Cherish Read online

  That was a promise Race meant to keep. If the killers returned, he’d keep back one bullet with her name on it. He wouldn’t let those loco sons of bitches get their filthy paws on her.

  He started to push to his feet, but then he thought better of it. Judging by the tear in her dress and the scratches on her face, she had taken a nasty tumble. Blood might not show through the heavy black muslin. Wouldn’t that be a fine kettle of fish, leaving her here to bleed to death while he went off to fix a wagon?

  Grayness. Rebecca was trapped in a thick blanket of it—a warm, fluffy grayness that closed in around her like goose down. She kept hearing a voice—the deep, silken voice of a man. It didn’t sound like Papa, yet he kept calling her “honey” and “sweetheart” as if he were a close relative. Uncle Luke, perhaps?

  Rebecca strained to see him. He was there—right on the other side of the grayness. “You know, darlin’, it just struck me. You could be bad hurt under that dress you got on, and I’d never know,” he said softly. “I swear on one of them there Bibles that I ain’t fixin’ to do nothin’ out of the way. I just gotta make sure you’re all right. You understand?”

  No, she decided. It wasn’t Uncle Luke. This man spoke like an uneducated cracker. She felt big, hard hands settle on her shoulders. Panic welled as bold fingertips traced her collarbone. Oh, God. He was making free with her person. She attempted to move. Couldn’t. Wanted to scream, but was unable to make her voice work. A dizzying, falling sensation came over her. Then she felt the cold earth against her back. She realized he had laid her on the ground. The next instant she felt him reaching under her skirts.

  One of the strangers? Oh, dear Lord in heaven! Just like Ma. He’s going to do me just like they did Ma. Horror filled her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t fight back. She felt big, searing palms sliding up her leg.

  Suddenly a tiny pinprick of light appeared in the wall of gray. As though looking the length of a narrow tunnel, she peered through it and saw her tormentor’s face, burnished and chiseled, his jaw sporting black stubble. The devil himself. His dark eyes glittered as he looked down at her. She felt his touch nudge at the apex of her thighs. Renewed horror washed over her in an icy, flattening wave, the reflux catching and carrying her like flotsam, deeper into the grayness. Tumbling, lost to sensation, she surrendered to the darkness, plunging farther and farther into it, glad to escape awareness.

  Scowling, eyes slitted, ears attuned, Race made fast work of examining the girl’s second leg, unable to shake the feeling that she might snap awake at any moment. He was heartily glad when he found no sign of a serious injury. A few scratches and scrapes was all, and only a little bleeding from those. Otherwise, she seemed to be all right.

  He wasn’t certain he could say the same for himself. If just feeling his way up her skirt had his heart drumming a war dance, he hated to think how he’d have felt, fitting her with a splint. He might have died of the excitement.

  “Well, darlin’, it looks to me like you’re gonna live,” he announced, his voice ringing with relief.

  Pushing to his feet, Race went to fetch a quilt that had been tossed from a wagon, then returned to lay it over her. Her expression remained frozen, like one of those porcelain dolls he’d seen in a shop window in Santa Fe when he’d been a bare-faced kid.

  Damn.

  As he rocked back on his boot heels, it occurred to Race that somebody would have to care for this girl until she recovered. Not him. No, sir. Just the possibility made sweat bead on his forehead again. But if not him, who? He had several young hired hands who’d probably jump at the chance. But he’d have to be out of his mind to let a single one of those randy whippersnappers get within ten feet of her.

  There was Cookie, his biscuit roller. Cookie had snow on his roof—where he wasn’t plumb bald—and not much of a fire still burning in his grate. An older, grandfatherly type with a heart of gold, that was Cookie. His worst vices were chewing tobacco and telling whoppers about the amazing things he used to do in his younger days. He still liked to talk about the ladies, of course. But Race figured it had been at least a decade since the old fart’s pistol had cleared leather. No question about it, Cookie would be the perfect person to play nursemaid to a pretty young woman.

