“But honey, Gabe didn’t know he was a father, remember? I didn’t even know I was expecting when I sent him away. I’ll tell you this. If Gabe Cameron had known I carried his children, he would have stuck to me like glue whether I wanted him there or not. You can believe that. That’s the kind of man your father is.”
The boy shrugged. “Or was. It would be nice to know. I like Captain Robards, Mama. Look.” He pointed toward the horizon. “I never figured we’d see the Kissing Stars this far south. I didn’t see them before, either on the way down to the Big Bend or on the way back. But there they are. Maybe they are following us.”
“I’m not about to put any limits on what the lights can and cannot do,” she replied, watching the balls of light dance across the darkening sky.
“I missed seeing them. Wish I had a telescope. That’s what I missed most about being away from home. Saturn just isn’t the same if you can’t see her rings.”
“Don’t let Rosie hear you say that. She’ll eat my telescope.”
Will cracked a grin that was a replica of Gabe’s. “Oh, I didn’t mean Rosie or any of the rest of the family. You know that.”
“True, but I also know how much you enjoy our work in Aurora Springs. I know you love the sky. So being away from the Kissing Stars, and away from our astronomical studies made you unhappy, did it?”
Will picked up a stick and started drawing lines in the dirt. “Not really. I knew I’d be coming home and it wasn’t like the stars were going anywhere or anything. The regular stars, I mean. Not the Kissing Stars. Who knows what they’ll do. I liked getting out and seeing something different. As long as I know I can come back home, well, I think that sounds perfect.” He glanced at her and said, “Maybe after we rescue Doc the three of us can take a trip. I’d like to go someplace that has a real honest to goodness forest. Think we could do that, Mama?”
“Maybe.”
He allowed a full minute to pass before he said, “Mama, you never answered my question.”
“What question?”
“You never said for sure if you think Doc helped Jimmy Wayne Bodine break out of jail. If you think he’s faked his own kidnapping.”
“Oh, Will.” She sighed heavily and wished the Kissing Stars would provide the answer. “You would have to force the issue, wouldn’t you?”
Accusation colored his voice. “You think he’s guilty?”
“No, I don’t. But the truth is, I don’t think he’s entirely innocent, either. I’ve learned something that causes me to question Doc in ways I’ve never questioned him before. There is something you don’t know, honey. Something I need to tell you.”
“What about?”
“Well, your grandfather. And your father. You see, sweetheart—”
“There you are,” Gabe’s voice boomed from the shadows. He strolled up before them saying, “I’ve been wondering where you were. Will, Rosie is making these pining sort of noises and the look on her face is downright lonely. I think she might be afraid you’ve left again.”
“Oh, dear,” the boy said, pushing to his feet. He dusted off his behind with his hands, adding, “Guess I’ll have to drag out my guitar and calm her down. I never expected her to be so sensitive. She’s been awful clingy since I got home. I’m hoping she gets over it soon. As much as I love her, she isn’t all that pleasant to sleep with.”
Gabe nodded sagely. “It’s the perfume. Pigs tend to over apply the stuff.”
Tess watched father and son share a mirrored grin, then the boy headed down the hill. When Gabe took Will’s seat beside Tess, she asked, “Why did you stop me? I was going to tell him. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Yeah. No. Not like that.” He sighed heavily. “I eavesdropped on the two of you. It was some damned hard listening.”
“You know the old saying about eavesdroppers never hearing good of themselves.”
“Now that wasn’t all true. You said some mighty fine things about me. Made it easier to hear that my son wished me dead.”
“Gabe,” she said reproachfully.
He reached out and took her hand, threading his fingers through hers. “You were right about me getting to know him before we tell him.”
“No, I was wrong. I feel like we’re lying to him, and I don’t like it. I never have before, and I don’t intend to start now.”
“I don’t think it’s lying. I think it’s doing what’s best for the boy. After today—especially after what I heard tonight—I can see how he’d take the truth better knowing I’m more than just the fellow who ran out on you.”
