The Best Man

by Maggie Osborne

  So be it.

  Resignation relaxed her fear-clenched muscles and the terror slowly faded from her eyes. She released a low breath of acceptance. She’d had a year longer than she should have had and she had used her time well. She had said good-bye to her father, had gotten to know her sisters, and she had known John. Her only regrets were that she would never have the chance to tell her sisters that she loved them, and that she had not met John McCallister at another time in another place under different circumstances.

  Before the maelstrom of thundering hooves drowned his voice, she heard Grady scream, “Run!” Luther and Ward added urgent shouts to Grady’s. But she couldn’t walk, let alone run. Certainly she couldn’t push the unwieldy and heavy chair fast enough to save herself, even if the ground had not been shaking as if an earthquake rocked it. “Run, you son of a bitch, run!”

  The crazed steers were close enough now that she could see sunlight sliding along their pointed horns, could smell the fearful stink of them and feel their heat rolling toward her. They would be upon her within minutes.

  Folding her hands in her lap, she bowed her head and calmly began to recite the Lord’s Prayer, but a flash of white caught her eye, coming up fast on her left. When she raised her head and saw John running toward her, an electric jolt of horror replaced the serenity of acceptance. Heart slamming against her chest, she gripped the wheels of her chair and screamed frantically. “No! No, go back!” Oh God. Oh God, no. “Don’t do this, no! Go back! Go back!”

  When he reached her, he spun in front of her chair, planted his legs wide and swung a rifle to his shoulder, firing into the onrushing destruction. The noise was monstrous now, a roaring hellish din. The ground shook so violently that John lost his footing and fell, rose to one knee and fired again. One steer dropped. And then another, so close to them that the horns furrowed the ground not eight feet from where John knelt, firing continually.

  The herd split around the fallen steers, and a foaming sea of animals swept past them, surrounded them on all sides. The hot stink of fear and chaos and animal hide thickened the air. Alex’s ears rang with the hideous sound of horns clacking and crashing and knocking together, with the sound of heavy snorting and blowing and hooves tearing up the ground. Her wheelchair toppled on the shaking earth, and she sprawled on the grass, immediately snatched into John’s arms. He caught her up upright against his chest, clasping her tightly, his face in her hair, his breath against her cheek, holding her as the cattle pounded around them.

  Alex clung to his neck, screaming, crying, praying they would miraculously survive this horror, praying that she would not be responsible for the death of another good man.

  And then finally, finally, after a nightmarish eternity, it was over. The massive animals raced past them, the stampede rampaging toward the open range, fanning out in all directions. Still clinging to John, Alex watched with dazed wet eyes as the drovers galloped past in pursuit. Freddy and Les reined in, their faces white with fear, looked at her, then spurred their mounts and chased after the drovers and steers.

  As the blood returned to Alex’s face and her arms and leg began to tingle, Grady, Luther, Ward, and even Jack Caldwell ran across the trampled ground. Luther picked up her toppled chair and Alex collapsed into it, shaking so badly that her teeth chattered and she couldn’t speak.

  Grady stared at John. “That was the goddamnest thing I ever seen in my life!” Turning, hands on hips, he stared at the dead beeves that had saved their lives. “You can shoot a tough old longhorn six or seven times and not even slow him down. But you got three of them! Well sheeeeit. ‘Sense me, Alex. That was some shooting, son! You had to place those shots just right, and you sure enough did!”

  John came to her and knelt beside her chair. Lifting her icy hands from her lap, he glanced at the abrasions she’d received on her palms when she spilled out of the chair, then he rubbed her fingers, trying to restore the circulation. White-faced and trembling, Alex gazed into his steady grey eyes. She couldn’t articulate what she felt; mere words couldn’t possibly convey the emotion swelling her heart. Fear, gratitude, awe. And an odd fringe of regret. There had been a moment when she welcomed the fact of her death and found relief in knowing her punishment would end.

  And she felt love. Looking deeply into John’s eyes, she saw what she had never seen in Payton’s gaze. Hot tears burned her throat, and she covered her face with shaking hands. The sudden intensity of emotion confused and exhausted her.

