The Texan's Dream (16 page)

Luther examined Snort’s wound while H. B. poured whiskey alternately on the injury and down Snort’s throat.

Snort woke long enough to swallow and swear. When Kara appeared, the old man reached for her hand, seeming to need it for comfort.

She glanced at Jonathan for answers, but it was Luther who spoke.

“The bullet went right through his shoulder,” announced Luther. “All we got to do is stop the bleeding. Heat a knife.”

One of the cowhands slid a long bowie knife from his boot and shoved it handle-deep into the hot coals of the fireplace.

Jonathan glanced over in time to see Kara pale. Before the knife was ready, he moved to her side and drew her from the room. It was bad enough she would hear Snort scream and smell flesh burning. She didn’t need to see it, as well.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, spreading her hand over the blood on his coat.

“No.”

“The old man. Will he live?”

“He’ll live to invent a long story of today.” Jonathan covered her hand with his, trapping it against his chest. Had it only been hours ago that he’d warned her to stay away? It seemed like days.

“Will you be all right here?” He studied her eyes for the answer. She was young, not accustomed to this hard life.

“I’ll be fine. How can I help?”

The sparkle of a warrior flickered in her green eyes, and he had the same sense he’d had once before that she’d fight, no matter the odds.

“I’m taking several men with me.” He forced his mind to think of other things besides her, though his body wanted nothing more than to hold her. “We need to see if we can pick up the shooter’s trail before sunset.”

She nodded.

“Can you fire a gun?”

She shook her head.

“Well, I’ve got about ten minutes to teach you.”

And ten minutes was all he allowed. Snort was resting quietly in Angela’s care, and the men were ready to ride when Jonathan handed her two Colts.

“Fire a shot in the air if trouble comes. We’ll hear it. If necessary, level the weapon and defend yourself,” he ordered. “Let no harm near, Kara. I’m depending on you. Do you understand?”

“Aye,” she answered, thinking he was giving her the chance to stand and fight. The very chance her father wouldn’t give her. She would not let Jonathan down.

Kara stood alone at the doorway and watched them thunder out like an army. She helped Gideon close the gate. Operating on one crutch, he hopped his way toward the bunkhouse. “I’ll check the other gates,” he said. “Nothing larger than a squirrel can get in here once we’re closed up.”

Kara still didn’t feel secure. If trouble came, it would find Angela, who refused to touch a gun; Snort, who was injured and drunk; Gideon, who was crippled; and her. Oh, she must not forget the woman upstairs who thought she was Apache and who now had a knife and might kill them all if she got frightened.

Kara tried to think of something—of anything—else. She told herself that her father must have already received her letter. He could be coming for her at this very moment. But even if he’d left yesterday, or the day before, it might be too late to save her by the time he traveled halfway across the country.

She shoved one of the Colts Jonathan had given her into her right-hand pocket and began pacing around the fountain. Months ago she’d begged to be allowed to stay and fight, to defend her home. Now she’d been given that chance and she wished desperately there was a train she could catch.

In her imagination, she could almost see killers crawling over the walls of the fortress. Or maybe they were tunneling under. Maybe the McWimberlys had joined forces with whoever shot Snort? Maybe they were ten, twenty, a hundred strong by now.

She’d never been so frightened. Not even when her father shoved her on the train. She’d been a fool to think she’d be brave in a fight. All she wanted to do now was run and hide.

But she couldn’t. The others were depending on her.

Kara walked back into the dining room, picked up another Colt and put it into her left-hand pocket. Twelve bullets, she thought. If they were a hundred strong, she’d at least stop a dozen of them. Like a soldier, she marched back to the courtyard and began alternately watching the top of the wall and the bottom.

An hour later, she was exhausted from carrying the weapons around and around the yard. She went back to the house and found Snort lying on one of the long leather couches in the great room with his feet propped on the arm. He was singing songs she’d never heard before about “bedding down the dogies.” The bottle of whiskey was empty beside him.

