RenegadeHeart

by Madeline Baker

  “Good Lord,” she gasped. “What happened to you?”

  “Annabelle Walsh set her dogs on me. Can I come in?”

  “Yes, of course. Here, sit down.”

  She hovered over him as he eased into one of the big, overstuffed chairs in the parlor, her sky-blue eyes reflecting the horror of what she saw. Tyree’s face was swollen, pale as death beneath the multicolored bruises and drying blood. Both of his eyes were puffy and turning black; his mouth was cut in several places, there was a jagged gash in his left cheek. His shirt hung in tatters, exposing his lean torso and she saw that his chest, too, was a mass of bruises and angry red welts. And his right hand… She turned away, fighting the urge to vomit.

  “Not a pretty sight, is it?” Tyree muttered. “Damn, it hurts like hell. You got any whiskey?”

  “I’ll get it. Just sit tight.”

  Tyree leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Every breath was an effort, but the pain caused by his broken rib was nothing compared to the constant pulsing pain in his hand and he swore under his breath, cursing Annabelle Walsh and her sadistic nightriders.

  Rachel returned shortly, carrying a tray laden with salve, bandages, scissors, and a tall bottle of scotch whiskey.

  Tyree reached for the bottle and took a lengthy swallow as Rachel began working on his hand. He flinched involuntarily each time she touched him, swore aloud as she cleaned the wound with a disinfectant that stung like hell.

  Going to the kitchen again, she returned with a bowl of warm water, and one of cold. Tyree grimaced as she placed his injured hand in the cold water in hopes of reducing the swelling. While his hand soaked, she began sponging the blood from his face and chest with a soft cloth dipped in warm water.

  “Tyree, I can clean up the blood and bandage the cuts on your face and chest, but your hand… I don’t know anything about setting bones that badly crushed.” There was a tremor in her voice, and her eyes were dark with worry when she met his gaze. “I think I can splint your fingers,” she went on uncertainly, “but I don’t know what to do about the rest. You need a doctor.”

  “What about the sawbones in Yellow Creek?”

  “He’s gone back East to visit his daughter. She had a baby last month.”

  “Damn.”

  “The only other doctor is over fifty miles away. I…I can take you in the buggy, if you like.”

  Tyree loosed a long sigh. Riding fifty miles across rough, unbroken country with a busted rib and a ruined gun hand was out of the question.

  “Shit, Rachel,” he murmured wearily, “just do the best you can, but do it the hell now.”

  With a nod, Rachel removed what was left of Tyree’s shirt and began to dab disinfectant on the wounds on his chest and face. The gash in his cheek was deep and he swore aloud as she bandaged it. Another scar, she mused, when he had so many. His side was badly bruised and discolored.

  It was nearing two a.m. when Rachel taped the last bandage in place. Tyree was quite a sight. A wide strip of cloth was swathed around his middle to support his broken rib, a square of gauze covered the gash in his cheek. His face was swollen and purple, one eye was nearly swollen shut. His right hand was splinted and loosely wrapped.

  With a sigh, Rachel stood up, one hand pressed against her aching back. She had done her best to mend the damage to Tyree’s hand, and she knew, with real regret, that her best had not been good enough. With luck, he would eventually regain the use of his right hand, but only for the simplest tasks. He would never fast-draw a gun with that hand again. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. And so did Tyree. The knowledge was clear in his eyes, and in the bitter twist of his mouth.

  Tyree got slowly to his feet, each movement an effort. “Thanks, Rachel,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t have come here if I’d had anywhere else to go.”

  “It’s all right.” She lowered her eyes, suddenly shy in his presence. So much had passed between them and yet, for all that, he seemed like a stranger. “The spare bedroom is still empty,” she said in a low voice. “You’re welcome to stay until you’re feeling better.”

  “No.”

  She had not expected him to refuse, nor had she thought to feel such regret when he spoke of leaving.

  “You’re welcome to stay,” she repeated. “Really.”

  “I can’t,” Tyree said wearily. “I need a place to hole up, someplace where no one will think to come looking for me.”

  “But you just said you had nowhere else to go. Besides, you’re in no fit condition to ride. Not tonight, anyway.”

