Outlaw’s Bride (35 page)

Reminded of how long it was between adventures of this sort, the mob mounted up, revived and refreshed by its gory purpose.

Careless didn’t try any longer to stop the crowd. He rode off at a gallop after them. He hadn’t realized how ruthless Boyd Stuckey was. Maybe he had better rethink his plan to thwart the richest, meanest bastard in Oak County.

*  *  *  

Patch and Merielle were in a race with time. They had to reach the spot where the Tumbling Tcowhands were dipping, branding, and castrating calves before Boyd’s lynch mob caught up to them.

Patch’s greatest fear was that Merielle might slow her down. After an hour on the trail, Patch conceded she had vastly underrated Merielle’s grit and gumption. The young woman had dried her tears, squared her shoulders, and ridden as hard as a horse thief with a prize stallion under him and the law on his tail.

Their horses were blown by the time they spotted a crowd of cowboys squatting down around a branding fire. “Ethan!” Patch shouted. “Ethan!”

Merielle joined in with a different verse. “Frank!” she shouted. “Frank!”

Only one cowboy came out of the bunch around the fire.

Frank started running toward them. Merielle came flying off her horse straight into Frank’s open arms. He hugged her so tight she could barely catch her breath.

“If you don’t loosen up a little, she’s going to faint,” Patch pointed out.

Frank let go a little, but kept his arms around Merielle. “What’s happened? What are you two doing here?”

“Where’s Ethan?” Patch asked.

“Haven’t seen him. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Boyd shot and killed Father,” Merielle said. “He’s blaming Ethan, and he’s hunting him with a lynch mob.”

“Why would Boyd shoot Trahern? Why is he after Ethan?” Frank’s confusion was easy to understand, and the answers he was getting weren’t doing much to clear things up.

“Boyd shot Father because Father was going to shoot him.”

“Why was Trahern going to shoot Boyd?” Frank demanded in exasperation.

Merielle couldn’t just blurt it out. Not in front of Frank. She turned to Patch.

Patch was more concerned about Ethan than about making explanations to Frank. “Ethan told me he was coming here to meet with you. So where is he?”

“For the second time, I haven’t seen him,” Frank said. “Why was he coming here?”

“We heard that Chester Felber was the one who—”

“It wasn’t Chester,” Merielle contradicted. “Boyd raped me!” Merielle realized what she had said and turned to Frank. “It was Boyd, Frank. I didn’t want to do it! He forced me!”

Frank’s face bleached white. He grasped Merielle’s shoulders so hard she winced. “You remember? Everything?”

Merielle bit her lip and nodded.

“You’re sure it was Boyd?”

“I’m not likely to forget a thing like that!” Merielle snapped back. The three of them looked at each other and laughed nervously. It wasn’t funny. But it was.

“What I don’t understand,” Frank said, “is why
the lynch party is after Ethan, when Boyd is the guilty party.”

“Boyd plans to tell everyone in town that Ethan made good on his threat to kill my father,” Merielle said.

“Meanwhile,” Patch added, “the Felbers are under the impression that
Chester
committed the rape. Boyd has been blackmailing them all these years to keep silent.”

Frank met Merielle’s dark eyes. “I thought you said Boyd—”

Merielle lowered her eyes to avoid Frank’s gaze. “He did.”

Frank took off his hat and rubbed his head with his knuckles. “I’m confused.”

Patch explained. “Horace found Chester and Boyd together with Merielle the day she—” She cut herself off and began again, avoiding actual mention of the word
rape
. “Merielle had scratched Chester’s face while he was trying to rescue her. But Boyd told Horace that Chester was the guilty one. It wasn’t until Merielle got her memory back that she confronted Boyd with the truth.”

“Which was when Trahern tried to shoot him, and he shot Trahern,” Frank concluded.

“Right!” both women said together.

“If Boyd knows you recognized him as the … one who hurt you, why did he let you go?” Frank asked Merielle.

“Because I made him think I’d lost my memory again.”

