Denim and Lace

by Rice, Patricia

  He'd downed a quarter of a bottle of good Kentucky bourbon, and his words weren't even slurred. That ought to tell her something about what kind of man this was. Her daddy didn't approve of drinking, and she was inclined to believe he was right, but this man could use some pickling to soften him.

  She found the cotton batting her mother had said to use and showed it to him. Her patient nodded approvingly.

  Under Talbott's directions, Sam slowly cut into the wound and packed it. She rather thought patients ought to be screaming with pain rather than giving orders to their doctors, but Talbott wasn't screaming, and he seemed to know what to do when she certainly didn't. Not only did she not know what to do, she was terrified from the moment she set scalpel to skin. Sam considered screaming for him.

  She tried to tell herself that cutting through flesh wasn't any different than skinning a squirrel, but that didn't relieve her nausea when she felt the first squirt of blood. Squirrels were at least dead before she skinned them. And they didn't have arms like steel bands to wrap around her to hold her steady. And they didn't clench their teeth and keep back groans of agony while directing their skinning.

  She was ready to weep before the scalpel finally disturbed something hard, and Talbott finally screamed and blacked out on her. After that, the tears ran freely down her cheeks while she pried the bullet loose. Blood ran everywhere. She could scarcely see to tell what she was doing. But she could feel the damned bullet and knew it had to come out. She was a Neely. She could do it.

  Remembering just in time to douse the tweezers with alcohol, she entered the wound one more time, grasped the bullet, and jerked.

  It wasn't any worse than pulling a splinter, after all. That didn't stop the tears running down her face. She brushed them off on her shirtsleeve and wished she could remember what her mother and Talbott had said about cleaning and packing the wound. There was more blood here than she'd ever seen out of a hog at butchering time.

  The even rise and fall of his chest gave her some comfort. She kind of liked the looks of his bare chest. It was rounded and hard where it was broadest, not like the flat chests of the men she knew. And his stomach rippled with ridges like a washboard. She thought that odd, but she couldn't help following the whorls of hair to his navel. It gave her something to think about while she worked.

  She tried not to think much beyond that. The arm he had gripped her with had fallen when he passed out, and she didn't have its strength to rely on anymore. She'd always thought of her father as strong, but she could see that she didn't know anything about such things after experiencing Talbott's grip. Once he got hold of her, she'd never get free until he was ready to let her go. She didn't think any of her tricks would force him to release a hold. He was a walking steel trap.

  Not walking at the moment, of course. That relieved some of her anxieties, but produced others. She had the bleeding stopped and the wound cleaned and bandaged, but he was still unconscious and Injun Joe hadn't appeared. What did she do now?

  She waited. She watched the rise and fall of his chest a little while. That began to make her feel itchy, and she ran out to the stream and brought back water to wash herself. His eyes remained closed, but he was jerking nervously. She bathed his forehead, and he relaxed again.

  He had a massive jaw beneath the cover of his beard. She could imagine him biting her finger off with one click of his teeth. His nose had been broken at some point. There was a slight hump where it had healed crookedly. Heavy dark eyebrows accentuated a face that wasn't made to look pleasant. But in sleep, he looked relatively serene. She found a small nick beside his mouth and smiled. Had he given up shaving because of that?

  To her relief, she heard the sound of a horse coming up the path. Picking up her rifle, she stood back from the doorway and glanced outside.

  The drunken gunslinger from yesterday rode up the road, his back painfully straight as he tried to remain upright. He'd cleaned up pretty good. Even his hair looked as if it had been dunked and combed back. It was apparent that he was in as much pain as her patient, however, only not for the same reasons.

  As he drew abreast of the cabin, the gunman made an attempt at a gallant bow and nearly fell from the horse. With a shrug, he slid down and watched her rifle through reddened eyes. He hadn't shaved in days either. Men away from women apparently didn't bother with such niceties, Sam observed. His sandy beard and thinning long hair were laced with gray, but she had no clue to his age as he spoke.

  "My good woman, I could shoot that weapon from your fingers before you knew what happened. Would you kindly turn it away?"

