She had to find Jenny.
When Colt and Saul rode in a few minutes later, the wind had risen to a mournful howl. Dust swirled in the yard, carried aloft on whirling vortices. Lightning snaked from the clouds into the mountains and the thunder’s voice had grown louder. Amelia searched frantically for Jenny in the eerie, green-yellow light.
Saul led both horses into the barn, his worried gaze on the advancing black clouds. Amelia grabbed Colt’s arm. “Did you see Jenny when you rode in? She was out picking blackberries.”
Colt shook his head. “She’ll be back. She’s a smart kid, Amy.” He tilted his head at the wall of clouds. “She’s not going to stay out in that.”
“No, she won’t come back. She’s terrified of thunderstorms. She clamps her hands over her ears and runs.” Amelia turned to the advancing storm and sucked her breath in on a frightened gasp.
The clouds seethed in a mass of greenish-black, writhing and twisting into each other. Lightning ripped through them and forked brilliant, harsh spears into the foothills. A wall of dark rain swept out from the clouds like a black curtain. A few raindrops carried forward by the wind splattered into the dry ground, raising tiny dust puffs.
Colt twisted around to the roiling sky. “Oh my God. Saul, get over here.” He grabbed Amelia’s arm, and shoved her toward the house. “I’ll go look for Jenny. Are you sure she isn’t in the house?”
“I’ve looked twice. She’s not there. I was going to check the barn again.”
“Get in the root cellar, both of you.” Colt caught Saul’s shirt when the boy rushed by him, his voice almost a shout over the fury of the rising gale. “Don’t you let your sister out of that cellar until the storm is long passed. Is that understood? Don’t you let her out of there.”
Saul nodded. Amelia paused in the doorway. “Please, Colt, be careful.”
Colt forced himself to grin at her. “I’m always careful. That’s why I’m still alive.”
He waited for Amelia to usher Saul into the root cellar and pull the door shut before he returned to the barn. Colt debated saddling up Angel. A nearby lightning strike speared into the ground, causing him to jump with the instant crack of thunder. No, Angel would be terrified out in that, just as Jenny had to be.
He grabbed a slicker from a peg inside the barn door and pulled it on as best he could in the howling winds, hindered by his sling. He made his way up into the hills around the house, shouting for Jenny over the deafening thunder and roaring winds.
So far, it hadn’t started to rain, but Colt knew that was a temporary reprieve. He shot another glance skyward and flinched. The black curtain of rain sweeping out from the base of the roiling thunderheads marched relentlessly nearer. Damn, he wouldn’t be surprised if the storm dropped down a tornado. He’d seen skies like that too many times in Texas, and they often brought violent, whirling death with them.
The breath of icy drops touched his face a second before the heavy rain reached him. It fell in hammering sheets, pushed into horizontal waves with the ferocity of the wind.
“Jenny!”
The lightning was all around him, spearing the ground with flashes of blinding light. Thunder snarled and barked. It was as dark as the hour after sunset.
Where would Jenny run to?
He scanned the top of a large granite outcropping with the next flash of lightning and caught his breath. Jenny was crouched atop the huge monolith, under the scant protection of a gnarled ponderosa pine growing from a split in the granite. Colt shouted, “Stay there, Jenny. I’m coming up to get you.”
If she heard him, Jenny didn’t respond in any manner. He scrambled up the rain-slicked rock. He lost his footing and slid back, tumbling to the base. His knee felt as if it was on fire, and his injured shoulder screamed at him. Gritting his teeth, ignoring the pain, he started up again.
Jenny stared at him as he reached the summit of the tall outcropping. Her eyes were wide with terror, and she had her hands clamped over her ears. She cowered on the granite slab, rocking to and fro. Not sure if it was tears or rain streaking her slender, pale face, Colt knelt in front of her. “It’s going to be okay,” he shouted over the wind and the rain. “I’m going to get you off this rock and get you back to the house.”
He pulled her to her feet. Her mouth opened in a silent shriek and she flung herself away from him. Her feet slipped out from under her on the treacherously slick granite and she fell heavily onto her back.
“Jenny, sweetie, it’s only me. It’s Colt. Sweetie, look at me.” Colt grabbed her chin, forcing her to look into his face. “It’s only me, Jenny. No one is going to hurt you. Jenny, it’s okay.”