Kara left Snort with Gideon and went to the kitchen. Angela stood at the counter, cutting vegetables and crying.

“Snort’s going to be all right,” Kara comforted. “I think he’ll be fine in a few days.”

Angela sniffed and attacked a carrot. “I know,” she said, “but they all blame Cooper, and I know he wouldn’t shoot Snort.”

Kara slipped onto her stool and listened. Anything was better than listening to her own imagination going wild.

“He’s a good man,” Angela continued, “I don’t know where he disappeared to, but there’s another answer besides him shooting at them. There has to be.”

Angela didn’t need to say more. Kara guessed all that she wasn’t saying.

EIGHTEEN

AS THE SUN FADED, THE AIR TURNED COLDER AT Catlin Headquarters. Kara pulled on Jonathan’s long wool coat that she’d first worn the day they met and continued her vigil at the front door.

All was quiet inside the house. Earlier, Kara heard Dawn’s baby crying, but the child must have finally fallen asleep. Snort was still passed out from the bottle of whiskey he’d downed. Gideon sat with him, keeping an eye on the wounded man. Angela had vanished before dark, as always, inside her little house.

Luther had ridden in an hour before saying Jonathan had sent him back to check on Snort, but Kara guessed it was more because the aging lawman couldn’t take the ride and the cold any longer. His bones had begun to knot like branches on a weathered tree.

“Want some supper, Miss Kara?” Luther asked from the doorway. He leaned on his cane heavily tonight. “Angela left plenty. I could keep watch out here if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No, thanks,” Kara answered.

The old man moved out into the night watching the sky, listening for any sound of the riders returning. “It sure is quiet out here at sunset. You can almost hear the stars being born.”

Kara pulled Jonathan’s coat tighter around her. “Back home, we lived so close to the mills that it was never quiet. No one had a clock. Our lives revolved around the whistles for the shift changes.”

“Where is home for you?” he asked politely as if not wanting to pry.

Kara hesitated, then realized no one here knew, or probably cared about her problems at home. The steel mills seemed a million miles away. “Pittsburgh.” She might as well have said China, for all he knew of the place. “My father had worked in the steel mills since he was sixteen. Back home, smoke fills the air, and sunsets are blocked by buildings.”

“You miss it?”

Kara surprised herself by saying, “Not as badly as I thought I would.”

Luther lowered his body to the stone wall framing the fountain. “I left home at sixteen, hungry for adventure. I went to Tennessee for a while, then Kansas and finally here. I was always trying to outrun civilization. Always looking for adventure.”

“And did you find it?” Kara sat down beside him.

Luther laughed. “I reckon I did. But in a way I guess I shut out more things than I welcomed. Raising a family, settling in one place, growing old with one woman by my side, those might have been the greatest adventures of them all. I closed myself off as completely as Angela does each night.”

Kara could barely see the comer of Angela’s little house. A light shown from her window. “Does she always leave at sunset?”

Luther nodded. “From sunset ’til dawn, she bolts her door. I don’t know that she’d come out even if the place were on fire.”

“But why?”

“Some say it’s because of her grandfather, Gideon. Thirty years ago Angela’s mother used to sneak out at night to meet a lover. The boy, tall for his age, was killed one winter night by a man on guard who thought he was a rustler. Angela’s young mother was heartbroken and lived just long enough to give birth to Angela. Some say she was too young to have a child. Others claim that she just plain didn’t want to go on living. The boy was a neighbor’s son and probably wouldn’t have married her anyway, but she believed what he told her.”

Luther straightened his leg out carefully before continuing. “From the time Angela was little, Gideon filled her head with stories of demons who roam the night. After Gideon’s wife died and they moved into the bunkhouse, Miss Victoria didn’t think it was proper for a little girl to sleep in the bunkhouse even if she did have a space blanketed off from the men. So, Gideon built Angela that little house with windows too small to climb out. For years he bolted the door from the outside every night. But as she grew from a pretty young girl to an old maid, he finally moved the bolt to the inside. But if you ask me, his stories and warnings locked her in more than any bolt could.”

