Dan’s voice dropped to a throaty whisper. “That’s the last word you’re ever gonna say about my wife. That’s the last word you’re gonna say about anything.”
The gun barrel nudged Jess’s chest just below the nipple. Dear God, the shot would blow parts of him all over Ellen’s kitchen.
Cautiously, he raised one hand. “How about we take this outside?”
“No tricks, boyo.”
Jess blinked sweat out of his eyes. “It’s not a trick. Whether you shoot me inside or outside, I’ll be just as dead.”
Dan’s lip curled. “Move outside? Not a chance. It’s full dark out there, and I wanna watch your face when you die.”
Jess said a quick prayer for Ellen and swallowed hard. “Then get it over with.”
Dan smiled oddly and lowered the shotgun, aiming it at the center of Jess’s chest, then drew in a slow breath.
Jess recognized the last bit of preparation a gunman did before he fired. This would be it. He looked straight into the Irishman’s face and waited. Ellen, I’m sorry. So damn sorr—
Dan squeezed the trigger. The steel barrel lurched upward and something fiery slammed into Jess’s shoulder, scorching deep into his flesh. A scream struggled for release in his throat, and he waited, his eyes still on Dan, for the welcoming ease of death.
The pain bit deeper, then deeper still. Why was he still standing? Still suffering? Dying should erase the pain, but God, why was it taking so long?
All at once Dan’s knees gave way. He began to crumple, and then his big body collapsed onto the floor, a look of almost childlike surprise on his face. Jess stared at him, wondering dully why Dan was down there, while he stood upright, his shoulder on fire, blood everywhere.
He raised his gaze to where Dan had stood a moment ago. Through the haze of gray smoke from the shotgun he caught a movement in the darkened parlor beyond.
Ellen stood motionless, her face drained of color, his Colt revolver clutched in her hands.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Jess. Jess, can you hear me?”
His eyes fluttered open, and he tried to smile. “Where am I hit?”
“Your shoulder,” Ellen choked out. “Does it hurt much?”
“Hell yes, it hurts,” he said through clenched teeth.
Her mouth twisted. “You’re bleeding, Jess. I can’t stop it.”
Talking took all his strength, but he had to know. “Dan?”
“I—I’m not sure. I don’t think he’s breathing.” She pressed a towel hard against Jess’s shoulder.
“Check for a pulse, Ellen. Hurry.”
She positioned his uninjured arm to hold the towel tight against his wound, and moved away. Jess let his eyelids drift closed. He hurt so damn much, like hot coals had been dumped into his veins. Just keep breathing and hope for a miracle before you bleed to death.
Ellen leaned over him again, her breath softly fanning his face. “Is he dead?” Jess asked without opening his eyes.
“I th-think so. I can’t find his heartbeat.” She gulped down a sob. “God in heaven, I’ve killed him. I didn’t mean to, but…”
“Can’t say I’m sorry,” Jess rasped. “It was him or me.”
“Jess, we’ve got to get you to Uncle James in town. Can you ride?”
“Don’t think so. Can’t stand up.”
“Try, Jess. Please.”
He lifted his head but the room began to revolve. “In a minute.”
“Now,” she said, her voice crisp. “You have to do it now.”
He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “Go get the roan. No saddle, just lead him to the back steps.”
She rose quickly, her motion washing air over his face. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” He took a breath, gathering strength. “Hurry.”
The next thing he knew her voice was speaking in his ear. “Jess, I’m going to help you crawl to the back porch. Don’t try to stand up, just crawl.”
“Can’t. My shoulder’s half gone, I think. Can’t support my weight.”
Shep whimpered from underneath the kitchen table. “Hush up,” Ellen snapped. She swiped tears of frustration out of her eyes with one palm. “The barn door wouldn’t open at first. The horse didn’t want to leave the stall. And now you don’t want to crawl. I can’t stand one more thing that won’t work when I need it to. Crawl, damn you!”
“Okay, okay. I’ll try.” His voice was grainy.
He inched forward on his belly, favoring his right shoulder and leaving a trail of blood across her kitchen floor.
