by Candace Camp
“Are you all right, ma’am?”
“Of course I am.” What was the matter with these people? Couldn’t they see she wasn’t the one who was wounded? She didn’t know that her face was ghostly white and her eyes huge. Nor did she realize that the men took her cool competence for shock that would momentarily be followed by screaming hysterics. She was accustomed to dealing with people who expected her to be calm and in charge.
She turned back to Slater. His eyes were open, and they didn’t yet have the dull glaze that forewarned a loss of consciousness. “Are you hit anywhere else?”
Slater shook his head. “Till just a minute ago, I’d forgotten I was hit there.”
“Most people would be aware that they were bleeding,” Victoria responded tartly.
Slater’s lips twitched up into something resembling a grin. “You’re a hard one.”
Victoria’s eyebrows rose in an expression of disdain. “I’m as hard as I have to be. Most women are.”
He shook his head slightly. “Not like you.”
“Well, I’m not a member of that criminal’s gang, if that’s what you’re trying to imply again.”
“I’m not.” Slater had spoken before in the heat of anger, but he knew that what he had said wasn’t true. It had been obvious that she hadn’t expected the gang to come riding in--after all, he had had to pull her down to keep her from getting shot. Slater could also tell that she was shaken by the sight of the sheriff’s dead body and his own blood, despite her calm efficiency. She had a cool head, but she wasn’t indifferent or inured to bloodshed. And she had urged him to follow Brody’s gang. She wanted him to get the other girl back. Slater was still confused about her, but he was sure she wasn’t in cahoots with Sam Brody.
The crowd around them grew with each passing moment. A man muscled his way through the onlookers to Victoria and Slater. He stopped short and stared at the sheriff’s still body. “Oh, my. Oh, my.” He looked vaguely around him, then back at the sheriff. He sat down heavily on the steps and rested his head in his hands. Victoria studied him. He was young, probably no more than twenty-two, and badly shaken. He wore the badge of a deputy sheriff.
Victoria’s heart sank. She had hoped that the deputy would follow the gang that had taken Amy, but it was obvious that he was not a person to take charge. And the lawman beside her was shot. He couldn’t lead a posse.
What was she to do? She had to get Amy back, and quickly. It made her shake inside even to think of what those men would do to her sweet innocent cousin. She remembered how terrified Amy had been when she first came to live with them. She was repulsed and frightened by any sort of violence. Even angry voices raised in a quarrel were enough to send Amy scurrying away. She would be horribly frightened. By the time they got through with her, even if they didn’t kill her, Amy might be a mindless wreck.
Victoria shivered, and her hand trembled on the bandage she was holding. Slater’s eyes darted to her face. He reached out with his good hand and took hold of her arm. “Are you going to faint?”
Victoria shook her head. “No.”
She looked at him. Her eyes were huge and a deep, fathomless blue, the kind of eyes that could pull a man’s heart right out of him. She appeared scared to death, and Slater found himself wanting to put his arm around her and promise that he would make everything all right. Good God, he thought. In the space of a few minutes he’d gone from wanting to throttle her to wanting to reassure her. Loss of blood must really be making him weak.
“I just realized,” Victoria told him, “that you’re my only hope for finding Amy. And you’re wounded. You can’t go after them.”
“The hell I can’t. I got shot in the arm, that’s all. It’s not even my gun hand.”
Victoria cocked a disbelieving eyebrow, but before she could express her opinion of his ability to ride in his condition, there was a rustling in the crowd behind her, and she turned to see the doctor elbowing his way toward them. He knelt quickly beside the sheriff and felt for a pulse that he didn’t really expect to find. Then he turned to Slater and Victoria.
When he saw Victoria, his eyebrows rose. “You again?” Victoria nodded. She still held the bandage on Slater’s arm. The doctor gently removed her hand, then peeled off the blood-soaked cloth. “It looks like you did a decent job of stemming the bleeding.” He ripped away the sleeve and examined Slater’s arm. “No sign of an exit. I’ll have to go in and get the bullet out.”
