He slapped the wood dust off his trousers and headed downstairs with Sailor panting at his heels. He had a saloon that needed his attention.
Claire and her temperance friends had stirred up a hornets’ nest by shutting down three more saloons. Three!
His patronage had doubled because of the other saloon closings, but each day more men were taking the pledge and encouraging their friends to do the honorable thing and follow suit.
Boyd didn’t care about the profits anymore. He just wanted some peace for one night.
The sound of a gunshot jolted him. Sailor tore across the room, barking and lunging at the front door in a frenzied attempt to get out. Boyd sprinted across the room then yanked the door open as his patrons pushed from behind.
Anna was running up his steps, yelling for help. “He’s beating her,” she cried, terror filling her voice, “Hurry.”
Ice rushed through Boyd’s veins. Sailor raced across the snow-covered street and bounded onto Claire’s porch with a ferocious growl. A man’s howl of pain filled the night, and Boyd saw the man kick the dog across the porch.
Karlton! The bastard was on Claire’s porch.
Shouting at the man, Boyd bolted across the street.
As Claire reached out to protect Sailor, Karlton kicked her in the ribs and drove her against the railing.
Molten rage flooded through Boyd as he leapt the porch steps. He drove himself into Karlton’s broad chest and slammed him against the wall. The house shuddered, the cannon-like sound echoing through the neighborhood as Boyd pummeled the man who had beaten Claire.
Karlton grunted and fought back, shoving Boyd backward as he crashed his beefy fists into Boyd’s shoulders and chest.
Boyd felt nothing but rage as he tore into Karlton with deadly intent. He shot his long arms out, swinging his fists into Karlton’s face. Each blow snapped Karlton’s head back, driving the man back until he fell over the railing and sprawled in the snow.
But that wasn’t enough punishment for what he’d done to an innocent woman. Boyd leapt the railing and landed in knee-deep snow.
Hands pulled at him, shouts filled his head, and he continued to strike. Finally, he realized he couldn’t get to Karlton anymore. A group of bloody men formed a circle around him, another around Karlton, who was bleeding a river in the snow.
“Somebody get a doctor!”
Pat Lyons’s voice cut through the melee, and Boyd spun toward the porch where Pat was bending over Claire. Anna knelt beside them, her face streaked with tears.
Boyd’s heart clanged as he vaulted the steps and fell to his knees beside Claire. “Jesus, God in Heaven, please let her be all right,” he whispered. He pushed her hair out of her face, and his stomach clenched with fear. Her left cheek was mottled, and her lip was bleeding. “Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
“M-my gun.” She struggled against his hands. “Where’s my gun?”
“You don’t need it.”
She pushed his hands away, her own shaking uncontrollably as her frantic gaze swept the porch floor. “Where’s my gun?”
“The boys got Karlton. They’re taking him to my bar until Duke gets there. Anna has your revolver.”
She struggled to sit up, but gasped in pain and sagged back to the floorboards in a near faint. Sailor whimpered and nudged Claire’s shoulder with his nose. Her moan sent a river of dread through Boyd.
“The doctor’s on his way,” he said, barely able to speak through his fear.
“He was going to kill me,” she whispered, the effort to talk almost more than she could manage.
“Karlton will never touch you again. I vow it.”
Anna touched Claire’s shoulder. “Be still. Please.”
Boyd sat on the snow-covered porch and carefully lifted his beloved’s head onto his lap. He wanted to hold her, to take her inside where it was warm, but he was afraid to move her.
“You’re safe now,” he said. But Karlton wasn’t. Duke had better have the wretch long gone when Boyd got to his saloon, because he would honestly kill the man.
Claire gripped his hand. “He knows about J-Jack.”
“Shhh...” He brushed the tears off her lashes, feeling helpless and sick to his soul. He should have recognized Karlton’s anger, his veiled threats, his hatred of Claire as something that would need to be ended. He should have been paying attention instead of drowning in self-pity.
He yelled to the group of patrons who were milling around the perimeter of the porch. “Someone get some blankets out here. And go see what’s taking the doctor so long.”
