Colorado Bride (37 page)

The last seven days had taught her what loneliness was. Stages had come and gone, meals had been prepared and dishes washed, and decisions had been made and orders given, but she moved through her daily routine hardly aware of what she did. Jake and Katie made sure that one of them was with her most of the time. Even Found came by to check on her. Several times each day she would look up from what she was doing to find his big brown eyes staring at her, wide with curiosity. His was an open gaze, but somehow those soft, innocent eyes made her feel that Found understood and sympathized with her loneliness. She guessed Katie and Jake understood too. All of them were alone. The only family they had was each other, and Lucas’s absence seemed to pull them closer together.

In the middle of the afternoon of the eighth day, the front door of the station burst open and Katie’s terrified shriek brought Carrie out of her mental paralysis.

Jake, his hands clutching a bloody wound in his side, was roughly shoved into the room by a man Carrie had never seen. Jake sank into the nearest chair as the man staggered over to the table, leaned on it for support, and pointed a rifle at them. His leg appeared to be badly wounded, but the light of desperation in his eyes warned Carrie that it was going to make him more dangerous rather than less.

“Don’t anybody do anything foolish, or I’ll finish killing this here fool,” the man threatened, his teeth showing surprisingly strong and white. They can’t hang me no higher for two murders then they can for one.”

Murder! This man was a killer, Carrie realized in stunned disbelief, and he would probably kill her or Katie just as soon as he would Jake. He was not an unattractive man, but he was unshaven, unkempt, and looked as if he might be flushed with fever.

“What do you want?” Carrie asked, struggling to keep her voice steady and not show the terror that filled her mind.

“Food, and something to bind up this leg. I also want a horse. Mine is finished.” Katie had been standing immobile since they entered, but now she suddenly came to life and ran to where Jake sat slumped in the chair.

“Get away from him, or I’ll put a bullet between his eyes. Then you won’t have no cause to worry over him.” Katie stopped in midstride, unable to move backward or forward, her eyes still on the blood dripping from Jake’s side.

“Can’t you see he’s bleeding?” Carrie demanded, unable to believe what was happening. “His wound must be cleansed and bandaged before he loses any more blood.”

“I ought to know how much he’s bleeding. It was my knife that was nearly stuck in his heart.”

“You did this!” Carrie exclaimed, though she didn’t know why she hadn’t known it immediately. “Why?”

“He had some foolish notion about warning you I was about.”

“Well of course he would,” replied Carrie, recovering sufficiently from her shock to move to the drawer where they kept the clean towels. “He works for me. It’s his job to warn me of intruders.”

“Get away from that drawer, lady, or I’ll shoot you!” the intruder warned, and fired a shot into the wood floor at Carrie’s feet.

Carrie had been badly frightened when the man burst into the station and she saw what he had done to Jake and realized what he might do to all of them, but when he shot into the floor,
her
floor, anger washed over her like rushing floodwater. She whipped around to face the killer, her fearless gaze challenging his, her body held proudly erect. “You would shoot a woman in the back?” Scorn sounded loud in her voice. “I was led to believe that Western men respected women, that at the very least they were honorable, not cowards and bullies.” Right away Carrie knew she had said the right thing. The man was angry and in considerable pain, but he had pride and Carrie could see it stiffen his trembling body.

“I’d kill any man who said half of what you said to me, lady, but I’ve never harmed a woman in my life.”

“Considering the direction in which your rifle is pointed, you can’t expect me to believe that.” She had to think, to outmaneuver him. Jake was wounded and Katie was petrified by fear. It was up to her to get them out of this situation.

“I didn’t want you to get no clever notions about doing something fancy.”

“What kind of fools do you normally point your rifle at? I wouldn’t attempt to reach for a gun when you were already pointing one at me.”

“You were reaching into that drawer …”

“I have towels in here which I need to clean Jake’s wound, and I intend to get them. You can watch me closely if you like, and you have my permission to shoot me if I attempt to pull out a gun.”

