“You keep your smart mouth shut,” Carson said, eyes fixed on Potter.

  “We don’t want trouble,” Potter said. “Clay, credit me with some sense. She must have a husband around somewhere. Just not here. At this moment.”

  They dismounted. The Easterly brothers tended to the horses. Seeing a woodpile and an axe, Carson chopped some wood. He and Potter carried it in. With some reluctance, Billy Turner fetched two buckets of water from a nearby well.

  They crowded into the cabin. The woman dabbed at Lemuel’s forehead. He was sweating as if he had marched across the Sonoran Desert at high noon. His eyes were bright and hot, and he thrashed about just enough to show he was still alive.

  “Gracious, you boys are doing all my chores.” She watched as Potter stacked the wood near the cooking stove and the water went into a large washtub.

  “What else do you need, ma’am?” Carson saw Joe and Daniel coming in. He inclined his head, setting them back outside as lookouts.

  “I wish I had more, but I only fixed enough for … my man and me.”

  “You’re out here alone, aren’t you, ma’am?” Carson saw how she reacted. Her eyes darted to the rifle leaning beside the door. “You’ve got nothing to fear from any of us. As Lemuel there said, we’re just passing through.”

  “Him? Lemuel?” She looked anxiously at the man sprawled on the bed. “He’s in bad shape.”

  “There’s nothing that can be done for him,” Potter said, hobbling over by the bed.

  “You’ve got a … a wound. Let me clean it for you. Any other … wounds?” She hunted in a box by the bed for bandages.

  “Sam, boil some water. She’s getting ready to fix up Simon.” Carson hoped the others understood that using first names kept them anonymous. If any of the posse came by, the woman wouldn’t be able to give any of their full monikers.

  “Let me rustle up some food for us,” Potter said. “I don’t want Sam anywhere near anything intended for human consumption.”

  “You set yourself down first, Simon,” the woman said firmly. “I can’t play doctor if you’re hopping around.” She looked up and blushed. “I didn’t mean it that way. I—”

  “Help me get my boot off. My leg’s all swole up,” Potter said, ignoring her embarrassment.

  Carson sat on the edge of the bed and stared at Lemuel’s pallid complexion. He ran a fever. The cold compress on his forehead would help hold down his temperature until he either got better or died.

  As Carson reached to soak the rag in more water, Lemuel grabbed his wrist with surprising strength. His eyes focused.

  “Come closer, Clay.”

  Carson bent over, thinking he was about to hear where the gold was stashed.

  Instead, Lemuel Jones said, “Promise me, Clay. You gotta promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t bury me with my boots on. You understand? Take off my boots ’fore you plant me.”

  “All right.”

  “Don’t forget. Don’t …” Lemuel smiled just a little, closed his eyes, and was snoring in a few minutes.

  Snoring and wheezing enough to show he hadn’t given up the ghost. Yet.

  CHAPTER 24

  “We’ll be riding on, ma’am,” Carson said.

  “It’s dark out. Why, it’s the middle of the night!” The woman brushed back her frizzy hair. Her lips thinned into a line, showing her determination.

  “It’s midnight,” Carson said. “We don’t want to cause you more trouble. You’ve already shown us too much hospitality.”

  “You’re not trouble. Why, you’ve done my chores and not even eaten any of my food. It looks like you intend to leave me some of yours! You’re no bother, not at all.”

  Carson blinked, momentarily thrown. He hadn’t expected her kindness to cut so close. Most folks they encountered treated them like the plague. That she saw them as anything but a threat—it unsettled him. His fingers tightened on his hat brim. It was a strange thing, being seen as a decent man again.

  “It’s polite of you to say so, but when your man gets back, he might not like finding a herd of squatters in his place.” Carson watched her expression. It was unreadable; then anger set in.

  “My Jacob ain’t comin’ back,” she said.

  “I didn’t see any sign there was a man with you, not recently,” Carson said carefully. “Other than the empty stall.” He caught his breath when he saw her eyes flash to the pot simmering on the stove.

