Bushedwhacked Groom (5 page)

Chapter Three

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What in blue blazes had happened to him? This was Lucky Lamont’s desperate thought as he stared up at
the young woman standing above him, scrutinizing
him inch by inch as if he was a prize bull in a pen. Who
was she and what was the nonsense she was spouting
about him being her hero and winning her the lower
five hundred?

Not that he could even think very well at the mo
ment. Every inch of Lucky blazed with pain from the bru
tal ride he’d taken down the dike in the driverless
stagecoach. A board poked him in the back and a
huge chunk of cast iron lay crushing his legs. He was
stunned that he’d even endured the breakneck plunge.

Indeed, had it not been for the agony he felt, he’d
never have believed he was still alive. But somehow he
had survived, unless he was already in heaven and this
was an angel standing above him.

A cherub in blue denim, he thought humorously,
though she did have the face of an angel. A strong
chin, wide mouth, delicate little nose, large green
eyes, long dark lashes and high arched brows. She was
dressed, however, like a cowgirl, in her jeans and
matching gabardine shirt, a wealth of lush auburn
curls spilling from beneath her western hat and dangling about her shoulders.

Next to her stood a small, mustachioed Hispanic
man in an outdated poncho and sombrero. He was
crossing himself and muttering to the Virgin Mary in
Spanish. Beyond the pair, two range horses munched on grass.

Who was this odd pair? He’d never before seen them
in these parts. But then, he’d encountered some curi
ous types today.

“You all right, mister?” his rescuer asked in a lilting
feminine voice. “That was some fall you just took.”

“Who are you, honey?” Lucky replied in strained tones.

“Hey, don’t you be calling me
honey,”
the young
woman chided. “It’s not fitting until we’re officially affi
anced.”

“Officially affi . . .
what?”
 
Lucky’s protest was lost in a
grunt of pain as a metal chunk shifted on his legs.

She sank down on her haunches beside him. “Hey,
stranger, you aren’t going to die on me, are you?”

Through the haze of his pain, Lucky somehow real
ized that the length of twine connecting his hands to
his feet had snapped during the harrowing ride, but
otherwise he remained bound. Raggedly he replied, “If
someone doesn’t untie me and get this g’damned axle
off my legs, I may.”

“
Well, you don’t have to resort to cursing,” she said
primly.

He spoke through clenched teeth. “Lady, you crawl
under this torture device and see how long you’re
spouting hearts and flowers.”

She stood, turned to the Mexican and snapped her
fingers. “Sanchez!”

“
Sí
,
s
eñorita
.” Convulsively crossing himself, the little
man stepped forward, eyeing Lucky with trepidation.

“Come on, let’s get to work,” the woman ordered him.

“Easy now!” Lucky exclaimed, as aghast at the thought
of them trying to free him as he was at his current plight.

Undaunted, both knelt and began trying to extricate him, tossing aside scraps of wood and chunks of iron. Within seconds Lucky was in everlasting hell. With each shift of metal or wood he suffered the torment of
the damned. Though he winced and grimaced
aplenty, he was too proud to cry out. But when they
rolled the heavy, twisted axle off his legs, the agony
was so exquisite that he bit his bottom lip.

The woman dusted off her hands and regarded his
ashen face with a frown. “Whoa, mister, don’t you go
swooning on me. You’re as white as one of my
grandma’s antimacassars.”

“Her
what?”
 
He sucked in a tortured breath. “Can’t you please untie my hands and feet?”

She appeared skeptical. “We’ll see to that directly”

Lucky was incredulous. “What? What the hell? How
do you expect me to get up, trussed up like a g’damned
turkey?”

She shook a finger at him. “Mister, I said no profanity.
I declare, you swear worse than my brothers.”

“What brothers?”

The Mexican extended his hand. “Perhaps I may pull you up,
s
eñor
?”

Lucky moved tentatively, only to yelp in pain. “Not with the two broken legs I think I may have.”

“Two broke legs?” the woman repeated, looking him over with a scowl. “Well, we’ll just have to fetch you
home so Grandma can set ‘em”

“Who’s Grandma?”

“I know you had a rocky ride through time—”

“Through
what?”
What psych ward had this woman
escaped from?

“Just don’t you go thinking having a busted limb or
two will get you out of marrying me.”

Lucky stared at her, unable to believe what a whack
job this woman was. Again he wondered if he had
died—and gone to Looney Tune hell. “Marry you? Are
you nuts?”

“Nope, and I’m taking you straight home so my pa can fetch the preacher. Ain’t no way I’ll let my no-
account brothers best me in this contest.”

“What contest?”

“We’ll be wed before sundown, even if we have to
roll you to the altar in a wheelbarrow,” she finished with determination.

Lucky remained stunned. “Just who in the hell are
you and why do you think I’m going to marry you?”

“I’m Molly Reklaw—”

“Reklaw? You mean like the gorge?”

“Yeah, like the gorge. And you’re going to marry me
because you’re my destiny from across time.”

“Your what? What time?”

She tossed him a superior smirk and waved his wal
let at him. “The year twenty-aught-four. Isn’t that where you came from
. . .
Mr. Lucky Lamont?”

