Marrying Miss Marshal

by Lacy Williams

  He couldn’t look away from her face. Unscathed. She was perfectly unharmed.

  He had to swallow back the emotions that wanted to burst from him.

  She wasn’t touching him—he suddenly realized it was because her hands were covered in blood—but apparently the connection between them didn’t require a physical bond. He could feel it, anyway.

  It unnerved him. Look at what had almost happened to her earlier—he’d frozen up, couldn’t come in to the bank and protect her. She hadn’t been killed, but she could’ve been.

  He needed distance.

  Forcing himself to stand, he closed his eyes to counter act his roiling stomach.

  “All right?” Danna’s soft-spoken question came from too close.

  “I will be. You?” He opened his eyes, but didn’t look at her. The dizziness began to fade.

  She shrugged; he saw the movement out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe a little bruised. No worse than breaking up a saloon fight.”

  It made him itch that she spoke of throwing herself into danger so casually. What could he say? She was the marshal.

  He followed her out the front door, boots crunching on glass from the window he’d broken.

  Danna knelt in front of one of the watering troughs usually reserved for horses to drink from. She spoke as she scrubbed her hands. “I’m going to take a swing around town, make sure they haven’t holed up anywhere. I doubt they would, but best to make sure. I’ll gather a posse and ride out at first light.”

  She hadn’t looked at him the whole time she’d been speaking, but now she glanced up. He could see weariness etched in the lines bracketing her mouth. “You should have Doc check out that bump on your head. Maybe rest awhile. I want you to sit in the doc’s office until the man who got shot comes around. If he does.”

  Chapter Nine

  The door to the jail half-open, Chas picked his aching head up off his arms when he heard a distinct set of bootsteps approaching. Danna was back.

  And then a second set of footsteps—this one much heavier than Danna’s steps—thudded on the boardwalk, coming from another direction.

  “Marshal, did you catch the men who robbed my bank yet?”

  The bank owner. Castlerock.

  “Not yet, sir.” Weariness was evident in Danna’s voice.

  “I want my money recovered and the men apprehended.”

  “They will be, sir.”

  “Soon, or I’m going to call for your job.”

  Now her voice lost what was left of its politeness. “I’ll be in touch when I have more information to share.”

  Through the open doorway, Chas saw her push past the larger man, and then she stepped through the door, her huff of annoyance audible as she closed the door with a snap.

  “Problem, Miss Marshal?”

  She was apparently so tired she didn’t even react to his teasing use of her title, as she always had before. She moved to her desk quickly and started opening drawers, making a pile of items on top of the desk. He recognized the leather journal from the top drawer, a pair of field glasses, a length of rope.

  Chas glanced out the window. The sky was lightening. Dawn would be here soon.

  “When’s the posse get here?”

  “There won’t be one.” Her actions contradicted her flatly spoken statement; she seemed to be preparing to leave for a length of time.

  “You found them, then?”

  She laid her hands flat on the table, closed her eyes, head tucked so her chin rested on her vest. “No one will ride with me. But I’m going anyway.”

  “What, alone?”

  She must have heard the sharpness in his tone—the same sharpness that speared his insides at the thought of her chasing down Hank Lewis with no one at her side—because she looked up with a glare.

  “Is it such a surprise? You didn’t—don’t want to work with me either. You’re only here because you need my help getting around the countryside.”

  She went back to her packing as if he hadn’t lodged a protest. “The tracks close to town were obscured, but I picked up four sets of hooves—four horses—outside of town, heading toward the mountains.”

  “You can’t go after them alone. You’ll be outnumbered.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him, was muttering under her breath as she loaded her chosen items into a pair of saddlebags.

  Something whined outside the door and Danna whirled to open it. The ugly mutt he’d met on his first day as deputy sauntered in.

  “Wrong Tree! I’d forgotten about you, boy. Where’ve you been since last night?”

  She awkwardly patted the top of the dog’s head, ruffled his ears. “You helped me last night, didn’t you? Chased off that lookout. But how did you get loose from Will Chittim?”

  The dog only lay down at her feet and offered his belly to be scratched.

  “He likes you,” Chas commented, the only words he could force past the lump of fear lodged in his throat.

  “He never has before,” came her response, as she stood and went back to the desk. “He was Fred’s dog before we married. He’s been staying at the livery.”

  The dog lolled its head toward Chas, as if inviting him to take Danna’s place and scratch him. Chas knelt to oblige, and the dog grunted its appreciation.

  Chas stood when Danna finished packing her saddlebags and turned for the door. “I’m going with you.”

  “Your head still hurt?”

  Her eyes were too perceptive not to catch him if he lied. She could probably see the pulse pounding in the left side of his temple. “Yes, but I can ride.”

  She shook her head. “You’re not riding along. There’s a storm threatening and I’ve got to move fast. If you get dizzy and fall off your horse…” She shuddered as she considered the possibility. “You’re too much of a liability.”

  “I won’t fall off. I’m not letting you go alone. We should really have more men, as well.”

