by Merry Farmer
She took the packet out, along with the narrow pencil she’d used to write the few letters she’d already written. Emma would need Uncle George’s address if they were going to correspond. She closed the lid of the hope chest and knelt to use it as a desk. The pencil seemed a bit more worn at the tip than she remembered it being, and the stationary wasn’t tied as neatly as she’d left it. In fact, as she untied the bundle and separated a few pieces of paper, she noticed one folded piece that had dark writing on the inside. Dark writing and slashes.
She set the pencil down, and when it rolled off the hope chest and clattered to the wagon bed, she hardly noticed. With her heart beating in her throat, she opened the folded piece of her stationary.
In crude, dark letters was written, “For every Briscoe Boy that hangs, one of you will bleed.” Under the letters were a series of stick figures with names written beneath: Judge Tremaine, Robert, Lynne, Graham, Violet, Marie. Each of the stick figures had a slice in the paper across its neck.
Finally, things were starting to look up again. Cade finished moving Emma Sutton’s oak chest from her wagon to the way station shack with Dr. Meyers’ help, grinning over the way Lynne had smiled when he’d asked about the flower in her hair. She’d smiled. It had been more than a week since he’d seen her smile, since she’d smiled at him. He liked it. It gave him hope. It was a starting place for him to win back all the ground he’d lost. He even liked the look of the daisy in her hair, although he wished he’d thought of bringing her one first.
He was just starting to come up with ideas of how he could bring her even more flowers—maybe weave a daisy chain garland for her hair, if that wasn’t too ridiculous—when he caught sight of Lynne leaping out of the back of her wagon. She was pale and her eyes were wide. His warm, peaceful thoughts evaporated.
“What happened?” he asked rushing toward her. The old, familiar feeling of urgency, the call to action, washed over him and he reached for his gun.
Lynne marched toward him. She held a piece of paper. What he had initially mistaken for fear in her eyes was, in fact, the glow of fury. His heart lurched in his chest. Lynne was madder than a hornet again. For some crazy reason he liked it. But it didn’t make him feel an inch better.
She waited until she was close to him before holding up the paper, half crushed in her hand. “Look what I found,” she growled.
She offered the paper to him and he took it and opened it. Inside was a threat, a warning, and a picture of what he assumed was her family, all with their paper throats slit. It was too much like the photograph they’d found of her father. It was too much.
“Where did you find this?” he growled, marching back to the wagon as though whoever was threatening her would be there waiting and watching. The only person there, though, was Ben, yoking up the oxen and getting ready to go.
“It was in my hope chest,” Lynne said. “Deep in my hope chest, underneath a pile of linens. I found it when I was looking for a gift for Emma. Someone was in my hope chest. Again.”
Cade itched to draw his gun and demand that the entire wagon train be searched. But for what? Anyone with a knife? Every man on the trail and half of the women and children had knives. Not all of them had access to Lynne’s wagon, though.
“Someone must have gotten into your hope chest right after the tornado,” he said. He strode from the front of the wagon where Ben worked to the back, but there was nothing he could do.
“I haven’t touched my stationary for weeks,” Lynne confessed. “Someone could have tampered with it before the tornado. It could have been there all this time.”
Cade nodded, grinding his teeth. How was he supposed to protect Lynne against a killer that he couldn’t see?
“They threatened my family.”
He dragged himself out of his thoughts long enough to stare at her. It hit him again. Lynne wasn’t afraid, not this time, not even a little bit. She was irate.
“My family, Cade. No one threatens my family,” she went on. “I want you to give me one of your guns.”
Cade bounced from grim anger to sharp surprise in a flash. His brow rose as he stared at her, not sure he’d heard her right. “You want me to give you a gun?”
“Yes. If someone out here in our wagon train thinks they can threaten the people I love, then they’ve got another thing coming. I want you to give me a gun.”
Still, Cade gaped. “Do you know how to use a gun?”
“No,” she answered, undeterred. “You can teach me.”
The absurdity of the situation mingled with the frustration of knowing that, in spite of his presence and his efforts, someone was still trying to hurt Lynne, gave the entire situation an unreal feeling.
“I’m not giving you a gun,” he said.
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not. Not if you don’t know how to use it.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “I won’t stand for this anymore. I’m through with playing cat and mouse with this would-be killer. I am not a mouse, and neither is my family.”
“Your family is hundreds of miles away in St. Louis,” he told her. “There’s nothing you can do for them out here. They’ve got their own protection.”
“I may not be able to protect them the way you’ve been set to protect me,” she argued, “But I can show whoever is out here threatening me that I won’t let him and his friends or brothers or whatever they are get away with what they’re trying to do.”
“Lynne,” he tried to reason with her.
She had no patience for whatever argument he would have formed. Instead, she lunged at him, reaching for the revolver at his waist.
“What are you doing?” He held her at arm’s length.
She continued to swipe at his gun belt, even as he twisted his hip away from her.
“Give me a gun, Cade. Just one gun. I know you have several. I want to be able to protect myself.”