Anna and a man from the crowd ran to do his bidding. A few seconds later Anna brought two thick quilts. She and Boyd tucked them around Claire’s shaking body, and Boyd winced each time she moaned in pain.
“The doc’s coming up the street now,” Pat said, rubbing Sailor’s head.
“Jack would have sold Grandma’s house,” Claire said. “It was all I had.” Tears flooded her eyes and she sobbed.
Boyd stroked her hair. “It’s okay. Jack’s not here. You’re safe now. You’ll be all right,” he said, but she was beyond calming.
“No, I won’t. I’m not all right.” She shook her head. “I’m not... I’m not.”
Tears streaked her temples, but Boyd let them fall. There wasn’t a single thing he could do for her. And that was the worst feeling he’d ever experienced.
She sobbed and turned her face into the crook of his arm. The doctor climbed the steps and crossed to where they sat.
“Why is this woman outside in the cold?” he demanded, scowling fiercely.
Boyd was as outraged as the doctor, but at his own lack of attention. If Claire hadn’t fired her revolver, they might have been calling the coroner rather than the doctor.
“She was kicked in the ribs, Doctor. I was afraid to move her.”
“Kicked?” The doctor glanced at Claire then back at Boyd. “Kicked?”
Boyd nodded. Acknowledging the beastly act sent rage roaring through him again. He would kill Karlton.
He and Pat lifted the quilts and helped the doctor as best they could. Gently, the doctor ran his fingers over Claire’s rib cage.
She moaned and flinched away.
“You’ll have a nasty bruise, Mrs. Ashier,” the doctor said, “but I’m fairly certain your thick coat saved you some broken ribs.”
As soon as the doctor deemed it safe to move Claire into the house, Boyd and Pat helped her to her feet, feeling it would be less painful for her to walk than be carried. Anna followed them in and put the revolver on the desk in the foyer.
Claire refused to be put in bed, so the doctor allowed her to sit on the sofa in the parlor. While he finished examining her, Boyd and Pat made sure Anna hadn’t been injured when Karlton shoved her down the steps. When she assured him she was fine, Boyd knelt beside Sailor. The dog’s eyes and mouth were free of blood, and his breathing chugged like a well-fed steam engine.
Boyd rubbed Sailor’s ears, feeling gratitude and love for his brave dog.
A horrendous uproar from his saloon brought Boyd to his feet. He and Pat raced for the door together.
“Stay with Claire,” he told Pat then bolted outside.
He saw Karlton leap down the saloon steps. Two men grabbed at him, but Karlton swung out his arm and hit one of the men in the head. He shot the second man.
Boyd stared in disbelief. A howl of outrage came from the men surging out the door of his saloon.
Karlton darted past Levi. The deputy and several other men pursued him, but Karlton was getting away. Boyd tackled him in the street, before he could take one step closer to Claire’s boardinghouse.
But Karlton’s desperation and bulk made pinning him impossible. The gun in his hand made him twice as dangerous. Boyd wrestled his arm around Karlton’s neck, hoping to hold him long enough for Levi to cuff him.
“Look out!” someone shouted, just before Boyd felt the gun in Karlton’s fist connect with his temple. Lights exploded inside his skull, an
d weakness stole over him. Karlton wrenched loose from Boyd’s arms and ran toward Claire’s porch.
“Get him,” Boyd shouted, struggling to his knees. He couldn’t let Karlton inside her house. If he got to Claire...
Shouts filled the street.
Boyd staggered to his feet.
Levi pointed his revolver at Karlton’s back. “Stop, or I’ll shoot you, Karlton!”
Karlton swung his arm and fired at Levi then leapt toward the porch steps. Boyd’s heart stampeded his chest, and he lurched forward on unsteady legs.
“Stay back,” Duke called out, shoving Boyd back into the street as he sprinted past.
Boyd gripped his bleeding head and ordered his legs to move. The deep snow felt like thick mud sucking at his feet, making him stumble and go down on one knee.
Pat stepped outside Claire’s boardinghouse and planted himself in front of the door. Karlton raised the revolver and pointed it at his chest.
