She kicked his gun away and placed her own on the ground well out of his reach. Then she knelt beside him. She took the bandanna from his hands and without a word tied off his leg just above the wound and quickly twisted the cloth into a makeshift tourniquet. He noticed she did it expertly, as if she’d had more than a little practice.
“Hold that while I get something to keep it tight,” she demanded.
He obeyed, even as the pain grew more intense. Think of something else. He concentrated on the woman’s face, and his eyes met hers. Golden eyes. A light golden-brown, almost amber with flecks of gold. And the expression? Regret? Something more than that? An instant awareness flowed between them. Its power stunned him, left him dazed. The wound. It was the wound and the loss of blood.
But for an instant, her fingers froze on his leg. He knew from the intake of her breath she felt that odd pull, too. She hesitated, then breathed in deeply. Shaking her head slightly as if denying any reaction, she took a knife from a sheath on her gun belt and cut the trouser leg until she saw the wound.
He followed her glance. The bullet had driven cloth from his trousers into the flesh. He fought a wave of unconsciousness, even as he noticed her hands were callused. And gentle.
“The bullet’s still inside,” she said, confirming what he’d already suspected. Her voice trembled a bit, and he realized she wasn’t as sure of herself as she tried to project. And her eyes weren’t hard now. They were…worried.
For him?
Hard to believe.
He leaned on his arm, trying to muster his strength. He wanted to pull her down to him and demand answers. She couldn’t have been aiming for his leg; it would be far too dangerous. He could have killed her. And why was she now determined to help him? He tried to sit up but nothing was cooperating.
“Stay still,” she said sharply.
He struggled to focus. The golden eyes were hard to read, and he was usually very good at judging people. Her hat was gone, and short tendrils of damp fawn-colored hair clung to her face, softening it. Pretty, he thought. How could he ever have taken her for a lad? Even for a moment.
He hurt too damn much to notice anything else. Neither was he in a position to question her help at the moment. The leg burned like hell, and he was fading.
“What the Sam Hill happened here?” Another shadow appeared in the late-afternoon sun. An old man sidled next to the woman and brushed her aside to examine the wound. Time had worn trails in his cheeks and forehead. A gray beard reached to the collar of his red shirt. He scowled as his rheumy eyes inspected the wound.
Jared tried to sit, but he fell back. He could barely keep his eyes open. How much blood had he lost in those few seconds?
“Damnation, girl, what did you go and do?” the old man asked.
Her face flushed. “He came for Mac,” she said simply, as if that were answer enough.
“Mac ain’t gonna like this,” the old man said as if she hadn’t spoken. He loosened the tourniquet, and the bleeding started again.
Jared wondered whether he meant the woman should have killed him. Or that he intended to do it himself.
“I’m a U.S. Marshal,” he said. “The Denver sheriff knows where I was going. If I don’t return, you’ll have a posse up here.”
“I’m real afeared,” the old man said, as if swatting off a fly. He waited a few seconds after loosening the tourniquet, then tightened it again and muttered something indecipherable. He turned back to the woman. “Git some sheets and cut them into strips. Clean ones. Then hitch up Brandy. We can’t leave the marshal here, and he’s a big ’un. You and I will have to haul him to the saloon.”
“The saloon?” the woman asked.
“Where else? Lessen you want to leave him to die out here?”
“But…” She stopped suddenly.
“This one ain’t goin’ nowhere for a while. Plenty of time to decide what to do with him. What did Mac tell you ’bout shooting? Make it good, or don’t even think about it.”
“I…I…”
If he didn’t hurt so damn much and hadn’t been the subject of the conversation, Jared would have been fascinated by the interplay between the old man and the girl. He supposed making it “good” meant killing him.
She left at a run, and the old man turned to him, grumbling as he did so. He studied the badge on Jared’s shirt, then muttered an obscenity. “What’s the name?” he finally asked.
“Jared…Evans.” No use in denying it. Papers were in his pocket and saddlebags.
