Cherished

by Jill Gregory

“Last call for the stage!” the driver’s voice yelled from the street outside, and Juliana jumped.

  “Thank you, Mr. Kelly,” she cried, and whirled toward the door, but as she started forward three men surged up from the table near the center of the room and quickly moved to block her path.

  “Hold on a moment, Miss ... Montgomery, ain’t it?”

  The man who grabbed her wrist was weed-thin and bony, but she felt the sinewy strength beneath his spare frame. He wore a patched red shirt and dusty breeches tucked into boots that were caked with mud. His narrow dirt-streaked face looked as if it hadn’t been washed or shaved in days. His companions were worse, if that was possible, Juliana thought in disgust, as she stared into the unsavory faces of the riders she had observed from the dining room window.

  “Let me go,” she ordered, as firmly as she could. It was all she could do to keep the alarm from her voice as she tried to pull her wrist free. “Step aside, if you please.”

  “Not so fast, lady.” The man tightened his grip. “Not till you answer the question. Your name’s Montgomery? First name ... somethin’ fancy ...”

  “Julie sumpin, Cash,” the tall, stringy-haired one piped in, grinning toothlessly at her.

  “That’s it.” Cash nodded. Studying Juliana, he licked his lips. “That you, honey?”

  “What if it is?” Juliana felt panic rising inside her. How did these men know her name? Through the one good window she saw the stagecoach driver climb into his seat. “Wait, Mr. Fitzsimmons! I’m coming ...” she called out, but the third man, an apelike, shaggy-haired fellow with coal-black eyes and a jutting chin, and breath that smelled like pig droppings, shook his head as he leaned toward her, so close his nose nearly touched hers.

  “No, ma’am. You ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he crowed. “ ‘Cept back to Denver with Cash and Luke and me. Nothin’ personal, you understand. We’re just doin’ our job. Takin’ you in—alive, just like the notice said.”

  “What are you talking about? What notice?” Juliana had been trying in vain to break free of Cash’s grip all this time, but now she froze, as a sudden dread swept over her in one great burst. “What ... are you talking about?”

  “The Wanted poster. This one.” Pig Breath pulled a handful of torn, crumpled papers from the pocket of his grease-stained duster. “Let’s see. Here it is.”

  He unfolded one page from the others and dangled it in the air before her. “See? The law in Denver wants you back real bad.” He clucked his tongue at her mockingly. “Horse thievin’ is serious business in these parts, ma’am. So’s stealin.’ You shoulda known better.”

  Juliana felt as if he had punched her in the stomach. She stared at the notice in sickened horror, trying to take in what was happening. The words were printed in large, bold type. Her name, a description. She was wanted for horse theft and robbery—there was a reward of two thousand dollars for her capture. She blinked, staring incredulously at the paper before her. Her body began to tremble.

  No, it couldn’t be. She felt a pounding in her head. But through the explosion of panic, she knew she had to try to stay calm, to think.

  “You’re lawmen?” she managed to ask.

  They burst into loud guffaws. “Not exactly.” The thin man—the one called Cash—answered her, still squeezing her wrist. “We’re bounty hunters, honey.”

  She twisted about to stare at the bartender, watching the scene in grim silence. “Mr. Kelly, there’s been a mistake. Please tell these men to let me go. I must get on the stage ...”

  Kelly’s expression was troubled. He was a hardened man and had lived many years alone in Cedar Gulch, minding his own business with cheerful good sense and a strict policy of never sticking his neck out. But something about this young woman and her situation affected him. She didn’t look like any damned horse thief he’d ever seen, but then ... it really was none of his business. Still, pity made him say in a forced, jovial tone, “Lads, it’s too hot for bothering about business today. Tell you what. Drinks are on the house. Why not let the little lassie go and—”

  In an instant, Luke Curry had his Colt trained on the huge bartender. “Two thousand dollars can buy a hell of a lot of drinks, and lots of other things mister,” he hissed. “So don’t think of interfering. We’re taking the little lady back.”