“Look out!” Boyd yelled, but his warning was lost in the noise filling the street. Karlton was going shoot him. Boyd’s best friend was going to die, and he couldn’t make his legs move fast enough to save him.
The deadly blast of a revolver ripped through the night.
A collective grunt came from the shocked crowd, and Boyd’s gut twisted.
“Pat!”
He surged forward, and stumbled onto Claire’s porch.
Chapter Thirty-three
Numb, Boyd went back across the street to close down his saloon. He felt no rush of relief, no sorrow, no satisfaction—just hollow disbelief that Karlton was dead. Duke had shot him.
He’d had to, of course. Karlton would have pulled the trigger and killed Pat—and anyone else who’d gotten in his way. He’d set his course and gone too far to turn back. For Karlton, it seemed, there had been no choice but to play out his hand and hope to use Claire as a wild card.
Boyd hadn’t known that desperate, deadly side of Karlton. His throbbing temple was proof of that. His head pounded and gut felt queasy. But Claire had to feel a hundred times worse.
After the ruckus from Karlton’s charge, the bar seemed strangely quiet. Boyd climbed the steps to close it down for the night.
The instant he stepped inside, he slammed to a stop. The back bar shelf his father had built lay in broken pieces across the floor. Mugs were toppled, and shards of glass littered the room. Everett and Zach, two of his regulars, stood in the middle of the mess, their faces filled with anguish.
“Karlton did this while we was waitin’ for the sheriff to come get him,” Everett said. “He jumped the bar and wrenched the whole thing right off the wall. Then he grabbed a gun from behind the bar and shot Peter right in the chest.”
So that’s where Karlton got the gun. From Boyd’s own bar. Not a word, not even a breath, escaped Boyd’s throat as he stared at his father’s destroyed masterpiece.
The men stood in the silence, seeing only a part of the destruction one man had caused that night.
Everett gave a helpless shrug. “We told everyone to leave, and that we’d wait for you to come back. We didn’t know what else to do.”
Boyd felt sick to his soul. “Thanks, boys. I’ll take care of the mess.”
“We can help you lay this stuff out on the floor. Maybe you can salvage it.”
“No, it’s too—you’ve done enough.”
The men glanced at each other and hesitated. “We’ll come by in the morning and give you a hand cleaning up.”
“It’ll be a few days before I can get to it,” he said. He appreciated their offer, but he didn’t want anybody touching his father’s work.
“All right then. You let us know.”
Boyd nodded. After they left, he surveyed the damage. Broken glass was scattered over the stools and floor. Huge pieces of wood lay in broken sections over and around the bar. His heart cramped with pain. The back bar shelf had been his father’s last project. It was his masterpiece. It was one of the treasures that marked his existence in this world—in Boyd’s life.
Boyd moved forward, but the sound of his boots crunching through glass stopped him. He looked down, horrified that he was stepping on pieces of the back bar.
A two-foot section of mirror lay on the floor in front of him, broken in half. He knelt and lifted the pieces. His reflection flashed back at him, and he saw the broken man who had failed both his father and the woman who’d deserved more than any other to be cherished and protected. His hands shook as he struggled to fit the halves together. The glass edges grated and shifted and sliced his skin as he fought to make them fit. They had to fit. He had to fix this.
The glass plates wobbled, and he grew frantic in his effort. They clanked together and chipped, causing a jagged gap to open between them.
He gripped the pieces with his bloody fingers. “I can’t fix it. I can’t fix this.”
He hurled the pieces of mirror against the wall. They shattered with a violent crash that brought him to his feet, lusting for an outlet for his frustration and heartache.
He kicked over a stool then swung his arm and slugged mugs off the bar. They flew in several directions and smashed on the floor. He overturned the billiard table then kicked over the bucket of kindling beside his stove. His fists blasted the walls with shuddering force. He busted bar stools over the bar and kicked chunks of firewood across the floor.
“I can’t fix it!” he shouted, his voice circling the room and returning to torment him.
He’d failed everyone. He couldn’t fix his father’s masterpiece. He couldn’t fix Claire’s injuries or the pain he brought her, any more than he could fix his father’s shredded pride.
