RenegadeHeart

by Madeline Baker

  Clint gave Rachel’s shoulders a squeeze. Then, with an audible sigh, he stood up, reaching for his hat.

  “Well, I’d best be going,” he said reluctantly. “I’ve got to get an early start in the morning.”

  Rachel stood up, lifting her face for his kiss. “Take care of yourself,” she murmured. “I’ll miss you.”

  Wesley nodded. “I’ll see you as soon as I get back.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Wesley nodded again, wondering if he dared kiss her again. Instead, he gave her a last, quick hug, then went down the stairs to where his horse was hitched to the rail. He swung agilely into the saddle, tipped his hat to Rachel, and rode out of the yard.

  Rachel smiled as she watched Clint ride away. He would make her a good husband, she mused as she went up to bed. If he ever got the nerve to propose! He had wanted to kiss her again; she had seen it in his eyes. Why hadn’t he done it?

  Climbing into bed, she drew the covers to her chin, wishing that Clint Wesley would stop worrying about propriety and sweep her off her feet. She fell asleep thinking of Clint, dreaming of all the towheaded children they would someday have.

  Saturday morning dawned bright and clear and warm. Rachel’s first thought was of Clint, she hoped he’d gotten off to an early start and would return safely home. Transporting a prisoner from Yellow Creek to the territorial prison at Yuma was always a dangerous assignment. You never knew when a prisoner’s friends or relatives would take it into their heads to try and help a convicted man escape his fate. Patrick Murphy, the town’s previous lawman, had been killed en route to Yuma, shot down in cold blood by his prisoner’s brother. Fortunately, such things were rare, but they did happen.

  Resolutely, Rachel put such thoughts from her mind. Slipping out of her blue flannel night-rail, she dressed quickly and headed downstairs to prepare breakfast for herself and her father.

  She found six-year-old Amy Cahill waiting for her in the kitchen. Amy was a frequent visitor at the Lazy H. Her uncle, Joe Cahill, was foreman of the Halloran ranch.

  “Good morning, Amy,” Rachel said cheerfully as she tousled the girl’s blonde curls.

  “You slept late,” Amy remarked. “Are we making pies today?”

  “If you like.” Rachel spread a clean cloth over the kitchen table and put the water on for coffee. “You’ll have to pick some berries though. I’m fresh out.”

  “Can I pick them now?”

  “Have you had breakfast yet?”

  “At home,” Amy said, scooping up the berry basket from a shelf in the pantry. “Mama made pancakes.”

  “Be careful,” Rachel cautioned as Amy skipped out the back door.

  “I will,” Amy replied, her tone implying that was a warning she heard frequently.

  The berry bushes were located behind the smokehouse. It was a long walk, but Amy didn’t mind. Skipping along, she glanced at the sand hills located some miles away. She had been admonished time and again not to go there, but she promised herself that one day she would explore the forbidden mountains of sand.

  But now, pies were uppermost in her mind. The bushes were heavy with fruit and Amy hummed softly as she moved from bush to bush, collecting blackberries. Her basket was nearly full when she found the man. He was lying in a shallow hole in the ground, partially covered with dead leaves.

  Startled, Amy stared at the man for a long time, wondering if he were dead. He looked like he was asleep, but then, her best friend, Joe Bob Somers, said that was how dead people looked, like they were sleeping, so how was a girl to know? The man lay so still, Amy decided he had to be dead, and all the scary stories she had ever heard about ghosts and haunts made her shiver with apprehension.

  She was about to turn and run for home when the man rolled over and she found herself staring into a pair of pain-glazed yellow eyes.

  “Are you all right, mister?” Amy queried tremulously. Slowly, she began to back away from the man, surprised to find she was more afraid of him now that she knew he was alive than she had been when she thought he was dead.

  “Need help,” the man rasped. He tried to sit up, but fell back heavily. His face went white beneath its tan. “Water—”

  “Sure, mister. Just lie still and I’ll bring help. Honest I will!”

  But the man was unconscious again and did not hear her.

