by Lynda J. Cox
The hair lifted on the back of Colt’s neck as he raced to the edge of the monolith. Cradling Jenny against his chest as best he could, he flung himself down the granite.
The sky split apart and the darkness flared with white-hot light. Even as Colt shut his eyes against the brilliant flash, the old pine Jenny had cowered under burst apart. Flaming branches flew past him, extinguished just moments later by the downpour. Colt risked a glance over his shoulder as he slid down the granite on his backside. Only a splintered trunk remained of the pine. The flames sputtered in the rain and wind.
He darted under what little shelter the outcrop provided just as the skies began to dump hailstones the size of goose eggs. He set Jenny down, and shoved her into the scant protection of the overhang. He wrapped his arm around her shuddering frame, and sheltered her as best he could. The icy rain and the hail hammering into his back and arms forced a gasp of pain from him.
Every clap of thunder sent a shudder through Jenny’s slight body. Her ragged breathing racked her as well. Even if he knew what to say to her to calm her fears, he wouldn’t be heard over the thunder, the roar of the hail pounding into the ground, and the screeching winds. Instead, he just held her and tried to shelter her.
He dropped his gaze to the gravelly ground. Discarded cigarette butts littered the ground under the granite overhang. Colt’s stomach clenched and a new chill crawled over his skin.
Someone had been on the hilltop. Had spent a lot of time there.
Colt craned his head over his shoulder, but couldn’t see much further than five feet through the blinding torrents of rain and hail. He didn’t have to. He knew what he would see if not for the rain. This hilltop provided a clear view of the small home where Amelia and Saul were huddled in the root cellar.
Had it been Taylor? Colt discarded that notion. No, Taylor approached from the town of Federal. This was the other side of the tiny farm. This was the side of the approach he had taken, so many days before, injured and nearly out of his head with delirium.
Colt tightened his arm around Jenny, and dropped his cheek to the top of her dark head. He shut his eyes, refusing to let his sudden heartache and anguish find an outlet. Someone other than Taylor had been observing the house, and judging from the pile of butts, had spent a good amount of time doing it.
He had no idea how long he and Jenny had been crouching under the outcrop when the hail stopped and the rain lessened. In time, the lightning faded and the thunder receded in the distance. Colt straightened and pulled Jenny out from under the granite.
She seemed totally drained. He lifted her again in his good arm. She slipped her thin arms around his neck and dropped her head onto his shoulder. Colt forced a cheerful tone to his voice. “Good thing we’re not too far from the house. I don’t think I could carry you all the way back.”
Jenny’s grip around his neck loosened, and Colt realized she had slipped into sleep against his shoulder. The warm and evenly measured intervals of her breathing assured him it was an exhausted sleep. She was as limp as a rag doll against him.
****
Amelia stood just outside the doorway, watching for them. When she spied Colt coming to her, Jenny cradled in his good arm, she couldn’t stop the tears of relief breaking from her.
She rushed to Colt across the muddy yard. Blood trickled in a wide path down the side of his face. “What happened?”
Colt handed Jenny to her and wiped the blood from his scalp. “Hail.”
“Are you all right? Is Jenny okay?” Amelia demanded as she led the way to the house.
“She’s fine, Amy. I got pelted pretty good with the hail, but I’ll live. I made sure she was safe.”
Colt followed her to the room she and Jenny shared. He hesitated in the doorway as she slipped Jenny into bed and pulled the blanket up over her.
“She’s not going to catch a chill, being in those wet clothes, is she?”
“I don’t want to wake her.” Amelia pulled another blanket up over the child and tucked it in around her. “Come on into the kitchen and let me see how bad you got pelted.”
Colt sank into a chair at the table. “I feel as if I’ve been run over by a fully loaded wagon.”
Amelia tilted his head back, and wiped the rest of the blood from his face. She carefully lifted his matted hair to peer at the damage. “That is going to be a good-sized knot on your head, but I don’t think it will need stitches.”
