“May God have mercy on their souls,” she whispered, “and on yours, Chance Wellesley, wherever you are.”
“I’m right here.”
Another second in the open and they’d both be dead.
Chance didn’t care what happened to him as long as he was able to finish what he’d come out here to do, but he did care what happened to Dora.
He grabbed her hand and jerked her behind a blackened pile of bricks a heartbeat before a gunshot whizzed past their heads.
Dora screamed.
“Son of a—” He pulled her down beside him and checked her for injury.
“I’m fine, but—” She gasped when she noticed the sling around his left arm and the blood soaking through the bandaged wound on his shoulder. “They told me you’d been shot, but never let on how bad it was. Chance, you’ve got to see a doctor.”
“Saw one yesterday. In the town you must have come through to get here.”
“But, Chance…”
“What are you doing here, Dora? Are you crazy?” He peered out into the night, straining to see the road where she’d come in. “Who’s with you?”
“No one.”
“You came all the way here alone?”
Her eyes widened in the moonlight. He had to fight himself from drawing her close, from wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her hair.
“Yes. No one knows I’m here. Well, except Delilah and John.”
“I told him to take care of you, to—”
She stilled his lips with her hand. Her fingers were trembling. “I’ve come here to give you something. Two things, really.”
Another shot rang out, this one closer. The bricks above their heads exploded. Jagged chips of rock and mortar rained down on them.
Chance swore. He shielded her with his body. When the dust cleared he got to his knees and peeked around the side of the toppled fireplace, his gun aimed directly at where he’d last seen Dickie Hargus’s hat.
“Here,” Dora said. “Take it. Take it back.” She had something in her hand.
He tensed as pale moonlight glinted off the silver star.
“You have to take it.”
“No.” He’d made his mind up long ago, long before he’d met her.
“You never meant to bring them in. All along you meant to kill them. At whatever cost, even your own life.”
He didn’t want her mixed up in this. Why the hell had she come?
“I know what happened here. I know what you lost.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. I know what you feel when you look into Dickie Hargus’s eyes. I felt the same thing when I stared into Lily’s.” She pushed the badge at him. “Take it. You’re not a killer. You’re a man of the law, like your father.”
He looked into her eyes, remembering the morning they’d stood together in the pasture, the air infused with the heady scents of sage and her lilac perfume. If he looked away from her now, he feared he’d lose the memory altogether. Like the rest of his life it would vanish, crushed by the stench of death that he carried with him always, but was strongest here in the place he’d once called home.
“He was a good man,” Chance said.
“You’re a good man.”
“I wasn’t there for him. I should have been.” That’s why he was here. Not for vengeance so much as penance. He’d known all along he wouldn’t survive this kind of gunfight, but not because he wasn’t a good shot. He was. He wouldn’t survive it because deep down he didn’t want to.
Looking into Dora’s shimmering eyes, he realized she knew it. She knew him. That’s why she’d come.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. I don’t know what went on between you, but I do know this…” She pinned the silver star to his chest, just as she had three days ago in the street in the fog. “The man I fell in love with is neither a killer nor a martyr. Yes, he’s been wronged, and maybe he’s wronged others, and he’s eaten up with pain. But he’s also his father’s son, just as I’m my father’s daughter.”
She paused and looked at him, biting her lip. Never had she looked more beautiful.
“Wild Bill should have seen you all grown-up. I owe him my life, you know.”
Her pale brows met in a frown.
“Remind me to tell you the story sometime.”
She smiled at that, her eyes lighting with hope. He wished he hadn’t said it. Damned if knew why he had.
The dull thud of footfalls in the dirt to their right brought him back to the moment. He spun toward the sound, raised his gun over the pile of burned brick. “Stay down!” he whispered, and felt Dora tense beside him.
More footfalls sounded to their left.
Chance swore.
He’d arrived late last night, after tracking the Hargus boys north out of Last Call, then east to Denver. He’d lost them in the city, but knew they’d show up here at the ranch eventually. He’d staked out a position in the barn, and they’d appeared just like clockwork, just a few minutes before Dora had come traipsing up the road. He had to get her out of here. Now.
“See that big oak behind us?”
Dora scrambled to her knees. “Yes.”
“I’ll cover you. I want you to run for it. Get behind that tree and stay put.”
“But—”
“Don’t argue. And once the shooting starts, I want you to make your way through that brush back to the road. You have a horse?”
“Yes. I left her near the gate.”
“Good.” He shoved his pistol into his sling, then fished its twin out of its holster. “Here. Take this. I can’t use it with only one arm.”
“I—I’ve got one.” She reached into the pocket of her cloak and produced the little derringer that had been her father’s.
“Take mine anyway. You might need it.”
She pocketed the derringer, pressing her lips together in a hard line. He knew what was coming next. “No,” she said. “I’m not leaving you.”
“The hell you aren’t.” He shoved the Colt into her hand.
Hoof beats sounded on the road, more than one set. He pulled her down with him into the dirt. “I thought you said you were alone.”
“I am. I mean, I thought I was.”
Any minute they’d be surrounded.
“Chance, you have to listen to me.”
