Despite the damage, he was a finely put-together man, Grace mused as she gently pressed the pads of muslin against his wounds. Not an ounce of fat disguised the lean, muscled contours of him. She tried to avoid looking at the track of dark curly hair that arrowed down from beneath his shirt past the washboard belly and disappeared into the waistband of his pants. The inverted V of his ribs rose and fell with each breath as she applied pressure with the pads. With her cheek only inches away from his chest, she could feel his warm breath against her hair.
He held his arms aloft, lifted at the elbows out of her way, and when she looked up, his gaze slid from her hair to her eyes to her mouth.
Unconsciously, Grace moistened her lips. "Can you," she asked, indicating the pad at his back, "hold this here?"
He obliged, lowering his right hand to cover it. She reached around him with the long strip of muslin while holding the other pad in place. With her arms encircling his torso, her cheek nearly pressed against his broad chest.
He rested one hand on her shoulder. "Bet you never did this for Edgar," he murmured against the top of her head.
She went stock-still. "Well, of course I never did."
"Pity."
She looked up in disbelief. "That he's never been shot?"
"No," Donovan answered with a wicked grin. "That he never got this close to you."
Her eyes widened with shock. "What would you know about—?"
She snapped her mouth shut and he winked at her! Gripping the end of the muslin between her teeth, she gave it a savage rip lengthwise. "Has anyone ever told you that you are a rude and arrogant man?"
"Several."
She reached around his back again and with a snort of disdain, added, "Except for that posse on our tail, I'd have half a mind to leave you right here to bleed to death."
He muttered something under his breath about "half a mind is better than none."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said, if you do, you could leave a horse for me—ow! Have a care with that knot!"
"Oh, dear, did I hurt you?" Sending him a wide-eyed, innocent smile, she finished off the strips at his waist and heaved a sigh. "With only half a mind, you see, I couldn't tell."
He rubbed his side with a sidelong glance at her as if to say, touché.
"Anyway," she continued, "since we need you and you've given us your word of honor that you'd help us, I'm afraid leaving you behind is entirely out of the question."
"Well, it was worth a try, I suppose."
As he watched her, only inches away from him in the darkness, the humor faded from his grin, replaced by something she instinctively sensed was dangerous and utterly masculine. She resisted the urge to back away from him. Something told her he'd been baiting her intentionally. Whether to make her think ill of him, or to question her loyalty to Edgar, she didn't know. But she wouldn't let him see that he scared her.
It took him three tries to get his feet under him. He stood with legs splayed, and except for the lingering sheen of sweat on his face, all trace of pain was gone from his face.
She stood, too, regarding him warily. His gaze lingered on her, that dark-lashed, piercing look that sent an odd dropping sensation to her stomach and made her mouth go suddenly dry. He wavered there for a moment. Afraid he'd fall, she reached out and grabbed his arm. His fingers closed around her elbow only briefly, long enough to make her heart plunge at the intensity of his look. But before she could think to speak, he let loose of her and pulled himself up onto the horse with slow, deliberate movements.
The moon slid out from behind a thick cloud, illuminating the ground like a lamp. He reached his hand down and offered his stirrup for her foot. "Are you gonna stand there, or get on the horse?"
Her brows dropped in a frown. Her heart was thumping like a drum. She was suddenly sure she didn't want him close enough to feel it. "Maybe I should ride with Brew."
"The gray is bigger and faster than the other horse and will hold the both of us. I'd give the bay two hours, traveling with the two of you, before he's blown out."
The desert silence seemed to close in on them as she stared at his hand. Uneasily, she put her hand in his, allowing him to haul her up. His hand was strong and hard. Nothing, she admitted, like Edgar's soft banker's hand. This time he settled her behind him instead of in front.
The thought of letting him feel the way her heart was pounding right now made her want to leap from the horse. Keeping a good three inches of space between them, she said, "I was thinking..."
"Oh, no."
