She couldn’t stifle the shriek of pain.
“Are you hurt?” He backed away, hands held half aloft as if he didn’t know where to put them.
“Of course she is, but she wouldn’t be left behind.” Doc Rawlings hustled toward them, his carpetbag clenched in one fist. “Where’s the boyo?”
Stewart looked from the doctor to Alannah and back again. “Inside. But?” He pointed toward Alannah.
“Sure and she’ll be fine with time and rest. Not that she’s had either.”
The doctor pushed between them. When Alannah hobbled to his side, he stopped. “You wait out here. I don’t need ya hangin’ over me shoulder.” He disappeared inside, banging the door behind him.
“Sit down before you fall.” Stewart pointed to the barrel beside the cabin door.
He leaned his rifle next to her. “I’ll put up the team and be right back.”
She leaned her head against the cabin siding and listened. The doctor murmured in a low tone, whether to himself or to Conn she couldn’t tell.
Fatigue hit like a runaway stagecoach. Her eyelids drifted shut.
The next thing she knew, Stewart knelt beside her.
She looked around and rubbed at her eyes. The wagon and horses were gone. How long had she been asleep?
“Now tell me what happened.” His smoky-brown eyes searched hers for answers. The stubble on his jaw had lengthened, and his hair was a wild tangle in need of a trim.
She curled her fingers into her palms, resisting the urge to touch his face.
“Cyclops fell.” Her chin wobbled. Tears washed her cheeks.
Hesitantly, with infinite gentleness, he put his arms around her.
She let her forehead fall against his shoulder, breathing in his strength. “It was dark. Fort Laramie’s lights were in view. I hurt so badly. Cyclops limped off toward the fort. I could barely move.” She sniffed and pushed away far enough to look him in the eyes. “I called out to God and…He answered me.”
“He did?”
“He sent Cyclops back to me. I couldn’t believe it.”
Stewart rubbed his jaw. “That’s an answer to prayer if I’ve ever heard one.”
“God hasn’t given up on me.”
“Lanny.” His voice deepened. “Alannah.”
Her name sounded foreign and beautiful from his lips. His fingers tangled in the ends of her hair. His eyes darkened. The dimple formed on his left cheek.
She leaned forward.
Their lips met and time ceased. The warmth, the pressure, a fire kindled inside her, his arm warm behind her waist, the nape of his neck soft beneath her fingers. Her world consisted of this.
And then Zeus barked.
The bark washed over Stewart like an icy mountain stream. He shot a glance at Alannah. Hat gone and lips softened from his kiss, there would be no denying who she was. He grabbed his rifle and faced the incoming riders. With each stride of their horses, his resolve to protect her hardened.
Hugh Bergman pulled his horse to a halt. Edward stopped beside him, but not within arm’s reach. Likely a lesson he’d learned years ago.
“So. You been hidin’ her here all along.” Hugh sneered. “Never trusted you.”
“It’d be a good idea if you and your sons just rode on to Oregon,” Stewart said.
Hugh snorted.
Where was Carl? An itch crawled along the back of Stewart’s neck.
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere without my wife.” Edward reached for his pistol.
Stewart snapped his rifle to his shoulder.
Hand still inches from his pistol, Edward froze.
Alannah stood and clenched the back of Stewart’s shirt. The weight of his pistol eased from behind his belt. Good girl.
“She’s not your wife. Not now. Not ever.”
“See here.” Hugh let his horse take a step forward. “We got more claim to her than you do.”
“Nobody who beats a woman has any claim to her.” He kept his rifle steady, aimed at Edward. Even a man as vile as Hugh wouldn’t want his son shot. He hoped. “Only a coward beats on the defenseless.”
Alannah gasped.
Hugh’s face mottled an unhealthy shade of red. His eyes narrowed, reins crushed in his white-knuckled grip. But he didn’t try for his gun.
Where was Carl?
As if conjured by his thoughts, the eldest son rode around the corner of the cabin leading Patch.
“Get a saddle, girl,” Hugh said.
“She’s not going with you.” Stewart hoped Alannah had filled Doc in on the particulars of this situation. He could sure use the doc’s help about now.
“You got one rifle, Pony man. You can’t stop three of us,” Hugh said.
