Harlequin Historical September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Lone Sheriff\The Gentleman Rogue\Never Trust a Rebel (18 page)

Jericho kept his rifle aimed at the fire pit and worked his way down through the rocks. Behind him he heard the hammer click on Rooney's rifle.

Jericho hoisted his Winchester shoulder high and scanned the area. Nothing but muddled boot prints and a scrap of leather thong, no outlaws.

“Rooney,” he yelled. “Come on down. The place is deser—”

Suddenly a scrap of yellow fabric caught his eye, wedged behind a flat-topped hunk of granite.
Maddie.
His body went cold. He clunked his rifle onto the ground and started toward her.

“Maddie!”

She lay at an odd angle, her face hidden under one arm. “Rooney,” he yelled.

“Hell,” Rooney breathed at his back. “Is she—”

Jericho grasped her shoulders and eased her body free of the rocks. Oh, God, she... He had to look away. The back of her head was sticky with blood.

“Turn her over,” Rooney said quietly. Jericho rolled her over as gently as he could and placed two fingers at her neck. A thready pulse fluttered.

“She's alive.” Then he saw the huge purpling lump at her temple.

Rooney knelt beside him. “Don't move her any more, Johnny. She might be hurt inside, as well.”

Chapter Twenty

“M
addie?
Maddie?
”

She moaned and opened one eye. The other was blood-encrusted and swollen shut. “Jericho...”

“Maddie, stay with me. Try to concentrate.”

All at once he felt a crazy urge to cry. Dammit, men didn't cry! Tears stung at the back of his eyes and he clamped his lips together.

Rooney knelt on her other side and inspected the cuts on her temple and the back of her skull. “Looks like she got slugged pretty hard and more than once. Pistol butt, maybe.”

Jericho could only nod.

“Musta thought she was dead. They musta hit her and left her to die.”

Jericho wanted to shut Rooney up so bad his fists burned.

Maddie moaned again, but her eyelids remained closed.

He bent over her. “Maddie?”

Her mouth opened and Jericho stopped breathing. “Head hurts,” she whispered.

“Maddie, what happened?”

Maddie ran her tongue over her cracked lips. Rooney offered his canteen, and Jericho grabbed it and dribbled water into her mouth.

“Tucker knew you'd follow... Waiting for you.” She struggled to get the words out. “Then he decided not to.”

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“Just my head, I think.” She reached her hand to her temple, then touched two fingers to the back of her head. “Ouch! Ooh, that hurts.”

“Yeah, someone hit you pretty hard.”

“Rafe,” she said. “The skinny one.” She opened her good eye. “What...does it look like?”

Someone behind him snorted. “Hell, Johnny, if she wants to know how she looks, there's still plenty of life in her.”

Maddie recognized Rooney Cloudman's voice and tried to smile.

“Shut up, dammit.” Jericho's voice.

“Now don't get riled, Sheriff. There's no need to get so testy. Stop worryin'.”

Jericho was worried about her? Again Maddie tried to smile, but her jaw hurt too much.

“I'll bring the horses,” Rooney said. “Got some blankets you kin wrap her up in.” She heard genuine concern in the man's voice.

“Hurry, dammit!” Then Jericho trickled more water over her lips and she reach up to touch his cheek. His skin felt damp and that made her breath stop. Her chest ached.

Rooney returned with two blankets. Jericho carefully wrapped her up into a cocoon and lifted her into his arms. When she groaned she heard him catch his breath.

“What now, Johnny?” Rooney's voice again.

“Gotta get her on my horse and—”

“I mean about the Tucker gang. You've got an injured woman and a bunch of outlaws on the loose. Got a choice to make.”

“Like hell I do,” Jericho said, his voice quiet.

There was a long silence, and then she heard Rooney's voice. “I know how you feel, Johnny, but—”

“Shut up, Rooney. This time, Maddie comes first.”

The trip back was pure agony. Maddie slept through most of it—or thought she did. Every so often she jolted from comforting blackness into a sharp awareness of pain and Jericho's arms around her. And his voice.

“Hang on, Maddie. Just a few more miles, and we...”

She drifted off before he finished talking. Each time she struggled back to consciousness, Jericho's voice sounded more hoarse. But he kept talking to her.

What seemed like years later he lifted her pain-racked body off the horse and carried her up the porch steps into Sarah Rose's boardinghouse. Upstairs he gently he laid her down on a soft bed that smelled of sun-dried sheets and lavender, then stepped back so Doc Graham could examine her.

Doc pried up one eyelid and studied her pupil, watched her gaze track one finger when he moved it back and forth in her field of vision. Finally he raised his gray-frosted head and held Jericho's gaze.