“Gabe, I didn’t mean for him…he didn’t know the circumstances. Please, don’t let what he said—”
“Hush, darlin’.” As the soothing strum of a guitar floated up from below, he brought her hand up to his lips for a kiss. “I can’t change how he felt in the past, but I’ll do my all to see that our future is square.” Gabe paused and Tess could hear the frown in his voice as he added, “It would help a lot more if Ranger Robards wasn’t homing in and trying to out-do my every overture toward the boy. What’s his problem, anyway? You told me he knows what I am to you and Will. Does he think he still has a chance with you? Is that what this is all about?”
“I think Lionel is a lot like you. He’s a strong man, a competitor.”
“He’s a pain in the butt.”
“Never mind Lionel. What shall we do about Will? How and when do we tell him you are his father?”
Gabe rolled to his feet, then pulled her up beside him. “Let’s give it one more day. Just see how it goes between us. Maybe I’ll get lucky and ol’ Lionel’s horse will throw a shoe and he’ll have to walk.”
“I could try and keep Lionel occupied,” she said innocently.
He answered by taking her mouth in a fierce, breath-stealing kiss. “Over my dead body, woman. Over my dead body.”
THE ACCIDENT happened mid-afternoon on the third day out of Eagle Gulch. Captain Robards had led his pair of Rangers ahead to scout out the route through the line of craggy, fractured mountains that rose before them like the gateway to hell, brown and barren and forbidding. Tess and Twinkle traveled inside the stagecoach being driven for the afternoon shift by the colonel. Rosie continued her ride in Castor’s basket.
Glad for a respite from the Rangers, Gabe rode alongside Will who regaled him with tales of his porcine friend. One hour stretched to two during which Gabe discovered a pleasant fact. His son was fun to be around.
The boy was witty, intelligent, and could spit a watermelon seed with dead-eye aim. Will seemed to like him, too. He was quick with a grin and the questions he asked showed honest interest in the answers. Gabe’s work impressed him, and with every “wow” and “who-eee, mister” Gabe sat a little straighter in the saddle. A time or two he tested the waters about the fatherhood question and took encouragement from the answers his son offered.
All in all Gabe’s day looked pretty bright as the stagecoach led the way down a moderately steep incline. A flash of sunlight on water grabbed his attention, and he had just lifted his hand to point out the spring off to their left when he heard the ominous wrench of tearing metal and saw the stagecoach pitch wildly to one side.
The next few moments passed in a panicky blur. Even as Colonel Wilhoit struggled for control, the stage slammed into a boulder, then tumbled on its side and started to roll. Above Twinkle’s scream and Rosie’s squeals, Gabe heard Tess shout his name.
Fear gripped him. He spurred his horse forward as the colonel went flying off the driver’s seat, landing hard at the base of an ocotillo cactus. The stagecoach rolled side over side. Supplies sailed and crashed; wood and metal twisted and snapped. The horses tumbled, too, screaming and pawing. Then one got loose, got back on his feet and ran, trailing broken harnesses. The other went abruptly silent.
Seconds later, the stagecoach did too, crashing to a halt in the shallow water at the bottom of the gully.
“Mommy?” Will said in a little voice.
He hung bac
k as Gabe slid off his mount and sidestepped double-time down the hill toward the coach. Gabe glanced back over his shoulder. “Will, check on Colonel Wilhoit. If he’s bleeding, staunch the flow, but otherwise don’t try to move him.” When the boy didn’t move, he called again. “Will! Shake a leg, son. We need your help.”
The battered coach lay on its left side, the right front wheel missing, the back wheel slowly spinning. Gabe’s stomach sat somewhere around his ankles, his heart smack dab in the middle of his throat as he climbed up on the coach, wrenched open the door, and peered inside.
At first all he saw was the blood.
Horrible streaks of red stained Twinkle’s bright yellow dress. She lay atop Tess and neither woman moved. At first glance, Gabe couldn’t determine the source of the terrifying stain. “Tess? Sweetheart?” He sucked in a breath. “Twinkle?”
Nothing.
Gabe started praying.
Water was starting to seep into the coach and Gabe’s sense of urgency accelerated. A person could drown in those two inches of water if their head rested just so.
Please, God, let them be alive for drowning to be a concern.
He eased himself down into the coach, grimacing when the conveyance shifted. Twinkle’s pain-filled moan was music to his ears.
