by Debra Cowan
Along with the gut-twisting fear that he had ruined everything, he became increasingly uneasy. “Baldwin?”
Matt turned from where he stood on the mercantile’s porch and saw Quentin in the street.
He walked down to meet the man. “Have you seen Annalise?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“I was coming to talk to her.”
The flood of relief Matt felt was blocked with the newspaper man’s next words. “She’s not at the clinic. Where could she be?”
Quentin frowned. “We ate at the Pearl earlier. Or, rather, we went there to eat. She was hungry, but she didn’t order any food.”
Only half listening, Matt’s gaze moved up and down the street. “Mmm.”
“All she wanted was lemonade.”
Matt’s head jerked toward Quentin. “What did you say?”
“She only wanted lemonade. She must’ve had a gallon of that stuff.”
“Lemonade?” The image of those lemons in her kitchen flashed through his mind.
She said she had craved lemons when—
Matt went completely still inside. For a heartbeat, his mind blanked, then questions rushed in. Was she pregnant? If so, why hadn’t she told him about the baby? After the way he’d acted, why would she?
He gave himself a mental shake. He could ask all that later. First, he had to find her. The cemetery maybe? he wondered. If she was expecting, maybe she had gone to visit their son’s marker.
Barely controlling his impatience, he asked, “Where did she go after y’all went to the Pearl?”
The other man shook his head. “I’m not exactly sure. I was coming to talk to her about my legs. Anyway, I saw her drive out of town with some man. Going west.” Matt stiffened.
“Before you get jealous, I think it was someone who needed help. She went freely. Drove her buggy.”
“Did you get a look at this guy?”
“Yeah. He was a scrawny fella. Looked like something was wrong with the left side of his face, but I didn’t get a close look. His mount was a red roan.” He paused, as though remembering something. “A gelding. He had a patch of jagged scars on his left hindquarters. Like he’d gotten tangled in some barbed wire.”
Matt cursed, wanting to put his fist through something.
“What?” Alarm streaked across Quentin’s features. “Do you know who that man is? Is Annalise in danger?”
“I’m afraid she may be.” Matt pivoted and headed for the jail, telling himself to narrow his focus, concentrate on finding her. He wanted to be wrong about who Annalise had left with.
The chair wheels squeaked as the other man sought to keep up. “Where are you going?”
“To tell Davis Lee and gather some men.”
“Damn it, you’re forming a posse! Tell me what’s going on.”
Yes, he needed to. Matt slowed, turned. Before he could get out a word, Quentin slammed a fist down on the arm of his wheelchair. “She’s in danger and here I sit in this damn chair. I couldn’t have helped her even if I’d known she needed it.”
“Not true. You’re helping her right now. If you weren’t in that chair, you wouldn’t have been going to see Annalise and you wouldn’t have witnessed what happened.”
“Exactly what did happen?” Frustration sharpened his voice. “Who did she leave with?”
The thought of Annalise alone with that man was enough to make Matt want to kill him, but if she was pregnant and something happened to her and the baby…
He couldn’t, wouldn’t finish the thought.
“Dammit, Baldwin!”
“Sorry.” Matt had been trying to deny it since he’d heard the description of the horse but there was no denying it now.
He met Quentin’s grim gaze with his own. “The man’s description doesn’t match any of the Landis brothers on the wanted poster, but he could’ve shaved. However, that horse belongs to one of them.”
Annalise tried to keep her thoughts on the cowhand who needed her attention. Hearing he’d likely been shot by the Landis brothers had made her think of Matt. And that brought back all her anger. And hurt. Not to mention thoughts of the baby.
It took effort, but she managed to put all of that out of her mind and focus on the man who needed her help. Sherman had led her around Julius’s large sprawling home to the bunkhouse in the back.
The patient, who looked to be barely twenty years old, was unconscious when she arrived. He was resting on a bed, his breathing shallow, his face dangerously pale.
Sherman hovered in the doorway. A few other cow-hands milled around outside. Frank moaned when she checked his belly wound.