“It was a hell of a big chunk of ice that hit my head…and my back…and my arm.” He smiled at her. The sudden warmth pooling in the depths of his eyes matched the heat coiling through her. Her stomach knotted and her heart pounded a maddened triplet. She licked suddenly dry lips and stepped back.
“What did you say to Donnie this morning?” she asked, trying to ignore the way her body responded to his nearness.
“Had a man-to-man talk with him, something he needed pretty bad.” Colt raised his hand to his head and touched the still-oozing gash. “Never knew ice could hurt so much.”
“Stop trying to change the subject.” Amelia wet a clean washrag under the hand pump, and then pressed it gently to Colt’s head. “I don’t know what you said to him, but he came in here all sweating and red-faced and asked me to marry him.”
Colt turned his narrowed gaze to her. “What answer did you give him, Amy?”
Chapter Thirteen
Colt waited for her answer with his heart in his throat. Telling Morris to marry her had been the right thing. She had herself convinced that Colt’s past wasn’t going to matter, that it wasn’t going to show up someday and put her and Saul and Jenny into harm’s way. As much as he would like to hope and dream it wouldn’t, he knew better. The drunk in town full of liquored-up bravado had proved that beyond any doubt. The cigarette butts he’d seen less than an hour ago on the ridge further drove that point home. They were proof that someone had been keeping close tabs on him, and he was willing to bet whoever it was had something to do with the Matthews clan.
His past was going to show up, sure as the sun would rise in the east. It was high time he stopped dreaming and well past time Amelia stopped clutching at straws.
Amelia pulled the cool rag away from his head. “I think it’s stopped bleeding. At least I don’t have to try to stitch it or put turpentine on it to stop the bleeding.”
“Now you’re trying to change the subject.” Colt caught her wrist. “What did you tell him, Amy?”
She studied his face for a long moment and then smoothed his hair away from his brow. “I told him no. I told him I would not marry him because I don’t love him.”
Colt exploded to his feet. “Damn it, Amy, why’d you tell him that? He’d make a good husband for you and a damn sight better father than I ever could to Saul and Jenny.” He leaned closer to her. “You don’t love him…what the hell does love have to do with anything?”
She paled, but didn’t back away from him. She pulled her shoulders back, and tilted her chin up. “I told him that because he’s not the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. He’s not the man I want to be the father of my children. He’s not the man I want to sleep next to every night of my life. And he’s not the man I love. That’s what love has to do with all of this.”
“I’m a shootist, Amy, a gunman. Do you know what that means? It means that every man I’ve killed has a family wanting to avenge his death. Maybe not all of them will try, but I know of one family that will. One of them already did try.” Colt leaned closer, his face inches from hers. “It means that someday, someone will show up here, looking for me with a loaded gun, hell bent on killing me.”
“You can stop being a shootist any time you want.” Her chin jutted stubbornly at him. “Any time you want, you can hang that gun up and never pick it up again. Others have done it. It can be done. I’ll live with the chance your past will come back for you.”
Colt grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “You are a fool, Amy. I can’t give you what he can. I can’t promise you tomorrow.”
“Neither can he, and he can’t give me what you can. I love you, Colt.”
She could have hit him across the head with an axe handle and it would have had less effect on him. She looked up into his face, those soft, blue-bonnet eyes shimmering with an emotion he’d never expected to see from any woman.
“The thought of any other man touching me or holding me or doing any of the things we’ve done leaves me feeling cold and empty. I don’t want to marry Donnie Morris. I don’t want to marry anyone but you.”
Marshal Taylor had been right, and that knowledge was worse than a red-hot poker in Colt’s gut. She loved him, and unless he could make his past vanish, he wouldn’t be the only one looking over his shoulder. If he stayed, Amelia would be forced to look over her shoulder too, waiting for the specter of his past to rear up.
What a choice it left him. Hurt her now, so she’d have a chance to heal and move on and learn to love someone else. Or stay around and hurt her—perhaps with a crippling hurt—later.
“I’m not the marrying kind, Amy. You don’t love me. You just think you do.”
