Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (14 page)

"Oh, yeah?" She planted her fists in the usual place. He'd seen her take that pose so many times, he figured she must have dug little niches into her hips, just so she could fit her knuckles into them. "Just 'cause you kissed me doesn't give you the license to tell me what to do, Zack Rawlins."

There she went, giving him lip again. He smiled grimly, remembering it was her lips that got him into trouble in the first place. "Er, look, Bailey. I've been meaning to talk to you about that—"

A screechy "woo-wooing" interrupted him. Zack recognized the call of an outraged raccoon even before the varmint dropped out of the elm tree and landed square in Boo's path. Whether the coon had fallen or leapt from its den wasn't clear, but the spittle on its jaws and the clicking of its fangs made its condition alarmingly evident. It was rabid.

"Boo!"

Bailey's warning could barely be heard above the explosion of barking and snarling. Zack cursed, struggling to hold Reb back from the thirty-pound pestilence that threatened Bailey's hound. He managed to grab his Winchester even as he heard Bailey snap the lever on hers.

They were too late. Too sick and crazed to flee, the coon attacked. In the melee of slashing, clawing, and biting that ensued, the coon had little chance. Boo flipped the creature and went for its throat, receiving little more than a scratch and a bite in the struggle. But they were enough.

Zack's throat constricted as Boo let the limp carcass drop from his jaws. He was panting, his eyes shining, and he wagged his tail in triumph. Zack fidgeted. Glancing at Bailey, he saw the shock slowly ebb from her features. He couldn't ever remember her looking so white.

"Boo," she said again quietly, extending her gloved hand. It trembled the tiniest bit, and Zack felt his gut clench.

The hound trotted with his usual happy-go-lucky gait to her side, plopping down on his haunches, his ears pricked, his eyes eager as he awaited her command. She swallowed hard, resting her palm on his great head.

"Bailey?" McTavish called anxiously, breaking through the underbrush with a ready rifle. The Coles quickly followed, leading their horses.

"What happened?" Jesse asked, peering curiously at the trickles of blood on Boo's leg.

Bailey said nothing. Squeezing her eyes closed, she pressed Boo's head against her abdomen.

Zack cleared his throat. "There was a coon. Near the tree. It came out of nowhere, and..."

Boo whined, licking Bailey's glove, and Zack's words faltered. There was no need to explain the rest. He knew the men knew. Bailey did too.

"Lass." Cradling his rifle in the crook of his arm, McTavish ground-hitched his gelding and strode closer. "Were ye hurt a'tall?"

"No." Her voice was hoarse, strained, but its volume was strong.

Jesse whistled long and low. "Damn." He squatted over the coon. "He was a big 'un." He glanced admiringly at Boo, then up at Bailey. When he saw her stony expression, his enthusiasm ebbed. "Hey, Boo wasn't bit, was he?"

"Of course he was bit," his father growled, shifting uncomfortably from boot to boot. "A hound doesn't fight a coon without getting bit."

Zack felt McTavish's gaze boring through him.

"Came out of nowhere, did he, lad? Leapt to the attack?"

Zack nodded. As much as he'd always complained about Boo chasing his cows, it occurred to him that he liked the hound. He liked the way Boo protected Bailey.

The silence thickened.

Mac pushed back his battered cap. "Bailey, lass. It isna natural, a coon starting a scrap with a hound."

Her chin trembled almost imperceptibly as she wrapped her other arm around Boo and hugged him tighter.

"'Tis plain to me," McTavish continued, his words firm, his voice gentle, "there was sickness in the beastie's blood. Ye willna see a coon by day if he doesna have the rabies fever."

Zack winced to hear Boo's death sentence spoken at last. Jesse climbed hastily to his feet.

"But maybe Boo won't get rabies," he said, glancing at his father. "You could pen him away from your livestock, ma'am, watch him awhile for the signs..."

Cole shook his head and looked at the ground. His heart twisting, Zack watched Bailey. He knew how much she loved her ugly old cur dog. But to expose her entire flock to disease for the sake of one animal, no matter how favored, would be the height of impracticality, not to mention cruelty. The odds were against Boo. Watching an animal grow sicker, madder, more vicious from day to day would be a kindness to no one, least of all Boo.