“Doc?” Sherman asked nervously.
Annalise glanced over her shoulder. “The bullet went out so I don’t need to dig around looking for it.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yes, but your friend has lost a lot of blood.”
He quickly checked around outside then walked to the other side of the bed.
“Even if I stitch him up, it might be too late to save him.”
The boy in the bed reached for Sherman’s hand and made a sound. The red-haired man nodded. “Frank wants you to sew him up.”
“All right.” The man was so weak she was afraid to give him any anaesthetic. The best thing would be for him to pass out until she finished.
She cleaned the wound with her mixture of water and carbolic acid. After threading a needle, she said to Sherman, “You may need to hold him down.”
He grimaced, but sat on the bed, keeping Frank in place when he jerked against the pain. After a long moment, his muscles relaxed and she knew he was out.
She stitched as quickly as she could. A dull ache throbbed at the base of her head. Sweat trickled down her spine. Late-afternoon sunlight slanted in the bunkhouse window, falling across the foot of the rough-hewn wooden bed instead of across the middle where it would help the most.
“When did this happen?” she asked.
“A day or two ago.”
“There’s no sign of infection.” She pulled the needle through flesh. “That’s encouraging.”
She heard the murmur of voices outside the bunkhouse. As she tied off the thread, she caught Sherman’s attention on the door again. Why was he so nervous? He had her itching to look over her shoulder every other minute.
Finished with the stitching, Annalise cleaned the wound again then began to bandage it.
“Sherman.” The deep masculine voice coming from the door startled Annalise.
Jumping, she glanced back. The ranch manager, Cosgrove, stood there in his shirtsleeves and dark trousers. Nice garments, not work clothes. His dark-brown eyes traveled over her and she thought she saw a flicker of irritation. At her?
But when he spoke, he was pleasant. “Hello, Dr. Fine.”
“Cosgrove.” She smiled. “I should be finished here in a minute.”
“Very good. I need to talk to Sherman. Could you stay with Frank until he returns?”
“Certainly.” Was it her imagination or had his voice turned terse?
Looking defiant, the ranch hand walked out with his boss. A sudden uneasiness crept over Annalise, but she couldn’t say why.
She managed to wrap the bandage around Frank’s belly and waist, covering both the entrance and exit wounds.
She could hear Cosgrove’s deep bass and occasionally the desperation in Sherman’s higher-pitched voice. Leaving a small amount of laudanum for the patient when he woke, she dribbled a little bit of carbolic acid solution on a cloth and cleaned her needle then returned everything to her satchel.
She closed the bag, easing down into the chair next to the bed and leaning over to check the patient for fever. None so far. His breathing was shallow, his face too pale for her liking, but she had done all she could do.
There were more voices now, the tones low and urgent. It sounded as though more men had joined Cosgrove and Sherman. What were they discussing? Ranch business probably.
She
glanced around the bunkhouse. She supposed it was clean by a man’s standards. No clothes were strewn about. Bedrolls sat neatly atop each bunk, but it still smelled like dirt and unwashed bodies and cattle.
A stove squatted in the middle of the room. A rocking chair sat along one wall as well as a small table with checkers and a checker board. In the far corner, she saw a branding iron with the Eight of Hearts brand—a center eight flanked on each side by an outfacing heart. And in the wall, burned into the wood, she noticed the Triple B brand.
At first, she didn’t register what she was seeing. Her gaze went back to the Eight of Hearts branding iron and on the floor beside it was a round piece of metal, hollow in the center like a saddle cinch.
A piece that could be heated and used to trace a free-hand pattern in a ranch’s registered mark resulting in a new brand. It was what cattlemen called a “running iron”.
Annalise’s gaze slid from there to the burn in the wall. The brand there was a sloppily imprinted pattern of three B’s. Two outward facing B’s on each side of a center B. The Triple B brand. Matt’s brand. And it had been altered to the Eight of Hearts brand.
This was a lousy effort, but no doubt they’d gotten better with practice.
