“I’m not going anywhere unless—unless the girls need me.” He sounded unsure and nervous, but so kind. “I understand why I can’t come in, but I can be out here. I can’t see a thing from here. But I’m close enough you don’t have to go through this alone.”
Mandy’s contraction eased, but she knew another one would be coming soon. With the last she’d felt that terrible bearing down of her body that meant it was pushing the baby out. She was only too glad that had finally come, even though the contractions were agonizing.
“It will be soon, Tom. The baby’s close to coming.” Mandy would have blushed at the improper topic if she hadn’t been exhausted and scared beyond embarrassment. She was in the mood to hurt any man she got her hands on, too.
“If you need me in there, I’ll come.”
“No, absolutely not. Never.”
“We may have to forget what people say is right and wrong. I will come in there if I decide I need to. But for now, I just thought you ought to know the girls are fast asleep for the night, and I’m here. You may be in that room by yourself, but I am one second away. You’re not alone.”
Mandy only realized at that exact instant how terribly isolated she’d been feeling. Having Tom say those words was like someone had thrown her a rope as she dangled off the edge of a cliff. “I’m glad you’re here.” Treacherously glad. Sinfully glad.
“Talk to me, Mandy. When your pains aren’t bad, in between them, just talk. Anything you want. Just to know you’re not alone.”
“I—my life isn’t a good one to talk about.”
There was an extended silence, followed by a sigh. “You’ve got a lot of money. Two healthy daughters. A fine home. You just bought two of the prettiest horses west of the Mississippi.” Even now she heard Tom’s pride in his fancy horses. He added, “You don’t have such a bad life.”
Mandy laughed, or tried to. “You’re right. I’m dwelling on the bad, and there’s so much that’s good.”
“The bad.” There was a long silence. “Like your husband.”
And Mandy knew how improper it was to speak to another man about Sidney. But her mouth wouldn’t obey her mind. “Sidney had a … a chance to be a good husband, I think. At the beginning.”
Mandy didn’t mention the part of the beginning where she’d found out Sidney was already married to someone else. True, that someone else had died before their wedding, but Sidney hadn’t known that. No, he’d stood beside her, in front of her parents and family, and taken vows before God to be hers and only hers for life. All while he thought he was married. A vile, sinful falsehood.
Forgiving him for that hadn’t come easy. With a slashing moment of honesty, Mandy realized she never had. She’d tried. She’d swallowed the shame and rage and betrayal and done her best, seeing as how the marriage was legal, to keep her vows to love, honor, and obey. But in her heart, in her soul, the soul that God had cleaned and forgiven, Mandy had not been able to do the same. It was a sin, and if she had been able to move, she’d have gotten to her knees and asked God to remove that sin from her heart.
She spoke of none of that to Tom. Instead she thought of Sidney after they’d had it out about his first marriage, after she’d pretended—even to herself—to forgive him.
And before the gold.
“The first winter together, Sidney seemed to respect the skills I brought to our marriage. He wanted to learn. He tried hard.” Some days he’d tried hard. Others he’d been his usual pouty, sullen self. “He made some real progress taking on the chores of a pioneer. He tried.”
“One winter?”
“We had part of the fall, then the whole long winter, and a short time in the spring where Sidney listened to me … and Luther.”
“I’ve met Luther and Buff. Good men.”
Where were Luther and Buff? Where was Sally? What had happened to them all? She didn’t expect Sidney back, but she’d thought for sure Luther would move mountains to be here for her when her time came.
“Yes, Sidney let them teach him, and he treated me well.” Once in a while. Even then he’d looked down on her. Mandy knew that now. “He showed promise.”
“And then he discovered gold.” Tom sounded so sure.
Mandy wondered what people said about her husband outside of his hearing. She suspected he was regarded to be a fool.
“Being rich hasn’t been a good thing for Sidney. When there was no money, for a time he seemed to be trying to fill that hollow part of himself with working the land, caring for the cabin, learning to be a good husband. Then he found gold. Now, it’s like he’s hollow inside and desperate to fill that emptiness with the things money can buy. Worthless things for the most part.”
