Reese

by Lori Handeland

  “These men being one of those things?”

  “It’s what I do best. Manage.”

  Jed snorted. Rico coughed. Cash’s upper lip lifted like a cur’s. Sullivan shrugged as Nate groaned and put a hand to his head. “Lord spare us from a good woman who manages things.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “It’s not a curse; it’s a gift.”

  “Right.” Cash flipped his pretty gun back into its holster, grabbed two boxes of bullets, and stalked toward the door. Before he left, he turned and glared at Reese. “You’d better manage her or I’m leaving.”

  The other four mumbled and grumbled as they chose their ammunition and filed out. Since Sutton glared at her, Mary thought it prudent to leave too.

  On the boardwalk she turned to Reese. “Can’t you control your men?”

  “They aren’t mine.”

  “Of course they are. You’re their leader.”

  “Only because”—his lips quirked in a wry half-smile—“one of the things I do best is manage. Not to mention that they’re too lazy to lead.”

  Mary frowned. “That doesn’t say much for their loyalty.”

  “Oh, they’re loyal. It’s one of the few things they have left.”

  “You’ll have to do something about them walking around shooting off guns to get their way.”

  “But it works so well.”

  She rolled her eyes. Children with temper tantrums. Men with guns. “I’m sure it does, but such behavior is inappropriate.”

  “Tell them that.”

  “All right.” She started toward the hotel but stopped when he reached for her. Even though his rough fingers only grazed her forearm, she felt his touch all over.

  “Everyone else in town walks around us as if they’re afraid we’ll kill them for breathing. But you aren’t afraid at all, are you?” His voice held the same wonder as when he’d said her hair smelled like rain.

  She tried to see into his eyes, shadowed by the brim of his ever-present black hat, but she couldn’t. “Should I be?”

  “Hell, yes!” He dropped his hand from her arm, turned, and took a few steps down the boardwalk as if he couldn’t stand to be near her.

  “What good is being afraid? I’m alone in this world. No one’s going to back me up, keep me safe, make my life into what I wish for it to be but me.”

  A deep breath raised, then lowered those broad shoulders. Still he didn’t turn around. “And what do you wish for when you wish?”

  That was easy. “A safe home. A job to keep me from going hungry or being bored. Friends.”

  “No husband? No children?”

  “Look at me, Reese.” He turned around but moved no closer. “Do I seem like marriage material to you?”

  His gaze wandered from her head to her toes. When his eyes returned to hers, an odd glow had sprung up in their depths. “For the right man.”

  Mary was not the kind of woman who would drive a man mad with hunger, but still, when Reese stared at her with those strange green eyes, she felt as if she could be. Silly old maid.

  Straightening her already ramrod-straight spine, she sniffed. “Perhaps. But I know better than to believe in miracles and to depend on anyone else but me.”

  He gave a slow nod, as if he agreed with her, then sauntered back and held out his arm. “You’re a very interesting woman, Mary McKendrick.”

  “Interesting?” She took his arm; it was only polite, even though touching him made parts of her she’d never known she had quiver. “That’s a new one.”

  “And far too trusting. You shouldn’t trust me.”

  “No?” They walked along, side by side, and Mary’s skirt twisted back and forth about her ankles, then danced across the toe of his boot “What kind of man tells a woman straight out not to trust him? A trustworthy one, I’d imagine.”

  “You don’t know anything about men.”

  “True enough. I never saw a man, beyond a priest, until I was sixteen.”

  She felt him glance at her, but she kept peering straight ahead. “You’re kidding.”

  “I doubt I’d kid about something like that.”

  He stopped in front of the church, glanced at the steeple then removed his arm from her grasp. “You shouldn’t be allowed near me or the others.”

  She laughed, and his gaze dropped sharply from the steeple to her face. “Who’s going to stop me?” When his eyes narrowed, she waved away his annoyance. “You came here to help us. You didn’t have to. I’d say that makes you trustworthy.”