Finding footholds, he considered how best to act. He hated to move her without first determining the state of her injuries, but he had to risk it. The blood had come from somewhere and Tess…
As gently as possible, he slid his arms beneath Twinkle’s unmoving form and shifted her enough to get his first look at Tess. Everything in him froze. Blood streaked her face and she lay crumpled like a doll in the bottom of the coach. Her head rested in the rising water; her opened mouth half-filled.
He licked his dry lips, then slipped a hand beneath Tess’s oh-so-still head and lifted it out of the water. Her head rolled, dead weight. His heart raced. With trembling fingers, he felt for a pulse. Faint but steady. “Thank God.”
Then his boot slipped and he almost dropped her. Damnation, there wasn’t room to move in here.
Where were the damned Rangers when he needed them? Gabe couldn’t get them out of the coach by himself. “Will! Jasper! Can you hear me? I need help!”
“Mr. Montana?” his son called. “I’m here. The colonel is just starting to wake up. I think he’ll be all right, but he isn’t gonna be much help. Not for awhile, anyway.” The boy paused a moment, then asked in a trembling voice, “Mr. Montana, how’s my mama?”
“She’s alive, son. She has a gash on the side of her head, and this kind of wound bleeds a lot.”
“She’ll be okay, though, won’t she?”
Gabe cleared his voice to speak. “I won’t lie to you, Will. She’s unconscious and that may be simply from the gash on her head or it might be something worse. I can’t tell much more without getting her out of here.”
A silent moment passed as the boy absorbed the news. Then he asked, “What about Twinkle?”
“I think she’ll be all right,” Gabe replied, relieved to see stirring that signified the older woman was coming to. “Any sign of Captain Robards or his men?”
“None, sir.”
Hell. Gabe tried to figure out what to do next. Ordinarily he was a quick thinking man, but the sight of Tess’s blood made his mind as sharp as cornmeal mush.
“What are we going to do, sir? Do you need the ladder?”
Ladder? “What ladder?”
“The rope ladder Twinkle keeps up in Castor’s riding basket in case Pollux gets ornery about kneeling down. She does that sometimes.”
God bless that saliva-spittin’ dromedary. “That’s just what we need, son. Good thinking.”
By the time Will sent the rope ladder unrolling into the coach’s interior, Twinkle had awakened enough to help hoist herself up and through the doorway. She sat on the side of the coach while Gabe hurriedly followed and assisted her to the ground. Leaving Will to settle her beside the woozy Colonel Wilhoit, Gabe hurried back to Tess. She was still unconscious.
He knew that moving an injured person sometimes caused added harm, but he didn’t see that he had a choice. “Honey, I’m going to get you out of here now. Hang on and I’ll have you settled in a minute.”
Holding Tess over his shoulder, he climbed from the coach. Will spread a blanket beside the spring and Gabe gently lowered her to the ground. He dipped his kerchief into the water, washed the blood from her face, then gently dabbed at the wound. Rosie plopped down beside the blanket, and Gabe would have sworn she looked worried.
“Are you going to stitch her up?” Will asked, his voice quavering.
“Not in this lifetime.” Gabe’s mouth dipped into a grimace at the thought. The very idea of poking her flesh with a needle had him breaking out in a sweat. “It’s not bleeding so much now; I think it will be all right. She’ll be all right.” Please, God, let her be all right.
With Gabe kneeling on her right side and Will seated cross-legged on her left, they began their uneasy vigil. Helplessness clawed at Gabe and he continued to bathe her face. He never left her side, sending the boy to check on Twinkle and the colonel and to climb the butte to look for signs of Robards and his men.
Confounded Rangers. What the hell were they up to anyway? Riding ahead. They hadn’t needed to ride ahead. They just wanted to get away from the camels and Twinkle’s singing. Gabe had heard Robards say it himself. When I go to revamp the Texas Rangers, I’ll see Robards transferred to the middle of nowhere. The feet the man was already stationed in the middle of nowhere might complicate the task, but Gabe would by God see it done. “You know why they call West Texas God’s country, son?”
“No, sir.”
“Because no one else would have it.”
