Marrying Miss Marshal

by Lacy Williams

  “She found us. Just before we left town. Said her pa used to run with Lewis’s gang until Hester killed him. She ran away from them. I think she’s been afraid all this time that they’d track her down and kill her, too.”

  His thoughts jumped from the outlaw gang killing Katy to what he’d feared the most since yesterday afternoon—them killing Danna. He hated riding away. He’d never been closer to enacting his revenge on Hank Lewis than right now.

  “How’d you know where I’d gone, though?”

  Danna’s question broke through his thoughts. “The doctor found me right after you rode out of town. And I’d…well, I found a passage in Fred’s journal that implicated Sheriff O’Rourke as part of the rustling ring.”

  “You read the journal? That’s why you came after me?”

  He couldn’t tell if that made her angry. He had invaded her privacy.

  “I couldn’t…let you face the danger alone, not if these men were ones who killed your first husband. I couldn’t leave you to die!”

  He knew he’d said something wrong when she frowned and turned her face into the blanket. Her breathing changed and he thought she might be crying. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up Fred Carpenter. He knew she loved the man, and it must hurt to know who had murdered him.

  She stayed that way for the short time it took them to reach the site where they’d camped. The other men were up and about, as were the stablehand and girl. The scent of coffee welcomed them when they pulled up near where the other horses were tied off.

  Chas hopped to the ground and reached up for Danna, then released her as soon as her feet touched the ground.

  His head spun with confusion. She’d been happy to see him, he knew she had. Why was she pulling away?

  Embarrassed by her teary breakdown, Danna kept her eyes averted from Chas’s face as he set her down off his horse.

  It was exhaustion and relief that had caused her to cry like a little girl. Not Chas’s admission that the only reason he’d come for her was because he felt responsible for her.

  Not because he loved her.

  What had she expected? Their marriage was temporary. They’d agreed on the coming annulment.

  Her feelings hadn’t changed since she’d first fallen in love with him, but she held on to hope.

  Chas propelled her over to the blazing fire and pushed her down to sit on a conveniently placed log.

  “Let’s get some coffee into her,” he called out, and men jumped to do his bidding.

  He pulled off her gloves, and she saw her hands were chapped, but not discolored like she’d expected them to be, with little blood flow in the freezing conditions. She might not lose any fingers after all. Chas chafed her hands between his, and the warm that infused her was more than just from the fire and his hands.

  It felt like he cared.

  No matter how much she told herself not to feel too much for Chas, her love for him continued to grow.

  Wrong Tree butted his head under Chas’s arm, looking for attention from the man he’d liked from the beginning. Chas gave the mutt a playful push out of the way and settled close to Danna’s side.

  “All right. So what’s the plan?” Rob squatted down next to Danna’s other side. He handed her a tin cup, steam rising from its rim. The rest of the cowpokes stood near enough to listen without intruding on their conversation.

  “The plan?” she echoed.

  “You mean to tell me you weren’t working on a way to round up those bank robbers while you were tied up?” Rob’s voice held both a teasing quality and a note of seriousness.

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head, feeling as if it was stuffed with cotton. “I’m not thinking real clearly yet.” She drank a big gulp of the coffee, hoping it would help.

  “You didn’t think we came all the way up here just to save your hide, did you? We’re going to help you bring in those outlaws.”

  She risked a glance at Chas, who was staring hard into the fire, his jaw tight. Had that been his intention? She couldn’t tell. But she had a job to do, even if she didn’t have the official title, and if these cowboys were willing to help, she’d be foolish not to take them up on it.

  “I saw four men in the cave last night, plus O’Rourke. Two are injured. By my count, there should be another man, but I never saw him.”

  “Who are the two injured?”

  She couldn’t look at Chas when she told them. “Hank Lewis and the man who was shot during the robbery.”

  “How bad is Lewis?” Chas asked, his voice low and angry.