“Hollow?” Tom just being out there, speaking, listening made this bearable.
“He was very poor growing up.” Mandy couldn’t relate the scandalous things Sidney had survived with a disreputable mother and no father. But poverty was enough of an explanation, though a poor one. Most poor people were honorable. “It’s like he’s trying to make up for a deprived childhood. He wants a bigger house, higher on the mountain, as if that makes him important, powerful. He wants a nicer buggy. A flashy ring, silk shirts, all of it just to brag. I hope you charged him a fortune for those two horses.”
“I charged him a fair price.” Tom sounded insulted.
Mandy’s belly started tightening again, and she fought down a whimper, focused on Tom’s arrogance. “Well, you should have doubled whatever you thought was a fair price because spending a lot on something seems to suit Sidney. And heaven knows he can afford it.”
“He paid plenty.” There was something smug in Tom’s voice, and Mandy knew that Sidney hadn’t bartered at all. Tom had made himself a pot of money on Mandy’s foolish husband.
He’d more than earned every penny of the extra by being here today.
A cry of anguish slipped from Mandy’s lips. Not loud—she fought that.
The baby pressed, ready to get out, more than ready. Mandy was ready, too.
“Are you all right?” Tom’s worried voice drew her attention and she could see he was closer to the window, one hand on the sill. His silhouette looked poised as if he intended to leap through.
“Shut up,” she shouted without meaning to and tried to sound more calm. “Just shut up for a second.” Not so calm. “I mean, I mean, let me get—ge–e–et—” The pain turned the last word of what she’d hoped would be a rational little speech into a scream.
She was beyond listening for Tom, beyond telling him to stay out.
Logan!” Sally fell most of the way down that cliff, but she got down fast and in one piece and it didn’t matter if she had some bumps and bruises. She jumped up and stumbled to her knees because of her stupid cast, then crawled to reach her man’s side.
He lay sprawled on his stomach.
Gently she leaned down and pressed her lips to his head. Then she reared back onto her knees, tears burning her eyes. “He’s dead.” He’d been shot! She turned to the man who had sent that bullet flying toward the man she loved. The only reason she didn’t kill him was because he was already dead.
Luther knelt across from her, his skinning knife still in hand. Their eyes met. Sally felt the strength and relief in Luther’s eyes that she was alive and well, and also the question. He’d witnessed her tenderness toward Logan. But this was no time for a talk.
Logan lay between them, flat on his belly, still as death. Luther’s shirt was soaked with blood from his head wound.
Wise Sister joined them and dropped to Logan’s side, nearer his head on the same side as Sally. “Scoot. Let me see to him.”
Pure tyrannical orders. Sally wouldn’t have dreamed of disobeying them. She remembered Logan saying he was kind of afraid of Wise Sister. Sally knew exactly what Logan meant. She moved closer to Logan’s feet.
Wise Sister looked up at Luther, fury in those black eyes. “See to Buff.”
Luther might have been a little bit afraid, too, because he fli
nched and looked past Wise Sister to his decades-long friend. He jumped to his feet, staggered as if his head reeled, then steadied himself just as Buff limped up to them. “Where’d he hit you?” Luther spared one loathing glance at the still-unconscious outlaw, lying face down beside his arrow-shot friend.
“Leg. Not bad.” Buff sank to the ground. “Just a burn. Slowed me down some.”
Wise Sister pulled a good-sized leather pouch out of her belt and tossed it to Luther. “Bandages. Moss. Pack Buff’s wound. See to your head. Hurry. Need it for Logan.”
Sally got to her feet and rounded to Logan’s other side. “Where was he shot? That man couldn’t have possibly missed at such a close range.”
“Tulsa Bob Wiley. That’s the guy’s name.” Luther pulled his knife again. “Sit down and let me clean out that wound.”
“No bullet hole I can see.” Wise Sister ran expert hands down Logan’s arms and legs. She ordered Sally, “Turn him over.”
“Get away from me with that knife.” Buff staggered to his feet and backed away as if Luther was aiming for Buff’s heart.
