Defiant (3 page)

She started untying the thongs at the top of the stranger's shirt before realizing she would have to tug the shirt off over his head. She couldn't do that without jostling the wounded arm. She would have to cut the shirt off. The pants would have to go, too.

And then he would have no clothes at all.

She took the knife from his belt, then, holding her breath, she cut the deerskin shirt open. She managed to pull it off the uninjured arm but had to cut off the cloth pasted to the right arm with blood.

His chest was solid muscle, brown and dusted with golden hair that led down to the waist of his trousers. She noticed two scars, one at the shoulder, the other a jagged one on his side. Whoever he was, he was prone to violence.

She took the beads from around his neck, handling them curiously for a moment. They looked like something worn by an Indian, but this man was no Indian, not with his features and that dark brown hair. She put the beads carefully down on the table, then turned her attention back to her patient.

Now for the man's trousers. She hesitated. She had seen a man's naked body before, but this stranger was so starkly masculine … Even knowing how foolish it was, she suddenly felt very reluctant.

But he was shivering through the wet cloth. Taking a deep breath, she untied the thongs that held the waist of the trousers and pulled them down. He was wearing nothing underneath. Her throat suddenly tightened at what she saw.

Taken as a whole, he was magnificent. Sinewy and strong. She looked at the mangled arm, and thought of the injustice of it, like the marring of something perfect.

She heard footsteps outside the bedroom door and hurriedly placed a quilt over the lower half of the wounded man's body.

Jeff came in carrying a basin of water, steam rising from it, and clean towels. He placed the basin on the table next to the bed, then started a fire in the fireplace. Jake followed on his heels, taking up a sitting position on the other side of the bed, his head resting on the quilt, his eyes full of curiosity.

Mary Jo cleaned her patient's right arm as best she could. She didn't see an exit wound, which meant she had to extract the bullet. Praying he would remain unconscious, she found a pair of tongs in the medicine box and probed the wound. It started to bleed again. “Keep wiping the blood away,” she told Jeff.

He moved quietly next to her and did as she asked. His face, when Mary Jo stole a quick look at it, was tense, and a tear hovered at the corner of his eye. He hadn't realized yet that compassion and being a Ranger didn't go together.

Sweat ran down her own face by the time the tongs finally found metal. She slowly, carefully extracted the bullet. What was left of it.

Mary Jo heard a moan coming from deep inside the stranger, and she sympathized with him. She also felt triumphant. Perhaps now he would have a chance.

She cleaned the wound some more, then poured sulfur powder into it and sewed it up. When she finished that, she sent Jeff out to find a piece of wood she could use as a splint. While he was gone she sewed up the wound in the stranger's leg.

His lower body was covered again when Jeff returned, holding a strong straight branch. He'd whittled off the knobs and rough spots, and intense pride flowed through Mary Jo. Perhaps because of where and how he'd grown up, he often seemed much older than most boys his age.

“That's perfect,” she said, giving him a grin of approval. He beamed back at her.

“Can you hold his arm for me?” she asked. Again he moved quickly to her side, doing exactly as she told him, no longer smiling but intent on his job, almost willing the man to survive.

Mary Jo concentrated on tying the stranger's arm to the splint and then using a piece of sheeting to bind it to his chest.

“Will he be all right?” Jeff asked.

“I don't know,” she answered. She finished and stood up, stretching. “But we've done all we can do. If he does live, it's because of you.” She gave him a hug and held him close for a moment, surprised he allowed it in his newly discovered need for independence. That he wanted maternal assurance showed the degree of anxiety he felt for their unexpected guest.

But then he twisted away. “I'll get some more wood for the fire.”

She nodded and sat back down next to her patient, studying his face once more. The lines appeared even deeper now, his face pasty. His breathing was shallow.

Dear Lord, let him live, she pleaded silently.

Thunder roared, lightning flashed just outside the window. She shivered, thinking how close he had come to lying out there in this weather. He would have been dead by morning, for sure.