  She shrugged. “He’d lost a lot of blood. The gunshot was in his upper thigh. He was alive when I got done patching him up, but I don’t know if he made it through the night.”

  “You patched him up?” Chas spat the words and vaulted to his feet so she had to look up at him. His face and neck had gone red, making his light freckles disappear. “After what he’s done? He murdered my—” He cut himself off, but she could still hear the words, as if he’d said them aloud. He murdered my love. The reminder burned a hole in her gut.

  “He killed my brother and his wife,” Chas said in a slightly more controlled voice. She could still hear the undercurrents of anger in his tone. “He doesn’t deserve to live.”

  She’d known his temper would blow when he found out she’d helped Lewis, but she’d been hoping he’d be a mite more rational.

  “I’m not a judge,” she replied. “I can’t make the decision whether he should live or die. Plus, they had a gun on me. If I refused to treat him, O’Rourke would have shot me.”

  Chas’s face paled, all the red seeping out of his cheeks, but he still stared at her as if he didn’t know who she was, couldn’t believe she’d done what she had.

  Slowly, he shook his head, then ran a hand from forehead to chin. The action wiped all the expression from his face, leaving only a hard-set jaw and empty eyes behind. “So what do we do now?”

  Rob shifted in his crouch, clearly uncomfortable to have witnessed their conversation. “We can assume they’ve figured out Danna’s disappeared. The question is, what’ll they do about it?”

  “If they saw our tracks, they’ll know she’s not alone,” Chas put in. “They could follow us pretty easy in all that snow.” He shared a secret smile with Danna, warming her down to her toes. “I think even I could track in these conditions.”

  Danna didn’t like the way her stomach swooped to think that O’Rourke and his men might be heading this way right now. Their group was out in the open and would be easy targets for a rifle. She glanced around the craggy, snowy scene around them, but didn’t see any sinister shadows lurking behind the trees.

  “Or they might decide to hole up in the cave, to see if we come after them,” Rob offered. That thought wasn’t particularly comforting either, as they’d be much too vulnerable if they tried to approach the cave with the scant cover the landscape around it offered.

  “They might make a run for it.” She knew that alternative was the least likely, due to the injured men. Or maybe they’d leave the hurt kid and Lewis behind to shoot it out, and the rest of them would try to run.

  After a moment of tense silence, Rob said what was on all their minds. “If O’Rourke knows he’s been caught out, he’s going to want us dead.”

  Rob’s hands all murmured their agreement. They all looked to her, and their gazes were like a weight on her chest. She’d wanted this responsibility?

  Chas turned to her from where he’d stood with his back to the group, one hand massaging his neck. “So tell us what to do, boss lady. You wanted deputies. Now you’ve got ’em.”

  In the end, everything fell into place beautifully. Danna took command of the situation, like Chas had known she could. She sent four of Rob’s men out scouting for anyone who might have left the camp after the snow had stopped, with instructions to fire a sequence of shots if they caught the men or needed help. She ordered the stablehand and the girl to stay put and to keep her ornery dog tied up with them. That l
eft five of them to figure out a way to approach the outlaw’s campsite without getting shot.

  “We came in from the south last night, and there wasn’t much cover at all.” Danna seemed to have regained her equilibrium. She paced a tight ring around the fire, alternately clasping her hands in front of her and waving them around when she spoke. She was adorable.

  “Is there another way into the cave?” Rob asked, as he checked his weapon.

  Danna shook her head. “The inside walls are solid rock. I couldn’t see any other way in or out, and believe me, I looked.”

  “From what I could tell, we’d have the most cover approaching from the east.”

  “Or we could hang a rope and someone could shimmy down to get to the cave.”

  It was risky. He hadn’t gotten much of a glimpse of the cave through the trees this morning, as Danna had been tied pretty far from the entrance, but he’d seen enough to know it was a sheer drop of thirty feet.

