Defiant (43 page)

His eyes remained on Kelly, watching as surprise and pain replaced rage. The outlaw tried to lift his gun again, but blood spurted from his right arm, and he dropped it as he went down. Sinclair reached over and took his gun, and then two lawmen were leaning over Kelly, the third over Shepherd. Other men were now pouring into the bank.

Sinclair moved over to Wade, one hand clenching the shoulder wound to staunch his own bleeding. His eyes, those watchful brown eyes, scanned Wade's body. Wade looked down. Blood was puddling on the floor beneath his left hip, and the pain, momentarily dulled by the shock, was excruciating. He knew from the pain the bullet had hit the bone.

“That was a fool thing to do,” Sinclair said.

Wade ignored him and looked toward the lawmen checking Kelly. “Is he still alive?”

One of them nodded. “He'll live. So will one of the others. The other two are dead.”

Wade closed his eyes wearily. More death. Wherever he went …

Wade woke through clouds of pain. His eyes didn't want to open, and his mouth was dry, as if he'd been sucking a cotton ball. He tried to remember. Shots. Pain. Blood, red and sticky and nauseating. Darkness. He kept his eyes closed against all that, but then other sensations started filtering into his consciousness.

The smell of flowers hovered around him. Her scent. Her essence. The comfort of a bed. Soft. Not hard like the jail cot.

Then he felt a cold nose nuzzling him, heard the comforting thump of a tail.

“He's moving.” Wade heard Jeff's anxious voice as if it came from a distance.

Then hands. Her hands. He would know them anywhere. Gentle. So infinitely gentle. He didn't deserve them. He didn't deserve anything. For a moment, he wished himself back in the darkness.

“Wade.” Her voice called to him, and he couldn't bear the sadness in it.

He slowly willed his eyes to open and tried to focus on her face. Such a pretty face. So sad. So worried. So caring. She didn't know. She didn't know yet just what kind of a monster he was. Wade understood that from her face. She would soon. Kelly would yell it from the rooftops.

He felt that nose again and dropped his gaze. Jake sat next to his bed, his tongue busily licking his good hand. Jeff was next to him, a big grin on his face. “I knew you would be all right. I just knew it.”

“Jake,” Mary Jo said severely. “Don't do that!” Jake looked wounded and dropped his head.

For a moment, all of Wade's hesitation disappeared. He felt as if he were home. He belonged to these people around him, the woman and boy, even the dog. And they belonged to him in some inexplicable way.

If only …

There was a knock on the door, and Mary Jo went to open it. Matt Sinclair stood there, his arm in a sling; Wade's arm was bound to his chest, apparently so it couldn't be moved. He frowned. “How long …?”

“Two days,” Mary Jo said as she returned to his side. “The doctor said you were just plain worn out. He said he didn't know how you were even alive with all those wounds. We couldn't risk taking you all the way back to the ranch, so we put you in this boarding-house in town.”

“I told the doctor you were the toughest man in Colorado,” Jeff said. “Maybe even Texas.” The latter was obviously the highest compliment he could give.

“That the doc you said wasn't any good? The one you were afraid might cut off my arm?” Wade asked.

She smiled, her eyes sparkling, that mouth curved in the easy smile he liked so much. “There was nothing he could take this time.”

Wade thought that wasn't entirely true, and from her sudden smile, he knew she read his thoughts again. He felt his own lips twist, but then he turned his head toward the sheriff. “You all right?”

“Thanks to you. I knew there was a reason I wanted you along. He would have killed me once we were outside. There was no way he could have gotten me on a horse.”

“Where are they?”

“In my jail. Dave's taking them to Denver tomorrow for trial.”

There was a silence, long, awkward, painful. Then Sinclair turned to Mary Jo. “I would like to talk to him alone for a few minutes.”

Mary Jo looked at Wade, who nodded. Her gaze moved from Matt Sinclair to Wade, then back again, and Wade saw a glimmer of apprehension in her face. Then she turned toward Jeff. “Let's go get our patient something to eat.”

“I'll leave Jake here for company,” Jeff said. “He'll watch out for you.” His young eyes were suddenly full of hostility as they looked at Sheriff Sinclair.