She shook her head. “Then don’t marry me, but don’t leave either. I won’t stop loving you, Colt Evans. I love you.”
“No, you don’t. You’re infatuated with me and with the dream of being able to change who I am and what I am.” He caught her chin in his hand. “You can’t change those things. Yeah, I carry a Bible in my saddlebags, because it’s the only thing my mother ever gave me that Jackson Hayward didn’t steal from me. Just because I carry it, sure as hell doesn’t mean I live by anything in there. I’m a gunman, Amy, a shootist, and nothing will ever change that fact.”
“I told Amy you were just pretending not to be a shootist. You really are a gunfighter,” Saul’s awed voice announced from the doorway.
Amelia whirled around. For the space of a heartbeat, she kept her back to Colt. Then her shoulders rounded and her head bowed. She turned back to him, her face pale. Her eyes had a bruised quality to them.
Colt forced himself to look at Saul. “Saul, go outside for a few minutes, please.”
Saul’s eyes were wide, and the admiration on his face twisted like a dull, rusty blade in Colt’s stomach. “Will you teach me to shoot your gun?”
“Go outside, Saul,” Colt repeated through clenched teeth.
“Wait until I tell Kyla I was right. She thinks she knows everything, just because her dad’s the marshal.” Saul ran away from the doorway.
Amelia took a step away from Colt. “You knew he was there, didn’t you? You know how infatuated he is with men like Earp and Masterson and you made sure he knew you’re just like them. How am I ever going to tell him that isn’t a life for him?”
“Amy, I didn’t know he was there.” Colt held his hand out to her, but she slapped it away. “I didn’t know he was there,” he repeated. “Do you really think I want any kid, especially that boy, ever to pick up a gun?”
“I don’t know what I think, right now.” Welling tears thickened her voice. She pivoted from him, her back ramrod straight, her shoulders squared and unyielding.
Colt raised his hand to her stiff back, and then dropped it to his side without touching her. He clenched his fist. “Tomorrow, I’ll take Saul out hunting, make sure he knows how to properly fire the rifle. Then I’ll leave. Marry Donnie Morris. He’s a better man to be a father to Saul than I could ever be.”
She was as silent as the woods on a bitter winter’s day.
He paused in the doorway, trying one more time. “Amy, I didn’t know he was there.”
If his words had any effect, she didn’t reveal it.
****
Amelia jerked a weed from the herb bed, pulling up a mint plant along with it. Colt had to have known Saul was in the doorway. Why had he done that? Why had he deliberately played into Saul’s infatuation with killers like Holliday, Earp and Masterson?
She shook her head, seizing another weed poking through the muddy yellow ground. With a hard tug, she separated weed from soil. She had said she would find a way to tell Saul the truth. Instead, Colt had deliberately let it be known. Now, Saul could hold Colt up as an example.
No matter how many times Colt told Saul that carrying a gun was no way to live, there would be no stopping the boy. He wanted to pick up a gun, and she knew why. More than once, Saul had told her he wanted to find the people responsible for killing their parents and make them pay.
From the corner of her eye, she spied Colt walking to the barn. Her heart twisted. For the past few hours, he had been as silent and resolute as the granite slopes rising around the small valley. Yet there was something in his stiff back and frozen expression that said her angry accusations had wounded him.
Maybe he hadn’t known Saul was there. Maybe his only reason for telling her to marry Donnie and his refusal to admit a man could change who and what he was lay in his belief that it wasn’t possible. Somehow, she just could not envision Colt encouraging Saul to pick up a gun. But how could anyone other than Colt encourage Saul not to choose that life?
Amelia rose. She tried to brush the clinging mud from her knees, but surrendered to the notion the mud wasn’t going to be removed until she washed the garment. More laundry. She straightened, thrusting the thought from her mind, and walked to the barn.
The wisp of a curry brush over Angel’s coat filled the air. Colt’s quiet murmuring to the horse snaked into Amelia’s heart.
Amelia stopped a few feet from the horse’s stall. “Have you seen Saul?”
