Maggie Box Set

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  At the apex of her ascent, her body is high enough to swing her straight leg over the mare’s broad back, where she bangs her knee to a stop on the cantle. She collapses across the saddle horn, her legs in a flying herkie, the jump she’d mastered her one year as a high school cheerleader. She had been the worst on the squad, both in terms of skill and attitude, before she’d run away for Nashville. She’s feeling just about the same now as she did then. Sucky.

  “Don’t stop. Use that stirrup leg now.”

  Maggie doesn’t have a hand to shoot him a bird since she’s clinging to Lily’s back like a baby spider monkey. She pushes off her stirrup leg and crawls the rest of the way into the saddle. Zero grace, but she makes it.

  “Nicely done.”

  “Liar.” Now that she’s on Lily’s back all by herself, her anger and bad attitude fades. That was kind of badass.

  “You’ll get better at it.”

  Her heart quickens, liking the sound of that. “If she’d moved a muscle . . .”

  “You’d be eating dirt.”

  “With my butt.”

  He laughs for real, even giving up a quick flash of dimples. “Come on.” He issues some invisible signal to Wolf, and the gray takes off at a slow lope.

  “Thanks for waiting on us, butthead.” She clucks as she squeezes with her legs. “Don’t let him get away, Lily. We’re making progress.”

  It’s all the encouragement the mare needs. She gathers her bulk and catches Wolf, and Hank and Maggie ride out at a lope, side by side.

  Forty

  When the horses slow for a breather, Hank says, “So, you said you wanted to talk to me. Talk.”

  There’s a firestorm of questions burning its way through Maggie’s head. It’s so intense that she can’t pick just one.

  Despite his earlier dimples, Hank is still edgy. “Well?”

  “Cool your jets. I’m trying.”

  “How about I go first, then. What possessed you with Sheila?”

  Maggie is taken aback. She’d been so caught up in what she needed to talk to him about, she’d forgotten about her scene with Sheila. “Um, you’re talking about . . .”

  “You making her believe you and I are carrying on behind her back. And she said you made a pass at her?”

  “Believe me, if I’d have made a pass at her, she wouldn’t have told you what we ended up doing. I just . . . pushed on her a little.”

  “Jeez, Maggie.”

  “Well, you did kiss me.”

  “We kissed each other. And I said I was sorry.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Sheila chewed my ass.”

  “There appears to still be enough left to work with.” One good thing has come from Hank turning the tables on her. She doesn’t feel like sparing his feelings anymore, and her words burst forth like a fireball. “Speaking of which, why the asswipe move insisting I come to lunch the other day for a ‘surprise’ only to shove the big reveal of your girlfriend to your mom and sister down my throat?”

  “What? That wasn’t my surprise. I didn’t even know Sheila was coming.”

  His words sprinkle drops of cool rain on her hot emotions. “Really?”

  “I just thought you’d like seeing Laura. I was excited about her visit.”

  “She hates me.”

  “Maybe she knows you went to dinner at Winchesters with Patrick Rhodes.”

  Just like that, he fans her flames again. “Maybe it’s something you told her about me.”

  He shoots her a withering look. “If you mean does she know I asked you to share my life and you said no, again, then yes, it’s something I told her. We’re loyal like that.”

  The horses amble on. Maggie is oblivious to their surroundings, to the weather, to the animal under her. The conversation isn’t going well. At all. And she’s barely started on the things she needs to talk to Hank about. She fights to contain her raging thoughts, to keep them from exploding all over him and making things even worse.

  “You’re killing me. If you’re not going to say what you had to say, why’d you come?”

  “Obviously not for the pleasure of your company.”

  “What’d you expect? I’m having a bad day. I was arrested for a murder I didn’t commit.”

  His horrible attitude is wearing her down, and her voice is sharper than she intends. “Hank, are you forgetting I was there when you fought Patrick?”

  Hank jerks Wolf to a stop. The horse tosses his head and chews at the bit. “Are you fucking kidding me? You think I killed him?”

