“You wanna get her killed?”
“Shut up, Sandy.”
“No, listen, Sheriff. I know you’re itchin’ to get her back, but you gotta wait a few hours, let ’em think they can relax. Then go after ’em.”
Jericho tried to elbow his way past Sandy, but the young man grabbed his arm. “Don’t do it, Sheriff. They’ll kill her.”
Jericho eyed his deputy, partly with disbelief and partly with respect. He hated to admit it, but Sandy was right.
“How’d you get so damn smart, kid?”
Sandy snorted. “If I knew that, I’m the one that’d be the sheriff.”
Jericho turned away. “Well, you’re not the sheriff.” Then he wondered if he was going crazy, and before he could stop himself he made another decision.
“I am going after them. Now.”
“Sheriff, you can’t. I know you, uh, you didn’t get much sleep last night, but...” Sandy turned crimson and studied the toes of his boots.
Jericho groaned. “You say one word, kid, and you won’t even be a deputy!”
“Yessir.”
“Now, get Doc Graham over here to tend to that varmint in the street and untie Old Man Warriner inside the bank.”
“Yessir.”
When he saluted, Jericho thought about slugging him.
He had to do something! He just couldn’t sit around and wait. In the next minute he found himself mounted up and setting out after Tucker and his gang.
He got no more than a mile out of town when a shot whined from behind a copse of willows and slammed straight into his calf.
Hell. What now? Should he stop and get Doc Graham to bandage him up? That would give Tucker a couple more hours’ head start.
He started to rein in his horse. No, dammit, he’d keep after them. He tried to kick his mount but found his left leg wouldn’t work right. And in that moment he knew he’d be worthless unless he could walk.
Sandy was right. He had to force himself to wait, give himself a better chance.
And...though he thought he’d never do this—but that was before Maddie—he’d ask Rooney Cloudman to ride with him. For the first time in his years as sheriff was he really willing to risk someone’s life besides his own?
Hell, yes, he was. And keeping Maddie alive was the reason. When he caught up with the gang it would be safer for Maddie if there were two men with weapons instead of just one.
Half an hour later, laid out on Doc Graham’s bed on the second floor of the boardinghouse, Jericho closed his eyes and began to plan. First off, he’d tell Old Man Warriner not to worry about the gold. He’d get it back.
And then he’d pray he was doing the right thing and try like hell not to worry about Maddie.
Chapter Nineteen
After six punishing hours with no stopping for rest or water, Maddie gave up trying to sit straight in the saddle and slouched forward to rest her back. Jericho had stopped every hour or so to rest and water his horses, but Tucker spared no thought for his men and animals, driving them on.
She was not sorry for what she had done this morning, grabbing Jericho’s rifle off the gun rack at the jail and rushing off to the bank. Her muscles were paying for it now, but it had been worth it. Jericho was alive.
She wondered if she would survive the next twenty-four hours. Oh, she could not think about that now. Instead, she decided to focus on simple, immediate things: the scorching sun on her bare neck, the powdery gray dust blowing into her eyes and up her nose, the sharp catch in her heartbeat whenever she thought of Jericho. If she did not survive this ordeal, at least she had known real passion.
She studied the three men who rode ahead of her. Tucker was big and broad-shouldered, with a florid face and a fat belly that jiggled when he walked. Lefty was paunchy, too, but some years younger than the leader, and he carried his weight better. But he was as cocky as a rooster. His face was marred by a constant scowl.
Rafe, the skinny one she had winged in the shoulder, was tall, red-haired, quiet and odd-looking; his head stretched above his scrawny neck like a giraffe’s, and he hawked spit onto the ground so often her stomach roiled.
What a scruffy, godforsaken lot they were. The looks Lefty was sending her were unspeakably rude, but they ceased when Tucker glared at him and muttered, “Hands off.”
Another two hours dragged by and she began thinking seriously about how to survive this ordeal. First, she needed to conserve her strength, and that meant getting enough water and food. Beyond that, she prayed the men would not hurt her or—she shut her eyes—molest her.
