by Laurie Paige
In fact, he had to get home. He had to protect his girls from the polecats who’d been hiding cattle on his land.
He knew who they were.
His mouth went dry at the thought of them at the ranch with Molly and Lass. Fear lent him strength and he pushed to his feet. He’d make it back if he had to crawl.
Setting his teeth against a groan, he climbed and clawed his way out of the arroyo. At the rim, he rested against a boulder, which was still warm from the sun. His breath rushed from him in harsh rasps of sound. He hoped the snake wasn’t near.
Across the river, he could hear the lowing of cattle as they settled in for the night. Tisdale cattle. He wondered how many the rustlers had stolen so far.
Rising, he opened a button on his shirt and slipped his left hand inside. It wasn’t much of a sling, but it was the best he could do. He had a five-hour walk ahead of him before he’d get home to his family.
His girls. Molly and Lass.
Molly couldn’t settle. She surfed through the channels until she couldn’t stand the noise. She stopped on a nature show, then muted the sound.
For a long minute, she listened to the night wind blowing around the house. Tonight it seemed especially lonesome.
Recalling last night, she felt the ready heat rush to her skin. She couldn’t believe it was possible to love someone so much. She’d told him again and again during the hours before they fell asleep.
A smile briefly touched her lips. She couldn’t believe Sam would actually sing to a woman, either, but he had. To her.
She hugged the memory to her. He had so many endearing traits…
A noise had her springing to her feet. No, it was just the nightly serenade from the coyotes beginning. She went into the kitchen and made a pot of tea. Going to the door, she peered into the dark.
The moon was bright and almost full, although the light was far from being as bright as day, as some folks said. Shadows lay over the land in sooty blackness. Daylight shadows were blue or lavender, sometimes purple, but not night shadows. They were stark in their absence of color.
She shivered and folded her arms across her waist. Come home, she silently demanded. Come home now.
The pickup the men owned was gone from its usual place next to the bunkhouse. A feeling of being utterly alone washed over her. Something felt wrong. She hesitated, then opened the door.
In her slippers, she silently crossed the gravel, feeling sharp edges through the soles of her shoes. She went into the bunkhouse and flipped on the light.
It was empty. Not just empty of the men, but bare. They’d taken their things with them, including their saddles, which usually hung from sawhorses in the corner.
That’s what had bothered her. Their saddles had been under the tarp that covered their pickup bed. The saddle horns had formed identical humps, which she hadn’t recognized at the time.
They didn’t intend to return.
She ran back to the house and called Bill Merritt. No answer. She tried the sheriff’s office. The dispatcher said he was on night duty and out on patrol. Molly left a voice mail for him to call her whenever he returned, no matter what time.
She put on a pot of strong coffee and dressed in jeans and a black shirt. If Sam didn’t come in soon, she was going to start a search. Fear caught her by the throat.
Oh, Sam, please make it…
Who could she call to take care of Lass? Tiffany. No. She was forty minutes away. Lass’s grandmother was closer.
She went to the phone, knowing Sam would be probably be furious with her for calling. “Elsie? This is Molly,” she said when the phone was answered. “Could you come over, please? I need your help.”
Elsie Tisdale arrived in less than thirty minutes. Her husband drove her over. “What’s happened?” he asked.
“Sam hasn’t come home. I’m worried about him.” She offered them coffee and refilled her own cup. “I’m going to try Bill again and see if he’s in.”
She left another voice mail for the deputy, reminding him to call as soon as he came in. She knew the sheriff wouldn’t mount a search without evidence of something wrong until Sam had been gone for twenty-four hours. She doubted a gut feeling would be considered valid evidence.
“It’s only a little after nine,” William Tisdale noted, glancing at the kitchen clock. “Or does he keep banker’s hours?”
She rounded on him. “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk. If you don’t have anything important to say, then keep it to yourself. I invited Elsie here in case I decide to go look for Sam or have to take him to the hospital when I find him. You can leave at any time.”