“I can shoot that one.” He lifted his chin a notch in the direction of Edward.
Hugh laughed and moved his horse closer. “Get a saddle, girl, and put yourself on that horse. Keep us from havin’ to kill your so-called hero.”
“There’s lathered horses in the corral, Pa,” Carl said.
Hugh rubbed his chest and coughed. “It’s a Pony station. Of course there is.” He shot his eldest a disgusted look.
“Six of ‘em.”
Hugh’s eyebrows flattened to a single line. “Hurry, girl. Saddle that horse.”
The cabin door creaked. The muzzle of a rifle poked from its narrow opening, aimed straight at Carl.
“Sure and stealin’ a horse is a hangin’ offense,” the doctor said from inside the cabin. “Unless ya get shot first.”
Carl glanced at his father.
“What we’ve got here is a standoff.” Hugh shifted in his saddle, and his horse sidestepped toward Edward’s mount. “Two of you against three of us.”
“Not quite.”
Stewart couldn’t turn and look, but Conn’s voice, while weak, was accompanied by the slide of metal over wood. He’d bet his bottom dollar the boy held his scattergun over the windowsill.
The click of his Colt Dragoon raised the hair along the back of Stewart’s neck. Alannah held the pistol in one hand, aimed squarely at Hugh.
“We ain’t goin’ without that girl.” Edward’s horse took a step forward.
“I don’t know ya, mister, but I’m thinkin’ no girl is worth gettin’ dead over.” Doc’s brogue rolled out from behind the door. “At this range, I can’t be missin’ ya, even was I inclined to try. Which I’m not.”
Hugh growled a warning at Edward.
Doc pushed the door open a bit more. “I’ve witnessed ya stealin’ a Pony Express horse. I’ll be filin’ a report when I get back to Fort Laramie. Now were ya to put a good foot under ya, ya might make it out of the territory before anyone can muster a posse.”
Carl slipped the loop from around Patch’s neck and coiled his rope.
“What you doin’, boy?” Hugh didn’t take his eyes off of Stewart.
“I ain’t no horse thief.”
“Did I tell you to let that horse go?”
“Ain’t goin’ to swing for it, Pa.” Carl shook his head. “Think we all know she won’t stay with Edward anyway. Ain’t worth it. We’ve wasted more than a week. I got me a wife waitin’ in Oregon.”
“Listen to your son, Bergman. He makes sense.” Stewart dared to hope, but he kept his rifle at his shoulder.
“But Pa—” Edward said.
“Shut up.”
“Pa—”
Hugh swung his hat and hit Edward’s mount in the face. The horse screamed and reared. Edward landed in the dust of the station’s yard, his pistol falling from its holster and landing beside him. He reached for it.
Stewart squeezed the rifle’s trigger, and it kicked against his shoulder.
Edward yelled and grabbed his right hand. Blood dripped onto the ground. “He shot me!”
Smoke drifted from the barrel of the Sharps; the smell of gunpowder hung in the air.
Hugh’s horse tossed its head and danced in a circle, the whites of its eyes showing. Hugh jerked it around and faced Stewart.
Carl caught Edward’s horse and helped his brother.
Hugh didn’t move until both sons were mounted. “We’ll be back.”
“No, we won’t,” Carl said.
Hugh whirled on his eldest.
“The telegraph will be here by next week, Pa. Instant communication with the fort. I ain’t comin’ back. I ain’t goin’ to hang for any woman, least of all that half-Irish one.” Still holding Edward’s reins, he kicked his horse into a lope heading west, towing his brother in his wake.
“Don’t come back, Bergman.” Stewart took a step toward him. “There’ll be nothing for you here but an arrest warrant. Or worse.”
With no sons to back him up, Hugh shriveled before their eyes. Gone was the bluster and swagger. Gone was the anger and disdain. For a brief moment, a washed-up old man sat before them. Fear stole into his eyes and scrubbed the color from his face.
Hugh backed his horse a half-dozen steps and raced after his sons.
Alannah pushed the Colt Dragoon into Stewart’s hand and rushed into the cabin. Conn lay draped over the seat of a chair, the shotgun still clenched in his fingers, his forehead against the windowsill.
“Conn!”
Doc grabbed her arm. “Whoa, there. Let me help him back to bed.”