  Luther gripped the handles of her chair and pushed her toward camp. Grady remained behind, shaking his head over the dead steers. Jack strode back to camp. Ward walked on one side of her and John on the other, his comforting hand gentle on her shoulder.

  “It’s a miracle the two of you weren’t killed,” Ward remarked, turning to inspect the cattle running across the range in all directions.

  A glance at John’s frown told Alex that she hadn’t imagined Ward’s disappointment. And she wasn’t imagining the concern in John’s eyes. She covered his fingers with her own and smiled.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him softly, knowing she didn’t look fine. Her skirt was soiled and torn. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders. “My hands and knees are scraped, but that’s the worst of it. After some coffee and a few minutes to collect myself, I’ll put some beans on the fire. They’ll hold until the boys come in.”

  “Alex, for God’s sake.” They were the first words Luther had spoken. “You don’t come that close to dying, then minutes later prepare a meal as if nothing happened.”

  She agreed with Luther, but she knew Dal wouldn’t. And she had grown enormously since the day she’d set her skirts afire. She would find the strength to do what she had to do. “If you want to help,” she suggested to Luther and John, “I’d appreciate it if you’d collect some prairie coal for the fire.” She’d lost her bag and stick. She couldn’t imagine herself ever again searching for cow pies if a single longhorn were in sight. But she would.

  She had always been a woman who set standards of excellence. The change that had occurred during this drive was that now her standards concerned character. The realization made her smile. Her new standards were infinitely harder to meet.

  While she drank a cup of black coffee and tried to calm herself, she remembered John’s strong arms crushing her close to his body. Pink infused her cheeks when she realized that would be her strongest memory. Not a near brush with death, not her terror, but John’s arms around her and the thrill of his warmth and strength and touch. She didn’t realize something had happened until she heard John draw a sharp breath, saw him set down his coffee and stand up beside her.

  When Alex followed his gaze, her breath hitched and stopped, coffee spilled across her skirts. Dal was riding into camp, leading Freddy’s horse. Freddy lay crumpled over the horse’s neck, blood pasting her shirt to her shoulder and arm.

  “The damned fool took a bullet in the shoulder, but she rode out anyway to round up steers,” Dal snapped, his face clamped in a scowl. He reined in front of Alex. “Have you ever removed a bullet?”

  “Good God, no,” she whispered, her eyes fixed on Freddy. There was so much blood.

  John’s hand clamped down on her shoulder, then he pointed to Grady and jerked his head toward the water barrel. Alex understood at once.

  “Grady. Put a pot of water on to boil. We’ll need bandages. John, the medical box is in the large bin on the left of the chuck box. I hope to heaven we have whatever you need. Grady, when you finish putting on the water, erect one of the tents.” When she saw a flash of indecision in Dal’s eyes, she hastily assured him, “We’re not breaking any rules. John is our guest and we’re fortunate enough that he’s a doctor. There are no rules about doctoring in the will.” Her gaze swung to Jack Caldwell, who hurried forward to catch Freddy in his arms as she slipped off her horse.

  That’s when she became aware that John had not moved after his initial impulsive action. He stood stock still, his gaze focused somewhere in
the past, and a tremble passed through his body. Alex could only guess what he was seeing and remembering, the sights and sounds of men shot and sliced on a field of battle.

  She slipped her hand in his and gently pressed. “John? The war is over. This isn’t a battlefield. That is my sister and I love her and I’m frightened for her. I don’t know what to do.” He looked down at her, struggling to return from dark memories. Alex held his hand and his gaze. “If you cannot do this, I will understand. But if you can, please save Freddy, too.”

  For one endless moment, she thought he would refuse, thought he would retreat into the safe blank spot he had built in his mind. She feared he would walk away from her, from humankind, and return to the range. He gazed at the prairie, then he looked down at Alex and touched her cheek with trembling fingers.

  When he took Freddy out of Jack Caldwell’s arms and into his own, Alex gasped softly, and a rush of hot tears spilled over her lashes. She had watched a turning point. His healing would not be easy, but now it would begin.

  Dal swung down from his saddle, strode forward, and smashed Caldwell in the mouth hard enough to knock him down, bloody his nose, and crack his lip. “Get up, you worthless cheating son of a bitch!”

