Winter Fire

by Elizabeth Lowell

  A shotgun boomed once, then again, shredding the willows where Ab and the other Culpeppers had taken cover. Moments later, the shotgun boomed twice more.

  Conner didn’t wait for a better opportunity. He ran for the brush and vanished like the hunter he was.

  The shotgun fired again, keeping the Culpeppers hugging the ground.

  “That’s my gal,” Ute said, grinning over his rifle barrel. “Taught her how to reload quick as a flea jumping.”

  “Lola?”

  “Sarah. Bet them Culpeppers is praying for deliverance right now.”

  “One way or another, they’ll get it.”

  Ute laughed, then leveled his rifle at a piece of brush that moved when it shouldn’t have.

  “Hell is gonna be a busy place tonight,” the old outlaw said, sighting down the barrel.

  Case had seen the same movement Ute had. Both men shot into the brush.

  Nothing moved there again.

  The sun soared above the edge of the plateau, spilling golden light throughout the canyon floor below. Gunsmoke turned blue and then gray as it rose toward the rim.

  Gradually the shooting died into silence. Case put his hat on his rifle barrel and poked it out over the canyon.

  Shots from the willows sent the hat spinning away.

  Rifles and shotguns answered in a deadly hail that lasted until everyone was forced to reload.

  No answering fire came from the willows.

  Silence expanded, filling the canyon with an almost unbearable pressure.

  A horned lark called from below. Case answered. So did Morgan.

  Nothing moved in the willows.

  Ute gave a hawk’s piercing cry. An answer came from the canyon floor where Conner had taken cover. Another answer came from the ancient trail down to the springs where Lola was.

  No answer came from the ruins.

  “Sarah!” Case called.

  “Sarah!” Conner yelled.

  He came out of cover at a run, yelling his sister’s name.

  A shot rang out from the willows.

  Conner stumbled and fell out of sight again in the brush. From the ruins came a scream that was Conner’s name.

  Sarah, Case thought. Thank God!

  He was the first one to fire into the willows where the shot had come from, but he wasn’t the last. Unnatural thunder rolled through the canyon until Hunter’s shrill whistle cut the air.

  The shooting stopped.

  Case uncocked his rifle and began shoving cartridges into the magazine.

  Reluctantly, Ute lowered his rifle.

  “You sure they’re done for?” the outlaw asked.

  “Hunter and Morgan are going through the brush right now. If it isn’t over, it will be soon.”

  “Hope Conner ain’t hurt bad. Sarah sure sets store by that boy.”

  “I know.”

  Grimly Case shoved another bullet into the magazine, filling it against a need he hoped wouldn’t come.

  It seemed a very long time before the call of a horned lark lifted above the valley once more.

  Hunter walked out into an opening in the brush and looked up at the east rim toward his brother.

  “It’s over,” Hunter called to Case.

  “All of them?”

  “Every last one.”

  Slowly Case stood. He pulled a worn “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster from his jacket. Only a few Culpepper names remained.

  He tore the poster into scraps the size of reales and flung them over the cliff. They turned in the rich light and floated as slowly as ashes onto the canyon floor.

  I hope you rest easier now, Ted and Emily. God knows the living will.

  24

  With a startled cry, Sarah grabbed her brother’s shoulders to balance herself as he lifted her off her feet.

  “Conner Lawson, no sooner do I bandage you than you do something to start the bleeding all over again,” she said. “I should have left you for the Culpeppers!”

  “But you didn’t leave me,” he said, grinning. “You rescued me because I’m your one and only brother and you love me more than a fortune in silver.”

  Laughing, he lifted her even higher and whirled her around the cabin, barely avoiding upsetting the two chairs and small table. If the ache of bandaged wounds in his left leg and arm bothered him, he certainly didn’t show it.