“Damn.” Slater released a breath. Victoria could see the beads of sweat beginning to form on his forehead. He might have forgotten his wound in the heat of battle, but he was doubtless fully aware of it now.
“You’ll have to come to my office. I’ll ask some of these men to carry you.”
Slater shook his head. “My arm’s shot, not my legs. I can walk there.”
“Don’t be a fool. You don’t have to be a hero.”
“No hero. Being carried will jostle me more than walking.”
“You have a point there—if you can make it to the office without passing out.”
“I’ll get there. Just help me up.”
The doctor gripped Slater under his right arm and lifted, and Slater stood up. His color turned even paler.
“I’ll help.” Victoria stood up also. “You can lean on me. I’m strong.”
“So I noticed.” Slater curled his arm around her shoulders. She fit very naturally there.
Dr. Bauer’s office was three blocks away, and Slater felt every step of it. At first his arm was around Victoria more for balance than support, but by the time they reached the door of the office, he was leaning heavily against her, his fingers digging into her flesh. Victoria suspected she would have bruises on her arm the next morning.
She glanced up at his face. It was drawn with pain and covered by a sheen of perspiration. She looked at his arm; the wound was bleeding again.
Together she and the doctor helped Slater into the office and onto the operating table in the back room. Slater lay back with a sigh. Dr. Bauer turned toward Victoria. “Since you’re here, you might as well help.”
Victoria nodded. She wanted some work—anything—to keep her mind off what might be happening to Amy.
“Swab off the wound while I prepare the chloroform.” He gestured toward the washbowl and pitcher on the other side of the room.
Victoria found a washcloth, poured water into the bowl and returned to the table to clean Slater’s arm. He had been lying in a half-conscious state, but he came to with an oath when Victoria touched his arm. He glared at her. “What are you still doing here?”
“Helping Dr. Bauer,” Victoria replied with ta falsely sweet smile. “He knew you’d be such an ornery patient it would take more than one person to handle you.”
“Why’d the doc say ‘You again?’ when he saw you?”
“What? Oh. Because we met earlier today. My cousin…” Her voice faltered almost imperceptibly on the word. “My cousin and I and our chaperone were on the stage to San Antonio, but my chaperone fell as she was getting off and broke her leg. I helped the doctor set it.”
Slater winced as Victoria cleaned the wound, and his words came out a trifle unevenly. “Sounds like you’re a dangerous woman to be around.” His breath hissed between his teeth “Ouch! Damn, lady, what are you trying to do?”
“Clean you up a little. I’m sure that’s quite a task.”
She had a slicing tongue on her, Slater thought. A man would be a fool to want her, even with those huge blue eyes and that porcelain skin. Thank God he was in no shape to make a fool of himself right now.
The doctor returned, carrying a small bottle and a pad of cotton. Slater narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What’s that?”
“Chloroform. So you won’t feel the pain.”
“No. I don’t want to be knocked out.”
“Captain Slater, be reasonable. I have to probe for that bullet. It’s buried in your arm. If you’re conscious, there wil
l be a great deal of pain.”
“I’ve had a bullet dug out of my leg with nothing to kill the pain but a few slugs of Tennessee sour mash. I survived that.”
Dr. Bauer looked pained. “I’m afraid I don’t recommend Tennessee sour mash as an anesthetic.”
“I’ve had chloroform, too. It’ll knock me out for hours, and when I wake up, I’ll be sick as a dog. It will put me out of commission too long.”
“Exactly what do you think you would do in those hours?” Dr. Bauer asked in the tone of one humoring a madman.
“Find Sam Brody.”
The doctor stared, then glanced at Victoria. She shrugged.
“But, Captain Slater, that is unthinkable,” Dr. Bauer told him. “You’ve been shot.”
“It’s happened to me before.”