  “Maybe we came here to rape and pillage. You told me in Dallas that there was no one in Rock Creek who could stop El Diablo. That means there’s no one to stop us, either—if we’re of a mind.”

  “Men like you would hardly rape and pillage.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  She tilted her head and considered Reese. He was such a strange, yet fascinating combination of rough and gentle, outlaw and honest man she wasn’t sure what to do with him—as if she’d know what to do with any man.

  “To be honest,” she said, “when I saw you and the others riding in yesterday, I was scared. So was Jo. I wondered if I’d made a mistake.”

  “Smart.”

  “But I feel better about everything today.”

  “I’d think you’d feel worse after that display in Sutton’s store.”

  “No. As Mr. Cash said, ‘Boys will be boys,’ especially when they’re men.” He gave her a narrow glare that made her smile. “Tell me this, Reese. If you were planning to rape and pillage, wouldn’t you have done it already? Why wait around, take a chance of getting killed by El Diablo and the rest? Strike and run would be your motto, I’m thinking.”

  “Maybe we’ve decided to take whatever it is El Diablo wants—there must be something—so we need to get rid of him before we get rid of all of you. You must realize, Miss McKendrick, we don’t usually work this cheap.”

  He had a point, and suddenly the peace she’d felt since the six had taken up residence at the hotel frayed a bit about the edges. She had no idea what these men were like. None at all. And she shouldn’t trust them. Especially Reese—a man who’d kissed her the first day he’d come to town. He had to be half-crazy to do a thing like that.

  Before she could get her thoughts in order for a better argument or more intelligent questions, the church bell tolled.

  This time, Reese didn’t bother to ask if there was church on Tuesday. “Inside,” he snapped, shoving her toward the building.

  “I can make it home.” She whirled, but before she took two steps, Reese cursed, picked her up, and hoisted her over his back. All her arguments whooshed out of her mouth when her stomach hit his rock-solid shoulder.

  “Manage this,” he muttered, and kicked open the door.

  The world whirled, and everything came at her upside down. She heard Reverend Clancy sputter helplessly as he ran toward them. One growl from Reese and Clancy’s footsteps receded.

  Other, lighter footsteps approached, and when Reese dumped Mary onto her feet in the aisle, Jo caught her before she fell on her face. Mary swayed, and her eyes crossed.

  “Stay,” he ordered.

  Thinking she might be ill, right there in front of God and everyone, Mary merely nodded.

  A bullet hit the open front door, smattering wood chips halfway into the sanctuary.

  “They’re shooting at a church!” Reverend Clancy shouted. “What kind of heathens are they?”

  “The usual kind,” Reese muttered, and ran past them then out the back of the building.

  Chapter 6

  Reese erupted from the church, ducked low, and raced between the lean-tos and sheds that composed the butt of Main Street. Whenever his men began a battle without him, he panicked. If they were going to die, he was too. He’d been left behind alive once before, and everything had pretty much gone to hell after that.

  Luckily, the invading bandits knew the six were in the hotel, and that was where they headed. They didn’t, at first, spare a glance for
the man in black who sped in that direction, albeit the back way.

  Three feet from the hotel garden, the dirt just ahead of his boot kicked up. The report of a pistol made Reese hit the ground, execute a quick roll, then come to his knees shooting. The straggler fell from his mount and lay still. The horse kept on going.

  So did Reese, stumbling through the rear door of the hotel. Sullivan nodded from the kitchen, where he watched their backs through an open window. As Reese ran up to the second level, windows shattered on every floor.

  “I hope they weren’t planning to use this hotel for anything but target practice anymore,” Reese murmured, and stepped into Nate’s room.

  Nate threw him a quick glance from his position on the floor next to his own shattered window. He returned his attention to the street. “Sullivan and Rico are on the first floor. No one will sneak past them. Me here; Cash two doors down. Jed’s on the third floor.”

  “Me too,” Reese said. They’d worked together so long and so well, Reese rarely had to ask any of his men what he wanted to know. They told him long before the question left his mouth.