  “You’re welcome to try—go and talk to the same men I’ve just been to see. Maybe they’ll listen to an outsider instead of a woman when you ask for their help.”

  The bitterness in her voice scared him; she was normally even-tempered, even in the face of the others in town doubting her. If she was giving chase to Hank Lewis and a gang of violent men with her emotions leading her, she was liable to get killed.

  The chill that thought sent through his blood shook Chas to the core. He grasped the marshal’s arm just above her elbow.

  “Would your husband have gone off to face multiple armed men alone?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it as he watched her fist clench against the wood of the door. She looked over her shoulder, her face set and fierce.

  “Fred would’ve done whatever he needed to do to apprehend these men.”

  “And you need my help,” he said it softly, as close to pleading as he’d ever come. “I’ll ride with you. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Danna rode a few paces in front of her deputy, eyes on the terrain in front of her horse. She might be watching for tracks, but she was extremely aware of the man behind her.

  He’d been vehement about not letting her do this alone, but she was concerned about that bump on his head.

  So far, he’d been true to his word and not fallen, but his face was gray with the strain. Of course, that could be from the cold that had fallen as the temperature continued to drop.

  They needed to round up the bank robbers and fast, or risk getting caught in the snowstorm banked in gray clouds getting closer as time went on. A stinging cold wind, strong enough to cut through her leather slicker, had descended about the time they’d ridden out of town.

  Plus, she disliked riding into the mountains, ever since she’d been injured and lost, riding after a lost cow and calf, just before her brother had sent her away to marry Fred. After riding all day and into the early afternoon, they were already well into the foothills and she was starting to get jumpy.

  And even though it irked h
er to admit it, her deputy had been right when he’d said Fred would never have walked into a situation like this alone.

  It still hurt that the men from town—men her husband had counted on, had worked with—denied her request for help. Hadn’t she proved herself enough yet?

  Chas made a low sound and Danna looked back to find he was hunched in the saddle with the collar of his jacket turned up.

  She drew up on the reins, halting her mount. Chas followed suit.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  He nodded, but it didn’t reassure her, not with the strain on his face. She knew he most likely couldn’t find his way back to town on his own, and she didn’t want to leave him when he had a head injury—if he became unconscious and fell without anyone to assist him, he could die out in the elements.

  But if they stopped now, they’d lose the trail.

  There were no good options.

  He rested the reins against his thigh and raised his hands to his mouth, blowing on them. “I’m fine, just cold,” he said, voice muffled by his hands. “Do you really know where we’re going? I still don’t understand how you can know which way they’ve gone.”

  She dismounted, her joints protesting the movement after being in one position for too long, and motioned Chas to do the same. “It won’t hurt to get down and get some blood flowing, warm up a bit.”

  When her deputy hit the ground, she motioned him to her side, a few feet in front of the horses. She squatted and pointed to the leaf knocked from its branch about a foot off the ground.

  “See how it’s broken off—this jagged edge here? Something stronger than the wind had to do that.” She walked forward a few paces before bending over a patch of soft dirt that showed a partial print from a horse’s hoof. “This track didn’t come from a wolf or a bear.”

  Chas knelt beside her and traced the imprint with his forefinger. She tried not to be aware of his close proximity. She failed.

  “How did you even see it?” He looked up at her, his hat shading his eyes so she couldn’t read them.

  “It’s a learned skill. The more time I spend in the woods, the more I can tell what is the natural way things look, and then it’s easy to spot things like broken leaves or footprints.”

  “Where did you learn all this? Following your husband around?”

  She shook her head. “My granddad taught me and my brother a lot before he died. The rest is a matter of staying in practice.”

  She pointed to another pair of hoofprints a few feet further along. “These are shaped a little differently. See here? It’s a different horse, but the tracks are just as fresh. I’ve seen four different prints, best I can tell.”

  “Amazing,” O’Grady muttered.

  His tone reminded Danna of his voice when he’d called her a doll on the first night they’d met. But surely his sentiments weren’t tender toward her, not after seeing her do a man’s job?

  Her emotions certainly didn’t need to get any more tangled regarding her deputy. She knew he was leaving when he completed his assignment. He was a city boy; she was happiest on the trail, like they were right now.

  They would never suit.

  But her heart didn’t seem to want to listen.

  “We need to keep going if we’ve got any hope of catching up with the robbers.” Danna swung her foot into the stirrup and boosted herself into the saddle, not looking back.

  The sky kept getting darker and darker, and Chas watched Danna get jumpier and jumpier the farther they rode into the foothills.

  She hadn’t spoken to him again since they’d taken off for the second time. He couldn’t get a good look at her face, couldn’t tell if she was getting antsy because of what she was “reading” on the trail or for some other reason.

  Her constant reactions to little things, like the snap of a branch in the wind, put him on edge. Plus, he was bone-aching cold, and the wind seemed to keep getting worse the longer they were in the saddle.

  “Can we stop for a rest?” he called out when he couldn’t take her silence or the cold any longer.

  She wheeled her mount around but showed no signs of getting off. Great. Her jaw was set tight, almost like she was holding back a scream. “I hate to stop now. Once it starts snowing, we’ll start losing the trail.”

