Explaining Herself (16 page)

Kitty . . .

When Ross drew his fingers off her cheeks and held her shoulders instead, turning her toward the house, she let him. She blessed his ability to move, when she couldn't. That thought, mixed with the gun smoke still lingering like a blue cloud, reminded her of another blessing.

'You were so fast," she marveled, remembering how quickly he'd drawn, how quickly he'd fired. She hadn't realized he'd done it until the third shot. 'You saved her life. How did you ever learn to shoot that fast?"

But, urging her toward the house, Ross didn't answer.

Victoria's innocence frightened him, and Laramie didn't know what to say. How could he be the one to tell her that death didn't always come fast? Life could be gruelingly tenacious in its good-byes; maybe that's what made the taking of life so profane. Even a man gut-shot by a rustler could linger for days. Even a little girl, trampled by a wild horse.

How could he tell her that instead of saving her baby sister's life, he might have only prolonged it?

He couldn't. And the hope on her face as she quickened her step, tugging him by the hand she would not release, found its way into his heart just to break it.

By the time they reached the house, Collier Pembroke was heading toward the stables, his face drawn. "I'll bring the doctor," he promised as he passed. "Victoria ..."

But then he shook his head and hurried on.

He thinks it's his fault for keeping the stallion,
thought Laramie. Maybe the Garrisons would blame themselves for not watching the girl more closely, or their mother would take fault for not coming along, or keeping her home. None of them knew what it
really
meant to be responsible for someone's death.

That was yet another reason he didn't belong here.

He felt blasphemous walking into the grieving household. Laurel was running up the stairs as they came in, and Victoria followed, dragging Laramie with her. He had to actually grasp her wrist to free his hand from hers, before she tugged him right into the sickroom.

He didn't deserve to be in there, with the family.

Instead, Laramie watched from the doorway while Mrs. Pembroke used sewing shears to cut Kitty's torn,
muddy dress off her broken little body, so as not to hurt her further. And it
was
broken. Right off, Lara
mie recognized the flash of white bone amid the bloody mess of one leg. One of her arms wasn't lying natural anymore, either. And something seemed wrong with her shoulder. Even once her father drew blankets over the child's near nakedness, they couldn't hide the blood already soaking into a pillow from the side of her head. Laurel Pembroke pressed a bandage against the wound, then made Victoria hold it while she darted out, past Laramie, for more supplies.

"What can I... ?" His words did not come easily, and she'd gone before he finished them.

The minutes stretched into bandages, soap and water, spiderwebs to stop bleeding, a hopeful bottle of brandy waiting to be used as a painkiller. All the while, Victoria was biting her lip, and Laramie wondered if it was to keep from saying anything wrong. Her older sister seemed more used to a sickroom, white-faced but grimly determined. And their father worked as smoothly and efficiently as if this were any injured animal he'd found, running his hands over the child's body, pressing at her gut, listening to her chest. He seemed almost unnaturally calm. Only his sharp eyes showed his agony
—and that, only because Laramie knew how to read a man's eyes.

It felt like a blow when the man finally lifted that raw gaze to Ross. "Fetch two lengths of wood," he instructed, hoarse. "Flat."

"For her arm," guessed Laramie.

The rancher nodded, already turning back to Kitty.

As Laramie started down the stairs, Victoria must have released her lip. Suddenly he heard her asking, "But what about her leg, Papa? How will we ever set her leg?"

Laramie drowned the rest under his boot heels on
the stairs. Kitty's leg was clearly ruined; best that they leave it for the doctor. If it came to amputation ...

He'd seen plenty of men torn, bleeding
—by accident, or due to poor companions and poorer choices. Hell, a posse's mistake had sent two bullets ripping through him just that June—the most basic of doctoring, in an outlaw's hideout, had hardly prettied his wounds. But this was the first
child
he'd seen in such shape. It sickened him, deep down where he'd thought he'd gone numb years ago.

Nobody should have to amputate his own child's leg.

Laramie hid from that sick feeling by focusing on the task. When he got back upstairs with the wood, Victoria hovered in his spot in the doorway herself, her shoulders hunched, her bloody fists pressed against her chin as if to stop her mouth from trembling. He hoped she hadn't gotten herself expelled from the sickroom for her questions; God knew a girl who took comfort in answers must feel a powerful need to be asking them.

Despite the risk of exposure, he slid a hand down her spine as he ducked past. The look she sent him
— grateful, hopeful, terrified—broke his heart a second time.

Garrison accepted the wood, then lifted the blanket off the girl's bad arm. "Best do it while she's out."

"But she'll come to, won't she?" That was Victoria again, desperate to know something, anything.

Laurel sounded cross when she said, "We don't
know."

The arm didn't look so bad, now that they'd cleaned her up. Oh, it was broken
—arms just weren't made to turn like that—but Laramie had seen worse.

"I'll set it," he offered. "If you'd like."

But Garrison did it himself, as if turning and readjusting his daughter's thin little arm wasn't tearing his
guts out. It was, surely. But he did it anyway.

Just as Laramie began to regret thinking he could help, the rancher said, "Fetch my wife. I
—" He stopped then, in the midst of adjusting the wood split over the now straight
little
arm, and swallowed. "We'll need my wife."

'Yes, sir."

But before Laramie had reached the stairs, Garrison added, "Take Victoria."

"What?"
Vic's eyes widened
—a reflection, Laramie thought, of his own.

Her sister said, "Do you want Mama to hear this from a stranger, Vic? No offense, Mr. Laramie."

"No," he agreed, understanding now. "We'll get her."