  For Conner the exuberance of being alive hadn’t worn off in the hours since he and Sarah had ridden into the ranch yard leading mustangs laden with silver. Despite the circles under his eyes, the colorful bruises on his forehead, and two chunks taken out of his hide by bullets, he was overflowing with energy.

  Smiling, Sarah put her hands on either side of her brother’s face. Beneath her palms she felt the subtle roughening of his skin that spoke of the man he was becoming. Bittersweet pleasure twisted through her. She looked into clear, deep green eyes that reminded her so much of their father that her heart ached.

  “Listen to me, Conner. Please. Take your half of the silver and go East. With an education, you can travel anywhere, do anything, be anything.”

  The smile left her brother’s face. Gently he lowered Sarah to the floor and returned her searching look.

  “I know,” he said. “And in a few years, I might. But first I want to get the ranch to a stage where it will feed and shelter you no matter what.”

  “My half of the silver will do that.”

  Conner gave her an odd look, as though he had been expecting a different answer. His next words told her what that answer was.

  “What about Case?” he asked bluntly. “You love him, don’t you?”

  Sarah wanted to tell Conner that it was none of his business. Unfortunately, it was. He and Case had more in common than her brother guessed.

  They both owned half of Lost River ranch.

  Somehow she had to make her brother understand why the man she loved didn’t love her. She didn’t want Conner and Case to become enemies over her.

  “Yes, I love him,” she said. “But my love alone isn’t enough.”

  “Hell, he must love you or he wouldn’t, uh, well, hell.”

  The smile she gave her brother was as painful as her thoughts.

  “It’s not like that for a man,” she said simply.

  “What kind of man would—” Conner began angrily.

  “A good man,” she interrupted. “A gentle man. A man who healed the wounds left by my past. A man whose own past left him afraid to love.”

  “Case isn’t afraid of anything.”

  “Unwilling, then. Or unable. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Case doesn’t love me.”

  “How can anyone not love you?”

  Softly, helplessly, Sarah laughed when she would rather have cried. Then she hugged her brother very hard.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Truly, Conner. Don’t be angry with Case. He has given me more than any other man, more than I ever believed a man had to give to a woman.”

  Conner’s arms closed around her, surprising her with their strength and fierce protectiveness.

  “Money doesn’t last,” he said finally. “The land does. Once I build up the ranch, you’ll never want for anything. You’ll be as free as those hawks you love.”

  “That’s the same thing I want for you.”

  “For me freedom is here, not in some Eastern school.”

  If Sarah had seen the least hesitation in her brother’s eyes, she would have argued.

  But there was none.

  The time for argument and persuasion was over. Whatever had been left of the child in her younger brother had died during his night of captivity and the gunfight that followed.

  Conner was no longer a boy. He was a man and he had made up his mind.

  With a long, shivering sigh of acceptance, Sarah stood on tiptoe to kiss her brother’s cheek.

  “All right,” she said. “It’s your choice to make, not mine.”

  He returned the kiss as gently as it had been given. />
  “Thank you,” he said.

  “So quiet?” she asked huskily. “No throwing your hat in the air and crowing your victory?”

  “Yesterday I might have. But not today. Today it’s enough just to be alive. After the Culpeppers jumped me, I didn’t expect to see another dawn.”

  A grim look settled on Conner’s face. Up to this moment, neither he nor his sister had talked about the long night or the battle that followed. They had simply taken the silver bullion back to the ranch and buried it even as Case and his brother were burying Culpeppers in Spring Canyon.

  Despite a bullet wound in his arm, Morgan had insisted on staying to help with the grim work, declaring it a task he had long looked forward to. Even Lola had insisted on staying. She said she wouldn’t believe Ab was dead until she put pebbles on his eyelids and shoveled dirt into his grave.

  “What ever possessed you to go to that overlook in the first place?” Sarah asked.

  “Same thing that possessed Hunter when he went there, and you when you sent Lola there. Next to the ruins, that overlook is the best place to spy on Spring Canyon. Or to shoot into it.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone alone.”