Frank’s face was grim. “I’d like to get my hands on him. And it looks like I might get a chance real
soon,” he said, pointing to a bunch of riders approaching in a hurry.

“That can’t be the lynch mob already,” Patch said. “It’s too soon!”

“It takes a crowd to raise that much dust. I don’t have that many cowhands working out here.”

Both Frank and Patch thought of Merielle at the same time. When they looked at her, she was standing frozen with her wide eyes focused on the riders jostling for position at the head of the pack.

“He’ll kill me,” she whispered. She turned to Frank. “And he’ll kill you, too!”

“He’s not going to kill anybody,” Patch said.

“He’ll know I remember. He’ll know—”

“He’ll know what we tell him,” Patch said. “You keep quiet and let me do the talking.”

Patch had barely finished speaking when Boyd separated himself from the crowd and rode toward them.

“Who’s that with you, Boyd?” Patch asked.

“The sheriff and a posse,” Boyd said. “We’re hunting Ethan.”

“What for?”

Boyd eyed Merielle sideways. “Didn’t Merielle tell you?”

“She came to my place crying, very distressed,” Patch said. “She was so hysterical, I couldn’t understand a word she said. I brought her here hoping that Frank could calm her down. As you can see, she’s all right now. Do you have any idea what might have upset her?”

Patch held her breath, waiting to see if she had
assuaged Boyd’s suspicion. From the corner of her eye she watched Frank’s arm tighten around Merielle. His hand slipped down toward his gun. A muscle jumped in his jaw. She hoped Frank wouldn’t take the law into his own hands. There was altogether too much of that going on in Oakville.

Patch felt the tension palpably increase while she waited for Boyd to assess the situation.

At last Boyd said, “Merielle probably witnessed her father’s murder.”

“Jefferson Trahern is dead?” Patch let her mouth fall open in surprise.

“Apparently Ethan made good on his promise to shoot him.”

“Did someone see Ethan do it?” Patch knew as soon as she saw Boyd’s lips flatten that she was only making trouble for herself by asking pointed questions that Boyd would be forced to answer with lies.

“As a matter of fact,” Boyd said. “I saw him. Do you know where we can find him?”

“I can’t imagine he would be anywhere within a hundred miles of here,” Patch said. “Especially if he knows you can identify him as Trahern’s killer.”

Boyd snorted in disgust at how he had trapped himself.

“By the way,” Patch said, “how did Ethan escape in the first place? I mean, if you saw him murder Trahern, why did you let him get away?”

Boyd was clearly flummoxed by Patch’s question.
“Ethan just shot and ran. There wasn’t time to react.”

Patch could have kicked herself for forcing Boyd into a corner. He was clearly suspicious again.

Boyd had been leery of approaching the branding fire when he realized Patch and Merielle were there with Frank. When he first rode up, the look in Frank’s eyes was deadly. He felt certain Merielle had somehow recovered her memory and exposed him. But no sooner had he identified the danger in Frank’s eyes than it was gone, replaced by a bland friendliness.

He had been put off guard at first by Patch’s smooth explanation of Merielle’s appearance. Then she had started asking those pointed questions.

She knows
.

Boyd glanced at Merielle from the corner of his eye. She was staring straight at him, and there was no confusion in her dark eyes, just fear and loathing. Her second loss of memory had been a fraud.

The bitch told them everything!

His eyes narrowed in calculation. It appeared, from the tension in Frank and from Patricia’s verbal attack, that they believed Merielle’s accusations against him. He would have to send Careless and the lynch mob back to town. His pursuit of Ethan would have to be postponed while he took care of more pressing business.

Patricia and Merielle and Frank all had to die.

Ethan knew he would never be free to settle down with Patch until he had made his peace with Jefferson Trahern. Since all the Tumbling Thands were gone on the roundup, there would never be a better time to beard the lion in his den. Trahern’s big bay gelding stood saddled and waiting in front of the house. Chances were good Trahern was still inside.

Ethan rode right up, tied his horse on the rail beside the bay, and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he looked around him uneasily. Maybe he was walking into some kind of trap. A narrow-eyed search revealed nothing unusual. In fact, the place looked deserted.

