The Lawman

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 pImages** 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 didn’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.

Archie’s ministrations weren’t gentle, but they were efficient, and Jared was in no position to complain. He was totally at their mercy and that galled him. He knew the pain to come would be many times worse than their jostling.

“You a doctor?” Jared asked.

“Nope, but I’ve done some doctoring ’round these parts.” Archie peered at the wound through a pair of spectacles he’d taken from a shirt pocket. “Have to take out the bullet and those scraps of cloth. I’ll sew it if I can. Cauterize it if I can’t. It’ll hurt like the blazes, but from some of them scars, I ’spect you know that.” He didn’t sound very concerned.

Jared merely nodded. He’d been through this before.

“We have a small bit of laudanum,” Archie said. “Maybe enough to help dull the pain.”

Jared didn’t like the idea of losing what little control he had. He damn well wanted to know what the man was doing to his leg. “Whiskey will do if you have some.”

Archie shrugged. “Sam will get a bottle,” he said, and the woman hurried from the room.

Sam? The old man had mentioned the name several times. Hell of a name for a woman. Even one who strapped on a gun and shot lawmen.

Archie put his hands in the bowl of water. Jared noticed the white foam. Soap. Good sign.

The man loosened the tourniquet again for a few seconds before retying it quickly. Despite the new rush of blood, Jared was grateful. Keeping the tourniquet tight would cut off the blood supply to the lower leg and he could lose it. He tried to sit upright to see what was going on, but he fell back, his breath ragged. God, he was weak.

He gritted his teeth as the old man chose a probe from the instruments the woman had lined up.

Concentrate on something else. “I would like to know the name of the man cutting me,” he said. “And…the lady’s.”

His captor frowned at him, obviously taking exception to the way he referred to the woman. “Since you ain’t likely to spread it anytime soon,” the old man said, “might as well tell you. I’m Archibald Smith. Archie to my friends. Smith to you. And the lady, she’s just Sam.”

Jared tried to wrap his mind around that. He couldn’t. She might be a lot of things, but she certainly wasn’t “just Sam.”

“Your daughter?”

“Nah.”

The old man was stingy with information. Jared clenched his teeth as he probed around the wound. Christ, it already felt as if someone was sticking white-hot knives in him. “You…raised her?”

Archie sat back and studied him with pale, watery eyes. “Sam pretty much raised herself.” He hesitated, then added, “Heard of you. Didn’t much like what I heard.”

“Because I’m a lawman?”

“You’ve been hunting Mac for years. That ain’t just marshaling, that’s something else. Something dark.”

The probe went deeper, and Jared’s fingers knotted in fists. After a second, he asked, “Then why are you taking the bullet out? You could have left me…”

“Could’ve, but Mac wouldn’t have liked it. He wouldn’t want Sam to kill anyone.” The old man shook his head. “Me, I’m not sure it would be a bad thing.”

Mac again. Jared tried to concentrate on the man’s words. Mac wouldn’t want Sam to kill anyone.

Mac must be Thornton, who also went by MacDonald. Maybe they knew Thornton would want to get rid of Jared himself. The old man just admitted they knew he had been trailing the outlaw for years. He wanted to ask more, but then Archie poked the wound again. Jared’s body arched involuntarily, and the room began to fade in and out.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget about Sam.” The old man spoke softly, but there was no mistaking the warning. “No one messes with her and lives.”

It seemed to Jared that it had been Sam doing the messing, but he didn’t reply, partly for fear it might come out as a groan. The pain was too intense. His body shivered. He tried to lie still, tried to adapt to the ever increasing waves of agony. There would be more. Maybe he should have taken the laudanum.

Archie muttered something Jared couldn’t decipher. He tried to concentrate on the words. His life might depend on it. Thornton. MacDonald. A killer with a price on his head. Yet this old man and the woman—Sam—talked about him as if he were some kind of god.

Then Sam returned again, this time holding a bottle of whiskey topped by a cup in one hand, a second bowl of steaming water in the other. She placed the water on the table, then filled the cup with whiskey. She lifted his head as she put the cup to his lips. “Drink,” she ordered.

Knowing what was coming, he gulped down several swallows. He still didn’t know what skill Smith had, but he did know the bullet could eventually kill him if it weren’t removed.

He stared up at the woman. His eyesight was blurring. She didn’t seem boyish now with soft hair framing her face. More…like an angel.

An angel who had shot him.

He finished off the strong, bitter whiskey.

She poured more, but he shook his head. Best to get this over with.

She placed the cup on the table, then dunked a piece of cloth into one of the bowls, took a deep breath and wiped the blood from around the wound. The cloth was hot, burning, but he was grateful for it. The heat would increase his chances of survival, of preventing infection.

There was a stillness in her face, like a mask, as if she were afraid to show any emotion. Only a flicker of her tongue against her lips gave her away. A tendril of hair fell over her forehead and he caught the scent of roses.

Sarah had smelled of roses, too.

Archie probed deeper.

Jared sucked in a deep breath. Christ. He needed something to bite on. Almost as if she read his mind, she stuck a piece of wood between his teeth. He crunched down on it, waiting for the worst of the pain to subside. Then Archie stopped fishing around.

