Swept Away (17 page)

“Riker, we got a problem, you and me.”

Dare whipped his head around expecting another scene with Lana and Simon Bullard. Instead there was only Simon, leaning against a post in front of the general store.

A chill slid down Dare’s back at the look in Bullard’s bitter cold eyes and the way his hand flexed right next to his gun. Dare had his holster on and his gun loaded; he’d taken to wearing it all the time since that day at Greer’s. But he also had a crate full of supplies in his arms.

“What’s this about, Bullard?”

Simon Bullard was a massive man. Over six feet tall, heavy and running fat, but rock-solid fat, and he had fists like hams and a gun that never lost its shine. He was probably fifty years old, but there was no sign that age was slowing him down, or if it was, he made up for a lack of speed by being deadly accurate.

“It’s about my boss not wanting anyone sniffing around his woman. He told me to come in here and make sure you understood that.” Bullard’s eyes shone like blue ice. He had a black hat pulled low on his forehead that shielded his eyes from the sun and helped him make every shot count.

“Let’s take a walk.” Dare started down the board-walk, and Bullard hesitated. Dare wondered for a second if he wasn’t asking for a bullet in the back.

Then Bullard moved and began stalking along beside Dare. “I’ve been put in a bad place by you,” Bullard told him.

Dare kept moving. If Bullard was walking and talking, he wasn’t shooting. Dare knew he probably oughta keep his mouth shut. He could pretend like he didn’t know what Greer had done to Glynna, but a reckless fury drove him to speak. “Because your boss wants to be able to batter his wife, and he doesn’t want any doctor knowing he’s done it . . . but you need me to take care of Lana. That is a bad place.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

A man stepped out of Duffy’s Tavern a few paces ahead of them. His eyes went straight to Bullard, and he ducked back inside like a scurrying rat.

“You look to be a mighty fearsome man, Simon.” Dare was counting heavily on Bullard’s wife at the moment. Now that Dare wanted to get Bullard and his wife into his house, the woman hadn’t been in all week screaming about the baby.

“I get paid real good to be fearsome, and no one can say I don’t earn my money.” Bullard pulled his gun.

Dare’s heart sank.

Bullard spun the revolver on the pistol, checking the
chambers. “My wife, well, I never should’ve gotten married. But I can’t get her out of my blood. No woman’s ever gotten her hooks into me like Lana’s done. I wanted her, and I took her, and now I’ll protect her with everything I’ve got. And right now protecting her includes keeping a doctor in this town.”

Done checking his load, Bullard holstered his weapon.

“Does Greer know you feel that way?”

“Greer and I understand each other. I’ve got my own cabin on Greer’s land. I keep Lana away from him, and more than that I keep her away from his wife. Greer expects me to back him when there’s trouble. Right now, to Greer, you qualify as trouble.”

“I’m not sniffing around Greer’s wife; I’m doctoring her. Do you hold with Greer putting his hands on his missus? A lot of men draw the line there.” Dare had more to say, but just then another door opened, this one across the street at the jail. Sheriff Porter stepped out, but rather than see Bullard and turn tail like most men would, he walked across the dirt street to join them. He walked with a strut that seemed only to underscore what a weakling he was. Seeing the law coming should have struck Dare as a good thing, but Porter was Greer’s man, bought and paid for just like Bullard. And Glynna had said Porter handed her over to Greer, so there was no pretending this man would protect a woman.

They stopped walking as the sheriff reached them. Standing down on the street, Dare and Bullard towered over Porter on the raised board-walk.

“Trouble here, Simon?” The sheriff was the opposite of Bullard: short, skinny, shifty. The lawman had brown eyes that skittered around like nervous vermin. The way he talked
first to a brute like Simon showed a man who was ready to take orders with no interest in truth or law and order.

To Dare’s way of thinking, there wasn’t much lower than wearing a badge with no interest in justice.