  Samantha nearly laughed, but something in his eyes kept her from doing so. She politely turned the rifle toward the floor. Injun Joe wasn't any taller than she, and he was more wiry than broad. She could knock him flat if she wanted. It was a good thing for him that she didn't want to.

  "Do I address you as Mr. Joe?"

  He relaxed, and a wry smile almost made him handsome as he replied, "Just Joe will be more than adequate. Your mother is a fine woman. Coffee like hers has to be made in heaven."

  Well then, he was at least partially sober. Samantha stepped aside and beckoned him to enter. "I've removed the bullet and patched him up, but he's out like a light."

  "I am not. You can go now."

  The voice seemed to belch from the bowels of hell. Samantha scowled and contemplated kicking his bed, but she'd been brought up better than that. She must be getting used to his wretched behavior, for she only replied, "I'm gone, Your Highness. Don't bother to thank me."

  And she was out the door before he could do so—or not, which was more likely.

  After the woman left, Sloan heard Joe's disapproving silence and attacked first. "What in hell is a woman doing in town? Can't I leave the place for a few days without it erupting in chaos?"

  "Ain't just one woman, but four of them, lookers every one. The one that just left is the plainest of the lot." Joe's practiced grammar slipped immediately into the vernacular with the absence of the female.

  Sloan bit back a groan. If that virago who had just left was the plainest, then the others had to be more beautiful than mortals were allowed. Such things weren't possible. Joe must have been drunk when he saw them. Joe was always drunk.

  "She's not plain," was the only reply he made.

  "She's got freckles all over her face." Enjoying himself, Joe pulled up a chair and didn't bother removing his medicinal whiskey from his pocket.

  "I didn't notice. What's her name?"

  Joe might be a drunk, but he wasn't a fool. He gave the simple answer. "Sam. That hair of hers is redder than a sunset."

  Sam. Sloan studied that briefly. It gave him something to do besides notice the pain. "Samantha," he finally decided. "No man would name his daughter Sam. And her hair isn't red. It's richer than that. Too much gold for auburn, though. Wonder what women call it?"

  "Red." Grinning hugely, Joe propped his feet on the bed and leaned his chair back. "Want me to drive them off?"

  "I'll help you, just as soon as I'm back on my feet."

  That wasn't what he wanted to hear. Joe gave the bed a vicious kick and reached for his whiskey, ignoring Sloan's wince of pain. "I don't know why I stay with you. I could go to San Francisco where there's a world of women."

  "Because I pay you, that's why." And as if that were the final word on any subject, Sloan closed his eyes and firmly refused to be drawn out again.

  Chapter Four

  "You took the bullet out all by yourself?" Jack's eyes went wide as saucers behind his wire-framed glasses.

  "Yeah." Sam brushed a stray curl from her face and continued to clean her rifle. It had been nearly twenty- four hours since she had left that monster in his cabin, and she hadn't heard a word. It didn't sit well with her to leave a job undone. But he had ordered her out. She couldn't go where she wasn't wanted.

  Jack munched on a licorice stick. "The men down at the saloon say he's a real bear. They're taking bets on if he'll die and when."


  Sam shot her young cousin a sharp look. "What were you doing at the saloon?"

  He shrugged innocently. "All the men hang out at the saloon. It's great. They're going to teach me to play billiards."

  Oh, Lord, give her strength. They had come to a town with nothing but men, and every man jack of them was a bad example. Drunks and gamblers and billiard players. No wonder there wasn't a church in town. What in the world had possessed her father to buy this property?

  "Don't any of these men have anything better to do than hang around the saloon all day?" she asked grumpily, snapping the rifle back together again.

  "They only hang out there at night, when there's nothing to do. A lot of them work for Talbott. He owns the lumber mill and the smithy and the hotel and everything. He's got a logging operation and a mine back up the mountain somewhere. And he has cattle and sheep and hogs. Some of the others do, too. They work." Jack defended his newfound friends.

