Cherished

by Jill Gregory

  But Josie had known deep in her heart that it was murder.

  The story grew worse. McCray had had the gumption to show up at Clint’s funeral, ostensibly paying the widow his respects. Somehow or other, the willowy, amber-haired young woman with the infant clasped in her arms had caught his fancy. He had begun pursuing her, sending flowers, gifts, calling on her despite her state of mourning. Of course, she had rebuffed him at every turn and the sheriff had even warned him off on her behalf. But one night when Rivers was away from Plattsville on business, several men who worked for McCray had shown up at her house on the fringes of town and tried to drag her off. They told her that their boss was waiting for her in his suite at the hotel, that he’d been patient long enough.

  Fortunately, Wade and Tommy had been heading out of town after a night of gambling at the saloon and saw Josie being dragged down the street. They’d interfered, wounding one man in the ensuing gunfight, killing two others. That’s when the vendetta between the Montgomery brothers and Line McCray had really begun.

  Wade and Tommy, after hearing her story, had helped Josie and her baby move out of town to this abandoned ranch. Not long afterward they had heard that Sheriff Rivers was dead, and that they were being hunted for his murder.

  Juliana interrupted at this point to question Wade. Kevin had fallen asleep in her arms, his soft little cheek resting against the curve of her shoulder. “Sheriff Dane told me that you and Tommy robbed a gold shipment from the Sanders mine. Was that much true?”

  “Sure was. That happened months ago, long before we came across Josie. We’d already met up with Gil and started heading back to Denver for you. When we reached Rimrock, we heard about the bounty and realized you must be on the loose. The Southwest is a mighty big place. We didn’t know where to look, so we decided to lay low in Arizona for a while, hoping to get some word about your whereabouts. When there’s a two-thousand-dollar reward offered, a lot of rumors tend to fly around. We spent a good while checking them out. Tommy even rode all the way to the Colorado border trying to pick up your trail, but all he heard was a lot of talk. While he was gone, Yancy and Skunk and I were nosing around about McCray. Everyone for miles around was talking about how he was buying up every piece of property and business he could find, that Wells was planning to sell him Fire Mesa, that he meant to build a railroad clear through to Texas. One of the things Yancy found out was that McCray owned the Sanders mine. He’d forced Jed Sanders to sell out to him secretly. So two months ago, waiting for Tommy to get back, we robbed the shipment on its way to Timber Junction, then gave a portion of it back to Sanders. Tommy got back from the border, still with no word about you, Juliana, and so we laid low for a while longer, waiting for our luck to change. Then one night Gil Keedy reported that Rivers was away. We had sent Skunk and Yancy and Gray Feather as far away as New Mexico trying to get a lead on you, but so far, no word from them. Tommy and I were going stir crazy up on Stick Mountain, so we decided to sneak into the Ten Gallon Saloon for the evening. We always wear masks during holdups, so we didn’t worry too much about anyone recognizing our faces. Anyway,” Wade finished, “that’s the night we met Josie. Once we heard about her troubles, we got caught up in this whole mess and figured we had to stay and see it through until it was finished.” He grinned over at his sister, comfortably reclining in the rocker with the baby sleeping peacefully against her shoulder. “Lucky thing you showed up in the vicinity. Now, as Tommy would say, we can kill two birds with one stone.”

  “And what might those two birds be?” Cole asked, setting his empty coffee cup down on the table. He tried to keep from staring at Juliana with that tiny baby in her arms. She looked downright natural holding him. She loved it, too, he could tell that by the glow on her face. Cole tried not to think about the little son or daughter he could have shared with her one day—if things had been different. They weren’t different, he reminded himself angrily. Juliana would just have to have some other man’s baby....

  But that thought made him scowl even more blackly.

  “The two birds were to rescue Juliana from you and any other greedy bounty hunter who might have his eye on that damned reward,” Wade retorted. “And to keep watch over Josie until McCray is dead or driven out.”

  “Men like McCray don’t get driven out. He’ll have to be six feet under before this is over,” Cole said as though discussing the chance of an afternoon drizzle.

