Swept Away (14 page)

“Reckon it’s me, Dodger.”

“You’ve come home at last.”

“You gonna use that gun?” Luke nodded at Dodger’s weapon, still aimed dead center at Luke’s chest. For all Dodger’s threatening words about shooting Rosie, this was a man with a code that didn’t stretch to hurting a woman.

“Nope.” Dodger holstered his gun, then rounded the boulder where Luke had stood watching him. When he got close, a smiled stretched on his face and he grabbed Luke’s shoulders. “I’ve missed you, boy. It’s good to see you.”

Luke was still leery of trusting him. But he needed to start somewhere and Dodger saying “home at last” sounded
hopeful. “I’ve come to start trouble, old-timer. I’ve got papers to prove I own my ranch, not Greer. I mean to have him hanged for Pa’s murder.”

“Murder? You think Greer killed your pa?”

Luke lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug that didn’t begin to reflect his true feelings on the subject. “I know I own this ranch. Pa sent me the deed before he died, naming me the owner. Pa said there was trouble coming at him and giving me that deed protected the S Bar S. Greer ain’t tellin’ the truth about Pa selling out to him. That makes my pa’s land stolen, and Pa being dead ended any dispute about the sale. That may not be a murder charge that will hold up in a court of law, but in my eyes, Greer is guilty as sin.”

Dodger’s faded blue eyes sparked. “I never knew, Luciano. I’d have
never
hired on with Greer if I had. I’ve always hoped that if I stayed around the Greer place, I’d see you or your sister again. I was mighty fond of both of you when you was young’uns. Where’s Callie?”

“Callie’s married to a good man. She’s living on his ranch in Colorado and has a baby and another one coming. Pa wrote when he sent me the deed. The letter was a while catching me. He said Callie’d married some Yank soldier who’d abandoned her, left her with a baby on the way. All Pa knew was the man’s name and that he was from Rawhide, Colorado. I rode out to Colorado to make the man do right by my sister and found Callie there. She’d hunted him down on her own.”

Without her worthless brother’s help. “Her husband, Seth Kincaid, seemed like a wild man, but a hard worker and right fond of Callie. She’s happy.”

“Good to know. I’ve spent time wondering if I should’ve gone tracking her. But I wasn’t on the ranch when she left.
I came in and found you all gone, your pa dead. I’ve surely wondered what became of you, but I’ve never heard even a whisper about Greer not owning the ranch. I heard you took off and your pa sold out before he died.”

“I’ve got a judge who’s seen my deed. Greer doesn’t own this land. Any deed he’s got is forged. It stands to reason he had a hand in Pa’s killing.”

“Greer’s a hard man, but there are a lot of hard men out West. I reckon I’m one myself. But there’s no denying he’s made a lot of savvy land buys. Men who looked dug-in just up and sold to him. But then this is rugged land—I could believe a rancher would sell out and leave the country. Maybe men ran or they died. Tell me what you need from an old friend to find justice for your pa, Luke.”

Justice
. The word didn’t quite suit Luke. It was too civilized. When he pictured Greer, he saw the man dying in a blaze of gunfire. Luke’s gun. It gave him so much pleasure to imagine it, it had to be a sin.

“And then,” Dodger said, nodding at a spot behind Luke, “introduce me to your lady friend.”

Once he’d recognized Dodger and been sure he wasn’t going to open fire, Luke had forgotten Rosie was even there.

He turned to introduce Dodger, and she arched one pretty red brow at him and said, “Luciano?”

“I’ll explain later.” He hadn’t been called that for years. “Dodger, call me Luke.”

As soon as the door closed behind Greer, the one upstairs opened. The children came rushing down.

“What can we do to help?” The boy glanced nervously
at the door. Greer coming back was a frightening prospect for all of them, Dare included.

“Are all the bedrooms upstairs?”

“No, there’s one down here that Ma sleeps in.”

Glynna Greer didn’t sleep with her husband. Dare got cold satisfaction from knowing that.

Dare slid his hands carefully under Glynna and lifted. Glynna’s lips clenched tight but a small moan of pain still escaped.

“Janny,” the boy said, “you go get bread and some apples and get it up into the bedroom. Next time we won’t starve if we have to stay locked up a few days.”

“I’ll hide them so he can’t never find ’em.” The little towheaded girl with golden eyes like her ma dashed for the kitchen.

“You need to leave before Flint comes back.” Glynna rested her left hand on Dare’s chest, and he felt it burn through his shirt.

Dare exchanged a look with the boy, then stood, holding Glynna close to keep from jarring her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

The boy headed in the same direction his sister had gone, rushing alongside the stairway. They walked past a door to the kitchen on the right, where the girl was frantically gathering food. The boy then turned left toward an open door, Glynna’s bedroom.

Dare saw with one glance that the woman was sleeping in there alone. The room contained only women’s things. Her clothes hung on pegs. Her brushes and bottles were on a chest beside the bed. Not a mark of a man anywhere. Glynna had put what space she could between her and her husband. But it hadn’t been enough. All he had to do was look at her to know that.

“I need more rags. If you don’t have big ones, bring me a sheet I can tear up.”

“No, I’ll be fine. Go back to town.” Glynna’s hand clenched his shirt front. To Dare, it looked like she was holding on to him. Her words and her actions didn’t match at all. Her eyes closed and her head rested more fully against him.

The boy wheeled to leave, but then paused beside his mother. “Will she be all right?”

Dare knew better than to promise anyone anything. But he couldn’t stand the look in the boy’s eyes. “Yes. What’s your name?”

