The Rancher & Heart of Stone

by Diana Palmer

  “You don’t understand!” she began helplessly.

  “I said, get out! Now! If you don’t, so help me God I’ll call one of Hayes’s deputies and have you taken out in handcuffs!”

  He was too angry to listen to reason, and he meant what he said. Keely couldn’t bear the thought of being hauled off to jail for trespassing. It would be all over Comanche Wells and Jacobsville in no time, and she’d never live it down.

  She sighed, feeling as if she’d been crushed. She loved him, and he could treat her so badly.

  “I’m going,” she said. “You don’t have to make threats to get me to leave. Please tell Winnie something came up.”

  He didn’t answer her. He swept back down the hall, out the door and into what sounded like a pickup truck. It roared away as Keely started down the long driveway. Boone didn’t know that Winnie had driven her here. She didn’t have a way home. But she was too wary of Boone to go down to the bunkhouse and ask for a ride. It would do no good, anyway—all the men were out in the pastures, bringing in the crops.

  She was wearing a long-sleeved blouse, she had no water, she wasn’t even wearing a hat. The sun was brutal. By the time she got out the gates and a quarter of a mile down the road, she was too sick and thirsty to go on. She’d sit in the shade by the highway, she thought. It was flat here. Winnie would come driving by sooner or later and spot her. Her white blouse would stand out in that grove of mesquite trees. She’d just have to be careful of the trees trailing limbs and long thorns, which were so dangerous that they could pierce a boot.

  The big tree near the road afforded a little shade. There was a fallen limb next to it which seemed to have been there for a long time. She slumped down, exhausted by the heat, without looking first. That was a mistake. She heard the sound of frying bacon, which even her addled brain immediately connected with the source that would be making it this far away from a stove; a diamondback rattlesnake.

  Before she could even turn her head to look for it, the snake struck. It bit her on the forearm and withdrew, still rattling.

  Terrified, she jumped to her feet and ran backward before it could get her again. The bite mark was vivid, stained with blood. Tourniquet, she thought. Stop the blood running to the heart. Get the bite lower than the heart...

  She dragged the handkerchief she always carried from her pocket and wrapped half of it around her forearm between the bite and her elbow. She grabbed up a stick and used it to tighten the handkerchief. Only use it to keep the poison below the skin, she recalled from the first-aid book she’d read, don’t tighten it enough to stop the circulation. Once tightened, don’t loosen it, get help.

  Help? She looked both ways. The road was deserted. She’d been bitten by a poisonous snake. Her arm was already swelling as the poison tried to make its way to her heart. She kept her left arm down—it would be the one that was already damaged!—and tried to breathe slowly and shallowly. She’d need antivenin. Did they have any at the Jacobsville hospital? She didn’t have her mother’s cell phone. It was still on the counter in Winnie’s kitchen. The heat had already exhausted her and her head was swimming. She was nauseated. The bite hurt. It really hurt!

  She closed her eyes, standing in the middle of the highway. If somebody didn’t come down that road soon, it would be too late. She thought of Boone, the way he’d been at the charity dance, holding her, kissing her so tenderly, almost as if he...loved her.

  “Boone,” she whispered. And she fainted.

  * * *

  WINNIE WAS CURSING her own bad luck as she drove rapidly back to the ranch. Boone had called her, almost incoherent with fury, daring her to ever let Keely back in the front door. He had photos, he said harshly, of her with Clark that turned his stomach. He’d told her to get out and he never wanted to see her on the place again. He hung up before Winnie could tell him that Keely had no way home. Now she was hoping she could get back in time to save the poor girl a long and uncomfortable walk.

  As she approached the ranch road, she noticed a bundle of rags in the road. But as she came closer, she realized it wasn’t rags—it was Keely!

  She wheeled her car around and left it running, the door open, as she rushed to Keely’s side.

  “Keely! Keely!” she called, as she whipped out her cell phone and dialed the emergency services number without hesitation.

  Keely’s eyes opened groggily. “Winnie...snake...rattler...” She tried to lift her left arm. It was swollen and almost black already.