  Convincing Cookie of that might prove to be a problem, though. Somehow, Race couldn’t see it happening, and Cookie was just ornery enough to collect his pay rather than get pressed into service.

  Ideally this young lady should be settled in with relatives until she got well. An aunt, maybe. Hell, even a distant cousin would be a leg up on the present situation. She surely had family somewhere, people who loved her and would take her in. She’d probably get well a lot faster if she had familiar faces around her. With any luck, maybe she and her folks had been journeying west to join relatives who had already settled out here. Only where?

  Retrieving his Henry, Race pushed to his feet. Someplace in all this rubble, there’d be a journal that could tell him where she harkened from and where she and her parents had been headed. All caravans kept a roster and daily record. Unfortunately, even if Race found a journal, he wouldn’t know it. He couldn’t read a lick, and none of his men could, either. He recognized only a few letters of the alphabet, mainly those used in cattle brands, the Rocking Y and the Circle D and the Triple M, to name a few. A lot of good that did him.

  What in the hell was he going to do with her? It wasn’t that he resented the inconvenience. In this country, a man got used to helping folks, his hope being that the favor would be returned if he ever got in a fix himself. It was just that a pretty young female didn’t mix well with a bunch of lonesome cowboys. Sort of like dynamite and a lighted lucifer.

  Not only that, but it was Race’s observation that messing with an unmarried woman, no matter how good the reasons, was a damned good way for a man to end up married whether he wanted to be or not.

  Galvanized by the thought, he turned a full circle, searching the horizon in all directions. There had to be another woman somewhere in these parts. But try as he might, he couldn’t think of a single one. Between here and his ranch, a two-week ride to the north, it was mostly open country, the only dwellings along the way a few lean-to cabins belonging to trappers. Pretty much the same held true along the trail from Arkansas that he had just traveled, the only exceptions a couple of trail stops operated by bachelors. Four days ago, he and his men had passed a cabin with a dress hung out to dry on the front porch, but that was the only sign of a woman Race could recollect seeing in nearly a week.

  Four days back? Hell’s bells. Before he could get the girl to that cabin, he’d have every freckle on her fanny memorized. And after riding all those miles to find her a nurse, it would be just his luck that she’d recover her senses about the time he got her there. Where would be the point? No matter how he circled it, he would have to care for her between here and there, anyway. So he might just as well keep heading for home and save himself a lot of aggravation.

  Not one to fret long over things he couldn’t change, Race took a deep breath, mentally jerked himself up by his boot straps, and turned to survey the group of nearly destroyed wagons, one of which he would have to commandeer to transport the girl back to his herd, and from there to his ranch. His ranch? That was a highfalutin term, now that he came to think on it. Next spring, he planned to start construction on a house. But for now, all he had was a one room cabin, a bunkhouse for his men, a rickety old barn and some outbuildings, with a few horse corrals and cattle chutes mixed in.

  He made a quick tour of the encampment, examining the wagons. Buckets of junk. The only one still held together with more than a hope, a prayer, and precious few rusty rivets was the wagon the killers hadn’t had time to rip apart, and even it was in sorry shape. By the time he got a decent means of transportation assembled and had hitched the two surviving oxen into the traces, he was flat tuckered, it was damned near dark, and the girl felt as cold as death when he went to get her. The quilt hadn’t provided her with enough p
rotection. Some caretaker he was proving to be.

  Resting his Henry against a wagon wheel, he went to search through the rubble again, his boots slapping the parched earth in impatience as he collected every stitch of bedding he could find. After fashioning a pallet in the wagon bed, he returned to get the girl, drawing the quilt off of her and carrying her quickly across the clearing.

  Just as he planted his boot on the backboard of the wagon, a section of the tailgate exploded, splinters of rotten wood pelting him in the face. Almost simultaneously, the report of a rifle exploded in the twilight. Reacting instinctively, he dropped like a felled tree. Catching his weight with his forearms, he landed in a sprawl over the girl, using his body to shield her. Another bullet zinged past his jaw, coming so close he felt his whiskers stir. Dirt shot up.