Good! He was moving. He was bleeding a lot, but he was alive. So far, anyway. She packed another towel against the seeping wound near his neck and pushed him through the screen door.
The horse nickered where she’d positioned him beside the top step.
“Forget it, Ellen. I won’t be able to mount.”
Ellen straightened slowly. “All right, now, Jess,” she said in a steely tone. “This is what we’re going to do.”
Later, she didn’t remember how she did it. Somehow she managed to shove Jess onto the horse’s bare back, belly down, then work his right leg over the animal’s rump and pull him upright. Shep whined and yipped at her feet.
She clambered up behind Jess, heaved her plaster-casted leg awkwardly over the horse’s back. Then they were moving through the gate she’d propped open.
“Shep?” She shouted for the dog, who bounded down the steps, tail wagging. “Get help, Shep. Go home. Get help.”
She dragged on the reins, stepped the horse onto the town road while Shep loped behind. “You hear me, Shep? I said go home. Home!”
The dog looked up expectantly and whined. Ellen began to cry. “Good boy, Shep. Please, for God’s sake, go get help!”
The animal spun around, gave a little yip and trotted off down the road. “Run, damn you!” she screamed after him.
She held on to Jess’s swaying body with every bit of strength she had, but he fell forward anyway. She yanked him upright, closing her ears to his groans of agony.
This will never end. In the morning, folks would find both of them dead. She closed her eyes. Oh please, God, let this horse follow the road. Please, please let Jess live until we reach town.
It seemed hours later when she glimpsed a flickering light ahead. Two lights—lanterns maybe. Moving toward her.
She fingered the Colt she had stuffed into her apron pocket. If it was J.D. and Gray, she would kill them both before they could lay a hand on Jess. Dear God, what is that noise?
Shouts, and a dog’s high-pitched barking. Hoofbeats, and then a light shone into her face. “Miz O’Brian?” an incredulous voice said. “Goldernit, she looks half-dead.”
“Who’s that with her?”
More light. “Her hired man. Shot bad, looks like.”
“Get Doc Callahan!” the first voice shouted.
She kept the horse moving steadily forward, but now there were hands reaching out to support her, holding Jess upright. Someone lifted the reins out of her fingers and led the horse along while she clung to Jess’s swaying form. He hadn’t spoken since she’d shoved him onto the horse, and her heart lurched into her belly. Was she holding on to a dead man?
“Jess? Jess!”
All he did was grunt, but that was enough. If he could grunt, he could breathe. She didn’t even try to stop her tears.
The horse came to a stop amid more loud voices. “Well, now.” It was the cracked voice of Uncle James. “What the devil have we got here?”
She willed her mouth to open, send some words into the warm night air, but another voice spoke instead. Jess’s voice.
“Get the sheriff.” Then he pitched sideways into the waiting arms of a half-dozen men. The last thing he remembered was the sound of Ellen’s sobbing.
He regained consciousness to find himself stretched out on a high, narrow table with a bespectacled, white-haired man staring at him. “Got enough lead pieces in your shoulder to make a string of Indian b
eads.”
Jess’s eyelids felt sticky, and his tongue was so thick he couldn’t speak. He tried to nod to show he understood.
“Don’t move your head, son. Got a messy wound in your neck, keeps seepin’ blood. You savvy what I’m sayin’?”
“Mmm,” Jess managed the sound without moving anything.
“Trouble is, there’s so many of the blasted bits of shot I don’t hardly know where to start.”
With a supreme effort, Jess wrapped his tongue around a single word. “Ellen.”
“Aw, she’s just fine, son. Gave her some brandy and it knocked her right out. Mrs. Everett’s settin’ with her.”
“Ah-hah,” Jess muttered.
“I’ll take that plaster off her leg soon as I fix you up. Damnedest collection of metal in a body I ever saw.”
Jess made another desperate effort to articulate some words. “Don’t suture…let drain.”
The white-haired doctor straightened and peered down at him. “Now how would you know that, I wonder?”
“Surgeon,” Jess muttered. “War.”
