Early Dawn (22 page)

She rested her head on his muscular shoulder, wondering as she did how she could feel so at ease with his arm around her. The whiskey, she guessed. She never should have accepted the third drink. “Sometimes I do. When they came aboard the train, I called attention to myself. That was so stupid of me. Any sane woman would have stayed in her seat and kept her mouth shut.”

“Why did you leave your seat?”

“They were shooting people, and the little boy behind us started to cry. Wallace threatened to kill him if his mother didn’t shut him up.” Eden closed her eyes. “When Wallace took aim at Timothy, I couldn’t just sit there. I got between the gun and the child. Timothy is a darling little boy. I didn’t want him to get hurt.”

“And you think that was a stupid thing to do? Brave, maybe, but not stupid.”

“They might not have taken me if I had stayed in my seat.”

He sighed again. “Maybe, maybe not. But the little boy probably would have died. The Sebastians kill young and old alike. Down in Mexico, they slaughtered an entire family, including a baby. They don’t know the meaning of mercy, and no life is sacred to them.”

Eden shivered.

He tightened his arm around her. “You did what you had to do, Eden, and you paid a terrible price. But none of it was your fault.” He shifted to get more comfortable. “The morning of the train robbery, I was following their tracks, like I told you. What I neglected to say is that I happened upon an old peddler in a clearing. They had slit his throat. Do you think it was the peddler’s fault that he died—that he did something to deserve it?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then stop blaming yourself for what they did to you. When thoughts like that enter your head, push them out. You protected a child. That was the right thing to do, and it took a lot of courage. If anyone should feel bad, it’s the other passengers on the train who did nothing, especially the men.”

Eden released a taut breath. “Feelings make no sense sometimes, Matthew. Rationally, I know none of what happened was my fault, but there are moments when I circle it, just as you said, thinking of everything I might have done differently. If I’d carried my Colts with me in a satchel, I could have defended myself and everyone else. If I’d stayed in my seat and just handed over our valuables, they might not have noticed me.”

He rested his cheek against her hair, and she felt his lips curve in a half smile. “You’d be hard to overlook with that pretty red hair of yours.”

It was Eden’s turn to sigh. “Thank you for talking to me, Matthew. I feel better, and from now on, I’ll try really hard to forget.”

“Forgetting something like that is damned near impossible. Time will help. But what you have to do is make your peace with it and be okay even when you remember.”

“I’ll try.”

“When it gets hard, think of how lucky you are to be alive. My Livvy didn’t survive. After each of them had a turn with her, they went at her with a knife.” His voice went thick. “Our baby died with her.”

Eden lifted her head to search his expression. In the firelight, his eyes glimmered like polished silver. “And you blame yourself.” She didn’t pose it as a question because she heard the guilt ringing in his voice. “Why, Matthew? Doesn’t everything you just said to me also apply to you?”

He puffed air into his cheeks and slowly released it through thinned lips. “It’s different for me. It was my duty to protect Livvy, and I didn’t.” He gazed off into the darkness. “We’d been at the creek for a picnic. It was our special place. I asked her to marry me down there. We celebrated our wedding night and all our anniversaries there. So she chose that place to tell me she was finally in the family way. I didn’t bother to take a rifle or revolver. We were on Lazy J land. There’d never been any trouble in the area. There aren’t even that many rattlesnakes to worry about. So I went down there unarmed.

“As we were driving home, the Sebastians came out of the trees and surrounded the wagon. They wanted our valuables, and all we had with us was Livvy’s wedding band, which wasn’t worth very much. My gold pocket watch was at the shop for repair.” He kept his gaze fixed on some distant place, his face tight with pain. “They were furious because we had nothing to give them, so they jerked Livvy out of the wagon to take it out on her. When I jumped in to defend her, two of them held my arms while Pete pistol-whipped me. After I went down, he started kicking me. Busted some of my ribs and fractured my hip. Then they dragged Livvy off a ways. I could hear her screaming my name, but I’d been beaten half-senseless, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get up. Pretty soon, the screaming stopped.”

“Oh, God, Matthew, how horrible for you.”

