A Lady of the West

by Linda Howard

  Dawn was slowly turning the sky a pale gray. It was snowing again, the swirling flakes cutting down on visibility. Crimson and yellow light from the burning house illuminated the area in a strange, flickering glow. Victoria turned her head and looked at the house; the fire in the kitchen had burned through to the second floor. She could see flames breaking through the roof and licking out of the broken windows. It was dying, the old, graceful house that had seen both love and savage betrayal, birth and death. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to pack away Celia’s clothes, but now she wouldn’t have to; the flames were destroying every memento, leaving only her own memories.

  The fist tightened on her body. She lay panting, watching the flames, and when she could speak again she said, “The baby will be here soon.”

  Carmita gasped, too overwhelmed by the night’s events to comprehend how she could deal with this, too. Emma looked up from where she was applying pressure to Ben’s wounds to stop the bleeding, her face tight with strain. “Your pains have started?”

  Victoria inhaled sharply, her fingers digging into the dirt. “Hours ago.”

  * * *

  Garnet was desperate and losing control. It wasn’t supposed to have been like this! It should have happened the way it had the first time, with them riding in and catching everyone off guard or asleep. Instead, those bastards had been awake and waiting for them. It didn’t make sense, and it made him afraid. Only the thought of finally getting his hands on Celia kept him from running. This would be his last chance, because he knew that if he failed, Sarratt would hunt him down like a mad dog.

  “Sarratt!” he bellowed. “Sarratt!” Even as he yelled, he changed position, working his way around toward the barn. If he could just draw Jake out, to hell with a fair fight. No way was he going to face Jake. Just one shot was all he’d need, a quick bullet in the head or back, and no more Sarratt. Someone had already gotten the brother. The kingdom would be his, and Celia would be his. He’d have to take care of Bullfrog in the same way he took care of Sarratt, but that didn’t trouble him any.

  Jake didn’t answer. He remained where he was, watching. He saw someone quickly sidle into the corral. The light was too uncertain for him to recognize the man by anything other than instinct. Garnet was heading toward the barn, where he would have cover when Jake showed himself.

  Jake didn’t intend to show himself. On his belly he wormed his way from bush to tree to well-house, then to the bunkhouse. Bodies were sprawled all over the yard, dark, boneless heaps. A lot of men had died that night. He wasn’t going to be one of them, but Garnet damn sure was.

  “We need heat,” Emma said calmly. “Can someone fire up the forge, please? And we need light.”

  Luis began stoking coal into the forge. “Heat, yes, but there’s no lantern. It will be daylight soon.”

  Victoria didn’t care about either heat or light. Every instinct, every sense, was focused inward. She was in the grip of a force that wouldn’t be denied, a great squeezing force wrapped around her body and dragging her down. Even though she had witnessed Angelina’s labor, she hadn’t imagined it would be this bad. It was grinding agony, tearing her pelvis apart and forcing air from her lungs, and it went on and on with only spare moments of relief between the waves.

  Ben lay next to the anvil, listening to Victoria’s stifled groans. “Take my shirt,” he instructed, keeping his voice steady with effort. “Twist it, and wrap it tight around a stick, then set it on fire. It’ll give you a few minutes of light.”

  “All right,” Emma said after pausing to consider the idea. “But not just yet. We’ll need it more in a little while than we do right now.”

  Garnet worked his way around to the back of the barn and opened the door just enough to slip in. Fingers of light were beginning to show through the cracks as dawn progressed. He didn’t have much time left. He ran to the front of the barn and opened those doors a crack, not enough for anyone to notice that they were open but enough for him to see and shoot. Now all he had to do was wait. Sarratt should be working his way toward the spot where Garnet had been when he’d yelled.

  Garnet grinned. Just a few minutes. A few more minutes, and he’d have everything he’d ever wanted.

  “Looking for me?”

  The words were accompanied by the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked. Garnet froze, sweat popping out on his brow despite the cold. He didn’t dare turn around. Terror ripped through him as he realized that he was going to die. He had shot others with no more feeling than he’d have burst a melon, but the thought of his own death was paralyzing.