Kara stared at the long, thin windows of Angela’s house and the pieces of her story began to fit together. “The boy was Wells’s son, wasn’t he?”

“Yep,” Luther answered. “That was the start of the bad blood between the Catlins and the Wellses. Strange thing is everyone agreed when Angela was born that we’d never mention her to Wells, or anyone outside the ranch, for that matter. She was dark like her mother. No one would know that she wasn’t part of Gideon’s family who came from Mexico City years ago. But as she grew, the extreme height of the Wells came through. None of her kin are over five six or seven, but, much as Gideon hates it, Angela has her father’s blood, as well.”

A silence fell between Luther and Kara. She thought about what he’d told her. Now that she knew the history, it seemed very unlikely that the prowler from several nights ago had been Angela’s lover.

From far away, like the sound of distant thunder, she heard horses coming. Three shots rang out in the night.

Luther hurried to his feet. “That’s the signal to open the gate after dark.”

Before he could move more than a few steps, Gideon limped from the house. Between the two of them, they managed to get the gate open before the men rode in.

Kara stood frozen in the shadows, not knowing what to do as horses danced in the courtyard and men shouted. The place had gone from calm to chaos in the twinkling of a star.

Jonathan’s voice rang above them all. “Luther, get the supplies. We’ve got another man hurt.”

She watched as men carried a body into the house. When the light from the foyer washed over them, Kara gasped. “Cooper!” The new man’s face was streaked in blood. Kara fought down a scream.

Jonathan brushed his hand across her shoulder and turned her toward the house. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, not trusting her voice. She’d traveled half a country to escape violence and somehow it found her.

“Luther may need help with the doctoring.” Jonathan’s voice was low, but hurried. “Can you handle the job?”

Kara didn’t meet his gaze. “Aye,” she answered as she pulled away from his warmth and followed Luther and the others into the great room.

Luther’s mind was still sharp, full of the knowledge he’d gained from countless battles, but his hands were no longer steady. As the night aged, he needed Kara to do the work while he gave instructions.

Cooper had a deep gash across his forehead that plowed an inch into his hairline. The wound had to be cleaned and stitched, then doctored to prevent infection. Unlike Snort’s wound, Luther said it would be better to let Cooper’s injury bleed. The man was in no danger of bleeding to death, and the more blood that seeped from the wound the less chance of poisoning.

Kara did everything Luther told her while she listened to the men talking. They’d found Cooper’s horse first, but it took them an hour to find the man. He must have tried to make it back to headquarters, but tumbled from the mount. The trail of blood indicated he’d crawled a quarter of a mile before passing out.

There was now no question about Cooper firing the shots at Jonathan and Snort. All guessed that, of the two shots fired in the rocks, one hit Cooper, the other Snort.

The men all came close, one at a time, and patted Cooper on the arm as though silently apologizing for doubting his loyalty. He was no longer the new man, he was one of them.

Though his hair was gray, his face looked more lined by the sun than age. Kara hadn’t taken the time to look at him earlier. Now that she did, she realized he was a man not out of his forties. If his hand hadn’t been crippled, he might have served as a sheriff for another ten years, maybe longer.

Cooper mumbled as Kara changed the bandage across his forehead. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he called Angela’s name.

When she leaned closer, he whispered, “Tell her I can’t come to her window tonight. Tell her I tried to make it back.”

Kara glanced up. No one else had heard his words. “I’ll tell her,” she whispered.

Ten minutes later, as the men ate supper in the dining room, Kara slipped out the kitchen door and ran through the barren winter garden to Angela’s house.

Kara tapped on the door. No answer. Then she circled to the high windows running along the side of the house and tapped again.

The window opened a few inches.