Porter wasn’t a man Dare feared facing, but he was worse in his own way than Bullard. The sheriff was a man to shoot someone in the back, from cover. A coward as dangerous as a Texas sidewinder.

Silently, Dare apologized to the sidewinders he’d just insulted.

“No trouble, Sheriff.” Bullard turned his cold gaze on Dare. “Is there, Doc? Not as long as you stay out of Greer business.”

“Then we’ve got no trouble,” Dare said. He expected in the next few days to bring a cyclone down on Greer business. He kept that to himself.

“You should put the gun aside, Simon.” Dare knew he was wasting his breath, but he had it to waste. “You’ve got a child on the way, and that child needs a father who’ll care for him, teach him how to live a decent life. Do you want your son to be a gunman?”

Simon turned to face Dare, blocking his way. “I’m real proud of who I am, Doc. If it’s a boy, I’ll teach him everything I know.”

As they stood there, Dare’s stomach sank because of what he saw in Bullard’s eyes. Sharp intelligence and cool viciousness—a lethal combination.

“My boss didn’t say I needed to rid this town of you, but he did want me to give you a message. It’s this: Stay away from the Greer ranch and stay away from his wife.”

“And if I get a call to come out to Greer’s place, I’m supposed to ignore it?”

“We’ve found out who asked you to come and we’ve dealt with him. You won’t be asked again.”

“I need to come and check on how her shoulder is healing.”

“Stay away if you want to live.” Bullard’s cold-blooded threat stirred up something hot in Dare’s belly. His hands, full of supplies, itched to make a fist and shove Bullard’s threats down his throat.

But now wasn’t the time. Soon. Very soon.

“You hear that, Doc?” Sheriff Porter asked.

“I heard my life being threatened. Is that what you’re asking if I heard,
Sheriff
?” Dare emphasized the title to make sure the sheriff caught his scorn. “I’ll stay away, Bullard. Or if I do come, it’ll only be because someone needs me to come real bad.”

Bullard didn’t like that, but Dare didn’t care much about what Bullard liked. He hadn’t come to shoot but only to pass on a warning. With a jerk of his chin, Bullard stepped aside.

Dare walked the short distance to his house. An itch between Dare’s shoulder blades kept him from forgetting for one second that one of the fastest gunmen in the state of Texas was watching him take every step.

The scouting took all day, but Luke enjoyed hunting around his ranch. Dodger gave them enough warning before he headed off to do his chores, so they knew where to hunt and where to avoid.

Only trouble with that was, the spot Luke was aiming for—the one that led to the ranch by a way not visible to the guards—was at the top of a cliff.

“We have to
climb
that?” Rosie looked up the almost sheer rock wall.

“I know of a couple other ways around. If those guards had been posted in a different spot, this would have been easier. But the guards are where they are so, yes, we have to climb that.” Luke had known this route would probably work, but he was hoping he could find something easier. The sentries had a view of more than just the narrow canyon trail; they could watch the ranch for miles around.

“Are you sure this is the only way?” Rosie plunked her little fists on her hips and looked disgruntled. And the woman was a worker, so Luke looked back up the cliff and wondered if he was risking their necks.

“I haven’t climbed this since I was a kid. But we can do it. If you want, I’ll go up first and then lower a rope for you.”

She narrowed her eyes. “If you can climb it, so can I.”

“It’s the pure truth, Rosie. I haven’t found a single thing this week that you can’t do every bit as well as me. Hiding from your no-account brother all those years is coming in handy now.”

“Just the same, I’d have preferred him to not be such a worthless skunk.”

“I’d find him and whip him good if he weren’t already dead.”

Nodding, Rosie said, “I appreciate it.”

Probably because he was putting off scaling the cliff, Luke leaned on the red rock and said, “When this is over, are you . . . are you . . . what do you plan to do? You have no family anywhere?”

“None I’ve ever met. My folks went west to Indiana a long time before I was born. I know they had some brothers and sisters but I’ve never met them and I don’t know how
I’d go about finding them. And if I did find them, they’d be strangers to me.”