Wade nodded solemnly, his stomach churning. He tried to move, to sit up, but the slightest movement sent agonizing pain penetrating his hip. He fell back down.

“Water?” Sinclair said.

Wade nodded, and he watched as the sheriff carefully poured water from a pitcher on a nearby table into a cup and handed it to Wade. Wade's fingers shook as he took it, lifted it to his lips and drank. Then his gaze met Sinclair's. “What happens now?”

“Kelly's gonna yell his head off about you,” Sinclair said. “I have to take you to Denver, unless you somehow slip out of town unnoticed.” The invitation was there in his voice. It would be real easy to slip out of town unnoticed.

And run and run and run.

The alternative: a possible noose, prison. Kelly would do everything he could to see that it was the former.

“It seems my choices are limited.”

“If you surrender yourself, I'll do everything I can to get you a pardon,” Sinclair said. “This whole town will be behind you, but you should know there's no guarantees.”

“But first I'll have to tell Mary Jo.”

Sinclair nodded.

Wade hesitated. There was something else. Maybe days ago, he could have kept lying about it, but not now. Sinclair had been too damn decent. “That dead man you found a month ago …”

Something flickered in Sinclair's eyes. He waited.

“I killed him. You were right about me being the man in the mountains. Three miners killed my wife and son. He was one of them.”

Sinclair nodded. “Figured it was something like that. Figured you had to be close to those redskins for them to help out like they did.”

Wade felt himself bristling at the term “redskins.”

Sinclair grinned suddenly. “Now don't go getting your back up. I don't have anything personal against them. They mind their business and don't bother my town, I don't bother them. Maybe next time we have a lost tenderfoot, or a little disagreement, I'll send you to negotiate for me.”

“If I'm here.”

“Something tells me you're pretty hard to get rid of. Otherwise I would have tried to run you off in the beginning.”

“Because of Mary Jo?”

Regret flashed in his eyes. “I'm a realist. I tried for a year and never got the time of day. You ride in and a week later … hell, I saw a light in her eyes I never saw before.”

A kind of warmth washed over Wade. It crawled into all the crevices of his heart.

“And about that body,” Sinclair continued, a bland look on his face, “I figure no one will ever know who he was or exactly what happened. That's what I wrote.”

“Kelly?”

“No one's gonna believe him. He's too full of hate. Your one problem is Centralia, but that was a long time ago. I checked you out and finally got some telegrams back. Centralia's the only thing against you, and a lot of those Rebs have already been pardoned.”

It was all too much for Wade's mind; which was still swimming in darkness, in fuzziness, still wrapped in pain. “It can't be that easy.”

“I don't think it's been easy. I think you've been punishing yourself for the last twelve years, and it's been a worse judgment than anything anyone else can do to you.” He hesitated. “I have my own ghosts, and it took me a long time to get to where I could live with them. But that day does come. And you were only a kid, for God's sake.”

“I was twenty.”

“And fifteen when that hate started. That's a young age to have to deal with such strong emotions.”

“You a sheriff or a preacher?” The confusion inside made Wade lash out.

“A sheriff who thinks you would make a good neighbor.”

Wade swallowed hard. “You don't owe me anything. I just wanted Kelly out of my life.”

“There were ways of going about it. You picked the hard one.” Sinclair stuck out his hand. “I think Mary Jo will understand more than you think. She's that kind of woman.”

Wade hesitated, then took his hand. Accepting it was a kind of commitment. “When do we go to Denver?”

Matt Sinclair grinned. “When you can sit in a saddle again. Think it might take some time. Doc says weeks. In the meantime, I think I'll put you in Mary Jo's custody. Jake looks like a pretty good guard dog.” Jake, who had been sitting next to the bed, started thumping his tail again as if in agreement. His tongue reached out reassuringly and took a big swipe on Wade's hand.

Another part of Wade started to ache, one that had nothing to do with his physical wound.

“By the way,” Matt Sinclair said, “there's a big reward for Kelly. The mayor and I figure you should get it.”

“No,” Wade said.

“The reward's gotta go someplace.”

“Doesn't this place need a school or something?”