  “You might as well turn around,” Jake said softly. “I’m going to kill you either way. At least if you turn you’ll have a chance to get a shot off at me, too.”

  The gun trembled in Garnet’s hand. He’d die as soon as he turned, but he believed Sarratt when he said he’d kill him anyway.

  “You should’ve kept going,” Jake murmured. “As far and as fast from the kingdom as you could get.”

  “You’d have hunted me down,” Garnet gasped. “And the girl—I wanted the girl.”

  Celia. Beautiful little Celia. Jake’s mouth tightened with pain. “You’ll never have her now,” he said.

  Garnet threw himself to the side, turning and firing as he did. Jake was prepared for that and had positioned himself behind a bale of hay. Only his head and gun were exposed. He was calm as he fired, the first bullet hitting Garnet in the stomach, the second in the chest. Garnet crashed against the wall, his finger tightening reflexively on the trigger and getting off a shot that went through the ceiling before the heavy gun dropped from his hand.

  Jake kicked the gun out of reach, just in case. The only way he’d trust Garnet was dead.

  Garnet’s eyes were open, his throat working convulsively as he tried to breathe. Red foam bubbled out of his mouth. Jake watched as his chest heaved up and down a few times, then stopped completely. Garnet’s eyes glazed over.

  There had been a lot of death on this ranch. Jake sighed, suddenly tired of it, but he automatically reloaded his pistol. It was quiet outside, he realized. Maybe it was over. He had to get back to Victoria. “Boss? You all right?” It was Lonny. Jake called, “Yeah.” “You better get back to the smithy. Luis says the baby’s coming.”

  Jake had been frightened before; he’d been anxious, worried, tense; but now he felt pure terror. Victoria couldn’t give birth like this, lying in a cold smithy, without blankets or anything. He ran, not even noticing the gun still in his hand.

  Ben was propped up against the anvil now, shirtless, but someone had given him a coat. He was pale, but a quick glance reassured Jake that the bleeding had stopped. The forge was going full blast, giving off great waves of heat that fought off the chill in the open shed. Luis lighted a lantern and handed it to the back of the shed, which had been partitioned off by several skirts that were hung over a rope strung from side to side. Jake brushed past the skirts and knelt on the ground beside his wife.

  Emma, Carmita, and Juana were all in their nightgowns, having sacrificed the clothing they had hurriedly donned over their nightwear for the makeshift curtain. Victoria’s nightgown was rucked up to her waist, her knees bent and raised. Jake knelt beside her, his heart in his throat as he stroked her damp hair back from her face with dirty, trembling fingers. Her eyes were closed, her face paper white as she breathed in quick, jerky pants.

  Carmita glanced up at him, her dark eyes worried. “Soon, Señor Jake. I can see the head.”

  Victoria’s eyes opened. They were glazed, but fastened on him like a talisman. She reached up over her head, and Jake caught her hand in his.

  “Hold on, love,” he whispered. He was frozen with fear. He had brought her to this, endangered her life, reduced her to giving birth in the dirt like an animal, his sweet lady Victoria. He should never have married her, he should have sent her back East, where she could have had the sort of life she’d been born for, a life of comfort and gentility.

  Her hand c
lamped down on his, and her teeth clenched. A low, raw sound built up in her throat, then erupted in an animal scream of pain, followed by another, and another. Her entire body was convulsing, bearing down, and her shoulders left the ground.

  With a gush of blood and water, a slippery little body slid out into Carmita’s waiting hands. The baby looked purplish and another sort of agony punched Jake in the chest as he stared wordlessly at the silent infant. Then Carmita thumped it on the back and a tiny, choking cry erupted that began building into a wail. She turned the baby, and Jake saw that it was a boy. Tightly clenched little hands jerked as his son expressed his upset at this unfamiliar new world.

  Unbelievably, Victoria laughed, a tired, weak sound. “Well, he definitely resembles you,” she said.

  Jake looked at her in bewilderment, wondering how she could see any resemblance to anyone in the squalling, red, wrinkled scrap, still covered with the blood of his birth. Maybe in the dark hair, but it was wet and might not be so dark when it was dry.