  “Dear God,” Winnie whispered reverently. A voice spoke in her ear. “This is Winnie Sinclair,” she said. “Shirley, is that you? I thought it was. Listen, I’ve got Keely Welsh here in the middle of the highway with snakebite. It was a rattler, she said. I’m taking her to Jacobsville General myself, no time to dispatch an ambulance. Have them waiting at the door with antivenin. Got that? Thanks, Shirley. No, I can’t stay on the line, I have to get her in the car.”

  She hung up and managed to get Keely into the front seat and belted in, in a matter of seconds, with strength she didn’t know she had. Her heart was pounding as she put the car in gear and left tire marks as she shifted into low gear.

  A mile down the road she was met by flashing blue lights. She slowed. The car, Jacobsville Police, spun around in front of her. The door opened and Kilraven’s head poked out. “Follow me!” he shouted.

  She nodded, relieved to have help. He took off and she followed close on his bumper. Cars got out of the way. They went right through two red lights and turned into the emergency entrance to the hospital.

  As soon as she stopped the car, Kilraven came running back to get Keely and carry her to her door where a gurney and Dr. Coltrain waited.

  “Snakebite,” Winnie panted. “Diamondback. She put on a tourniquet herself...”

  “It’s all right,” Kilraven told her. “Shirley called them for you. Everything’s ready, except the antivenin,” he added quietly. “They don’t have enough, so they’re having a state trooper run it down here to the county line. Hayes Carson’s going himself to meet him and relay it back here.” He put a big hand on Winnie’s shoulder. “She’ll be all right. You did good.”

  She bit her lower lip. Tears rained down her face. She turned it away from him and started up the steps.

  He pulled her around and into his arms. “Don’t ever be ashamed of tears,” he said into her ear. “I’ve shed my share of them.”

  That was surprising and sort of nice. It meant he was human. “Thanks,” she said huskily after a minute. She drew back and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I was scared stiff and I couldn’t show it. She’s my friend.”

  “I know. Come on. I’ll walk you in. I had a call here, anyway. Remember old Ben Barkley? His son put a bullet through his leg when he started beating the boy’s mother.”

  “Riley shot him?” she asked, surprised. The boy was sweet and helpful when he called emergency services to get help saving his mother from his habitually drunk father.

  “Riley did,” he asserted. He grinned, and bent low. “We’re going to take him out to our firing range and help him improve his aim, in case he ever does it again.”

  She burst out laughing. It was such an outrageous thing to say.

  “That’s better,” he said when he saw her face. “Stiff upper lip, now.”

  “I’m not British.”

  “You aren’t?” he exclaimed. “Why, what a coincidence...neither am I!”

  She punched his broad chest, laughing. They walked together to the emergency waiting room.

  * * *

  FURIOUS, HELPLESS TO do anything for her friend, Winnie took refuge in the only thing she could think of that might help—revenge. She phoned Boone and gave him hell.

  “Slow down, slow down!” he complained. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Wait...” He cut off the engine on the tractor he was using to help with the harvest. “All right, what was that about Keely?”

  “She was walking home, thanks to you, and she g
ot bitten by a rattlesnake! She’s at Jacobsville General...Boone? Hello? Hello? Damn!”

  She hung up, even more furious now, because he wouldn’t listen to her. She called Clark. “Where are you?” she asked when he didn’t answer for almost a minute.

  He sounded out of breath. “I’m, uh, I had to run to catch the phone,” he said lamely. In the background, music was playing and there was a faint protest, which sounded as if it came from a feminine throat.

  “Oh, hell, never mind,” she muttered and hung up. She didn’t need to ask where he was. He was almost certainly with that damned Nellie again. So much for restraint.

  But he phoned her back ten minutes later, while she was waiting, hoping, for some sort of report about Keely. She stopped nurses, who promised to go and check but never came back. She was getting frustrated.

  “What did you want?” Clark asked.

  “Never mind. Go back to Nellie,” she muttered.