  “Damn right,” Cash echoed, and suddenly yanked Juliana toward the door. As she glanced back in frantic appeal to the bartender, he shook his head in regret. Luke Curry kept his gun trained on him all the while that Cash and Bo dragged her from the saloon. Kelly scowled, but kept his hands flat on top of the bar. These hombres were of a type he knew well. Vicious coyotes, more animal than human. They’d just as soon kill a man as look at him. He’d have liked to help the girl, but he’d be digging his own grave if he interfered.

  Outside, Cash dragged Juliana toward his horse. When the stagecoach driver, seeing her struggle, called out sharply to them, Luke Curry waved the Wanted poster at him. “You don’t want no one like this on your coach,” he called. “We’re takin’ this gal back for her trial.” He pointed his Colt in a businesslike fashion at the driver, a grin splitting his face when several of the passengers screamed. “You folks had best be on your way,” he sang out.

  The driver glared, spat a wad of tobacco juice into the dirt, then flapped the reins. As the horses bounded away, and the stagecoach disappeared in a haze of dust, Juliana saw her last hope of rescue die.

  She felt cold and hot all at once. Terror gripped her in a deathly vise. These men were savage, filthy brutes. How would she make it back to Denver alive? Even if she did, she thought on a wave of despair, what awaited her there? John Breen’s fury. He must have been livid to have put up such a bounty—and to have claimed she stole from him. Would he send her to jail? Or force her to marry him? She trembled at the thought of being handed over to him, of being completely at his mercy.

  Suddenly, as Cash released her arm for an instant to untether his horse, she saw her chance and grabbed it. She bolted past him quick as a jackrabbit. Lifting her skirts in one hand, she fled down the deserted boardwalk with every ounce of speed she could muster.

  Behind her she heard Cash shout. “Put that thing away, Bo! The poster said ‘alive,’ dammit. Surely we kin catch a little girl like that without havin’ to shoot her in the back.”

  Juliana’s feet pounded the boardwalk as she spun around a corner and headed toward a group of ramshackle buildings up ahead. Her reticule flew off her wrist and went sailing into the dust, but she never paused. Her breath was coming in short, painful gasps as she ran ever faster. She stumbled once, regained her balance, and ran on, wanting to scream for help but knowing there was no one to help her, no one who would lift a finger against the bounty hunters, no one who cared.

  A sudden gust of wind sent dust flying in her face, blinding and choking her, but she ran on, not knowing where she was going, only that she had to get away from those men, that she would rather die than be caught. With a little sob she staggered forward, her chest heaving, her eyes smarting, the clamor of their pursuit drumming in her ears.

  Glancing back over her shoulder for one precious second, she saw all three men closing in on her, their faces purple with anger. Cash whirled a rope, sent it sailing out toward her, and with a scream, she dodged desperately to her right. The loop skimmed past her and fell harmlessly in the dust, but as she hurled herself sideways, Juliana tripped over a rock in the dust and went sprawling.

  Wildly, with a low weeping deep in her throat, she scrambled to her feet and plunged forward once more straight into a wall of solid rock.

  Then with a gasp she realized that it was not a wall of rock after all. It was a man’s broad, solid chest, hard and immovable as granite. Before she could draw back, she felt powerful hands seize her arms and hold her fast.

  Tears lined her eyelashes as she raised her head to stare into his face. The sun beat down into her eyes and she could barely see him, but from what she could see, she knew one thing. She would f
ind no mercy here.

  Cole Rawdon held her immobile before him. His face was a mask of ice.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but no words would come. Gulping, she tried again. Her knees were weak as pudding, but this time she managed a whisper. “Please. Oh, please.”

  At that her knees gave out and she would have fallen if not for his arm swooping about her waist.

  For the second time, Cole Rawdon stared down at this girl who had a habit of collapsing in his arms, and he swore silently at a fate that seemed destined to mock him. His attention left her flushed, terrified face and the tumble of pale hair that had come unbound from its chignon, and riveted itself on the three men coming up behind her.

  Cole Rawdon studied them with cool detachment as the girl twisted about in fright. He had a firm hold of her wrist, otherwise he knew she would have bolted. He could feel her pulse racing like a runaway train engine beneath his thumb. He sensed, even more than he saw, the panic coursing through her.

