Swept Away (12 page)

Dare picked up speed.

He found Glynna Greer lying on the floor, sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs. Unconscious.

Dare rushed to her side, feeling guilty for not galloping all the way here. Dropping to his knees, he felt for her pulse. It was strong and steady. Some of Dare’s fear eased—but not much. “How long ago did she fall?”

“Uh . . . it was, she was like this when I woke up this morning. It’s been two hours . . .” The boy’s voice broke. He dropped to his knees on the other side of Glynna, across from Dare, swallowed hard, and added, “She’s been like this from the time I sent someone to town. You’re not supposed to come out, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Her arm l-looks bad.” A quiet voice drew Dare’s attention. The girl huddled on the stairs, just a few paces inside the front door. The little blond thing looked at him through the dark oak spindles of the banister. Janet. He remembered this quiet girl from before. Her eyes were wide with terror. Her skin pale. She looked ready to drop over into a swoon, and Dare wished he had time to give to the child, but she’d have to wait.

Dare had been focusing on Glynna’s breathing, but the girl’s words directed his attention to an ugly misshapen lump on Glynna’s right shoulder. Dare saw that her shoulder was dislocated, nothing broken. As he worked his hands over the woman’s arms and legs, checking for fractures, he prayed. There was little he could do if a patient was busted up inside. He needed better training for that. For the first time he felt shame that his skills were so limited. But no
doctor could open up a patient and hope for much. A few tried, a very few had seen success. Dare wouldn’t know where to start. And considering how badly hurt she’d been in the fall, internal damage was highly possible.

Her bones seemed intact, not counting the shoulder.

Her breathing remained steady.

The girl inched over to Glynna’s side and dropped to her knees across from Dare.

“I need rags, torn into long strips,” Dare said. “Or we might need to tear up a sheet if you don’t have anything else. We’ll have to put her arm in a sling.” The girl didn’t move until Dare reached across Glynna to touch the child’s arm. Those golden eyes, just like her mother’s, were riveted on her badly hurt mom. “Can you do that for me? For your mom?”

The girl looked at him and nodded.

“What’s your name?” Dare felt the need to hurry, yet something about this child, who looked so fragile, forced him to take a few seconds to try and help her get hold of herself. He well remembered her name, but he hoped to somehow break through her horror. He wanted to help ease her fears now that a doctor was here.

Doctor
, Dare thought with contempt. He had a lot of nerve claiming that now. Glynna might die, and all because of his lack of skills.

“I . . . I . . .”

“My sister’s name is Janet. Shouldn’t you be helpin’ Ma instead of talking?” The boy still had a rude mouth, but he also had a point.

“I’ll go for the rags.” Janet leapt to her feet and dashed out.

“We’re going to need to reseat her shoulder joint.” Dare
looked at the youngster and saw, under the orneriness, a boy scared to death. “I’m going to need help. Can you do it?”

“What do you need?”

“I need to pull on her arm. The shoulder’s dislocated. But I have to pull hard and it’ll be a mercy to your ma if we fix it while she’s still . . . fainted.” This was no faint. The woman was knocked clean out, but Dare wanted to make it easier on both these young’uns if he could.

“Show me what to do.”

“Trade sides with me. Let’s do it quick, before your sister gets back. It’s not easy to watch. Not for a child.”

The boy’s shoulders squared a bit to not be included as a child. They quickly got into position.

“Just hold your ma down. Put your hands here.” Dare placed the boy’s hands just under Glynna’s collarbone. “When I pull, don’t let me lift her off the floor.”

She was unlikely to have cracked or broken ribs that high up. Dare prayed he was right because a broken rib could puncture a lung. Dare might not have formal training, but he’d read everything he could get his hands on and he’d worked alongside some mighty skilled doctors, both during the war and after. Right now all the dire possibilities paraded through his head.

“Have you got her?”

The boy nodded, his eyes riveted on his own hands, spread wide and flat.

Wincing, because he knew how much this would hurt if Glynna were conscious, Dare straightened her arm at the elbow, dragged in a deep breath, then said, “Okay, hold her.”