Then he headed down the stairs again, surrounded by the scents of new wood, new paint, and fineries that meant nothing when a little girl lay up there hurting, maybe dying. He waited at the bottom until Victoria followed, her gray eyes still glazed with fear. Then he took her elbow and led her to the kitchen.

"Wash the blood off," he instructed, working the pump handle until water began to gush out, then guiding her hands into the flow. "Smell might spook your horse."

One of the hardest parts of riding to safety, after he'd been shot, had been handling his goddamned horse.

"I hate horses," she said
—and suddenly he wanted to laugh. It wouldn't have been a good laugh. He swallowed it.

Instead he said, "I know."

"Give me Papa's saddle," she called, as he headed out the kitchen door, and he nodded.

He'd saddled her gelding by the time Victoria arrived, and she adjusted her father's stirrups to her leg length while Laramie tightened Blackie's cinch for
himself, all in silence. When he turned to help her mount, Vic surprised him by suddenly leaning her head against his ribs, wrapping her arms around his waist, and crumpling into him, shaking.

Startled, he instinctively drew her more tightly against him, taking a bitter comfort in just the holding of her. He wished he could make this better, wished protecting life were as easy as taking it. But all he could do was stand there and try to absorb some of her misery.

"I don't understand," she said, her words slurred like maybe she was crying. Even when he tucked his chin to his chest, he could only see the top of her head
—so he stroked a hand across her hair. "She should have known better than to go in there. And that horrible horse—she couldn't have been a threat to it! Why did it happen to her? She's so good. Of all of us . . ."

You 're good, too.
He doubted she wanted to hear that, and he didn't know any other answers, so he just held her.

"Tell me she'll be okay." Now she tipped her face toward him, her wet eyes bright with desperation. "She will, won't she? Papa's taking care of her, and Collier's fetching the doctor, and we'll bring Mama back, so Kitty
will
be all right, won't she?"

But this time, he couldn't lie. Not even a lie that she needed so badly to hear as this one. Only God knew if Kitty would make it.

Assuming God cared.

Cantering along the wooded path that would eventually take them to the ranch road, wishing Ross
—in the lead—would spur his horse into a full gallop, Victoria felt guilty for not leaving sooner. She shouldn't have stopped to wash her hands and face, even if that had calmed her. She shouldn't have let Ross hold her,
even for those few brief minutes, even if that had helped far more.

Nothing should matter but getting Mama back to Kitty
—until Ross's horse reared back, even as Victoria registered a sound too familiar, today.

A gunshot?

Another gunshot?

Ross wheeled his horse back at her
—"Get down, get down!"—but she didn't understand. Was someone hunting? Had someone made a mistake?

Still, she slid from Papa's worn saddle to the safety of the rocky ground, tugging poor Huckleberry hurriedly back up the path where Ross, leading Blackie, was crowding them. When Ross looped his gelding's reins over a tree branch, Victoria did it too, for lack of a better idea.

"Stay here." He spread his hand, the one not carrying his rifle, as if that could hold her back, then started up the path on foot, without her. But not for long.

"What's going on?" she whispered as she followed him. "Who's shooting?"

"Shhh!" He waved a hand backward at her. "Stay there."

When she shushed, she could hear what sounded like men's voices arguing from the trees beyond them, then the nicker of a horse.

Ross hunkered down with a slight wince and started to take off his spurs, one-handed. She stepped closer to him, put her hand on his hard shoulder and leaned very near his ear to whisper, "Why would anybody shoot at us?"

He widened his eyes at her, one finger
—and a handful of leather and spurs—to his lips, and sank lower behind some brush. He left the spurs on the ground to reach up for her, catch her arm, and draw her abruptly down beside him.

Suddenly, after this awful morning, Victoria felt glad to be kneeling so close to the
safety of Ross Lar
amie
—even if someone
had
shot at them. Surely nobody had
meant
it! And in the meantime, his warmth and his smell and the lean hardness of him somehow reassured that she would be fine.

Though if it hadn't been an accident, if it had been
bad men . . .

When she parted her lips again, he covered her mouth with his hand. She almost protested. But the way he then used that hand to gently draw her head toward his, then pressed his cheek against her hair and his lips near her ear, felt so intriguing that she did not want to interrupt.

"They
shot
at us," he whispered into her ear, and she shivered at the sensation. "But they didn't
aim
at us."

How did he know that? His hand muffled her attempt to ask the question. In the meantime, she heard the lowing of a cow from the same direction as the voices.

Was it rustlers? Of course, they
were
in cow country; there were more cattle around here than humans. But the shooting part, that did seem significant.

Laramie whispered, "Speak. Very. Quietly." And she felt guilty again. His words shouldn't tickle like that. Not when they were in a hurry. Not with her sister hurt.

But they did.

When she nodded, he slid his hand from her mouth.

She rose on her knees to brace her jaw on his shoulder, brush her lips against his ear. Her whisper was barely a breath. "Do you think it's the rustlers?"

His nod was an awkward jerk, his shoulder tight.

"How do you know they weren't aiming at us? Maybe they're bad shots."

When she drew back, she saw that Ross had closed his eyes. After a moment, and a long breath, he opened them and bent back to her. "Gut," he admitted breathlessly, with a one-shoulder shrug. "And I did not hear the bullet hit."

Oh. She returned to
his
ear. "Then why shoot at all?"

He nuzzled her hair again to answer. "Warning. They heard us coming."

When she leaned back to him, his sleek, soft hair tickled her cheek. She liked his scent, even the gun smoke that still clung to his clothing. He may have saved Kitty's life, fast as he could shoot. She would always admire that about him. "Are you going after them?"