He eased the gun from Conn’s fingers and turned the boy over into his arms. Bright red blood soaked Conn’s side.
Alannah gasped.
Doc laid him on the bed and grabbed a wad of bandages from his carpetbag. He packed the wound.
“Can you get the bullet out now?” Alannah asked.
“Sure and what do ya think I was doin’ before that bunch showed up?” The doc’s eyes twinkled beneath his shaggy eyebrows.
“Then he’ll…?”
“Aye. He’ll be up and about soon enough, but not too soon, mind ya.”
Alannah collapsed beside the bed.
Stewart entered and stood behind her. “They’re gone. I don’t think they’ll be back.”
“Carl finally showed some backbone.” Conn opened his eyes and smiled at his sister. “He was the only one of ’em with any brains.”
She grabbed his hand and squeezed, his face wavering through her veil of tears.
He looked past her. “Stewart.”
“Yes?”
“Been thinkin’ on this whole situation. It ain’t proper. You’d best marry my sister.”
Alannah jerked and would have stood but for Stewart’s hand on her good shoulder.
“I believe you’re right,” he said.
The room tipped and then righted itself.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll take her outside now and ask her proper.”
He pulled her to her feet. His warm hand on the small of her back steered her through the door. Its soft click cut off the doctor’s chuckle.
She dashed the tears from her eyes. “How could you tell him that?”
“What? The truth?”
“You don’t want to marry me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“I’m a half-Irish, dirt-poor nobody from Kentucky.” She twisted the front of her shirt. “Your family owns a plantation.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“I turned away from God. I was angry with Him. You live with the Bible in your hands.”
“You called out to Him, and He answered you.” Stewart shrugged. “If He didn’t hold that against you, I certainly can’t.”
“But you’ll be an important person here. You’ll be running the telegraph station. I’ll just be…”
“My wife.” He looked at the dirt and then back into her eyes. “I have no family inheritance. No money other than what I make. No land unless I purchase it. All I can offer you is my heart.”
He took her good hand and pulled her closer.
“But first I need to explain about the war. Why I’m not fighting.”
“There’s no need—”
He pressed his fingers to her lips. “There is. I have six brothers fighting in the war, three for the Union and three for the Confederacy. I couldn’t choose between them. I couldn’t choose which brothers I might see in the sights of my gun.” He shook his head. “I won’t go back. If that makes me a coward, then I am.”
“You aren’t.” Tears blurred his face. Sorrow laced through her at the thought. She could never hold a gun against Conn.
“I believe that my life is here. With you.” He brushed the tears from her face with the pads of his thumbs.
She leaned into him.
His lips claimed hers, and all her thoughts fled.
Sometime later the door creaked behind her.
Doc cleared his throat. “I better stay with the patient for another day or two.” He rocked back and forth from his toes to his heels. “Guess I could saddle a pony when needed, toss a little feed to the stock, and watch over things long enough for the two of ya to get hitched at Fort Laramie. Best return the buckboard while you’re at it.” He ambled back into the cabin, shutting the door behind him.
“Will you?”
Stewart’s smile sent flutters through her already quivering middle.
“I will.”
“But I have one request.”
She gripped her bottom lip between her teeth and nodded.
“Before we find the chaplain, we find you a dress at the fort.”
Alannah laughed for the first time since her mother’s death. The cloud of despair lifted, blown away by his answering chuckle. Zeus barked and jumped around them.
“I have a request, too.”
“Anything.” The fire in his eyes convinced her he meant it.
“Purchase Cyclops from the Pony Express for me.”
“If the only way to get you to be my wife is to purchase a cantankerous one-eyed horse, so be it.”
Then his lips silenced her laughter in a most satisfactory way.
Pegg Thomas lives on a hobby farm in Northern Michigan with Michael, her husband of *mumble* years. A lifelong history geek, she writes “History with a Touch of Humor.” An avid reader and writer, she enjoys fiction stories threaded through historical events and around historical figures. Civil War and Colonial are her favorite eras. Pegg is a regular blogger at both QuidProQuills.com and ColonialQuills.com. When not working on her latest novel, Pegg can be found in her garden, in her kitchen, tending her sheep, or on her trusty old horse, Trooper. See more at PeggThomas.com.
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