“I’m just gonna cut open your pants leg. Bandage the wound.” Luther advanced on Buff.
“No!” Buff’s voice was a loud whisper, as if he only wanted Luther to hear, but every word was clear to Sally. “You’re not cuttin’ my pants offa me in front of Wise Sister.”
Sally was distracted from her worry about Logan by Buff’s strange behavior. She’d never seen him act nervous. Was he hurt more seriously than she’d thought?
His pants were slick with blood low on his left thigh, just above the knee. But it wasn’t bleeding that fast, and why mention Wise Sister but not Sally? Buff wasn’t a man to talk much, and Sally had never seen him worry for one moment about what anyone else thought.
“Help move Logan.” Wise Sister glanced over her shoulder at Buff and sniffed. “We won’t look. Just hurry.”
Luther advanced toward Buff. Buff backed away quickly enough Sally had no chance to worry, because they reached a clump of aspen trees and vanished from sight.
Noticing the lengthening shadows, Sally looked up to see the sun low in the sky, ready to set and leave them on this mountain in the dark.
From low muttered words, Sally could tell Buff was letting Luther tend his wound.
Sally and Wise Sister eased Logan onto his back. There was no blood, except for a single rivulet coming from his temple. A blood-stained stone under his head explained how that had happened.
“I can’t believe he missed. I can’t believe it.” Sally dragged a kerchief out of her sleeve, folded it, and pressed it to the cut on Logan’s forehead. Through her fear, she noticed Logan breathing steadily. His face was ashen under the blood, but if his only injury was being knocked senseless, it would take time and nothing else to fix him up.
Wise Sister gave one furious look over her shoulder at Luther, who had walked off with her bandages, then pulled the corner of Logan’s shirt up, produced a lethal-looking knife, and slit the fabric. “Move your hands. Bigger bandage.”
Leaving her kerchief in place, Sally let Wise Sister add her pad of cloth. Wise Sister pressed down hard to staunch the bleeding.
“Ouch! That hurts!” Logan’s eyes flickered open.
Her husband-to-be was waking up. And wouldn’t she just know the first words he said would be unmanly?
Sally was so relieved she felt another bite of tears just as Logan’s eyes flickered open and locked on hers. With an unsteady hand, he reached for her and pressed his hand to her cheek, which jarred loose some of that blasted salt water.
“Logan.” She leaned down and kissed him full on the lips. At least it hid her tears from Luther, who, if he could see through those trees, would be horrified and ashamed that she acted so girly. The kiss might horrify him almost as much. It didn’t matter. Luther was ignoring her in favor of stopping Buff’s bleeding.
When Sally pulled back, Logan was alert and—for a bleeding man who’d just jumped off a cliff into gunfire—he seemed pretty happy. She leaned down to kiss him again, and Wise Sister shoved at Sally’s shoulder and shook her head. Probably not the time or place for kissing.
A sharp crack of a bullet being jacked into a gun barrel pulled Sally’s eyes up straight into the muzzle of a rifle.
“Everyone just stay calm.” A stocky man with a streak of white hair leveled his fire iron at them as he leaned against a sturdy tree.
Sally had seen him lying unconscious then forgotten all about him. One of the two coyotes Wise Sister said were hunting her.
The man’s eyes darted toward his dead friend, but Sally didn’t see a lot of grief. Then he scanned the area and must have known Luther and Buff were close by. He aimed his rifle straight at Sally’s head.
“You men get out here or I’ll kill her.”
“Just back away, mister.” Sally felt that odd, almost crazed calm that came over her in times of trouble.
“We stay right here.” Luther’s voice sounded as sure and solid as a mountain from where he was behind that tree. “We’ll let you ride out like you rode in. But if your finger even twitches on that trigger, you’ll die. You can’t kill us all. Your only chance of survival is to walk away.”
The outlaw’s eyes stayed beaded on Sally for a long, long moment, and she felt as if she was staring straight into her own grave.
God, have mercy.
“Don’t be stupid, mister.” Buff added his voice. “There’s only one way for you to live through this day.”