  “Do you think we’re close?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Her fatigue and frustration were evident as she shifted in the saddle, wiped her face with a gloved hand. “I’ve lost two of the sets of hoofprints. I don’t know if they’ve split up or if I’m so tired I’m not seeing straight anymore.”

  Part of him wanted to comfort her, to make everything all right again. Another part wanted to find Hank Lewis at all costs, and enact his revenge.

  “Danna,” he said quietly, and she raised her eyes to meet his. “Why don’t we rest for a few minutes and you can catch your breath?”

  She tapped her thigh with a fist. “I’d rather keep moving.”

  Something cold stung his cheek and he raised his face to the sky. Snowflakes whipped downward in a crazy dance toward the ground. He looked to Danna to see her face fall. “I think we’re out of time.”

  “Not if we hurry!” She jerked on her mount’s reins and kicked him hard, spurring him into a gallop.

  Chas followed, but his heart wasn’t in the chase any longer. He still felt an urgency to find Lewis, and he would find him, but his concern for Danna was more pressing at this moment.

  He concentrated on keeping pace with her, not an easy feat, since her horse’s legs were so much longer. Her braid flew out behind her, the tails of her long coat flapped in the wind. Snow and sleet stung his face as they raced through the trees and hills.

  He was forced to fall back, his mare lathered and getting winded. He managed to keep Danna in sight, but fell farther behind.

  He’d topped a ridge when he saw her lying on the ground, a dark shape against the gathering snowdrifts.

  Chapter Ten

  In a blind panic, reckless, Chas kicked his horse, riding past where Danna’s horse limped on three feet, several yards away from where her body lay. He threw himself to the ground before he could stop the beast; it slowed to a stop near Danna’s horse.

  “Danna,” he cried, dropping to his knees and not even noticing the wet from the ground.

  He took her shoulders and turned her over, being as gentle as possible. Other than a scrape on one cheek, her face was unmarred. Her dark eyes blinked open, focusing on his face.

  Her hat had fallen off and her hair fell loose in the wind, dark strands tickling his fingers as he clutched her shoulders. She gasped for breath. “Danna!”

  She struggled against him, and for once he was thankful for her stubborn independence. “I’m all right. Just winded.”

  She pushed his arms away, tried to sit up, finally catching her breath.

  The sense of relief he felt nearly crippled him. She was all right. Again. Did the woman have to constantly put herself in danger?

  “Let me—” His throat threatened to close, so he cut off his sentence as he ran his hands through her hair that had come loose, checking for bumps on her head. Large, fluffy snowflakes continued landing in her hair, stark white against the dark locks.

  “I’m all right, Chas.”

  Her quiet words stopped his erratic movements but not the frantic beat of his heart. Before he could think, he leaned in and took her mouth in a kiss.

  He felt her surprise in her utter stillness, was conscious of her hands trembling against his chest. When he pulled back, hands on her shoulders, she stared at him with large, dark eyes. “What…was that?”

  “Relief,” he said quickly. “Probably shouldn’t have done that—we work together—”

  She stood up, cutting off the rest of his words—not that he knew what he was saying—and moved toward her horse.

  Danna couldn’t stop shaking. Not from adrenaline or fear from when her horse had thrown her.

  From Chas’s kiss.

  The
kiss that he thought was a mistake.

  She went to her horse, immediately noting that something was wrong. A quick examination revealed it had thrown its shoe. She patted its neck, intensely relieved that nothing worse had happened, like a broken leg.

  “He won’t be able to carry a rider, not with a thrown shoe.”

  Chas had moved to his horse, too. He wouldn’t look at her. She closed her eyes, realizing he must regret kissing her.

  “So what do we do?”

  “We can both ride out on your mount, but the snow’s getting worse.”

  It was—coming down now in clumps, the cold wind buffeting it in all directions.

  “I think we’re better off buckling down here for a while. We wait until the worst of the storm is past.”

  She wouldn’t be able to track the bank robbers farther in this weather either. It galled her to have lost them, but the circumstances seemed to go against her mission to capture them.

  Shelter was scarce this high in the mountains, but Danna scouted their best option. She showed Chas the best places to find dry kindling in this kind of wet weather, then picketed the horses in a spot where the ground dipped away, providing a wall to shelter them from the worst of the wind.

  Nearby, she found a hollow between a hill and a large fallen tree. It would give her and Chas the most protection possible. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be stuck for long. Especially with the awkward tension now between them because of that kiss.

  He’d pulled away so quickly…had he been able to tell how it had affected her? Her heart had beaten like a big bass drum she’d heard once at a parade in Cheyenne; she hadn’t been able to breathe correctly.

  It was nothing she’d ever felt before. Not even with Fred.

  She couldn’t be falling for her deputy. She just couldn’t.

  Quickly getting a fire going, Danna secured the wood Chas brought to her and motioned him to sit close to the flames. She spent a few more moments carrying their gear over, including the saddle blankets that they would use to keep warm.