“Evans?” The man frowned. He apparently knew the name, but then many outlaws did. Jared traveled a lot, sent by territorial governors to wherever he was needed. No doubt any number of outlaws would like to see him dead.
Which might well include these two. He forced himself to a sitting position and felt the blood drain from his face. He glanced down at the knife he carried in his belt.
“Don’t even think about it,” the old man said as he eased the weapon out of its sheath. “Lessen you want to bleed to death.” He paused, then asked, “Why are you here?”
The woman already knew why Jared was here. No sense in trying to lie. “Thornton. I have a warrant for him.”
The old fellow’s eyes sharpened. “I should leave you here to die.”
“You a…a friend of his?” Jared was beginning to fade again. Too many hours on horseback. Too little food. Now too little blood.
“Yeah, and I can tell you one thing. You ain’t taking him.”
“The…woman?”
“Sam? You don’t need to know nothing about her, and you have to swear you’ll forget you ever saw her if I fix you up.”
“Can’t…do that.”
The old man stood. “Then you can bleed to death. Won’t bother me none.”
Jared knew he would do exactly that if he couldn’t keep the tourniquet tight. He also knew he needed help. The bullet would have to come out. The wound would have to be cauterized. Even then he might well lose the leg to infection. Being a one-legged lawman didn’t appeal much to him. Still, he wasn’t going to lie, or violate his oath.
“Might matter to the…lady,” he said harshly. “One thing to wound a lawman. Another to kill one.”
The old man stood motionless for a moment, then sighed in surrender. “You know what we gotta do?”
“I know.”
“You hurt her…I’ll kill you. And if I don’t, someone else will.”
Jared didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to make promises he wouldn’t keep. Not even to save his life.
The old man knelt again. This time Jared noted the stiffness in his movements. An old man and a young woman. They obviously knew MacDonald and where he was. Knew him well enough to kill for.
To die for.
SAM HURRIEDLY GRABBED a threadbare but clean sheet she’d washed yesterday. She stopped suddenly and leaned against a table. Her body started shaking. She’d almost killed a man. Maybe even had, if Archie couldn’t control the bleeding. She would never forget the surprise on the marshal’s face when he started to fall.
She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. Dear God, don’t let him die. She had wanted to stop him. Had to stop him. She hadn’t thought beyond that.
His wound was serious, particularly with the cloth driven inside. And his leg? She didn’t know how much damage she’d done to it. Could she have crippled him? Destroyed the pure masculine grace that had intrigued her?
She’d stopped him. She’d given Mac time. But she hadn’t expected to feel this kind of remorse. A raw, wicked guilt that made her stomach turn. Maybe it was because he’d hesitated. He wasn’t what she’d expected.
Neither had she expected the jolt that ran through her when their eyes met. Like a lightning strike. She still felt its heat inside her.
It was guilt. Nothing more.
Stop it! She’d done what she had to do, and now she was wasting time. She started tearing the sheet into strips. She heard Dawg yowl in the storeroom, but he would have to wait.
/>
Damn the lawman. He would have to come now, just as she hoped they could finally head north. The four of them. An odd family at best. Archie and Mac and Reese. Her godfathers, as they jokingly called themselves. All three men had sacrificed for her. Each so different in looks and personal quirks, but ever so dear to her. Mac, the taciturn gunman; Reese, the handsome, easygoing gambler; and Archie, the curmudgeon. Mac was like her father, Archie like a grandfather, and Reese a charming uncle. They were the only family she’d known for the last ten years. She didn’t aim to lose them.
She finished tearing the sheet. They would need a lot of bandages. The lawman’s leg had bled copiously. Bone and muscles were probably damaged. Doctoring his wound was beyond her skills but not Archie’s. He’d been a doctor’s orderly during the Mexican American War.
He was also the closest thing to a doc this place ever had. When Gideon’s Hope had been a roaring, lawless boom town, he was often called in the middle of the night to set a bone or sew up someone, even to birth a baby. After turning fifteen, she’d often gone along with him and helped.