The older man pursed his lips. “Well, now, that’s mighty interesting. You’ll understand then why you’re gonna have a depression in your right shoulder for the rest of your life.”
“Mmm.”
“Want some brandy? This is gonna hurt like blazes, but I guess you know that.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Andy,” Dr. Callahan yelled. “Bring some of that tarantula juice in here.”
Jess wanted to smile, but it was too much effort.
A lanky youth with kind eyes dribbled some fiery tasting liquid into his open mouth, teaspoon by teaspoon. The brandy didn’t cut the grinding pain, just made it seem like it was happening to someone other than himself. After a while, between Doc’s forays into his flesh with what felt like a pair of white-hot forceps, and sips of the warm liquor, Jess floated off into blackness.
An hour later, Doc still labored over him, plunking bits of metal into a basin and muttering to himself. “Worse than shrapnel,” Jess heard. And agreed completely. He’d dug bits of shrapnel out of many a man, and it had never been easy.
“Damn fine brandy, don’tcha think?” Doc said.
Jess blinked, then surprised himself by uttering an almost intelligible sentence. “Sure is.”
“If you live through this, son, sheriff wants to see you.” Doc pried out another chunk of lead from Jess’s bloodied shoulder, and he drifted off again.
When he came around, the upper half of his body was swathed in tight bandages of white linen, and his head ached as if a railroad track had been nailed over it. The lanky kid gave him some water, and Jess slept off and on for another day and a half.
Sometimes he dreamed Ellen sat by his bed, talking softly—something about carrots. Sometimes she touched his face with her cool hand. He liked the dreams so much he didn’t want to wake up.
After three days, he could sit up and feed himself left-handed, and the next day he stumbled out of his bed, got dressed and went to find Ellen.
“She’s gone over to the sheriff’s office,” Mrs. Everett told him from the boardinghouse front porch. “Walkin’ nice as you please, not a bit of a limp. Doc Callahan took off her cast yesterday.”
The sheriff’s office. Well, it had to come sooner or later. Best thing would be to meet it head-on while he could still stand up. Jess shuffled down the main street toward the shingle-sided office he remembered, twisted the doorknob with his left hand and walked in.
Ellen looked up to see a pale shadow of the Jess she had seen mere hours ago. With him up on his feet, his weakness was obvious, but he masked it with determination. His face and neck glistened with perspiration.
“Are you in pain?” she asked, her voice tight with anxiety.
“Some,” he said. “Mostly drunk.”
Seated behind the desk, Sheriff DeWitt laughed out loud. “Ol’ Doc’ll do that to ya. Doesn’t believe in lettin’ a patient suffer.”
Ellen didn’t think for one minute it was the liquor Uncle James had obviously poured into him. She knew Jess well enough to recognize the tension around his mouth and the pain-weary darkness in his eyes. Lord, what he had lived through on her behalf.
She rose from the single wooden chair and motioned for Jess to take her place. She was working herself up to a very crisp order about the matter when he surprised her by sinking onto the hard seat with a whispered “Thanks.”
The sheriff turned his sharp eyes on the two of them. “I expect you know about Dan. One of my deputies found him out at your place, Miss Ellen. With a slug in his back.”
“Yes,” she said in a dull voice. “I know about Dan.”
“Sure am sorry, Miss Ellen. Body’s down at the funeral parlor if you’d want to see him.”
“Thank you,” she said unsteadily. “But no.”
“Caught up with Stedman and Nichols outside Copper Canyon. Right now they’re on the train back to Riverton. Under guard, of course. Sure was sorry to let Dan slip through my fingers. Funeral’s set for tomorrow morning at eleven.”
Ellen said nothing. Was she sorry Dan was dead? Sorry she had been the one to kill him? A wave of nausea washed into her belly.
Lord yes, she was sorry. Sorry she’d married him in the first place. Sorry she had wasted the years waiting and hoping. Mostly she was sorry it had finally come to the agonizing choice between Dan and Jess.
She had chosen selfishly, reaching to grasp at the happiness Jess offered. But oh, how she ached inside for the man Dan could never be. And for what she had done.