She drew in a sharp breath. Julius’s men were rustling cattle. Did he know? Did his manager, Cosgrove?
As casually as possible, she had to get to her buggy and back to town. Once there, she would tell Davis Lee what she’d found. She remembered the fire she’d seen the night she had treated Edward. At the time, she had wondered if it might belong to the rustlers. Now she was convinced it had.
Her nerves were jumping and impatience drove through her, but she had to be careful not to let on that she knew anything. Outside, the voices lulled. This might be her chance.
She rose and picked up her satchel on the way to the door. Her palms were slick on the leather handle; she tightened her grip. Five men she didn’t recognize from her last visit to the ranch stood in a half circle around Cosgrove. Their gazes crawled over her and she shuddered inwardly. All of her senses screamed danger.
She tried not to act affected in any way. “I left some laudanum for Frank. When he wakes up, he’ll need it.”
With a wary look at his boss, Sherman moved toward her. “Thanks, Doc.”
She forced a smile. “You’re welcome. I guess I’d best be going.”
Looking put out, the ranch manager’s attention shifted to Annalise. “I’m afraid you won’t be going anywhere, Doctor.”
“Why not?” Though her stomach dropped to her knees, she managed to keep her voice steady. “No one else appears to need my help.”
Cosgrove narrowed his eyes at Sherman. “I told you no doctors.”
“Yeah, I heard you, but Frank’s our brother. I ain’t gonna just let him die, especially when he got shot because he was stealing cattle for you.”
Stealing cattle? Brothers? Frank and Sherman were brothers as well as some of these other men? “Are you all brothers?”
The taller of the five men stepped toward her. Annalise held her place, noticing a ragged scar across the bottom of his chin. “All of us but Cosgrove.”
“There are seven of you in total.” They were the rustlers and she knew exactly who these men were. She hadn’t recognized Frank, but now she could see Sherman’s resemblance to his picture on the wanted poster. If he hadn’t shaved his beard, she would have realized sooner. Still, she asked anyway. “So, just who are you?”
“The Landis brothers,” the tall one answered.
The fear she’d felt before sharpened to a razor’s edge. And now she wasn’t only concerned for herself, but also for the baby. Her mind whirled as things fell into place. Frank had been wounded a day or two ago. That’s when the posse from Whirlwind had been chasing them. He had likely been shot by one of those men. Maybe even Matt. And here she was, treating the outlaw.
Matt. She’d been painfully clear that she wanted nothing more to do with him. He wouldn’t know she was here. Would anyone? Did anyone even know she was gone?
“And now that you know everyone’s identity, you aren’t going anywhere.” Cosgrove clamped a hard hand on her upper arm.
She tried to pull away. If she could get to Mr. Julius, she might have a chance of escaping these men. “What are you going to do?”
“Not sure yet. I’ll have to ask Theo.”
Well, so much for Mr. Julius. Feeling panic well up, Annalise battled it back. She had to stay calm if she was going to get herself and her baby out of this. And right now it looked as though she was their only chance.
Chapter Sixteen
Annalise. Matt struggled to stay calm as he told his brother that Quentin had seen Annalise drive off with someone who matched the description of Sherman Landis. In less than five minutes, they had a posse formed with the two of them, Davis Lee and Bram.
As they thundered out of town and west across the prairie on their horses, he refused to let himself think about what might be happening to Annalise. And he absolutely couldn’t let himself think about the baby she might be carrying. If he did, he wouldn’t be rational and that would endanger her and their child.
He needed to be smart and focused. That was the way to help Annalise, but right now fury and fear rode him hard. He didn’t know if he could shut down enough emotion to keep him from going in with guns blazing when they finally found her and Landis.
Maybe Sherman had given her a story about needing a doctor. That seemed the most likely scenario, considering she had appeared to leave willingly with him.
As they rode, they kept an eye out for signs that might point them somewhere specific. They stopped at Riley’s ranch and when he heard what had happened, he joined them. They covered Baldwin land without incident.
