Chapter Eleven
Honey mesquite brush was all about me, my face smashed into the dirt, a rock cutting my cheek. If I survived this, if the bandits didn’t assassinate me, I’d blaze with fury—I needed that roost.
A sunray flickered low through slim sycamore trunks. Boot steps crinkled in the wood nettle, and I glimpsed wavy black hair, golden jaw, black slicker hanging like a cape.
I sputtered—that scallywag, in my way again. I jumped up, pushed back my hair, cowboy hat toppling earthward, and trained my Winchester on the Lawman.
“Minnie?” His low, resonant voice was easy and unhurried.
“Sakes alive, I told ya—it’s Amelia.” I steadied my weapon and groaned loudly, exasperated. “Miss Hoopes.”
The Lawman raced his gaze across my face, as if remembering my features. I didn’t lower my gun.
Well, I could shoot him. He knew my secrets. His glare lowered to my gun barrel, one eyebrow lifting. Mocking me as I pointed a rifle at his face.
He was the only one who knew about the cowboys—I had no reason to trust him. We were miles from our homesteads. Folks would assume the Bunch had finally got him. No one would know. The Lawman’s gaze was detached, unafraid as he faced death. I could shoot.
Well, of course I couldn’t. But Lord have mercy, part of me wanted to. To be rid of the worry, to allow this haunting to dim. If he told my secret, vigilantes would rise against me—and I’d be jailed or buried six feet under, clean and simple.
“You just tug back the little trigger,” he said, his voice without inflection. “That notch there on the bottom of the gun.”
“Gah.” I cursed. Flung the barrel earthward. He deserved to be shot for such audacity. For shooting my turkeys. “Those were my birds.”
“Yours? I’ve been scouting them all afternoon.”
“Like hell.”
“And you know where their den is?”
I flicked my hand westward. “In the woods.”
He settled his hands in his pockets, sable leather gun belt gleaming in the gloom of his oilcloth slicker. His silhouette diffused the light, sunrays filtering between the mustard-yellow leaves. Dark hair fell about his face in waves. It’d grown longer these months, long enough for him to tie back.
“I’m not a thief,” he said, voice hard. “I don’t like being accused of things I haven’t done.”
My eyebrows flung upward. The outlaw was miffed, not that I trained a long gun on him but that I accused him of stealing. Or was he alluding to the men I’d slain? A chill cinched around my forearms, a panic that he’d tell, a fear of what I’d do if threatened.
I stalked forward, heels scrunching fallen leaves. “Those birds,” I gritted through clenched teeth, “ran toward my call.”
“Those pathetic caws were yours?” His gaze on the hardwoods. “I assumed it some injured magpie.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
His thumb brushed over his leather holster. “Did it, Minnie?”
“Amelia.”
“Darling, it don’t matter what your name is.”
“Just admit you snatched my kill.” I shoved his chest. His hands shot out, encircled my wrists. I gasped. His skin was hot and calloused, his linen shirt coarse below my palms. I tilted forward, wondered what this gunfighter would do if I sank my nails deeper into his muscles.
He released my wrists, stepped back, ran a hand down his face. “You’re a wild one, huh?”
“What in all creation does that mean? I can’t accuse you of theft, but you can name me?”
He unsheathed a bowie hunting knife and methodically cleaned the turkey. The brush rustled, and I damn near jumped outta my skin. But it was just One Eye, his wolf dog, not some bandit intent on slaughter.
I stepped forward. “This isn’t over.”
“Stop yammering and help already,” he said. “I’ll give you half.”
“Yammering?”
“You do know, this is outlaw territory.” He sawed at the birds. “They will not hesitate. They will shoot.”
Course I knew this was outlaw land—I didn’t fancy being treated as a simpleton. A flush of heat raced down my fingers. “I’m not a child.”
He rubbed the heel of his palm against an eye. “What does that even mean?” He waved a hand at me. “Obviously you’re not a child.”
“I don’t like being coddled.”
“Not coddling you.”
“Felt that way.”
“Well”—his voice was harsh, a whip—“stop feeling.”
Apparently the gunfighter was hardheaded and wouldn’t admit the catch was mine. But I supposed I could take half. He probably needed food as well—it was actually magnanimous of me to share.
“You’re mighty—” I yanked my hunting knife from my sheath and screeched when I sliced my palm.
“All nature, Amelia. Quiet.”
I pressed against the deep line of red spilling from my hand. I hadn’t cut myself since I was in pinafores.