“Obviously. Well, whatever the medical practices you have been used to, here you will receive the best in modern care. I promise you, I have a light hand and will render you unconscious for the shortest possible time.” Dr. Bauer placed the pad over the bottle and upended it. Slater reached out his free hand for the bottle. Dr. Bauer gave Victoria a significant look. “Miss Stafford, I require your assistance.”
Victoria nodded and came around the table to grab Slater’s good arm with both hands. She leaned on it with her full strength, pressing it back down to the table. Dr. Bauer stepped in nimbly and placed the pad over Slater’s nose and mouth, muffling Slater’s roar.
Slater’s eyes blinked, and the strength went out of his arm. The last thing he saw before he slid into darkness was Victoria’s face. “Beautiful,” he mumbled, and closed his eyes.
Dr. Bauer stepped back. “I’ve given him a light dosage, so we must work quickly. Please hold his arm still to make sure he doesn’t twitch in his sleep.”
He picked up a scalpel and a pair of long tweezers and began to explore the wound. Victoria held the injured arm firmly and watched the doctor find and neatly extract the dented bullet. Triumphantly, he held it up, then dropped it into a pan.
They both looked down at the sleeping man on the table.
“They say Captain Slater is one of the best there is,” the doctor commented.
“The best what?”
Dr. Bauer looked nonplussed by the question. “Why, one of the best Texas Rangers, I suppose. But, I forget, you are not from here. You know nothing about the excitement this Slater has caused in our little town.”
Victoria shook her head. “Something to do with Sam Brody, I presume.”
“That’s right. You know who Brody is?”
“I imagine everyone in Texas does. He’s robbed banks and stagecoaches for years, but they’ve never been able to catch him.”
“Yes. Well, Captain Slater has been after him for years. And he captured him the day before yesterday. Right here in Santa Clara.” The doctor beamed, proud of the town’s sudden rise to fame.
The doctor seemed inclined to talk more about the exciting events of the past few days, but Victoria washed up and made her escape as soon as she could. She had no use for the doctor’s stories right now. She had to learn what was being done to find Amy.
She supposed she should hurry back to the hotel and tell Mrs. Childers what had happened. After all the time they had been gone, the woman was probably frantic with worry. But Victoria didn’t have time to waste. Instead, she returned to the sheriff’s office.
Inside she found the young deputy she had seen earlier, an older deputy who seemed equally ineffectual, and several of the men from the town, discussing the possibility of a posse. When she entered, the men turned to look at her, and all conversation stopped.
“Please, go ahead,” she told them. “I want to hear what you plan to do to find Amy.”
“Who?”
“My cousin. The woman who was kidnapped.”
“Oh.” Several pairs of eyes shifted away from her.
Finally one of the older men said, “Ma’am, I’m real sorry about your cousin. We’ll do our best to find her.”
“I’m sure you will. What are your plans?”
The man looked a little taken aback. “Uh, I know you aren’t from around here…”
“No. We were traveling on the stage to San Antonio.”
“Maybe we could get in touch with your father. Or an uncle who could—”
“I plan to send a telegram to my father as soon as I’m through here. He’ll come immediately, of course, and he’ll do everything he can to help you find Amy. But it will take him a day to ride here, and we have to do something immediately. The colder the gang’s trail gets, the harder it will be to find Amy.”
“Well, yes, ma’am, of course we’re planning on setting out right away. Just as soon as we talk to the Ranger.”
“Captain Slater? He’s out cold and will be for some time.”
“He’s one of the best.” The older deputy echoed the doctor’s earlier sentiment. Victoria decided that was a phrase she could grow tired of easily. “We’ll be better off getting his advice before we do anything. We’re all agreed on that.”
Victoria looked around the room. It was just as she had feared when she first saw the young deputy. With the sheriff dead and Slater laid up with a gunshot wound, there was no leadership for a posse. This bunch would never be able to find Brody’s gang, let alone bring them in.
She would simply have to do it herself.