Yesterday, they had lost track of the Landis brothers on the other side of the Eight of Hearts ranch. Matt wanted to tell its owner what was going on, not only so Julius could keep an eye out for Annalise, but also in case he wanted some of his men to join the posse.
The five of them rode into Julius’s yard and up to the front porch of his large two-story home.
The businessman stepped outside, his sharp gaze taking them all in. “Trouble?”
Matt kept his seat. “Earlier, Dr. Fine was seen leaving Whirlwind with a man matching Sherman Landis’s description.”
Julius straightened. “Is she all right?”
“As far as we know. She appeared to go willingly so we think he may have told her that he or someone else needed a doctor. I don’t think she had any idea of his identity.”
The other man frowned. “That means the rest of them are probably with him, too.”
Matt nodded. “We thought you’d want to know. We plan to ride on, but if you’d like to send some men along, you’re welcome to. These bastards stole some of your cattle, too.”
“I appreciate that. Let me talk to my men and I’ll be right back.” The man disappeared into the house.
Matt folded his hands over his saddle horn as he listened to Julius’s shiny polished shoes tapping on the hardwood floor.
Bram eased his horse over beside Matt, saying in a low voice, “Somebody in that upstairs window is trying to get your attention.”
He looked up and saw Julius’s guest, Edward, whom Annalise had treated for a cracked vertebrae. He lifted a hand in greeting as the boy threw open the window.
The kid leaned out, his gaze darting nervously around the yard. “Mr. Baldwin!”
“Hi, Edward.”
The boy gave a nervous glance over his shoulder, then said in a hushed voice, “That man you described to Mr. Julius rode in with Dr. Fine, around to the bunkhouse and they’re still there.”
Everything inside Matt went still. “Is someone hurt? Do they need a doctor?”
“I’m not sure.”
Matt said to Russ, “We should warn Julius before he walks into an ambush.”
He started to draw his Peacemaker and fire off a shot then halted at the boy’s next word
s.
“No, sir! Don’t. Mr. Julius may not know Dr. Fine is here, but he knows those other men are and so does Cosgrove.”
Julius and Cosgrove both knew? Anger rose inside him like a molten seething pulse. He narrowed his eyes at Edward. “Why are you helping us?”
“Dr. Fine probably kept me from being a cripple. I’ll do whatever I can for her.”
Matt gave a curt nod. “Stay inside until one of us comes to get you.”
“I will,” he said, and stepped back from the window.
Russ’s gaze swept over the big house. “Now what?”
The others moved their horses closer to Matt. “Let’s spread out and surprise them. Move quietly so we can find out first what we’re dealing with.”
In agreement, everyone dismounted. Matt and Russ started stealthily around one side of the house; Davis Lee, Riley and Bram went to the other.
From his previous trips, Matt recalled the barn was about a hundred yards from the house. A bunkhouse sat on a diagonal between the two buildings. A couple of old cedars shaded the near side of the bunkhouse and provided some cover.
Attached to the opposite side of the barn was a corral. Two wooden horse troughs were set on either side of the single gate.
Matt eased up to the corner of the house and peered around. Julius and Cosgrove stood just outside the bunkhouse, talking to a group of six men. Movement in the doorway caught Matt’s eye just as Annalise stepped onto the front stoop.
Pushing aside the black fury that threatened to overtake him, Matt forced himself to take stock of the situation. He counted six Landis brothers, plus Cosgrove and Julius. Beyond those men, he caught sight of Davis Lee, Riley and Bram silently making their way to the back of the barn. They would be able to take cover inside as well as defend themselves.
Once they were in place, Matt started to signal Russ. Before he could, Cosgrove pivoted toward them.
“Guns!” The ranch manager dove inside the bunkhouse.
Annalise gave a startled scream when Julius locked an arm around her neck and dragged her inside after him. Matt had only a brief glimpse of her struggling before Julius slammed the door shut. The Landis brothers were left outside. One of them tried to shove the bunkhouse door open to get to cover, but the door wouldn’t budge. The others drew and gunfire erupted.