  He’d forgotten, in dealing with Miss Mary, to grab ammunition of his own, so Reese confiscated a box from Nate’s morning haul. They had the same rifles, taken off Yankees somewhere in Georgia. The best thing about Henry repeating rifles were the sixteen shots that could be fired before reloading. Reese loved that gun. Nate took a sip from his flask and sighted down the barrel.

  “Do you have to drink while you shoot?”

  “If you want me to hit anything.”

  A bullet came through the window and punched a hole in the wall above the bed.

  “Bastard,” Nate muttered. He took another drink, cracked his knuckles, and shot several times in rapid succession. “Got him.” Nate calmly reloaded.

  Reese left, shaking his head. Why did he bother? He knew Nate needed to drink so his hands didn’t shake. He knew Nate could hit a locust at twenty yards. What he didn’t know was why Nate drank, but he really didn’t want to.

  He stopped in his room to grab his own rifle. As he headed up the last flight of stairs a shotgun blast made him flinch. He sprinted the last few steps and found Jed.

  “Who the hell has a shotgun?”

  Jed kept his attention on the street, firing his rifle with the ease born of a wartime sharpshooter. “The Kid. Got it at the shopkeeper’s this morning. We figured he might be able to hit something with it, which would be a step in the right direction.”

  “He’s saved your ass with that knife a few times.”

  “I’m not complaining.” Jed turned his head quickly to the side, and his eyes narrowed on something below. “Do you think you could pick a window and help out? These sons a bitches are moving up on us.”

  Reese found an empty room at the far end of the hotel and glanced outside. Jed was right. A man attempted to flank them from Reese’s end. He loaded his rifle and took care of that little problem. Another shotgun blast from downstairs and the idiot who approached from Rico’s side ended life with a fist-sized hole in his chest. Then a movement from the outskirts of town drew Reese’s attention.

  He turned his gaze toward the river, half-afraid he’d see enough men to make an army streaming over the bank. Instead, like a general surveying the battle out of harm’s way, El Diablo sat on his horse and observed his men in retreat.

  As they reached the river, short by four or more, the old Indian seemed to stare right at Reese. Logically, he knew this was impossible. El Diablo was too far away to see him in a third-story window, even if the man hadn’t been the age of Old Scratch himself. Still, Reese could feel those soulless dark eyes pass over him before the Indian made an obscene gesture, which startled an unexpected laugh from Reese.

  El Diablo whirled his horse and disappeared into the gully where the river ran. Moments later, his men did too, and silence settled over Rock Creek.

  Reese picked up his gun and the ammunition, then moved out of the room and joined Jed in the hall. “Nice shot on the ugly bastard to your left.”

  Reese nodded. That was quite the compliment coming from Jed, who thought everyone should be able to put a bullet between the eyes of a deer at fifty yards. Since they had Jed, no one else had ever needed to bother with hunting while on the trail.

  Together they descended to the second floor, where Nate and Cash waited at the top of the next set of stairs. “Everybody okay?” Reese asked.

  “They’re going to have to send a lot better shots than that to hit one of us,” Cash said.

  “Or at least to hit you,” Nate murmured.

  “Damn right.”

  The four of them tramped down to the ground level. Sullivan lounged in the kitchen doorway. “Should I take the Kid and trail ‘em?”

  Reese shook his head. “They have a hideout near here or they wouldn’t keep coming back. It’ll be fortified; no use bringing the battle there. Let them try to take Rock Creek again. By then we’ll be ready.”

  “I prefer to follow and blast them all to hell today.” Cash wiped the handles of his pistols with a pristine white handkerchief.

  “I’d agree,” Reese said, “except one thing we learned in the war holds true in every battle: Inferior odds in a fortified position have the advantage.”

  Cash gave Reese a narrow look, followed by a cold smile. “I hate it when you’re right all the time.”

  “Someone has to be.”

  Rico skidded into the room like an overly excited puppy. Jed snatched the shotgun from his hand.

  “Not bad, Kid. Told you this was your weapon.”

  “I still prefer my knife.”