  She pulled him down to her, her eyes alight with mischief. Putting her lips against his ear, she whispered, “He’s very definitely a male.”

  Then Jake understood what she meant. He looked at the naked baby and for the first time in his life, a blush reddened his cheeks.

  She held out her arms for the baby. “Let me have him. He must be cold.”

  Carmita cut and tied the cord. The baby was quickly wrapped in someone else’s shirt (everyone seemed to be giving up their clothing for the occasion) and placed in Victoria’s arms. The baby stopped crying, slowly blinking his unfocused eyes as he responded to the warmth of being held by his mother.

  Jake put his arms around both of them, resting his grimy cheek against Victoria’s hair. “I love you,” he said hoarsely. She was all that was good and strong and gentle in his life. Her hold on him had shattered the core of hatred that he had fed off of for so long.

  Victoria tilted her head back, her shadowed blue eyes meeting his green ones. “I love you, too,” she replied simply.

  “I meant to give you better than this. We don’t even have a house to live in now.”

  “I don’t care.” She was tired and leaned more heavily against him. “I’m glad the house burned. There was too much hatred locked in it, too much death. I didn’t want all of that for him.” She looked at her son and gently touched his downy cheek with a finger. He turned his head toward the touch, his rosebud mouth working.

  “I can start over,” Jake promised. “I’ll build another house for you, if you’ll stay with me. God, honey, don’t leave me. You might as well shoot me if you’re going to leave, because I love you so much I won’t be any good without you.”

  He’d never before told her he loved her, never before looked at her with that expression in his eyes, so desperate and haunted and … and afraid. She couldn’t imagine Jake Sarratt being afraid of anything, but it was there in his eyes that no longer looked cold to her at all.

  It changed everything, his love. The hate was gone, and with it her reason for ever leaving.

  “All right,” she said, reaching tiredly for his hand. “You build your own kingdom and forget about the past, about that other Sarratt’s Kingdom. It’s really gone now, and we can start fresh.”

  Emma knelt beside Ben to check his leg. He grinned at her. “Do I have a niece or a nephew?”

  “Nephew.” She looked down, her face getting hot as she fumbled with his bandage. “And maybe a son of your own,” she mumbled.

  “What?” He stared at her in shock. “What?” he asked louder, sitting up straight.

  “Hush!” she hissed at him.

  He grabbed her arms, holding her still. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “It’s possible. I’m not certain yet.” She was just a little late, and her system had never been as reliable as Victoria’s. But the possibility was there. She had spent too many nights in Ben’s bed for her to think otherwise.

  He began laughing and pulled her down for a hard kiss. “Emma girl, I haven’t been able to think straight since I met you, and things aren’t getting any better. I think we’d better get married, don’t you?” “Because I might be—?”

  “No, because we love each other and we’ll probably have a houseful of kids, so it would make things simpler if we were married.”

  Emma’s dark eyes began to glow. “Ben Sarratt, I do love you.”

  “That’s a yes?”

  She nodded. “That’s a yes.”

  Jake sat on the ground, holding Victoria propped in his arms. Unbelievably, she was sleeping and so was the baby. He looked at his son, all red and wrinkled and completely helpless, dependent on him for protection and food and everything else in life. He had to think about the future now, and his future was Victoria and the baby, as well as other babies that might come. The morning carried the stink of smoke and gunpowder, but the snow had stopped and the sun was trying to break through and shine on the new layer of white. There was something else new, something inside him, new and good. The future loomed before him, and he felt good about it.

  He had Victoria, their baby was fat and healthy, and together they could build a life of their own without the taint of the past. The territory would see a new Sarratt’s Kingdom, the one he and Ben would build, but this one would be as fresh as the snow that lay on the high valley.

  LINDA HOWARD is the award-winning author whose New York Times bestsellers include Open Season, Mr. Perfect, All the Queen’s Men, Now You See Her, Kill and Tell, and Son of the Morning. She lives in Alabama with her husband and two golden retrievers.