Swept Away (3 page)

Which meant few men following would go this way.

A good enough reason for him to choose it.

The water was smooth and shallow. His horse stopped to take a long drink, then moved along in the cool October breeze, the running water gurgling and tumbling around his hooves. They made good time for several hours and, as Luke began to watch the banks for a way to climb out, he saw boards ahead. Frowning, he wondered if a rancher lived nearby and had lost a wagon in the flood.

Then he got closer and saw someone lying on the boards.
A woman!

Rushing forward, he gained dry land and tied his gelding to a shrub.

He dropped to his knees beside her, knowing the chances of her being alive were slim. He tried to roll her onto her back and realized her arm was wedged into a knothole in one of the planks. She was warm—alive. Her chest rose and fell. Carefully he worked her loose from where she was caught.

He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the slim strip of sandy soil along the bank. Lowering her to the ground, he saw an ugly gash in her matted red hair. Judging by the condition of the battered-down grass, he estimated the floodwaters had passed through here at least a full day ago. She’d been a long time trapped on that plank.

“Miss?” He gently patted one of her pale, dirt-streaked
cheeks. She moaned but didn’t wake up. Pretty little bit of a thing. Ash white skin with red splotches peeling as if she’d been in the sun too long. She’d had a hard time of it.

With a quick look he decided she had no injuries except that crack on the head—none on the outside anyway.

“Miss, can you hear me?” He had no idea how to make an unconscious woman wake up until she was good and ready. The presence of those varmints on his back trail goaded him. He couldn’t leave her and he had to press on, so the only choice was to take her with him. He lifted her gently.

He couldn’t make good time with a double load. But he was close enough to home that caution was more important than speed. His horse could take it slow. He covered up his tracks, mounted up, juggling the woman and his reins, and headed on for his north Texas ranch.

Unless a town had sprung up since he’d left Broken Wheel, there wasn’t anywhere to leave her this side of home. And he had no intention of turning away from his course.

They headed downstream as Luke kicked around his choices. All he knew for sure was that he’d just picked up an unwilling passenger on his way to start a range war.

Ruthy’s eyes blinked open and the pain knocked them shut again.

“You awake, miss?”

The world was rocking. Her head throbbed, and only knowing how bad it would hurt to move kept her from being sick to her stomach.

The flood. Her hand fumbled at the front of her dress. She was too dry to still be floating.

“My head.” She tried to reach for the pain and something . . . or someone . . . restrained her arms. That brought her eyes open again. She was ready for the pain this time and kept them open to focus on a man . . . rocking her? He was dark, his eyes a velvety shade of midnight brown. He had a deep dimple in his chin that drew her attention for too long. His hair was black as coal, his skin so tanned he almost looked like an Indian. But his perfect English, laden with a Texas drawl, said he wasn’t.

“You’ve got a mean bump on your skull, miss. Best not to touch it.”

Then she noticed the horse.

“Where are we? Who are you?” She remembered Ma and Pa Reinhardt and Virgil. What had become of them?

“I’ve got some questions too, miss. Name’s Luke Stone. I found you run aground on a riverbank. Looked like you’d been riding the current a while. Where’s home? Don’t you worry, I’ll help you get back to your people.”

“I-I don’t know exactly where we were. Our wagon train got caught in a flash flood.” Her throat sounded ragged.

Luke reached for his canteen, and Ruthy was suddenly aware of a thirst so terrible it felt like its own wound.

“The whole train? Aren’t they fifty or a hundred wagons long? How’d you lose all of them?” The man stopped lifting the canteen, and Ruthy was so desperate she almost reached for it to wrestle it away from him. Her arm hurt bad enough she decided not to start a fight with a man whose corded muscles looked to be more than up to besting her in a struggle.

“We were five wagons, split off from the main train. All five were hit. I think two of them were out of the river and headed up, but then the water came.” She shuddered
and buried her face against Luke’s chest. “It was a wall of water. It came around a bend as high as the top of the bank. There was rain upstream.”

“Should’ve had sense not to cross.” The man adjusted his grip so her head was lifted a bit and she could see the world better. His strength was so great that he moved her to suit himself with only the slightest shift of his broad shoulders. He raised the water to her lips.

“I wasn’t in charge or we’d have stayed on high ground until the sky cleared.” When had Ruthy ever been in charge of her own life? She sipped the water and it seemed to soak into her mouth before it even reached her throat. She drank again.

“Don’t drink too fast or you’ll cast it up.” He lifted the canteen away.

She wanted to grab at it, fight him for it.

“So what about the rest of your people?” It was almost as if he were offering her the water in exchange for answers to her questions. But no one would be that low-down, would they? Then Ruthy thought of the Reinhardts and decided nothing could surprise her.

“I don’t know how anyone could survive that flood. I don’t know how I did.” She remembered her wagon tumbling. Oxen bawling. She’d seen Virgil’s body. No sign of life. Ruthy clutched Luke’s shirt, felt a terrible agony in her arm, but held on anyway. “I should go back. See if anyone made it.” Ruthy lifted her eyes to Luke Stone. “Can you take me? Can we ride upstream and search?”

True, she had plans to escape her family. Ma slapped her and Pa was a lazy complainer and Virgil paid her disgusting attention. True, they’d never spoken a kind word to her while she toiled for long hours every day for years. True,
they were none too smart and none too clean and none too honest. But that didn’t mean she wanted them dead.

Much.

“No, we can’t,” Luke said.

