Wanted (36 page)

“Can you play ‘Betsy'?” Maggie said, losing the last of her shyness.

“‘Sweet Betsy from Pike'?” he said roguishly. “Can I play that? Ah, can I ever play that.” He looked down at Maggie. “I used to play that song for Lori when she was no taller than you.”

“I like Miss Lori.”

“Everybody likes Miss Lori,” he said.

“But me best,” Maggie argued. “She likes Caroline.”

“I like Caroline too,” he complained, his voice teasing.

Maggie squirmed happily next to Beth, who put her arm around the girl and pulled her close while her eyes rolled at the thought of Caroline's admirers.

Nick chuckled.

Beth tipped her head in a gesture that was becoming increasingly dear to Nick. “You should do that more often,” she said.

Nick felt that warmth spread into his heart, take root there, and begin to fill it. He found a rock in his throat, so he lifted the harmonica and let it talk for him. The lively sound of “Sweet Betsy” filled the clearing, and when he was finished, he started another, this time a plaintive melody, a lovely, haunting melody that sang through the woods. Before he was finished, he heard the melody put into voice, and saw Lori coming over, her mouth framing the words with such sweet clarity. It was one of the songs that never failed to move an audience: “Red Rosey Bush.”

Nick turned his head and saw Davis. He was, as usual, leaning against a tree, watching. His gaze turned hungry as it followed Lori's movements. Hungry and intense and brooding.

The bittersweet melody had always affected Lori's sentimental streak, but Nick noticed her eyes were already red and swollen, though her voice was pure and strong as ever. Something flickered on the Ranger's face, but Nick couldn't tell what it was before he turned away and disappeared into the shadows.

Nick finished, and all of them were silent, a heavy emotion gripping them all. Even Maggie was still, her hand caught in her mother's tight grasp. Nick wished that brief moment of peace hadn't been swallowed whole by foreboding, by a suffocating presentiment.

For the child he tried to shake it off. He started another tune, one he'd heard Lori sing for Maggie. Lori approached and sat down next to Maggie, her voice losing the plaintive quality as she matched Nick's forced playfulness.

“
Froggie went a'courting, he did ride
,

Uh-huh”

Just as Nick moved slightly in rhythm to the music, a rifle shot rang out, raising a cloud of dirt a fraction of an inch away from where he'd moved. His reaction was instantaneous. “Take cover,” he yelled to the two women as his own body shielded Maggie, picking her up and following the two women to sparse shelter behind thin aspen trees.

Nick kept his body over Maggie's as he looked for Beth and Lori. Both were hugging the ground as another shot rang out, then a third, the latter coming again within inches of Nick. Whoever the shooter was, he was good. Very good.

Nick heard another shot, this time from a six-gun. Davis. The other man, the shooter, had a rifle. Nick knew enough about guns to recognize the difference.

The rifle sounded again, this time coming nowhere close, and he knew the gunman was now aiming for Davis. The Ranger didn't have a chance against a rifle. Nick lifted himself. “Go to your mother,” he told Maggie, and nodded his head to Lori for the three of them to move back.

If only he was stronger. If only he could get his hands on the rifle in the Ranger's saddle, now lying about fifty feet away. And bullets. Davis kept them in his gunbelt or saddlebags, both with him, while the rifle was a good hundred feet away in clear ground. He prayed his legs would work, that his body still had enough strength in it to reach the rifle.

Another shot rang out, then another. How many bullets from the rifle now? Four? He would wait until he heard the sixth, then make a run for the rifle and try to get bullets from Davis.

If Davis would give them to him.

He found his harmonica and tossed it out, drawing the gunman's attention. A shot threw the harmonica in the air, and the Ranger fired again, but he was too far away to be effective.

Five shots.

He waited impatiently and then realized the gunman didn't have a good shot. He was waiting too. Nick saw a movement to the side. He guessed it was Lori, who had also understood what needed to be done and had shaken some bushes.

Another shot. Six.

