Jodi Thomas

by When a Texan Gambles

  Sam saw no reason to lie. He nodded. Fear widened her eyes. Before he realized what he was doing, he put an arm around her and pulled her close. “Don’t worry about it, Sarah. I won’t let him close enough to hurt you.”

  She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “I don’t want to have to kill him twice.” She wrapped her arms around Sam’s waist as though suddenly needing his warmth.

  Sam felt the day going a bit better than it had started. He liked the way her head fit right under his chin and the way her hair smelled like fresh rain. She was a woman made to be held, he thought.

  “Well, I’ll be!” Jacob shouted from several feet away. “The lady really does appear to like you, Gatlin. Sheriff Riley told me, the night of your wedding, he gave her a chance to back out, but she stepped up beside you like you were the pick of the litter. Mr. Moon even said she must have been crazy about you the way she hung on you, but I didn’t believe it possible. A walking, breathing woman actually likes the mighty Sam Gatlin.”

  “Walk softly.” Sam glared at Jacob over Sarah’s head. “I don’t take lightly to any man questioning my wife’s judgment.”

  Conflicting feelings bombarded Sam’s mind. Normally, he thought of himself as void of emotions, but suddenly it was raining in the desert. He liked the idea of Sarah moving close, of her needing him, of her holding on to him now as if she might drown in trouble if she let go. Sam wasn’t at all sure she liked him, but she trusted him and maybe that was more important in this country.

  Sarah laughed as if unsure whether Sam’s warning was only a joke. She patted his chest. “Stop trying to frighten the lawman, dear.” She looked across to Jacob. “Of course I like my husband.”

  Jacob tilted his head, obviously trying to see Gatlin in a better light. “You ever hear any of the tales told about your husband, ma‘am?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Most I don’t believe.” She rubbed her hand across Sam’s shirt. “All I know is he’s never hurt me.”

  There she went again, Sam thought, patting on him like he was a pet. The woman had no idea who she was dealing with. Maybe Jacob was right, someone should question her judgment. He was not a man women hugged and touched, but now didn’t seem like a good time to inform her of the fact.

  Jacob looked from her to Sam. “I almost feel sorry for Whitaker. He thinks he’s going after a helpless little woman. He has no idea he’ll have to down a legend even to get near her.”

  “That’s right.” Sam looked straight at Jacob, silently making a promise.

  An understanding passed between the two men as Sarah turned away. They talked while she made breakfast. Jacob voiced no doubt that Sam held Sarah’s welfare as a top priority.

  With Jacob’s back to the trees, Sarah had little trouble delivering biscuits stuffed with bacon to the children. Her attempts at being sneaky kept Sam distracted as he talked with the Ranger.

  About the time she finished packing the supplies, the men had formed a plan. Sam decided it would be better to take Sarah to a safe place than meet up with Jacob. They thought it made more sense to find Zeb than to wait around for him to storm across their lives. Jacob had a few leads. They’d try to locate the outlaw before he harmed one of the women. Jacob even made Sam promise to bring Zeb in alive. But first they had to make sure Sarah was safe.

  “Want to tell me where you’re taking her?”

  “No,” Sam answered. “The fewer who know the better. If you’ll ride back to where the wagon turned into the river and wait a half hour to make sure we’re not followed, I’ll do the rest. Within the hour my wife and I will have disappeared completely. I’ll see her out of harm’s way and meet you back in Cedar Point in three days.”

  Jacob voiced his objections to the plan. He wanted to make sure Sarah was safe before he left, but Sam didn’t think he needed help and there was a good chance Sheriff Riley in Cedar Point might. After all, he was trying to keep up with two women. Jacob might be needed in town more than here. The first week or so everyone would be on guard. But after a while they’d start to slip, and that would be when Whitaker struck.

  The Ranger swung onto his saddle. “Three days, four at the most. I’ll be looking for you!” he yelled to Sam then smiled and tipped his hat to Sarah. “And don’t forget to stay out of Reed’s way. Once we take care of Whitaker, I’ll help you find Reed in Fort Worth.”