Chapter Three
When Brody had flung Amy to the ground, she had been stunned. A split second later, the guns had opened fire, roaring above and around her, and she had frozen in terror. Brody’s warm weight over her seemed like a safe shelter, and she’d curled up beneath him, almost mindless with fright. Amy always hated the sound of guns, but this sudden explosion was worse than ordinary gunshots. It went on and on, and there were screams and shouts and horses stamping and whinnying. It was like the nightmares she had as a child, scary and senseless, filled with violence, noise and confusion. She wanted to scream, but her throat closed up, and she couldn’t. The fear was like a blackness wrapping itself around her.
Then the man’s weight was off her, and she was exposed to the danger. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could only lie there in blank terror. He loomed above her for an instant, dark and large, but somehow he wasn’t frightening. What was frightening was that he had taken away her protection.
He bent down and jerked her up with him into the midst of the confusion. He tossed her onto a horse and climbed up after her. Amy didn’t struggle; the thought never entered her mind. She was too confused, too numb with horror and fear. She was afraid not only of the present battle, but of a battle from years in the past. She wasn’t just the woman she was now, but a little girl, too, cowering in the cellar, hearing the unfamiliar cries of Comanches, the oaths of her father, and the deafening gunfire of three people shooting from inside the small cabin. And the screams. She heard the screams.
Brody’s arms went around her taut body, holding her on the horse and bracing her against his hard chest. They raced away from the noise and the confusion, and Amy clung tightly to the front of his shirt, burying her face against him.
The gunfire receded, and soon there was only the thunder of hooves, and an occasional shouted word. Slowly Amy’s body began to relax. But she didn’t try to move, nor did she release her death grip on Brody’s shirt. There was something infinitely soothing about leaning against him, smelling the tart masculine odor of horse, sweat and tobacco, feeling his strength enfolding her, hearing the steady rhythm of his heart beneath her ear. It made her think of her childhood, one of the few memories she had. It had been raining, and she had been riding like this, cradled in a large, dark-haired man’s arms. Daddy. That had been warmth and safety. That had been love.
Amy snuggled into him instinctively, seeking shelter, and gradually the blind panic began to recede. She realized, with a kind of amazement, that she had been stolen from Victoria by this man. She didn’t know who he was, or why on earth he w
ould have taken her.
From the day she had been brought to the Stafford ranch, she had been cosseted and protected from anything that was strong, blunt, or crude. To her family, the ranch hands, and even the townspeople, she had remained a child—too fanciful, too delicate, too different, to be treated as a woman. She had rarely been away from the warm cocoon of the ranch and the town of Bennett, and so she had never run into any other attitude. Even the rough young men never tried anything with her. She was too strange, they said, not all there. At dances, only the old men asked her to dance, and they did so with the same air as when they danced with a child, avuncular and sexless. Men didn’t flirt with Amy, didn’t smile at her with a certain knowledge in their eyes, didn’t turn their heads to watch her walk by. Amy saw men do that with Victoria, of course, but she had never experienced that sort of attention herself.
She knew too much about animals not to realize how their young came into being, and she had wondered how such things applied to humans. But when she had asked Mrs. Donnelly about it, the housekeeper had stared at her with such horror that Amy knew she had again said something bizarre and wrong, something no normal person would talk about. So she had quickly shut her mouth and left the kitchen, and she had been careful not to speak of such things again. And, though she had been curious at times about what went on between a man and a woman, she had absorbed the accepted view of herself as abnormal too well to even think of such things happening to her. And never would she have dreamed that that act, vague as it was in her mind, might be forced upon a woman.
So Amy was not racked, as Victoria was, with visions of Brody and his gang raping her. She only wondered why he would want her with him.
At the moment Brody was wondering much the same thing. He had acted on impulse, weighing nothing in the split second in which he had made his decision, knowing only that he could not let this woman go. But now his mind was working, and he knew it had been a foolish thing to do. She would slow them down. She was a tiny thing, delicate as a bird. She couldn’t ride as hard and as long over the rough terrain of the Texas hill country at they would have to.