“It was far worse for Livvy. The Sebastians go out of their way to inflict pain when they rape a woman. When they finished with her, one of them shot me in the chest. The slug barely missed my heart, and I guess they thought I was dead. I had blood in my eyes, so I couldn’t see which one fired the gun. That’s the last thing I remember, the blast of the gun. My parents got worried when Livvy and I didn’t come home. They came looking for us. I was in a real bad way, and the doctor didn’t think I’d make it. If not for my mother’s efforts, I probably wouldn’t have. When I woke up three weeks later, Livvy and my baby were already buried, and life as I’d known it was over. It was as if everything had been made of blown glass, and quicker than you can snap your fingers, it shattered. That’s why I can never go back. I don’t have it in me to try to glue the pieces together again.”

“Oh, Matthew, I’m so sorry.”

He cleared his throat. His voice was gravelly when he said, “I’ve never told anyone about that day—haven’t been able to talk about it.”

Eden rested her head on his shoulder again. “Well, I’m glad you were able to tell me. You need to have your own words repeated back to you. It wasn’t your fault, and you shouldn’t blame yourself. I didn’t know Livvy, but if she loved you as deeply as you love her, she wouldn’t want you to feel this way.”

“Any man worth his salt protects his wife,” he ground out. “She was a timid little thing, my Livvy. She believed in me and trusted me to keep her safe. Instead, I just lay there by that damned wagon and did nothing while she was raped and murdered.”

“You were badly hurt. So badly hurt you couldn’t get up. How can you blame yourself for that?” Eden touched a fingertip to the paralyzed corner of his mouth. “You were on your own land, Matthew, at a picnic spot you believed was safe. You had no way of knowing that you needed to take a weapon that day. You had no idea the Sebastian Gang was in the area, or that they’d trespass onto the ranch. What happened wasn’t your fault. If someone else told you the story you just told me, would you blame that man for not saving his wife? Even if you’d been armed, it would have been one man against six, and at that time, you probably weren’t very fast with a gun.”

“No, but I should have been,” he whispered gruffly. “Instead I waited until
after
my wife was dead to practice with a gun. How does that make sense? I should have been prepared for any kind of threat before I asked her to marry me. A man should make sure he’s fit to be a good husband before he takes on the responsibility, and I didn’t do that.”

Eden felt so sad for him—and also for herself. Because of the Sebastians, they’d both endured terrible pain. Would either of them ever get past that, or would it haunt them for the rest of their lives?

“You know what, Matthew?”

“No, what?” he asked shakily.

“The way I see it, the two of us have a choice to make, probably the most important one of our lives. We can forget the terrible times in our lives and try our best to be happy—or we can live in the past and feel awful until the day we die. If we do the latter, the Sebastians win. Even if you finally manage to track them down and send them all to hell, they will still have won.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

“I don’t know about you, but that thought doesn’t sit well with me. They got the best of me once, but I can’t allow them to get the best of me again.”

He finally met her gaze. Her heart caught when she saw tears shimmering in his eyes. “You’re quite a lady, Eden Paxton. And you’re right. You need to put it all behind you. Just please understand that it’s a journey I’m not able to make. It wasn’t only me the bastards harmed. My wife and baby died. I’ll never forgive myself for that,
never
.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “It’s been so long now that I can’t even picture Olivia’s face anymore. Can’t remember the sound of her voice. There have even been times when I’ve wondered what the hell I’m doing out here, chasing men that large posses have failed to catch. But even so, I can’t turn loose of it. Keeping that promise is the one thing from my past that I can still hang on to. I have to finish it.”

“And in the doing, punish yourself forever? Livvy wouldn’t want that. If she’s up in heaven, looking down on you—and I believe she is—her heart is breaking. She would want you to heal and be at peace. She’d want you to be happy. Imagine how painful it would be for you if the situation were reversed, and it was you looking down on her. Wouldn’t you want her to have a good life?”

“Of course I would. If ever anyone deserved to be happy, it was Livvy. She didn’t have a mean bone in her whole body.”

“Neither do you,” Eden told him. “I’m coming to believe that you’re a fine man, Matthew Coulter, and you deserve to be happy, too. Don’t let the Sebastians deprive you of that.”