Colt shook his head, keeping his back to her. “Not for about an hour. I thought he said he was going to go down to the creek to try and catch a few fish. He said the fish bite pretty well after a rainstorm. Wouldn’t listen to me that they bite better before, not after.”
“Have you talked to him?”
Colt set the curry on the edge of the stall door. “I tried.” He shrugged. “I don’t think I got through to him. Amy, I can’t say this enough. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was there. The kind of life I lead isn’t a life I would want for anyone, but especially not for Saul.”
“I know that. I know you would never want him to pick up a gun.” Amelia took a step closer.
“Amy, I have to leave. I have a past. We’ve both been denying that truth ever since I got here. I’m not a good example of clean living, and I’m not the marrying kind.”
For a moment, Amelia chewed the inside of her lower lip and studied the floor at her feet. She forced herself to look up. “I thought…I thought maybe you found a place to make those dreams you told Jenny about reality,” she finally whispered, and turned away.
The stall door banged against the wall a second later. Colt grasped her elbow and spun her around. He caught her chin in his hand and pressed his open mouth to her lips. His hand slipped around the back of her neck, his fingers cradling the base of her skull, and his tongue probed her closed lips.
Fire raced through her and a sudden sob of hurt and need caught in her throat. She wrapped her arms around his waist, clinging to him and drinking in the heady, intoxicating taste of him.
His tongue invaded her mouth, stroking hers. Amelia’s womb clenched with the feel of him, the taste of him, the scent of him.
When he withdrew from her, his eyes were nearly black and his chest heaved. “Don’t you think I’d stay if I could? The thought of you in another man’s arms, of any other man touching you, kissing you, and loving you is agony, Amy. But the thought of you or Saul or Jenny getting hurt when—not if—when my past shows up is tearing me apart.”
She drew a steadying breath and backed away on trembling knees. “Don’t I have a say in this decision?”
Colt threw his head back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then he dragged his hand through his hair. “Oh, God,” he murmured, anguish thickening his voice. He lowered his gaze to her.
His agony found an echoing emotion in her. She had never felt this kind of pain in her life, not even when she found her parents’ bodie
s on the road to Federal.
He shook his head, while trailing the back of his fingers along her cheek. “I’m not going to take that chance with you. I can’t. And if you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll admit you don’t want to take that chance either, not with Saul and Jenny’s lives at stake.”
Colt lowered his hand and walked away from her. Amelia watched him leave the barn through a haze of tears. She wanted to call his name, beg him to stay, tell him it didn’t matter that what was in his past could come back to haunt him. But she knew it did matter. She wasn’t the only one affected by her decision. She had to think about Saul and Jenny.
Colt paused on the small porch of the cabin and leaned his head against the roof support. The pain in his soul hurt worse than the bullet hole in his shoulder ever had. Yeah, he could stay and see Amy or the kids or all of them get hurt when someone from his past came gunning for him. Or he could ride away, not look back, and be secure in the knowledge it would only take a matter of hours for the town’s gossip mill to circulate the information he’d ridden off. Hell, he could make sure the town gossips knew he had ridden away from the McCollister place, that wouldn’t be all that difficult to do. Riding off would assure safety for Amy, Saul, and Jenny.
Even though his head said it was what he needed to do, his heart argued this was where he was supposed to be. Colt ruthlessly quelled that voice and muttered, “A gunfighter with a conscience. Thought that was a commodity you couldn’t afford, Evans.”
Angry, he shoved the back door open.
A telltale double click made him whirl to the side and drop into a crouch. His hand instinctively went to his thigh. Only his revolver wasn’t there.
It was in Saul’s hand. Colt stared at him over the barrel of blued metal.
He was standing in the middle of the kitchen, Colt’s gun belt hanging loosely around his hips.
“Saul. Put the revolver down, now.” Colt’s heart hammered painfully against his breastbone. He never liked being on the receiving end of a revolver, especially in the hands of a novice. Knowing how smooth the trigger on his weapon was only heightened that discomfort. Colt swallowed, trying to force his heart from his throat.