The Farmer's Wife

by Lori Handeland

  Ignoring the spike of glass and wood against her knees and palms, the tiny cuts across her face and throat, Annabeth crawled to the door where she'd dropped her possessions. She slid her Colt from the holster, muttering a few curses that she'd left the rifle in her saddle's scabbard. A pistol was going to be of no use unless whoever was shooting at them decided to approach the house. And if they were going to do that, they would have done it in the first place rather than snipe at them from afar.

  Annabeth thought about what she'd seen in that instant before she'd pushed Ethan out of the way. A glint of sun off metal at the edge of Freedom, where few people roamed, in a place where whoever wanted them dead could slip back into town during the commotion, or jump on a horse and disappear during the same. Although, around here, there wasn't much cover.

  She doubted the culprit was still out there. Nevertheless, she peeked over the edge of a window that now matched the empty one in Ethan's room-- very quick, just in case--but no more shots were fired.

  A cloud of dust had marred the horizon. A horse and rider? Or just dust? She couldn't tell.

  "I think they're gone, but . . . ” She paused. The words stay away from the window--one never knew just how gone “gone” was--remained unspoken.

  Ethan didn't move, didn't speak. She considered he might be frightened, but as he'd once spent time as a field surgeon in the middle of a war shots had come closer to him than this.

  "Ethan?" She sat on her heels and glanced over her shoulder.

  She'd been wrong. No shot had ever come closer than this.