Depending on the Doctor (Nevada Bounty Book 2) (11 page)

Clyde smiled wide. “All right, then. My answer is yes. I’m going to enjoy breaking the both of you. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll wish I’d just let Lyle kill you.”

I was too furious to speak to Lydia the rest of the day. How could she sell herself like that? Was she that eager to prove she was the nobody she claimed to be? She said she’d done it to save me, but she didn’t know I was even more of a nobody than her. Why was my life more valuable to her than her own?

I’d planned to negotiate with Clyde for Lydia’s life, but she stepped in and ruined my chances. Clyde would never change his mind, now, not with a better prize in hand.

We all packed up shortly after the deal was struck and headed northeast, for the gang’s hideout. They’d lashed Ernie to a horse and planned to bury him once they got home. From their conversations, I anticipated only a long day’s ride.

Lydia couldn’t have misinterpreted my mood, so she left me alone all day. But as the sun worked its way down into late afternoon, she finally rode up beside me. I chose not to look at her; just kept my eyes on the cold, snowy trail between us and Lyle and Slim’s horses in front of us.

“You’re going to have to get over this eventually.”

“I don’t have to,” I said. My voice sounded petulant even to me.

“I saved your life,” she said, keeping her voice low enough that the men in front and in back of us wouldn’t hear.

“Did I ask you to?”

“I didn’t figure we had time discuss the issue. I didn’t particularly want your death on my conscience, if I could prevent it. So just stop complaining. If you’re so hell-bent on getting yourself shot, I’m sure Clyde would accommodate you if you asked.”

I turned and looked her in the eye. “I might just do that, then I’ll be rid of the picture in my head of that filthy pig rutting on you.”

She gasped and recoiled, and I felt bad for saying it, even if it was true.

“What are you two on about up there?” Dom asked from behind us.

I turned in the saddle and waved Dom off. “Nothing. Just talking. It’s a long ride. Gotta kill the time somehow.”

I faced front again, but I couldn’t get the image out of my head of Clyde, sweaty and erect, that self-satisfied leer on his face, driving himself hilt-deep into sweet, innocent Lydia. I couldn’t let it happen, but by striking the deal, she’d made things much more difficult.

She clucked her tongue at me. “Do you really think I’d let him do that?”

“What?” My expression must have shown my confusion. “But you made a deal.”

“Was I supposed to just let him shoot us? I had to think of something, and that’s all I could come up with. But if it happens, it won’t be because I volunteer it. I hoped we could figure out how to escape before then. But you’ve been pouting all day, so we couldn’t make any plans.”

Much of the anger I’d harbored all day drained from my shoulders and jaw. I found myself smiling. “Just when I think I have you figured out, you surprise me again.”

“Oh, and how did you think you had me figured out?”

“When I met you, you reminded me of a deer—curious but nervous, afraid. And then I got to know you some, and learned you have a sharp mind—and tongue. You’re practical, you’re kind, and far braver than many men I’ve known.”

That pretty pink blush I liked had blossomed on her cheeks. Definitely if anyone was going to be rutting on Lydia Templeton, it would be me.

Holy Christ, that image hit me and took my breath away, and I filed it away as ‘for future reference.’

“And now?” she asked.

“Now I know you’re all those things, but you’re wily, too. If you’d asked me when I first met you, I would have guessed you weren’t capable of lying; or making a dishonest deal with anyone like Clyde. I’d say if you made the deal, you’d live up to it no matter what.”

She frowned and looked away, a dark cloud passing over her features. “You’re right. I surely would have. For a long time, and until very recently, I assumed I knew the difference between right and wrong, that I could always identify it and make that choice, the right choice. I’ve always lived like that, by a strict moral code. I even thought I should make those choices for other people, especially people I loved, when I thought they were choosing wrong.”

If Randall was anything like his father, I imagined that moral code had been drilled into her from an early age. “You don’t seem that…”

“Uptight? Judgmental? Dogmatic?”

“I was going to say strict. You don’t seem that strict now.”

“I’ve lived a very sheltered life; first with my parents who dragged me around from one tent meeting to another where I was never out of their sight or away from their influence. Then Father promised me in marriage to a man who helped promote his business.”

That information startled me. “You’re married?”

She laughed and looked back at me. “No. Father sent me out to Carson City to meet my future husband, dowry in hand, but when the man met me at the train, it turned out he was a charlatan. He made arrangements for us to marry, took the dowry, and then abandoned me. At the alter, no less.”

“I imagine your father wasn’t too happy about it.”

“No, he wasn’t. In fact, he was so angry, he blamed me and when I asked him to wire me the money for train fare home, he refused.”

“He left you stranded in Carson City? What kind of father does that?”

“He said if I’d been prettier or sweeter or meeker, maybe the man wouldn’t have abandoned me.”

Tears shone in her eyes, but the set of her chin said she refused to cry about the past. “Lydia, you are pretty and sweet, and any man who wants a meek woman is an idiot. I like spunky women.”

