Autumn Lover (30 page)

“What the hell!” Mickey said. “I had him dead to rights!”

“Be glad you didn’t pull the trigger,” Morgan said curtly. “That’s Hunter’s brother out there.”

“His brother?” Mickey said. “I didn’t know he had one.”

“You do now. Keep it in mind. Case is as hard a man as you’ll find on the right side of the law.”

Morgan watched the two riders below. Within seconds, his worst fears were confirmed.

Case didn’t bother stopping to talk to Hunter. He simply shouted something and swept past at a dead run.

He was heading for the Ladder S.

Fully dressed, Elyssa paced her bedroom like a caged animal. Back and forth. Back and forth. She looked through first one gun slit, then the other. Then she paced.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Peer through gun slits toward the B Bar.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Stare out the other window, two more gun slits.

Listen for the sound of shots.

“Where are you, Hunter?” Elyssa whispered. “You and Morgan and all of the men. Are you all right? Have you found the cattle? Have the Culpeppers found you?”

Only silence answered Elyssa’s questions. The ranch yard was empty. The dogs were quiet. Penny was in her room, trying to sleep. Lefty and Gimp were downstairs drinking coffee in the kitchen, trying not to sleep.

Elyssa looked at her watch. More than an hour had gone by since the men had ridden out by twos into the darkness.

Like a restless ghost she went from window to window. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Stare out the gun slits.

Dawn was coming on in a shimmer of pale orange and red and yellow. The peaks were already glowing. Soon daylight would slide down the rugged mountains and fill the Ruby Valley with light.

Elyssa barely noticed the beauty of the gathering dawn. She simply paced back and forth.

Three equally spaced shots shattered the night’s silence.

Danger
.

Carbine in hand, Elyssa turned and ran downstairs, calling to the others every step of the way. When she reached the first floor, Penny was standing in her bedroom doorway. She was carrying Elyssa’s shotgun.

“What is it?” Penny asked quickly.

“I don’t know. Just three shots.”

Suddenly the dogs erupted into a frenzy of barking.

Elyssa ran to the shutter and peered through a slit. She saw a racing shadow in the darkness that preceded dawn. Moments later she made out the shape of a horse galloping flat out toward the ranch house from the direction of Wind Gap.

Elyssa’s heart soared in the instant before she realized that big, broad-shouldered rider who was crouched low on the horse’s neck wasn’t Hunter.

“Don’t shoot!” she yelled to Lefty and Gimp.

“Sassy, you know we don’t
never
shoot at what we can’t personally i-den-ti-fy!”

Ignoring the indignant reply, Elyssa stared into the darkness where hoofbeats made a rolling thunder.

The horse galloped past the garden and right up to the front porch of the house.

“Open up!” Case yelled.

Elyssa was already yanking the bar out of its supports before she heard Case’s command. He dove through the doorway just as gunfire broke out beyond the barn.

“Don’t shoot!” Case commanded. “Hunter and the rest are coming in behind me!”

“Front or back?” Elyssa asked.

“Any damned way they can. The Culpeppers will be all over them like a rash in about two minutes. Close that door, but don’t bar it yet.”

Elyssa slammed the door shut behind Case. He went from rifle slit to rifle slit, peering into the fading darkness.

The sound of galloping horses came from the distance like a mutter of drums.

“Lefty!” Elyssa called out.

“Yo!”

“Come in here and cover me when I open the door. Penny, Gimp will cover you at the kitchen door. If you men see any strangers coming in, shoot.”

“Hunter won’t like having you anywhere near the doors,” Case said bluntly. “A lot of bullets could be coming through with the men.”

Elyssa said only, “How good are you with that rifle?”

“Tolerable,” Case said dryly.

“The approach to the back door can be covered from the nursery upstairs. The front approach can be covered from the first bedroom on the left.”

Case was running for the stairs before Elyssa finished speaking. He went up them with the speed and coordination of a cougar. She could barely stand to watch. Case was so like Hunter in his size, his build, his way of moving.

Gunfire erupted through the night in a deadly staccato
hail, drowning out the growing rumble of horses’ hooves.

Hunter
, Elyssa thought.
Oh, God. Hunter
!

Lefty came to stand beside Elyssa at the front door. The sound of glass shattering upstairs told her that Case was breaking out a windowpane to make room for his rifle barrel.