  Life was hard at the best of times. She was making a life all by herself out on the prairie, enduring dust storms, loneliness, and the threat of men worse than any band of Indians. The cabin walls were thick with dust, and a pair of cracked boots sat neatly by the hearth, untouched for who knows how long. Her only companion seemed to be the wind that scraped across the clapboard and sighed through the gaps in the eaves. A lone woman could be devoured out here by the land, or by what prowled across it. And if she survived, she often became something less than a person—a ghost in her own life, clinging to a memory, to the last warmth of a voice long gone.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “You are the strangest gang of men on the run from the law I ever did see.”

  “Do you see many?” Carson asked softly.

  This brought a smile to her lips, then a rueful laugh. She shook her head. She tucked her brown hair up again. It refused to obey her urgings to stay in place. This made her look down at the floor, a little girl caught doing something her ma warned her against.

  Carson sat quietly and watched the emotions playing on her face. When she looked up, her spirit had returned.

  “My Jacob got hisself hanged by the marshal over in Boone. All he did was argue with the proprietor of the general store.”

  “Marshal Sutcliff can be a vindictive man. Seems his hobby is hanging folks who don’t rightly deserve it.” Carson glanced toward Simon Potter. The man had stretched out alongside the bed, where Jones slept more peacefully now. Potter tossed and turned, but at least he caught a few winks. Carson was glad. One of them needed to be alert when they hit the trail again, and he wasn’t getting any sleep sitting up and talking with the woman.

  Somehow, missing sleep seemed a small thing in comparison.

  “I’ll say it again, for a bunch of ruffians and scallywags, you are decent men. I don’t understand how the world’s all upside down, you on the run and a man like the marshal claimin’ to be all lawful.”

  “It’s better for you if we ride on as quick as a rabbit, ma’am. Because of the marshal. If he had it in for your Jacob, he’s not likely to take kindly if he finds you have patched up a gang running from his brand of justice.”

  He couldn’t see her face well in the dark, but he knew what she was going to say. He wished he didn’t have to hear it.

  “You got spare horses. Let me come along. There’s nuthin’ fer me here.”

  “Even if we’re running from the law? We got a bounty hunter after us, too.”

  “I don’t have anything here. Please, Clay. I can do your cookin’ and patch you up when you catch a bullet or two.” She reached out, her hand trembling. “You seem to get shot at a lot. I can … I can do for you.”

  He thought she was going to touch his cheek. Instead, she ran her finger through one of the holes in his hat brim. It wiggled back and forth like a prairie dog poking its head from a burrow.

  “I can sew up clothes and fix holes in your hat.”

  “We’re traveling fast and far, ma’am. It wouldn’t be right for you.” He felt his mouth turn even drier. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

  The thud of boots outside caused him to jerk around. Potter sat up, instantly awake, six-gun out and cocked. Both Wylie and Turner responded a few seconds later when Daniel slammed open the door and shouted, “We got company!”

  Panting, he bent over, hands on his knees. He caught his breath and looked up at Carson.

  “It’s a whole danged posse. Joe thinks it’s the marshal, but there’s one man ridin’ with ’em that looks the world like that mountain of gristle and dumb you and Simon tangled with.”

  “Brody?”

  “That’s him. He’s big, and I swear he’s a couple axe-handles wide across the shoulders.”

  “How’s Lemuel doing?” Simon asked.

  “I’m awake. We got to ride? I’m up for it.” He coughed, but no blood came up this time. “Give me a hand, Simon.”

  “Ma’am, you tell them we forced you. Not even Sutcliff can hold it against you being held at gunpoint by seven desperadoes.” Carson was torn between doing more to rescue the woman from what would be certain danger and taking her along as they escaped. If she slowed them down, they’d all be in trouble up to their ears when they might otherwise have gotten away.

  “Tell him there are twice as many of us and half rode out around sundown. Pick a direction other than the one we’re taking,” Jones proposed. Potter helped him shuffle to the door.

  “Which direction’s that, Lemuel?”

  Carson didn’t get an answer. They were all too busy ducking low to avoid a hail of bullets that tore through the night. He caught the reflection of the muzzle flashes in a window an instant before it shattered. He lurched forward and wrapped his arms around the woman, carrying her safely down to the cabin’s dirt floor.

