Daisies In The Wind (8 page)

“Eight, nine ...”

With effort she moved her lips. Her jaw
splintered with pain. “The papers ... are in a strongbox,” she
whispered. “It’s ... hidden under the floorboards. I have the key
... in my reticule. I’ll get it.”

“Don’t you move, girlie. None of your tricks.
I’ll get it myself.” He eased off the bed and circled the room with
his eyes until he made out her reticule propped on the chest of
drawers. “You’d better be tellin’ the truth.”

When he reached the chest, she lunged, diving
under the pillow for the gun, but he threw himself back on her
before she could draw it out to fire. Though she kicked at him, he
wrenched the gun from her fingers and slapped her backhanded,
sending her tumbling off the bed.

“You were lyin’ to me, weren’t you? You
greedy little slut! I’ll teach you to lie to ol’ Fess Jones.”

The knife came from nowhere, glittering in
his hand. On her knees on the floor, Rebeccah drew in her breath.
Fear gut-punched her. She shinnied away, against the wall, and
staggered unsteadily to her feet.

Jones laughed at the terror on her face and
the trembling of her body. He whipped the knife back and forth in a
zigzag motion. “You’re goin’ to be real sorry you didn’t tell me
the truth, Reb Rawlings,” he chuckled. “I’m goin’ to cut up that
purty face of yours first, and then you’re going to hand over them
papers.”

He moved toward her, grinning. Rebeccah,
trapped like a rabbit in her corner, began to scream.

* * *

A scream.

Wolf’s blood turned to ice as the horrible
sound tore from the cabin and through the chill air of the yard. He
was inside the darkened cabin in an instant, and following the
sound of the second scream. He burst through the bedroom door like
a cannonball.

Then two things happened at once.

Fess Jones threw his knife, Bodine drew his
Colt, and gunfire thundered through the Rawlings ranch house.

When the explosion died away and the
gun-smoke cleared, Fess Jones lay crumpled on the floor, emitting a
horrible gurgling gasp. His body twitched from the bullet lodged in
his heart, his chest gushed blood, his eyes stared in unseeing
agony. And then the twitching stopped, and Jones went still.

Rebeccah slumped against the wall, her palms
clinging to it. She dragged her gaze from Jones’s body and looked
at Wolf Bodine. He nonchalantly pulled the knife from his shoulder
and tossed it to the ground, seemingly oblivious of the blood
spurting from his wound. In the faint, silvery moonlight she saw
the calmness of his expression as he trained his Colt .45 on
her.

“Talk.”

“You’re bleeding!”

She started forward, but the harshness of his
voice stopped her. “Stay where you are.”

“You need help—”

“You’re wrong. I need answers, Miss Rawlings.
What the hell were you and this hombre up to? Were you
double-crossing him in some kind of dirty scheme? You’ll answer my
questions either here or in a jail cell. It’s up to you.”

Rebeccah refused to look at the hideous thing
on the floor. If she did, she might get sick, and she’d be damned
before she let Bodine see her retch her guts out. “You’re loco!”
she cried, shooting him a look of disgust. “Go ahead and shoot me,
Bodine, but I’m not going to let you bleed all over my rug. It’s
the only one in the cabin, and I happen to like the color, so do
you mind? It’s bad enough I’ll have to scrub
his
blood
from the floor.”

Bodine’s eyes narrowed as she strode across
the room, muttering all the while.

“Come sit on the sofa, for God’s sake, and
let me bind up that shoulder for you. And put your silly gun away.
I’m not armed, you know. If I was, do you think I’d have let that
snake get near me?”

When she reached his side, moonlight caught
her face, and Wolf saw for the first time the ugly welt swelling
red and tender across her cheek.

“Looks like you’re the one who needs some
help,” he said sharply. “How badly did he hurt you?”

She put a finger to her cheek, remembering,
and then winced. “He only hit me a few times. But he was going to
use that knife on me when you came in.”

Something fierce and gut-wrenching slammed
tight inside of him at the thought of what might have happened if
not for his son Billy’s sharp eyes. A stroke of luck had brought
him here tonight—nothing more. He glanced with contempt at Jones’s
corpse.

“The filthy coward. You ought to put some
liniment on that bruise.”