“It’s Paul. Named for my pa and grandpa.”

“How’d you end up out here, so far from family?”

“They died. There was no one left and no money, and trouble from Pa and the war that . . . that made us need to move. Ma answered an ad and we all thought it was going to be the saving of us.” A one-shouldered shrug seemed to say it didn’t matter, that it wasn’t important. But Dare knew it was.

“I’m going to take care of your ma’s injuries. Then I’m going to get her out of here. I may not be able to take her—take all of you—today. But I’ll find a way. You’re not staying here with Greer. Will he hit her again?”

“Not for a while. He seems to work out his need to hurt her, and then he’s calmer for a time. She might not make a mistake that angers him for a while neither. She tries so hard to not set him off, but no one can be perfect enough to keep from upsetting a rabid dog.”

“Unless me being here sets him off.” Dare wanted his gun. He wanted his friends at his side. He wanted the whole Union Army to come down like raining brimstone on Flint Greer. He now knew just how Luke felt.

“Thanks, Paul. We’ll figure it out. I’ll not forget, and if Greer stops me, I’m a man with friends. We’ll get you out of here and get you somewhere safe. Now get those rags and get back here.”

The boy had gleaming hope in his eyes as he jerked his chin and rushed out of the room

Dare laid Glynna down and her eyes fluttered open. “I heard what you said to my son. You shouldn’t have.”

“Shouldn’t have what?” Dare needed to get on with his doctoring, yet he couldn’t stop looking at those beautiful tear-stained eyes.

“Shouldn’t have promised him we can get away. We can’t. I’ve tried.”

“Greer said you’d run off before.”

“I snuck away and got the children to town after he hit me the second time, not long after we got here. I went to the sheriff. He held me there until Greer came. I screamed for help so the whole town could hear and no one would help me. I had a bruised-up face and I told them he’d hurt me. They all just watched as Greer dragged me onto his horse and rode out of town. He had men with him that brought the children.”

“Does he hit the children, too?”

“No, not yet. But that’s only because I stand between them. I find I have a gift for drawing his rage to me. Paul is ready to kill him. My boy is so full of hate it’s going to destroy him. Janet barely speaks. I was such a fool. I thought a rancher would be an honorable man. Flint wrote letters full of promises. I think now someone wrote them for him. He can barely sign his name.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this when I was out here before?” Dare began unbuttoning her dress; it was blue calico sprinkled with white flowers.

She didn’t protest, which told Dare just how dazed she still was. If her head had been clear, she might insist this was caused by another fall.

Sounding so hopeless Dare felt the ache of it in his bones, she said, “I was terrified you’d tell Greer every word I said, and everyone in town has to have heard about me that day—the screaming, the sheriff holding me for Flint. Why would I believe you didn’t already know? Why would I believe you’d help me?”

“All you need to know is I will.” Dare spoke it with all the fierce passion of a vow before God. He meant it just like that. “Whether you believe me or not doesn’t matter because I
will
get you out of here. You can believe it when it happens.”

He slipped her dress over her left arm, then very carefully eased it down her right arm. A few quickly suppressed moans of pain escaped her pursed lips.

Paul came in with the rags just as Dare got the dress pulled down. He saw his ma at the same time Dare did. The bruises on her arms, one in the perfect shape of a man’s crushing hand.

A wild growl came from the boy as he set the rags down on the bedside chest and studied his battered mother.

“Go on, son,” Dare said quietly. “Get in your room before Greer comes back and punishes you or Janet for not minding him.”

Rather than obey or object, Paul said, “There’re men posted at the front and back doors. That low-down sidewinder’s not going to take a chance that you’ll leave with her.”

Dare had expected nothing less. “I’ll have to go today, without you. But I’ll be back.”

The boy’s eyes were riveted on his mother, who closed her eyes as if she was ashamed of being too weak to stop her child from seeing the bruises.

“Paul!” Dare drew the youngster’s attention. “You have my word.”

It was sickening to see such fear in a child’s eyes. The boy had lived with hopelessness for too long to risk believing there was a way out. Dare looked at Glynna and her eyes flickered open. Hers were gold and Paul’s were blue, but the defeat in them matched.

“I swear it on my own life. I’ll come back. I’ll get you away from Greer.”

Glynna’s eyes fell shut.

Paul stormed out of the room.

Dare reached for the rags and, with rage made worse by his impotence, tore the rags in strips, trying to take his frustration out on a helpless piece of cloth when he wanted to tear a strip off Flint Greer.

No, that wasn’t quite true. He wanted to rip Flint’s head off.

C
HAPTER 10

Ruthy watched the town lights die. Luke was beside her in the trees behind Dare’s house. Mostly watchful, but he’d throw her an occasional irritated glance. Which she noticed because she was glancing at him at the same time. With the same irritation.

“Why are you still so upset? I never came close to giving us away.”

“I caught you, didn’t I? You gave yourself away that once. What if I’d been Flint Greer or Simon Bullard?”

Ruthy clenched her jaw. “I wouldn’t have gone up close to them. I do have some sense, Luciano.”

“Do
not
call me that.”

“It’s an old nickname? Is that it?”

Crickets chirped.

A coyote howled at the rising moon.

For some reason, Luke’s annoyance with that name eased her tension. She fought a smile.

“It’s my name, but it’s not.”

She decided to wait a little longer.

He cracked. “I’m Italian, but my parents changed their names to sound more American. They wanted to belong
more fully in this country. Leastways that’s the story they told me. I think their names just took too long to spell.”