  “Howdy, Cash,” Rawdon drawled after a long, taut moment when the sun seemed to blaze even more fiercely down upon his head. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  8

  Cash Hogan skidded to a halt and swore under his breath. Rawdon. Damn it all to hell. Why did it have to be Rawdon?

  Cash made sure the grin he flashed was at least outwardly friendly. Maybe if he was smart—and careful—they could work this thing out without a fight.

  Behind Cash, Bo and Luke waited in uneasy silence, tugging at their neckerchiefs, squinting at the black-garbed man in their path.

  “Uh, you’ve got our prisoner there, Rawdon,” Cash chuckled nervously. “ ‘Preciate it if you’d give her back.”

  “It doesn’t look much like she’s your prisoner, Cash. Matter of fact, it seems to me she’s my prisoner.”

  Juliana trembled. For just a moment, she had thought Cole Rawdon might help her. How stupid could she be, she chided herself as a tear slipped down her cheek. This man, like the others, was a bounty hunter. He was after her too. Dread clawed at her heart, for something told her he was even more dangerous than the others. Despite the hot sun, a chill spread through her, turning her skin clammy, her blood to ice.

  “Yours? Hell, no, she ain’t.” Bo started forward, but Luke, stringy hair dangling in his eyes, grabbed Bo’s arm.

  “Well, she ain’t,” Bo hissed furiously at his brother, then clamped his lips shut when he saw the deadly purpose in Cole Rawdon’s face.

  “Let’s be reasonable about this, Rawdon,” Cash went on, a wheedling note entering his voice. He pushed his hat back on his head. “We got her first. Caught her right back there in the saloon. The bartender will tell you that. Fair’s fair, ain’t it? Why don’t you jest hand her back over to me, and the boys and I’ll buy you a drink?”

  “Go to hell.”

  Juliana held her breath, unable to believe that Cole Rawdon could speak with such arrogance to the three men facing him. They were dangerous and they were greedy and angry to boot—such a combination boded ill for anyone who got in their way. Yet this man with the iron grip on her wrist seemed totally unafraid, even contemptuous, and he must know he was enraging them. Luke’s face had turned blood red, and Bo had gotten a dark, weasely shine in his eyes, which Juliana guessed meant he was ready to kill Rawdon on the spot.

  Even Cash, who probably had more brains than the other two put together, now looked as though his anger was getting the better of him. “Not very sociable, are you, Rawdon?” he growled, and Juliana saw the muscles clench in his neck.

  Cole stood relaxed and calm, yet his gaze never wavered from Cash Hogan’s face. “I’d sooner eat a skunk than sit down to a drink with you and your pards, Hogan,” he remarked conversationally. “And I’m sure as hell not going to turn over my two thousand dollars to you. Ride out now while you still can and save the folks of Cedar Gulch the trouble of burying you.”

  Juliana saw the change flood over the three bounty hunters’ faces. The fear was still there, etched deep beneath the blustering facade, but now the men had been goaded and lashed into anger by Rawdon’s scornful words and arrogant dismissal. Luke’s lips thinned and his eyes glittered in the sun, Bo’s thick shoulders hunched, and Cash seemed to turn to stone, every sinewy muscle tightening, readying, his thin face twisting into an expression of snarling, frozen fury.

  “There’s three of us, Rawdon, and only one of you,” Cash hissed. “Reckon you’re the one goin’ to need buryin’.”

  Everything happened at once. Rawdon shoved Juliana into the dirt with such force that her hands, face, and knees were scraped raw in the gritty dust. She lay stunned, red sparks of light exploding in her head while deafening gunfire thundered above her. She covered her ears with her hands, screaming. Acrid gunsmoke clogged her nostrils as the air reverberated with gunshots. It seemed like an eternity before they ceased, and when they did there came a stark silence. Floating on this stillness, Juliana heard the groans of a dying man.

  A tremor shook her. For a moment she couldn’t move, then she forced herself to lift her head, forced her body to inch upward. Every muscle cried out in pain. Blood oozed on her cheek.

  There was silence all around her now. Eerie, absolute silence. Juliana somehow managed to crawl to her knees, and she blinked against the glare of the sun.

  No more than six feet from her, three men sprawled motionless in a crimson pool of blood.

