Return to Me (27 page)

One

M
AY
1890

B
LUE
S
PRINGS
R
ANCH
, I
DAHO
T
ERRITORY

“Not again, Bevins,” Libby whispered to herself as she peered at the horseman’s approach through the latticework of sunlight and shadows. “Not as long as I’ve got breath in my body.”

Obscured by the thick grove of cottonwoods and pines, the rider stopped his horse. Libby had difficulty keeping track of him as dusk settled over the barnyard. Whatever he was up to, it wasn’t good. It never was with Timothy Bevins.

She stepped back from the window until certain she couldn’t be seen, then moved to the front door, checking to see if it was tightly latched. It was.

A small sigh of relief escaped her. But her relief was short-lived. Bevins wouldn’t break into her house. No, that method was too direct and could get him in trouble with the law. He would take an underhanded approach.

Well, you can’t scare me off.

She pressed her lips into a determined line. She wasn’t going anywhere, frightened or not. And she wouldn’t wait for Bevins to make the first move either. She wouldn’t give him a chance to do his dirty work. Not this time.

She grabbed the double-barreled shotgun that rested against the wall. Then, fortifying herself with a deep breath, she walked to Sawyer’s bedroom, peeking inside at the boy lying on the bed.

“Sawyer, something’s got the horses worked up. Probably another coyote. I’m going out to run it off. If you hear anything, don’t be scared. It’s just me.”

“I don’t scare so easy, Libby.” He raised his scabbed-over chin to a brave tilt.

“I know you don’t.”
And neither do I.

She hurried through the kitchen to the back door, opened it silently, and stepped outside. Evening had changed the colors of the earth and sky into varying shades of gray and black. The trees were threatening silhouettes, looming overhead, their scraggly arms reaching toward her.

Bevins could be anywhere. Perhaps he watched her even now.

She sidled along the side of the house, making her way toward the wide clearing at the front, searching every shadow.

You can’t scare me, you yellow-bellied snake in the grass. You can’t

run me off my land.

Libby quit running over six years ago. This was her home, her land. Aunt Amanda had entrusted the ranch to Libby, and she meant to protect it and everyone on it. She wouldn’t let Timo- thy Bevins run her off, no matter what he did, no matter what he threatened to do. And he wouldn’t get another chance to hurt Saw- yer either. Spooking the boy’s horse was the last straw. Absolutely the last straw.

She heard the snap of a twig off to her right. Startled, she turned and, in the waning light, saw him stepping out of the trees. More important, she saw the rifle in his hand.

She reacted instinctively, raising the shotgun and firing before he had a chance to do the same. The kick of the gun slammed her

back against the side of the house as she squeezed off the second shot.

She gasped for air, her ears ringing, her shoulder throbbing. Had either shot hit Bevins? She hoped not. She only meant to scare him. As her vision cleared, she looked across the yard and saw him lying in the dirt.

He didn’t move.

Oh, Lord. Don’t let him be dead. Don’t let me be guilty of murder.
Gulping down panic, she dropped the shotgun and cautiously made her way toward him, uncertain what she would do if he was

dead, uncertain what she should do if he wasn’t.

She reminded herself that Bevins was to blame for the death of Dan Deevers, Sawyer’s father. Dan, her ranch foreman, had been out in that January ice storm because Bevins ran off more of her sheep. He’d been stealing them a few at a time for the past year. She knew it was him, but she couldn’t prove it. Just like she couldn’t prove he’d spooked Sawyer’s horse on purpose yesterday. The boy could have broken his neck in that fall.

The Good Book said not to hate a man, but Libby had a prob- lem with that command when it came to Bevins.

Reaching him, she steeled herself against a bloody sight, then looked down.

Father God, what have I done?

Libby dropped to her knees and stared at the man she’d shot. It wasn’t Bevins. It wasn’t one of Bevins’s hired thugs. It was someone she’d never seen before.

God forgive her. She’d killed an innocent man.

The stranger groaned.

With a quick prayer of thanks that he wasn’t dead after all, Libby sprang into action. She had to stanch the bleeding. No time

to wonder who he was or what he’d been doing, sneaking around her place at this time of evening.