The boy bore down. Dare yanked.

The joint reseated itself with a sickening pop. Glynna cried out in pain.

The boy looked up, furious, as if he’d dive over his ma’s prone body to attack Dare.

“Look at the shoulder. It’s back where it should be.”

The boy turned to look and the worst of his killing fury ebbed. Or at least Dare sure hoped it did.

The girl came tearing into the room with a stack of towels in her hands. She looked at her brother. “What happened? What did he do to her?”

“He fixed her arm,” the boy said. “Can’t you see it’s better? He’s helping her.”

The girl skidded to a halt, just as the front door slammed open.

Flint Greer.

Dare had met him in Broken Wheel once. Otherwise, the man never came to town. But there was talk, and Dare knew the man to be a tyrant. Greer looked like a wild man. Someone in town said at one time he’d been almost too neat. His hair always trimmed, his clothes clean and well made. He was a Northerner, a carpetbagger, which made Dare ashamed of his part of the country. Greer had come into the area and took what land he wanted. There was no law in north Texas to stop him.

There was nothing tidy about the man now. His hair and beard were long and filthy. His clothes looked like they’d been good quality at one time, but now they were worn near to tatters.

The signal his guard had fired brought him in, as Dare knew it would. The man would be frantic now to see how badly hurt his wife was.

Greer’s eyes went first to her, then straight to Dare. “You get off my land.”

Of all the responses Dare had expected, that wasn’t one of them. “I will not get off your land until I’m sure my patient is able to be left on her own.”

Greer whipped a revolver from his holster and aimed it straight at Dare’s heart.

Luke raised his head slowly to study the land before him through a row of scrub brush. He saw a pair of riders crossing a long stretch of rich grass. They rode horses with Greer’s Diamond G brand.

Luke had been ghosting around all morning, leaving Dare’s house before dawn. He’d staked his horse on grass near town and walked. Palo Duro was a good place for ghosting, but a man on horseback had his hands full staying low enough. There were trees to be found, though they were sparse. A man on foot could slither along on his belly through cracks in the ground, duck behind clumps of juniper, scale the red rocks, and study the lay of the land. Luke’s time playing with the Indian children had taught him a lot of tricks.

He’d spent the morning getting an idea as to how many cattle Greer ran and how many men he had on the payroll, and whether those men were cattlemen or gunmen. Luke considered how to thin the herd of hired hands on Greer’s property and decided to watch a bit longer before he chose a plan of action. The wrong approach could get him shot.

Luke could see the sentries standing on the high ground by the narrow canyon that led to his pa’s house. Pa had chosen that spot to build because there were Indians in the area back when they’d settled there. He’d wanted a
place he could defend. Now Greer was using his pa’s savvy against Luke.

Looking down a long, sweeping slope at the riders, Luke’s eyes narrowed on the older of the two men. Even from a hundred yards away, he recognized Dodger Neville. The man had been old when Luke was a kid and a good friend of Pa’s. But he was riding for Greer now. The horse had a Diamond G brand. Which meant Dodger worked for the enemy. Luke figured that made Dodger a man not to be trusted.

The younger of the two riders pointed at a divide in the trail, and they rode toward it.

Luke watched them and, knowing his land, walked a rugged trail that threaded between two soaring mesas that would give him a view of the two men at a point farther on. He also kept his eyes open for Comanche. They’d been in the area before his family had moved here and were mostly friendly, but Pa had taught Luke to be mighty respectful of them. Luke knew Broken Wheel was a town for the simple reason that someone passing through had a wagon break down and they’d stayed. Others had settled, but it had never thrived due to the tension with the natives.

The land was dotted with longhorns, all branded Diamond G. Bitterly Luke wondered just how many of them were born to S Bar S cattle. Sal Stone, Luke’s pa, had been so proud of that iron with the S Bar S blazing red hot at the end. The calves born to Pa’s cattle were now branded to be Greer’s.