  Fury shook his body and reddened his mind. He wanted to kill Caldwell, and he wanted to do it with his bare hands.

  Caldwell stayed on the ground. After touching a hand to his mouth, he glanced at his bloodied fingertips, then up at Dal. Dal threw off Luther’s restraining hand. “Caldwell hired a rustler named Hoke Smyth. That’s why today happened. That’s why Alex almost died, and Freddy might die.” His fists opened and closed. “Get up you fricking coward!”

  “Is that true, Caldwell?” Luther demanded. “Did you endanger everyone in this outfit?”

  “Frisco can’t prove a goddamned thing.” Sitting up, Caldwell rubbed a sleeve across his bloody nose. “I don’t have to hire any two-bit rustlers, Frisco. Not when I can depend on your incompetence.”

  Dal ground his teeth and pushed a fist against his palm. “Were you and Lola thinking I was incompetent back when you offered to double my fee if I’d make sure we didn’t deliver two thousand steers? Is that why you’ve started stampedes, drowned cattle, and hired rustlers, you whoreson, because I’m incompetent?” From the corner of his eyes he saw Luther staring at Caldwell.

  When he realized Caldwell was not going to get up, was too cowardly to fight, his chest tightened with frustration. “If Freddy dies,” he snarled, “I’ll kill you, Caldwell. Nothing will stop me.”

  “That’s what this is about,” Caldwell said, sliding a calculating glance toward Luther. “It’s Freddy, isn’t it?” He smiled. “Didn’t like to discover that someone else got there first, did you?”

  “You lying son of a bitch!” He would have torn Caldwell into bloody pieces if Luther and Ward hadn’t grabbed him. Even that wasn’t enough. Grady had to jump in before he stopped struggling to reach Caldwell and rip his throat out.

  “You can sort this out later,” Grady said quietly, looking into his eyes. “Right now, you got a herd scattered all to hell and back, and only about six hours of daylight left.” A scream spiraled toward them and they all looked toward the hastily erected tent where John McCallister was removing the bullet from Freddy’s shoulder. “That little gal was out there rounding up beeves with lead in her shoulder,” Grady said evenly. “If you want to help her, get out there and get your herd back together. That’s what’s important to her. Not this snake in the grass.” He turned around and shot a wad of tobacco juice toward Caldwell.

  The red haze of rage slipped enough for Dal to understand that Grady’s advice made sense. Killing Cald-well wouldn’t change anything. What was needed now was to mop up the mess, take a count, and discover how much devastation the son of a bitch had inflicted.

  “This isn’t finished,” he said, a promise glittering in his icy eyes.

  Then he followed Freddy’s screams to the tent, steeled himself, and looked inside. John had tied her to a board so she couldn’t hit out or thrash while he probed her wound for the bullet. He’d ripped her shirt open to expose an ugly raw opening that bubbled red. Dal watched the cords rise on Freddy’s throat as she arched her neck and screamed, and he felt sick to his stomach. John didn’t look up, but Alex glanced toward him, her face the color of whey. Her hands were bloody.

  “She’ll be all right,” Alex whispered. But the fear in her eyes told him that she was saying what she needed to hear, not what she knew as a fact.

  Freddy’s screams cut through him like a hot knife. He’d seen men shot before, had heard them scream. Hell, he’d been shot himself. But nothing had been as painful to witness as this. If he could have, he would have traded places with her in an instant.

  Shaking with helplessness and rage, he swung up in his saddle and lashed the reins across the horse’s flanks. If she died…

  But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. That was Joe Roark’s daughter back there in the tent. She could be as tough as nails when she needed to be. He hoped she remembered that and pulled through, because he needed her.

  He loved her.

  It was after midnight before Dal returned to camp. Alex offered him a plate of food, but he was too exhausted, too worried to eat, and he waved aside the beans and fried meat. Picking up a lantern, he walked directly to Freddy’s tent and stepped inside. “You idiot,” he said, looking down at her. Grady had set up the cot they used in cases of serious injury or illness, and he’d fashioned a makeshift pillow. Her hair covered the pillow like a dark cloud, and her left arm was bound in a sling that rested on top of a light blanket.