She rose, lit another kerosene lamp, and sat down next to him.

She had done all she could do.

She could only wait now. Wait and pray.

2

The pain was so overpowering Wade wanted to sink back into oblivion.

He wasn't dead, he knew, unless hell was even worse than he'd imagined. But surely if he were burning in that place, as the preacher men always predicted, the agony wouldn't be centered in his arm.

He heard his own groan, then chanced opening his eyes. Closed them again. Then opened them. How in the hell had he gotten into a bed? He doubted whether such luxuries were standard in the netherworld.

He tried to move, to see more of the dim room, but the pain was too great and he sank back, closing his eyes as he did so.

Had he cheated death again, dammit? Why wouldn't he let go?

Something wet and rough, yet not unpleasant, nudged at him. He opened his eyes, and the earnest gaze of an animal that seemed part dog, part wolf met his directly. A great tongue hung out of one side of the mouth.

Christ. A dream? A nightmare? A hound of hell?

The tongue washed his cheek. He blinked, looking the animal over more carefully. Eager, inquisitive eyes stared back at him.

Memories darted in and out of his mind. Pavel. His dog when he was fifteen …

Pavel was the first thing he saw when he returned from town that hot day in July 1858. The body lay at the side of the road, still and bloody. Pavel always waited for him there at the crossroads, ever so patient, wanting only a word of welcome
.

Wade had not been Wade then. He had been a reckless boy named Brad Allen. His rebelliousness had delayed him that day; he'd sneaked a bottle of rotgut from the saloon on a dare from other boys, and they'd spent the afternoon drinking and telling unlikely tales. It had been nearly sunset before he arrived home with seed, knowing that he would be facing harsh words and digging fence holes the next day
.

But still, he was eager to reach home. The table would be laden with food, including an apple pie. It was his older brother's birthday. Drew would be eighteen today
.

Perhaps that was why he'd lingered. He hated to admit it, but he was jealous of his brother, of his competence and the way his father trusted him so. He seemed satisfied with the small farm, not afflicted with Brad's restlessness to see more of the world
.

Brad loved his family, his father who sometimes played the violin at night, his mother who was so quick with a hug
,
his sister, Maggie, who was thirteen and would soon be a woman herself. Already she was catching the eyes of the young men in their little corner of northwest Missouri. And he loved Drew, though he didn't understand his brother's reverence for the land
.

When he'd seen Pavel at the side of the rutted trail, Brad stopped and dismounted. He knelt at Pavel's side, feeling for some sign of life, but there was none. The animal was cold, already stiffening. There were bullet wounds, many of them, and he let his hand linger for a moment on the large shaggy head before suddenly being seized with panic
.

He mounted his horse again and rode toward the small farmhouse, spurring his horse into a gallop. But there was no plain farmhouse awaiting him, no smoke curling wistfully from the chimney into the sky
.

The smoke instead was coming from blackened ruins of the house and barn. The fences had been torn down, and the horses were gone from the small corral. His eyes searched the trees that had surrounded the house and stopped, riveted by the sight of two bodies hanging from them
.

Through blinding tears, he galloped over to them. His brother and father were hanging by their necks from a tree limb he and Drew used to climb. Their hands hadn't been tied but were hanging obscenely as the bodies swayed in the light breeze
.

Brad slid down from his horse and cut the ropes with his knife. The bodies fell, and Brad straightened them out on the ground, trying to give them some dignity. Then he started looking for his sister and mother
.

He found them several hundred yards from the cabin. Both were naked from the waist down. Both were covered with blood. Both were dead
.

Brad sat down next to them. He took his mother's hand and held it for a long time, unaware of anything but overwhelming grief. And then guilt. He should have been here. He was good with a rifle. Maybe …

The full moon was high in the sky when he started to bury all of them, including Pavel. It was dawn before he finished
.