  “How should I know? You took off from my cabin after attacking him for no reason, and next thing I hear, you’ve chased him down and fought him again at his place, and then he’s dead.”

  “No reason? You have no idea all the reason I have.”

  “No thanks to you. But don’t worry, Gene filled me in on your past. Patrick working for the Valdez family. The Valdez thugs coming to town. You fighting them off with a tire iron. Defending your mom by shooting one of them with a rifle.”

  “Gene has a big mouth.”

  “Whatever. None of that is going to help you much with the deputies now, and I need to know what happened, and what you told the deputies, for when they question me, Hank.”

  Hank spurs Wolf, who takes off like a rocket. Maggie urges Lily to catch him, but the gelding leaves her like she’s standing still. Maggie doubts Lily could have stayed with Wolf even if she wasn’t pregnant and wanted to. And she doesn’t want to. Maggie slows the mare to an easy trot. Ahead, Wolf is a gray streak across the waving brown prairie. When Maggie can barely see it anymore, the gray streak slows, then stops. Ten minutes later, they overtake Wolf. He’s grazing with his reins over his saddle horn. Hank is lying on his back nearby, head cradled in his hands, shoulders propped on a boulder.

  Maggie and Lily stop beside him. “I shouldn’t have told you what Patrick said.”

  “I shouldn’t have chased after him and picked another fight. Don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t just what you told me. It was a lot of things.”

  “Like what?”

  Hank smiles. One side of his mouth, one dimple. It’s enough to kickstart Maggie’s pulse. “He shouldn’t be making moves on you.”

  She hates that she loves hearing him say this. “You’ve got a girlfriend.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with the thought of you with someone else. Especially not him. But he was alive and well when I left for the summer cabin.”

  She hadn’t asked where he stayed yet, and she ticks this off her burning list of questions. “The summer cabin?”

  “The one up on the mountain.”

  “I know where it is. You told me about it.”

  “It’s where I go for solitude.”

  This makes sense. She believes him. But she can’t stop now. “The police say Patrick was shot with a rifle.”

  “Yeah. And I defended my mom with a rifle. They’re trying to make a thing of it. Ballistics will clear me.”

  “But how, if there’s no weapon?”

  “Because the bullet won’t match any of mine. And none of mine had been fired.”

  Unless the shot was fired from his stolen rifle. She’s scared to bring it up. But she has to. She will. She just needs a minute to figure out the right way, to get her courage up. When she does, she’ll ask him about Sheila, Chet, and Phoebe, too. “I wish there was a way to clear me that easy in the Chet mess.”

  “I wish you’d never left the Occidental with Chet.”

  “Hank . . .”

  “What? You don’t like that I’m jealous? After the stunt you pulled with Sheila, you don’t have much room to talk.”

  Touché. She changes course. “Were you at the summer cabin the night you told Sheila you were going hunting? After you saw me with Chet?”

  He cocks his head at her. “Yes. Why?”

  “Did you go fight with him, too, like Patrick?”

  “I didn’t like the douchebag, and I hated seeing you with him. But
he’s not worth my time.”

  “You lent Andy your bow.”

  He sits up, jumps to his feet. “What did you say?”

  “You lent Andy your bow. But you told Sheila you went hunting.”

  “I lied to Sheila. And then it snowballed, and I had to lie to everyone at lunch. That wasn’t a good moment.”

  “Hank, Andy saw you that morning. You were covered in blood.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I just need to understand what happened.”

  “You came out here alone with me to ask me if I killed Patrick, and now Chet? You either already know the answers, or you have a death wish yourself.”

  “You won’t hurt me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you love me.”

  “Aren’t you the smart one.” His tone is dark. His face is darker.

  He whistles for Wolf. The horse trots back to him, and Hank slips him a cookie. He clears his throat, and his expression relaxes to normal. Or semi-normal. As normal as he gets with a murder charge hanging over his head. “Real cowboys don’t use horse treats. Now you know all my secrets.” He remounts and takes off at a trot.