"Bailey," he finally said, "since I'm not as acquainted with the hound as you and McTavish, maybe you'd like to leave him with me...."

Her chest heaved, and she hastily shook her head. "No." She drew herself up straighter. The gaze that met his was resolute behind the silvery film of tears. "He's my hound. Come, Boo," she added quietly.

Turning her back on the men, she walked with firm, purposeful strides into the cedar maze, and Boo trotted obediently at her side. If the hound suspected his fate, he didn't balk, but he did nudge his head beneath her hand, staring up at her as if he sensed her distress.

Zack was glad when the gray-green shadows swallowed them. He drew a ragged breath.

The rifle report rolled across the clearing moments later.

Jesse flinched; Cole grimaced; McTavish muttered something in his native tongue. Zack wondered if the older man had spoken a prayer or curse, and when he glanced at Bailey's foreman, McTavish looked at him. There was something vaguely discomfiting about the Scot's stare, as if McTavish were appraising him, sizing him up. Zack couldn't help but tense.

The minutes ticked by. Reb whined, and Boss nickered. The sheepherders began to fidget. Zack thought about going into the trees after Bailey. He couldn't help but remember the one and only time he'd had to shoot a hound to put it out of its misery. Rusty had been fifteen—Wes's age—and Zack had been sixteen. Even though the hound had been nearly blind, arthritic, and unable to chew his food, Zack had felt heinous, as if he'd murdered his best friend. Wes had sobbed like a baby after the deed was done, but Zack, unable to shed his own tears, had retired to the privy to retch.

What if Bailey were sick, or, worse, had fainted?

He started in her direction, but McTavish stepped forward to block his path.

"Leave her be," he said crisply. "She knows what she's about."

Zack frowned, wondering how McTavish could bear to stand so calmly by his horse when the woman he'd once courted was probably, at the very least, sobbing her head off a few hundred feet away. If Zack knew one thing about women, it was that they needed comforting when they cried. What was the matter with McTavish? Didn't he give a damn how Bailey felt?

He was just about to challenge the Scot's apparent lack of compassion, when a twig snapped. A cedar bough trembled. White-faced and gray-lipped, Bailey pushed through the veil of needles, her chin set and her shoulders rigid. To Zack's amazement, her eyes were dry, but he had never seen them look so hollow.

"I can't bury him deep enough," she announced in a brittle tone.

"Aye, lass. The ground's too hard."

Zack glared at McTavish. He sensed, even if the Scot didn't, that it had cost Bailey a lot to admit she couldn't finish the job on her own, even though she'd dented her rifle stock all to hell.

"Are you packing a shovel?" She directed her question at Zack in a clipped voice, the same voice he'd heard her use in the Bullwhip when she'd squared off with Hank Rotterdam. Zack wasn't sure he liked her speaking to him as if he, too, were her foe.

Before he could tell her about his ax and the hand trowel he'd brought to douse his campfires, Rob put in his two-bits' worth.

"We should probably burn the coon. Boo too," he added. "You don't want any critters digging up the carcasses, infecting themselves and everything else in these hills."

Bailey blanched even whiter, if that was possible, and Zack wished he was standing close enough to kick Cole in the seat of his pants.

"That's not necessary," he said. "I'll bury Boo. I'll see to the coon too."

For the briefest of moments, Bailey's gaze poured into his. He spied the warmth of her gratitude, the welling relief behind her suffering, and he heard his breath catch. It was the strangest sensation, looking into eyes he'd seen ten hundred times, eyes he thought he knew, and seeing a stranger staring out from their depths. He marveled that he'd never before noticed how captivating Bailey's gaze could be—or how sweetly vulnerable.

"Thank you." She released a ragged breath. Then, as if she couldn't bear the intensity of their staring, she turned on her heel and strode to her horse. "I need a whiskey, boys." She thrust her rifle roughly into the saddle boot. "Who's buying?"