  “Then he’ll be six feet under.” Wade met the bounty hunter’s skeptical look with a determined set to his mouth. “He’s hurt enough people already. It’s the only way.”

  Juliana swallowed. Violence. She knew McCray was evil, that he deserved to die, and yet something inside her cringed at the easy way both Wade and Cole turned to killing for the answer. She took a deep breath. Maybe it wasn’t easy for them after all. Maybe they had just seen enough of lawlessness and greed and brutality to know that sometimes it was the only way to put an end to such evil. She shuddered as a tremor worked its way down her spine. It might be the only way, but she couldn’t bring herself to like it.

  “Let me get this straight,” Cole said, rising to stare from Wade to Josie, choosing his words carefully. “After you helped Josie clear out of Plattsville, long after the Sanders job, that’s when Rivers got killed? We heard he was out with his posse hunting for you when it happened.”

  “That’s right. He had tracked us right after the robbery, of course, but found no trace. Gray Feather had already found us the cabin on Stick Mountain, and Rivers hadn’t a clue where we were holed up. But after we helped Josie, McCray got word of it and learned who we were. He realized that the Montgomerys hadn’t only pulled the Sanders job but had also ruined his fun with the lady. He decided to seek his own revenge. My guess is he made sure Rivers got a false lead concerning our whereabouts, then he had him killed. That allowed McCray to put his own man in as sheriff—that idiot Dane—and also gave us a murder charge to reckon with. We’ve been forced to stay pretty much away from any town ever since. Except for Keedy. He’s the only one not actually associated with the gang—yet.”

  At the mention of Gil’s name, Juliana noticed a light enter Josie’s dark eyes. But she had also seen the girl perk up when Tommy’s name had been mentioned. Apparently, Josie Larson was having a difficult time choosing between the two young men competing for her attention. Of course, it was still only a short time since her husband’s death, but Juliana realized that here in the West, people couldn’t mourn for as long as custom considered proper in the East. Life out here just kept going right on, like a huge, raging river, and if you didn’t keep up with it, you were swept under. She had a feeling that Josie, despite missing her husband, needed someone to lean on, someone to love. It must be terribly lonely for her here all alone. In addition, she had the responsibility of raising her child. She would want a father for him, someone to love and protect him in this untamed country. It was only natural, Juliana reflected as the baby stirred and whimpered in her arms, that Josie would seek out the companionship of another man. But which one did she prefer? Juliana, despite her fondness for Gil, felt a strong loyalty to Tommy. Couldn’t this girl see how wonderfully handsome and fun-loving, and dear he was? Of course, Josie certainly might feel that Gil, though not as lankily good-looking or charismatic as Tommy, nevertheless had his own special brand of charm. His gentle, drawling sense of humor, courtly Texas manners, and easygoing demeanor must have had an effect on Josie. Still ...

  Her musings were broken by the sound of the baby’s wails. Startled, she rose and hurried to Josie, who reached for him with a weary smile.

  “Looks like my little one wants his mama’s arms. Can’t say I blame him.” She sighed, stroking the little boy’s bald head with a work-callused finger. “Sometimes I wish for my mama’s arms, too.”

  “Don’t we all,” Juliana murmured softly, thinking of the mother she had lost when she was nine, and whom she scarcely remembered. If only she had a mother to confide in now, to pour out all her doubts an
d hurts over Cole. Suddenly she felt a strange bond with this young woman, who like herself seemed destined to fight for survival alone in a world of men. “Don’t we all.”

  The two young women smiled at each other then, each taking the other’s measure with eager interest, more than ready to become friends.

  “Tommy has talked of little else except finding you ever since I met him,” Josie offered a little while later as they cleared away the coffee cups. Cole and Wade had gone outside and the two women found themselves alone in the kitchen, able to talk together without the men listening in.

  “Come with me and I’ll show you where Kevin and I spend most of our time,” Josie said. “There’s a little parlour in back that I’ve fixed up nice and homey.”

  Sure enough, tucked behind the dark wood staircase was a spotless, cozy chamber, perhaps originally a little sewing room, where the lace-edged pillows on the chintz sofa were arranged neat as a pin, where the cedar floor was swept and polished to a high gloss, and where the iron stove in the corner was as clean and bright as a newly minted government coin. Josie settled Kevin down in a crib she’d discovered in the former nursery upstairs.