  “Oh? How the hell do you think I got here?”

  “But where will you go?” Her concern was evident in her voice, but Tyree did not seem to notice.

  “Out to the Jorgensen place,” Tyree answered as if the idea had just occurred to him. “I’d be obliged if you’d keep my whereabouts to yourself.”

  Rachel nodded. Once word got out that Tyree’s gun hand was ruined, he would be a sitting duck for any bounty hunter in the territory. Anyone catching him off-guard would have no trouble getting the drop on him. She thought fleetingly of Clint.

  “You’ll need a gun,” she said, thinking aloud. “Pa’s got an extra one in his room. You’ll need some food, too, and a clean shirt.”

  Before he could argue or agree, she began gathering the items she had mentioned. With a sigh, Tyree sat down again. Closing his eyes, he rested his head on the back of the chair. Damn, but he was tired. It would be so pleasant to stay at the Lazy H and let Rachel take care of him. He had missed her more than he cared to admit. But he could not stay. Annabelle’s men would not waste any time bragging about how they had whipped Logan Tyree, smashed his gunhand, and sent him running. Once word got around that he was hurt, he would be fair game for anyone who felt like hauling him in to the nearest lawman.

  And he was not going back to jail. Not now. Not ever.

  “Tyree?”

  “Yeah?” It was an effort to open his eyes.

  Rachel was standing before him, a burlap bag in one hand, a shirt and an old Walker Colt in the other. With a low groan, he stood up, reaching for the shirt with his good hand.

  “Here, let me help you,” Rachel said quickly.

  Halloran’s shirt was a trifle snug through the shoulders and the sleeves were a couple of inches too short, but it was better than nothing. Tyree accepted Rachel’s help because he had no choice, but it galled him nevertheless. She could see that. He was a man who did not take kindly to depending on others.

  Wordlessly, she handed him the gun. The barrel of the old Colt was too long to fit into his holster, so he shoved the gun into the waistband of his pants.

  “Thanks,” he said gruffly. Brushing her cheek with his left hand, he picked up the sack of food and left the house.

  Peering out the front window, Rachel watched Tyree hang the sack over the saddle horn. Saw his face go gray with pain when he accidentally jarred his right hand as he pulled himself into the saddle. Once mounted, he sat there for several moments before he reined the stallion north toward the old Jorgensen place.

  Rachel watched him ride away into the darkness, bewildered by her feelings. He had used her and abused her. He had taken her as callously as he would have taken some cheap saloon girl. And yet, inexplicably, it grieved her to see him in pain, to know he was alone and hurting.

  She stayed at the window, staring down the empty road long after Tyree was out of sight.

  Chapter Ten

  The cabin was cold and dark, empty of life save for an owl perched on one of the overhead beams, its bright yellow eyes blinking in the sudden light as Tyree lit a lamp. With a faint rustle of wings, the owl flew out into the night. Tyree stared after the bird, frowning. The Apache believed an owl was a bad omen, a forerunner of death.

  Moving sluggishly, Tyree went outside, slipped the rigging from the gray before turning him loose in one of the pole corrals located behind the shack.

  Inside again, he dropped his warbag on the floor, barring the door
behind him. Pain slashed through him with every move, and he cussed long and loud as he eased down on the lumpy mattress, his left arm thrown across his forehead, his right hand pillowed on his chest.

  Outside, the wind came up, whispering mournfully as it blew across the valley. Tyree stared out the curtainless window, his thoughts grim as he watched the clouds drift across the inky sky. It would be weeks before his right hand healed, and even then it would likely be as useful as teats on a boar. And until then, what? He had money, but didn’t dare show his face in Yellow Creek to buy supplies as long as he was crippled up. He could ride on, he mused grimly, but the next town was over fifty miles away, and he was too damn sore to travel that far. And too damn mad!

  Unconsciously, he stroked the smooth walnut butt of the Walker Colt jutting from his waistband. There were five men who had a debt to pay and by damn, he meant to see they paid it. In full.

