“Rebecca.” He rose from his chair, his gaze traveling over her hair, face and attire.
“Sheriff, I—” the man said, but Adam held up his hand to silence him.
The look in his eyes told Becky all she needed to know. No matter what words might come out of his mouth in the near future to ruin the moment, he liked the new her. And there was an understanding in his expression that she’d found a way to bridge the gap between them. Relief. Hope.
“I’m going to raise the alarm,” Fiona announced, turning to go.
“No!” Adam shouted, but it was too late. Within two minutes everybody in town was going to know Lucas Kilraine had called him out.
And the cold seeped back in to her bones, overwhelming the momentary warmth Adam’s gaze had wrapped her in. It would be too cruel to lose him now that she truly believed they had a future together.
The other man in the room cleared his throat. “Kilraine ain’t coming alone, Sheriff. There were at least ten others with him that I saw.”
Becky’s knees started trembling and she held on to the door for support, but Adam was there in a heartbeat, wrapping his arms around her.
“I’m going to take you back to the Coop where the chickens can look after you. Davey, thank you for the warning. I’m sorry they stopped you on the road and dragged you into this.”
“No problem, Sheriff. I’m going to head on over to the saloon and get a drink or two, but I’ll be ready come four o’clock.”
Adam shook his head. “I’ll deal with this myself. I’ll be ready in a minute, Rebecca.”
Davey left, and Becky watched him checking his guns and his ammunition. He was obviously preparing for a battle, and Rebecca had to focus on deliberately breathing in and out lest she stop altogether from the suffocating fear.
When he was finished with what he needed to do, she allowed him to walk her back to the Coop, well aware of the moment he shifted her to his left side so his right hand could rest over his gun.
I’ll deal with this myself. How could he possibly deal with at least eleven armed men by himself? He might have the kind of reputation that kept hell raising to a minimum in Gardiner, but it clearly had no impact on Lucas Kilraine.
After she stepped back inside the Coop, it took Becky’s eyes a moment to adjust after the bright sunlight, but once they did she felt a little better. No matter what he thought, the sheriff wouldn’t be facing danger alone. It seemed half the town was in the front parlor, all of them armed.
“What the hell are all you people doing in here?” he yelled.
Eliza Jane stepped forward and handed him a cup filled with coffee. “Fiona told us Lucas Kilraine is coming.”
“So you decided to throw a goddamn tea party in a whorehouse?”
The doctor’s wife only smiled back at him. “He would expect people to gather at your office, so we came here to prepare.”
Becky had to smile at the horror with which Adam regarded the dainty porcelain cup in his hand, but she took it away before he could throw it at something, or somebody.
They were momentarily distracted by Frank Seymour dragging his son, Billy, toward the front window. “I told you to keep your eyes off them paintings.”
“These are our friends, Adam,” Becky said when the Seymours were settled. “This town isn’t going to go let you face an army alone.”
He snorted. “I’ve faced an army before, little mouse, and whatever ragtag bunch of ruffians Kilraine’s gathered, it ain’t an army.”
“We’ll be standing out there with you no matter what, so you may as well get used to the idea.”
“We?” He grasped her upper arms as if he was going to shake her and glared down at her. “You are not leaving this building, Rebecca Hamilton, until I say you are.”
“You have no authority over me, Adam Caldwell,” she snapped before it occurred to her he might lock her in a jail cell again if she didn’t mind herself.
Instead he dragged her through the gathering of people and into her room. After slamming the door behind him, he took off his hat and tossed it onto the bed so he could scrub his hands through his hair.
“Please,” he finally said in as soft a voice as she’d ever heard him use. “I will beg you if I have to, but I don’t want you out there, Rebecca. I won’t be able to concentrate if I don’t know you’re safe.”
“How do you think I’ll feel, watching you walk out there to get shot at?”
He pulled her into his arms and rested his cheek atop her head. “I lost count of the number of folks who’ve taken a shot at me a long time ago. I ain’t that easy to hit.”
