Chapter 11 #2
Clint found himself liking Shea Randall. He’d feared tears, screams, incriminations, or worse. Instead, she had stated her case calmly, even with a little bite. He suspected she hadn’t given up.
“And now you have some food … eggs, bacon.”
But Shea was in no mood to be pacified. Or let him feel less guilty. “For the condemned?” she asked grimly.
“Do you feel like the condemned?”
“How would you feel locked in a small room, at the mercy of people you don’t know, for reasons you don’t understand?”
“Try it for ten years,” Clint said roughly.
“If you’re talking about …” She stopped, not knowing what to call Rafe Tyler. “He brought it on himself by stealing.”
“Did he?” Clint deliberately made his question provocative.
“What do you mean?”
Her puzzlement made Clint suddenly want to explain what Rafe Tyler obviously had not. But it wasn’t his place to explain. He could only talk about his own feelings.
“I met Rafe,” Clint said slowly, “when he was a captain and I was nineteen, my brother sixteen. We’d enlisted in the Union Army, but God knows we were as green as you can get.
Captain Tyler was our officer, and he worked tirelessly to shape us up, but the army hurried us into battle before we were ready.
Rafe made captain about that time, and we were assigned a new lieutenant, one as green as we were.
“The lieutenant was trying to make a name for himself. He ordered my brother to take out a sniper, and Ben got caught in the open and shot. The sniper kept firing at him. I went after him and took a bullet myself. No one could reach the sniper from our lines. The lieutenant panicked and told the others to withdraw, leaving us out in the open. Captain Tyler was riding by at that time and saw what was happening. He had orders to report directly to General Grant, but he disobeyed them and crawled out to help us. He was able to get close enough to kill the sniper, but not before he, too, was shot.”
Clint didn’t disguise the intensity of feeling he always had when he remembered that day. “Captain Tyler was the best officer I ever saw throughout the war. Do you really think a man who would risk his life, who would disobey orders to save two enlisted men, would do what they said he did?”
“People … change.”
“Not that much, Miss Randall.”
“He practically admitted …”
“Did he? Or did he just refuse to defend himself? No one listened before.”
He saw her tremble slightly as she considered his words. “But he’s robbing stages now.…”
“He’s only stealing from one man, Miss Randall. And you happen to be his daughter. Why should he think you might listen when no one else has? Rafe didn’t want you here. He still doesn’t. He’s just trying to protect my brother and me. Again.”
There was silence for a moment, then her eyes widened. “If he was innocent …”
Clint waited for her to complete the thought in her mind as well as with her mouth.
She had seen the clipping reporting that Jack Randall was the principal witness against Captain Rafferty Tyler.
She shook her head. “It can’t be. Everyone says Jack Randall is a fine man. He’s respected and liked and—”
“You don’t know him, do you, Miss Randall?”
“No, but I heard …”
“And he’s your father.” Clint said the words gently.
She just looked at him with those disturbing blue-gray eyes of hers, and Clint suddenly understood why Rafe had been so testy the other day. These days, Clint had his own testiness to cope with, and that, too, had to do with a woman.
“I’ll cook some eggs and bacon,” he said abruptly, letting her draw her own conclusions.
Shea thought back to late last night when Rafe had allowed her out to attend to her needs.
She’d realized he was leaving the clearing, that he had been going out to do something that involved her father.
For the first time he’d worn a gunbelt, the holster strapped to his thigh.
He’d looked lethal and forbidding, so different from the men she’d known in Boston.
His mouth narrowed into a tight line, he’d had very little to say to her.
He’d made sure she had enough water and food and left an empty bucket.
She had tried all night to find a way to escape, but her captor had taken everything that could possibly be used as a wedge to force open either the window or door.
And while she’d worked fruitlessly at her apparently impossible task, she’d worried about what she would do if he didn’t return. And she, incomprehensibly, also worried about him. Because she had become so dependent on him for her every need? Or was it something more?
She now seized the opportunity to learn anything she could from Clint, even though she couldn’t accept everything he was saying. He was excusing Rafferty Tyler and therefore himself. If Rafe Tyler had been innocent, wouldn’t he try to clear himself rather than commit other crimes?