“Hurt yourself is more like,” he said, continuing to dodge.
She continued to snatch for a few more seconds before switching tactics and grabbing at the Cooper he had concealed under his vest. Her hands brushed his chest, searching and grabbing. His brow rose further at the stab of raw pleasure that coursed through him, settling in his groin. Under any other circumstances, he would give just about anything to have Lynne attempting to rip his clothes off. It made him more clumsy than he needed to be, clumsy enough that she was able to thrust a hand into his vest and pull out the Cooper.
“Ha!” she exclaimed in triumph. “Now, how do you use it?”
“You don’t,” he said, lunging at her to get the gun back.
She held it above her head, but he was several inches taller than her to begin with, and the movement did nothing to deter him. He swiped at the revolver, but she moved it behind her back, low and tucked into her skirts.
“You can’t have it,” she said, panting. “I need it. I need something to protect myself.”
“I’m here to protect you, not some gun,” he said, breathing heavily himself.
He stepped into her and reached behind her back, but she inched away, bumping against the side of the wagon. That didn’t stop him. He continued to dart one hand, then the other behind her, reaching for the gun with effort that brought them closer and closer together. She twisted and wriggled to get away from him, but couldn’t. Her efforts only wedged her further against the wagon until she couldn’t move at all. He had her pinned with his chest and hips, his hands caught between the boards of the wagon and her backside.
“Give me the gun,” he panted against the side of her head.
“No,” she replied, stubborn as ever.
There was only one way he could think of to disarm her. He gave up reaching for the gun and cupped her backside instead, lifting her up into him. When her head was tilted up in a gasp, he closed his mouth over hers, kissing her with a ferocity that brooked no argument.
Something that could have been a protest or a moan of pleasure caught in her throat. He tease
d his tongue against the inside of her lip. His groin jumped when she touched her tongue to his, slipping it into his mouth to taste and explore. Flashes of the night they’d spent in each other’s arms hit him, the way she’d hummed and urged him on and begged him to join with her in no uncertain terms, of how sweet and tight it had felt to be inside of her. He wanted her again that way. He hadn’t stopped wanting her since that night.
A click behind Lynne’s back made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and his blood run cold. He jerked back, hips still pressed against her, and glared at her.
“Did you just fire that gun?” he demanded.
“I….” Lynne’s mouth hung open. “I think my finger slipped on the trigger.”
The sweat that had broken out on his back as he’d kissed her turned cold. “You fired a gun while you were holding it in your skirts?”
“I….” She blinked and shook away from him, pulling the small revolver out from behind her. “It isn’t loaded.”
“Of course it’s not loaded,” he shouted at her. “Do you think I would carry a loaded gun tucked into my vest where it could go off and drill a hole in my gut?”
Understanding flashed to Lynne’s face only to be replaced by deep shame, and then anger. “Why carry a concealed gun at all if you’re not going to keep it loaded?”
He leaned closer to her. “I know it’s not loaded and now you know, but anyone else looking at me is just going to see a man with too many guns and a mission.”
Emotions continued to flash across her pink face—incredulity, then cunning.
“Then let me carry it, unloaded,” she said. Her dark eyes shone with victory.
It was a victory too. He knew it as soon as she did. He could argue all he wanted against her carrying a loaded weapon, but if she carried an empty gun around, whoever was out to hurt her would think she was armed.
He breathed out a sigh. “All right, you can carry the Cooper. Unloaded.”
Her smile grew tenfold. “I knew you’d see it my way.” She held the gun up to study it. It looked a little too good in her delicate hands.
“How did you know that?” he growled, straightening his shirt and vest that had been pulled askew in their struggle.
Lynne shrugged. “The one thing I’ve learned about being brave and independent is that women like me nearly always get our way.”
Grumpy as he was over losing, a part of Cade thrummed with joy and life.
“Is that so?” He pretended to be grim when what he really wanted to do was sing. That or kiss her silly.
“Yes,” Lynne said. “And as soon as we stop for any significant amount of time, you’re going to teach me to shoot it.”
“Am I?” His heart leapt in his chest, sending fire straight to his groin.
“You are.”
Tornados and threats and hardships be damned. The Lynne he had ungentlemanly dreams about, the Lynne he loved, was back.
Chapter Eleven
Cade wasn’t exactly sure if it was possible to go to hell for someone else’s sins, but if it was, Lynne had him halfway there. He let her keep the Cooper with her, even loaned her a belt with a holster so that whoever was out to harm her could see she meant business. The problem was that everyone else in the wagon train could see the gun she carried as well. It didn’t take much to conclude that people didn’t like it. There was enough strangeness and disruption in the wagon train already.
By the time Sunday rolled around and Pete had them stop for the entire day, the stares Lynne was getting were pointed. When they gathered for one of Reverend Joseph’s short, awkward sermons, the last seats to fill up in the rows of benches that had been set up like church pews were the ones beside them. Even then, only Callie and John sat close. The rest kept their distance.