“But he might,” she muttered into his shirt. “He might kill you, Adam.”
“I’d feel a little more kindly about all this if you had a little faith in me. I’m a fair hand with a six-shooter myself.”
“Don’t forget what that old woman told you,” she pleaded, willing to drag a silly childhood fear into the conversation if it kept him from going out into the street. “I don’t want to be your downfall, Adam.”
He tipped her chin up so she could see his eyes. “I’ve spent my whole life waiting for something to come along I’d be willing to die for it. But it wasn’t something, it was somebody. If it turns out I die today, my life will have been worth living.”
She pressed her face to his chest again, breathing in the scent of him as his shirt absorbed her tears. “But I’ll have the rest of mine to face alone.”
He held her in silence for a few minutes, stroking her hair and her back until the worst of the crying had passed. She was very still, not wanting to give him an excuse to pull away.
“You’re not going to face your life alone,” he told her. “After I take care of this business, I’m going to park my boots under your big brass bed and we’ll be the most scandalous couple in Gardiner.”
“Promise me you won’t die.”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her. “I promise, little mouse.”
A hard rapping on the bedroom door jerked Adam’s attention back to the matter at hand. He had some killing to do before he could get started on a new life together with Rebecca.
He opened the door to find Will on the other side, gunbelt looped over one arm and a little china cup in his other hand. “Doc, I didn’t want you dragged into this.”
“Makes no sense at all to tell your friend and deputy when you’re facing trouble, and yet here I am anyway. Imagine.”
“This is my fight, Doc,” he insisted as he shoved through what was fast becoming a crowd.
Will followed on his heels. “If that ain’t the most insultin’ thing I’ve ever heard, I’ll eat my hat.”
“There’s a whole list of reasons you can’t go out there with me,” Adam insisted.
“Give me a couple of damn good ones, ‘cause I don’t aim to sit on my ass while you’re getting shot at.”
“Well, for one, I ain’t the kind of man who makes friends easy. I don’t reckon I want to have to replace you. And I trust you to take care of Rebecca if I get killed.” Adam turned and grinned, then clapped his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Plus it sure would be a tragedy if I got myself shot only to discover the only doctor in town got himself killed.”
When the door opened and Lucy Barnes marched right into the Chicken Coop with her husband on her heels, both of them carrying rifles, everybody stopped talking.
It was a sight that made Adam even more nervous than the thought of a group of well-armed men descending on Gardiner. “What the hell are you up to now?”
“We’ve come to help defend the town,” she announced, and Brent nodded.
“You do realize they’re trying to kidnap Becky Hamilton, right?” Eliza Jane seemed to feel the need to point out.
Lucy sniffed. “Be that as it may, when a no-good, lying Yankee threatens to kill the people of this town it’s our duty to defend it, no matter what his intentions.”
“Watch how you wave that thing around, Lucy,” Adam said. “I like my toes well enou
gh where they are.”
“I’m not only the wife of a banker, Adam Caldwell, but when I was a little girl we only ate what we could kill. I can shoot the warts off a toad.”
Young Billy Seymour leapt back from the window with an excited whoop. “They’re coming! Right up the middle of the street like they own the place.”
Then the boy grabbed up his old rifle and went to stand at the door, like he wanted to be first in line to get shot. Adam knew Billy had a fine aim when it came to rabbits and such, but he didn’t believe a boy should kill a man before his first shave.
“Billy, I’m going to ask something special of you today. I’d like for you stay in here and keep Miss Hamilton safe.”
“Aww, Sheriff, you’re just trying to keep me indoors like the young’uns.”
“I’m asking you to watch over my woman, Billy Seymour. I don’t reckon I’d entrust her to any young’un. And the job comes with a deputy badge and a deputy’s pay.”
Billy’s chest puffed out and he seemed to grow two inches taller in the course of a blink. “In that case, I’d be right honored, Sheriff.”