“Not now. I—”
“Chance!” She squeezed his bad arm, and he saw stars. “I said I had two things for you. This is the other.” She fished the pewter watch fob out of her pocket and tried to make him take it. “The key to the future, my father told you. My future. But he gave the key to you.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does! He knew, Chance. He knew who you were when he gave it to you. He knew you were Secret Service. He knew about your family. He knew everything.”
Her words hit him like a punch.
The hoof beats grew closer. Lee Hargus called to his brother to fall back.
“H-how do you know this?”
“Max told me. My father wanted us to meet, don’t you see? He knew you’d help me find my life, and he knew I’d help you remember yours. You were a rancher once. You could be one again.”
His head throbbed almost as much as his shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“You have a job to do first. To bring these murderers to justice. Justice, Chance, not whatever it is you’ve been planning. I didn’t know your father, but he couldn’t have wanted this for you. This…obsession that’s likely to end with another of his children in the grave.”
“Wellesley! You out here?” The hoof beats stalled. Just off the road a trio of riders came into view.
The Hargus boys opened fire.
Chance pushed Dora into the dirt and fired back.
“U.S. Secret Service!” the voice called out.
Damn it! Chance watched as the three men abandoned their mounts and took to the brush behind them.
“Who are you, Chance?” Dora pulled herself up beside him.
“It’s time to show your true colors.” She gazed at the silver star, then at him.
He’d never loved a woman before. He guessed this was how it felt. He hadn’t expected it would hurt so bad.
“The first night I met you, you said, ‘Can’t always judge a book by its cover.’ It’s the last chapter, Chance. How’s it going to end?”
Ten days later
Dora toyed with the pewter watch fob as she stared blankly out the window of the upstairs parlor at the Royal Flush.
Susan sat beside her with last week’s Rocky Mountain News across her lap. “Shall I go on?”
“Why don’t we read from the New England Primer today. I don’t think you’re ready for newspapers.”
The truth was, she wasn’t ready for what nearly every Colorado paper had splashed across its front page the morning after Chance’s shoot-out with the Hargus boys.
“But this is so much more exciting.”
That wasn’t the word she’d have chosen to describe the events that had taken place at the Wellesley ranch. But she’d suffered through the telling a dozen times over. She guessed she could hear it again. “Go on.”
Susan began to read where she’d left off. “The gunfight broke out after local agents of the…”
“United States Secret Service.” Dora had committed the article to memory.
“Thank you, Miss Dora.” The girl continued. “Susur-rounded the ranch.”
“Very good.”
Susan looked at her with wide eyes. “Did Chance really take them both single-handed?”
“I don’t know. When the shooting started more lawmen arrived, including the local marshal and a couple of his deputies. Chance made one of them take me away.”
And she’d neither seen nor heard from him since. Gazing at the pewter watch fob, she recalled the look on his face when he’d refused to take it back.
“Federal agent Marvin—”
Dora couldn’t stand it. She grabbed the newspaper. “Yes. It says that the Hargus brothers shot and killed two federal agents and the town marshal before they were subdued.”
“Sub…dued. That means caught, right? By Chance?”
She rose abruptly from the chaise, marched to the fireplace and tossed the newspaper onto the dancing flames. Turning to Susan she said, “Yes. It says he brought them in wounded, but alive.”
“That’s somethin’, ain’t it?”
It was something. She couldn’t imagine what it had cost him to have done it.
“But they was killed anyway, wasn’t they?”
“Yes.” The newspapers reported that at the town jail Lee Hargus managed to free his hands and grab a rifle. Chance shot him dead. Dickie died later of his injuries.
“Good,” Susan said. “They were bad men.”
Yes, she thought. They were. And somewhere out there was a good man, a man she loved more than anyone or anything on God’s green earth.
“Miss Dora, you okay?”
She smiled, pushing her feelings aside. There’d be plenty of time for her to reflect on all that had happened here later. “Are you and Tom packed?”
Susan’s face lit up. “Nearly. The preacher in town’s gonna marry us tomorrow. Tom already bought our tickets for the stage. He wired the orphanage two days ago. They’re expectin’ us.”
At least there’d be other happy endings. “You’ll have your son back. Tom will be a wonderful father and a good husband. You deserve that, Susan.”
The girl hugged her. “Thank you, Miss Dora.”
Together they walked out to the balcony overlooking the empty saloon. Dora had closed the Royal Flush a few days earlier. John had helped her arrange for the sale of the valuable Chinese birdcage back to its original owner in San Francisco. The man was wealthy and had paid a small fortune to get it back.
Rumor had it that the railroad was considering a new line that would pass through Last Call. The railroad meant new business, that Last Call would thrive on its own, without the Royal Flush. All the same, Dora intended to invest some of her money in local enterprise, just to help get things started. And the town still needed a school. There was a lot to do.
Jim and the rest of the girls were already looking for new jobs. Dora didn’t think they’d have any trouble. It looked as if Gus was going to recover just fine from his gunshot wound. He and Rowdy would stay on, of course, until she decided what to do with the ranch. It seemed silly to keep it. What would she do with six thousand acres and a big rambling house on her own?
