Lucky Penny (30 page)

A footstep.
Brianna tensed, her pulse slamming, certain she’d heard something. And then it came again—the soft, almost imperceptible chink of a boot spur. She shrank closer to the ground, terrified to look over the rock to see how close he was.
Be quiet, Daphne, please, please be quiet.
Had only one of them survived? If all three were alive, they’d be out here in force, sifting through every blade of grass. A picture of David’s face swam in her mind. Oh, how she regretted now that she hadn’t realized sooner what a good fellow he actually was. In that moment, she would have given almost anything to hear his voice, even if he was cursing.

“Son of a
bitch
!” A hand closed over Brianna’s right arm, and she was jerked to her feet as if she weighed no more than a feather. “I told you to
run
, God damn it! As fast as you could go and as far as you could go! And I find you hiding only a few feet from camp!”

Brianna, about to let fly with both fists, went limp.
“David?”
she whispered incredulously. “You’re
alive
? Oh, thank God!” She threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, thank God. David! I thought sure they’d killed you.”

He grasped her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Don’t you
David
me!” He gave her a shake that rattled her teeth. “You willful, stubborn,
ungrateful
little brat!”

The next instant, his hand closed around her wrist, as relentless as an iron manacle, and she was jerked half off her feet as he turned back toward camp. “Daphne, come along,” he barked.

Brianna’s foot tangled in something in the dark. David caught her from falling and drew her abreast of him. “You—you have this all wrong!” she cried.

“Shut up!” There was a snarl in his voice. Even in the dim light, she could see that his lips were peeled back, stretched thin over his white teeth. “Don’t test my temper right now. I’ve a good mind to turn you over my knee and give you such an ass warming, you won’t be able to sit for a week!”

Still wailing, Daphne ran ahead of them toward the fire. Brianna was relieved to see that the child seemed to be unharmed. Unfortunately, it was the only thing she could be glad about. In a temper, David Paxton was a fearsome man. She wanted to explain to him what had happened, but she was afraid to say another word.

When they reached camp, he pushed her, none too gently, down onto a rock. Then he loomed over her, one forefinger rigidly extended to punctuate every word he blasted her with. “You
deliberately
disobeyed me! I walked in here, willing to die so you and Daphne would have a chance to run, damn it! And instead you stayed within throwing distance, putting not only your own life at risk, but my daughter’s as well! Do you have any idea what those bastards would have done to both of you?
Do you?
If I hadn’t prevailed, the party would just now be starting.” He jabbed his finger at Brianna’s nose. “And
you
, my fine, high-minded lady, would be the main source of entertainment!”

Daphne, who had finally stopped crying, tried to interrupt. “Papa?”

“Not right now, Daphne,” David snapped. “This is between me and your mother. Go check the damned vegetables to see if they scorched.”

“But, Papa, she’s
hurt
!”

“I don’t care if she’s—” David broke off and grabbed Brianna by the chin, moving slightly to one side so his shadow, cast by the fire behind him, no longer hindered his view. “Oh, shit.” He went down hard on one knee. “Oh,
shit
! Were you hit?”

Brianna remembered something striking her at the corner of her eye and started to reach up to investigate. He grabbed her wrist. “Don’t touch it. If there’s lead lodged in your skull, you might push it deeper.”

She could feel him trembling, which was altogether frightening. “I think it was a piece of rock, not a bullet.”

“Rock?”

Daphne broke in with, “The rock in front of us blew up, Papa.”

David hauled Brianna back to her feet, encircled her waist with one arm, and half carried her closer to the fire. As he deposited her carefully on the grass, he said to Daphne, “Toss on some more tinder, pumpkin. I need better light.”

As the flames flared, he tilted Brianna’s face to examine her injury. The next thing she knew, he pulled his knife from the sheath that rode on his trouser belt. She flinched away. “Rest easy,” he told her. “I’ve got to sterilize it first.” He thrust the blade into the coals. “Daphne, can you get another pot out of the packs and run get me some water?”

While he wasn’t looking, Brianna carefully fingered the wound. The flesh around it felt tender and ached dreadfully, but she discovered nothing sharp. Her hand came away covered with blood. “It’s only a cut, David. A piece of rock flew up and got me.”

He turned, saw her crimson-streaked fingers, and clenched his jaw muscle. “Will you
ever
do as I say? I told you not to touch it!”