The pounding of horses’ hooves became a rolling thunder sweeping toward the house.

“Our men are coming in the back way!” Case called from upstairs. “Get ready!”

Elyssa forced herself not to run toward the darkened kitchen. Her job was at the front of the house, not the back.

Rifle fire erupted from the upstairs.

“Some are coming to the front!” Case called. “Get ready! The Culpeppers are right on their tails!”

Lefty moved to a rifle slit by a window, broke out the glass pane, levered a round into the chamber, and waited. Even though the old hand had refused to sign on for gunfighting wages, he was calm and efficient in his movements.

“Open the kitchen door!” Case yelled.

Abruptly the sound of horses and gunfire became louder, telling Elyssa that the kitchen door was open. She didn’t turn away from the front door even when she heard shouts and curses and Ladder S men calling out their own names as they fought their way into the kitchen.

“Front door!” Case yelled.

Elyssa threw it open and then ran to the nearest rifle slit, carbine in hand. She peered out and saw nothing but a turmoil of shadows lunging out of the darkness that preceded dawn.

Bullets thudded into the thick wood of the house as Elyssa lifted her carbine to break out the glass. Before
the steel barrel met windowpane, glass exploded. She flinched and gave a startled cry. Then she realized that the raiders had done her a favor—now she wouldn’t have to break the glass herself.

On the other side of the door, Lefty fired several times at a muzzle flash in the cottonwoods along the stream.

Men hurtled through the open doorway. Lefty yanked his rifle out of the gun slit and turned toward the men, listening and watching. They were calling out their own names as they lunged into the room.

“Fox!”

“Reed and Blackie!”

Dimly Elyssa realized that Reed was supporting the other man. Blood gleamed like wet paint on Blackie’s pant leg above the low top of his boot.

“Hunter set up a dispensary in the root cellar,” Elyssa said tightly. “No light will show from there. Penny! We have an injured man!”

“I’ll take the kitchen door, ma’am,” said Fox.

There was a pause, then two more men raced through the front doorway.

“Sonny here,” said the first man. “Morgan is right on my ass.”

A dark shadow leaped through the door after Sonny and dove to one side.

“Morgan,” said the shadow. Then he raised his voice and shouted, “Close and bar the kitchen door!”

“Yo!” Gimp answered from the back of the house.

Elyssa held her breath, waiting, waiting.

No other men hurtled through the open front doorway.

“Hunter,” Elyssa cried. “
Hunter
.”

She didn’t know she had gone to the opening to call out his name until Morgan yanked her out of the doorway. Bullets whined and screamed through the dark room.

Morgan slammed and barred the door. Bullets thudded into the triple-thick planks.

“Ammunition!” Case yelled from upstairs.

“Ma’am?” Sonny asked.

“In the root cellar,” Elyssa said numbly. “There’s plenty. Hunter saw to it.”

“Two boxes for everyone,” Morgan said.

“Follow me,” she said.

As Sonny followed Elyssa down an indoor stairway and into the basement, the young man’s eyes widened in appreciation of Hunter’s preparations.

Lantern light glowed up from a corner of the large, dirt-walled room at the bottom of the stairway, illuminating the cellar. In addition to the usual sacks of onions and carrots, potatoes and apples, there were ranks of barrels, stacks of ammunition boxes, and seven cots with blankets. Other boxes and full gunnysacks of supplies were stacked neatly about, waiting to be used.

Blackie was on one of the cots. One of his boots was off. Penny was working over his leg.

“By God,” Sonny said, taking it all in. “Morgan wasn’t fooling, was he? Our ramrod must have been some kind of Johnny Reb soldier boy.”

“Yes,” Elyssa said. “He was.”

She turned away. The thought of Hunter outside in the danger an darkness was too painful for her to bear.

“The ammunition is over there,” Elyssa said tautly. “As soon as you get some to Case, distribute boxes to the other men.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sonny said.

While he grabbed cartridge boxes, Elyssa asked the question that had been gnawing at her.

“Hunter? Did you see him?”

“No, ma’am. He was back up on the ridge, covering our retreat. That man can shoot like hell on
fire
. Without
him, we wouldn’t have made it through Wind Gap without being cut to doll rags.”

