Explaining Herself Page 11

  'You're no help," accused Laurel.

  Collier only smiled his lopsided smile—the only thing about his face that wasn't perfect—and said, "That is exactly the point. We aren't to help."

  Because she'd been keeping track of Ross on the edge of her vision, even while watching Laurel's husband, Victoria immediately noticed when Ross's head came up. She saw him frown. Then, before she could ask what was wrong, he put down his glass and stood, and everyone noticed.

  Then, in the silence that fell over the parlor, even Victoria heard it through the open windows—the scream of a horse. It didn't sound hurt. It sounded somehow . . . angry.

  Laramie bolted for the door on those long legs of his, only bothering to call a single word—"Trouble"— over his dark-shirted shoulder.

  Papa and Collier were up then, Collier darting to the fireplace for the sleek rifle hanging over it.

  Was it rustlers? Victoria stood, still confused, and looked to Laurel for clarification. A mountain lion? A bear? But Collier, leaving with the rifle, called, "The stallion!"

  Nobody would steal a wild horse that, thus far, the Pembrokes could not give away. That's when Victoria realized there could be other kinds of trouble than theft, and she followed Laurel out by a heartbeat.

  Papa turned to point a stern hand at his older daughters. "Stay."

  But then Victoria's ever-searching gaze stopped, frozen, on a flash of yellow in the stallion's corral. She could not have looked at anything else even if she wanted to. Just that. Yellow. Close to the ground. Yellow like calico. Yellow like a dress.

  Then not even her father could keep her from breaking into a full run after Ross and Collier.

  Chapter Eleven

  Of course, Laramie heard it first. He'd lived his adult life watching, listening, waiting for trouble. It still surprised him when trouble came. But he'd kept alive staying ready for the surprise.

  When the feeling came upon him in that fine parlor—like a hum of danger, deep in his gut—he didn't question it. He was on his way out even as the others fell quiet enough for him to hear the horse. A horse, even in distress, shouldn't give him this cold clutch in his chest, this itch in his gun hand. But he knew better than to question it, so he kept going.

  When Pembroke called, "The stallion!" Laramie knew which direction to head, his shoulders tight, his pulse rushing. Something felt wrong, smelled wrong, sounded—

  Then he saw the rearing stallion, and the flash of its deadly fighting hooves. He saw the heap of yellow calico lying beneath those hooves.

  His hand moved even faster than his mind, so quickly did he have his left arm extended, his aim taken, his trigger finger squeezing. Once. Twice. Three times.

  With the first shot, the stallion dropped to four feet and turned, startled. At the second, it staggered back. With the third, it shuddered—he was hitting it, he knew he was hitting it, and yet still it hadn't gone down.

  Too far away. Even as he ran, it was too far away for the accuracy of a damned six-killer. But he fired again.

  Someone screamed, behind him. He hoped it wasn't Victoria, and he fired again.

  The horse was stumbling now, red starting to mark lighter patches of its coat—and Laramie's revolver clicked on an empty chamber.

  Men who rode with a sixth bullet tended to lose toes, but he would have sacrificed toes for this. Click!

  He spun on the man he sensed beside him. "Damn it!"

  And Collier Pembroke, with the finest rifle Laramie had ever seen, fired the shot that took down the rogue stallion for good. The Englishman did not look handsome at that moment. He looked ill. But he did it.

  In the midst of tragedy, that counted for something.

  Then everyone was rushing past them—Laurel and Victoria, their father moving faster than any old cowboy Laramie had ever known. And the two younger men were left standing in a sharp cloud of gun smoke, staring at a corral that looked to be too full of death for a kinder world.

  "Kitty!" At Victoria's wail, a cry so full of grief it hurt to hear, Laramie felt sudden fury. Not at her. Not even at the damned horse.

  Bad is bad.

  He felt furious at the world, at God, for letting this happen. He'd always known—well, learned early enough—that he didn't live in that kinder world.

  He hadn't realized until this moment how much comfort he'd taken from the belief that Victoria Garrison did.