Sally saw Luther move in the forest. He was making himself a target, she knew, trying to draw this man’s deadly gun to himself. Sally’s fingers twitched to reach for her own rifle. She saw Logan’s hand slide to the sheath on his belt that held his knife, and she remembered that he’d tried to die for her once already today.
God, have mercy on us all.
“That streak of white hair,” Luther said. “I’ve seen that before.”
“Me, too,” Buff added; and from the location of his voice, Sally knew Luther and Buff had spread out to make themselves even harder to hit.
Sally watched the outlaw and saw the instant he hesitated and shifted his eye. They had him. He’d figured out he had to run.
“You get out here.” The man’s voice rose with nerves. “I mean it. I’ll kill the girl, and even if I die, you’ll have lost your friend.”
Sally heard the soft whisper of Logan’s knife inching out.
No, please, stop this. Have mercy on us, God.
“You can’t win this fight,” Sally said. She had to save Logan. She couldn’t let him die. She couldn’t live without him. “You can kill one of us, and we don’t want that, but then you’ll die. One man alone can’t take all of us.”
“That thatch of white hair,” Luther said, moving back and to the right as a snapping twig told Sally Buff continued to move forward and to the left. “It’s just like—”
“How about two men?” A new voice entered their conversation.
Sally looked up high overhead, to the mouth of that cave, and saw another man.
“Two could do a lot of damage.” A younger version of the man down here held two pistols aimed in the general direction of Luther and Buff. Sally wasn’t sure what the man could see from up there.
“Cooter.” Luther’s voice sounded like he was spitting. “He has hair just like Cooter’s.”
“Your name is Cooter?” The man down on their level asked.
“Yep, that’s my name. Least it was a long time ago. And my pa and my brother had that same streak of white.”
The two men exchanged a long glance, but their guns aimed true.
“I think that makes you my big brother.”
“Cordell, is that really you?”
“Yep, sure enough. I came west huntin’ you. I heard tell of a man with this mark. I’ve kept my eyes open, but never run you to ground.”
Cooter and Fergus held their whole conversation without shifting their eyes or lowering their guns.
“Cooter works for Sidney,” Luther said.
Wishing Luther would shut up, Sally knew he was trying to draw the men’s attention. Give her a fighting chance. She straightened slowly, gradually, to shift her gun so the muzzle wasn’t pressed against the ground. Then Sally thought about what Luther had said. “He works for Sidney? Mandy’s Sidney?” Which reminded Sally of her big sister and the fact that she was somewhere, very soon to have a baby—if she hadn’t already. Sally needed to get to her.
“We’re not gonna shoot it out with you folks.” Cooter spoke like he was chitchatting over coffee and huckleberry pie. “I’ve got my eye on the mother lode, Fergus, if you want in.”
“Why not? I’m shy a saddle partner.” The older man jerked his head toward the dead outlaw.
“I think they’re right that we won’t be able to get out of here without taking some lead. But they’ll take their share. Not a winning hand. We’ll back off.”
Sally straightened a bit more. No time for relief yet.
“I’ll keep ’em covered while you get to your horse, Fergus.”
Fergus shuffled back. A mighty careful man. “Head south and I’ll catch up with you.”
“Their only horses close to hand are up here in this cave so they’ll be a long while climbing up here to get ’em. I’d steal ’em, but if I got in that cave, these folk’ll scatter and I won’t be able to get out. Their horses’d slow us down too much anyway, and the plan I’ve got, we can buy all the horses we want. I’ve already got a spare, and you’ll have your partner’s. With the climb ahead of these folks, we can be well away by the time they’re on horseback.”
Sally wasn’t sure where Luther had left his horse, but it couldn’t be anywhere close by. Luther, Buff, and Wise Sister had climbed down here on foot if they’d been on the trail she and Logan had taken. Cooter had it figured out about right.
No one moved as Fergus vanished from sight. The man above them kept his eyes and aim steady.
At long last, just as the sun slipped below the mountain, casting them into twilight, a whistle from far below caught their attention. The man above touched two fingers to his forehead and backed into the brush alongside the trail. He never once slipped up with his aim until he ducked out of sight.
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 55