Nick got to his feet and dashed toward Davis's saddle, desperation driving a body that felt leaden. He grabbed the rifle, just as another shot barely missed him, and he rolled behind some bushes, crawling toward where he guessed Davis to be. He heard several pistol shots and realized Davis was providing cover for him.

He located the Ranger approximately six feet away. He was on his side, reloading his six-gun as bullets splattered around him. Like Nick, he was only partly covered by the tree trunks. Nick would have sold his soul at that moment for an honest, good-sized rock.

He found his own limited cover. “Bullets?” he asked Davis.

The Ranger hesitated only a moment. “I'll trade you the pistol for the rifle.”

Nick was loath to give up the weapon, but he knew Davis was probably better at this than he was. He, like Lori, was damn good at bottles and apples, but the Ranger had more experience at human targets. He threw the rifle to the Ranger and caught the pistol the man threw back at him.

Christ, it felt good to be able to defend himself, though he knew his role now was to give Davis cover, to distract the gunman while Davis did the real work. Still, the gun felt fine in his hands.

“That hill up there,” the Ranger said, and Nick found the glint of late sun on a rifle barrel. He nodded.

“Shoot as close to that as you can,” Davis said. “I'll move around and try for a better shot.”

Nick aimed at the rocks above, coming damn close to where he'd seen the gleam of metal. The rifle sounded again, dirt spurting up a foot away. Nick crawled in that direction, thinking the gunman would now move his sights a bit to the left. He fired, knowing he was making himself a target, knowing it was necessary if Davis was to get a clean shot.

He didn't care about Davis, but he cared about the child and Lori and Beth, and he realized Davis had been right all along about the bounty hunters. The gunman had come close to hitting Maggie; he obviously didn't care whom he killed, and that meant the women and child were in danger. He'd settle the score with Morgan Davis later. He rolled another couple of feet and shot again. Damn, he had only one more bullet left.

How long had it been? Had Davis had a chance to move upward. Then he heard a rifle shot, and a grunt of pain. Something rolled down the incline where the gunman had lain in wait.

Everything was quiet. Morgan was apparently waiting too, making sure the man had been hit and wasn't just faking. A bird started trilling again, overhead. Nick saw Morgan finally rise and carefully approach the clump of rocks that had hidden the gunman. He went behind them, then came back out, his hands holding a second rifle.

Nick looked down at his pistol. One shot left. That's all he needed. Morgan's hands were at his side, the rifles pointed downward.

One damn shot.

He aimed.

The Ranger saw the gun in his hand, stilled. Waiting.

Nick couldn't pull the trigger. He tried. His finger closed around the trigger, but he couldn't make that final movement. He cursed himself. He'd been able to pull the trigger on Wardlaw, to save Andy. Instinct pure and simple. But it failed him now. Perhaps if Davis had a rifle pointed at him … if it were a fair fight …

If. Nick felt waves of defeat as the Ranger started moving forward again. He reached Nick, tucked both rifles under his arm, and held out his hand for the pistol. “No bullets left?” he said.

Nick shook his head. “No,” he said.

Davis laid the rifles on the ground and checked the pistol. “You don't count so good.”

A muscle jerked in Nick's cheek. He felt it, and he damned it. He wanted to be as impassive as the man two feet away from him. He just turned around and headed back to camp, to his bed, to Beth … to captivity.

He didn't even care who it was up there.

“Braden?”

He turned around.

“No curiosity about who it was?”

A muscle flexed in Nick's face again. “What difference does it make to me?”

“Then why did you help?”

“He almost hit Beth and Maggie,” Nick said tonelessly.

“Well, he's dead now, thanks to you. A bounty hunter named Curt Nesbitt.”

Nick stiffened, the area around his mouth tensing.

But Morgan wasn't through. “You were real good back there.”

Nick didn't want the Ranger's praise. Especially not now. He shrugged, mindless of the fact that it was the same gesture he had seen Davis use so many times. He felt sick. Now that the urgency was gone, he felt leaden and weak and … crushed. He hadn't been able to do what he needed to do. Every step seemed like a mile, but finally he reached his bedroll—and the tree he'd been chained to. The tree that represented every damn failure.