  Courting thoughts of vengeance, Tyree fell into a troubled sleep…and sleeping, began to dream—dark dreams peopled with the skeletal images of men he had killed. The ghost of Job Walsh materialized in the midst of the others, his eyes burning like twin coals plucked from the bowels of hell. With a death’s-head grin, Walsh drew his gun, cocked the hammer, sighted down the barrel. Tyree saw himself grinning confidently as he reached for his own gun. But his hand refused to obey his mind’s command. Puzzled, he glanced down at his right hand, screamed in horror at the gnarled and distorted claw growing from the end of his arm and screamed yet again as his left hand withered before his eyes. Helpless now, he looked up to find Walsh laughing at him, laughing like a crazy man as he pulled the trigger again and again…

  Tyree woke in a cold sweat. The bandages on his right hand made a white blur in the shadowy darkness. He stared at his ruined hand for a long time before sleep claimed him again.

  He woke the following morning feeling ill-tempered and sore as hell. Scowling blackly, he touched a match to the wood stacked in the fireplace, dumped some coffee into the battered coffeepot, and put it on the fire to boil. Rummaging in his warbag, he pulled out a slab of bacon, sliced it awkwardly with his left hand, dropped the pieces in a cast-iron skillet. There were a half-dozen biscuits in the sack, and he ate them with the bacon, washing it all down with gulps of hot black coffee.

  With breakfast over, he pulled a set of hobbles from his pack and went out to check on the gray. The clear morning air was blue with the sound of Tyree’s angry curses by the time he had the hobbles in place. That done, he turned the stud out to graze on the sparse yellow grass growing around the cabin.

  He spent the day drowsing in the sun, letting its warmth bake the ache from his battered body. Sitting there, he found himself thinking of Rachel and wishing she didn’t have such a low opinion of him. He frowned as he recalled how she had flung his past in his face, taunting him with the men he had killed, like the supposedly unarmed man he had shot in Amarillo. True, the man hadn’t been armed in the usual sense of the word, but he had been swinging a double-bitted axe that was every bit as lethal as a six-gun. And then there was that helpless woman. Rita Lacey, her name had been, wife of Tom Lacey, one of the fastest gunmen this side of the Missouri. Tyree had killed Lacey in a saloon brawl, and Rita had come looking for her husband’s killer, shotgun in hand. And Tyree had killed her. He hadn’t liked killing a woman, especially a woman as attractive as Rita Lacey had been, but what the hell. It had been him or her. And it wasn’t her house that had burned down, but an El Paso crib where Rita worked part-time.

  And as for the man he had reportedly shot in the back without even a call, shit, the man had never existed except in the mind of whoever set the story in motion. Of course, there were dozens of other men he had killed. A sheriff in Texas. A Pinkerton man in Abilene. A drunken cowhand in Dodge. A double-dealing gambler in Tombstone who tried to palm a fifth ace. The list was endless, but he had never regretted killing any of them. He had chosen the path he rode, and he would ride it to the end.

  Tyree frowned as he pulled his thoughts back to the present, and Rachel. His only regret in life was taking her virginity. She was a lovely young woman, much too good for the likes of a washed-up gunfighter. And too good for a man like Clint Wesley, too.

  Wesley. Tyree spat into the dirt. Wesley wasn’t a bad kid, but unless he got rid of that badge, or got a lot better with his gun, he wasn’t going to live long enough to marry Rachel, or anyone else. A green kid packing a gun was just asking for trouble.

  The days passed with annoying slowness. Inactivity made Tyree restless and irritable, his inability to use his left hand with the same sureness and dexterity as he had used his right hand made him angry and bad-tempered. Cooking, eating, shaving, bathing, dressing, looking after the stallion, even combing his hair—all the simple everyday tasks he had once performed with ease now took twice the time and required twice the effort and concentration.

  Thoughts of vengeance crowded his mind every time he looked at his ruined hand, and he spent long hours plotting the demise of the five men responsible.

  As his strength increased, he took long walks to pass the time. Sometimes he took the gray stud along for company. The horse trailed at his heels like an overgrown puppy.

  He played countless games of solitaire, cussing mightily every time he tried to shuffle the cards.

  He was about out of food, cigars and patience when Rachel showed up at the cabin door.