"Maybe we could tie some tumbleweeds to a rope and I could walk, dragging them along behind. That way our trail wouldn't be so easy to follow. In Ozark Outlaw, Lucky Jim Faraday used—"
He rubbed his temples and groaned aloud.
"You said we were leaving a trail a blind man—"
"That trick might fool a blind man, but not an old Ranger like Sanders."
He reached back and drew her left arm around him, closing her unwilling fingers around the cool metal buckle of his gun belt. He covered her fist with his open palm. "Hold on to me here."
She tried to pull her hand away from such an intimate position. "I couldn't!"
He locked it there. "We haven't the time for petty argument, woman. Hold as I say, or take your chances with the ground." The horse turned, prancing nervously. "As for me, I won't be riskin' that elbow again if it's all the same to—"
Stopping short, his eyes searched the darkness to the west. He let out a low curse.
"What is it?" she asked.
Allowing her gaze to follow his, she saw the reason for his concern. In the distance, four, maybe five miles behind them across the flat, dark prairie, two specks of light floated like specters on the horizon, moving in their direction. Donovan's words, when at last he spoke, sent a shudder of foreboding through her.
"They're usin' bloody lanterns."
* * *
The rain came hard and all at once, as if the heavens had rent open, spilling their contents on the parched earth. It fell too fast to quench the thirsty soil, skimming, instead, along the surface in swift-moving streams that met and united into something larger. Washes, which minutes ago had been bone dry, now sang with eddying currents and rushing water.
The horses sank fetlock deep in the shifting mud as they plunged ahead, heads down to the driving weather. Grace pulled the India-rubber rain poncho about her face and leaned closer to Donovan's back.
She was tired. So tired.
Her legs ached, her back hurt, and somewhere, miles ago, her insides had turned to mush. Dawn and the small comfort of daylight was still several hours away, she guessed.
She hoped. She clung to that thought, certain if they could only make it until daylight everything might seem a little less hopeless.
Water ran in rivulets down the oiled canvas cloth of Donovan's duster. Beneath it, she felt him shiver and sway in the saddle. She suspected the only thing holding him upright now was plain stubbornness. She prayed he didn't fall, for if he did, she feared she might go right along with him.
Beside her, she could see Brewster, hunched over in his saddle. He'd been coughing steadily for the last hour, and she could see his strength waning. If they didn't find shelter soon, they'd all be lost.
The hot sting of tears mingled with the cold rain on her cheeks. Dear Lord, what had made them think they could get away with such an idiotic scheme? They'd made a perfect muddle of it, and they'd probably hang for their mistakes when that posse caught up with them. And Luke would die in that awful Mexican prison, thinking she'd forsaken him.
With her arm still locked around Donovan's waist, she felt him give a start as he jerked himself back to alertness. The pads she'd wrapped around him were soaked through with blood. He lifted a hand slowly to his face, swiping the rain from his eyes.
"Grace?" He sounded weak and at the end of his strength.
"Yes, Mr. Donovan?" she called over the pounding rain.
"Can you... do you t
hink you could find Brownsville on your own?"
The defeat in his voice frightened her. "No," she answered flatly, not even wanting to consider the possibility. "I'm quite certain I couldn't, so don't even think about it."
"The Rio Grande runs to the south of here. Find it and follow it east. It'll take you there."
"Don't talk like that. We're not leaving you behind."
"A fella named Gil Lambert. Has a sloop docked there. Tell 'im I sent you. He'll help you. Sanders can't follow over the border. You'll be safe."
"Stop it, do you hear me? Are you giving up? Just like that?" His head dropped forward, and she grabbed his right arm and gave it a shake, trying to keep him awake. He straightened momentarily in the saddle.
"What kind of a hero are you, anyway?" she ranted, ignoring the rain that pelted her face. "Heroes don't quit! Do you think Black Jack Kelly just curled up and died when those banditos chased him into that box canyon in Escapade on the Santa Fe? No, he—"
"Bloody—," Donovan muttered.
"—fought them with every last ounce of strength. Even when it looked impossible. He fought until he'd picked every one of them off."