  Rachel held the front door open as Joe Cahill and two of the Lazy H cowhands carried the unconscious man into the house. Twenty minutes earlier, Amy had run into the kitchen shouting, “A man, Rachel! I found a man in the berry bushes. I thought he was dead, but he wasn’t!”

  Once Rachel had calmed the excited child down, she had learned that Amy had first gone to her uncle and that Cahill was even then bringing the man to the house.

  Rachel looked at the stranger’s face as he was carried inside. Who was he? Where had he come from?

  “He’s bad hurt,” Cahill remarked.

  “Take him into the spare bedroom,” Rachel said. Frowning, she went down the narrow hallway ahead of the men. Turning left, she entered the spare bedroom located at the end of the hall and quickly turned back the bedclothes.

  “Don’t know if he’s gonna make it,” Cahill muttered as the cowhands laid the injured man on the bed. “That bullet wound looks like it’s festering.”

  “It’s in God’s hands,” Rachel murmured. “All we can do is patch him up and hope for the best.”

  Logan Tyree stirred at the sound of voices but his eyes refused to open and when he tried to speak, the words would not come. Rough hands endeavored to wrest the six-gun from his grasp, but he batted them away, refusing to relinquish his hold on the .44.

  “Shit, Candido, let him keep his iron,” Joe Cahill growled. Then, remembering where he was, he murmured, “Sorry, Miss Rachel.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “He ain’t gonna turn loose of that Colt,” Cahill mused, “but he ain’t got the strength to cock the damn thing, neither.” Color crept up the back of Cahill’s bull-like neck. “‘Scuse me again, Miss Rachel.”

  Rachel smothered a grin. When the men got excited, they often cursed in her presence. Always, they were embarrassed and quick to apologize.

  “Leave the gun for now,” Rachel said.

  Cahill nodded as he followed the cowhands out of the room. If anyone could pull the stranger through, Rachel Halloran could. Many a man on the Lazy H owed life or limb to her nimble fingers and quick thinking.

  Rachel quickly gathered several clean cloths, scissors, disinfectant and a bowl of warm water. Then, taking a deep breath, she began to undress the man lying on the bed. The wound in his side was red, swollen, and infected. Fortunately, she had been blessed with a strong stomach and steady hands and the sight of blood and torn flesh did not send her running for her smelling salts as it did so many of her friends. As the only woman on the ranch, she was often called upon to nurse the sick and tend the wounded. When times were hard and they could not afford the extra help, she often pitched in to work the cattle, occasionally she helped with the branding and the calving, sometimes she helped with the castrating, which was hard, dirty work at best and usually left to the men.

  With cool efficiency, Rachel began to wash the wound.

  Tyree groaned as unseen hands probed for the slug lodged deep in his left side. The slightest touch caused him agony, and he clenched his teeth as the slug was pried from his flesh. Through it all, he held fast to the Colt, finding comfort in the weight and feel of a gun in his hand without remembering why. Rachel gnawed on her lower lip, her brow knit with determination, as she removed the slug, washed the wound a second time, then swabbed the whole area with strong carbolic.

  With a soft grunt of exertion, she rolled the semi-conscious man onto his side so she could remove the sodden, blood-stained linen from the bed. It was then she saw his back. It was badly scarred. She knew men in prison were often flogged for disobedience and she drew back, chilled to the bone by the thought that the man tossing restlessly on th
e bed might be an escaped felon.

  As though hypnotized, she continued to stare in horrified fascination at the broad, scarred back, feeling a surge of pity well in her heart. No human being, no matter what his crimes, should be subjected to such cruel abuse.

  With tender concern, she washed the broad expanse of sun-bronzed flesh, spread a clean white sheet beneath him, then pulled the bedcovers up over his shoulders.

  That done, she studied the man through boldly curious eyes. He was a big man, tall and whipcord lean. Though he was terribly thin, she could see he had once been powerfully built. A thick black moustache and bristly black beard covered the lower portion of his face, making it difficult to determine if he were young or old, handsome or plain.

  His language, when he mumbled in his sleep, was coarse, filled with the kind of profanity no lady was ever permitted to hear. Even Rachel, accustomed to the curses of the men who worked the ranch, had rarely heard such foul expletives.