  “And so do we. But when it comes to long-range fighting, you use this from now on.” Jed checked the chamber, earning a frown from Rico, nodded, then handed the shotgun back to the Kid.

  The six of them headed for the front of the hotel. “They’re going to be pissed now,” Nate said. “We took out at least three of their guys.”

  “No more talkin’, right?” Cash glanced at Reese. “This was their answer to your little ‘get out of town’ discussion.”

  “No more talking,” Reese agreed. “From now on this is a battleground. Clean up the glass. Board the windows. Get the bodies off the street. We need strategically placed cover all over town in case they catch us out there. Watches start tonight.”

  “But Capitan, there is a watcher at the top of the church who rings the bell.”

  “That’s worked real well so far,” Jed drawled. “By the time the bell rang, El Diablo was breathing fire down our necks.”

  “We’ll take over the steeple watch. That way there’ll be a man where they won’t expect one. First sight of movement, ring the bell. Two men a night. Sullivan first, then me. And we’ll alternate at the hotel too, one man on the ground floor. Jed first, then Rico. Let’s move.”

  Everyone nodded but stood there lounging.

  “Go, go, go,” he said.

  They laughed, but they went. Of course, no one went toward the bodies. They never did. You’d think men who had seen what these had would be less squeamish. Well, most likely they weren’t squeamish; they just didn’t care if the carcasses rotted in the street. Reese did, which meant he got to take care of them.

  He headed out the back way. He’d take care of the dead in the order they’d become that way. First in line was the straggler who had nearly gotten Reese while he ran from the church to the hotel.

  Reese stepped onto the porch and saw Mary. He bit off a curse. Did the woman ever listen? He distinctly remembered telling her to stay put. And he hadn’t meant until she felt like leaving. If his men listened as well as she did, they’d all be dead, and so would he.

  He stalked across the dry, brown remnants of a garden; his boots made crackling noises as he crushed what might have once been flowers—or tomatoes or sagebrush, for all he knew—into oblivion. But despite what seemed to him to be a very loud approach, Mary did not turn.

  She’d probably never seen a body before,
and Reese wished he could have kept her from seeing this one. Death wasn’t pretty no matter how it happened. But a violent end was worse than going to sleep forever at the ripe old age of seventy. That kind of death—one he’d never have—at least made some kind of sense.

  Reese stopped at her side and stared down at the man he’d shot. He was dead, all right. “Miss McKendrick, I wish you’d stayed in the church. This is no place for you.”

  Mary didn’t answer; she just kept staring at the fellow so intently that Reese began to worry. He’d known men in the war who saw too much death and retreated behind a wall of their own making, never to come out and talk with the rest of the world again. Could that happen to Mary at the sight of her first dead body? Reese hadn’t thought her so frail. But what did he know about women?

  Little to nothing at all.

  He cupped his palm gently about her elbow, planning to lead her back to her friend at the church. If there was a doctor in Rock Creek, he’d call the man. If not… Reese had no idea. Nate always doctored all their ills, mainly because he had all the whiskey.

  “It’s all right; no one will hurt you,” Reese soothed in a voice he’d used on horses mad with pain.

  She yanked her elbow from his grasp and turned. She wasn’t sad; she wasn’t frightened, and she wasn’t crying. She was furious.

  “Y-y-you killed him!”

  “Appears that way.”

  “And how many more?”

  “Today or in general?”

  “Today.”

  “Personally or collectively?”

  She stamped her foot. “Answer the damn question, Reese.”

  “Four today, not all mine.”

  The anger seemed to drain from her, then a confused, uncertain expression took its place. Reese would rather have the anger back, as odd as it was, because when she looked at him the other way, he felt as if he’d disappointed her somehow. He hadn’t cared about disappointing anyone for a long time, and now he remembered why. He hated that feeling.

  “But why kill them?”

  “Because they were trying to kill us?”

  “But you weren’t supposed to kill them.”

  Had she lost her mind? Why were they here if not to kill all the bad guys?