Ethan felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. He took the few steps to the front window, cupped his hand against the glass, and looked inside. A second later he had let himself in and was running for the parlor.

“Anybody home?” he shouted. “Anybody here?”

He knelt beside Trahern’s inert body. The big man lay on his stomach, his arms outstretched. He
had been shot in the back at fairly close range. Blood stained his suit jacket and the carpet beneath him. Ethan checked for a pulse and was amazed when he found one.

“Son of a bitch.”

Ethan faced a choice he would rather not make. Should he try to save the man who had murdered his father? Or let him die? He stood and paced the length of the parlor once. He turned and paced back again. When he reached the parlor door, he walked through it.

Trahern groaned.

Ethan stopped just beyond the doorway. His chin dropped to his chest. He couldn’t leave the man to die. He had to do what he could to save Merielle’s father—if not for Trahern’s sake, then for his own. He had no idea who had shot Trahern, but he had a pretty good idea who was going to get blamed for it. He had been a loudmouthed idiot, threatening Trahern in front of the whole damn town. They would be after him again, and this time he might very well hang. Ethan had no choice. He had to help the man who had murdered his father.

Ethan searched quickly for a downstairs bedroom where he could take the wounded man and tend to him. He found it at the back of the house. It was obviously a guest room. He pulled the quilt off and yanked the sheets down. Then he hurried back to the parlor—long step, halting step—turned Trahern over, and lifted him enough to circle his arms around Trahern’s chest from behind.
He dragged the heavy man across the parlor and down the hall to the bedroom.

Getting Trahern onto the bed wasn’t easy, but Ethan finally managed it. He pulled off Trahern’s coat and shirt, so he could bandage the bullet wound and stop the bleeding. The bullet had entered Trahern’s back high enough to miss the heart and lungs and far enough to the left to avoid the windpipe. But if Ethan didn’t do something quickly, Trahern was going to bleed to death.

The hole where the bullet had gone in wasn’t too big. Ethan managed to plug it with cloth he tore from a pillowcase. However, the hole in Trahern’s upper chest, where the bullet had come out, was substantially larger. Ethan used pressure to stop the bleeding, and then tied on a tight bandage with more strips of the pillowcase.

When Ethan tightened the knot, Trahern grunted. And his eyes opened.

When he saw Ethan, Trahern tried to rise, but he had lost too much blood. He fell back and clutched his chest. “What the hell are you doing here, Hawk?” he rasped.

“Trying to save your life,” Ethan muttered. “Lie down and be still.”

Trahern grasped weakly at Ethan’s arm. “Merielle … Where’s Merielle?”

“How the hell would I know? There wasn’t a soul around when I got here.”

“Maybe she got away. She must have … or he would have killed her, too.” Trahern clutched Ethan’s shirt. “You have … to find her!” he gasped.

Ethan freed his shirt and took a step back so Trahern couldn’t reach him. “What the hell went on here? Who shot you? Is Merielle in some kind of danger?”

“Please … You have to go look for her!” Trahern’s voice was a bare whisper as he struggled to make Ethan understand his desperation, his fear for his daughter’s safety. “You can’t make her pay for what I did to you. I know now how wrong I was. Oh, God, I’m so sorry!”

“What the hell happened here?” Ethan demanded.

“I didn’t know,” Trahern said. “How could I know?”

“Stop talking in riddles,” Ethan said irritably. “What is it you didn’t know?”

“That Boyd … raped Merielle.”

Ethan froze. He met Trahern’s eyes and saw the shame, the regret. His blood curdled.
Not Chester. Boyd?
“Who said he did it?”

“Merielle. She remembered everything.” Trahern took a labored breath. “When she pointed a finger at Boyd, I reached for a gun to kill him, and he shot me in the back.” Trahern tried to raise an arm to cover his eyes, but the pain forced him to abandon the effort. “Once Boyd shot me, Merielle was left to fend for herself with that rotten bastard.” Tears appeared in the old man’s eyes. “I’ll never forgive myself … if anything happened to her.”