Don’t let there be permanent damage, she prayed. She would never forgive herself if there was, even if the lawman was a threat to the man who’d raised her, protected her, loved her like she was his own.
She gathered up several of the strips and hurried downstairs, her heart pounding every step. She kept seeing the marshal’s face, startled at first, then clenched as the pain hit. Pain she’d inflicted. She bit hard on her lip.
Sam tried to dismiss the thought. Mac’s all that’s important now. She only wanted time for him to heal well enough so they could all go to Montana. They’d talked about building a ranch there someday. Reese had been to Montana and described it in vivid terms: rich grasslands, clear rivers and an endless sky. But it had always been someday. Something had always stopped them. Like not having enough money, or hearing talk of Indian troubles there, or Reese being away on one of his trips through the gold camps.
Why now? Why did the dratted marshal have to come now when they were almost ready. Another month and they would have been gone. Frustrated and still tormented by guilt, she raced out into the street. She handed the torn pieces of cloth to Archie.
“Get Brandy now,” Archie said. “Sooner we get him out of this dirt, the better. Best we drive to the back of the saloon. It’s only a few steps, then.”
She didn’t question him. A quick glance at the lawman made it evident he was in excruciating pain. Dammit, but those midnight-blue eyes would haunt her forever.
In another five minutes she had Brandy—Archie’s old mule—hitched to the wagon and drove him out to the street.
The lawman was sitting up, but the effort was costing him. She saw that right away. His leg was straight out, a bandage wrapped tight around his thigh. The rest of his leg was bare. The soft material contrasted with the sheer masculinity of his powerful muscles.
His eyes were steady on her. He had a day’s growth of beard but it didn’t cover a slight scar on the left side of his face. Sensuous lips had thinned in pain, and a muscle throbbed in his neck. He was a striking man, compelling in a stark way. His face was hard, but that harshness was broken by the barest hint of a dimple in his chin. And those damned dark eyes. Probing. Always probing.
That unfamiliar flicker of heat ran through her again.
“Come on, Sam,” Archie said impatiently. “You’re gonna have to help me lift him.”
She leaned down, picked up her gun and started to replace it in her holster, then stopped as Archie frowned. “Empty your gun.”
“He can’t…”
Archie’s expression made her do as he asked. Removing the remaining bullets, she tucked them in a pocket. Then she knelt and put one arm around the marshal. Archie did the same on the other side.
The marshal tried to help. But he was nearly a deadweight and he probably weighed more than she and Archie together. She was strong, though, and so was Archie, despite the rheumatism plaguing him. With their help, the marshal stood on one leg and slid onto the back of the wagon.
The white bandage was red now. The lawman’s face was pale. She touched his cheek. It was damp with sweat. She sat next to him, trying to protect him from the bouncing that was to come.
“Go,” she told Archie.
Archie didn’t bother to get up on the bench. Instead he led old Brandy down the street to the corner, then around to the back of the saloon. With every bump, the marshal clenched his fingers into a fist, but he didn’t utter a sound.
She knew what was to come would be worse. Much worse.
She wanted to touch him and somehow make his suffering more tolerable. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t take the shooting back and she knew she would never forget this day, this hour, these terrible minutes.
Maybe she should say a small prayer. But she didn’t know any. Preachers hadn’t lasted long in Gideon’s Hope. Neither had teachers. All she knew was what her godfathers taught her and what she’d read in books.
She reminded herself that the marshal probably would have killed Mac. But that didn’t help at the moment, nor did the thought that he hadn’t shot her when he could have….
3
JARED TRIED to help as they dragged him inside what once must have been a busy saloon. But whenever he put any weight on his injured leg, new waves of agony coursed through him.
He ground his teeth to keep an expletive—or worse, a groan—from escaping his lips. He swayed as they entered the building. He tried to take a step with his good leg and sagged against the woman. Her arm tightened around his body. Stronger…than she looked. Hell…of a lot stronger.