Luke nodded. “When my folks came west, they left everything behind, too.”

“We’re going to have to stop stalling and climb.”

He laughed and realized he didn’t want to move, and not because he was dreading the climb. No, it was because he liked talking to Rosie. Reaching up, he caught one of the curls that had escaped her bun and now danced in the light breeze. “You’re sure a pretty little thing. You should stay around Broken Wheel. You could get to know me and my friends when we
aren’t
planning a war.”

“I think I know you all pretty well.” She jerked her head at the cliff. “Let’s go.”

“Rosie, do you ever stop looking for work?”

“Call me Ruthy.” She’d told him so many times, even she knew better than to expect it.

“Rosie suits you.” Luke leaned toward her, then stopped. What was he doing? He might be dead in a few days. And here he was thinking of kissing a woman. That wasn’t the way an honorable man had oughta act.

“It does not.”

“Rosie red hair.”

“You only call me that because I was sunburned when we first met. My hair was drab brown from floodwater.”

“You were pretty even soaked in mud.” With a sigh of frustration he turned to the rocks. It was probably thirty feet high, and the ground was soft. If one of them fell, they might not even get hurt . . . too bad. “All right. Let’s climb this stupid cliff.”

One step at a time, Luke inched his way up the rock, searching out handholds and toeholds, some of them so
narrow a rolling piece of gravel might knock his grip loose. Halfway up, he stopped to catch his breath and looked down. She wasn’t following.

“What are you waiting for?”

“I think I’ll let you get to the top. Then, if you fall, you won’t knock me off the cliff on your way down.”

She had a point. He was most of the way up before he looked down again and she’d started. He could tell she’d tucked her skirt into her waistband and was scrambling up as smooth as a wily mountain goat. The woman was right handy with everything she put her mind to.

The ledges were narrow, and clinging like a burr to the side of the cliff was harder than when he was a kid. Luke finally reached the top and rolled over the ledge onto a mesa with a decent stand of trees to use for concealment. Breathing hard, he turned to look down at Rosie. She was climbing faster than he had, if he cared to admit it. Which he didn’t.

He lay there catching his breath a minute, watching his little mountain goat tackle the cliff. She was close enough to hear him. “I clambered around in these hills a lot as a kid. I found out I could get around that trail this way. There were a couple of trails besides this one, but the lookouts can see us if they look just right. I might risk it. But we need to try and figure a way out for Mrs. Greer and her two children. There isn’t an easier way. I’ve given it a lot of thought. I made a game of it when I was a kid—sneaking around, hunting deer, playing with the Indians. I learned all the tricks a few of the Indian kids could teach me, and I know these canyons like I know my own name.”

“Your name? You mean Luciano? Do you really know your name all that well?”

Luke smiled.

“This is going to be a mighty slow way to get to your ranch when we go throw Greer out.” Ruthy wasn’t even breathing hard as she neared the top.

“Maybe we could string a rope. Leave it behind so that the day we come we can move faster.”

“Good idea, unless they find it.” Rosie got close enough to reach his outstretched hand. She took a moment to untuck her skirt for modesty’s sake, then grasped his wrist. He hoisted the little lightweight the rest of the way. She rolled onto her belly beside him. He was glad he’d had a chance to rest before she saw him. “Why can’t we just go however Dodger goes? We’re meeting him in secret.”

“Because he rides away from the ranch in full view of the lookouts. When he gets out to where we meet, he can get out of their line of sight. But we can’t get in or out of the ranch house unseen any other way than this. Through these trees there’s a good place to study the sentries, and a trail that leads to the house. It’s tough but passable. Now stay low.”

Luke crouched behind a line of scrub junipers. He and Rosie were far enough away that they could talk quietly with no risk. A soft wind gusted toward them, which cut down the chances of their voices carrying. The sound of the swaying trees and the birds chattering in the branches covered small sounds.