The boy shot him a quizzical look. “What does that have to do with my mother?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. Never mind me, son.” Gabe was getting punchy with worry.
A few minutes later Twinkle and the colonel staggered over. Both looked very much the worse for wear and, except for advice, had little assistance available to give. Not that Gabe wanted any. It was his place to care for his wife. His and Will’s.
Gabe’s concern grew at a steady pace. It was past time for her to wake up. “Tess, enough of this now,” he told her, holding the hand of her uninjured arm in one of his, stroking it with the other. “Come on, honey. Wake up. It’s time. It isn’t good for you to sleep so long.”
He was tempted to pinch her cheeks to put some color in her pasty complexion. He wanted to shake her and scream at her to just wake up, dammit. “Open those eyes, darlin’. Please, sweetheart. You’re scaring me.”
“Please Mama. Do like he says.” Will’s voice trailed away to almost nothing as he added, “I don’t want to be an orphan.”
“You won’t be an orphan!” he snapped.
“But if Mama dies…”
“Tess isn’t going to die and you won’t be an orphan. Now, no more of that kind of talk, you hear?”
Gabe dampened the kerchief again, then trailed it across Tess’s face. “Wake up, Tess. I need to see those beautiful blue eyes. I need you. Our son needs you. I love you, Tess. I always have and I always will. Did you hear that? I love you. Now open those eyes and glare at me for saying it. I love you, darlin’. I love you.”
Tess’s eyelids twitched and Gabe held his breath, praying for them to lift. Nothing happened at first, but then they twitched again. Had they lifted halfway or had he imagined it? “There! Did you see that, Will?”
When the boy didn’t answer, Gabe flashed him a glance. Will wasn’t looking at his mother. He was staring straight at Gabe, his gaze narrow and sharp enough to shave with. “You’re him, aren’t you?” he accused, betrayal shining in his eyes. “You are my father.”
CHAPTER 15
“YOU ARE MY FATHER!”
Will’s bitter words pierced the haze of pain and confusion clouding Tess’s mind. Oh, no. Not like this. He shouldn’t have found out this wa
y.
Her wits returning in the face of her son’s distress, she ignored her throbbing muscles and pounding headache and forced herself to put aside the burning concern she felt for her friends’ safety. She opened her eyes, wanting desperately to reach for her son and hold him, to talk to him and explain. To tell him how much she loved him.
Neither male noticed their gazes locked upon one another, the air between them sizzling with tension and emotion.
Tess’s heart gave a wrench. She had wanted to tell Will herself, or at least be cognizant enough to moderate the event. But now it was too late. Will had figured it out.
You are my father.
She’d never heard such rancor in her son’s tone. A sense of urgency battled the drum corps playing in her head, and Tess tried to figure out what to do. It was so hard to think. Opening her mouth and speaking seemed an insurmountable problem.
But then, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was best that the two men in her life work out this situation by themselves. She allowed her eyes to shut and she listened.
“You’re not Whip Montana,” Will accused “You are Gabe Cameron.”
Tension added an edge to Gabe’s firm voice. “I am your father, Will. But my name is Montana now. I’ve been going by it since before you were born.”
“Why?”
The heartbreak Tess heard in that single word hurt her worse than the pain radiating in her head Gabe took a long time to respond forcing a curious Tess to peek at him through her lashes. Frustration hardened his jaw, but his eyes—oh, his eyes—held such anguish. Oh, Gabe. She wanted to reach out and squeeze his hand in comfort.
Gabe’s voice was raspy with emotion when he spoke. “Just which why are you asking, son? I can think of at least a dozen. Why did I give up my name? Why did I give up your mother? Why haven’t I been around to be your father?”
Will scrambled to his feet sending puffs of red dust billowing in little angry clouds. He clenched his hands at his sides so hard his knuckles turned white. With every word he spoke, his voice got a little louder, a little more desperate. “How about why the hell don’t you get away from my mother! Why the hell don’t you get out of here. We don’t need you. And don’t you ever call me son again. You changed your name. Well I’m changing my father. Doc is my father, the only father I want. You just saddle up and ride on out of here, mister. We don’t need you!”
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