She blushed even harder and my trousers suddenly felt far too tight.

“Father would have disagreed.”

“Well, your father was a fool and you’ve been better off out from under his influence, haven’t you?”

“I have. He passed not long after that and Randall took over his ministry. He was even less interested in helping me than Father had been. I was lucky enough to find the advertisement for a teacher in Palmer, and once I was there I met Beth and she took me in. I don’t know what I would have done without her, but I still have a hard time trusting people.”

“Understandable, when the one person you’re supposed to be able to trust betrays you.”

“Which is what I thought about when I made that deal with Clyde. I thought, I’ve spent my whole life being honest, living by the rules, being a good girl, doing what was expected, but Clyde is the exact opposite. I don’t trust that he’ll keep his word at all. If I make him angry, he’ll just shoot me. So why should I be truthful with him? I said what I needed to in order to keep us alive and buy us time, and he thinks I’m the kind of girl who will keep her word.”

“See? I was right. You are smart.”

“And wily?” she asked, a proud sparkle in her eyes.

“Yes, and definitely wily. Maybe all you needed was more experience to gain some perspective about that moral code of yours.”

“Maybe. I suppose necessity really is the mother of invention. You never know what you’re capable of until put on the spot.”

A whistle sounded ahead of us, as we approached a bluff. Clyde whistled in answer. There were several men up above the trail guarding the entrance to a pass.

Pete rode up between me and Lydia, a grin on his face. “We’re home.”

“Where’s home, exactly?” Lydia asked.

“Hole-in-the-Wall,” he said.

I groaned. Just what we needed was to be herded into the most remote, difficult to get into—and out of—desperado hideout in the country.

Riding into a bandit hideout wasn’t exactly what I’d expected. The narrow, winding trail through the pass was, indeed, the perfect entrance, but when the trail opened into a secluded valley the beauty of it took my breath away. The last orange rays of the setting sun shone over the top of the canyon walls, casting long shadows over the camp. A creek rushed along, rippling shadows and light, and several cabins were scattered through the valley. As we approached a pair of them built close to one another, I tried to catalog the rest of the building and noticed a corral, a barn, and a couple of other buildings.

We rode to the larger of the nearest cabins and dismounted. My back and hips ached from sitting in the saddle for so long, and I’d have given pretty much anything for a bath, but more than anything I really wanted to lie down somewhere and sleep. I’d begin the process of dealing with the repercussions of our situation tomorrow.

Light filtered from the cabin windows, and when the door opened it spilled around the form of a man, onto the porch.

“Welcome back, boys. Did you take a good haul?”

“Yeah, Billy,” Clyde said. “We lost Ernie, though.”

“Sorry, Lyle,” Billy said.

Before Lyle could answer, Clyde started giving out orders, “Pete, you and Jed bed the horses; Dom, you and Lyle deal with Ernie. We’ll bury him tomorrow. Slim, help me with the money.”

I cleared my throat to get his attention.

“The two of you go inside. Billy, this is our new cook, and doctor. Put her in my bed and find him a place in the bunkhouse with the boys.”

My knees about gave out on me. I wasn’t ready to pay up on my deal just yet. I would have fainted if Emmett hadn’t wrapped his arm around my waist and held me up.

“She’s not sharing your bed,” he said. His tone didn’t invite discussion.

“I beg to differ,” Clyde said, his tone more amusement than anything. “She made a deal.”

“I need to sleep,” I said. “I have to be up early for breakfast.”

Clyde said, “I don’t need you to be awake.”

I shuddered at the prospect. In theory it had sounded like a good way to keep us both alive. Now that I faced the reality of sharing a bed with him, it made my stomach roil.

“No,” I said, trying to sound as decisive as possible. “Not tonight.”

He glared at me for a painfully long time before he said, “Hmpf,” then turned to the laden horses and began unloading their loot.

When he didn’t say anything else, Emmett pressed me from behind and guided me up the steps of the porch and into the cabin.

Billy, who’d answered the door, did indeed only have one arm, the left having been amputated below the elbow. He noticed me looking. “Lost it in the war,” he said, a grin on his boyish face.

It didn’t miss my attention that when Emmett saw Billy’s arm, he blanched and turned away.

“I’m Lydia,” I said. “This is Emmett.”

“Go ahead and hang your coats there on the hooks,” Billy said. “You want some coffee? I don’t have much to eat right now except some beans. Didn’t know when to expect the men back.”

“Yes, thank you,” I said, hanging my coat then sitting on the bench on one side of a long table. While he fetched the coffee, I surveyed the place that would be our home for a while, anyway.

The building wasn’t all that big, but big enough to have a large stone fireplace at one end, used for cooking and heat, with the table running parallel. At the other end of the cabin were two bunks, a settee and a couple of chairs, a dresser between the bunks, and trunks at the ends. A shallow loft hid above the fireplace.

“Clyde ain’t never shanghaied nobody before,” Billy said, setting empty cups in front of us, then going back for the coffee pot.