He looked out over the neat fields that had given his father and Drew so much satisfaction. The dawn was pink, soft, but something hardened in Brad that night. He didn't see the beauty of the sunrise; the only thing on his mind was vengeance
.

He would never return here. He couldn't, not without seeing those bodies swaying in the wind
.

He knew who had done this. The Jayhawkers, pro-Union guerrillas out of Kansas, had been raiding farms throughout the area, attacking every family they suspected of being pro-Southern. They had become so bloodthirsty, they needed little proof. Brad's father had been neutral, wanting only to mind his own business, but he would have defied someone trespassing on his land
.

Brad felt the hate filling his heart, his gut, every corner of his soul. Its intensity wiped out every other human emotion. And he knew exactly what he was going to do
.

He would find the antislavery irregulars. And he would kill every damned Jayhawker in Kansas
.

His father hadn't wanted any part of this fight, but now it was Brad's …

“Jake.” The name was spoken softly but authoritatively, and the dog moved away from Wade. He heard a swishing of skirts, then smelled something sweet, like flowers. He turned his head slightly, feeling a pounding behind his eyes as he did so, and swallowed a groan.

A woman. He hurt too much to notice more, to be more than mildly curious about how he came to be here.

“I'm sorry,” she said in a pleasant, husky voice. “Jake seems to have sneaked in here. He's taken it into his head that you belong to him.”

“Jake?” He barely managed to say the name. His voice was weak and shaky even to him.

“That huge beast of a dog,” she said with a slight smile. “He found you.”

Wade closed his eyes. A dog. He should have known. Perhaps it
was
a hound of hell after all.

“He didn't do me any favors,” Wade said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.

“Don't,” she said sharply. “I've lost a husband and a good friend, both of whom wanted to live very badly. Don't tell me I've wasted time and effort on a man willing to throw life away.”

Wade opened his eyes and looked at her more intently. Her hair was auburn and pulled back into a knot at the back of her head. It was too severe for her face, which was strong but tired-looking. Her eyes were green, and bright with intelligence and, at the moment, a bit of anger.

But Wade didn't care about being polite. “I didn't ask you to. Why in the hell couldn't you leave well enough alone?”

Her lips tightened. “My son and his dog found you. I don't like the kind of lesson he'd learn if I left you there.”

A kid! So he owed this ninth life to a kid. And a dog. His kind of luck.

He tried to move, and agony shot through him. “My arm?”

“In bad shape,” she said frankly. “A doctor might have taken it off, but I …” She hesitated. “I got the bullet out and cleaned the wound the best I could. Put some sulfur in it. You might keep it if there's no infection, but I don't know …”

He stared at her, momentarily surprised out of his bitterness. “You took the bullet out?”

“There's no doctor within a day's ride, and the nearest is none too good,” she said. “I couldn't leave you, and I wasn't going to send my boy out in this storm.”

“Storm?”

“It's been raining two days.”

“Two days?” Damnation. He'd been unconscious that long? The last miner? He almost panicked, thinking he might have lost his quarry. Then he remembered pushing his rifle to the man's throat and slowly pulling the trigger.

He glanced down at his half-covered chest, noticed for the first time it was naked. Taking mental measure of the rest of him, he quickly realized his lower half was naked, too.

He'd never been a particularly modest man, but now he felt vulnerable. Now he was weak as a two-day-old wolf cub, and he felt a flush rising in his face.

His left hand went to his neck.

“On the table, next to the bed,” the woman said quietly.

He reached for the necklace, his fingers clasping it tightly for a moment before relaxing.

Then his eyes were back on her face. “Your man?” he asked, wanting to rid himself of those steady green eyes that studied him so carefully. She'd said a husband had died, but surely there must be another one, or a foreman or something.

She hesitated, and he realized there wasn't one here, and she wasn't sure if it was information he should have. He almost laughed. The thought of being a threat to anyone in his present condition was a joke.

Then he wondered how she'd gotten him here. She was of medium height but slender. Surely there had to be a man about.