“Tell me more about … Rafferty Tyler,” she said as he produced a frying pan from the saddlebags he’d carried inside.
Clint shrugged. “That’s all I know. He was a damned good officer.”
“Then about you,” she said, needing companionship after so many hours alone.
He looked at her sharply. “Nothing to tell.”
“No wife? No children?”
Clint stared at her for a moment, his gaze suspicious. “It won’t work, Miss Randall,” he said. “I won’t let you go. You will be safe here until we’ve finished what we came for, and then you can go wherever you want.”
“What did you come here for?” She kept trying to probe their real intention toward her father, although so far every inquiry produced nothing.
“You ask too many questions.” He put some bacon in the frying pan, which he placed over the flames.
“I’ll cook that,” she offered, wanting something to do.
He nodded and stepped back.
If only she could keep the frying pan here. It would make a weapon.
The smell of sizzling bacon filled the room, and Shea felt her mouth watering. How many days had she been here? How long since she’d had a decent breakfast?
“You didn’t bring some coffee?” she asked wistfully.
“No, but I will next time.”
Her eyes clouded. “How many next times will there be?”
“I don’t know.”
She swallowed, suddenly overwhelmed by hopelessness.
She felt alien among these men who wore guns, who talked about violence and robbery like Bostonians discussing a concert.
She still didn’t physically fear them—they’d had their chances to harm her and had not—but she did fear everything they represented.
Still, a wayward part of her was fascinated with them, particularly with Rafe Tyler.
An ugly fascination, she thought. She couldn’t accept the premise that Rafe Tyler was innocent.
The courts couldn’t commit such gross injustice.
And her father … her own blood … couldn’t have schemed in such a way.
If her father was so greedy, why had he sent so much money to her mother all those years? Why would he build a school? Why would he help so many others in trouble, as the people of Casey Springs had said?
But there was still that nagging worry about Rafe Tyler. The mere thought that he might be wounded or hurt was unexpectedly devastating.
She smelled something burning and looked down. The bacon was black, curling up. Her mind still occupied with the enigmatic Rafe Tyler, she reacted instinctively and grabbed the handle of the pan, heat scorching her hand.
She dropped the pan, and grease went splattering over her dress, splashing on bare skin.
“Damn,” Clint Edwards said, moving swiftly toward her. He took her hand; the skin was already turning white.
Shea held her wrist with her other hand as the agony deepened, roaring up her arm. She felt tears form in her eyes from the pain.
“Is there water?” Clint Edwards asked.
She nodded toward the bucket of water Rafe had left for her, and Clint led her over to it. She slowly lowered her hand into it, wincing as she did so, but she made no cry at all.
“It will be all right,” he said. “Shouldn’t be any scarring, but it’s going to hurt like hell for a while. Damn, I wish there was some salve.”
Shea wished the hand would just stop hurting. She wished she could go home. But she had no home any longer, she reminded herself.
A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Can we get a doctor?”
“No, but I’ll bring some salve.” A glint of admiration shone in his eyes. “For now keep it in the water.”
Shea recalled the brand on Rafe’s hand, and she knew her pain must be very small compared to what he had suffered. She couldn’t even bear to think about that.
Instead, she closed her eyes and let the tepid water soothe her hand. Her right hand. Her drawing hand. She tried to move her fingers and winced. She glanced up, catching Clint’s gaze on her.
“When will … your friend be back?” She still felt awkward calling her kidnapper “Rafe.” Or “Tyler.” Or anything else that had the slightest hint of intimacy.
“This afternoon.”
“You sound very sure of that.”
“I am,” he said with irritating sureness. “How is your hand feeling now?”
“Terrible.”
“Perhaps some mud might help. Want to go down to the stream?”
Shea wasn’t sure she wanted to leave the bucket of water, the little relief it gave her, but getting outside the cabin sounded good. She took her hand from the water. It was still agonizingly painful. She looked at the frying pan on the floor as Clint turned toward the door. He had forgotten it!
His back was to her, so she nudged the pan with her foot until it was under the cot, just out of sight.
Murmuring a small prayer under her breath, she followed Clint out the door.