  Maggie isn’t letting him run off again. She and Lily stick with them from the get-go. The horses eat up ground in a slow trot, their riders silent again. Maggie wants to tell Hank she loves him, too. That she believes in him. She needs him to answer her questions, to clear the air, but she believes in him. In them.

  “Hank . . .”

  He rushes to cut off her emotional tone. “What’s the holdup with the investigation into Chet’s death? Don’t the police have any suspects?”

  “No, none. Unless you count me. Even though there’s a list as long as my arm of people with motive, which I don’t have a lick of.”

  Hank stares at her. Can he hear the tremor in her voice? “Like who?”

  Is he testing her? Teasing her? Serious? She watches him, treading lightly and carefully. What if she blurts out “Sheila?” But she holds it in. Finally, she says, “I think that’s a question for the police.”

  At the top of a broad ridge, Hank stops Wolf. Without permission, Lily joins him in the rest. Maggie looks around. She recognizes the view in one direction, although she’s seeing it from a new angle. The creek, the fence at the property line, Rudy’s ramshackle place.

  “I’ve seen a big buck out this way recently. Let’s hunker down and wait.”

  “Okay.” Maggie urges Lily forward a few feet, wanting distance from Hank and the disturbing thoughts still swirling in her mind. The grass crunches under the horse’s hooves. She sees movement in the distance on the far side of the ridge. “Is that an antelope herd?”

  Hank whirls in his saddle. He grins. “Hell yeah. No time to hunker down. Do you want to take the shot? I’ll let you have my tag.”

  “No, that’s okay.” Maggie’s in no shape to operate a weapon with her mind in a muddle.

  In a few swift moves, Hank liberates his bow from Wolf’s side and throws the quiver over his back.

  The herd is moving. Maggie’s emotions are roiling and her mind aflame. She feels swept along by a force bigger than herself, like she’s caught in the middle of the running hooves with no way out but to speak.

  “Whoa, boy.” Wolf stands like a statue. Hank nocks an arrow and takes aim.

  Maggie’s secret erupts out of her before he can shoot. “I know about Phoebe. That she’s Sheila and Chet’s daughter.”

  Hank cuts his eyes to her without dropping his bow and arrow. “So do I.”

  Oh God. Hank knows? That gives him almost as much motive as Sheila. More, in some ways. And now that her fears are pouring out, she can’t stop the flow. “And your rifle. The .300 Win Mag you lent me. It was stolen from my cabin two days ago.”

  Hank’s bow arm falters. “What the hell?”

  A loud pow rips through the silence, the sound lingering for several seconds. Lily jumps, then hotfoots in place. Maggie gathers the reins in.

  “Oomph.”

  The sound is from Hank, and Maggie turns toward him. His body slumps, then lists sideways. He topples from the saddle to the ground. Wolf prances and rears beside him.

  Maggie screams. “Hank.”

  There’s a second pow. Wolf spins and falls. The sounds he makes are purest animal agony. He writhes and kicks, his hooves dangerously close to Hank.

  Lily panics. Her back end catapults upward, but with a funny twist. Maggie pushes down with her feet and tush. She reaches for the saddle horn, but Lily’s next buck comes too fast. The force of her motion flings Maggie’s arms upward. Lily leaps forward and to the side. Maggie feels air between her butt and the saddle, then, as her feet fly up and out of the stirrups, she thinks Gene was right—Lily bucks with enthusiasm and strength. Then she’s floating, like a dying bird, several feet above Lily’s head. But not for long. The ground comes, hard and fast. Maggie lands hard—rump first, shoulder and ribs second—in the space where Lily was a moment before.

  Pain shoots up Maggie’s rear and back. She groans, rolls onto her elbows, and drags herself, hips flat against the ground. Lily’s hooves jackhammer the ground, then grow rhythmic and softer as she bolts away. Maggie twists, trying to find Hank. Wolf’s thrashing body is in the way.

  “Maggie,” Hank calls, his voice a rasp. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not sure.” She can’t catch her breath, but she forces words out. “Are you?”

  “I’ve been shot.”