Donovan reined in the horse, weaving in the saddle even as she held him up. He turned his head slowly toward her and said hoarsely over the rain, "I'm no hero, lady. I'm just bleedin' t' death."
Grace found she couldn't catch her breath. Tears gathered in her throat in an enormous lump, blocking her airway. She shoved the hood off her head and tilted her face up to the sky, gulping air and water at once.
He was dying, right here in her arms! She could feel the strength seeping out of him as the hours passed. And how could she stop it? Perhaps his death was indeed destined, by rope or slow agony; the blame rested squarely on her either way.
But if their destinies were so tangled, could fate not be simply choices? Each action choosing the final road? Could she not alter the outcome here by refusing to accept the fork they'd chosen? Could he?
Desperately, she searched the darkness for something. She had no idea for what. Shapes shifted in the sheeting rain, tricking her eyes. Some fifty feet away, she thought she saw something, a dark, uneven shape against the inky night, nestled beneath a rock-strewn ridge.
Brew pulled his horse up beside her. Hunched over his saddle, shrunken beneath his poncho, he was coughing hard, his breath a wheezing rattle.
"What is it?" he shouted when he caught his breath.
She shook her head, staring at that shape. "Do you see that?" she called back, pointing at the apparition.
His gaze followed her finger and he squinted into the watery night. "What? That ridge?"
"No, that black splotch to the right, below that outcrop of rock."
"Ain't sure. Can't make it out. Might be a..." He shook his head again. "Hellfire, I don't know."
Donovan sat hunched over the saddle horn, breathing hard. Grace slid the reins from his hand. "Hang on," she told him and turned the horse toward the ridge with a nudge of her heels.
She blinked away the rain as they drew close. She heard Brew coughing again and felt the tug of Reese Donovan's weight against her arm. The rain stung her face and roared against the ground with an angry sound.
She stared at it at first without comprehension. Relief was slow to come, for her senses were dulled by the cold and rain and her pounding exhaustion. No apparition this, but a gash carved into the face of the rocky outcrop. An opening large enough to admit not only them, but their mounts as well.
Dear God, it was a cave.
Chapter 7
Reese woke to the whoosh of dry wood catching fire and the crackle of sparks as they escaped upward, spiraling into the darkness above him. The scent of singed wool assaulted his nose.
He blinked, trying to remember where he was. The fire disoriented him. The last thing he remembered was a driving rain chilling him to the bone, and someone—that woman—badgering him into consciousness, pulling him from an inexorable slide toward darkness. He didn't recall finding this cave or even steering the horse toward it. But here they were. How she'd managed to find dry wood for a fire was beyond him, and the fact she'd had wits enough to build it out of sight of the entrance surprised him even more.
He rolled over, instantly regretting it. His side was aflame and every muscle in his body ached, but he forced himself up on his elbow, enduring the moment of dizziness it brought. Slowly, his every movement weighted down by lethargy, he glanced down at his side and found fresh bandages there. He had no memory of that either. It occurred to him dully that she had saved him. She'd saved them all.
Grace's wet coat lay drying by the fire, steam rising from the dark fabric. The old man lay asleep on the opposite side of the fire, his snore a congested and unhealthy rattle. Beyond him, the two horses stood dozing in the shadows of the far wall, their breath forming white clouds in the darkness.
His gaze found Grace by the entrance of the cave, silhouetted by the lightening sky. With her knees drawn up tight to her chest and her shoulders draped with a blanket, she scribbled in some notebook she was holding, pausing now and then to nibble on the end of the pen and gaze out at the desert beyond. That glorious spill of golden hair fell negligently around her shoulders. Beside her lay the Henry rifle they'd taken from Sanders's office, its brass fittings glinting in the firelight.
He took in the steep rock walls of the enclosure around him, the vaulted ceiling, the pressing comfort here. It had been a long time since he'd nothing to fear at his back but a stone wall.