* * *

Digging a grave deep enough for Boo's remains was no small feat in midsummer with an ax and a hand trowel, yet Zack honored his word, pausing only to wipe his brow and flex his cramped fingers. He refused to consider the easier way of destroying the carcass by fire. Boo had meant a great deal to Bailey and, he reflected, Bailey must mean something to him. Otherwise, why would he be out here breaking his back, when he could be turning over a couple piles of ashes?

The sun was hanging low in the sky when he finished dousing the coon's burial pyre. More than two hours had passed since Bailey and the sheepherders had ridden toward town, and Zack considered following them. After the afternoon he'd just put in, he had a powerful thirst, and liquor was a strong temptation. He didn't drink much, not after watching rotgut make Cord lose control and turn Wes downright fractious, but he did enjoy a good beer now and then.

He also needed to replenish his supplies, and since he didn't much like the idea of returning home and facing his brothers' brand of humor, he decided to ride to Bandera. He figured he could get a warm meal, a bath, and a shave before he headed for the saloon.

By the time he had tethered Boss and Reb outside the public washhouse, the sun had turned a fiery orange, undulating above the horizon in the shimmering heat waves that it struck from the earth. Anticipating his bath made Zack think longingly of the spring-fed waters he'd lost to Bailey in the Sherridan deal. Two years earlier, he and his brothers had been in the process of expanding their range when the widow Sherridan's prized water-fed pasturage, located between the McShane and Rawlins ranches, had come up for sale. Bailey's daddy had died at the same time, and his funeral had been the day of the auction.

Zack had counted on the funeral to eliminate competition from her, and he'd offered the widow Sherridan a fair but admittedly low price. He'd never expected Bailey to withdraw her daddy's life savings after the reading of his will. Racing from the bank in her mourning chaps and duster, she'd arrived at the auction block with a wad of greenbacks that had fairly made his eyes bulge. "Cash on the barrelhead," she'd challenged him. "What good is a promissory note to Mrs. Sherridan when she's struggling to set up house back in Arkansas?"

Zack winced as he recalled that public embarrassment at Bailey's hands. Still, the hardheaded, businesslike Bailey of the auction block was entirely different from the pale, heartsick one who'd been forced to shoot her own hound. If he hadn't seen her both times with his own eyes, he would never have believed the two women could exist in the same body. The realization made him wonder what else he didn't know about this neighbor he called Bailey.

As he rounded the corner of the public washhouse, his gaze was drawn to the church at the end of the street and the sun-beaten sycamore dominating the front yard. He couldn't immediately say what made him hesitate and peer more closely into the leafy shadows that darkened the grasses. Maybe it was the appeal of all that shade, rolling out in gray-green waves toward the picket fence, now tinged a dusky peach in the twilight. Or maybe it was the lone mourner with the wheat-colored hair, who sat, head bowed, against the tree trunk.

Zack chewed his bottom lip. Bailey really looked like she could use a friend.

Feeling awkward and not at all sure of his welcome, he walked the two blocks to the churchyard. He doffed his hat as he paused at the gate, suspecting he looked like he'd strolled through a dust devil. That was a regular state for him, thanks to cattle hooves and prairie winds, but he wasn't among cowboys at the moment, and he suddenly felt self-conscious. He hastily combed his fingers through his hair and he used his hat to beat off the worst of the trail dust. Then, drawing a bolstering breath, he lifted the latch and pushed inside the yard.

Bailey was too preoccupied to notice him. She was turning an object over and over in her hands, and as he crossed to the tree trunk, he recognized the leather strap that had once been Boo's collar. His heart twisted.

"Bailey."

She started at his gentle tone, blinking up at him with luminous, tear-filled eyes. He thought he recognized a welcome in her gaze before the embarrassment rolled in. She quickly looked away.

"Mind if I sit awhile?" he asked.

She hiked a shoulder, her chin jutting the tiniest bit, and he was reminded of his seven-year-old niece, Megan, who often employed the same tactic when she was too proud to admit she was hurting.

Gingerly lowering himself beside Bailey, he propped his back against the tree and stretched his legs out beside hers. He couldn't help but notice how short hers seemed compared with his, or how slender and delicate. He frowned, wondering when he'd last thought of the woman beside him as delicate.