Sheriff DeWitt cleared his throat, waiting for Ellen to meet his gaze. Beside her, Jess’s left hand opened and closed, opened and closed, as if squeezing the past few days out of his memory. After a long, silent minute, Ellen raised her eyes.
“Just one more question, folks.”
Jess’s fingers curled tight. “Save it, DeWitt. She’s been through enough.”
The sheriff’s face darkened, then softened as he studied Ellen. “Get outta here, both of ya. I’ll talk to you again after the funeral.”
Ellen’s knees turned to jelly. She looked at Jess, noted that the tension had eased some around his mouth, but his left hand remained in his lap, fisted so tight the tanned skin stretched white over the knuckles. She wanted to reach out and take his hand in both of hers.
Jess rose to stand beside her. The effort made his breath catch, and a needle of anguish stabbed through her.
“After the funeral,” he said in a tired voice. “Until then, I think I’ll lie down.” He swayed forward, caught the back of the chair and moved unsteadily to the door.
Ellen longed to help him, but she didn’t dare touch him in front of Sheriff DeWitt.
Once outside on the board sidewalk, Jess took two halting steps and stopped, his face ashen. “I don’t suppose you’d care to walk me back to the boardinghouse?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Iona Everett’s boardinghouse was the acknowledged social center of Willow Flat. Dozens of schoolteachers, salesmen, circuit judges and travelers had been sheltered in the meticulously kept rooms while their landlady cooked and bustled along hallways and generally made life comfortable for them. Late afternoon usually found her rocking on the wide, white-painted veranda, exchanging pleasantries with boarders and passersby alike.
Today was no different, except that her boarders had retreated to the cool parlor inside to escape the summer heat. Iona rocked away in the shade of her prize purple clematis vine, alone but for the glass of lemonade in her capable-looking hands.
Squinting into the westering sun, she brought the rocking chair to an abrupt stop. It couldn’t be. Simply couldn’t be. The spitting image of Dr. James Callahan as a young man was ambling up the lane.
Iona blinked, peered at the man through blurred eyes. Beside him walked a young woman so slight she seemed to float over the rough planks. Iona’s heart squeezed painfully. Could I have looked like that once, all those years ago? So�
��lit up from inside? So beautiful?
The couple turned in at the gate and approached, unmindful of her bedazzled gaze. The young woman slipped her arm around the man’s waist as they slowly ascended the four wide steps to the porch. He was lean and long-limbed, and the woman never took her eyes off him.
Iona raised her hand in greeting, watched the tall man and the smiling woman vanish into the interior of the house, and went back to her lemonade.
She was dreaming, of course. She knew it. But it was such a nice dream, so lovely it brought tears to her eyes. She had fallen in love with James Callahan when he first came to Willow Flat twenty-five years ago. She loved him still. But he’d never spoken up for her, and so she had married someone else.
Upstairs in the prettily wallpapered hallway, Jess opened a certain door and drew Ellen into the airy, high-ceilinged room he had taken in Mrs. Everett’s boardinghouse. Without a word, she led him to the bed and knelt to remove his boots.
With a groan he lay back on the ruffled white counterpane and let his eyelids drift shut. Ellen unsnapped her skirt, unbuttoned the high-necked, yellow calico waist and stretched out beside him, careful not to jostle his injured shoulder.
“I should not be here, with you,” she said.
Jess responded with a tired sigh. “Yes, you should.”
“It feels right to me, but no one in town would think so. Mrs. Everett is a bit of a gossip.”
Jess smoothed one hand over Ellen’s hair, repeating the action over and over without speaking.
“Did you hear me?” she whispered.
He nodded. “I heard you. Door’s locked.”
“Good,” she murmured.
A laugh rumbled in his chest. “What about your farm? Who’s seeing to the chores?”
“The Gundersen boy. I promised him all the sweet corn and tomatoes he could carry as payment.”
Jess lay silent for a long while, stroking her hair, smoothing his fingers down her neck. He’d have to tell her what was in his mind, but not today. Not now, while she lay calm and quiet beside him. He would wait until tomorrow, after Dan’s funeral.
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