  Papa's hat fell off as he swung himself between the corral rails. Victoria noticed that. Though hurrying, he didn't cry out or stumble, but his white hair seemed oddly vulnerable, without a hat.

  Then he was gathering Kitty's frail little form up into his arms and carrying her out. The hat stayed, in the mud by the dead horse. / should get his hat, Vic thought numbly. But that was so she wouldn't think the worse thing.

  Then she saw the broken spectacles, also in the mud, and she thought the worse thing anyway, and she pressed both hands to her mouth to keep any noise, any words from escaping and making this horrible thing real.

  Not Kitty. Not little Kitty.

  Collier was in the corral then, rifle in hand, checking to make sure the horse was dead. It was Laurel, the bravest of Vic's sisters, who flanked their father as he strode back toward the house with his precious armful and somehow asked what needed asking. "Papa? Is she ... ?"

  Papa answered so low that Victoria, still standing where she'd stopped, couldn't hear. Laurel started to cry—but she didn't stop walking with Papa and Kitty. She even ran ahead to the house, got the door.

  What had he said?

  Still not moving, Victoria wasn't sure she wanted to know. That depended on the answer. But want to or not, she needed to know. As Ross Laramie came to her side and took her arm with a gentle hand, she turned to him as her only hope. "What did he say, Ross? Did you hear? Is—is she ... ?" She couldn't face the worse question, any more than Laurel had, so she again begged, "What did he say?"

  "He said she's breathing," answered Ross in that low, even way of his. She longed for his containment, his control. Collier jogged past them toward the house, while Papa carried Kitty inside, but Victoria could only search Ross's face, see the truth of his words—and feel her heart begin to beat again. "Breathing?"

  He nodded, the most beautiful answer she ever could have received.

  "She's alive?"

  He nodded, tugged at her arm. "They'll need you."

  She glanced toward the corral—at what she could see of the dead stallion—and she imagined poor Kitty's terror as the beast reared up, struck at her. "Why? Ross, why? Why would anything hurt a little girl?"

  He framed her face in his hands, as if to make her hear him. The warmth and steadiness of his touch felt like salvation, like the only thing that kept her head from exploding. She was safe with Ross. She always had been. "Victoria," he repeated, "They need you."

  She nodded. Yes. Poor Papa. Poor Laurel.

  Kitty . . .

  When Ross drew his fingers off her cheeks and held her shoulders instead, turning her toward the house, she let him. She blessed his ability to move, when she couldn't. That thought, mixed with the gun smoke still lingering like a blue cloud, reminded her of another blessing.

  'You were so fast," she marveled, remembering how quickly he'd drawn, how quickly he'd fired. She hadn't realized he'd done it until the third shot. 'You saved her life. How did you ever learn to shoot that fast?"

  But, urging her toward the house, Ross didn't answer.

  Victoria's innocence frightened him, and Laramie didn't know what to say. How could he be the one to tell her that death didn't always come fast? Life could be gruelingly tenacious in its good-byes; maybe that's what made the taking of life so profane. Even a man gut-shot by a rustler could linger for days. Even a little girl, trampled by a wild horse.

  How could he tell her that instead of saving her baby sister's life, he might have only prolonged it?

  He couldn't. And the hope on her face as she quickened her step, tugging him by the hand she would not re
lease, found its way into his heart just to break it.

  By the time they reached the house, Collier Pembroke was heading toward the stables, his face drawn. "I'll bring the doctor," he promised as he passed. "Victoria ..."

  But then he shook his head and hurried on.

  He thinks it's his fault for keeping the stallion, thought Laramie. Maybe the Garrisons would blame themselves for not watching the girl more closely, or their mother would take fault for not coming along, or keeping her home. None of them knew what it really meant to be responsible for someone's death.

  That was yet another reason he didn't belong here.

  He felt blasphemous walking into the grieving household. Laurel was running up the stairs as they came in, and Victoria followed, dragging Laramie with her. He had to actually grasp her wrist to free his hand from hers, before she tugged him right into the sickroom.

  He didn't deserve to be in there, with the family.