“What is it you two do when you're not here in my office getting bandaged up?” he snapped. “First you both get shot. Now she's got a head injury worse than any horse kick I've ever seen a body live through. This lady's got one hell of a concussion.”

Jericho squeezed Maddie's hand but said nothing.

“Forget I asked,” Doc quickly amended. “Everybody knows you're a lawman, Johnny, but what about her? I heard she was your cousin, but you know, I don't really think so.”

“Maddie's not my cousin.”

“Some kinda law, then?”

“Not exactly,” Jericho said.

“Well, what exactly?” Doc barked.

Maddie flinched at his tone, and that set off her headache again. She struggled to keep both eyes open, especially the swollen one, where Tucker had smacked his elbow into the socket when she refused to obey. With the other she stared up into the older man's lined face and opened her lips.

“I am...an actress,” she pronounced carefully.

“Sure you are.” Doc's voice was full of disbelief.

Mrs. Rose entered with a cup of something, tea, Maddie hoped. She fervently prayed the landlady had added some brandy. What she got instead was a spoonful of laudanum mixed into a cinnamony-tasting brew. At least she didn't have to think up any more lies for the doctor.

The men turned their backs while Mrs. Rose eased her out of her mud-spattered garments and into a white muslin nightgown, then tiptoed out, followed by Doc Graham. Maddie could hear their voices in the hall.

“Maybe Miz O'Donnell is just a greenhorn from back East,” Doc was saying. “An unlucky visitor out here who gets herself in deeper than she—”

“Huh!” Mrs. Rose snorted. “You ever see a greenhorn with a loaded pistol in her skirt pocket?”

The voices faded.

Jericho returned, pulled a chair up close to the bed and enveloped her fingers in his large warm hand. Even when Sandy clomped up the boardinghouse stairs to report about the jailed prisoners, Jericho did not let go.

“She hurt bad?”

“Bad enough,” Jericho answered.

Maddie stopped trying to keep her eyes open and let her lids drift shut. Her limbs began to feel heavy, but her mind felt light and floaty, like soap bubbles. She didn't want to think about anything.

“Sheriff, you think Tucker'll try to break the prisoners out?” Sandy's voice.

“Wish to hell he'd try,” Jericho said. “Save me goin' after them again.”

“I knew you was gonna say that. I think you've done enough. This time I'm goin' with you.”

“Shut up, Sandy. I'm the sheriff.”

Sandy expelled his breath in a rush. “You're right about that. You're just about the stubbornest old coot I—okay, Sheriff. Okay. But if you change your mind, I'll be at the jail.”

The deputy tiptoed out and Maddie heard Jericho's voice. “And the jail is where you'll stay, my friend.”

She fought through the drowsiness and the sickening waves of pain in her temple. “Jericho, promise you will not go after those men tonight.”

He squeezed her hand. “Not tonight, no.”

“Will you stay here with me for a while? Please?” Her thoughts were all jumbled together like loose pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but she knew she wanted him here, beside her.

Jericho let out a long sigh. “Sure, I'll stay. Kinda glad we're alone. There's some things I want to say to you.”

“What things?”

“This probably isn't the time, but I've been wondering about something.” He said nothing more for a few heartbeats, then, “I guess Smoke River's nothing like Chicago, is it?”

“No, it is not.”

“Does that matter to you, Maddie? Do you think you could, um, grow to like Smoke River?”

She thought for a long minute. Jericho had always been honest with her; she must be the same. “It does matter, yes. I am not used to small towns. I do not think I could ever get used to living in one.”

Another long silence. “You're gonna leave when this is over, aren't you?”

“Yes. As soon as the gang is captured, I am going to leave. Mr. Pinkerton is in Chicago. My detective work is in Chicago, with Mr. Pinkerton.”

“You gonna marry him?”

Maddie did not dare laugh; it made her head hurt too much. “Oh, no, I will not be marrying Mr. Pinkerton, or anyone else.”

“Why not?” he said after a long hesitation.

“I was married once before and I was very unhappy. It was nothing but endless teas and receptions and afternoon socials. I had no time for myself, for my music and my painting. And my husband did not care about what I wanted. Marriage for me was a trap. The very thought makes my head hurt.”

Jericho said nothing, but she heard the hitch in his breathing.

“Besides,” she added with a chuckle that made her head throb. “Mr. Pinkerton already has a wife.”

“Listen, Maddie,” he said, his voice rough. “I don't see things that way. I know Smoke River is a real out-of-the-way place, but...”

“Jericho, stop.”

“I can't. Dammit, Maddie, in my whole life I never wanted anyone like I want you.”