  “It’s a mistake I won’t make twice.” Conner grinned unexpectedly. “But I would like to have been there when Lola found Hunter.”

  “She didn’t. Not exactly. She found a dead Culpepper and figured that whoever was on the overlook now was either Morgan or Hunter.”

  “I never even saw Morgan until he shot that one-armed outlaw who was fixing to shoot me in the back,” Conner said, shaking his head. “Fastest draw I ever saw.”

  “Morgan was in the canyon all night, watching out for you.”

  “I owe him,” Conner said simply.

  “I told him to take all the reales I poured into the canyon.”

  “Good.”

  Sarah gave another shivering sigh and touched her brother’s face as though she still had difficulty believing he was alive.

  It was worth it, she thought, all of it.

  Even what is yet to come.

  “Hey, are you all right?” Conner asked, catching hold of his sister’s shoulders.

  “Just…tired.” She smiled despite her pale lips. “All of a sudden. Tired.”

  “You should sleep. You look worn out.”

  From what I remember about Mother, being pregnant does that to a woman, Sarah thought ruefully. In the first few months, she used to fall asleep every time she stopped moving.

  She said nothing aloud about her growing belief that she was carrying Case’s child. She told herself it was too soon to be certain, but that was only part of the truth. The last thing she wanted was to set her brother against the very man who now owned the other half of Lost River ranch.

  Conner wouldn’t understand why Case didn’t marry her, no matter what scars the past had left on his soul.

  Sarah understood.

  She had known yesterday, when she saw his eyes after they made love. Fear, regret, anger. A raging kind of distance.

  The eyes of a trapped hawk.

  Her love didn’t bring comfort to Case. It brought only greater turmoil.

  He had healed the fears left by her past.

  She hadn’t been able to heal his.

  Perhaps burying Emily’s murderers will give Case some measure of peace.

  Sarah didn’t know. She knew only that her time on Lost River ranch was nearly over. Even if she had still owned half the ranch, she couldn’t stay.

  Don’t tease me into making you pregnant. I would hate both of us for it.

  She could endure anything but that. Being hated by the man she loved would be more than she could bear.

  “Sis?” Conner asked, troubled. “Maybe you better lie down.”

  Forcing herself to smile, she looked up at her brother.

  “Later,” she said. “Right now I think I’ll just put a pot of beans on to cook. Then maybe I’ll go to Deer Canyon and watch the hawks fly.”

  And I’ll wish all the way to my soul that I could fly with them again, in Case’s arms.

  But instead of going to her hawks, Sarah waited until Conner was asleep. Then she quietly began packing her clothes. When she was finished, there was plenty of room left in the two saddlebags for a few bars of silver.

  As she strapped up the bags, her glance fell on the unusual joined mugs that Case had found in the ancient ruins. She picked up the tiny bit of pottery and remembered the miniature teacup and saucer Lola had found among Case’s belongings.

  Ah, Case, Sarah thought sadly. If we had met before Emily died, would you have loved me?

  All that answered her was the echo of her own silent question.

  She put the cup back in its little niche, caressed the ancient pottery with her fingertip once, and turned away.

  It was late afternoon before everyone returned from Spring Canyon. Lola went straight to tend to her goats. The men washed up and headed for the huge pot of beans and pans of hot cornbread they knew would be waiting.

  Sarah greeted each man with a smile and a heaping plate of food.

  “I’m really going to have to make some more chairs,” Case said, holding a plate of beans as he stood near the fire. “But first I’m going to cut planks for that floor I promised Sarah.”

  She almost dropped the plate of beans she was handing to Morgan.

  “Watch it,” Morgan said, rescuing the food.

  “Sorry. I’m not usually so clumsy.”

  “You have a right. You’ve been through a lot lately.”

  She looked into Morgan’s dark, compassionate eyes and smiled wearily.

  “Not as much as you or Hunter or…” Her voice frayed. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “None needed.”