  Instead, Laramie watched from the doorway while Mrs. Pembroke used sewing shears to cut Kitty's torn, muddy dress off her broken little body, so as not to hurt her further. And it was broken. Right off, Laramie recognized the flash of white bone amid the bloody mess of one leg. One of her arms wasn't lying natural anymore, either. And something seemed wrong with her shoulder. Even once her father drew blankets over the child's near nakedness, they couldn't hide the blood already soaking into a pillow from the side of her head. Laurel Pembroke pressed a bandage against the wound, then made Victoria hold it while she darted out, past Laramie, for more supplies.

  "What can I... ?" His words did not come easily, and she'd gone before he finished them.

  The minutes stretched into bandages, soap and water, spiderwebs to stop bleeding, a hopeful bottle of brandy waiting to be used as a painkiller. All the while, Victoria was biting her lip, and Laramie wondered if it was to keep from saying anything wrong. Her older sister seemed more used to a sickroom, white-faced but grimly determined. And their father worked as smoothly and efficiently as if this were any injured animal he'd found, running his hands over the child's body, pressing at her gut, listening to her chest. He seemed almost unnaturally calm. Only his sharp eyes showed his agony—and that, only because Laramie knew how to read a man's eyes.

  It felt like a blow when the man finally lifted that raw gaze to Ross. "Fetch two lengths of wood," he instructed, hoarse. "Flat."

  "For her arm," guessed Laramie.

  The rancher nodded, already turning back to Kitty.

  As Laramie started down the stairs, Victoria must have released her lip. Suddenly he heard her asking, "But what about her leg, Papa? How will we ever set her leg?"

  Laramie drowned the rest under his boot heels on the stairs. Kitty's leg was clearly ruined; best that they leave it for the doctor. If it came to amputation ...

  He'd seen plenty of men torn, bleeding—by accident, or due to poor companions and poorer choices. Hell, a posse's mistake had sent two bullets ripping through him just that June—the most basic of doctoring, in an outlaw's hideout, had hardly prettied his wounds. But this was the first child he'd seen in such shape. It sickened him, deep down where he'd thought he'd gone numb years ago.

  Nobody should have to amputate his own child's leg.

  Laramie hid from that sick feeling by focusing on the task. When he got back upstairs with the wood, Victoria hovered in his spot in the doorway herself, her shoulders hunched, her bloody fists pressed against her chin as if to stop her mouth from trembling. He hoped she hadn't gotten herself expelled from the sickroom for her questions; God knew a girl who took comfort in answers must feel a powerful need to be asking them.

  Despite the risk of exposure, he slid a hand down her spine as he ducked past. The look she sent him— grateful, hopeful, terrified—broke his heart a second time.

  Garrison accepted the wood, then lifted the blanket off the girl's bad arm. "Best do it while she's out."

  "But she'll come to, won't she?" That was Victoria again, desperate to know something, anything.

  Laurel sounded cross when she said, "We don't know."

  The arm didn't look so bad, now that they'd cleaned her up. Oh, it was broken—arms just weren't made to turn like that—but Laramie had seen worse.

  "I'll set it," he offered. "If you'd like."

  But Garrison did it himself, as if turning and readjusting his daughter's thin little arm wasn't tearing his guts out. It was, surely. But he did it anyway.

  Just as Laramie began to regret thinking he could help, the rancher said, "Fetch my wife. I—" He stopped then, in the midst of adjusting the wood split over the now straight little arm, and swallowed. "We'll need my wife."

  'Yes, sir."

  But before Laramie had reached the stairs, Garrison added, "Take Victoria."

  "What?" Vic's eyes widened—a reflection, Laramie thought, of his own.

  Her sister said, "Do you want Mama to hear this from a stranger, Vic? No offense, Mr. Laramie."

  "No," he agreed, understanding now. "We'll get her."

  Then he headed down the stairs again, surrounded by the scents of new wood, new paint, and fineries that meant nothing when a little girl lay up there hurting, maybe dying. He waited at the bottom until Victoria followed, her gray eyes still glazed with fear. Then he took her elbow and led her to the kitchen.

  "Wash the blood off," he instructed, working the pump handle until water began to gush out, then guiding her hands into the flow. "Smell might spook your horse."