  Tears streaming, he balled a fist and rubbed frantically at his eyes, horribly aware that bullets were striking the earth all around him, chunks of clay stinging him through his shirt. Christ on crutches. He felt like a bale of hay at a shooting match.

  Stupid, so stupid. He’d had a feeling from the first that the killers were still in the area. Then he’d found the girl and relaxed his guard, thinking hers was the presence he’d sensed. He knew better than to ignore his hunches. Why hadn’t he taken more precautions? He’d even left his rifle leaning against the wagon, a good five feet away.

  Clasping the girl tightly in his arms, he rolled under the wagon and crawled like a panicked crayfish to the far side, dragging her limp body with him. Even with the wagon bed to provide cover, slugs of lead still plowed into the dirt around them.

  Crab walking and rolling, he drew the girl into the clearing, then leaped up and pulled three trunks to where she lay, forming a barricade to protect her. That done, he ran a loop around the clearing, dodging bullets as he jerked the dead farmers’ rifles from the wagon boots. En route back to the barricade, he detoured to retrieve his Henry as well. All totaled, he had six rifles hugged to his chest when he dove for cover behind the storage trunks, yet another indication that he had surprised the killers. No one would have left all these rifles behind on purpose. Weapons of any kind cost dearly, and a person of shady character could make a tidy profit selling them to Indians.

  Only three of the confiscated weapons were repeaters, two fully loaded. The others were single-action, and God only knew where the cartridges for them might be. Luckily, he had plenty of extra ammo for the Henry in his saddlebags. He whistled shrilly through his teeth, and Dusty, trained from a colt to come at the signal, galloped across the enclosure.

  As the horse slid to a stop near Race, the twilight exploded with more rifle shots, bullets thudding into the trunks and raising clouds of dust. Coughing and squinting against the burn, Race grabbed the buckskin’s reins and jerked the animal to his knees.

  “Down!” he cried.

  All the hours that Race had invested in training his horse paid off now. Dusty nickered in fear but obeyed the command, folding his back legs and rolling onto his belly. Race could only hope the trunks would shield the horse’s huge body. Exposing himself to the rifle fire, Race straddled the buckskin and dug through the saddlebags for his extra ammunition. When he’d gathered all the cartridges he could find, he dove for cover again, then belly-crawled from one trunk to another until he found the most comfortable rifle rest.

  Sighting in on the hillside above the clearing, Race finally had a few seconds to ponder the situation, and with the opportunity cane a question. Why had the bastards waited so long to start shooting at him? Race could only guess at an answer, the most likely being that the killers had hoped he knew the victims and that if they watched him long enough, he would eventually reveal the whereabouts of whatever it was they had been trying to find.

  He cast a thoughtful glance over the clearing, noting the wagon contents that had been scattered everywhere, an indication that his first suspicion had been right on target. The men on the hillside had been searching for something. To back that up, there was also the condition of the women’s bodies, which bore signs that they’d been tormented before they died. When Race had first come upon the carnage, he had assumed the no-good polecats had tortured the women out of sheer meanness, but now another possibility came to mind. If the killers had come here hoping to get their hands on something, maybe they had prolonged the women’s agony in an attempt to make them or their husbands talk. If that were the case, though, why in the world had they killed everyone before getting the information they sought?

  A chill crept up Race’s spine, for he knew the answer to that question the moment it entered his mind. The girl. The killers had probably been following this small group of wagons for a spell, waiting for the right moment to ambush the travelers. If they had, then they’d known of the girl’s existence and that they were leaving one person alive who could tell them what they wanted to know. By a twist of Fate or sheer luck, the girl must have been absent from camp when the attack occurred. Then Race had arrived, forcing the killers to hide. They’d obviously been watching him and the girl ever since, hoping Race knew the whereabouts of whatever it was they wanted. Now they realized he didn’t, and they meant to kill him so they could torture the girl for information.

  Crazy, so crazy. What in the hell were they after? Race found it difficult to believe these poor dirt farmers had anything of value in their wagons. As for the girl, those murdering skunks would get their hands on her over Race’s dead body.