“You’re the one who needs doctoring,
Sheriff,” she reminded him coldly, tugging on his good arm as she
led him out to the parlor. “Sit right there while I heat some water
and get the salve. And don’t ask me any questions, because I can’t
answer them and minister to you at the same time,” she threw over
her shoulder as she disappeared into the kitchen.

He didn’t know what to make of her. The
ragged little wildcat who’d spit in his face in that Arizona shack
had grown into a startlingly beautiful and amazingly self-possessed
woman. As she boiled water, sponged at the two-inch gash the knife
had slashed in his shoulder—a gash no more serious than a flesh
wound—gingerly applied salve, and then cut up strips of a clean,
thick towel to wrap it, he had an opportunity to study her. He was
struck by her delicate, serious face, by the solemn concentration
in her eyes as she worked, and by the way the thin pink nightgown
hugged the delectable curves of her body. His shoulder throbbed a
little, but he ignored it, focusing instead on the soft, flowery
scent of her (was it lilacs?) as she sat beside him on the old
sofa; on the luxuriant tumble of her midnight hair, glistening in
the lamp light; on the gentle way her fingers slid across his
injured arm.

What business did this woman have with the
likes of Fess Jones?

Wolf couldn’t help being suspicious of her.
He had learned to be suspicious of women, especially beautiful and
clever ones, and from his own observations Rebeccah Rawlings
possessed both of those qualities.

Yet he sensed something in her, something
that didn’t quite fit. He frowned as she finished binding the wound
and sat back to study her own handiwork.

“Got any whiskey?”

“Whiskey? Why? Do you feel faint?”

“No, ma’am,” he drawled patiently.
“Thirsty.”

“Well,” she said doubtfully, studying his
calm, bronzed face as he leaned against the horsehair sofa, looking
the picture of strong, manly health, “I haven’t come across any
whiskey. I could make coffee,” she offered.

“I wouldn’t want to put you to any
trouble.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble, Sheriff Bodine,” she
replied, rising and staring down at him as he lounged on her sofa,
“as long as in return you get rid of that ... thing in my bedroom
for me.”

He nodded. “Deal.”

Suddenly she noticed his gaze was no longer
trained upon her face but was traveling slowly along her body,
across her breasts, shifting down to her hips.

With a cry of chagrin Rebeccah suddenly
remembered she was still wearing only her nightgown. Somehow being
beaten and nearly cut into little pieces by Fess Jones had made her
completely forget that she was wearing little more than a thin gown
of cotton and lace that barely skimmed her ankles, while Wolf
Bodine wore boots, pants, shirt, vest, guns, badge, and a
Stetson.

“My, God,” she breathed in dismay, and backed
away toward the bedroom. A vermilion flush spread upward from her
neck, setting her cheeks aflame in the lantern light. “How dare you
... you despicable ... why didn’t you say something?”

“Do you think I’m loco?” he asked softly, but
his eyes held approval along with the amusement. “I was only
admiring how handsomely you’ve grown up.”

“Don’t you dare ogle me or laugh at me,”
Rebeccah warned, fleeing toward the bedroom door. She paused at the
threshold, clearly steeling herself to enter the room containing
the dead body, but after throwing one indignant glance back at the
tall man on her sofa, she dashed inside.

It took only a moment to discard her
nightgown and pull on the man’s breeches and blue-and-green flannel
shirt she had purchased at one of the larger towns along the
stagecoach route, figuring that if she was going to work on the
ranch, she’d need something besides dresses. She fastened the
shirt’s buttons with shaking fingers and didn’t look once at
Jones’s body. Tying her hair back severely with a green ribbon, she
stalked back to the parlor once more, leaving the long ends of her
shirttail hanging out.

Funny, in her daydreams she had imagined
herself reunited with Wolf Bodine in a confection of lavender silk
and lace, all frills and beads and ribbons, and now here she was,
deliberately dressing like a man, hoping to make him forget about
her embarrassing state of near undress a few moments ago.

Life never seems to go according to plan, she
decided grimly, as her small, bare feet padded across the floor.
She refused to look at Wolf Bodine as she crossed directly to the
kitchen, but she could feel his gaze on her.

It seemed to be burning into her
backside.

Well, there is nothing the least bit
indiscreet about what I’m wearing now, so let him look all he
wants,
she thought rebelliously.