  One of the hardest parts of riding to safety, after he'd been shot, had been handling his goddamned horse.

  "I hate horses," she said—and suddenly he wanted to laugh. It wouldn't have been a good laugh. He swallowed it.

  Instead he said, "I know."

  "Give me Papa's saddle," she called, as he headed out the kitchen door, and he nodded.

  He'd saddled her gelding by the time Victoria arrived, and she adjusted her father's stirrups to her leg length while Laramie tightened Blackie's cinch for himself, all in silence. When he turned to help her mount, Vic surprised him by suddenly leaning her head against his ribs, wrapping her arms around his waist, and crumpling into him, shaking.

  Startled, he instinctively drew her more tightly against him, taking a bitter comfort in just the holding of her. He wished he could make this better, wished protecting life were as easy as taking it. But all he could do was stand there and try to absorb some of her misery.

  "I don't understand," she said, her words slurred like maybe she was crying. Even when he tucked his chin to his chest, he could only see the top of her head—so he stroked a hand across her hair. "She should have known better than to go in there. And that horrible horse—she couldn't have been a threat to it! Why did it happen to her? She's so good. Of all of us . . ."

  You 're good, too. He doubted she wanted to hear that, and he didn't know any other answers, so he just held her.

  "Tell me she'll be okay." Now she tipped her face toward him, her wet eyes bright with desperation. "She will, won't she? Papa's taking care of her, and Collier's fetching the doctor, and we'll bring Mama back, so Kitty will be all right, won't she?"

  But this time, he couldn't lie. Not even a lie that she needed so badly to hear as this one. Only God knew if Kitty would make it.

  Assuming God cared.

  Cantering along the wooded path that would eventually take them to the ranch road, wishing Ross—in the lead—would spur his horse into a full gallop, Victoria felt guilty for not leaving sooner. She shouldn't have stopped to wash her hands and face, even if that had calmed her. She shouldn't have let Ross hold her, even for those few brief minutes, even if that had helped far more.

  Nothing should matter but getting Mama back to Kitty—until Ross's horse reared back, even as Victoria registered a sound too familiar, today.

  A gunshot?

  Another gunshot?

  Ross wheeled his horse back at her—"Get down, get down!"—but she didn't understand. Was someone hunting? Had someone made
a mistake?

  Still, she slid from Papa's worn saddle to the safety of the rocky ground, tugging poor Huckleberry hurriedly back up the path where Ross, leading Blackie, was crowding them. When Ross looped his gelding's reins over a tree branch, Victoria did it too, for lack of a better idea.

  "Stay here." He spread his hand, the one not carrying his rifle, as if that could hold her back, then started up the path on foot, without her. But not for long.

  "What's going on?" she whispered as she followed him. "Who's shooting?"

  "Shhh!" He waved a hand backward at her. "Stay there."

  When she shushed, she could hear what sounded like men's voices arguing from the trees beyond them, then the nicker of a horse.

  Ross hunkered down with a slight wince and started to take off his spurs, one-handed. She stepped closer to him, put her hand on his hard shoulder and leaned very near his ear to whisper, "Why would anybody shoot at us?"

  He widened his eyes at her, one finger—and a handful of leather and spurs—to his lips, and sank lower behind some brush. He left the spurs on the ground to reach up for her, catch her arm, and draw her abruptly down beside him.

  Suddenly, after this awful morning, Victoria felt glad to be kneeling so close to the safety of Ross Laramie—even if someone had shot at them. Surely nobody had meant it! And in the meantime, his warmth and his smell and the lean hardness of him somehow reassured that she would be fine.

  Though if it hadn't been an accident, if it had been bad men . . .

  When she parted her lips again, he covered her mouth with his hand. She almost protested. But the way he then used that hand to gently draw her head toward his, then pressed his cheek against her hair and his lips near her ear, felt so intriguing that she did not want to interrupt.

  "They shot at us," he whispered into her ear, and she shivered at the sensation. "But they didn't aim at us."

  How did he know that? His hand muffled her attempt to ask the question. In the meantime, she heard the lowing of a cow from the same direction as the voices.