  Abruptly, the man began to toss fitfully. His eyelids flickered open and he stared, unseeing, at Rachel.

  “You dirty sonofabitch,” he growled in a voice edged with pain. “If my hands were free, I’d take that whip and give you a taste of your own medicine.” He lay still, rigid, as though listening to a distant voice, and then he laughed, a deep ugly laugh laced with bitter despair. “Go ahead, you slimy bastard, do your worst!”

  Rachel watched in tight-lipped silence as the man’s body grew tense from head to heel. His mouth thinned to a taut line and sweat popped out on his brow as he relived the agony of the lash playing across his flesh.

  It was too awful to watch. Stepping forward, Rachel placed her hand on the man’s shoulder and shook him slightly.

  “It’s over,” she murmured urgently. “Forget it. Sleep now. Hush, hush. It’s over. Go to sleep.”

  Tyree’s eyes flickered open as a soft voice murmured words of comfort. He stared at the woman hovering over him, expecting, somehow, to see the face of the woman he had loved more than his own life. But the face hovering above him was pale ivory, not copper; the hair was honey-gold instead of Indian black; the eyes the most incredible shade of sky-blue when they should have been deep chocolate brown.

  Disappointed, he closed his eyes and fell into a deep black void that stretched away into infinity.

  Rachel stayed at his side almost constantly during the next few days. She held him down when he began to thrash about, fearful that he would rip open the ugly wound in his side. He had already lost a great deal of blood; he could ill afford to lose more should the wound start to bleed again.

  The thought that he might be a wanted man gnawed in the back of her mind. Harboring a fugitive was against the law and, though she tried to convince herself he was just a man who had run afoul of outlaws or Indians, she knew deep inside herself that he was wanted by the law. The scars on his back, the odd purple discolorations on his wrists and ankles, undoubtedly caused by shackles, the words he mumbled in his sleep, all pointed to the fact that he was an escaped prisoner.

  The man was ever in Rachel’s thoughts as she moved from chore to chore. Who was he? What had he done? Was it safe to have such a man in the house? When she voiced her concern to her father, he merely shrugged.

  “I don’t reckon he’ll be much of a threat for another day or two,” John Halloran said laconically, “but I’ll have one of the boys take him into town to Doc Franklin if his being here bothers you.”

  “No,” Rachel said quickly. “I don’t think he should be moved just yet.”

  The stranger. She could think of little else. Caring for him, she was increasingly aware of the breadth of his shoulders, of the way his long black hair curled around her fingers. His moustache, though bristly to look at, was soft beneath her fingertips. She tried not to stare at his nakedness when she bathed the sweat from his body or changed the bandage swathed around his middle, but her eyes continually strayed toward his flat belly and lean flanks. He was very brown all over, and not just where the sun had touched him. His legs were long, covered with fine black hair. His hands were large and looked capable of great strength. She blushed furiously when she found herself wondering what it would be like to be touched by those hands, to be held in his arms.

  He was trouble. Her instincts told her that. She knew she should pray for his speedy recovery but deep inside, she did not want him to leave and that was silly, because she didn’t even know the man. She knew she should insist her father notify the proper authorities immediately, but she was too softhearted to have the man sent back to jail now, when he was in such obvious distress. There would be plenty of time for that later, when he was well again.

  Tyree woke to pain and darkness and a raging thirst made worse by the fever burning through him. He stirred restlessly on the soft mattress, tossing aside the blankets that weighed him down like lead. His fingers tightened instinctively around the butt of the gun he still held in his right hand as a slight figure materialized out of the shadows. A soft hand rested lightly on his brow, a cool cloth gently wiped the perspiration from his face and neck. He felt the tension drain from his body as he recognized the dim outline of the woman who was constantly there to tend his needs.

  “Lie still,” Rachel murmured. “You’re among friends.” She glanced at the gun in his hand, but did not try to take it from him.

  There were many questions Tyree wanted to ask, but when he tried to speak, only a choked whisper emerged from his throat.

  There was the sharp smell of sulphur, a sudden burst of light as the woman touched a match to the candle on the bedside table.