She has no idea how adorable she
looks,
Wolf decided as Rebeccah Rawlings stamped past him
without a glance.
She must have inherited her mother’s
looks
, he concluded, because there was nothing of Bear’s heavy
jowled face, stocky, powerful build, or shrewd black eyes in his
daughter. Only his stubborness and orneriness, Wolf guessed—and
possibly his lawlessness.

He had to find out what Fess Jones had been
doing here with her, besides beating her and trying to kill her.
Wolf had a feeling deep in his gut that Jones wasn’t the only
outlaw about to descend on his peaceful little neck of the woods,
thanks to Miss Rebeccah Rawlings.

He tried to ignore the fiery pain in his
shoulder as he mused on the circumstances that had brought him back
here tonight. He’d gone home as usual, trying to think of nothing
but enjoying his supper with Caitlin and Billy. He’d tried his
damndest to avoid thinking about the irritating Miss Rawlings,
until Billy had come tearing out the door the moment Wolf had
reached the gate.

“Pa, Gramma wouldn’t let me come get you—she
said I had to stay right here—but I saw him ... I saw him, Pa! That
fellow on the Wanted poster you got last week from Dodge City—Fess
Jones!”

Wolf had swung down from Dusty and knelt
beside Caitlin’s flower garden to stare intently into his son’s
excited face. “Slow down, Billy. Are you sure about this?”

“Sure as anything. You know I’ve got a good
eye, Pa,” Billy reminded him, his gray eyes shining with
excitement.

It was true. Billy frequently visited Wolf at
the sheriff’s office, where he was fascinated by the collection of
rifles, the locked box of ammunition, the big brass ring of keys to
the cell, the safe, and all the locked cupboards. But he was most
intrigued by the Wanted posters tacked to the corkboard beside the
window. He had an amazing memory for a child, and he could recite
the mathematical tables and how to spell hippopotamus, and he could
name the states in which an outlaw was wanted and for what offenses
faster than most folks could remember what they’d eaten for
breakfast.

“Tell me where you saw him, then,” Wolf
ordered, and Billy took a deep breath.

“I was fishing in the creek, sitting there
real quiet like, and all of a sudden I saw someone riding right
through the trees on the other side. Well, he stopped when he saw
me. Pa, for a minute there I was mighty scared. The way he stared
at me—he looked about as mean as a hungry coyote in an open chicken
coop.”

Wolf glanced up and saw his mother standing
in the doorway, her work-worn hands motionless at her sides.
Caitlin’s iron-gray hair was bound up as neatly as usual, and her
nearly sightless blue eyes gave no hint of her feelings, but her
mouth was set and grim within her lined face, providing the one
visible sign of her concern.

“Go on,” Wolf told the boy quietly, setting a
hand on his bony young shoulder. “Did he hurt you, son? Scare you?
What did he say?”

“Nothing, Pa. He just looked at me, real long
and slow, like he’d like to roast me over a campfire and eat me for
dinner—that kind of a look. I was too scared to move. But Sam
started growling deep in his throat, and he looked ready to spring.
For a moment I thought Fess Jones was going to shoot him.”

As if understanding, Billy’s big red dog,
Sam, nosed his way into the conversation, wriggling between Wolf
and his son and resting his nose on the lawman’s broad
shoulder.

“Good boy, Sam,” Wolf said, and stroked the
dog’s head. “Billy, are you going to finish this story, or do I
have to expire with suspense?”

The boy laughed. He enjoyed being the center
of attention—in that way, and no other, Wolf decided, he was like
his ma.

“He stared at us real long and slow, like I
said, and then dug his spurs into his horse and kept riding. Never
said a word.”

“Which way did he go?”

“That way, toward the Peastone place. Think
he’s planning to hole up there and wait for some pards to come join
him? Maybe he’s going to rob the bank in Powder Creek like he did
in Lucasville. Maybe—”

“Maybe you should go wash up for supper.
Gramma’s looking mighty hungry to me.”

“Aren’t you coming in, Pa?”

“No. But save me some of your Gramma’s pie.”
Wolf had stopped the boy with a tug on his sleeve. “You did good,
Billy. Real good. I’m proud of you.”

And Billy had flushed with pleasure.

If he hadn’t run into Fess Jones and
recognized him, I wouldn’t be here right now
, Wolf reflected,
wincing as he flexed his shoulder.
And Miss Rebeccah Rawlings
would probably be dead.