He felt the wet cloth against the tender skin again and looked back at the woman. Damn, why did she have to be…pretty? And dangerous? She’d done what few men had: bested him in a gunfight.

If he lived through this, he had to remember that. He suspected those golden eyes could make a man forget almost anything. When she finished cleaning the area around the wound, Archie gave him a long look. “I got most of the cloth out. The bullet’s deep, lodged against the bone. We can tie your hands and feet to the posts. You don’t wanta be moving when…”

Jared shook his head and dropped the wood from his mouth. “Get…on with…it.”

The woman put the wood back in place, and he bit down as the probe reentered the wound. His left hand clutched the iron frame of the bed. Sam stood next to Archie, washing away blood as the old man worked. Spasms of fresh pain shot through Jared’s thigh and up his body. His teeth chomped harder on the wood and he squeezed his fingers into tight fists. Waves of agony, each worse than the last, swept over him.

Then he was aware of her hand holding his, that he was gripping it. He opened his eyes and saw a tear halfway down her cheek. Her lips were bleeding from biting into them.

Maybe he was imagining it. Or maybe it was the whiskey. He closed his eyes again as the old man pulled out the bullet. Remember. Remember the good times.

Sarah. Sarah stood there in the door of their farmhouse, that grand smile spreading across her face….

THE MARSHAL’S BODY RELAXED. Sam’s body eased, as well, as he lapsed into unconsciousness. She couldn’t feel the full extent of his pain, but some part of it radiated into her. She’d done this to him.

Thank God, he was finally unconscious. It seemed like an hour but must have been no more than three or four minutes before Archie held up a bullet. “Got it,” he said with satisfaction, and dropped it onto the table. Then he went in again and fished out more pieces of fabric. Concealing her bruised hand, she started swabbing the wound again with the wet cloth.

“How bad is it?” Sam asked.

“Bad enough. Lodged against a bone and tore some muscles. Be a while before he can walk again. But if it doesn’t putrefy, he should be all right.” He looked at the gaping wound. It still bled. “I have to cauterize it.”

“You can’t sew it?”

“It’s bleeding pretty bad. Safer to sear it shut.” He looked at her closely. “Best do it while he’s out.”

She retreated to the kitchen area and fetched the knife she’d left in the stove to heat. She stood by as Archie poured sulfur in the wound, then touched the white-hot blade to the marshal’s skin. Shivers ran through her as the smell of burning flesh permeated the room. Thank God the man was still unconscious. But when he woke…

Archie looked weary, the lines in his face deeper than usual.

“You go see to Mac,” she said. “I’ll put some salve on the wound and look after him.”

“Better change clothes first. You got blood all over you.” Archie wearily walked to the door. “Damn fool shoulda taken the laudanum. Got guts, though.” He sighed. “Don’t know what in the hell we’ll do with him. Might have been best to just let him bleed to death.”

She didn’t answer that. There was no answer. She hadn’t planned ahead. She’d only thought about the immediate need to protect Mac.

As for courage? The marshal undoubtedly had that.

Sam took one last look at the unconscious man, then went to release Dawg from the storeroom, where she’d placed him before the confrontation in the street. He’d known something was different, and she hadn’t wanted him to alert Archie or, worse, try to follow her.

The half mutt, half wolf regarded her quizzically when the door opened. Then he tentatively wagged his tail. She leaned down and petted him, assuring him all was well, even if it wasn’t. Dawg cocked his head, trying to understand, then whined.

She’d found Dawg four years ago, his leg half torn off by an old trap. Archie had doctored him, and he’d chosen to stay with them.

He sniffed her now, apparently smelling the blood on her and the scent of a new person. He knew something was wrong but apparently no longer sensed immediate peril for those he cared about. He followed her up to her room and watched protectively as she put on a clean shirt and trousers.

When she finished, she hesitated, trying to steady herself. She’d always been independent. And strong. She’d helped her mother run a boardinghouse until her death when Sam was eleven. Her father had died several years earlier, and there had been no living relatives. Mac, Reese and Archie—all of whom had loved her mother—promised to care for Sam. One of them was usually gone, one was always in town, and each had taught her his special skills, and most of all, how to take care of herself.

She’d never questioned why they’d stayed here when everyone else left. To her, it made sense. Gideon’s Hope was a safe place for Mac. Few people even realized it still existed after the gold ran out. They’d had some visitors. The hopeful who thought they might still strike it rich. Sometimes friends of Mac or Reese or Archie. But visitors were increasingly rare these past few years. The town had made a convenient base for Reese, who gambled up and down the gold camps and now the silver mines, and Mac and Archie both loved the mountains. They had a comfortable home in the saloon Reese owned. There were plenty of trout in the stream, game in the forest and enough remaining nuggets carried down by mountain rain to pay for any additional supplies they needed.

As for her schooling, she had three teachers. Reese had attended Cambridge University in England, and Mac the University of Virginia until the war started. Between the two, she’d learned to love knowledge. Reese had collected books from all over Colorado, and she’d read every one. He’d introduced her to Shakespeare and poets along with penny novels and romances. Mac was more interested in sums and astronomy because that was something he could use.

From Archie, she learned the greatest gift of all: healing.