  “Stay low,” he ordered. “They’re firing at the cabin, not anyone they can see. It’s still too dark and you don’t have a lamp burning.”

  “Hold your fire, you blamed idiot,” Lemuel barked at Sam Wylie. “You’ll give ’em something to aim at. They’ll sight in on your muzzle flash.”

  “I’m not going to let them turn me into a window screen,” Wylie snapped.

  “Me neither.” Billy Turner popped up, knocked out what remained of the broken window, and opened fire.

  “Joe’s out there!” Daniel tried to pull Turner back, but the man shoved him away.

  “Don’t,” Carson warned, catching Daniel’s hand as it went for his six-shooter. “Killing each other makes it easier on the posse. They want us all dead. Make them do it. Make them.”

  “He’ll hit Joe!”

  “Go around the back and saddle the horses. When we bust out, we’re going to have to ride hard and fast. We’ll need all the horses if we want to outleg the posse.” Carson held on to Daniel’s wrist. In a lower voice, he said, “We get out of this by looking out for one another.”

  Daniel growled like a feral animal, glared at Wylie, then slipped through the door, kept low, and disappeared around back, where they’d tethered all the horses.

  “You and me, Clay?” Simon Potter checked his six-shooter.

  “Just like we’ve done before.”

  “What’re you doing?” The woman inched toward Carson on her knees and grabbed his arm.

  “You’ll play an important part if you like, ma’am. It’ll be dangerous.”

  “If that’s Marshal Sutcliff and his cutthroats, I’ll march to hell to put them in the ground!”

  Carson sent Wylie and Turner out with Lemuel. Before he ducked through the door on his way to the horses, Lemuel called back to Carson, “Remember. Don’t bury me with my boots on!”

  Anything more he said was drowned out with the thunderous roar of a new volley. Dozens of rounds smashed into the cabin walls and blasted through the now-glassless window.

  “He surely does think different from anyone I ever did see,” Potter said. “It’s likely to be you and me in a grave ’fore him.”

  “Horses,” the woman said. “I hear horses in back of us.”

  “Daniel’s got them saddled and everyone’s making an escape,” Carson said. “Good.”

  “But you let them leave you behind!”

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” Carson said, pulling her close and speaking in her ear so she could hear over the deafening crash of gunfire.

  She looked at him as if he were crazy. He wasn’t going to argue if she made that claim.

  “Wait for the gunfire to die down,” Carson said.

  She nodded. In less than a minute, the posse had run through all the rounds in their rifles and six-shooters. She stepped out and waved a white towel.

  “Think they can see her in the dark?” Potter asked.

  “I hope so. She’s mighty brave.” Carson crouched, pistol in hand.

  “They’re all dead. The ones in the cabin,” she shouted. “The rest lit out like their tails was on fire. They headed … um, they headed toward Boone. I don’t know why.”

  “She’s not a good liar,” Potter said.

  Carson peeked over the windowsill.

  “They’re riding in. Fanning out. Six of them. You take the three on the right. I’ll aim for the rest.”

  “We might try for every other one. That’d be a danged sight more interesting. Why, that’d require skill.”

  “I’m a better shot than you, Simon. Always have been, always will be.” Carson saw the riders had stopped twenty feet out. He heaved a deep breath, then called, “Now!”

  Both he and Potter popped up. Their first shots hit men on either end of the line. Working toward the middle proved hard. Horses reared and, worse, the posse began returning fire. Carson got one more. So did Potter. That left a pair of riders.

  “Surrender, and we won’t gun you down!” shouted one.

  His partner laughed and said, “We’ll save you for the marshal to hang!”

  “Stop, don’t!” Carson called. The woman reached into the cabin, grabbed her rifle, and jerked it to her shoulder.