Mr. Tisdale’s eyes widened at the reprimand. A flush colored his face. Molly didn’t care if she’d made him angry. She was damn angry herself.
“Why do you think something’s wrong?” Elsie asked. She took a seat at the table and cupped her hands around the warm mug.
“The hands have left. Cleared out,” she clarified. “I think they were the ones behind the rustling. If Sam caught them, he could have been hurt.”
Her imagination provided pictures of him lying alone and bleeding someplace where they would never think to look. He could be dead…
No, not Sam. He was too vital, too dear to her heart. She couldn’t lose him. Their marriage had hardly begun.
“He can’t be dead,” she repeated in a hoarse whisper.
Mr. Tisdale sank heavily into a chair. He licked his lips, opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. “It’s my fault. If he’s dead, it’s my fault.”
“Were you in with the rustlers…with Tom and Sandy?” It hurt to say their names. She had trusted them. Tom had kept Lass for them the night before. Surely they weren’t guilty.
So why would they leave without a word of farewell?
They hadn’t looked at her at supper. They’d been silent. She’d thought the tension was from her, because of Sam. Now she thought they had contributed. They must have known Sam wasn’t coming in. Oh, dear God…
“No,” Mr. Tisdale answered her. “But I started it. I paid one of my men to spread the rumors about Sam.”
“Why?” she asked. Her voice shook, she was so angry. She reined her emotions in. “Why do you want to ruin him?”
“Because he had everything and I had nothing. He’d saved his money and paid off the mortgage on his ranch. We’re going to lose the land.” He raised haunted eyes to her. “Land that’s been in my family for generations.”
“So has Sam’s.” She refused to heed the pity that formed in her. People made choices. They had to live with the results.
“Yes. I hated it that he could come back, take over and pull this place out of the fire. I was losing out no matter what I did. I thought he would help me, but he refused. I thought, when he and Elise married, he’d be like a son, but he wasn’t.”
Molly stared at the older man. He seemed to be talking to himself, and the voice was one of defeat. He was giving up… on his ranch… on life…
“Sam would have helped,” she said, totally certain in her estimation of her husband, “if you’d been honest with him. You tried to make it sound as if you were doing him a favor. He knew you weren’t. Trust has to be earned.”
He nodded his head. Elsie reached out and touched her husband’s hand, lying idle on the table. She looked at him in sorrow. Molly spared a moment’s pity for both of them. They’d made a lot of mistakes.
She paced to the window. Across the meadow she saw a horse silhouetted in the moonlight. It walked toward the stable. She realized something was on its back. A saddle, perhaps. No, larger than that. A man, lying over the horse’s neck.
She rushed outside to meet the gelding at the paddock gate.
The big roan stopped by Molly and nuzzled her shoulder. He seemed to be asking for help. On his back, Sam clutched a handful of mane as if it were a lifeline.
“Sam, can you hear me?” she asked, laying a hand on his shoulder. She felt the dampness on his shirt and rubbed her fingers together
. Sniffing, she detected the salty tang of blood. Her heart lurched painfully and started pounding.
“Molly,” he gasped. “Watch out. Rustlers … here.”
“They’ve gone,” she assured him, her tone dry. “They took off right after supper. Can you get down?”
He slid from the gelding with a groan of pain. She put her arms around him and held him upright.
“I’m all right. Let’s get to the house.”
“Hold on to me,” she ordered, fearing he’d topple over.
“Yes, darling,” he said meekly.
Relief made her dizzy. “Now I know you’re going to be all right. You’re making fun of me.”
She guided him across the gravel driveway to the back door. Elsie held the door open for them and closed it after they were safely inside. Mr. Tisdale was on the phone.
“I don’t give a damn if he’s entertaining the president. I want to talk to the sheriff. Where is he?”
Molly guessed he was trying to rouse the sheriff into going after the two thieves. She led Sam down the hall to their room.