“Don’t touch that drawer,” the stranger threatened.

“If you’re going to shoot me anyway, I might as well die trying to be useful.” Carrie didn’t know what drove her to defy this man. He was clearly desperate and he was also in great pain. There was no way of knowing what he would do. She turned her back on him and carefully opened the drawer, but she moved so the killer could get a good view of its contents. “You can see it’s only towels.” Carrie removed several and handed them to the still immobile Katie. Kati looked from Carrie to the killer, unable to make her limbs move, certain he would kill her if she moved a single step without his permission.

“Go on and clean him up,” the man growled. “Just make sure you don’t do nothing stupid.” Katie rushed to Jake’s side and pulled away his hands. It was difficult to tell how badly he was cut because of the blood and the torn shirt.

“Strip him to the waist,” Carrie ordered, “while I get some water.” For the next several minutes both ladies were busy until the wound had been cleaned well enough for Carrie to see it wasn’t serious.

“It’s just a cut across his ribs,” Katie said at last. “It’s not a bad thing at all.”

“If he hadn’t been so quick on his feet, it’d be serious enough,” the man said. “I mean for people to do what I say.”

“And what is it you want us to do?” demanded Carrie.

“Give me some food and a horse.”

“You’re welcome to any food we have. I won’t see any man go hungry, even a murderer.”

“I’m not a murderer,” the man stated with sudden vehemence.

“But you said-”

“I said they couldn’t hang me no higher for two murders than for one. I didn’t say I’d done the one.”

Carrie paused, her curiosity and sympathy engaged. If this than wasn’t a killer, men why was he threatening them? “Why don’t you have a seat at the table, Mr.—”

The name’s Butler, Sam Butler. I suppose you’ve heard of me.”

“No, I can’t say I have,” Carrie told him as she moved to take food out of the pantry and lay the table.

“You be careful with those pots and pans, ma’am. You suddenly show up with a gun in your hands and your friends are going to die first.”

Carrie turned to face him. She was completely calm now. “It’s clear
you
haven’t heard of
me.
If I pick up a gun,
you
will be the one to die.”

“She can do it too,” Jake said, grimacing with pain as Katie began to bind the open wound. “She can shoot the ash off a cigar and never touch the fire.” Sam eyed Carrie in disbelief. Her back was turned to him as she worked at the stove, but she showed no evidence of the fear his presence usually evoked in people. He didn’t believe she could shoot the way Jake said, but this woman was different somehow. He had better keep an eye on her.

“I have plenty of food I can serve you here, but I don’t have much you can take with you,” Carrie said to Sam as she placed a plate in front of him. “Suppose I tell you what I have, and you tell me what you can use.”

“Suppose you just sit down over there,” said Sam, wondering why this woman wasn’t afraid of him. He had looked over the whole station before he jumped Jake, and there was no one about, but she acted as though half the United States Army would be at her door in two minutes. “You just sit real still while I eat. I get jumpy when I’m eating.”

“You probably have extremely poor digestion from eating badly prepared food in too great a hurry,” Carrie suggested. “You should take more time over your meals.”

Sam looked as if he trusted Carrie less and less every minute, but she poured out two cups of coffee, checked to see if Katie needed any help, then calmly sat down at the table across from him.

Sam ate slowly at first, keeping his eye firmly fixed on Carrie, but the excellent food began to work on him, and before long his attention was evenly divided between Carrie and his plate.

“Now suppose you tell me what this is all about,” Carrie said as she handed him a piece of pie and refilled his coffee cup. “Surely you don’t make a practice of holding people hostage and stealing food they would have been happy to give you quite freely.”

“I don’t make a practice of holding nobody hostage, and I don’t steal nothing neither,” Sam said angrily. “I don’t say I ain’t come mighty close to the edge from time to time, but I ain’t killed nobody who wasn’t trying to kill me first, and I ain’t taken nothing from nobody I wasn’t paid to take.”