  He recalled his vow to keep one bullet in reserve for the girl. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but realistically, he knew the odds were against him. By his calculations, there were sixteen men up there, maybe more. He was a damned good marksman—one of the best, even if he did say so himself—but no man was that good.

  He glanced at his charge, who lay so deathlike beside him, her face a pale oval in the deepening twilight. If those men circled around him in the darkness, they could sneak up on him from behind. If they did, they would probably rush him, and he might have time to fire only one bullet.

  For her sake, he had to make that one bullet count.

  Chapter 2

  Race didn’t have enough hands. While firing one Colt in the general direction of the hillside, he worked frantically to reload his other .45 and the Henry. He didn’t care if he hit anything. At this point, keeping the enemy busy dodging bullets while he replenished the rounds in his other two weapons was his main concern. The second he backed off, the bastards would be on top of him.

  Since the shooting started, he’d lost track of time. The sun had slid behind the mountains, darkness had closed in, and one by one the stars had come out. Judging by their position, the actual time that had passed was probably closer to forty minutes, maybe an hour. If so, it had been the longest hour of his life. Trying to keep the girl safe, shooting almost ceaselessly, reloading with only one hand, and constantly searching the darkness for movement already had him drained. His back ached, and his arms trembled with exhaustion.

  So far, he had hit only three men for sure. That left thirteen still out there, and the lulls between fire were few, which provided him with his only opportunities to reload.

  A blessing though they were, the lulls worried him, one thought pounding away at him in the sudden silence. What were they up to? In their shoes, he’d be circling the encampment.

  Race was in serious trouble, and he knew it. One against thirteen was damned rotten odds, even for a man used to fighting for what he got. When the enemy advanced from two directions at once, he wouldn’t be able to cover himself from both the front and the rear.

  Glancing over at the girl, Race grimly accepted the fact that he not only didn’t have enough hands, but that the two he did have were tied. Normally he wouldn’t remain behind a barricade, vulnerable to attack. He’d attempt to turn the tables. They would never expect a lone man to sneak up on them from behind, and with a little luck, he could take them out, one at a time, using his knife.

  Only he didn’t dare leave the girl. If some
thing happened to him, her fate would be sealed. He couldn’t allow that, knowing as he did what those animals would do to her.

  The possibility that he might have to take her life hadn’t been far from Race’s mind since the shooting started, and with each passing second, it loomed as a bigger threat. God help him, he only hoped he had the guts to do it.

  After reloading the Henry, Race resumed his firing position. The metal edge of the trunk was sharp and had creased his forearm, making his wrist numb. He kept seeking a more comfortable rest, but then the first thing he knew, he had his arm back in the same spot again. If he lost the feeling in his fingers, it would be a hell of a note.

  A glint of metal in the moonlight caught his eye, and he swung the nose of his rifle to the right, sighting in on the spot and lightly touching his finger to the trigger. Patience. The best marksman in the world could pull a shot if he became too eager, and in a battle, there were seldom second chances. He peered at the spot where he’d seen metal flash, his eyes aching with the strain as he took a deep breath, exhaled, and went absolutely still.

  After several seconds, his patience was rewarded by another mirrorlike flash. Slow and smooth, easy does it. He pulled the trigger, and the bark of his Henry exploded into the night. A man cried out in startlement and pain. Silence followed—a silence so thick that Race felt as if he could damned near sink his teeth into it.

  That’s four. And he’d gotten them all because their guns flashed in the moonlight. Race blackened the metal on his own weapons. Reflective gun barrels had been the death of too many men. Granted, a nickel-plated Colt .45 in a silver-studded, hand-tooled holster was an attention getter, and a rifle with a carved, high-gloss stock and butt looked real fancy. But fancy wasn’t what separated a man from the boys. What counted was who walked away when the smoke cleared.

  He would have bet his last gold eagle that those fellows on the hillside went in for fancy weapons. Lots of flash and short on brains. Looking mean was the only edge some men had.