  “Gil carried it down here for me—in fact, he helped me fix up this entire room. I didn’t want to make the rest of the house look too lived-in, but I needed some little place where I could feel at home.”

  “Why didn’t you stay down at the hideout on Stick Mountain?” Juliana asked curiously.

  “It just goes against the grain with me to stay in a cabin with a bunch of men and not be married or related to any of ‘em. My folks raised me strict, I guess.” She shrugged. “So every day or so one of them is kind enough to ride down and visit, seeing if Kevin and me need food or supplies or anything, and in the meantime, we just wait.”

  “For what?”

  Josie glanced up from where she was busily folding a pile of the baby’s newly washed clothes. “For word that McCray is gone, so me and Kevin can go back to Plattsville. Tommy promised me we’d be able to go home again soon.”

  “Did he?”

  Noticing the interested manner in which Juliana waited for her to continue, Josie gave a self-conscious laugh. “Tommy has been real nice, real concerned. He’s here to visit almost as much as—”

  “Gil Keedy?” Juliana suggested with a smile.

  When Josie blushed and nodded, Juliana added, “They’re very different, aren’t they?” She couldn’t help wondering what Josie’s assessment was of her two suitors and hoped the question would prompt some insight, which it did.

  “Tommy is ... well, Tommy,” Josie chuckled. “He acts without thinking sometimes—just plunges right into mischief and to heck with the consequences. Lucky for him, he shoots fast as lightning, so he can get away with it. That night those men tried to drag me off,” she explained, her expression sobering, “it was Tommy who saved the day. Wade would’ve been shot in the back by one of McCray’s men, but Tommy saw him and plugged him before he could get off a shot. If you’ve never seen him shoot a gun, Juliana, you ain’t never seen any real shooting.”

  Thinking of how expertly Cole handled his Colt .45 pistols, Juliana wondered fleetingly if her brother could possibly draw any faster. But more on her mind at that moment was the admiring glow on Josie’s face when she discussed Tommy.

  “He thinks a lot of you, too,” she said by way of a reply, and studied the girl’s reaction.

  Josie flushed the color of baby rosebuds, shook her head vigorously, and said, “Oh, Tommy’s just a big tease.”

  “And Gil?”

  “Gil ...” Josie’s confusion grew. “Gil is sweet, too. All the boys are dears—I don’t know what Kevin and I would do without them.”

  Suddenly she turned to Juliana and lifted her hands helplessly. “To tell you the truth, Juliana, both Gil and Tommy have been more than just sweet. They’ve been downright attentive ... and though they wouldn’t neither of them be disrespectful enough to Clint’s memory to actually court me yet, I can tell that they both want to.”

  “How do you feel about that, Josie?”

  The girl stood over the baby’s crib, staring down at the sleeping child, whose breath came in slow, light beats, calm as sunrise. “It’s too soon after Clint to say. And even though Clint ... well, our marriage wasn’t exactly a Sunday picnic—” She broke off, hesitating, then something in Juliana’s expression, a glimmer of compassion, of interest touched by genuine caring, spurred her suddenly to continue in a rush: “He drank sometimes, you see—and when he was very drunk ... he would sometimes ... beat me ... but not often, and it wasn’t really so very bad—not usually.”

  Her voice trailed off. She was still staring down at the baby, but Juliana could see tears on her cheeks.

  For a moment, Juliana was speechless. Then she went swiftly to the girl and put her arms around her. “But that’s terrible, Josie. Even if it only had happened once—it would have been one time too many. Why didn’t you leave him?”

  “Leave him?” The girl looked blank. “He was my husband. I took a marriage vow to love and obey him.”

  “Pledging to put up with beatings isn’t part of any marriage vow I know about.”

  “I was scared,” Josie whispered in a tortured voice. “I ... wanted to run away sometimes ... Oh, I didn’t know what to do. And then there was Kevin ...”