  “Feels like I’m floating,” she murmured, reaching for his hand.

  “That’s the laudanum John gave you.” He sat on a low stool beside her. “What in the hell did you think you were doing? Chasing beeves when you had a bullet in your shoulder? If you weren’t already shot-up, I’d shoot you myself for being so damned dumb.”

  “Didn’t want any to escape.” She started to shrug, then sucked in a breath and winced instead. “How many?”

  “It’s bad, Freddy.”

  “How many?”

  “We lost fifty-eight.” John McCallister had shot three. There were four dead cattle on the range, two of which he’d put down himself when he saw they wouldn’t recover from bullet wounds received from the outlaws’ guns. Fifty-one additional longhorns were missing. Some might still be found in the morning if they hadn’t joined another herd by then, or found a hiding place in the brush. He figured the rustlers had made off with the rest while he and his drovers were chasing down the stampede. Closing his eyes, he pulled a hand through his hair and swallowed the bitter taste of frustration and fury.

  Reason told him he shouldn’t blame himself, but he did. Haltingly, he told her about his bathhouse conversation and the probability that the rustlers had been hired by Caldwell. “I should have pulled a couple of the boys off the line and sent them out to watch for strangers.” He had assumed any attack would come at night, and he’d beefed up the watch. Now they were paying for his error.

  Freddy’s eyes sharpened through the pain and laudanum. “This was Jack’s fault, not yours.”

  “The problem is proof. There isn’t any proof.”

  Wetting a finger, he rubbed a speck of blood off her throat before he drew a long breath, held it a minute, then took her hand again. “We’ll stay here until noon tomorrow, but I can’t give you more time than that, Freddy. I’ll put you back on drag, that’s the best I can do.” She was going to have an agonizing few days, and he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  “Don’t worry,” she murmured, her eyelids drifting shut. “You always said the horse does most of the work anyway.”

  He stayed with her after she slept, blowing out the lantern and sitting in the darkness listening to her breathe and holding her hand. She had calluses now, something he hadn’t noticed that night in Fort Worth. He ran his thumb over the rough pads on her palm. And he wished he
had killed Jack Caldwell.

  Fifty-eight. He was down to a margin of ninety-one.

  He stared out the tent flap at the boys gathered around the campfire drinking coffee. Everyone was too worked up to sleep. He doubted the drovers on night watch would have to rub tobacco juice in their eyes to stay awake tonight; the day’s excitement would reverberate well into tomorrow.

  Ninety-one. And Red River wasn’t far ahead; he’d heard it was swollen and running fast with the worst of the spring melt. Even in the best of conditions, it was a rare boss who didn’t lose a few beeves crossing the Red River. Christ. Dropping his head, he rubbed his forehead.

  If he was going to win their inheritance for three women who had earned it and deserved it, he needed to be luckier than he’d ever been before.

  “Dal?” When he lifted his head, he saw Alex pushing her chair through the soft summer darkness. “May I speak to you a moment?”

  Stepping outside, he put his hat on and looked down at her. She had pinned her hair in place and found a minute to mend her skirt. She didn’t look like a woman who had been caught in the center of a stampede and lived to tell about it. Had in fact gone from surviving almost certain death to helping remove the bullet in Freddy’s shoulder and then prepare supper for twelve men. “Are you all right?” he asked, his gaze softening with admiration.

  “I’ve had better days,” she said with a wan smile. “There’s coffee on my worktable.”

  Nodding, he moved around behind her and pushed her back toward the chuck wagon, remembering that day—a century ago—when he had refused to assist her with her chair. None of them had been the same people then. He gave her one of the coffee cups and took the other, leaning against the side of the wagon, feeling the fatigue in his shoulders and thighs.

  “Luther told us what you said, about Caldwell and Lola making you a dishonorable offer. I’d like to hear more about that,” Alex said quietly. “And I’d like to tell you how my heart stopped beating when I saw you bring Freddy in off the range. I’d like to know if Grady is right and Caldwell is responsible for most of our large losses.” She gazed up at him with a lifted eyebrow, firelight dancing across her complexion.