Adam unpinned his own star to give the boy and then asked Lucy Barnes for the loan of her Bible, which he had Billy place his left hand on while raising his right.
“Do you, William Seymour, solemnly swear to uphold the law in Gardiner, be fair and just and obey any and all orders given to you by me or Doctor…uh, Deputy Martinson?”
“I do so solemnly swear to uphold the law in Gardiner, be fair and just and obey you and Doctor Deputy Martinson.”
He pinned the star to Billy’s shirt and shook his hand. “Deputy Seymour, my order to you is to keep Miss Hamilton safe by whatever means necessary. If it looks like things are going badly out there, you get her and hide or skedaddle out of town no matter what’s going on in the street, understand?”
Billy snapped a smart salute. “Aye aye, sir!”
Will choked on his coffee and Adam thought about reminding the boy they weren’t in the Navy, but Lucy cleared her throat and stepped forward. “The town council hasn’t authorized additional wages.”
“Take it out of mine. Times like these a sheriff needs men he can trust.” Her eyes narrowed and he forced himself to continue. “And women, too.”
“Rebecca Hamilton!” they heard Lucas Kilraine bellow from the street. “Come out and honor your poor dead father’s last wish and I won’t kill anybody today!”
Adam took a deep breath of satisfaction. It was about damn time the son of a bitch had shown himself. Now he could deal with him once and for all, then turn his attention back to where it belonged—his future with Rebecca.
Will set down his coffee and strapped on his gunbelt. “I reckon it’s time.”
Fiona checked her shotgun, while Lucy made sure her husband had enough ammunition for her liking. It didn’t appear Adam was going to get his way this time.
“I swear, I could go out and find the meanest, mangiest coyote ever born and it would still listen better than you people.” Then, in front of everybody, he walked over and kissed Rebecca, hard and fast.
“I love you, Miss Becky,” he said before he walked out the door.
Chapter Seventeen
“How do we know they won’t just shoot us all on sight?” Fiona asked as they stepped outside.
It seemed a little late to ask the question, but Adam answered it anyway. “Kilraine doesn’t know where Rebecca is so he’ll try to scare us into handing her over first.”
He stepped out into the harsh sunlight, making his way out into the street. Aware not only of the townsfolk fanning out behind him, but also of the rifle and shotgun barrels suddenly poking out of various homes and businesses lining the main street, he almost laughed. Half-crazy as they might be, there were some good people in Gardiner.
When he reached the center, he turned and looked not too far down the street to where Lucas Kilraine and his men had taken up position. It might have been a fairly daunting sight, but for two things.
One, as he’d told Rebecca, he considered himself a pretty fair hand with a six-shooter. And, two, he’d told her loved her. Not only had saying those words made him feel about ten feet tall, but now he had to live so she could say them back to him.
“We can do this in a civilized manner, Sheriff,” Kilraine called. “Just hand over my Rebecca and we’ll leave peacefully.”
His Rebecca? Adam gave the man a slow, cold smile. “There ain’t nothing here that belongs to you, so I don’t think a civilized manner’s called for.”
“I heard she’s been whoring for you.”
The sound of hammers being pulled back echoed down the otherwise quiet street, but Adam didn’t so much as flinch.
“You heard wrong, my friend. Now I’m going to give you to the count of five. You can turn around and leave or you can die.”
“I’m not going to be—”
“One.”
“—ruined financially because—”
“Two.”
“—that bitch is spreading—”
“Three.”
“—her legs for you.”
“Four.”
“Let’s talk about—”
“Five.”
Kilraine looked startled for a second, then he reached for his gun. Adam shot him through the heart as gunfire erupted all round him.
He didn’t even have time to savor the moment before he had to take aim on the next man. Everybody was scattering, Gardiner’s citizens and Kilraine’s men alike, seeking shelter from the bullets even as they shot their own into the melee.
Two of Kilraine’s men turned and ran, and a third would have followed but someone shot the horse out from under him. A shot from somewhere else finished the man off.