  “Please take those reales.”

  Morgan started to refuse as he had the other times the subject came up, but Case cut him off.

  “I’d do it if I were you,” he said. “That pretty girl you left behind would look more kindly on the man who set off on a cattle drive and didn’t come back for nearly a year, if that selfsame man had some silver in his pockets.”

  Morgan’s grin flashed whitely. “It’s not money my woman is looking for coming down that dusty trail back to her.”

  “You saying that a gold ring and a little ranch of her own wouldn’t make her smile?” Case asked.

  “There are other ways of making Letty smile.”

  Ute snorted and stood up stiffly, setting aside his already empty plate. Favoring his right knee where a ricochet had left a bruise the size of a fist, he turned to Morgan.

  “Nueces,” the old outlaw said, “don’t you make me ride all the way to Texas just cuz you’re a stiff-necked son of a bitch.”

  Morgan blinked and looked rather warily at Ute.

  “Meaning?” he drawled mildly.

  “Meaning,” Ute said, “that what Sarah wants, I get for her. You either take that damned silver with you or have me hunt you down in Texas with a bad temper, a loaded gun, and two saddlebags full of reales.”

  “Take the silver,” Hunter advised, standing up.

  “Would you?” Morgan retorted.

  “If the choice is silver or Ute camping on my tail, I’ll take the silver.”

  Morgan grinned. “Colonel, you’ve got yourself a deal. You take half and I take half.”

  “Wait, I didn’t—”

  “Or would you rather have me camping on your tail,” Morgan continued, talking over Hunter.

  “He’s got you,” Case said to his brother.

  Hunter muttered something under his breath and then turned to Sarah.

  “Ma’am, you have better things to do with that silver than give it away.”

  She shook her head.

  “Conner?” Hunter asked a bit desperately.

  “I always do what my sister says,” he said with a wide-eyed innocence that made Ute snicker. “Just ask her.”

  “Hell,” Hunter said.

  He shot
Case a glittering look, then forgot whatever he was going to say.

  Case was fighting a losing battle against a smile. The sight of it amazed his brother.

  “Divide up the silver,” Hunter said absently to Morgan. “I’m hitting the trail at first light tomorrow. Elyssa will be wanting to know that Case is alive.”

  “She’ll be a lot more relieved to know that your sorry hide is whole,” his brother retorted.

  Hunter just grinned.

  “Would it be too much trouble for you to see me to the nearest stage or railhead?” Sarah asked.

  The silence that followed her words was thick enough to sit on.

  “Conner could do it, but he won’t be comfortable riding a horse for a few days,” she continued calmly. “Neither will Ute.”

  “What are you talking about?” Case demanded.

  “Taking a trip.”

  “If it’s getting the silver to a bank you’re worried about, I’ll haul it myself.”

  “Thank you. It saves me worrying about it.” She turned back to Hunter. “If you want to get back to Nevada as fast as you came here, I can sleep in the saddle. I won’t slow you down.”

  Hunter looked toward Case. Though there was no expression on his brother’s face, his eyes were narrowed as though in anger or pain.

  “Talk it over with Case,” Hunter said. “Afterward, if you still want to ride out with me, I’ll see you safely to any place you like.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “Just as far as the nearest—”

  “Anywhere,” Hunter interrupted. “It’s the least I can do for the woman who saved my brother’s life.”

  “I’ve been amply repaid for that.”

  “Ute, Conner, come with me,” Hunter said. “We’re only in the way here.”

  Sarah started to object, then shrugged.

  “Sis?”

  “Go with Ute and Hunter,” she said to Conner. “I won’t be far behind you.”

  “I’ll put your saddle on one of the mules,” Hunter said. “But if you need it, my brother is a fool.”

  She watched the three men file out, leaving her alone with the man she loved.

  A man who didn’t love her.

  “What in hell are you thinking about?” Case asked bluntly.