Eden straightened away from him and reached for her coffee. After taking a sip, she glanced over at him. He sat unmoving, his gaze fixed on the horizon, where ponderosa pines rose in black silhouettes against the darkening sky.

After a few minutes, he stirred, stood up, and went to one of the packs. After rifling through the contents, he came up with a shirt, which he began cutting into strips with his hunting knife. When he approached the fire, holding the lengths of cloth in one hand, Eden got a bad feeling as she met his gaze.
Purposeful
was the only way to describe the glint in his eyes.

“How tipsy are you feeling?”

Eden set aside the third drink, which was almost finished. “Why do you ask?”

“When we were down at the creek, I saw a big lump on those ribs of yours,” he said without preamble as he hunkered down in front of her. “They aren’t just bruised, Eden. Pete busted at least two of them, if not three. You should have told me.”

“There isn’t much to be done for broken ribs.”

“True, but wrapping them tight will at least hold them steady. Without binding, if one of them is broken clean in two, you could puncture a lung if you took a tumble off the horse.”

Eden angled a wary look at the strips of cloth he had started knotting together. “I don’t think they’re that bad.”

He continued at his task. “Maybe, maybe not, but there’s no sense in taking a chance. Besides, a tight binding will help ease the pain.”

Eden wasn’t about to strip down naked up top so he could wrap her ribs.

As if he guessed her thoughts, he said, “You can tie your shirttails snug under your protuberances. All I’ll see is your belly and back.”

His use of the word
protuberances
made her smile in spite of herself. She guessed he’d heard his sisters use the term. “Really, Matthew, the support isn’t necessary.”

“I say it is. Remember our agreement? I’m telling you to shed that coat.”

Reluctantly, Eden took off the jacket and tied her shirttails snugly beneath her breasts. He motioned for her to stand up, his expression so grimly determined that she didn’t know who felt more uncomfortable. As she gained her feet, she nearly lost her balance. He clamped a hand over her shoulder to steady her.

“You okay?”

“I think I’m a little drunk.”

His eyes twinkled with humor. “That was my aim, to relax you. I knew this would be too unnerving for you otherwise.”

It was unnerving for her anyway.

“Suck it in,” he ordered, “and hold it until I make a couple of passes. The tighter I get it, the better.”

It hurt to suck in her stomach. But she held her breath until he’d wrapped the cloth around her twice and told her it was okay to relax. She felt self-conscious, standing before him with her belly bared, but to his credit, he made fast work of the job. Before she knew it, he had finished and told her she could loosen the shirttails to cover herself again. To her surprise, the tight binding did ease the pain in her side. It no longer hurt so much when she moved, and she could take a deep breath.

“Better?”

“Much.”

“Maybe that and the whiskey will help you get a good night’s sleep.”

After spreading out the bedroll, he lay down on his side. When Eden joined him under the blanket, he looped his arm around her waist and moved closer. This time, she didn’t flinch or grab his wrist. She suspected it was because the liquor had numbed her, and she didn’t have the good sense to feel panicky. Drifting in the alcohol-induced haze, she relished the heat of his body, vaguely aware that his hand remained anchored in one place. The realization made her smile sleepily. Maybe some men got out of line with women when they drank, but Matthew Coulter clearly wasn’t one of them.

He reminded her of a gift her brother David had given her on her tenth birthday. It had been during the lean years, when they couldn’t afford fancy paper or many presents, so he’d wrapped it in newspaper, one layer after another, because he had wanted to prolong the opening of gifts for her. Only somehow the newsprint had gotten wet and the ink had bled, creating a sodden, blackened lump that looked extremely unappealing. Not wishing to hurt David’s feelings, Eden had pretended to be excited as she worked to pick away the tape, wondering all the while what awful thing he’d gotten her.

At the very center of that frustrating mess she’d found a beautiful little gold locket on a chain so fine and exquisite that it had felt like a strand of silk against her skin. David had saved back a portion of his wages every week for three months in order to buy it for her, and Eden had treasured it until the day of the train robbery, when she’d put it with all her other valuables in the knotted handkerchief.