  She got off one round before the pair of deputies sighted in on her. Her hands trembled, but her aim was steady. Carson saw it—this wasn’t some desperate gesture, it was raw fury. But time was cruel and quick. The deputies moved in tandem, eyes narrowing, barrels rising. He didn’t think—he moved, instinct barking louder than reason. Carson dived, caught her around the waist, and drove her facedown into the dirt. She struggled. When he let her up, she swung her rifle around to fire again at the posse. She was a Greek Fury intent on destroying the men who had killed her husband.

  She lowered the rifle without firing a shot. Both men had fallen from their horses and lay motionless on the ground.

  “What happened? Neither of you shot them. And I didn’t, either.”

  “Come on in, Joe! You got ’em good. Both of ’em!” Simon Potter called. He reloaded his pistol.

  “I forgot about him, the young one’s brother!” She clung to Carson until he pried her loose.

  “We’ve done this before.”

  Carson looked down into the woman’s brown eyes. He saw nothing but admiration there. And maybe something more he wasn’t inclined to think on now.

  “Get the spare ammo and guns,” he called to Joe Easterly and Potter. “Grab their horses, too, if you can.”

  “Please, Clay. Let me ride with you.”

  “You were mighty brave, ma’am. You saved us all.”

  “Got two more horses,” Easterly called, tugging on the reins as he hurried to the cabin. “And saddlebags packed with ammunition. They intended to have a real shoot-out.”

  “I have one of their mounts,” Potter said. “We’ve got horses under us. Let’s ride, Clay.”

  The woman grabbed Carson and pulled his face down to hers. They kissed, and for a breathless moment, the world stilled. Her lips were warm, full of all the sorrow and steel she’d carried alone for far too long. He tasted the dust of the plains and the heat of her resolve. She clung to him like a lifeline, and he let her—for just that moment—before duty yanked him back to his saddle. He forced himself away. There wasn’t time.

  “Ma’am, take care of yourself.”

  “If you’re back in this direction, I … I’ll be here.”

  Clay Carson vaulted into the saddle of a captured horse and put his heels to its flanks. He and his partners galloped into the night, intent on finding the rest of the gang.

  One thought kept intruding as he rode along. The memory of her brown eyes haunted him, steady and fierce in the firelight. The way her hair refused to stay pinned, the way she’d stood in that doorway like a warrior queen—he could picture it all too well. The prairie rolled out ahead of them, wide and lonesome, but behind him he’d left a quiet strength that would linger like campfire smoke in his clothes.

  He hadn’t even asked her name.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Where did they get off to?” Joe Easterly looked around. The still night mocked him. Even crickets stayed silent and offered no suggestion where Lemuel Jones and the others had gone. The prairie lay wide and empty, stretching under the cloud-streaked moon like a forgotten quilt—ragged in places, torn in others.

  “I wish the moon was brighter,” Carson said. “I had sight of their tracks where they headed north, but they started angling to the right. Then I lost them.”

  The wind stirred a dry whisper from the grasses. It sounded like the land itself was trying to speak but couldn’t find the words.

  “Someone other than Turner should have been with them. He could never find feathers on a chicken.” Simon Potter twisted this way and that, also hunting for some trace left by the others. Or of the posse that might be on their tail.

  “She won’t send them after us,” Carson said, more to himself than to his friends.

  “Why do you say that, Clay? If it meant savin’ her own neck, she’d turn us over in a flash. That’s the way women are.” Daniel Easterly rode closer to Carson. He peered through the murk, pale silver moonlight catching his cheekbones and making it look as if he wore Indian war paint. His youthful voice carried a sharp edge, the kind born of inexperience dressed up as certainty.

  “Because she was sweet on him, that’s why,” Potter said, laughing.

  “Shut up,” Carson said without rancor. “You didn’t hear what she had to say. Sutcliff strung up her husband for his own amusement. She’d as soon shoot the marshal as talk to him.”

  “It wasn’t just for Sutcliff’s pleasure,” Potter said. “The whole danged town considers a hanging to be as much fun as a barn dance or a Sunday social.”

  “How much did tickets go for, for your hangin’, Simon?” Daniel tugged on the reins and walked closer to hear the answer. “You might think that the more the tickets fetched, the bigger the attraction. Why, you mighta brung in hunnerds of dollars. That’d make you a real draw.”