A woman screamed to Adam’s left and risking a glance, he turned to see Lucy Barnes lowering her husband to the ground, his blood soaking through the front of her dress. She had a wound of her own, what appeared to be a grazing, in her upper arm.
One of Kilraine’s men stood up from behind a barrel and took aim at the couple. Before Adam could react, Fiona was there and the blast from her shotgun damn near blew the man out of his boots. Then she laid the gun down in the dirt.
“Get his feet,” she yelled at Lucy. “Let’s get him inside.”
A bullet buzzed by Adam’s ear and he went back to shooting. One by one they picked off Kilraine’s men until nothing but the acrid stench of sweat and gunpowder remained and the silence was almost deafening.
“The shooting stopped,” Becky whispered, her fists clenched so tightly she could no longer feel her fingers.
Eliza Jane only nodded. After reminding her she couldn’t shoot any better than she cooked, Will had given her the same speech about how he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on keeping himself safe if she was outside, so she’d joined Becky under Billy’s watch.
Betty and Holly were both upstairs with rifles, ready to protect the Coop as a last resort. Neither was as proficient as Fiona, but they both knew how to load and fire.
“I’ll go look out the window,” Billy said and neither woman tried to stop him. Besides their own anxiety over the men, the boy’s father was out there, as well.
“It’s all over,” he told them. “I see the sheriff and Doc. And there’s Pa. They don’t look hurt. And it looks like that Kilraine and his men are all dead or gone now.”
That was enough for Becky. She leapt up from the settee and ran to the door, Eliza Jane right on her heels. The sunlight blinded her temporarily, but she kept running to where she’d seen Adam.
He caught her as she threw herself into his arms, crying his name, and hugged her so tightly she thought her bones would break. “It’s all over, little mouse.”
She kissed his neck, then pulled back so she could kiss his face, his mouth. “I was so scared.”
She was kissing him again when Will interrupted them. “I sent Billy to help Ol’ Bart bring the wagon for Kilraine and his men.”
“How ‘bout our
s?” he asked, and Becky thought Fiona?
“Some grazing and some minor wounds. Nothing I can’t have patched up by suppertime.”
“Where’s Fiona? I don’t see her.” Becky pressed a hand to her stomach, trying to stifle the queasiness.
“I saw her trying to help Lucy drag Brent off the street. You seen to him yet, Doc? The front of his shirt with soaked with blood, but I was a little busy to check on him.”
“Rifle kicked on him and broke his nose. He wasn’t shot.” He shrugged and walked away.
Adam used his thumb to wipe a stray tear from her cheek. “Where were we, Re…Becky.”
“I actually like the way you say Rebecca, and the fact that only you call me that.”
“And I really like this new look of yours,” he said. “I didn’t get a lot of time to take it in earlier, but I noticed.”
“I don’t know if it’s enough,” she admitted. “I know I’m still the wrong side of scandalous, but—”
“Little mouse, I like you just that side of scandalous. And about my boots under that bed of yours…”
“If you didn’t mean that, I’ll understand. I imagine when you’re going into a situation as dangerous as a gunfight a person makes all sorts of promises they later regret.”
“I told you the day we met when I say something I stand by it. But you need to start thinking on what kind of house you’d like because I ain’t raising a family in a whorehouse, even if it’s my wife’s.” He paused, then leaned close to whisper in her ear. “We’re taking that bed with us when we move, though.”
She laughed and put her palms on his shoulders to push him away. “Maybe we shouldn’t have this conversation in the middle of the street.”
“It worked for Doc and his women’s libber. Too bad that justice of the peace already left town, though, even if he was a drunkard.”
“I know conversation isn’t your strong suit, but it’s customary to ask a woman for her hand in marriage.”
He crossed his arms and scowled down at her. “I asked you for your hand in marriage barely ten minutes after the first time I saw you.”
Becoming Miss Becky Page 15