Or kill her. With her pistol she could protect herself up to a point, but she knew that the instant she fired a single shot at any of them, bullets from three guns would rip into her body.
She thought about dying. It made her think about her life and the choices she had made. When she was young she had let Papa maneuver her into a marriage that almost crushed her spirit and her sense of herself. Joining the Pinkerton agency after she had been widowed had been a good choice; the training had given her self-confidence and a feeling of independence, and the missions she accomplished told her she was doing something of worth with her life.
Only when she met Jericho had she recognized the underlying ache of loneliness. And when he had kissed her, she had become aware of an ache for something else, for connection of one spirit with another, of one body with another.
Oh, heavens, if she died she would never again know that joy.
Tucker called a halt at a shallow stream where the men watered their horses and wolfed down hunks of jerky dug from the depths of their saddlebags. She considered yanking her mount free of the rope tied to Tucker’s horse and racing for freedom, but that would be foolish; they would shoot her in the back before she had traveled three yards.
And then she would never see Jericho again.
An hour later they clattered up a rocky hillside and dropped down into a campsite tucked within a circle of jagged rocks. Tucker dragged her off the horse but left her wrists tied. He shoved her toward the fire pit, and she sank her sore, throbbing body down against a smooth-sided gray boulder. Surreptitiously she managed to kick a stick of kindling under the folds of her skirt. If one of the men threatened her, she would use it to scrape hot coals at him.
She patted the small pistol hidden in her side seam pocket, she knew she couldn’t shoot all of them, but she could use it on herself if one of them pounced on her.
She dared not think about it.
She eyed the circle of boulders looming around the camp. Jericho would come from the south, but she knew instinctively that he would circle around to... She studied the huge, irregularly shaped rocks. That one, she decided. The gray-green one directly across from her. She patted the lump under her skirt. She would be ready to back him up.
Tucker posted Rafe as a guard, built up the fire, and began to unload the now-filthy Wells Fargo bags. They thunked heavily onto the ground, accompanied by Tucker’s satisfied grunts.
“Jest lookit that,” Lefty exulted. “And it’s all ours, every last ounce of it.” He ran his pudgy hand appreciatively over one lumpy bag but did not untie it. “How much you figure’s there, Tuck?”
“Enough,” came the terse reply. “Rustle up some supper instead of moonin’ over our take.”
It was a miracle the men did not rip away the canvas to count their treasure. Maddie prayed the men would wait some hours before they dived into their ill-gotten gains—long enough for Jericho to reach the camp.
Tucker slapped a tin plate with two shriveled dust-covered biscuits in front of her. “Eat,” he grated.
“I most certainly would if I were able,” she retorted. She held up her trussed wrists.
Tucker grunted and sawed through the leather thong with a dull pocketknife. She rubbed her wrists to restore t
he circulation, gingerly picked up one biscuit and tried to nibble a few bites. It tasted like sawdust.
It grew dark. Lefty replaced Rafe as lookout. Tucker produced a bottle of whiskey, gulped down a swallow and spat. Then he offered the bottle to Maddie.
“Want a pull?”
“Certainly not. I do not indulge in spirits.” Except for Rita’s brandy-laced coffee. Her mouth watered. How she wished she had some now!
“Churchgoer, huh? Thought so by the look of ya. But ya sure don’t handle a rifle like a God-and-Jesus type, little lady.”
“My name,” she said in a clipped voice, “is Mrs. Madison O’Donnell. ‘Ma’am’ to you.”
“Feisty, too,” Tucker muttered. He tossed her a ragged, sour-smelling blanket. “Shut up and go to sleep. We’re gonna tally our take.”
“I think not,” she said quietly but with immense satisfaction. “At this moment the train out of Smoke River is pulling into the Portland station carrying four bags of Wells Fargo gold.”
“Couldn’t be,” Tucker rasped. “We’ve got that gold right here.” He kicked one of the canvas bags. “Slit one of these open, Rafe. Let’s see how much we’ve got.”