  Juliana struggled to understand. Compassion for the girl crying in her arms warred with her fury at the man who had beaten her, and indignation that any woman could find herself caught in such a cruel trap. What frightened her most was that Josie had hardly realized she had had a choice. She could have left. It might not have been easy, but she could have done it—just as she had left Plattsville when Line McCray’s attentions became too threatening.

  “I’m not trying to say I’m glad Clint died in that fire,” the girl added quickly, lifting a tear-streaked face. “I would never have wished such a thing on him in a hundred years, but if it hadn’t happened ...” She took a deep breath and went on. “I would never have met Gil or Tommy, and wouldn’t have known how ... how truly nice and kind a man could be. And that’s why,” she said, plunging ahead with a determined glint in her dark eyes, “I’m not going to rush into marryin’ anyone again—I don’t want to make any more mistakes. I’m going straight back to Plattsville and start over—and I’m going to just sit tight and see.”

  “Let’s just hope Line McCray gets what’s coming to him,” Juliana muttered. And John Breen, too, she thought as she picked up a flowered china vase from the desk, studying the wildflowers arranged on it. She couldn’t help being struck by how similar her predicament was to Josie’s. Both of them had been forced into hiding by men determined to possess them at any cost. Both only wanted the freedom to live in peace. Of course, she sighed, unlike Josie, she had found a man she did want to spend her life with—but he wasn’t sweetly love-struck the way Tommy and Gil were; he was by turns unpredictable, arrogant, rude, indifferent, and heartbreakingly gentle and tender, not to mention entirely too self-sufficient to need or want her or anyone else....

  She found herself wishing suddenly, for the first time in her life, that she didn’t have these infernal freckles marching all across her nose. And that her mouth was not quite so wide. It did ruin the symmetry of her face. Maybe if she was prettier, with the classic, perfect porcelain beauty common in so many girls she’d known in St. Louis....

  What would it take to make Cole love her?

  Idiot, she chided herself in silent fury, you’re supposed to be forgetting him!

  His voice at the door shook her out of her thoughts, jarring her so badly, the vase dropped from her hands and crashed onto the wood floor into a thousand delicate shards of china, waking little Kevin, who immediately started to cry.

  “Oh,” Juliana gasped, “I’m so sorry.” As she knelt and began hastily collecting fragments of broken china, she cursed herself for a clumsy fool—she who had whirled so gracefully about countless ballrooms and never trod on a partner�
��s toe. She had always thought that love made one happy, whole, and perfect—not that it reduced intelligent, able young women to fumbling idiots!

  “It’s all right,” Josie told her as she picked up Kevin and soothed him in her arms. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll fetch a broom ...”

  “Ouch. Damn.”

  Cole was by her side in three quick strides, frowning as she stuck her cut and bleeding finger into her mouth. “Let me see that.”

  “It’s nothing ...” she protested.

  “Let me see it, Juliana.”

  He forced her to hold her hand still and studied the gash in her finger, from which blood spurted like a small crimson fountain. Snapping off his neckerchief, he quickly bound up her hand while Juliana ground her lip.

  “You’re not going to faint are you?” he asked quickly.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She was tougher now, since she’d started traipsing through the West. She had to be. Still, she was feeling a trifle light-headed. Maybe because he was standing so close to her, holding her hand, taking care of her.

  “I guess I’m clumsy today,” she offered in a faint voice to Josie, who was watching the little scene with one brow lifted.

  But Cole cupped her chin in his hand. “Today?” His face softened. Then he sent Josie a wry look. “Every day,” he informed her.

  “That so?”

  “I beg your pardon ...” Juliana fumed.

  “First time I met you,” he murmured, ignoring Juliana’s outrage and continuing to hold her hand in his large one, “you fainted in my arms. Next time, you fell down in the dirt in Cedar Gulch right at my feet. After that, you stumbled over the edge of a canyon so deep, you’d have aged five years before you hit bottom. And this morning, you nearly fell just getting off your fool horse ...”

  “That’s enough!” Juliana gasped between clenched teeth, humiliated, and wondering what on earth Josie was thinking. She yanked her hand from his. “And do you care to tell us why I almost fell over that canyon? Who was chasing me, scaring me half to death before I even got anywhere near the edge of that cliff?”