She pressed her hands over her ears and shook her head vehemently. Colt let go of her chin.
“Jenny, we have to get home. Take my hand, Jenny. I’ll take you home.”
Colt glanced around in startled shock when a chunk of ice shattered on the granite. “Shit. Jenny, we don’t have time to argue this. Take my hand, now.”
More ice pelted the pinkish-gray granite and hammered into Colt. Jenny winced as a large hailstone hit her head. Colt grabbed Jenny by the waist and flung her over his shoulder. She kicked and flailed, struggling to get free.
The hair lifted on the back of Colt’s neck as he raced to the edge of the monolith. Cradling Jenny against his chest as best he could, he flung himself down the granite.
The sky split apart and the darkness flared with white-hot light. Even as Colt shut his eyes against the brilliant flash, the old pine Jenny had cowered under burst apart. Flaming branches flew past him, extinguished just moments later by the downpour. Colt risked a glance over his shoulder as he slid down the granite on his backside. Only a splintered trunk remained of the pine. The flames sputtered in the rain and wind.
He darted under what little shelter the outcrop provided just as the skies began to dump hailstones the size of goose eggs. He set Jenny down, and shoved her into the scant protection of the overhang. He wrapped his arm around her shuddering frame, and sheltered her as best he could. The icy rain and the hail hammering into his back and arms forced a gasp of pain from him.
Every clap of thunder sent a shudder through Jenny’s slight body. Her ragged breathing racked her as well. Even if he knew what to say to her to calm her fears, he wouldn’t be heard over the thunder, the roar of the hail pounding into the ground, and the screeching winds. Instead, he just held her and tried to shelter her.
He dropped his gaze to the gravelly ground. Discarded cigarette butts littered the ground under the granite overhang. Colt’s stomach clenched and a new chill crawled over his skin.
Someone had been on the hilltop. Had spent a lot of time there.
Colt craned his head over his shoulder, but couldn’t see much further than five feet through the blinding torrents of rain and hail. He didn’t have to. He knew what he would see if not for the rain. This hilltop provided a clear view of the small home where Amelia and Saul were huddled in the root cellar.
Had it been Taylor? Colt discarded that notion. No, Taylor approached from the town of Federal. This was the other side of the tiny farm. This was the side of the approach he had taken, so many days before, injured and nearly out of his head with delirium.
Colt tightened his arm around Jenny, and dropped his cheek to the top of her dark head. He shut his eyes, refusing to let his sudden heartache and anguish find an outlet. Someone other than Taylor had been observing the house, and judging from the pile of butts, had spent a good amount of time doing it.
He had no idea how long he and Jenny had been crouching under the outcrop when the hail stopped and the rain lessened. In time, the lightning faded and the thunder receded in the distance. Colt straightened and pulled Jenny out from under the granite.
She seemed totally drained. He lifted her again in his good arm. She slipped her thin arms around his neck and dropped her head onto his shoulder. Colt forced a cheerful tone to his voice. “Good thing we’re not too far from the house. I don’t think I could carry you all the way back.”
Jenny’s grip around his neck loosened, and Colt realized she had slipped into sleep against his shoulder. The warm and evenly measured intervals of her breathing assured him it was an exhausted sleep. She was as limp as a rag doll against him.
****
Amelia stood just outside the doorway, watching for them. When she spied Colt coming to her, Jenny cradled in his good arm, she couldn’t stop the tears of relief breaking from her.
She rushed to Colt across the muddy yard. Blood trickled in a wide path down the side of his face. “What happened?”
Colt handed Jenny to her and wiped the blood from his scalp. “Hail.”
“Are you all right? Is Jenny okay?” Amelia demanded as she led the way to the house.
“She’s fine, Amy. I got pelted pretty good with the hail, but I’ll live. I made sure she was safe.”
Colt followed her to the room she and Jenny shared. He hesitated in the doorway as she slipped Jenny into bed and pulled the blanket up over her.
“She’s not going to catch a chill, being in those wet clothes, is she?”
“I don’t want to wake her.” Amelia pulled another blanket up over the child and tucked it in around her. “Come on into the kitchen and let me see how bad you got pelted.”