The land got more rugged and the going slowed, but Luke still reached an overlook in plenty of time to hide behind a man-high jumble of boulders uphill of the riders. He watched them ride up to two other Greer hands and talk a spell.

Four of Greer’s men.

Thin the herd.

Luke’s hand itched. He knew a good way to make men vanish. He had his Winchester slung over his shoulder and was a dead shot. For the men below, there was no cover for a long way if he wanted to open up on them. But Luke was no murderer. He had right on his side and didn’t intend to stoop to gunfire except if it meant life or death to him or to one of his friends.

Or Rosie.

As he stood behind the boulder, a smile stretched his lips. Rosie had been in one beauty of a snit when he’d left this morning. Wanting to come along—of all the harebrained ideas. Dare had ordered her to stay in that upstairs bedroom and hide. Luke had told her she’d get them both killed if she came along with him.

He could just imagine dragging her through the wilderness, spying on Greer’s cowpokes. They’d’ve been found out and shot before they’d been riding an hour.

A snap from behind him had him whirling around, crouching, pulling his gun.

“Don’t shoot.” Rosie stepped out of a copse of trees, her hands in the air.

Luke dropped to his knees. He’d come within a second of shooting her.

He jammed his gun into his holster and missed, then missed again. His hands were shaking because he knew just how close he’d come to killing Rosie. “What are you doing out here?”

They were a far piece up the hill from the four riders. Luke could scold her all he wanted if he kept the noise down.

“I stepped on a twig.”

Words so obvious they didn’t need to be spoken.

“How’d you find me?”

With a little huff of a laugh she said, “I’ve been on your trail all morning. I caught up with you two hours ago and have been following you ever since.”

That sent a chill down Luke’s spine. He considered himself as good as a man could be in the wild and he’d had no idea he was being followed. But here she was. Living proof.

“How’d you get out of town?”

“I left before sunrise. Dare was called out for an emergency. I heard the man who came to the door say something about Mrs. Greer. Dare told me to forget making stew; he’d be all morning and then some. I had no intention of sitting alone in that little room all day, so I went downstairs, figuring I could have the run of the house with Dare gone. But I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stay in that house doing nothing for another day. I knew you’d sneaked out to where we watched the night we came to town, so I headed that way and set out tracking you.”

“I was careful not to leave a trail.” Luke had covered miles this morning on the rugged, rocky soil covered with clumps of low-growing grass. It was a hard place to pick up a footprint.

She shrugged one cute little shoulder. “I managed to find it. And you didn’t go fast.”

Luke had stayed to rocky or wooded areas and rarely stepped onto a path bigger’n what a white-tailed deer might follow. “I can’t believe you tracked me.”

Rosie glared. “I’m here, aren’t I? You think I just happened upon you? And I would have stayed hidden all day if those men hadn’t distracted me. I was busy watching them while I eased closer. I didn’t see that stick.”

That reignited his annoyance, but he put that aside for now because honestly he was impressed. “Where’d you learn to track like that?”

“I learned for a couple of reasons. I was a hand at fetching food for my family when I was young. I was the only child, so Pa let me tag around after him more than he might have if he’d had a son.” Her face relaxed into a smile that made her eyes flash with pleasure as she talked of her father. “We hunted together a lot, and he said often enough I could slip up on a sleeping deer and steal its antlers and never wake it up.”

“You said a couple of reasons. What’s the other?”

Her smile vanished. He’d seen this level of tension in her only once before: when Dare opened that storeroom door in his office and Rosie jerked awake and cried out the name Virgil.

“When I was at the Reinhardts’, Virgil was always pestering me. Even when I was far too young, he was . . . was giving me . . . attention. I didn’t like it ever, and as I grew up I learned to hate it. In the last year or two I learned to fear it. I did a lot of outside chores, and he’d try and catch me alone. I learned to listen for him coming and run for the woods. There were heavy woodlands around our property, so if I was quick and quiet, I could stay out of his way. I got very good at sneaking around. I’d listen for Pa Reinhardt to come near. I’d get to his side and Virgil wouldn’t bother me anymore.”