Rafe pulled a shiny, wicked-looking knife from his boot and started for the bag. Maddie felt for her pistol, still hidden inside her skirt pocket. If one man made a move toward her, she would take out Tucker with her first shot, then aim for Rafe and then Lefty. If she was lucky.
It would be smarter to wait for Jericho, which would even up the odds, but hours had passed and he had not shown up. Was he nearby? Or had Tucker’s attempts to cover their trail been successful? Goodness, what if Jericho didn’t find her until it was too late?
Rafe emitted a squawk of fury. “Sand!” he shouted. “Nuthin’ but sand and gravel!” He turned furious eyes on her. “God, I’ll—”
Tucker silenced him with a gesture. “No, you won’t. Ain’t her doin’, it’s that damn sheriff. Too smart for his own good.”
Maddie tugged the filthy blanket up to cover her smile. Substituting sand for the gold was the one part of her plan that Jericho had adopted. She forgave him for being so stubborn about the rest.
Lefty clumped down from his lookout post, took one look at the sand spilled on the ground and swore in more colorful terms than Maddie had ever heard.
“What’re we gonna do now, boss?”
Tucker did not answer. Instead, he stalked over to Maddie and squatted down in front of her. “You knew about this, didn’t cha?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And Silver knew, too?”
“Yes.”
His hard black eyes looked puzzled. “Then why in hell— Why not just let us grab it and ride out. Why try to stop us?”
“Because,” she said slowly and clearly, “it is not the gold the sheriff wants. It is you and your gang.”
He looked down his bulbous nose at her. “You think a lot of Jericho Silver, don’tcha?”
“Yes, I do.” She spoke as calmly as she could. She thought more than a lot of Jericho; she knew now that she was in love with him.
“Aw, hell,” Tucker spit out. “Women are nuthin’ but trouble. I’ll deal with you later.” He tramped back to his tin plate of misshapen biscuits and left Maddie cold and shaking.
She settled back against the boulder behind her and tried to think about something other than her aching body and the crisp night air seeping through the threadbare blanket.
There was a good chance she would not survive this. In fact, she probably wouldn’t. And if she did?
The prospect made her think about her life, about the choices she had made. She was glad she’d met Jericho, glad she had known love, even if it was only for a short while. She blinked back the tears that stung behind her eyes.
Even if she did survive, she knew she could never stay in Smoke River. It was simply too, well, small. It was isolated. Ingrown. It had none of the cultural amenities she was used to, things she had loved since she was a girl.
Worse, she acknowledged, she could not bear to be trapped in a marriage ever again. Marriage was a prison, and a woman’s husband was the jailer. A wife obeyed or she died.
She shut her eyes tight. Could there be another way? She stifled an unladylike snort. A lady could not live in sin in a small town like Smoke River. Not only would it ruin her, it would ruin Jericho, as well. The townspeople would strip him of his sheriff’s badge quicker than a meteor could streak across the sky.
Jericho’s whole life was based on serving as Smoke River’s beloved sheriff. If he lost that because of her, she could not live with herself.
* * *
Jericho reined up suddenly at the sight of the small pile of rocks beside the path—three flat stones carefully stacked on top of one another. An old Indian signal. Thank God! He knew then that he had picked up Tucker’s trail.
Rooney Cloudman moved his bay up beside him and stared down at the sign. “Trail marker,” he grunted. “Now who d’ya suppose left that?”
“Indian,” Jericho said. “Klamath or Nez Percé, maybe. Fellow keeps turnin’ up at just the right time.”
“You got a scout workin’ for you?”
“Nah. Just an unseen friend.”
Rooney’s mouth quirked. “How’d you manage that?”
“Dunno. Maybe because I’ve been lettin’ him steal jerky out of my saddlebags for the last couple of years.”
Cloudman raised both gray-speckled eyebrows but said nothing. Jericho nodded once, and the two men rode on.