  “Oh, my God,” she choked. She shut her eyes against the grisly vision. With an effort of will she fought the nausea that welled up in her throat and threatened to overtake her.

  Cash, Bo and Luke were all dead, bloodied bits of sinew and bone and flesh spattered all about them. Juliana trembled, her body a mass of jelly. She flung herself away from the ghastly pile of bodies and willed her eyes to open once more. A shadow loomed over her.

  She gazed dazedly up, up at the man who towered above her. The tall, black-garbed man, the one they called Rawdon, who held a smoking Colt .45 in each hand.

  Slowly, as Juliana watched in sick terror, he replaced the guns in their holsters. Expressionless, he bent toward her.

  “No,” she breathed in a wisp of a voice.

  He seized her arm and hauled her to her feet. “You’re not going to faint on me again, are you?” he demanded.

  Juliana could only gape at him in stunned fear.

  He studied her. The sun glittered down. No sign of life came from anywhere in Cedar Gulch.

  So this was the horse thief, Juliana Montgomery, the one he’d been tracking for the past two weeks. It was unbelievable, Cole mused—or maybe not. He sure hadn’t figured her for a thief that day in Denver, with her fancy dress and plumed hat, with those big, bright green eyes of hers that he hadn’t been able to forget. Even when he’d read the description on the Wanted poster, it hadn’t occurred to him that the blond-haired thief was the same girl who’d fainted on him outside the Gold Dust last April. Yet remembering another girl long ago, one with almond-shaped brown eyes and thick ebony hair that felt like silk in his hands, he swiftly reminded himself that nothing a woman did should surprise him. Women could be every bit as greedy and dishonest as men, without a clue of it showing on the outside—and he had the scars to prove it. So this one, innocent and weak as she looked, would bear watching. Cole tried to ignore the fascinating beauty of her delicate features, which, combined with the curvy softness of her body, proved a delectable combination. He stared at her, exerting all his will to see not a fragile golden-haired waif of a girl but a criminal worth two thousand dollars cash when he brought her in. It wasn’t easy.

  When he moved his hand up to her face, the girl flinched, but he only traced the dirty scrape across her cheek lightly with his thumb. “I didn’t mean to push you so hard.” His tone was curt. “Still,” he said, grasping her wrist once more, “you’d have gotten a lot worse from them.” Instinctively, she followed the direction of his gaze to the dead men in their pool of blood, and this time her knees buckled.

  “Oh, n
o, you don’t.” He steadied her, and shook his head in exasperation. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. We’ve got a ways to go before dark.”

  “G-go? Where?”

  “Colorado.”

  Juliana froze as panic flooded back. The first shock of the shootings was draining away and she was left with the reality of her own situation. She couldn’t go back to Denver and the fury of John Breen—he would throw her in jail or ... who knew what he would do now that she had humiliated him? Dread clawed at her, giving her strength to wrench free of Cole Rawdon.

  “You can’t take me back there,” she cried, lifting a desperate face to him. “You can’t! Listen to me, please, there’s been a mistake. I’m not a thief!”

  “Sure you’re not. And I’m not a bounty hunter. I’m the President of the United States. C’mon.”

  He grabbed her arm again, but Juliana tried to pry his fingers away. “There’s been a terrible mistake, you must listen to me ...”

  But he wasn’t interested. He held her easily, and scanned the sky and horizon with steady, searching eyes all the while that she babbled on, then he seemed to make up his mind about something and started directing her toward the stables at the far end of the street where a pinto horse was tethered to a hitching post.

  Juliana gave a shriek of pain and stumbled.

  “What is it now?” he growled, but she was leaning over to touch her ankle, her face a portrait of agony.

  “My ... ankle,” Juliana gasped. “I must have twisted it when you pushed me ...”

  He lowered her to the ground and knelt beside her. When he touched her foot, she cried out. “Oh, it must be broken.” Juliana bit back a sob. “It hurts quite terribly ...”

  “Damn.”

  Rawdon looked about. At last the citizens of Cedar Gulch were starting to emerge from their burrows to see the results of the gunfight. Several men drifted around the corner of the main street and peered toward the bodies. Rawdon stood up.

  “I’ll find out if there’s a doctor in this hellhole. Don’t try to move it in the meantime.”