  Sure they did. That's why they had time to hang around the front porch and wait for the twins to come out. That's why there was always one of them at the door, wanting to know if they could help out around the house. They worked all right. At whatever they wanted to, whenever they got around to it. Men were like that.

  She threw a look over her shoulder as her mother came out the back door, drying her hands on her apron. They both glanced at the cloudless blue sky, but said nothing. The rain barrels were empty, and the only well appeared to be the one in the plaza. They needed Emmanuel to invent a pump or dig a well or do a rain dance. Running water was a luxury they had grown accustomed to.

  "I reckon you'd better go check on your patient, Samantha." Alice sat down in a cane chair and picked up a potato from the basket one of the men had left the night before. She produced a paring knife from her apron pocket and began to peel.

  Samantha had no real inclination to join her in peeling potatoes, but she wasn't inclined to visiting the sick, either—especially not grumpy bears. "He told me to go away. And it probably isn't proper for me to call on a man like that."

  "He's had time to turn up feverish, and I doubt that Joe stayed up all night drinking coffee. I think the proprieties can be waived in this case. A man's life is at stake."

  From the sounds of it, the man's life wasn't worth much, but Sam knew that tone of voice. There wasn't much point in arguing with her mother when she sounded like that.

  "I'll take Jack with me, keep him out of trouble. What am I supposed to do if he's feverish?"

  Half an hour later, she and Jack were riding out of town with a basket of nourishing broths and medicines. Alice Neely should have been a physician. She had a need to heal and a talent for doing so that men like Dr. Ramsey would never possess. Unfortunately, Alice Neely was a woman and society expected her to stay home and take care of a family. It had never even occurred to her that she could do anything else.

  But it had occurred to Sam. A lot of things had occurred to Sam that she should never have pursued further. But looking and acting like a man had given her a different perspective on life than most women, and she wouldn't ever be as malleable as the twins or her mother. She had made that vow a dozen years ago when she had been told she couldn't attend the horse sales and the accompanying races because she was a girl. She had attended, all right, and her horse had brought a fat purse after she'd sneaked in as a jockey and ran it to first place. Her father had never told her she couldn't after that, but other men weren't quite so understanding.

  At twenty-four, she faced the fact that she would never marry. She wasn't particularly concerned. With a father who wandered, she had a ready-made family to look after. She liked being her own boss. That men still treated her as a helpless female frustrated her, but she had learned how to deal with it, often with a humor that turned the tables. Being cut out of male activities made her angriest because she was helpless to do anything about it. She couldn't go where she wasn't wanted, and it had become obvious a long time ago that they didn't want her.

  Not being able to join the men after dinner to discuss politics wasn't quite the same as being told to get out of a man's cabin, but the distinction was a nicety that eluded Sam. But her mother's word was law, and she would obey.

  Injun Joe's horse was still tethered in the lean-to outside the cabin. That meant he either managed to get along with the curmudgeon all night or had passed out drunk. Sam wasn't reassured by either possibility. Anybody who could get along with a mean-tempered bear wasn't quite right in the head.

  Knocking, she received no answer. That didn't bode well. Easing the door open, she allowed light to penetrate the dark interior. No sound greeted her. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door wide and stepped inside.

  A knife whizzed past her head and thumped loudly into the wooden door frame.

  Sam froze, then turned an outraged look to the unrepentant man upon the bed. "You knew I was out there. There was no call for that."

  Talbott gave her an icy glare. "You weren't invited."

  Even Jack hesitated to enter at this reception. He stood behind Sam and peered around her warily. Too furious to care, Sam grabbed the knife hilt and jerked it out of the frame. Brandishing it in one hand and clenching her basket in the other, she approached the bed. She could see Injun Joe wiping sleep from his blurred eyes in the corner, but the empty bottle beside his pallet said all that was necessary. He wasn't going to interfere.

  "A Neely doesn't leave a job undone. If you're feverish, you've got to have medicine. And if you're not, you've got to have food. And in either case, the wound needs tending. You're going to have to get better before I can kill you proper."