  “Danna could do it. She likes to climb things. Like roofs.” For the second time, he gave her a smile that said they both shared a secret. She flushed under his gaze and looked away.

  “I guess you never grow out of some things,” said Rob, shattering the moment.

  Danna kept her face averted, but then her gaze cleared and she turned to Chas. “Do you have Fred’s journal with you? And a pencil?”

  He’d thought she would be angry that he’d violated her husband’s memory by reading the journal, but she’d done what she always seemed to do when faced with a situation that needed to be handled—put aside her personal emotions in order to work.

  He retrieved the book from his saddlebag, along with a stub of a pencil he had to dig for, and brought them to Danna. She flipped to a blank page near the end of the book and completed a quick sketch of the area around the cave, including trees, rocks, larger impressions in the hills. Her memory was impressive.

  She tapped a corner of the page. “If your two hands come from this direction, and I slip down from above the cave, you—” she nodded to Rob “—and Chas can approach from here.” She indicated a thick stand of trees. She shook her head as if she wasn’t terribly happy with the plan, but said, “I think this is the best we can do. Ya’ll ready?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer as she strode to her horse and swung up into the saddle. Confident they’d follow. And they did, Chas hopping up behind Danna.

  It didn’t take long to retrace their route to where they’d found Danna in the woods. The storm clouds had dissipated after sunrise, and now the sunlight sparkled off every surface, almost blinding in its intensity.

  Shortly before they reached the place where Danna had been tied, Rob and Chas broke away from the other two men to circle around the other side of the little valley.

  Letting Danna down from his horse and watching her slip away into the snowy mountain was hard for him. Especially after she’d come so close to death the night before. Chas clamped his teeth together to keep from calling her back.

  He had to remember how capable she was. And at least she wasn’t unarmed, as she’d been able to take an extra pistol her brother had provided.

  Chas and Rob moved quietly into place, hobbling the horses a fair piece away, in case gunfire erupted. They snuck through the winter-white landscape together.

  Not as comfortable as Rob was at sneaking, Chas followed the other man and tried to stay behind barren trees, outcroppings of rocks, or even getting down on hands and knees in the snow, so as not to be seen.

  When the mouth of the cave was in sight, Rob began to move even more cautiously. Rob found a spot he liked and pointed out a covering of brush not far away, mouthing instructions for Chas to go over there and wait.

  Lying there with his belly wet and cold wasn’t Chas’s idea of a good time, but he did as he was told. He wouldn’t endanger Danna as he had the other night. Sighting his rifle, he drew a bead on the cave, black against the white landscape.

  In minutes, a length of rope unfurled down the ledge above the cave. He saw Danna’s dark head at the top of the cliff, and then her backside as she began to lower herself hand over hand, right down the wall of rock.

  Chas’s heart drummed in his temples at her being so exposed. If any of the other outlaws were out in the woods, they’d have an easy shot at her. He sent up a desperate prayer that no one with nefarious intentions was near enough to do her harm.

  For a moment, his breath cut off and he thought he was going to get caught up in a memory of those few moments before Julia and Joseph died, but instead of the images he expected, all he could see was Danna hanging off that dangling rope, her life in the balance.

  After she was out in the open so long he was beginning to feel sick to his stomach, she braced her legs against the rock wall and raised one hand in a prearranged signal.

  “O’Rourke!” Rob roared, and Chas jumped, even though he’d been expecting the shout. “We’ve got you surrounded! Toss your weapons outside the cave and walk out with your hands up!”

  No sound emerged from the cave. The woods themselves were eerily quiet, without the normal sounds of birds and small animals moving about, as if even they knew something was happening. The snow muffled everything, but Chas knew it could be hiding death and danger.

  Danna fisted her hand and pumped it once in the air—the signal they waited for—and a voice from across the clearing called out this time. “We know you’re in there, and we’re not leaving. We’ve got enough ammunition to wait you out!”