A step, a hop.
He fought the fog closing in on him. Too much blood lost in those seconds before the tourniquet was in place. And the worst was yet to come. The damn bullet in his leg had to come out. He also knew the wound would probably need to be cauterized to stop the bleeding and infection.
He was only too aware that more men died in the Civil War from infections and fever than from ordnance. He’d been lucky thus far. He had survived three bullets: two during the war, one while marshaling. Shoulder. Side. Left arm. A bayonet had nicked his face.
He tried to focus on the woman rather than the pain. Who in the hell was she? Thornton’s woman? Must be, to risk her life. Hell, the man must be decades older than she was.
Another step. Why? Why was he being helped inside? As a hostage maybe? To wait for Thornton? The original question pressed him: Why not just a bullet in his heart? Or had she really aimed for his leg? If so, it had been one hell of a gamble.
He might have made the same gamble, though. He was tired of killing. During those few tense minutes outside while he’d tried to avoid a shooting, his mind flickered back to a boy he’d encountered two months earlier. The kid was no more than seventeen, but Jared hadn’t known that then. He’d only seen the gun in the boy’s hand when Jared stepped out of the stable after feeding his horse.
He groaned inwardly, but it was more from the memory than pain. Why now, dammit? Why did those images continue to haunt him? Maybe he should have quit hunting men. He’d been at it far too long….
Then they were inside the saloon.
“Back room,” the old man said to the girl, then as an aside to Jared, “Used it as a cell after the jail burned down.”
Ironic.
The old man and the woman helped him through the back door of the saloon, then down the hall to a door. The woman opened it, and they half carried, half dragged him to an old iron bed and lowered him down on a thin, lumpy mattress. He made himself glance around the room. One chair and a small table in addition to the bed. Nothing else. Stout door. No windows.
His breathing was labored. The last of his strength was ebbing. So, apparently, was the old man’s. His captor collapsed on the chair, his breath coming in spurts. But the woman…
She stood straight as if his weight hadn’t been anything. Tall and slender…she was far stronger than she looked. Her gaze did
n’t waver as she met his. It was almost as if she was challenging that connection he’d felt a few minutes earlier. But it was there. He’d felt it, dammit. Felt it still. How could that be? Hellions had never appealed to him. Nor had women who chose the other side of the law.
He had little doubt she was Thornton’s woman. Why else would she risk her life for him?
And why should he care whether she was or wasn’t? Maybe because of the regret in those wide golden eyes as she looked at his wound. Or the gentleness in hands that seconds earlier had fired a gun. Or maybe the glimpse of vulnerability in her expression when the old man appeared.
Her cheeks started to flush as if she knew what he was thinking, or maybe it was because of what she was thinking. She turned abruptly, put a hand on the old man’s back. “I’ll get your bag and some water.” She left the room in a quick stride. Straight. Proud. Defiant.
He fixed his thoughts on her. It blocked the pain, the knowledge of what he had to face next. Damn, but she intrigued him even now.
When she returned several minutes later, she had several sheets folded over her shoulder. She carried a black bag in one hand and a bowl of water in the other.
“Archie, are you all right?” Her voice softened as she placed the items on the table and knelt before the older man. Jared watched affection flicker between the two, and a pang of loneliness ran through him. He couldn’t remember when someone had last worried about him.
“Stop fussin’,” the man named Archie said. “Jest a mite winded. I’m all right now. Let’s get started on him.”
“I fired the stove and more water is heating. I’ll bring it as soon as it’s ready.” She obviously knew what was needed. Jared remembered the deftness with which she’d taken over the tourniquet. He would bet that this wasn’t the first time she’d treated a wounded man.
He was even more certain when she started to pull instruments from the bag and line them up on the table she placed next to the bed. He gritted his teeth as the old man yanked off his boots, then what was left of his pants. He cut away the right leg of Jared’s long underwear but managed to leave enough fabric to cover his privates. Some shred of dignity at least.
The Lawman Page 2