  “I hope you don’t mind a little company,” she said by way of greeting. She was glad to see he was looking much better. His face was no longer swollen, though it was still slightly discolored. The gash in his cheek had scabbed over; it would leave a ragged scar. She noticed he had not shaved in several days.

  “Come on in,” Tyree invited. “Sit down. What brings you clear out here? Come to gloat?”

  “Of course not. I…I just thought you might be a little lonesome.”

  “Did you?”

  Rachel lowered her lashes, unwilling to meet his probing gaze. Regaining her composure, she looked up and smiled. “You look like you could use a shave,” she remarked, resisting the temptation to reach out and stroke his beard.

  “Reckon so,” Tyree agreed, rubbing his left hand across the dark stubble sprouting on his jaw.

  “This place could use some cleaning up, too,” Rachel observed, glancing with distaste at the dirty dishes stacked in the sink, and at the empty bottles and papers piled in one corner.

  “Yeah,” Tyree muttered glumly. “And the window is dirty and the blankets need washing, and the floor needs sweeping. And, dammit, I need a drink.”

  Rachel’s laugh was soft and musical, like the purling of spring water over a mound of mossy stones. “Poor baby,” she crooned, “got a broken hand and can’t go into town.”

  Tyree’s deep amber eyes glittered angrily. “Dammit, Rachel, it’s not funny!”

  “I know,” she said, instantly contrite. “Everyone is wondering what happened to you. Larkin and his bunch are bragging about how they whipped you and ran you out of town.”

  “I’ll bet they are.”

  “Yes.” Rachel smiled up at him, her eyes twinkling merrily. “The way they tell it, you were tougher than Hickock and Cody rolled into one.”

  Tyree snorted derisively. “But not too tough for Larkin and his thugs, right?”

  “Right. They’re boasting, modestly, of course, that they went through you like a hot knife through butter.”

  “They’ll pay dearly for that bit of bravado,” Tyree vowed quietly. “Damn, I wish I had a drink.”

  “Would you like me to ride into Yellow Creek and buy you a bottle?”

  “Yeah. And some ammunition. And a holster for a left-handed draw. And a box of the best long nines the town has to offer.”

  “Are you planning to live on cartridges and cigars?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Be serious. How’s your food supply holding up?”

  “Cupboard’s about bare. Here.” He pressed a wad of bills into Rachel’s hand
. “Buy whatever you think looks good.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Tyree?”

  “You need more money?”

  “No, this is plenty. Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask.”

  “Why did you become a gunfighter?”

  Tyree regarded her for a long moment while he considered and discarded several answers, and then he shrugged. “A man has to do something for a living.”

  “I’m sure you could have found another line of work if you had tried.”

  “Sure. I could have swamped out saloons for two bits a day.”

  “Can’t you ever be serious?” Rachel snapped.

  “I am being serious. Take a good look at me, honey. I’m a ‘breed. Nobody’s gonna give me a job that amounts to anything. Besides, I like what I do.”

  “I can’t imagine why. Just look at you. You can’t even ride into town for fear of being shot at, or arrested. Why don’t you quit?”

  “I can’t,” he retorted, somewhat bitterly. “No matter where I go, there’s always someone who knows me, some young punk who thinks he’s faster than I am, and won’t rest until he takes a stab at proving it.”

  “Have you ever tried to quit?”

  “Once. I went to California. Cut my hair. Changed my name. Grew a beard. But it didn’t work. I’d only been there a week or so when somebody recognized me. Next thing I knew, I’d killed two men and I was on the move again. So I figured, what the hell. Might as well cash in on it. And I have.”

  “You could try again. To quit, I mean.”

  “Maybe.”

  Tyree’s eyes probed Rachel’s, wondering what lay behind her questions, and her sudden silence.

  “I’d better be going,” Rachel announced abruptly. “I’ll be back tomorrow with your supplies.”

  “Rachel—”

  “Yes?” She looked up at him, her heart aching to hold him, to mother him, to feel his mouth on hers. She did not like to think of him staying in such a dreary place alone, with no one to care for him, to love him.

  “I seem to be thanking you for something every time I turn around.”