She raced to the house, wishing for once that she hadn’t for- saken her long skirts and petticoats for the freedom of denim britches. Cotton petticoats made good bandages.

As soon as she opened the door, she saw Sawyer, bracing him- self against the jamb of his bedroom.

“What happened, Libby? What’s out there?”

A heartbeat’s hesitation, then she hurried forward. She couldn’t stop and explain. “Go back to bed, Sawyer.”

“Libby — ”

“Now!”

Before Sawyer turned away, Libby caught a glimpse of tears in his eyes, but she knew better than to apologize. Sawyer was every bit as proud as his father had been and wouldn’t want her to see him crying.

She grabbed a blanket off her bed. It was almost dark and the temperature was dropping. She had to get the stranger inside. In another few minutes, it would be black as pitch out there, not to mention bone-chilling cold.

Her heart pounding, Libby returned to the wounded man. She laid the blanket on the earth beside him, then paused to assess the situation. The long and lanky stranger had a good sixty pounds on her, if not more. But Libby was strong. She wrestled enough obsti- nate sheep at the Blue Springs Ranch to make her so. She ought to be able to handle one helpless male.

Bending over, ignoring the crimson stains on his pant leg and shirt, she rolled him onto the blanket. She grabbed hold of one end and began to drag the injured man across the yard, making slow but steady progress. Worry nagged the edges of her conscience.

What would the sheriff do to her if the stranger died? Would anyone believe she’d fired in self-defense? What was the penalty for shooting someone in cold blood? Hanging? Prison?

She shook off such thoughts. Only a fool or a thief — or both — would have done what this man did. No honest traveler would hide in the trees rather than ride into the yard and knock on her door. No, this was the stranger’s own fault.

She wished Alistair McGregor or Ronald Aberdeen were here to help her. They would know what to do. But they were with the sheep, up in the hills north of the ranch.

Just as well. As fond as she was of McGregor, Libby wasn’t in the mood for a lecture from the crusty Scotsman.

She dragged the unconscious man into Amanda’s old bedroom. Once there, she turned up the lamp and set it on the floor where it could spill the most light onto the stranger’s wounds. She felt her stomach turn.

Buck up, Libby. You’ve got no business getting squeamish at the

first sight of blood.

She’d seen worse than this. She might see worse yet before the year was out. Life in the Idaho high country was hard. It always had been. It always would be.

With her sewing shears, she cut open his shirt and trousers, swallowing hard as she stared at the torn and bleeding flesh on his left side and leg. There wasn’t time for misplaced modesty. City girls could blush and swoon, but Libby would be sensible.

Her gaze moved from his wounds to his face. He didn’t look like a thief. Come to think of it, he didn’t look like a fool either. And he certainly looked nothing like Timothy Bevins.

The stranger’s features were aristocratic without any hint of soft- ness. His nose was long and straight, his jaw strong and determined. A slight cleft dented his square chin. Black brows capped eyes that

bore tiny crow’s-feet in the outer corners. A two-day-old beard made other men look scraggly and unkempt, but not this man.

He groaned again.

Libby rose from the floor and hurried to the kitchen, where she poured hot water into a large bowl. She dropped a towel into the basin, then picked up the soap and returned to the bedroom.

“Mister,” she muttered, “I sure hope you don’t come to, because this is going to hurt.”

Pain was Remington’s constant companion. He dwelled in dark- ness, haunted by blurry visions and hot pokers jabbing into his flesh.

He saw his father once, far in the distance. He wanted to go to him, but he couldn’t move. He tried to call to him, but he couldn’t speak. Slowly his father faded, swallowed in a white mist, leaving Remington alone with the pain once more.

No. Don’t go.

But his father was gone.

“No . . . don’t go . . .”

Libby leaned over the man in the bed, uncertain whether she’d heard him. “Mister?”

His eyes were closed, his face drawn with pain, as it had been for two days. The wound in his side seemed superficial, but Libby was concerned about his leg. The buckshot had torn through it, missing the bone but tearing the flesh and muscle. She wondered if he’d ever walk without a limp. And there was the possibility of infection. So many things could go wrong before he had a chance to recover.

With a shake of her head, Libby straightened, picked up the washbasin, and carried it outside to empty into the underbrush.