Tears flooded his eyes and burned down his cheeks. “I can’t fix any of it,” he whispered, his throat so clogged with remorse he couldn’t breathe. He fell against the wall, his chest gripped by a relentless claw that crushed the air from his lungs.
“I can’t fix this,” he sobbed, “I’m sorry.” He slid down the wall and crouched beside the piano, bleeding and weeping and wishing he could take back all the mistakes he’d made in his life.
The sound of a crash startled Claire. She’d been sitting on the sofa with Anna, trying to calm down after the deadly scene with Karlton. Sailor barked and raced to the foyer.
Anna followed him. The doctor was upstairs working on the two men Karlton had shot.
Claire clutched her sore ribs and stood. Her head grew light from the pain, but she hobbled to the foyer to look out the window. The saloon was dimly lit, but someone was definitely in there.
What if one of Karlton’s friends was angry with Boyd for helping her? She looked at Anna. “Something bad is happening over there.”
“Stay here,” Anna said. “I’ll get Pat.” She hurried toward the kitchen where he was filling the stove.
Claire took her revolver off the desk then opened the door. The cold blast of air took her breath away, but it cleared her head and helped steady her as she stepped outside. All she could think about was someone driving their fist or foot into Boyd’s body like Karlton had done to her. Boyd had no one to step in and help him.
Sailor sprinted across the street and bounded onto Boyd’s porch. Gasping in pain, Claire hobbled behind him and climbed the steps.
She marshaled her strength and entered the saloon with her gun held directly in front of her. She would pull the trigger if necessary.
But as she surveyed the destruction, her breath rushed out and her arms fell to her sides. What on earth happened here? The sight sickened and terrified her. Who’d done this awful thing? And where was Boyd?
A hoarse sob from the corner of the room startled her. Sailor bolted forward with a yelp. Boyd was crouched against the wall, bleeding and sobbing.
She went to him. “Are you hurt?” she asked, lowering herself to her knees with a jerky, pain-filled movement.
He looked up, his eyes ravaged with tears and sorrow. “I can’t fix this.”
“Can’t fix what?” she asked, her hard breat
hing wrenching her bruised ribs, the pain so sharp it made her nauseous.
“You. My father. My bar.” Tears streamed down his face. “I’m sorry, Claire. I should have protected you. I should have hugged my father. I didn’t do either.”
Pat rushed into the saloon, his stance indicating he was ready to take on an army of men. But when he saw Claire kneeling beside Boyd, he stopped and stared. “What is going on?”
Boyd gawked at Claire as if just realizing she wasn’t safe on her sofa where he left her, but was here kneeling in the debris on his saloon floor. He looked at Pat. “Why did you let her come here?”
“He didn’t,” she said in Pat’s defense.
Boyd raised his bloody hand to stop her explanation. “Never mind. I’m taking you back right now.” He dragged his shirtsleeve across his eyes then reached for her hand.
She drew away and spoke to Pat. “Will you please wait outside with Sailor?”
“The doctor said—”
“Please,” she interrupted. “Give us a minute.”
He nodded and took Sailor outside.
“Boyd, wait.” She laid a hand on his arm to stop him from standing. She put the revolver on the floor and pointed it away from them. “What happened here?”
“It’s not important. You need to be in bed.”
“I feel better sitting on the floor. Really,” she said. It wasn’t an outright lie. She was in extreme discomfort, but nothing worse than she’d experienced at home on her sofa. She leaned her shoulders against the wall, fighting to disguise her pain and the raspy sound in her voice. “You can take me back as soon as you tell me what happened.”
“I can pick you up and carry you home.”
“Please don’t. It would be painful to be manhandled again.”
He sagged back against the wall and released a weary sigh. “This should have never happened. And it’s my fault, Claire.”
“You didn’t beat me.”
“I may as well have.” Tears filled his eyes, but he seemed unaware of them. “I should have protected you. I’m so sorry I didn’t.” He slipped his blood-splattered fingers over her hand. “Karlton should never have been able to touch you.”
Only You Page 27