  The name "Neely" brought a flicker of something to his eyes, but it was gone in an instant when Sam dug the knife into the bandage around Talbott's shoulder and cut through it with a single swipe. He yelped as she tore it loose, but held his tongue as she examined the wound for any signs of infection.

  "You might live. I daresay there's a number of people around these parts who won't thank me for it." Sam reached for a fresh bottle of liquor to use on the wound.

  She still wore her low-crowned straw hat as if she meant to leave at any moment, but the burnished curls that escaped around her cheeks and forehead and nape glistened in the sunlight coming through the door. Sloan watched with grudging fascination—until he became aware that her top shirt button had come undone.

  That was even better. He could surreptitiously watch for the motion that would give him a glance at her bare breast, because he knew damned good and well she didn't wear anything beneath that coarse cotton. The way the material clung to her told him that.

  He held his breath as she applied the alcohol and cleaned the wound. She was doing a fine job. He didn't need to instruct her. If he could just get her to shift a little more to the right ...

  A shot shattered the silence of the close confines of the cabin. Sam shrieked and jumped backward and almost lost her grip on the bottle. Sloan grabbed for the pistol hidden beneath his blanket. Injun Joe just looked green and staggered to the doorway to empty the contents of his stomach in the yard.

  That reaction brought Sam to her senses. Grimly swinging in the direction of her young cousin, she caught him blowing smoke from the barrel of his father's Colt. "Jefferson Jackson Neely, I'm going to shove that thing down your throat if you ever pull a fool trick like that again!"

  "There was a whopper of a rat sneaking in under that log. I was just getting rid of him for you." Defiantly, Jack holstered the gun and crossed his arms over his chest in a gesture vaguely reminiscent of his father when he was up to something. "Besides, that bastard was trying to look down your shirt."

  Sam gasped, turned beet red, and swung back to glare at her unabashed patient. For once, she was speechless.

  Sloan appreciated that fact. He had half a mind to grin at her astonished expression, but he merely shrugged his uninjured shoulder and met her gaze coolly. "A man can't help seeing what's right before his eyes."

  She would have t
o kill him. That's all there was to it. But first she meant to horsewhip him through the middle of town. Something of that thought must have appeared in her expression. Sloan grabbed the bandage from her hand and gestured at the door.

  "There's the way out. Joe will put this on for me."

  "Oh, no, you're not going to get off that easy." Sam wasn't normally a mean-spirited person, but she had just discovered she possessed a weapon that she could wield against this man without fear of retribution. He was helpless and hated it. And she meant to rub it in. "You're going to lie right there and let me fix that bandage, and then you're going to finish every bit of this broth my mother made if I have to shove it down your throat. I said I'd look after you, and I mean to keep my word."

  Fastening every button on her shirt until it was closed tight around the collar, Sam smiled widely at his scowl and set about her task.

  Injun Joe leaned against the door frame and watched this performance with dazed awareness. No man ever stood up to Sloan Talbott. No God-respecting woman ever came into his vicinity more than once. That skinny woman was asking for disaster. But when Talbott just lay there and let her do her damage, Joe shrugged and turned a watery glare on the boy scouring the cabin for more targets.

  "Come here, boy. We've got water to fetch." He staggered out without waiting to see if his orders were followed.

  Jack glanced at Sam’s grim expression and gladly took the excuse to escape.

  "I want meat. I don't want any of that stinkin' broth." With the bandage tied, Sloan shoved his way to a sitting position. He tried to conceal the agony it cost him, but he leaned against the rough cabin wall in exhaustion once he was upright.

  "You'll have the broth or I'll pour it on you," she purred. Continuing in a syrupy drawl, she added, "I shot those squirrels myself. They're a might tough for eatin', maybe, but they make a fine broth."

  The shock of that deliberately sultry voice shot right through Sloan. He had been so busy admiring her curls and trying to get a look at her chest that he hadn't really listened. Besides, she'd been harping and nagging and yelling, and even if it came out as sweet as syrup, it wasn't the same as this tone. She did this on purpose. He would swear to it.