  “Don’t hang up!” he grumbled. “I’m not with Nellie. I’m over at Dave Harston’s place helping him move a piano. His wife’s making us lunch.”

  She felt her face go red. “Sorry.”

  He laughed. “I guess the sounds must be similar, but I swear I’m not doing anything I’d mind being seen doing. What’s up?”

  “Keely got bitten by a rattler,” she said miserably. “I can’t find out what’s going on and I’m worried sick. Her arm was almost black, Clark. I’m scared—” Her voice broke.

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. She’ll be all right, sis. I know she will.”

  “Thanks,” she said huskily, and hung up. She prayed that he was right.

  A commotion at the desk caught her attention. Boone was bulldozing right past a nurse and a police officer—Kilraven—on his way back to the emergency room. Winnie almost cheered. If anybody could cut through red tape, it was her big brother. They could threaten, but they wouldn’t stop him.

  “Coltrain!” he bellowed.

  “Over here,” came a deep, resigned voice.

  Boone hid it well, but he was terrified. Winnie’s phone call made him feel guilty as hell, and he’d hardly managed to breathe as he rushed to the hospital. One of his cowboys had died from a rattler bite the year before. He was scared to death that Keely might not have reached help in time. If she died, he’d never forgive himself, never!

  “Where is she?” Boone demanded, dark eyes flashing, face flushed. He’d come straight from work to the hospital in his work clothes, and never noticed how disheveled he was.

  Coltrain nodded toward a cubicle where they were working on her. He knew better than to try to stop Boone. It would mean a brawl, where he could least afford one.

  Boone walked into the cubicle and stopped dead. Everything seemed to go out of focus except for Keely’s left arm. They’d bared her to the waist, pulling the sheet only over one breast, leaving the left one and her shoulder bare while they pumped antivenin into her in an attempt to save her life. She was unconscious. Her arm was almost black, swollen out of recognition. But it wasn’t the swelling that Boone was fixated on. It was her shoulder. There were huge scars, which looked as if something with enormous teeth had taken a bite right out of her. The damage was staggering to look at. The pain she must have suffered—

  He knew at once that his photographs had been faked, and later he was going to give somebody hell over that botched, so-called investigation. But right now, his whole focus was on this slip of a girl whom he’d misjudged, whom he’d almost killed with his outrage.

  “What in hell happened to her?” Boone bit off.

  “She was bitten...”

  “Not the snakebite. That!” He pointed at her shoulder.

  Coltrain wanted to tell him that he should ask Keely, but he knew it would do no good. “She jumped into a mountain lion pit at her father’s game park to save a seven-year-old boy who sneaked under the rail when nobody was looking.”

  “Good God! And where was her father while all that was going down?” Boone demanded.

  “Standing at the rail, watching,” Coltrain said with utter disdain.

  “Damn him,” Boone said huskily.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  He held his breath as he looked at her. “Will she live?” he asked finally, having postponed the question as long as he could.

  Coltrain looked at him. “I don’t know, Boone,” he said honestly. “The poison had a good bit of time to work before she was found...” He hesitated because of the torture in the other man’s eyes.

  Boone moved past the technicians to the head of the bed where Keely was lying, so white and still. He brushed back her sweaty hair with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. He bent down to her ear.

  “You have to live,” he whispered, his voice forcibly steady. “You have to live. This is my fault, but I can’t...live...if you don’t, Keely...” He had to stop because his voice was breaking. She was blurring in his eyes. He never cried. His composure was absolute. But he was losing it. His thumb brushed her pale lips as he drew in an audible breath. “I’ll kill that damned private detective,” he whispered.

  Keely stirred, just a heartbeat’s movement, but he felt it. His forehead bent down to hers and his lips brushed against the pale, cold skin. “Don’t die. Please...”

  “You have to let us work,” Coltrain said, catching the other man’s arm. It was as rigid as metal. “Come on, Boone. Do what’s best for her.”

  Boone hesitated just long enough to take one last look at her.

  “Pity about those scars,” one of the techs was saying.

  “What scars?” Boone asked huskily.