  “I don’t remember asking for any help, Ranger. But Fort Worth is the last place I’d be heading right now.”

  Sam crossed his arms and watched the Ranger splash into the water and disappear around the bend in the river. He was a good man, despite his youth. Sam glanced at Sarah and grumbled, “If something should happen to me, find Dalton. He’ll see you’re safe.”

  She looked surprised. “I didn’t think you liked him.”

  “What are we ... in grammar school?” Sam frowned. “All of a sudden everyone seems worried about who likes who. It doesn’t matter a damn if I like the man, he’ll stand if trouble comes and not run.”

  Sarah shook her head as she packed the last of the supplies. “Well, I’m telling you right now that if trouble comes, I’m running.” She moved toward him with her finger pointed. “And stop swearing in front of our children. I’ll not have it.” She poked him on the shoulder. “Do you hear me, Sam? I’ll not have it.”

  For a woman who didn’t like to be touched, she sure did her share of patting and poking, he thought. “I’ll try to remember,” he answered. “But the rules are starting to log-pile in my brain.”

  She didn’t retreat, but continued to stare at him as if she meant business.

  Sam grinned. “How about every time you come up with a new rule, one falls off the back of the list?”

  She crossed her arms.

  He fought the urge to toss her in the river. “Come on, we’re wasting daylight. Grab the kids and get in the wagon.”

  “But Jacob will see them if we leave so soon.”

  “We’re not headed in that direction.” Sam didn’t explain as he put out the fire. By the time she wrapped the children in blankets and tucked them into the back of the wagon, he’d erased any evidence that they’d stayed in the clearing. Without a word he lifted her onto the bench seat and climbed up beside her.

  “Are you strong enough to drive?” she asked, remembering his wounds.

  “I’ll manage.” He took the reins and grinned as she settled close to his side.

  They turned upstream, the opposite way from where the Ranger disappeared. To Sarah’s surprise, they traveled less than a half mile before Sam pulled the wagon onto dry land. He handed her the reins and slowly climbed down. “Head straight toward the sunset. I’ll follow on horseback.”

  He swung up onto the black horse and rode along the river’s edge. Before she lost sight of him, she saw him dragging a branch filled with dying leaves from the brush. He swept back and forth across the wagon’s tracks, erasing the wagon ruts she had made.

  Sarah kept moving, but it wasn’t easy with no road to follow. Once she left the foliage near the river, the land spread out into an endless space of nothing but open land. She tried to maneuver around the rocks and groundhog holes, but found it impossible. The air was thick with the smell of sage and the dirt impatient to fly as the horses plodded forward.

  Finally K.C. climbed up onto the bench beside Sarah and asked, “You ever drive one of these wagons before, lady? Cause you’re not very good at it.”

  “I’m trying.” Sarah laughed. “When I stare out over the land, it looks like prairie grass rolling along all the way to the horizon, but up close it’s not quite that smooth. The horses seemed to be finding every rock for miles to stumble over.” They crossed into a field of bleached bones where buffalo had fallen years before.

  K.C. took up the job as scout, pointing out problems ahead before Sarah could even see them. The crackle of broken bones snapped along her nerves, but she didn’t slow. Sam hadn’t explained why she had to travel this direction without even a road to follow, but she
trusted him.

  The day aged. Sam didn’t return. She followed his order and headed directly into the sunset. That morning she hadn’t looked for him, figuring he was making it impossible for them to be followed. After noon she wondered where he was and guessed the ride across this prairie must be far easier on horseback. He might claim he was fine, but his wounds must still bother him. The sway of a saddle might be far easier to bear than the rattle of a wagon.

  He’s fine, she repeated in her mind every time she began to fret. But in the last few hours of daylight, worry won over hope. What if he fell off his horse? What if he met up with trouble? It seemed to follow the man closer than a shadow. What if he were no better at directions than he had been at remembering numbers back at the hotel? He might be halfway to the Oklahoma Territory before he realized he was going in the wrong direction.