Susan returned to her room to finish packing. Dora was headed downstairs when she noticed the door to her father’s bedroom was cracked open. That was strange. No one went in there except her. No one else had a key. Well, no one else except…
“Delilah?” she said, pushing the door open. “Are you all right?”
The older woman sat on the bed with the toy rabbit that had once been Dora’s in her lap. Dora entered the room, a knot of tenderness twisting inside her.
Delilah gave her a half smile. “I’m fine. Just reminiscing a bit.”
“You’re still determined to leave?”
“Oh, I think it’s high time I skedaddle. My sister lives back East, you know. I wrote her yesterday. She’ll be expectin’ me before the month’s out.” Delilah patted the bed. “Come here. Sit a spell. I’ve got a story to tell you, if you’re ready to hear it.”
“About you and my father?” Dora sat beside her.
“First you need to know about you and your pa, about your ma, too.”
“Go on.” This was why she’d come to Last Call in the first place. To learn about her father and her mother, what had happened between them, and what it meant.
“She was in love, your ma was.”
“With my father.”
Delilah paused and looked at her. “Yes. They were engaged. His name was Frank O’Donnell. He was Wild Bill’s best friend.”
“What?” She stared at Delilah openmouthed. “Y-you mean…”
“That’s right.”
Dora had to take a minute to let it all sink in. “William Fitzpatrick wasn’t my father?”
“Not blood relations. But he was in his heart.”
“Keep going,” Dora said. Her stomach felt as if it had done a somersault inside her.
“See, Bill was always gettin’ him and Frank mixed up in all kinds of crazy business deals. Risky ventures. Some of ’em dangerous. Your ma didn’t like it none.”
She thought briefly of her father’s dealings with the Harguses. It had been smart on Delilah’s part to make her sit. She didn’t think, at this point, her legs would have held her up.
“G-go on.”
“Bill was young and passionate, and had a way with words. He talked Frank, your pa, into some kind of cattle deal. The whole thing went south, and in the end Frank got himself killed.”
Dora’s breath caught in her throat.
“Your ma was already pregnant with you.”
“Good Lord!” She could guess the rest. “He…Bill… He married her.”
“That he did. Your ma didn’t have no choice about it. She needed a name for that baby. Bill never forgave himself for what happened to Frank. He married her the same month.”
“But he loved you.” The tragedy of it was almost too much to bear, on top of everything else that had happened.
“We knew it was the right thing. Bill couldn’t have done otherwise, and even if he could, I wouldn’t have let him.”
She looked at Delilah with new appreciation.
“But your ma, she never got over it, and she never forgave him.”
“She made him leave, didn’t she?”
Delilah nodded.
“All this time I thought he was the one who’d left us.”
“He wouldn’t have done that, not in a million years. He loved you like his own blood kin. It was your ma’s way of punishing him, making him promise to not see you.”
“But he did see me, he watched over me, from afar.”
“And he
sent money every month, along with those letters.”
She hadn’t known that. She’d always wondered how her mother had made ends meet. She hadn’t even known about the letters until recently.
“Here,” Delilah said, and handed her the toy rabbit. “He’d want you to keep this.”
Dora looked at the faded and battered stuffed animal. “I’ll always keep it, to remember him by. To remember his love.”
“He’d like knowin’ that.” Delilah sighed and got to her feet.
“What about you? How did you bear it all these years?”
Delilah’s smile was bittersweet. “Oh, child. True love endures. Through thick and thin, hellfire and brimstone, it finds a way.”
“I wish that were true.” She stared off into space, only half aware she’d spoken.
A knock sounded on the open door. They both looked up to see Jim standing in the corridor. “Someone here to see you, Miss Dora.”
“Oh.” She shook off the muddle of emotions churning inside her and stood. She placed the toy rabbit on top of her father’s bureau and gave it a little pat. “Who is it, Jim?”
“A cattleman. Says he wants to buy the ranch.”
She exchanged a look with Delilah.
“Really?”
“Yes, ma’am. He stopped in town first. John Gardner sent the paperwork along with him.”
John had been a good friend to her through all of this. She’d always be grateful to him.
“Says he would have come sooner, but it took him a while to get his financial affairs sorted out. Seems he’s gettin’ some kind of restitution from the government.”
“Oh. Well, I’d be happy to see him. Please tell him I’ll be right down.”
Jim grinned from ear to ear, then winked at Delilah. He pulled her out into the corridor and whispered something in her ear.
“What are you two up to now?” Dora followed them out. She peered over the balcony into the saloon below.
Her heart stopped.
Chance stood at the bar with a sheaf of papers in hand. He looked up as she floated down the spiral staircase, her knees shaking.
“You’re the cattleman,” was all she could think of to say. She stopped an arm’s length from him, drinking him in.
His shoulder was still bandaged, but he looked well, rested. The wild look she remembered the last night she’d seen him, as they’d huddled together behind the pile of toppled bricks, was gone. He’d come to terms with what had happened. She felt it as surely as she felt her love for him surge anew.
Rocky Mountain Marriage Page 23