The Lawman sprang up, his voice astonished. “You cut yourself?”
“Don’t you dare say nothing.” I clenched my teeth, inhaled. “You all-overish distracted me.”
“Distracted you, huh?” He edged closer.
Gloaming glinted low through the scrub brush, fuzzed about the lime-green lichen, as if the forest tipped. I was dizzy.
“Aw, damn.” He rubbed his jaw. “That’s bad.” He reached for me, and I jerked away. He rolled his eyes. “Let me see.”
“You a doctor, Lawman?”
He nodded as he studied my cut.
“You are?”
He kneaded his shoulder beneath his duster and seemed so uncomfortable I believed him. “No,” he said. “Not a doctor, but I have some skill.”
On my palm, blood pooled, the color shocking in the muted browns of the groundcover. I wobbled, and he swept an arm behind my back, lowered me to the forest floor.
“Don’t touch me.” I nudged him away with my elbows, my hands still pressed together to stanch the blood.
He ripped some fabric, then wrapped a piece of his butter-colored shirt around my cut.
His hands were wide, with defined veins and square nails, trimmed and clean.
His shirt was unbuttoned at his throat below his white kerchief and black vest, his fingers warm on my wrist. I thought of Magnolia pressing salve and rosewood calico to my sliced thigh.
Her gasps of laughter at catching ourselves amid honey locust thorns, her palm swiping her forehead, smearing a translucent stain of red blood. All autumn long, no one had touched me.
He tied off my bandage and pressed the back of his palm to my forehead. “Can you walk?”
“Course I can walk.”
“Where’s your buckskin? Cricket, right?”
I gestured behind us. Then folded forward over my crossed legs, pressed the pads of my palms to my eyes.
It had been a long while since I’d felt so known.
Here in the wildwood, with an outlaw, I felt authenticity.
I glimpsed that vulnerable and rare pulse of friendship, in a way I hadn’t since everything that had happened last spring.
“You’re just lightheaded,” he said. “Lost some blood.”
“I know that,” I snapped.
“I truly thought they were my catch,” I added, my tone somewhere between a grumble and a sob. “I don’t like sharing.”
“I can tell. Me neither.” The wind cracked through the dried leaves of a pin oak. “Perhaps we’ll learn?”
His boots swept through the grass toward the turkeys. These past months, I’d felt rooted to the earth, steady and unwavering. But this man was a raging storm. He made me want to race into his winds and feel something. Get lost a moment. Abandon myself, make another shocking choice.
He wasn’t good for me, just the sort of anarchy I should avoid. But Olive was right—I couldn’t survive winter alone. Perhaps he was the safest, as I couldn’t hurt him. “I won’t promise outrageous things,” I said. “I’ll call you a cheat, when you cheat.”
He tied together a couple of birds for each of us. Then stood, long body unfolding. “I won’t treat you as weak neither.”
“That’s just an excuse so you can snarl whenever you like.”
“Arguing with me is the most fun you’ve had in weeks,” he said.
“You’re dreaming.”
He crouched beside me. Crinkles edged beside his eyes, his tan throat glistening with sweat. He was loathsome—but a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “You love it,” he said.
“You—”
He cut me off. “Darling, I just don’t have time for playing.” He stood, hefted me upright. “Let’s go.”
I bit my lip, amused, off-kilter, then slung my Winchester cross my back and followed him through the brush. I couldn’t remember anyone, ever, flinging fire back at me with such smoothness. I didn’t know what to do with him.
Sound eased in that calm before nightfall.
The softening of blackbird song in the overstory, the smush of leaves underfoot, the gawky yips of coyotes out yonder.
We’d reach Cricket by candlelighting, and I knew the buffalo trails of this land well enough to ride by the glow of the full moon.
Though lightheaded and unsettled, I hadn’t lost that much blood—I’d be fine.
The Lawman whispered through the hardwoods, his broad shoulders turning to avoid a branch, his gaze roaming the timber: attentive, silent, lethal. The wind reverberated through creeper, and then a thwupt sliced through forest sounds.
I dove behind a stump, cocked my pistol.
A hatchet cleaved through my muslin sleeve, pinning my hand against the bark.
The weapon jangled with hawkbells, and a golden eagle feather reverberated.
I scanned the wood. No movement, no color, no sound, just the weight of the impending.
The Lawman crouched beside me, hands raised, his gun dropped into the autumn-hued leaves.
All wrath—was this the borderline of Osage territory?