  Of course. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Hank and Wolf. She pants and keeps dragging her inert body toward Hank, around Wolf’s sharp, flailing hooves. “Who would shoot at us?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe a poacher. Somewhere north of us. Can you walk?”

  Maggie tries to stand. She doesn’t make it, but her hips rise enough for her to crawl on her hands and knees. From this height she can see Hank, beside his bloody horse. She must be in a state of shock, because everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion, including her emotions. She feels bad for the squalling horse, but she has to get to Hank, and it seems to be taking her forever.

  Finally, she reaches him. He’s bloodier than Wolf, and it takes all her will power to remain calm. Hank needs her.

  Another pow sends Maggie flat on her belly. It’s followed in rapid succession by two more, with the three protracted sounds overlapping for a brief moment.

  “Shit,” Maggie says.

  “Maybe not a poacher.”

  After a few seconds of silence, she raises herself on her elbows again. His cheek looks uninjured, and she touches it. “Where did it hit you?”

  He points slowly at his side with the hand and arm cradling it. The other arm hangs limp. “Hurts like a sumbitch.”

  She has to get help. Her panic rises again and she feels like the sky is expanding and pressing her down. Maggie pulls out her phone and checks it. “No signal.” She yells at the heavy sky, “Fuck you, Wyoming.” She returns it to her pocket. “Do you have yours?”

  “Shirt pocket.”

  She pats it gingerly, but there’s no phone. Scanning in concentric circles, she spots it ten feet away lying beside a rock. She crawls to it. It’s broken nearly in half. She tries to turn it on anyway. Nothing happens. Horse hoof, she realizes.

  She crawls back to Hank. “Broken. I could build a travois and drag you out. If there were any trees. But there aren’t. Not any closer than there.” She points to the edge of the woods up the side of the mountain, a half mile or more away.

  “No tools. No lashing. Try again.”

  “I need to get you out of here.”

  Hank winces. “You need to go for help.”

  She looks around for her horse, hoping for a miracle, but doesn’t see the mare, just a dark wall of clouds closing in. “Lily’s gone.” She rises to her knees, weight off her hands. Her tailbone sends pain shooting through her like fireworks. Still, it’s progress.

  “Go to Rudy’s. Not too far. Call Gene. Tell him . . . tel
l him I’m where he got the buck mule deer last fall. And take my gun.”

  “Gotta get you outta the line of fire, first. And stop the bleeding.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Maggie ignores him. She becomes aware that Wolf’s cries are softer and farther apart, but she can’t worry about him. She has to help Hank. She grabs him under his arms. This time, she’s able to stand, but when she pulls he doesn’t budge. “Come on, dammit.” The harder she pulls, the worse it hurts.

  She bends her legs, tears streaming down her face. “Fuck off, pain.”

  Using all the strength she has, she drags Hank one foot, then falls on her injured butt. She screams.

  “It’s okay, Maggie. I’ll be fine.”

  She ignores Hank and hooks her arms under his again. Sweat joins her tears. On her next try she gets him another foot before she crashes to the ground, weeping. Then eighteen inches, then two whole feet. Finally, she props him behind a rocky outcropping. She takes off her Double S jacket. She wads up a sleeve and forces it against his wound.

  Hank’s face whitens, and he cries out. “Argh.”

  “You’ve gotta press here.”

  He nods. He tries to get his hand in place, but he can’t get the right leverage to apply pressure.

  “I can put a rock on it. Or you can roll on your side.”

  “Rock won’t work.” He rolls over onto the jacket, grimacing.

  Maggie shoves a rock under the coat and him, forcing the wad of fabric further and tighter against the wound.

  Hank gasps, “You’re enjoying this.”

  “Not one iota.” She grasps his face. “Don’t you die on me.”

  “Too ornery. But I could use help.”

  “What do you need?”

  He dimples, and she’s done for. He has a girlfriend. He’s killed a man before. Maybe others. Probably not, but there’s not time to be sure. Because fuck if she doesn’t love the shit out of this man. She always has. She always will. And that’s all that matters right now. She presses her lips against his. Hard at first, then soft, and her lips cling to his.