“I don’t find that kind of slipshod morality the least bit admirable,” Carrie told him frankly, “but that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here now and why you attacked one of my employees.”

“Because of this hole in my leg,” Sam said, pointing to the leg which he had stretched out awkwardly in front of him. “I didn’t shoot myself.”

“Who did, and why?”

“The damned sheriff from Tyler’s Mountain and that posse of his. He’s got it into his head that just because a man was shot dead in the street and I was in town at the time, I must have been the one to shoot him.”

“There’s either more to it than that, or you’re lying to me,” Carrie said bluntly, her gaze unwavering. Sam blinked in surprise, looked like he didn’t quite know how to proceed next, and then decided to trust Carrie with the truth.

“We’d had an argument earlier, that fella and me, in the saloon, and I told him I’d kill him if he ever crossed me again. But I went to get something to eat after that, and I never even thought of him again until they burst into Carta’s room thinking they’d find me with my pants off and be able to take me easy.”

“You were in …” Carrie couldn’t put it into words.

“Yes, ma’am, I was, but I was just visiting. Carta’s a friend from back home in Indiana. And it’s a damned good thing she is, or I’d never have gotten out that window, clothes or no clothes. As it was, they got me in the leg.”

“And you’ve ridden all this distance without taking care of that wound? It might become infected.”

“Lady, there’s a posse on my heels, and they mean to hang me when they find me. This leg being infected won’t make no difference if I’m dead.”

“But if you didn’t kill that man, there can’t be any witnesses. And without witnesses, there’s no case against you.”

That sheriff’s been wanting my hide for a long time. This is his best chance to get it, and he knows it.”

“You ought to let me look at that leg. I’ve got some medicine over here …”

Carrie got up from the chair as she spoke and turned toward where Katie had laid out all their medicines as she took care of Jake. Just as she glanced up, she saw the door to the back of the station open ever so slightly and the barrel of a rifle slide silently through.

“No, Found!” she shouted. Lulled by a stomach full of good food and the fearlessness of this unusual woman, Sam had laid his rifle down while he ate his pie. It was that, along with Carrie’s sudden shout, that kept anyone from being killed.

Just as Sam dived out of the chair and rolled away from the table, Found’s rifle shot splintered the back of the chair where Sam had been sitting. In the seconds it took Sam to throw his body away from the chair, draw his gun, and aim toward the doorway, Carrie sped across the room, and threw herself in the line of his fire.

“Stop!” she shouted as she pulled Found from behind the door, took the rifle from his hands, and hid him behind her own body. “For God’s sake, can’t you see he’s just a child!” Sam had already shot, but his aim was spoiled as he rolled and the bullet embedded itself in the door frame mere inches from Carrie’s head.

For several seconds everyone was too numb from shock and fear to move.

“Put that rifle on the table, and I just may let the lot of you live to see tomorrow,” Sam said when he stopped breathing too rapidly. I didn’t know there was anybody else here. Where the hell did you come from, kid?”

Found didn’t reply, and Sam impatiently waved his gun at Found. “I said where’d you come from?”

“He can’t talk, at least he never has,” Carrie explained, holding the boy even tighter and still shielding him with her body. He was probably up at Lucas’s cabin checking on the horses. It’s part of his job.”

“Is there somebody else here I missed?” Sam demanded, wondering if he had stumbled into some kind of mirage.

“Lucas is the wrangler,” Carrie told him, “but he’s gone to Denver. I don’t know when he’ll be back. Now sit back down and finish your coffee. There’s no need for you to be lying on the floor.”

“Not until that rifle is on the table. I ain’t taking no chance on that kid plugging me in the back.”

If Carrie had believed Sam was a killer, she would have risked a shot. As it was, she laid the rifle on the table, being careful to keep Found behind her. “Found only tried to shoot you because he thought you were threatening me. I don’t see how you can blame him for trying to do what you said you would do to us.”