“You do realize people are forming opinions of you?” Cade told Lynne as they walked across a field of parched grass where people were gathering buffalo chips for their fires.
“What do I care about people’s opinions?” Lynne countered.
“What?” Cade sputtered. “Not that long ago you were crawling all over me to keep my distance because these same people might think less of you for sleeping under the wagon with me.”
She eyed him askance, her cheeks flushed. “Well, there’s a great deal of difference between a woman being judged for a lapse in morality than for carrying a sidearm to protect herself.”
Cade rubbed a hand over his face, stuck between wanting to laugh at her crazy reasoning and wanting to shake some sense into her.
“I think you just make up your own rules of propriety to fit whatever you want to do,” he said.
She shrugged and he had the impression she would have tossed her curls at the notion if her hair hadn’t been braided and looped around her head like a crown. “Maybe I do.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lynne, but you don’t make the rules, society does. Right now, you’re walking a fine line.”
“Am I?”
She stopped and faced him. They had wandered to the far edge of the group of people hunting for buffalo chips. A sly smile lit Lynne’s face. Cade’s heart wasn’t sure whether to sink or to dance in his chest. She was up to something.
“Well, seeing as my reputation is thoroughly ruined already, why don’t you teach me how to shoot this gun now?”
Cade sighed. He had a bad feeling he was being set up again, like she’d set him up before and like her Uncle George had back at the beginning. He knew he’d let George Tremaine down, but the punishment was far worse than his crime.
“I can’t teach you to shoot now.” He scrambled for an excuse. “Your gun’s not loaded.”
She smiled and produced a small box from the pocket of the apron she wore. It was just his luck that she’d found and brought the box of bullets that went with the Cooper.
He crossed his arms and rested his weight on one hip. “Now who’s going through other people’s things without their permission?”
“It was for a good cause,” she argued.
“Like I said, you can’t make up rules just to suit you.”
“Maybe not.” Her expression held a tiny sliver of contrition for about three seconds before brightening. “But, what’s done is done. And because it’s done, I think you should teach me how to fire this gun.”
He was not going to win the argument. Knowing that spread prickles of heat along his skin and sent his blood pounding. The notion that he would marry this woman curled back on him, but with a sense of dread. He was going to be responsible for her for the rest of his life. For her and for her wild ideas.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, thinking fast. “I’ll give you what you want and teach you to shoot that gun—”
“I knew you would.”
“—if you give me something I want in return.”
Her smug satisfaction hardened to suspicion. She stared at him sideways, another look that made him wish they were alone and vertical.
“What do you want?”
Might as well go all in. He sauntered closer to her, snatching her by the waist and pulling her close, pinning her arms between them. She was surprised enough to gasp but didn’t struggle.
“I want you to sleep under the wagon again, where I can keep an eye on you.”
She eyed him warily, but he could have sworn he felt her whole body shiver.
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head and leaning back as if she expected him to try to kiss her. It wasn’t such a bad idea at that. “We didn’t sleep last time,” she added in a low voice.
“We slept eventually,” he said.
“You know what I mean,” she said, even lower.
“It’s still the best way for me to make sure you’re out of harm’s way.”
“No one is going to attack me in my sleep,” she insisted. “Except maybe you.”
The sudden vision of stoking a hand across her body, up under the thin cotton of her chemise, as she slumbered in his arms sounded like the perfect way to spend a nigh
t. He would kiss her awake and then show her what it really was to be alive. The very thought had him hard and sweating.
“Teach me to shoot,” she said, calm and even.
He realized a beat too late that her hand had slipped between them and rested in the perfect spot to feel exactly what kind of power she had over him. He had to take a step back to avoid half the people around them starting a hue and cry about indecency.
“All right,” he sighed. If he kept letting her get her way like this, there was no telling what mischief she’d get up to. But it would be useful if she could defend herself. “I’m just going to show you the basics, and hopefully you won’t have to use them.”
“The basics it is.”
She grinned from ear to ear and followed him to an open area far away from the wagons. It was far enough from the bustling train to be private, but not so far that he couldn’t trundle Lynne back to the wagon and scold her if things went wrong. She began to yelp in protest when he took the Cooper away from her, but as soon as he started explaining, she was quiet.
“A Cooper is a simple, five-chamber revolver,” he explained, opening the cylinder and showing her where the bullets went. Once you load it, it becomes a dangerous weapon, so you have to be careful.”
“I see.” Lynne nodded.
“Lynne,” he emphasized her name. “You have to be careful.”
“I will be,” she argued.
Cade took the bullets from her and loaded them one by one before closing the cylinder and continuing. “The trigger is very sensitive. This is a double-action revolver, which means that you don’t have to pull the hammer back. You press the trigger a little and the cylinder will turn, and when you press it all the way, it fires. So once it’s loaded, you don’t want to point that gun at anything you don’t intend to kill. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Cade. Can I have the revolver now?”
Half of him absolutely did not want to hand her the dangerous weapon. The other half was eager to see what she would do with it, although, knowing Lynne, she would take someone’s head off.