After he was seated on the chair, she unfastened his shirt and examined him. There was a bloody slash along the fleshy part of his shoulder.
“What caused this?” she asked.
“Snake,” he said, grimacing as she probed the spot. “I fell off my horse.” He explained briefly.
“The skin is torn.” The anger burned as keen-edged as a sword in her. Because of the rustling, her man had been hurt, and she wasn’t going to forget it. “The wound looks clean.”
“Yeah. Help me get out of these clothes. I need a shower. Then you can bandage it,” he added at her protest.
“We have to get you to the hospital. You might need a couple of stitches.”
“I think we have some butterfly bandages.” He gestured toward his feet. “Help me with these boots.”
She pulled them off as gently as she could. She saw bruises along his side. “You’re black-and-blue.”
He quirked a sardonic grin her way. “Yeah, living color.” He pushed to his feet and tried to unfasten his jeans with one hand. “I was lucky to catch up with the gelding later. He’d stayed close. Where are the hands?”
“Gone,” she informed him. “They lit out after supper with all their gear.”
“Good. I won’t have to shoot them.”
“You knew it was them?”
“Suspected it when you found those tire marks. Today I found the place where they worked.”
“Here, let me.” She pulled the snap and tugged the zipper down. “I trusted them. Tom stayed with Lass. She loved him.”
“Yeah, well, just goes to show you—you can’t trust your best friend nowadays.”
“Why did they hang around here until after supper? They must have known you knew about them. Why didn’t they take off as soon as they got back to the house?”
“They didn’t want to arouse your suspicions, I assume. Maybe they were waiting to see if I’d caught on, then chickened out and decided to leave. Maybe they wanted your company and a home-cooked meal one more time. Tom was sweet on you and Lass.” He smiled as if he found the idea amusing.
“I know,” she said sadly. After pushing the pants down, she told him to step out.
He did, laying one hand on her head for balance. “I’ll have to watch you. Always trying to get a man out of his pants.”
She looked up at him. Something in his eyes gave her pause. She shook her head. He was hurt and vulnerable right now. What she saw was gratitude for her help.
“I’ll get the shower started.” She dashed into the bathroom and adjusted the spray to a comfortable warmth.
Sam followed her. He’d finished undressing. A sigh escaped him when he stepped under the water.
“Wait. I’ll come in with you.” She stripped as quickly as she could and stepped into the shower.
Sam leaned against the tile wall, his eyes closed. He looked so utterly weary. A wave of tenderness washed over her with the cascading of the water down her back. Along with it grew a fierce protective anger on his behalf.
Soaping her hands, she washed him carefully, checking his body for scrapes and bruises as she did. Other than the graze on his shoulder and the bruise on his side, he didn’t appear to have any other injuries. She found the bump on his head when she washed his hair. The anger rekindled.
Sam touched the frown lines between her eyes. “Don’t look so fierce. You make me nervous.”
“It makes me angry that you were hurt.”
“Make me feel better,” he suggested. He pulled her against him and kissed her.
The passion surprised her. “You…we can’t,” she whispered when he kissed down her neck. “The Tis-dales are here. You’re injured.” Otherwise, she’d have taken everything he offered.
He gave a brief laugh. “Don’t I know it. But I’m not dead. Tomorrow I’ll be as good as new. Right now, you’d better get me to bed before I fall on my face.”
She dried him off, then wrapped a towel around her and led him to bed. She rubbed antibiotic ointment on his wound and taped a gauze square over it. He ran a finger along her skin just above the towel. “Stop that,” she ordered, smiling.
After tucking him in, she dressed again, combed her hair and, after checking him one more time, headed for the kitchen.
Bill Merritt had arrived. “Tisdale told me an interesting tale. He thinks your ranch hands saw the main chance when he spread the rumors about Sam rustling cattle. They decided to make the story true, thinking they’d get the benefit and Sam would get the blame.”