His answer caused a wave of relief so strong she felt guilty. “Why not?”

She realized no matter what his reason, she was going to accept it.

“I’m headed south, and I’m in a hurry.” His horse continued to wade relentlessly in a direction away from where she’d last seen the Reinhardts.

Ruthy hoped he remained strong in his refusal. A woman saved from a deadly situation couldn’t exactly dictate where her savior was riding, now could she? This way, the choice to go back and spend days on a futile search was out of her hands. Why of course she’d have gone back and hunted for those dreadful Reinhardts. Except Luke was in a hurry. She had no choice in the matter; she had to go along in whatever direction he was heading.

Why did she feel as if she were making excuses to God?

It was because when her turn came to stand before the pearly gates, she needed to be ready when He asked her why she’d left her family to drown, that’s why.

She debated, then decided there was no sense asking for forgiveness yet. She needed to quit sinning first. It was wrong to be so cheerful, and she did her best to suppress it.

“Why are we in the water?” She saw the steep banks and a cold curl of terror did plenty of cheer suppressing. “More water could come. We need to get to high ground.”

“Nope. Not yet.” Luke seemed unusually alert. Of course she was comparing him to Pa and Virgil, who looked on the edge of napping most of the time. Luke’s focus moved
left to right, behind him, overhead, always his eyes roving. The alertness went beyond just watching. He was listening, smelling, most of all thinking. Ruthy knew what that was like, because hiding in the woods when Virgil was hunting her had given her sharp skills of her own.

Even so, she felt like she was buried alive at the bottom of these high banks. Ruthy was tempted to shake the man for his terse answers. She decided to avoid questions he could answer with yes or no. That wouldn’t be hard. That was mostly how she spoke to the half-wit Reinhardts.

“Tell me why we’re riding in the water.”

He looked down at her, his eyes shaded by a broad-brimmed western hat. She had the sense that he was making a decision, and she was afraid she wouldn’t like it.

“Miss, I don’t know you, and it ain’t polite to go asking a lot of questions in the West. If I tell you my business, you may have cause to regret knowing it.”

“Are you an outlaw?”

“Not in any honest court in the land, I’m not.”

Which meant he was.

“I’ll get you to the nearest town, and you’ll have to make your way from there. Folks will help you find your family.” He seemed hard and knowing about the land, but not a cruel man, at least not in his handling of her.

A small shudder was uncontrollable. “I had plans to leave my family when the opportunity arose. They aren’t my family, more like I . . . I worked for them. It’s a shame they probably all drowned, but I won’t miss having them around. Maybe I can find a job in this town.”

It would be wiser to get on a stage and travel far and fast before she settled down, but she had no money for a ticket. Her only possessions were the extremely filthy and
battered clothes on her back. It wasn’t going to be easy to put space between her and the Reinhardts. But if they survived, maybe they’d think she was dead. Yes, of course they’d assume she’d drowned. They wouldn’t hunt her any more than she planned to hunt them. She could risk stopping for a while. Earn a bit of money.

“I know a man or two in Broken Wheel, the closest town. They might help you find work. Best to not let on you know me, though. I’ve got trouble to face and a bad hombre might decide to make you part of it.”

So he was taking her to his home. She was tempted to blurt out her fear of Virgil finding her—although she was quite sure he was dead. But just in case, she’d like to ask Luke for his protection. Except if she did, it might annoy him to the point he’d turn around and find the Reinhardts and hand her over, the better to shed any responsibility for her.

Of course to do that, he’d have to veer from his course.

“Where are we?” She thought they’d been in Indian Territory when the flood hit, although they’d been riding for weeks and she admitted to being more than a bit lost.

“Texas. You’ve floated a fair piece, miss. Probably one river ran into another more than once while you were floating along. Doubt we could find your family if we tried.”

Which suited Ruthy right down to the ground.

“Can I have some more water?” She wondered how long it’d been since she’d eaten.

He let her drink longer this time until her belly was full and her throat much soothed. The quenched thirst wed to her relief at being irretrievably lost made her aching head heavy. “Is it a long way to Broken Wheel?”

“I hoped to make it there by nightfall. Once I leave this streambed, I’ll make better time.”

“Well, wake me when we get there.” Her eyes flickered shut.

Luke was tempted to laugh. She was a trusting little thing to fall asleep in a stranger’s arms. Not all that worried that he might not be an honorable protector, never mind that his arms would get mighty tired.

A pretty little thing, too. She was coated in long-dried muddy water. Her red hair was stiff, her sunburned skin peeling. So calling her pretty was saying a lot.

He wouldn’t mind seeing her all cleaned up.

It looked as if he had little choice about carrying her while she napped, and so he did as he was told. The sun was at high noon and he rode along, not pushing his overly burdened horse, enjoying the shade of the towering trees lining the stream. The banks showed the ravages of the flood that had passed through, yet there was no sign of a storm upstream so he stayed down here, lengthening the stretch between entering and leaving the waterway, to make pursuit all the more difficult. He finally picked a rocky spot, rode up onto the plains and headed for home at a fast clip.

They’d covered a fair distance, and the land was taking on the broken look, with the layered red rocks that surrounded his ranch, when he spotted a rocky stretch, wooded, with a spring trickling from a stone. His horse could use a break, and his little saddle partner should probably have more water and something to eat. He’d’ve finagled a meal without stopping if not for her, but he couldn’t show up in Broken Wheel before dark anyway.