Sinclair's grin widened. “Now I really know I want you as a neighbor, but I'd better get the hell out of here before Mrs. Williams takes a broom to me. She's been real protective, just like a mother cougar. Blames me for that gunshot, and she's partly right. I never should have taken you into that bank. I'll never figure out why I did.”

He turned to leave.

“Sinclair?” Wade's voice stopped the sheriff, but he didn't turn.

“Thanks,” Wade said, knowing it came out as a croak.

Sinclair just nodded and went out the door, without turning back.

26

Mary Jo wanted to touch all those wounded and scarred places on Wade's body and miraculously make them go away. She wondered if some of the hidden ones were too deep to heal.

Kelly knows something about me
. Those words kept haunting her; so did the fact that Matt had locked Wade up. No one had told her why.

She felt terribly uncertain, which was just slightly better than how she had felt two days ago when she'd heard the shots and saw Wade being carried out.

She had insisted on caring for Wade herself after the doctor, still smelling of whiskey, had told her Wade had a painful but survivable wound. It would be days before he could sit a saddle, or anything else for that matter. The doctor hadn't understood why he'd remained unconscious for so long, unless it was exhaustion combined with loss of blood.

And Matt had been as closemouthed as ever, though he'd checked regularly to see whether Wade had returned to consciousness. And now Matt and Wade were together in the room, and Mary Jo sensed they were deciding his fate. Which would affect hers, too.

She had sent for Jeff almost immediately after the shoot-out, knowing he would come by himself if he heard. Once Jeff had arrived in town, Tuck had returned to the Circle J to tend the animals.

The door to the room finally opened, and Matt came out. “You can go in,” he said.

She hesitated. “What's going to happen now?”

“He'll tell you,” Matt said. “Take good care of him now.”

There was something about the way he said those words that made her heart flare with hope.

She went in. Wade was lying on his side, three days' growth of beard on his face. He looked like a brigand again. She tried to look inside his eyes, to see some of the hope that she thought Matt had just offered. He moved slightly, and she heard him draw in his breath as pain hit again.

“I have some laudanum,” she said.

His gray-green eyes seemed to search hers. “Later,” he said. “Where's Jeff?”

“In the kitchen, getting you something to eat.”

She moved over and sat carefully on the bed. “Matt said you had something to tell me.” She reached over and put her finger on his left cheek. “It doesn't matter, you know,” she said. “Nothing matters except you're alive. And you're a hero in this town now.”

His good hand took the finger, stopping its movement. “I'm no hero. I never have been.” He hesitated a moment, then continued in a low voice. “Have you ever heard of Bill Anderson?”

Anderson
. She tried to think, but nothing came. She shook her head.

“During the war, he commanded a group of bushwhackers in Kansas and Missouri.”

She'd been in Texas during the war. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old, and in love with a Texas Ranger. She tried to remember Anderson from all the other war news that had flooded Texas, but she'd been more concerned about Jeff and thanking God his Ranger company had remained in Texas. “Bushwackers?”

He shifted again, bringing her hand down from his face, the fingers on his good hand playing with it absently. Or was it absently? His brows were furrowed together, his lips thinned. “Anderson used to like to say he was a Confederate soldier, but the truth is, most Rebs disclaimed him.” Wade didn't spare himself. “He and his men murdered, stole, raped. They even scalped some of their victims.” His fingers abandoned hers. “I was one of Anderson's raiders.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “I joined after my family was killed by Jayhawkers—Unionists. They were abolitionists for the most part, but they had a lot in common with Anderson. Some of them just killed for the love of killing.”

Mary Jo felt the blood drain from her face. He'd never said anything before about a family other than Chivita and Drew. “What happened?” Her voice was so low she wondered whether he could hear.

“My father was a Missouri farmer. He never liked slavery, but neither did he like being told what to do. When he refused to join a group of Jayhawkers, they came by to teach him a lesson. I'd been sent to town to get some feed, and stayed too long. When I got back, my father and brother were hanging from a tree and my mother and sister had been raped and murdered.” He paused. “It was my fault. If I had been home earlier, there would have been another gun, and maybe—”