Overhead, the sky was an expanse of brilliant blue, unmarred by clouds. The air was warm and would have seemed hot if not for the breeze.

She sighed as she pushed stray wisps of hair from her face, wondering what she would do about the stranger if he didn’t show signs of improvement soon. McGregor wouldn’t come down from Tyler Creek, where the sheep grazed, for several weeks. Not until she failed to show up on time with fresh supplies. It was a two-day ride to find the nearest doctor. She couldn’t send Sawyer for the physician, couldn’t leave the patient in a ten-year-old boy’s care while she went, and couldn’t haul a seriously wounded man all that distance in the wagon. It seemed she had no choice but to wait it out, doing the best doctoring she could on her own.

Turning, she noticed Sawyer looking at the man’s horse in the corral. She set the empty washbasin near the back door and crossed the yard to stand beside him.

“He’s a mighty nice horse, ain’t he, Libby?”

“Isn’t. Not ain’t,” she corrected gently. “Yes, he’s a fine horse.”
Fine
was an understatement. The bay gelding was magnifi- cent. This was no ten-dollar saddle horse. This was a steed more commonly found in a stable behind a New York mansion on Fifth Avenue or at a summer cottage in Newport. Not the usual sort of horseflesh seen in these parts. But neither was the gelding’s owner the usual sort of man to show up at her ranch. Most men who came this way were itinerant workers, traveling around the country, look- ing for anything to put a few dollars in their pockets before moving on. No, the man lying in Amanda’s bed was no more like them

than his horse was like Idaho’s mountain mustangs.

She thought of the beautiful saddle she’d removed from the gelding’s back, the fancy leather saddlebags, the expensive cut of the stranger’s clothes, the gold pocket watch, the Colt revolvers,

the Winchester rifle. She recalled every item that belonged to him, including the money she’d found. But nothing gave up his identity. He remained a mystery — as did the reason for his arrival at Blue Springs.

“Is he gonna be all right, Libby?”

She glanced at the boy. Sawyer’s coffee-colored hair was shaggy and sorely in need of a trim. His eyes, like dark brown saucers, watched her with a wariness she understood. Nothing was certain out here. Life was precarious. Sawyer had learned this sooner than most.

“I’m pretty sure he’ll make it.” She brushed his tousled hair from his forehead.

He frowned and withdrew. Sawyer wanted her to treat him like a man, not a baby. He often told her so.

Libby’s heart tightened in her chest. She loved Sawyer, and she wanted to do right by him. But what did she know about raising children? She certainly couldn’t take anything from her own child- hood as an example.

For a moment, she recalled paper-covered walls, high ceilings and elaborate moldings, long hallways and whispering servants, a mother with a sad-sweet smile, a father who —

She beat the memories back.

Libby looked at Sawyer again. “You’d better feed the horses, then get inside and prop that ankle up before the swelling returns.”

“It don’t hurt no more.” “It
doesn’t
hurt
any
more.”

“Right.” He tossed the word over his shoulder as he headed toward the barn.

She smiled to herself. Sawyer could probably run a footrace and not bother his ankle. She shouldn’t make an invalid out of him.

If only the patient inside the house would mend as quickly. She had a nagging feeling his presence didn’t bode well for her future. She would be glad to see him out of that bed in the spare room and on his way.

Remington drifted slowly into consciousness. At first he thought he only dreamed of the pain. How wrong he was.

What happened?

He searched his memory for clues. He remembered arriving in Idaho. He remembered talking to folks in Boise City and Weiser. He remembered learning about, then looking for, the Blue Springs Ranch.

The ranch. That was it. He’d found it at dusk. He’d dis- mounted and left his horse in the trees, then started to walk toward the house.

And then what? A noise.

A gunshot.

And then pain. White-hot pain.

With his eyes still closed, he moved his right hand to check his injuries. He felt the strips of bandages binding his chest and winced when he touched a tender place on his left side.

He continued his exploration, moving his hand beneath the blanket toward the throbbing in his left thigh. How serious was it?

He drew a ragged breath, then opened his eyes, squinting against the sunlight that streamed through the open window into an unfamiliar room. He tried to lift his head from the pillow but sank back as agony exploded behind his eyes.