  As the sunlight faded, Sarah faced one of two possibilities. He must be somewhere behind them, hurt. He might have started bleeding again and lost too much blood to stay conscious. Or fallen from his horse and knocked himself out when he hit the rocky ground. If he was hurt, she wasn’t sure she could find him. She wasn’t even sure she could go back the way they came. The grassland played tricks, erasing wagon tracks as soon as they were made. Even if she could manage to make it back to the river, she’d never be able to follow a man on horseback with the wagon.

  The second possibility loomed no brighter. Since he hadn’t followed and if he wasn’t hurt, then he had abandoned them. She refused to allow a single tear to fall. It made sense. She’d been nothing but trouble to him, and now he had an extra helping of worry with Zeb Whitaker out there looking for her. He obviously felt no attachment to his children, and he had never mentioned even being fond of her. Maybe he thought he’d been kind; after all, he’d given her a wagon filled with supplies and, she hoped, headed her in the direction of a town.

  When not even the glow of a sun remained, she finally stopped. The children were too tired to eat more than an apple. The air turned frosty. They curled together on the old buffalo hide spread between the supplies in the wagon. She covered them with all but one of the blankets. Sarah thought of lighting a fire. Maybe Sam would see it and come in. But the light was as likely to attract bugs and unwanted guests as one lost husband.

  Exhaustion ground like sand over her body. Her bones ached from being tossed around on the hard bench. She walked several feet from the children and spread out her blanket in the tall grass, then covered up with a section of the wool cloth Sam had bought her. She fell asleep even before she could get warm, figuring any dream was bound to be better than the nightmare she lived while awake.

  After what seemed like only a minute, she felt an arm pull her against a solid body.

  “Sarah?”

  She jerked full awake, fighting to free herself from the form suddenly lying next to her.

  “Sarah. It’s me.” Sam’s voice filtered through her sleepy mind.

  An inky darkness surrounded her, but she smelled his familiar masculine scent as his hand pulled her close to him once more.

  “Sam.” She wrapped her arms around him and held tightly. “Sam. You came back.”

  She felt the rumble of his laughter. “Well, of course I came back. I’ve been watching you all day making sure no one followed you. Once you stopped, I thought I’d wash up before I came into camp.”

  Sarah slammed her fist against his chest. “Why didn’t you let me know you were near! I was so worried.” She continued to pound, needing to release the panic that had hovered over her all day.

  “So worried you fell asleep,” he pointed out.

  The thought that she must have worried over him finally registered on his brain, for he added, “It’s all right. I didn’t think about telling you. I thought you knew I wouldn’t be far away.”

  Her hair brushed against his face as she rose to a sitting position and tried to see his face. In a sliver of moonlight she finally made out the outline of his jaw. “I thought you were hurt.” She couldn’t bring herself to say what else she felt, that she feared he might have left her. “I was afraid I would never be able to find you.”

  “I’ve never had anyone worry about me before.” He cupped the side of her face with his hand. “There was no need.” His hand threaded into her hair. He thought about the pieces of her past he knew about. “I’m not going anywhere, Sarah. I’m not leaving you. You’re not something I just picked up along the trail and plan to toss away. You don’t need to worry. When or if I ever leave you, I promise to take the time to say good-bye.”

  Before she could answer, he pulled her down to him and touched her lips with his. This time his kiss was not hard, but soft. He didn’t take, but tasted her slowly. For a few moments she was too shocked to react. She’d never been kissed with tenderness, and Sam was the last man she expected to have any knowledge of such a skill.

  He moved his mouth over hers as though hungry for a response. Requesting, but not demanding.

  She didn’t know what to do. The kiss before had been easy to resist, for it hurt her lips and pushed against her teeth. But this kiss was different. It caressed. It warmed. It welcomed her to a new world. How could a man who knew nothing of even being nice to people have such a talent?

  Pushing away, she rolled from his chest and landed beside him on the blanket. For a long while they both stared up at the thin moon. Sarah tried to figure out what he’d done so different this time in kissing her and why she felt the way she did inside.