What the hell did she mean, where he came
from? “Right,” he mocked. “And this
is
the year 2004, in
case you hadn’t noticed.”

The woman laughed while the Mexican turned a
sickening shade of green and began silently praying.
“Mister, it’s not the year 2004 but the year 1911, and you’ve come back in time to be my hero.”

Lucky had thought he couldn’t possibly be any
more flabbergasted than he already was, but he was
wrong. “Your
what?
The year
what?”

“Don’t you know how to say anything but
what?”
she
mocked. “You sound like a darned Victrola with a stuck
needle.” She waved him off matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry, my ma will explain it all to you. It happened to
her, too, you see.”

Lucky could barely speak. “You’re a crazy woman!”

She clenched her jaw at that, and Lucky felt a surge
of self-satisfaction that he’d managed to rile her. “Now
don’t you go insulting me or my pa will bust your
chops,” she scolded, then turned to the Mexican.
“Sanchez, help me hoist my fiancé over my horse.”

Lucky was so horrified by the prospect of being
“hoisted” that her reference to his being her fiancé
went almost unnoticed. “Please,” he pleaded, shudder
ing at the anticipated torture, “you can’t move me right now. Why, I could have a fractured spine, or—”

“Oh, quit your bellyaching,” the woman shot back.
“You must be made of tougher stuff than that if you
survived the journey across time, not to mention the
plunge into this gorge.”

Lucky couldn’t believe she was actually going to do
this. “Won’t you at least untie me?”

“Nope. My daddy bushwhacked his bride back to
the ranch and I think I’ll do the same with my groom.” She flashed him a simpering smile. “‘Sides, you ain’t
exactly taken to the notion of wedding me, have you, H
andsome?”

“No shit!” he roared back.

“Hey, I said no bad language. You want my grandma
to think I’ve brought home a foul-mouthed heathen?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say he couldn’t care
less what her grandma thought. But then she and
Sanchez began to
hoist
—and Lucky screamed.

***

Every muscle in Lucky’s battered body that hadn’t been abused so far was tortured during the inter
minable ride to the crazy woman’s ranch. His long, lanky body lay dangling over her lap, and the saddle
horn was gouging a hole in his belly. His face was
pressed against her knee, his nose slammed repeat
edly against her shin even as he smelled the scent of
her womanly skin and absorbed her heat. A terrain covered in rocks, grass and
Colorado
wildflowers
bounced past his aching eyes as his sorer-than-hell
body was repeatedly bumped, jostled and slammed.

“Lady, please, show some mercy,” he pleaded.
“You’re killing me.”

“0h, hush, or I’ll gag you, too.”

Lucky ground his teeth at this possibility. Clearly there
was no reasoning with this psycho.

After what seemed forever, he felt her horse de
scending into a valley, where cattle grazed and fields
of fledgling wheat and corn waved in the distance. At
last the horses came to a halt in a dusty yard, and as
Lucky sneezed and groaned, he caught sight of chick
ens scurrying about in a barnyard, and steps leading to a whitewashed house where two brown-and-white cat
tle dogs dozed on the porch. Then the vixen who had
captured him dismounted, unsheathed a rifle and
fired it into the air; she followed that with an earsplitting rebel yell that had the poor Hispanic man mutter
ing blasphemies.

Oh, God, what was next? A firing squad?

Even as his ears were still ringing from the rifle crack
and shriek, the dogs began to howl, and he heard the
thunder of running footsteps and watched a group of
people pour out of the house amid shouts and expos
tulations. This had to be the family she’d spoken about.
He spotted an attractive middle-aged couple in anti
quated clothing and four handsome young men in
farm attire—three were dark-haired, while the fourth and smallest was auburn-haired like his captor. Lum
bering along at the end of the entourage was a huge
old woman with a fiercely set, grumpy face—undoubt
edly Grandma of the antimacassars. He could not be
lieve the bizarre costumes these folks wore, or their primitive surroundings. Had he landed among some
oddball religious sect?

Even as he was contemplating this, one of the mon
grels raced over to sniff him and lick his nose. Lucky
mouthed an epithet, and the dog whined and scurried
away.

“Molly, what the hell is going on here?” demanded
the middle-aged man.

His captor patted him on the rump, making Lucky churn in impotent fury. “Daddy, I’ve won the contest.
I’ve brought home my bridegroom.”

“You’ve what?”

Everyone began talking at once then, and more
warm bodies surrounded Lucky. The second dog
licked his ear, while the plump old grandma leaned
over to peer at him with her garish features. “You’ve
brought home your bridegroom, eh? Why, this fella’s all
beat up, like he’s been to hell and back.”

“No, lady,” Lucky all but spat. “I’ve landed in hell.”

That comment caused several family members to
snicker. Then his captor’s father demanded, “Molly,
who is this man? Where did you find him, and why is
he lying hog-tied across your saddle?”

“His name is Lucky Lamont, Daddy, and I found him
in Haunted Gorge, just like you found Ma,” she de
clared proudly. “He tumbled over the ridge in Lila Lul
laby’s old parlor wagon, and he was already hog-tied,
all set to fetch home and marry.”