“Angela?” Kara whispered.

There was no answer, but she knew the old maid must be on the other side of the opening. “Angela, I came to tell you Cooper’s all right. He’s hurt, but he made it back, and he wasn’t the one who shot Snort.”

“I knew that,” came an angry voice from the other side. “I never for one moment thought he was.”

“Do you want to come see him? He’s in the great room resting now.”

“No.” Angela’s voice softened a little. “I’ll die if I step foot out at night. My grandfather says it is written in the stars since my birth. I have to stay here.”

“But you’d like to see Cooper,” Kara tried again.

“He’s been very kind to me. He’s the only one who stops by to thank me for the meals I send over to the bunkhouse and sometimes he stands where you are now and talks to me.”

“I’m sure he’d like to see you now. He’s in some pain. Having you to talk to might help.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I told you, I’ll die.”

Kara guessed how Angela’s imagination, since childhood, had built on the fear her grandfather planted. The woman wasn’t just afraid, she believed her words.

“Tell him I’ll see him in the morning. I’ll sit with him then.”

“I’ll tell him.” Kara fought back tears. Fear bolted Angela inside, and there was nothing she could do to coax her out.

Kara walked back to the house. She sat by Cooper until he finally came to enough to understand her words. Then, while no one was listening, Kara leaned close and whispered, “She wants to come, Cooper. But she’s afraid. She says she’ll see you at dawn.”

He nodded. “I know. I’ll wait.”

He took a long breath and added, “Miss, she ain’t as cranky as she lets on.”

“I know,” Kara answered, wondering what these two found to talk about.

Luther’s cane tapped on the floor, announcing his presence. “How’s our patient?”

“Resting,” Kara said. “As you should be. It’s late. I’ll sit up with Snort and Cooper for a while.”

“No, let me,” Luther mumbled as he fell back into a comfortable chair between the two wounded men. “At my age, my body sleeps even when I’m awake. They’re both resting quietly and out of any danger except fever. I’ll take this shift”

Kara didn’t argue. She washed her hands in the basin set up by the windows, added another log to the fire and left the room.

She thought to go straight to bed, but as she passed Jonathan’s room his door opened.

He looked as surprised to see her as she was to see him. For a moment they stared at one another, neither knowing what to say.

For once, Jonathan broke the silence. “I was just going up to the widow’s walk to look out. Want to come with me?”

She nodded and followed.

Once they climbed the ladder and were alone on the walk, Jonathan pulled the trapdoor closed so that no light came from the house. “I know I can’t see anything on these moonless nights, but I keep hoping. My men are being shot, and there doesn’t seem to be a thing I can do about it. I don’t even see the why of it all.”

Kara listened, knowing he needed to reason out his own thoughts.

“I think the first shot today was meant for me, but ricocheted off the rocks and hit Snort. Then, Cooper must have surprised the shooter and taken the second shot. But why didn’t the man behind the rocks take aim a third or fourth time? He could have finished us all off.” Jonathan paced back and forth in the little space. “From the tracks and the few words Cooper said when we found him, the shooter must have panicked and ran.”

Jonathan slammed his fist against the railing. “It doesn’t make sense. If he wanted to kill us, why didn’t he finish the job? Cooper was down, half-blinded by blood. Snort was hit, and I stood in plain sight.”

“Maybe the man shooting didn’t want you dead, only frightened.”

Jonathan looked her direction as he leaned on the railing. “That’s the only answer I can come up with. But what could be gained from trying to scare me off? He must not know me very well to think I’d run so easily.”

Kara watched him closely. “What does frighten you, Jonathan?”

He faced her. “It’s good to hear you finally call me Jonathan. I was beginning to think I’d be Mr. Catlin to you until the day you left.”

Kara smiled. “You’re avoiding the question. What frightens you?”

“Nothing.” His smoky stare watched her closely even in the moonlight. “Nothing at all,” he whispered.