  “If you’re waiting for me to say I’m sorry again, Sarah, you’ll wait till hell freezes over.” His voice drifted on the wind.

  “Don’t swear,” she corrected.

  “The children can’t hear me,” he mumbled. “And I don’t swear. We need to have a talk about which words are swearing and which are places.”

  He moved the wool she’d been using as cover over her and she jumped at his slight touch.

  “Explain something to me.” He moved toward her and his low words brushed her cheek. “You say you like me. I figure you married me of your own free will since Jacob told me the sheriff gave you a chance to back out even after you picked my name. You sleep with me and are always drawing near like there was barely enough room on this earth for us both to stand. But when we kiss you act like I’ve just attacked you.”

  She almost felt sorry for him. He sounded confused, as if he had just encountered an animal unlike any he’d ever seen or heard about.

  He turned away. “Why’d you hug me just now if you weren’t glad to see me?”

  She closed her eyes as tightly as she could wishing his questions would go away. She always hated it when some fool asked a question she hadn’t figured out the answer to yet.

  “Good night,” he said when she didn’t answer.

  “Good night,” she answered in little more than a whisper.

  “You still sleeping next to me, or do I get my bedroll?”

  “I’m still sleeping next to you,” she answered. “Everyone knows next to you is where I belong. I promised I’d sleep next to you. And I hugged you because I was worried about you.”

  For several minutes neither of them moved. She knew he wasn’t any closer to sleep than she was. Finally she whispered, “Sam?”

  “Hmmm,” he answered.

  “I’ve never been kissed before you.”

  For a while the words floated in the air between them. Finally he rolled back to face her. “Never?”

  “Never. Not like you kiss me, not on the mouth. Mitchell kissed me on the cheek the morning we married. I don’t think he knew much about things like kissing or maybe he just had no interest in kissing me. Even though he’d been married once before, he wasn’t a man of the world like you.”

  Sam laughed. “In truth, I don’t know much, either, but compared to you I guess I’m an expert.”

  She rolled until their faces were only a few inches apart. “Then, why do folks kiss, on the mouth like that I mean. It’s not a necessary part of mating.
”

  “Didn’t you ever want to kiss Mitchell? After all, the man was your husband for a year. Surely once in that time you felt a fondness toward him.”

  “No,” she answered honestly. “He was near forty when I married him. Like most folks that old, most of his teeth were missing. Just setting across the table watching him chew was as close as I ever wanted to get to his mouth.”

  She waited for an answer to her question, but instead, he asked another. “How old were you when you married him?”

  “I was twenty. Which made me well into being an old maid. He lived on the farm next to Granny. His wife and kid had died a few years before. He would always talk to me when he came past our cabin on his way to town. Granny Vee wouldn’t have allowed it if she’d known. She always thought some man would come along and take me away, then she’d have to die alone with no one to help her. But he didn’t ever talk like he was interested in taking me, he just asked about our garden and such.

  “When she died, the creditors came to get her things and he came over to get me. He said it wasn’t right for me to just move in with him, so we went to the preacher at dawn the next day. He didn’t want to miss many daylight hours of working. We were married and he went back to farming while I cleaned and moved in. Living with him wasn’t all that different from living with Granny Vee.”

  “Did he love you?”

  “I asked him once, and he said he loved his first wife and she died. He didn’t plan on doing such a foolish thing again.”

  Sam didn’t say anything.

  Finally Sarah added, “The crops were bad last year and we lost almost everything. He sold the livestock for enough to buy a wagon and said he wanted to make a fresh start out West. I didn’t want to go because I already knew the baby was coming, but I didn’t have much choice.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Mitchell says a wife is supposed to love her husband. That’s just the way it is. He said our ages didn’t matter, he’d tell me the rules and we’d both do our jobs. But I think he thought I’d take care of him like I did Granny Vee when she got sick. Once in a while he’d remind me that he wanted to be buried next to his wife. But I couldn’t do like he asked. We were on the trail when a fever took him, and I was too sick to have any say. Bailee told me when I asked that they buried him on a hill so he could see all the way back to where his wife was buried.”