“It cannot work,” she whispered. “We want different things. You want some kind of commitment, and I...” Her voice started to drift off.

“Maddie? What is it you want?”

“I want...well, freedom.”
I do want it, don't I? I have always wanted it.

“Yeah. I guess those are different things.”

She forced her eyes open and reached up to touch his jaw. “Jericho, we do understand each other, do we not?”

He looked away. “Yeah, we do. I don't like it, but we do.”

Something in Maddie didn't like it either, but at the moment her mind was too cloudy to think why.

Jericho sat by her most of the night, feeling hungry and mad, and shaken in a way he hadn't felt since he was a kid. Maybe he didn't know who he was, exactly, half Mex or Indian or white or whatever. Maybe he wasn't like other men. But he knew
what
he was.

There were some things a man risked his life for, things like peace and justice. And there were some things a man couldn't live without. He felt as if he'd struggled through the blackness of a blinding storm into the light.

And now, dammit, now he wanted one of those things. He wanted to love a woman. This woman. Maddie was fine and strong and so beautiful it made him ache.

Around three in the morning, when his mind was as quiet as he knew it was going to get, he figured out what he had to do.

He slipped down the staircase to the front porch, buckled on his gun belt, checked his rifle and jammed it into the saddle scabbard. Then he mounted and rode out of Smoke River, praying he'd find another Indian marker to show him the trail.

* * *

“Alone?” Maddie said in disbelief. She stared at Sandy across the boardinghouse breakfast table. “You let him go
alone?
”

The deputy ducked his head and focused on the brimming coffee mug before him. “You ever try to stop the sheriff from doing anything? Don't mean to be rude, ma'am, but when Sheriff Silver gets a notion in his head he's like a bull buffalo.”

“For heaven's sake, this is not simply a ‘notion' This is the misguided, foolhardy man who thinks he has nothing to lose.”

“Nah, that ain't it. Sheriff thinks he's invincible, like them Roman soldiers in those history books he reads.”

Maddie snapped her jaw shut and instantly wished she had asked the doctor for another spoonful of laudanum. The persistent ache behind her eyes was starting in again, and she gritted her teeth against the pain. Against the frustration. Against the fear. Jericho would get himself killed and then she would never know another moment of happiness.

She stood up and found she was unexpectedly wobbly. Sandy bolted to his feet, slapped his big paws on her shoulders and forced her back into her seat.

“Now you listen to me,” he ordered. “Jericho don't need you to do somethin' dumb, so you just sit there nice and quietlike 'til he gets back.” He gave her a little shake. “You hear me, Miz Detective? Jest let him alone.”

Awash with violent, throbbing pain, Maddie let her head droop. She covered her eyes with one shaking hand and tried to calm her thundering heartbeat. Why,
why
did she have to fall in love with a man like Jericho Silver? A man braver than any intelligent human being had any right to be, a wonderful, honorable fool of a man who would do his duty or die.

She became aware of Sandy's hand patting her arm. “Aw, don't cry, Miz O'Donnell. Here.” He stuffed a folded handkerchief into her hand.

“I am not crying,” she sobbed. “I am th-thinking up a proper punishment for h-him for going off alone.”

The deputy chuckled. “Look, ma'am. Jericho's done the exact same thing a dozen times since he's been sheriff. Nobody thought he'd come back alive from his first manhunt, but he's proved us wrong so many times we don't even think about it anymore. He's hard to kill.”

“Oh, s-stop talking, Sandy. Maddie wiped her eyes. “
I
am thinking about it. About him getting killed.” She scrunched the handkerchief into a ball.

Sarah Rose flew into the dining room, wiping her hands on a flour-dusted blue apron. “Sandy! What on earth did you say to her?”

“Aw, hell...er...heck, Miz Rose. I just explained 'bout Johnny.”

The landlady's blue eyes hardened. “She knows all she needs to know about Johnny.”

“Yes'm.” The deputy gulped a swallow of his cold coffee and bolted for the front porch.

Sarah rubbed her hand over Maddie's heaving shoulders. “You just cry it out, dearie. Then you go on out to the porch an' talk to Rooney. He's the smartest man I know, outside of Johnny.”

“J-Johnny is not smart at all,” Maddie sniffled. “He is intelligent, but that d-does not make him smart. A s-smart man would not go off alone to...”

She gave up, turned her face into Mrs. Rose's soft bosom and wept until she began to feel dizzy.

“Come on, dearie.” The older woman propelled her out onto the veranda where Rooney Cloudman sat rocking in the porch swing. He shoved over and Mrs. Rose eased Maddie down beside him.