  Still no answer from the cave, no movement. Had the men left after they’d discovered Danna was missing earlier in the morning?

  Chas watched with bated breath as Danna dug in her heels and leaned to the side until she was nearly horizontal. Her braid hung down like a pendulum, as she lowered her head enough to peer into the recesses of the cave. A shot rang out and she scrambled a few feet up the rope.

  So there was at least one man in the cave.

  Chas squinted, cursing the bright sun glinting off every surface, as he tried to determine if she’d been hit. He couldn’t see any blood on her face or neck. That was a good sign, right?

  “Stop worrying so much,” came Rob’s voice, this time so quiet, Chas knew it was meant for his ears alone. “She knows what she’s doing.”

  That was debatable. Danna was taking an incredible risk right this second. Chas knew how quickly a life could be snuffed out, and Danna was putting herself in danger. And did so every single day. Chas’s jaw was so tight, he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to unclench it, so he didn’t try to answer Danna’s brother.

  “You have to let it go,” Rob said. “Her life is in the Lord’s hands. If He wants to take her home today, He will, and nothing we can do will stop it.”

  But I need her, Chas wanted to cry out, and he would’ve, if he could’ve wrenched his mouth open.

  If only Danna had a safer job. Of course, just living out here in the West was a bit more dangerous than his parents’ home in Boston. But he couldn’t picture her living in his parents’ world, with their society parties and boring lives. If she sat down to tea with his mother, Danna would likely send the older woman into a swoon.

  He loved her the way she was.

  The realization shocked him into silent stillness. It felt right.

  He loved the marshal.

  He just didn’t know if he could handle her dangerous job. He was so afraid of watching her die, like he had Julia. And although Julia’s death had devastated him, Danna’s death would rip him to shreds. Because he loved her. Not the love of a childhood friend, but the deep, abiding love of the woman he wanted to spend his life growing old with.

  Fear held him immobile while Rob crept toward the cave. Chas watched as the other two cowhands came into sight on the far side of the clearing. All three men advanced on the cave, now in plain sight of anybody inside.

  A volley of shots rang out. The men darted for cover. A figure ran out of the cave, straight toward Chas, but he doubted the man even sa
w him.

  Rob jumped onto the man’s back and took him facedown in the snow. The two hands joined him and helped hog-tie the man before Chas had time to blink.

  “How many more are there?” Rob demanded, his knee in the outlaw’s ribs.

  “Just the two hurt ones.”

  And Chas went a little crazy.

  He had to know if Hank Lewis was inside.

  Not caring if he got shot himself, Chas slipped in to the cool darkness, keeping close to the wall, and let his eyes adjust. The kid sat against the farthest wall, unconscious, though a gun lay near his thigh.

  Lewis was there, too. Unarmed, from the looks of it, lying prone and flat on the ground.

  Which meant there was nothing stopping Chas from killing him. Chas stood over the man who’d taken so much from him, and pointed his pistol right at Lewis’s heart.

  Danna dropped to the ground as Chas ran into the cave. She rushed in after him, foolishly not taking the time to determine if it was even safe to go inside. She had to stop Chas before he did something he’d regret his entire life.

  The instant her eyes got used to the dimness inside the cave, she saw Chas standing over the prostrate Lewis, with his pistol trained on the outlaw. His hand shook, but the tension in his shoulders told her everything she needed to know.

  He was ready to shoot the man that had killed two people he loved.

  Heart in her throat, she knew she’d never get to her husband in time to stop him. She couldn’t call out, but she started toward her husband.

  “You deserve to die,” Chas said, and she knew a moment of fear that he would shoot. She’d have to arrest him if he did.

  Lewis didn’t respond. She was nearly there, but from this distance she couldn’t tell if Lewis was even conscious.

  As she drew near, she saw that Chas’s whole body was trembling.

  “Chas.”

  He turned his head, and even from the side view of his face, she could tell he struggled with himself.