Chapter Twenty-two
She would have been pacing if her ankle hadn’t throbbed. Instead she sat before the window in her bedroom, her leg propped up on a pillow, worrying about Ramon and concerned for her uncle when the thunder of hoofbeats rent the air.
Tightening the sash of her pale pink wrapper, she limped to the door to meet the group of mounted men who pounded into the yard, raising a cloud of dust.
Near the front of the group, slumped over and tied onto his horse, the sight of her uncle’s bloody figure sent a shaft of terror slicing through her.
“Dear Lord,” she whispered through lips that went suddenly dry. She gripped the door frame at Cleve Sanders’s approach.
“It’s real bad, Miss McConnell.”
Numbly she nodded. “Hurry, bring him inside so we can tend him.” Sanders and three other men eased him down from the horse then carried his blood-soaked body up the back stairs and into the house.
His breeches were ragged and dirty from the fall he had taken from his horse, his shirt stained crimson from the massive wound in his stomach.
Another bloody hole seeped fluid from his chest.
“Take him into the bedroom.” Carly bit hard on her lip, fighting back the strangled sounds of fear that threatened to erupt from her throat.
Suddenly all the heated words they’d said, all the disagreements, all her uncle’s machinations meant nothing.
Uncle Fletcher was dying. He was hurting and he was frightened.
In his own way he had been good to her. He was family.
Her mother’s only brother. And she was all he had.
“Caralee?” He said her name so softly she almost didn’t hear him. She moved closer as the men laid him down on the deep feather mattress and began to pull off his boots.
“I’m right here, Uncle Fletcher.” She forced a smile and brushed the tears from her cheeks, then reached over and caught his hand.
She sat down in the chair beside him, her legs no longer steady.
On the opposite side of the bed, Cleve Sanders helped Rita strip away his torn and bloody shirt and begin to wash his wounds, but all of them knew the effort was futile.
A low sound of pain struggled up from his throat.
He dragged in a breath and slowly released it.
“Didn’t mean for it to end like … this.” He stared up at her, his cheeks sunken with pain, his skin as waxen as a candle.
“Wanted … to be sure you’d be … taken care of. Your mother … would have wanted that.”
Her throat ached. She felt as if she might strangle. “You did your best, Uncle Fletcher.”
“Hoped … you and Vincent…”
“I know. Don’t try to talk. You have to save your strength.” Dear God, he was dying! Somehow she couldn’t make herself believe it.
“No … time for that.” His weak hold on her hand tightened faintly. “Want you to know … in my own way I … loved you. Never said that to anyone. Not … my way. Never told your mother either. Always … regretted that.”
She swallowed past the ache. “I love you, too, Uncle Fletcher. In the years after Mama died, I was so lonely. I came here and you took that loneliness away.”
He grimaced as a ripple of pain speared through him. “Wanted you to be happy … have the things your mother never had.” He started coughing and a trickle of blood seeped out from between his thin blue lips.
Carly pressed a clean white handkerchief against his mouth to blot the red liquid away, her hands shaking, tears flooding her cheeks. “I am happy, Uncle. And I have everything I want—I promise you that.”
He gazed at her with a measure of his old wily shrewdness. “You’re talking about … the Spaniard. You’re still … in love with him. Saw it almost from the start.”
“I know how you feel about him, Uncle Fletcher, but—”
“He’ll take care of you … never doubted that. Good man to have as a friend … bad man for an enemy.”
Carly said nothing, just gripped her uncle’s white-knuckled hand. “I wish this hadn’t happened. I’d give anything if—”
“Just the way life is, honey. Lots of things … I wish I hadn’t done. Things I wish I could … change.”
A sob welled up, but only a soft sound escaped.
“Where’s Rita?” he asked.
“I am here, Senor Fletcher.” She hurried forward, her face ashen, tears flowing freely down her cheeks.
Fletcher sucked in a wheezing breath of air. “I’ll miss you, woman. Never said that before, either.”
Rita began to speak to him in Spanish, intoning him not to leave her, but already he was slipping away. Carly could almost feel his life-force dimming in front of her eyes.
“Caralee?” he whispered.
“Yes, Uncle Fletcher?”
“Be happy,” he said on a final breath of air and then he was gone.