Two hours later they came to a muddy creek bank where they could see four clear sets of hoofprints. Rooney leaned forward, propping his hands on the saddle horn. “Looks like she’s still with them. Think she’s all right?”
Jericho took his time answering. She had to be all right. He would die if Maddie wasn’t all right.
“Yeah. She’s all right.”
“How come you’re so sure? There’s three desperate men out there, and she’s just a woman.”
“Maddie isn’t ‘just a woman.’ Maddie is...”
Rooney shot him a look. “Oh, I see. Felt that way about a woman myself, once.” He sent Jericho an admiring glance.
“Mind your own business, Rooney.”
Rooney cleared his throat. “You thinkin’ about marryin’ her, Johnny?”
Jericho’s throat swelled shut over a lump the size of a lemon. He couldn’t answer. God knew he was in love with her, but...
Marry her? Nothing could scare him more. He hadn’t mixed with the others at the orphanage, maybe because of his darker skin, his obviously mixed heritage. But he’d been a friend to Little Bear. He’d let her chip through the protective shell he’d thrown up, and after that he’d shared everything with her, confided in her, cared about her.
And then, on that day he’d never forget as long as he lived, he’d watched her die for something he had done. Since then he’d never let himself get close to anyone, never let himself care about another human being. Something about it, about caring and permanence, had left him wary all his life. He was a loner, and he liked it.
Up until now.
“Let’s move,” he grated.
Without a word, Cloudman reined his mount back onto the faint trail, and for the next few hours they followed it in silence. Jericho scanned the ground ahead and tried not to think about Maddie.
Just when the horses were close to being played out, the tracks petered into dust and Jericho sighted the boulder-protected hideout up ahead. Tucker’s camp.
They picketed their mounts half a mile away and crawled on their bellies to lie hidden until the moon rose. They’d have just enough light to spring a trap.
An hour passed, and Jericho began to sweat. When he couldn’t stand to wait any longer, he rolled toward Rooney. “Now,” he into
ned.
As they’d agreed, Rooney circled to the left and disappeared from view. Minutes later, his rumpled gray hat poked up from between two large red-veined rocks. Jericho crept in the opposite direction. He tried not to think about when he and Maddie had pulled the same stunt a week ago and it had gone horribly wrong.
This time he couldn’t make any mistakes. At the first sign of trouble, Tucker would kill her.
After a skin-prickling half hour, he saw Rooney’s gray hat move up, then down, then up again. Jericho waited and slowly counted to twenty so his deputized companion could crawl into position.
When it was time, Jericho called out.
“Tucker? You’re surrounded. Drop your weapons.”
Nothing.
“Tucker?”
No answer.
Sweat soaked the neck of his shirt. “Jeb Tucker?”
Cautiously, Jericho stood up, peeked over the rocks, and sucked in his breath.
Nothing moved in the circle of boulders. Shredded canvas bags were strewn among piles of sand; dirt had been hastily kicked over the fire. The camp was deserted.
Jericho kept his rifle aimed at the fire pit and worked his way down through the rocks. Behind him he heard the hammer click on Rooney’s rifle.
Jericho hoisted his Winchester shoulder high and scanned the area. Nothing but muddled boot prints and a scrap of leather thong, no outlaws.
“Rooney,” he yelled. “Come on down. The place is deser—”
Suddenly a scrap of yellow fabric caught his eye, wedged behind a flat-topped hunk of granite. Maddie. His body went cold. He clunked his rifle onto the ground and started toward her.
“Maddie!”
She lay at an odd angle, her face hidden under one arm. “Rooney,” he yelled.
“Hell,” Rooney breathed at his back. “Is she—”
Jericho grasped her shoulders and eased her body free of the rocks. Oh, God, she... He had to look away. The back of her head was sticky with blood.
“Turn her over,” Rooney said quietly. Jericho rolled her over as gently as he could and placed two fingers at her neck. A thready pulse fluttered.
Harlequin Historical September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Lone SheriffThe Gentleman RogueNever Trust a Rebel Page 17