Colt sank into a chair at the table. “I feel as if I’ve been run over by a fully loaded wagon.”
Amelia tilted his head back, and wiped the rest of the blood from his face. She carefully lifted his matted hair to peer at the damage. “That is going to be a good-sized knot on your head, but I don’t think it will need stitches.”
“It was a hell of a big chunk of ice that hit my head…and my back…and my arm.” He smiled at her. The sudden warmth pooling in the depths of his eyes matched the heat coiling through her. Her stomach knotted and her heart pounded a maddened triplet. She licked suddenly dry lips and stepped back.
“What did you say to Donnie this morning?” she asked, trying to ignore the way her body responded to his nearness.
“Had a man-to-man talk with him, something he needed pretty bad.” Colt raised his hand to his head and touched the still-oozing gash. “Never knew ice could hurt so much.”
“Stop trying to change the subject.” Amelia wet a clean washrag under the hand pump, and then pressed it gently to Colt’s head. “I don’t know what you said to him, but he came in here all sweating and red-faced and asked me to marry him.”
Colt turned his narrowed gaze to her. “What answer did you give him, Amy?”
Colt waited for her answer with his heart in his throat. Telling Morris to marry her had been the right thing. She had herself convinced that Colt’s past wasn’t going to matter, that it wasn’t going to show up someday and put her and Saul and Jenny into harm’s way. As much as he would like to hope and dream it wouldn’t, he knew better. The drunk in town full of liquored-up bravado had proved that beyond any doubt. The cigarette butts he’d seen less than an hour ago on the ridge further drove that point home. They were proof that someone had been keeping close tabs on him, and he was willing to bet whoever it was had something to do with the Matthews clan.
His past was going to show up, sure as the sun would rise in the east. It was high time he stopped dreaming and well past time Amelia stopped clutching at straws.
Amelia pulled the cool rag away from his head. “I think it’s stopped bleeding. At least I don’t have to try to stitch it or put turpentine on it to stop the bleeding.”
“Now you’re trying to change the subject.” Colt caught her wrist. “What did you tell him, Amy?”
She studied his face for a long moment and then smoothed his hair away from his brow. “I told him no. I told him I would not marry him because I don’t love him.”
Colt exploded to his feet. “Damn it, Amy, why’d you tell him that? He’d make a good husband for you and a damn sight better father than I ever could to Saul and Jenny.” He leaned closer to her. “You don’t love him…what the hell does love have to do with anything?”
She paled, but didn’t back away from him. She pulled her shoulders back, and tilted her chin up. “I told him that because he’s not the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. He’s not the man I want to be the father of my children. He’s not the man I want to sleep next to every night of my life. And he’s not the man I love. That’s what love has to do with all of this.”
“I’m a shootist, Amy, a gunman. Do you know what that means? It means that every man I’ve killed has a family wanting to avenge his death. Maybe not all of them will try, but I know of one family that will. One of them already did try.” Colt leaned closer, his face inches from hers. “It means that someday, someone will show up here, looking for me with a loaded gun, hell bent on killing me.”
“You can stop being a shootist any time you want.” Her chin jutted stubbornly at him. “Any time you want, you can hang that gun up and never pick it up again. Others have done it. It can be done. I’ll live with the chance your past will come back for you.”
Colt grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “You are a fool, Amy. I can’t give you what he can. I can’t promise you tomorrow.”
“Neither can he, and he can’t give me what you can. I love you, Colt.”
She could have hit him across the head with an axe handle and it would have had less effect on him. She looked up into his face, those soft, blue-bonnet eyes shimmering with an emotion he’d never expected to see from any woman.
“The thought of any other man touching me or holding me or doing any of the things we’ve done leaves me feeling cold and empty. I don’t want to marry Donnie Morris. I don’t want to marry anyone but you.”
Marshal Taylor had been right, and that knowledge was worse than a red-hot poker in Colt’s gut. She loved him, and unless he could make his past vanish, he wouldn’t be the only one looking over his shoulder. If he stayed, Amelia would be forced to look over her shoulder too, waiting for the specter of his past to rear up.
What a choice it left him. Hurt her now, so she’d have a chance to heal and move on and learn to love someone else. Or stay around and hurt her—perhaps with a crippling hurt—later.