Rita bent over him, sobbing unashamedly against his thick chest, but Carly slipped quietly out of the room.
Walking numbly, hardly aware of the pain in her ankle, she moved past the low-burning lamps in the hall and made her way into the darkened living room.
Sitting down in front of the embers that had burned to ashes in the huge rock hearth, she leaned wearily against the back of the horsehair sofa.
In one night her whole life had changed. Ramon was gravely injured and her uncle was dead. The sheriff still prowled the hills for Pedro Sanchez and the rest of the men.
They all still searched for El Dragón.
She bent her head, laced her fingers together, and said a quiet prayer for her uncle. When she finished, she said one for Ramon and the rest of his men. A shuffling noise intruded, then voices sounded in the hall.
Cleve Sanders paused beside three of his men. “At least we got the filthy bastard who done it.”
Carly stiffened on the sofa. “What—what did you say?”
“Sorry, Miss McConnell, I didn’t know you were in there.”
“That’s all right. What were you saying?”
“I was just telling the boys we got the man who murdered your uncle. Riley Wilkins killed the Spanish Dragon.”
Were they talking about Ramon? Had something happened at Las Almas after she had left there? Carly’s heart constricted. Dear God, it couldn’t be true! “Wh-what happened?”
“We were following them up a trail north of the river. The outlaws split up and we lost them in the hills, but the leader circled back. He climbed up in the rocks and ambushed your uncle.”
“How did you know it was El Dragón?” she asked carefully.
“I seen him that day we took Llano Mirada. We were with Sheriff Layton when they carted him off to jail.”
“And that was the same man who killed Uncle Fletcher?”
“That’s right. Riley Wilkins shot him deader’n a slaughtered steer.”
Carly said nothing more. Just got shakily up from her seat in front of the empty hearth and made her way unsteadily down the hallway toward her room.
She wished she could go to Ramon, tell him her uncle was dead and so was his cousin, but now was not the time.
She couldn’t take the chance of leading them to Ramon.
If they discovered he was wounded, they would know he’d been with the men at the jail that night.
She would have to send Jose to find out how he was. She was certain now that she could trust him. Tomorrow afternoon, perhaps she’d be able to go to him herself. Now that her uncle was dead, people wouldn’t be surprised when she returned to the care of her husband.
Numb clear to her bones, more frightened and alone than she had felt since her mother died, Carly went inside and slowly closed the door to her room.
* * *
Ramon tossed restlessly in the deep feather mattress.
He had slept off and on, weakened by loss of blood, his condition growing worse in the hours since his return to Las Almas.
By mid-afternoon of the following day, a fever raged through his bloodstream and he passed in and out of consciousness, only dimly aware of his surroundings.
Jose brought word of his condition to Carly, who wrung her hands and fought back tears, who paced and fretted, but knew she dared not leave the rancho. Not with Sheriff Jeremy Layton waiting for her in a chair in her uncle’s study.
He came to his feet when she walked in, frowned at the slight limp she tried to conceal, then gave her a polite nod of his head.
“Real sorry to hear about your uncle, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Sheriff Layton.”
“I know this isn’t a very good time, but there’s a couple of questions I need to ask.”
She sat down in the chair next to him, straightening her full black bombazine skirts around her. “Of course. I’ll be happy to help any way that I can.” Adjusting the prim white lace on her cuffs, she tried not to look as nervous as she felt. “What is it you wish to know?”
The sheriff returned to his seat. “I’m gonna be real straight with you, ma’am.
Your uncle had a mighty strong suspicion your husband was involved, some way or other, with the outlaw who killed him.
He figured maybe the don was passing information, possibly even rode on some of his raids.
I thought maybe that had something to do with the reason you left him and came back here. ”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”
“What I’m saying is if the don was involved in something you didn’t approve of, maybe that was the reason you wanted the marriage annulled.”
So he knew about the proceedings her uncle had started. Then again Jeremy Layton seemed to know just about everything.
Carly forced her eyes to his face. “Actually, I had already decided to go back to my husband before my uncle was killed. The truth is I never should have left him in the first place.”
“I know it ain’t exactly my business, but it would surely set my mind to rest if you would tell me why you did.”