He ignored Beth's anxious question, Maggie's frightened face, Lori's concerned glance. He lowered himself and turned away from all of them.

The Ranger had won!

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Lori realized immediately that the level of tension, already near the boiling point between the Ranger and Nick, had increased even further in the minutes after the shooting.

Nick's knife wound was bleeding again, and Beth tended it, carefully sewing back where the threads had broken. Lori tried to calm Maggie and a disgruntled pig, which had been disturbed from its dinner.

Neither of the men seemed disposed to talk about what had happened. After accompanying Nick back to his blankets, Morgan disappeared again without words. Nick was unusually sullen, bearing the pain of restitching with clenched teeth.

As Lori comforted a still frightened Maggie in her arms, she kept her eyes on her brother. Something vital had drained from Nick, and a twisting pain snaked through her. She wondered what had happened now to plunge him into such despair. She squeezed Maggie affectionately and asked her to help look for Nick's harmonica. They finally found the mouth organ, a bullet stuck halfway through it. There would be no more music from that source, and it had been one of Nick's most treasured possessions, a gift from years back.

She whispered to Maggie, telling her a story until Beth finished doctoring Nick and moved over to Lori to take Maggie in her arms. Lori traded places with her, sitting next to Nick, wanting desperately to know what had taken place.

“What happened?” she asked quietly, keeping her voice too low for Beth and Maggie to hear.

“I had a chance, Lori, I had a chance to take him, and I couldn't”

“The shooter?”

“Hell no—Davis. After he'd shot the man. Bounty hunter, he said. I had Davis in clear sight, a gun in my hand, and I couldn't pull the trigger.”

Lori privately thanked God, but she wisely refrained from saying so. And she was surprised. She knew Nick, knew his temper, knew how the anger had been building against Morgan, especially after the past two days. Her hand went to him, locking her fingers in his.

He looked around, saw that Beth was out of hearing distance, calming Maggie. “I'm a coward, Lori,” he said with a defeat that almost broke Lori's heart.

“Cowardice had nothing to do with it,” she said. “Look how you exposed yourself to help …”

“To help the man who's taking me to hang and who's sleeping with my sister.” This time Nick's frustration exploded with words he hadn't said to her before, though they had been in his eyes.

Lori swallowed, her face reddening, but she wasn't going to lie to him. “That was as much my doing as his,” she said. “I care about him. I didn't want to. I still don't, but I do, and … dear God, I'm so glad you couldn't shoot him.”

He was silent.

“The family will be waiting in Pueblo,” she said. “We can find some way to free you.”

“Without killing him?” he asked, disbelieving. “He'll chase me the rest of his life. He's that kind of man.” With that comment he turned away from her, closing her out, and Lori's heart cracked into pieces. Her heart was divided against itself, and she wondered whether it could ever be whole again.

She hesitated, then left his side. There was nothing she could say to ease the burden he'd taken upon himself. She knew he felt he had not been up to the task of killing Morgan Davis—not only for himself but for her.

Lori wished there was something she could do. Anything to keep busy. But the meat was almost done on the spit. She'd already washed every piece of clothing she could find. Beth was still soothing Maggie, and her brother didn't want anything to do with her.

And she couldn't go to Morgan. Not now, and do even more injury to Nick. She'd done enough already.

She went over to Clementine and rubbed the mare's neck, taking a tiny satisfaction in the way the horse shivered in delight. She rested her head against the animal's neck. She needed to give affection to someone, something. Holy Mary, but she was burgeoning with the need, and no one wanted any.

The horse wasn't saddled, but it was bridled. In sudden impulse she unbuckled the hobbles and bolted to the horse's back. She had to get away from the unrelieved tension, from the blame and guilt and uncertainty.

Without looking back, she turned toward the mountain to the west and tightened her knees against Clementine's sides. She was a child again, riding in front of an approving crowd, looking down and seeing Nick's proud face. She closed her eyes for a moment, bringing back those days, letting Clementine have her head, trusting her as she had always trusted her.

Lori was still thinking of those days when the side of her head hit the low branch of a tree.