  “Are you in pain?” Rachel asked kindly. “Is the bandage too tight?”

  “No.” Tyree’s voice was weak, foreign to his ears.

  “Is there anyone I should notify?” Rachel asked. “A wife, perhaps?”

  “No. Water.” His mouth formed the words but no sound emerged.

  But the woman understood and quickly poured him a glass of water from the pitcher standing on the bedside table. She lifted his head while he took a long drink. With his thirst quenched, he slept again.

  The next few days passed in a kaleidoscope of pain and fever. His side throbbed mercilessly, burning as if all the fires of hell were kindled inside, and he tossed restlessly from side to side, unable to find relief from the searing pain, or from the nightmare images that haunted his dreams. Dreams of iron bars and cold gray walls, of men long dead, killed by his own hand. At times, Red Leaf’s sweetly smiling face filtered into his nightmares and he heard himself babbling incoherently in guttural Apache, heard himself crying her name over and over again, like a frightened child whimpering for its mother.

  In his lucid moments, he was ever aware of the woman with the lovely sky-blue eyes sitting quietly by his side. Her face was kind, her eyes sympathetic whether she was gently sponging the rivers of sweat from his brow or easing his thirst with countless cups of water. Always she was there when he needed her, her voice soft and low, as pleasant to the ear as the sound of summer rain on sun-bleached prairie grass. Even when he was wandering down the dark corridors of the past, he was somehow aware of her presence lingering nearby, willing him to get well. Perversely, he resented her constant attention and concern, resented the weakness that made him dependent on another human being.

  But nothing lasts forever, and a man either gets better or he dies. And Tyree was not ready to die. The day soon came when he opened his eyes and knew the worst was over. His fever was down, leaving him weak as a newborn pup. His side was stiff and sore, painfully tender to touch, but for all that, he felt better than he had in days.

  How many days, he wondered, glancing curiously at his surroundings. There wasn’t much to see, just a narrow room sparsely furnished with a small oak table, a tall chest of drawers, and the bed he occupied. His clothes, neatly washed and ironed, were folded on top of the dresser. His .44 rested on the table beside the bed within easy reach of his hand. He wondered how the woman had managed to wrest it from his grasp. He was s
urprised to discover the Colt was still loaded, the hammer resting on an empty chamber.

  He was halfheartedly thinking of trying to get up when the bedroom door swung open on well-oiled hinges and the woman with the sky-blue eyes stepped into the room, skirts swishing about her ankles. She frowned as Tyree’s hand closed over the butt of the .44, one long brown finger curling automatically around the trigger.

  “Surely you must realize I mean you no harm,” Rachel remarked drily, and Tyree noticed for the first time that she was hardly more than a girl, perhaps nineteen or twenty.

  But what a beauty! A wealth of long honey-gold hair tied back with a white grosgrain ribbon, eyes as deep and blue as the Pacific, a small, tip-tilted nose, and a mouth made to be kissed. He had not seen a woman in a long time and his eyes lingered on her figure, admiring the way it went in and out in all the right places. A wide blue sash circled a waist so narrow, he was certain he could span it with one hand.

  For a moment, he contemplated dragging her into bed with him and sampling the pouting pink lips that looked as soft as the petals of a wild rose.

  “Well?” Rachel said, looking pointedly at the gun he still held in his hand.

  With a wry grin, Tyree put the gun aside. “How long have I been here?”

  “Nearly a week.”

  Tyree digested that for a moment, his face thoughtful. “The kid that found me, she yours?”

  “No. She’s Joe Cahill’s niece.”

  “Cahill?”

  “He’s our foreman. Amy lives in town, but she comes out to visit Joe on weekends.”

  “Well, I’m obliged to you and the kid,” Tyree said, swinging his long legs over the side of the narrow bed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get dressed and be on my way.”

  Rachel frowned at him. Was he kidding? He was in no condition to travel. She was about to tell him so in no uncertain terms when the sheet fell away from his body, exposing his lean torso, flat belly, and one long, muscular thigh. A corner of the sheet barely covered his groin.