Sonny straightened and trotted past Elyssa on his way to the stairs.

“Excuse me, ma’am. They’ll be needing these cartridges.”

Sonny ran up the stairway.

“How is he?” Elyssa asked, turning to Penny.

Blackie answered before Penny could.

“It’s just my calf,” he said, disgusted. “Soon as Miss Penny wraps it up, I’ll be ready to fight.”

“That’s not necessary,” Elyssa said.

“The hell it ain’t,” he retorted. Then, “Excuse me, ma’am, but there’s more than forty raiders out there. We need every hand.”

“Hold still,” Penny said. “I’m going to wash the wound.”

“Hell, ma’am, just pour some whiskey through it and get me out of here.”

“As you wish.”

Liquid gurgled out of a bottle. Blackie hissed a string of words that both women pretended not to hear. Penny began wrapping the wound. She had barely knotted the bandage before Blackie swung his legs off the cot, crammed his foot back in his boot, and picked up his rifle.

When Blackie’s injured leg took his weight, he grimaced, paled, swore…and walked unevenly to the stairway, using the butt of the rifle as a crutch.

Elyssa turned to follow him.

“Wait,” Penny said to her. “You’re bleeding.”

“What?”

“Your face,” Penny said simply.

Elyssa held her hand up to her face. Her fingers came away red and sticky. She stared at them, shocked. Only
then did she realize that her forehead and right cheek stung as though on fire.

“Come here,” Penny said.

She wrung out a cloth in warm water and started cleaning Elyssa’s face with gentle touches.

“What happened?” Penny asked.

“It must have been the glass,” Elyssa said, remembering. “It exploded before I could knock it out of the rifle slit.”

Penny smiled wryly.

“John warned Gloria that would happen, but she wouldn’t hear it,” Penny said. “She insisted that a proper home needed proper panes of glass, not thick shutters with gun slits in them. So they compromised. Glass and shutters both.”

Gunfire came sporadically from inside and outside the house.

Elyssa closed her eyes and tried not to think of Hunter out there in the night, unprotected.

Hunter wounded, bleeding, alone.

Dying.

“Are you all right?” Penny asked, concerned.

Elyssa nodded.

“You turned white as salt,” Penny said.

“Hunter.”

“What?”

“Hunter covered the men’s retreat. He’s still out there.”

Penny made a small sound, then hugged Elyssa.

Belatedly Elyssa realized that Bill also was out there in the dangerous dawn.

Somewhere.

“
Rider coming in! Hold your fire!
”

Elyssa recognized Case’s voice. She turned and ran up the basement stairs and then up the stairway to the second floor.

Case was standing at a rifle slit. Despite his shouted order, he was sighting down the barrel of his rifle, tracking the rider.

“Is it Hunter?” Elyssa asked urgently.

“Likely.”

In the silence Elyssa could hear the sound of hoofbeats approaching rapidly.

“Why aren’t the Culpeppers firing at him?” she asked.

“It’s a goddam riderless mule!” Fox yelled from downstairs.

“Hold your fire!” Morgan commanded harshly.

Elyssa looked toward Case. He was tracking the mule over the rifle barrel with a single-minded intensity that was chilling.

“Unbar the kitchen door!” Case yelled without looking away. “Morgan, stand by with your pistol!”

“Yo!”

Elyssa turned and ran downstairs. As she reached the kitchen, she heard Case yell for them to open the door and get the hell out of the way. She froze in place.

No one noticed her. Every eye was on the kitchen door.

Revolver cocked and drawn, Morgan stood to one side of the door as it swung open.

A man dove through the door a bare instant before the mule careened into the side of the house. The force of the impact made the building shudder.

The kitchen door slammed shut before the man stopped rolling.

Morgan tracked every motion the man made. Then Morgan’s smile flashed and he holstered the pistol.

“Welcome home, suh,” Morgan said.

“Glad to be here,” Hunter said, coming to his feet fast. “What’s the situation?”

The easy power of Hunter’s movements told Elyssa
that he was unhurt. The relief she felt was so great that it made her dizzy.

“Blackie is shot through the leg,” Morgan said. “Mano Herrera took a crease along his shoulder. Penny is patching him up now. Blackie’s already back on the job.”

“Elyssa?” Hunter asked.