  Coltrain only smiled as he herded the rancher out of the cubicle and back out to the waiting room.

  Winnie looked up as Boone was deposited in the waiting room. He paused, almost trembling with rage. He looked at his sister. “You call me if there’s any change, any at all,” he said heavily. “You hear?”

  “Yes, of course,” she replied. “Where are you going?”

  “To kill a private detective,” he said through his teeth. He’d added a few pithy adjectives to the sentence, which had Winnie’s eyebrows arching toward her hairline.

  He was gone in a flash. She connected the photos he’d mentioned to Keely’s sudden departure and then to the private detective that Boone was going after. Clark walked in while she was mulling it over in her mind.

  She turned to him. “Do we know any bail bondsmen?” she asked in an almost conversational tone.

  * * *

  KEELY HAD BEEN failing, but she rallied when they added the relayed antivenin to her drip catheter. She wasn’t conscious, but she was groaning. Coltrain kept her under while they worked to stabilize her vital signs.

  It was very late when he came out into the waiting room, smiling.

  “She’ll make it,” he told them wearily. “But she’ll be here for a few days.”

  “Thank God,” they said almost in unison.

  “We should send the boys out hunting rattlers,” Clark suggested.

  “Boone’s already out after one of them, I’m afraid,” Winnie said. She smiled at Coltrain. “Thanks.”

  “I like her, too,” he replied. He smiled. “You’d both better get some rest. I’ll have one of the nurses phone you if there’s any change.”

  “Thanks,” Winnie said again.

  “It’s why I’m a doctor,” Coltrain said, grinning as he left them.

  Winnie tried to phone Boone, but he didn’t answer. She was about to try again when Sheriff Hayes Carson came into the room, his brown-streaked blond hair shining in the ceiling light. His dark eyes were turbulent.

  “Have you been trying to reach your brother?” he asked Winnie. “Sorry, but they don’t allow cell phones in detention.”

  Winnie groaned. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes,” Hayes replied. “Don’t worry about calling anybody. I went and bailed him out myself while I was off duty.” He put a hand to his ear. “I swear to God, the guards were writ
ing down the words as he ripped them out. I’ve never heard such language in my life. At least the detective isn’t pressing assault charges, however...”

  “He isn’t? Thank goodness,” Winnie exclaimed. “But why?”

  “He ran for his life. His employers weren’t so fortunate.” He actually smiled. “Detective Rick Marquez and I have been doing a little sleuthing of our own, after office hours, and with a little help from some friends. It turns out,” he said in a low tone, wary of eavesdroppers, “that Boone’s girlfriend, Misty, and her father are up to their necks in the regional drug traffic network. They ran for it when Marquez sent a DEA agent to their detective agency with a search warrant to have a look around. Last I heard,” he added with a chuckle, “there was a statewide BOLO for them. I don’t think we’ll be seeing them again anytime soon.”

  Winnie was almost breathless. “Poor Boone. He and Misty were dating....”

  “I asked him to do it,” Hayes said quietly. “He was mad as hell, too. He said it was interfering with something very personal. I hated to strong-arm him into it, but he was the only person who had any sort of access to her.”

  Winnie’s eyes lit up. “He didn’t really care about her, then?”

  “No. He couldn’t stand her. He did it to help me cut off one of Jacobsville’s top drug suppliers.”

  And Boone didn’t want to because of something personal. Could it be Keely? She thought about the photos Misty’s father’s detective had dug up for him...

  “They faked the photos,” she burst out.

  Hayes frowned. “What photos?”

  “Never mind.”

  “How’s Keely?” Hayes asked gently. “I heard about the snakebite from Boone.”

  “She’s going to be fine. I still can’t get him on the phone,” she added worriedly.

  “By now, he’s made it to the nurse’s station,” he said. “He didn’t stop cursing until we got to town. He’s in the hospital somewhere. He’ll turn up directly.”

  Even as they spoke, Boone walked in the door. He was disheveled, red-eyed and bruised.

  “I know,” Winnie said when he held up a bruised hand. “The other guy looks worse. Are you okay?”