“It’s my face. I guess I know if there’s a bullet in it or not. And I
tried
to do as you said. It’s not my fault nobody ever taught me my directions.”

He slanted a burning look at her. “What do you mean, your directions?”

“North, south, east, and west—
those
directions. All I know is right and left, unless you count forward and behind.”

His stony expression turned incredulous. “Right and left?”

Brianna flung out her arm. “That is right.” She flung out her other arm. “And
that
is left. It’s useful enough knowledge, I suppose, but it isn’t much help out on the prairie.”

As sharp as finely honed blades in the flickering light, his blue eyes pierced hers.

“I ran, just as you said, truly I did. But then Daphne fell and rolled. By the time I managed to pick her up, I’d gotten turned around. I wasn’t sure which direction I’d been going, so I did an eenie-meenie-minie-moe.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

Brianna saw Daphne returning from the creek. Now that he seemed to have control of his temper, she dared to say, “Mind your tongue, sir.”

David drew his knife from the fire. The metal glowed red-hot.

“You’ll
not
touch my face with that thing, either. All I need is a bit of cleaning up.”

He waved the blade to cool it. Daphne set the pot on the fire, then hunkered with her skirt and cloak tails drawn over her knees, minding David’s warning not to let the cloth flutter into the flames. “Where are those men, Papa? Did you scare them away?”

David studied the cooling knife blade. “Let’s just say they made a bad choice and soon saw the error of their ways.”

Brianna had all but forgotten the other men. She glanced uneasily around. The recently fueled fire cast its light afar. She saw what looked like blood on the grass in several places, and there were also drag marks in the earth, leading off to a small copse of brush about fifty feet away. Had David killed all three men and then hidden their bodies so Daphne wouldn’t see them? Or had the ne’er-do-wells run for their lives? Their horses were gone. But, then, Blue, Lucy, and the bay weren’t there, either.

“Did you give them what for and whip them, right and proper?” Daphne asked.

Brianna waited for David to speak. He’d stood strong against three armed men and had every right to brag a little. Instead, he said, “Sometimes trouble comes calling. You don’t invite it, and you try to avoid it, but it comes anyway. When that happens, you do what you have to do, and if you’re real lucky and God is watching out for you, you live to feel sad about it, and then try to put it behind you.”

“Are you feeling sad, Papa?”

David settled a warm gaze on the child. “Heck, no! I’m feeling very glad that all of us are safe. I think it calls for a party.”

“It’s fortunate that you have our penny in your pocket. I bet that’s why you won.”

That stupid penny again. Brianna wanted to tell Daphne that it had been God, not the coin, that had kept David safe, but she didn’t want to stir that hornet’s nest again.

David reached inside his duster to rest his hand over his shirt pocket. “By Jove, you’re right, pumpkin. Maybe our lucky penny helped save the day.”

“For certain sure,” Daphne cried. “It’s the luckiest penny
ever
.”

“Did our vegetables scorch?” he asked.

Daphne looked in the pot and beamed a grin at him. “Nope. The water almost cooked away, and I think they’re way too done, but they didn’t burn.”

“Well, then, after we get your mama’s face doctored, we’ll have ourselves a meal fit for royalty. I’m a fair hand at making corn cakes over the fire, and we’ve got plenty of sugar to spare. You ever had corn cakes drizzled with syrup?”

“Not for a very long time.”

“Well, it’s on the menu tonight.”

“Yum!” Daphne exclaimed, the fate of the men forgotten. “Where’s the cornmeal? I’ll run get it.”

David told her which pack it was in. As the child ran off, he shifted in his crouch and slipped the cooled knife back into its sheath. “I’m sorry I lost my temper like that,” he said softly. “It’s one of my worst faults, yelling and getting mad when I get a bad scare.”

What Brianna found utterly amazing was that she’d never once feared he might strike her with his fists. She’d worried momentarily about the future of her backside, of course, but in her experience, a paddling could be survived with only a bit of soreness. Being knocked flat—having a man’s hard knuckles connect with her cheek—well, that was quite another thing, and she never wanted to live through it again.

“I understand.” She watched her daughter, who was barely illuminated now by the flames as she dug through the packs. She’d taken to this lifestyle as if she’d been born to it. “Those men. They’re dead, aren’t they?”