She sank into a chair and pushed her damp hair back from her face. “It looks that way. They left tonight with all their gear in their truck, so I don’t guess they mean to come back.”
“How’s Sam? What happened to him?”
She repeated the story she’d pieced together while she’d washed her husband and taken care of his injuries.
“A rattlesnake?” Bill whistled at her nod. “He’s lucky to be alive. By the way, we have an all-points bulletin out on the pickup, also your cattle truck.”
She looked questioningly at him.
“It’s missing. I figure one of them is driving it, loaded with the cattle they stole. If it’s spotted, we want to follow them and see who’s buying.”
“Catch the source, huh?” Tisdale chipped in. He looked pretty grim.
Molly glanced at the clock. After eleven.
Elsie followed her gaze. “I suppose there’s nothing more we can do tonight. It’s time we were getting home.” She stood and looked expectantly at her husband.
William seemed startled by her decisive manner.
To Molly, Elsie seemed younger and more energetic than when they’d first met. Tonight she’d dressed in blue slacks and a white shirt with a blue scarf around her neck. She wore sapphires in her ears and a matching ring on her right hand.
Perhaps the woman had recovered her spirit. Love could do that to a person, and Elsie certainly loved Lass.
“We’ll need a statement from you,” Bill told the older man, “on your part in all this.”
Tisdale started to argue, then stopped at a look from Elsie. “I’ll come down to the station tomorrow.”
“Some of your men might be involved,” the deputy went on, thinking aloud about the case. “We’ll have to check that out.”
Again William appeared to want to argue. He heaved a deep breath, his mouth settling into grim lines. He may have been handsome once, but now he looked tired and frayed around the edges. His anger at Sam had disappeared in the face of the problems he’d caused. She wondered if he’d be arrested as the instigator of the crime.
Molly walked them to the door. She kissed Elsie’s cheek. “Thank you for coming.”
“I’d like to come back. Anytime you need a babysitter, I’m only a phone call away. I hope you’ll let me.”
“Of course.” She looked at Mr. Tisdale. “Thank you for coming tonight.”
He flushed. “
I’m a damn fool,” he said. “You can tell Sam I said that.”
She smiled.” You can count on it.’
After they left, Bill lingered while he drank the coffee. He had until midnight before he was off duty. Molly politely kept him company, but she wished he’d leave. She wanted to go to her husband.
“Well, one thing for sure—Sam won’t have to worry about his father-in-law anymore,” Bill commented.
“Do you think he’s seen the error of his ways?”
“I don’t know about that, but when this comes out, Tisdale will be ruined in this community. Sam’s name will be cleared.”
Chapter Thirteen
Molly woke the next morning to a loud banging. She sat straight up in bed and looked around wildly.
“Someone’s at the door,” Sam said, pushing the covers back. “I hope they have a damn good reason for waking us up.” He groaned when he rose from the bed.
She noted the bruise on his side had spread roughly into the size of a soccer ball. “You’re lucky you didn’t break something when you fell.”
“Yeah, good thing I took most of the fall on my head.”
She grimaced at his levity. He treated his injuries lightly because of her, she suspected.
The banging rattled through the house.
” Coming,’’ Sam yelled.
“They’ll wake up Lass,” she grumbled, pulling on her robe and slippers. She pulled a comb through her hair and washed her face, then helped Sam with a pair of jeans and a shirt, then shoes and socks.
He followed her to the kitchen.
They could see the shape of a man silhouetted against the dawn on the other side of the door. Sam went over and opened it.
“Good morning. You out for a snipe hunt?” he asked with dry humor when Bill Merritt stepped inside.
“Morning, Sam, Molly,” the deputy said.
Molly, busy putting on a pot of coffee, returned his greeting. “What are you doing out at five o’clock?”
“We got your rustlers.”
“Tom and Sandy? Where’d you catch them?” Sam asked.
“Down by your stable.”
Molly whipped around and stared at the deputy. “Here? On our place? Had they come back for more cattle?”