On the ground near the fire lay the corked bottle of elixir. Reese moistened his lips and reached for it. The cork gave a slight squeak. Wincing, he glanced at the girl. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and scribbled in her little book. He lifted the bottle to his mouth and was rewarded by the merest drop slithering down the slippery side of the bottle.
"It's empty," a familiar female voice informed him.
Reese looked up to find Grace walking toward him, a self-satisfied expression on her face.
He lowered the bottle with a frown. "And exceptional hearing, too. Is there no end to your talents, Miss Turner?"
"We used the elixir on your wound. Medicinally speaking, of course, being all we had."
"'Course. I suppose that's the last of it."
"Not the last. Brew has another bottle, but he needs it for his cough. God knows why, but it seems to help him. I'll thank you not to dip into it."
He glanced at the sleeping man. He recognized the persistent cough and sallow, unhealthy-looking skin. Consumption. He'd heard the rattle of it often enough during his misspent youth; first, in the steerage quarters of the scow that had brought him from Dublin, then on the streets of a Boston slum. Enough to know there wasn't a thing that peddler's elixir or anything else could do to help the old man. But if she didn't know that, he decided it wasn't his place to inform her.
She knelt by the fire. "I'm glad to see you're alive, Mr. Donovan."
"I have you to thank, it seems."
"Or perhaps Dr. Braufield's Celebrated Elixir." She fed a dry branch into the blaze. A shower of sparks exploded and drifted upward with the smoke. "I won't ask how you feel. You look nearly as bad dry as you did wet."
"Ah," he said, dragging a hand through his ragged hair, "careful, princess. You might turn my head with such flattery."
"You should be resting." She held her hands above the flames, toasting that little notebook of hers along with her fingertips.
"What about you?" he asked. "Did you sleep, or have you been up all night scribbling down notes on the Great Pair-a-Dice Escapade?"
She flushed, tucking her journal protectively behind her. "What I scribble is none of your business. And for your information, I was keeping watch for the men who are following us."
He frowned, glancing back at the entrance. "Any sign of them?"
With a lift of that perfect little nose of hers she said, "It just so happens there was."
He sat up straighter. "What?"
He swore softly, rubbing a hand down his face, "Why didn't you wake me?"
"Wake you? You were out cold, Mr. Donovan. Why, in the time it took for Brew and me to bandage you up, you didn't so much as twitch an eyelash. How did you expect me to—"
"How many?"
She frowned. "Six, I think."
"You think?"
"No, definitely six."
"Did you get a good look at them?"
"Only one," she admitted. "The one holding the first lantern."
Reese waited, watching her intently.
"He was Mexican, or Indian, with dark hair past his shoulders and a light-colored neckerchief around his forehead."
"Are you sure?"
She nodded. "I could be wrong, but he looked like one of the men in the saloon that night you shot Deke Sanders. The one who claimed he hadn't seen Deke draw on you."
Reese rolled back onto his bedroll with a curse and closed his eyes. "That means they'll be back."
"What makes you think so? They didn't even look this way."
"Because that's Juan Hidalgo, a half-breed Comanche and one of the best trackers in Texas. The rain put him off our scent, but when he finds no trace of us now that it's stopped, he'll know we holed up behind them. They'll be back, sniffing around, until they flush us out of this hole."
She cast a worried look at the lightening sky. "What should we do?"
Holding the pain in his side, he turned his head toward her. "You should get on that horse and ride south as fast as you can. Put as much distance between yourself and this place as possible."
She turned on him with a disbelieving laugh, as if such a thought would never cross her mind. His dead-serious expression made her smile slip. "And I suppose if the situation were reversed that's just what you'd do."
"Aye, it is," he answered bluntly.
Those bluebonnet eyes of hers narrowed. "I don't believe you."
"That's your misfortune."
She looked him up and down as if trying fit in some puzzle piece she thought belonged to him. Then a slow smile spread over her dirt-smudged face and she shook her head. "No," she pronounced. "You want to know what I think?"
The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1) Page 9