“Dead as doornails. I’ll take care of them later after Daphne’s asleep.”

Brianna couldn’t express with words how grateful she was to him for shielding her child from that kind of ugliness. “And the horses and mule? Are they—dead, too?” Brianna had detested four-legged beasts of burden for six long years, but she’d grown unaccountably fond of David’s animals. “Did you hide their bodies as well?”

David laughed. “It’d take six men and a boy to drag a horse. All the animals are fine. When the gunfire broke out, they used the good sense God gave them and ran. Blue will round them up. That’s why I wanted you on him today. Unless he stepped into a prairie-dog hole and broke a leg out there, he’ll find his way back to me.”

His tone when he spoke of Blue told Brianna he loved the horse deeply. Two days ago, she might have questioned his sanity, but tonight she gazed off into the darkness, hoping Blue was okay and that he’d bring Lucy and the bay safely to their camp.

She realized she was trembling like a leaf just as David reached out to grasp her shoulder. “You okay, Shamrock?”

It had been such a close call. She’d never been so scared in her whole life, but right then, she needed, almost desperately, to move forward and not think about it. “I’m fine,” she pushed out. “Just a bit shaken up. When I realized I’d run in a circle, I was frightened half to death. I ran and ran and didn’t go anywhere.”

“How’s the head? It looks as if the bleeding has stopped.”

“I had almost forgotten about it.” Touching the spot, she added, “It’s definitely nothing urgent. Let’s wait until Daphne has settled down before we clean it up. It’s only panging a bit. I’ve endured far worse.”

“When?”

That was a question she didn’t care to answer. So instead she changed the subject. “Twice today, you said I should tell Blue to take me home.” Brianna searched his face, admiring the chiseled cut of his features, delineated by the firelight. “Would he truly have headed for No Name? That seems a bit far-fetched. It’s a long way, isn’t it?”

David lifted the coffeepot and moved it to the edge of the fire. It seemed to Brianna that a lifetime had passed since he’d put it on to boil. The brew was probably as thick as sludge. “That’s a trick every smart rancher teaches his horse. The dangers are many out on a cattle spread. You can get gored by a bull, or fall and break a leg. If you’re so badly injured you can’t guide the horse, you need him trained to take you home while you try to stay on his back. Blue is smart and well trained and has the homing instinct of a pigeon. He would have headed straight for No Name, just like I said.”

Brianna searched the darkness, her throat going tight. She couldn’t believe she felt like weeping over a stupid horse. But, oh—he wasn’t just
any
horse. “I do hope he’s okay, David.”

He shrugged and swallowed. “If he doesn’t come in, I’ll look for him come morning and do what I have to do.”

Brianna shivered. A broken leg usually meant certain death for a horse.

Just then, a joyous hee-haw cut through the night. Daphne leaped to her feet and shouted, “Lucy!” She went streaking out into the darkness, making Brianna’s heart jerk.

But David only pushed calmly to his feet, hollering, “Mind your horse manners, Daphne!”

The child’s voice came trailing back to them. “I will, Papa!”

As David struck off after the child, Brianna forced her exhausted body erect and plodded after him. “What, precisely, are horse manners?”

He slowed and curled an arm over her shoulders. The contact startled her, but his hard, warm hand cupped her opposite arm, holding her fast. “Easy,” he said, his voice pitched low. “You can’t see shit in the dark. I just don’t want you to fall. As for horse manners, I’ll teach you, but first we need to work on your directions. You can’t find your way out here if all you know is left and right. Where’d you grow up, anyway, in a barn?”

Brianna bit back a startled laugh. “So you’re holding that against me, are you?”

“Nah, my feelings aren’t that easily hurt.”

She almost reminded him that she’d grown up in a convent, not a barn, but her memory of his past reaction to that information had her biting her tongue. Instead she peered with strained eyes through the darkness for a glimpse of her daughter.

David apparently saw Daphne long before she did, for he strode forward without hesitation, his thigh riding her hip, his gun pressed so firmly against her that she might have been wearing it herself. The heat of his body radiated over her. She felt his strength, his hardness, and for the first time in her life, she found them soothing. Well, a little alarming, too. He made her feel things she wasn’t at all certain she wanted to feel. She could finally understand why so many women were so foolish as to marry.