California Romance (21 page)

“That’s right,” the sheriff seconded. “You’ve plumb wore out what little welcome you ever had in Madera. Now git up, and git before I run you in!”

Red slunk out but not before giving them both a baleful look.

Now that Matt knew Gus and Tice’s destination, he rode toward Fresno as if pursued by a thousand howling devils. Chase fully lived up to his name. The buckskin gelding had never run faster or more smoothly. They reached the buggy in which Sarah and Curly had driven to Madera. The horse was still in the traces. Matt freed him but didn’t attempt to lead him. He would only slow Chase down. Instead Matt staked him out by a patch of nearby grass. He’d retrieve the horse and buggy after he found Sarah.

Daylight gave way to growing darkness, but there was still no sign of the girl Matt loved. He slowed Chase and gave thanks for the multitude of brilliant stars that lighted their way. Then, around a bend in the road, Matt came across a gruesome scene: an overturned coach, with the horses still in their harness. The driver sprawled across the seat. Dead. The coach fit the description he’d gotten from Red.

Matt yanked the coach door open. A battered and bleeding older man—Gus Stoddard, no doubt—fell into his arms. The coach was empty. Matt’s world turned black. “Where’s Sarah?” he demanded, torn between rage and a reluctant pity for the injured man.

“I don’t know.” Gus was incoherent. Blood flowed freely, but a quick examination showed his injuries didn’t appear to be life threatening. Gus Stoddard would live to return to his family.

Matt gave a cry of despair. “Sarah, where are you?”

The silence was so profound Matt could hear his breaking heart thunder in his chest.

M
atthew Sterling fell to his knees beside the coach and faced his own personal Gethsemane. How could God take Sarah and let worthless Gus Stoddard live? From the looks of the overturned coach, it had been traveling at a terrible pace. He would find Sarah somewhere in the darkness, lifeless and broken. Despair descended like a woolen blanket, smothering Matt until he wondered if he would survive. He beat his fists on the ground. Guilt tormented him. He had promised Seth to protect his beloved sister—and failed. “I should have taken Sarah to Madera and let the ranch chores go hang,” he cried out.

Memories rose to haunt him: Sarah as a young girl in the picture in Seth’s saddlebags. Sarah miraculously transformed into the woman whose picture Matt carried just over his heart. Sarah at the Yosemite Hotel, eyes filled with gratitude for what Matt had done for her brother. Sarah on Pandora. Sarah with Seth. With Solita. With Curly, Bud, and Slim, who were outspoken in their admiration. The courageous girl repelling Red Fallon’s advances. Finally Sarah teaching the Mexican children and their mothers, face alight with the joy of giving.

Matt had thought he loved her beyond description, praying she would be God’s choice to complete his life. Yet those feelings were nothing compared with what he now felt—when it was too late. She had asked for time to be sure of her own feelings. He had given it to her. She must not marry him out of gratitude or the need for a protector. She must explore her heart before she wore the gold band of wifehood.

Now there was no time for Sarah to learn to love him the way he believed she had begun to do. No time to place the sparkling engagement ring that had belonged to Matt’s mother on Sarah’s finger—the ring he had never considered offering to Lydia Hensley. Matt groaned, the sound loud in the quiet spot. “Why, God?” The night remained still, as if holding its breath, waiting for an answer or silently mourning a life snatched away by lust and greed. A rustle of leaves came, and a low cry as soft as an angel’s wing.

“Matthew? Thank God. I knew you’d come!”

Matt leaped up, snatched a lantern, and strode toward the sound of Sarah’s voice. She lay in a crumpled heap in the shadows at the side of the road, dirty and disheveled. One sleeve of her blue-and-white gingham dress was torn. A dark bruise and a trickle of dried blood on her forehead showed in the flickering light.

Matt set the lantern down and peered at her. How badly was she hurt?
Please, God, don’t let her have broken her back when she was thrown from the coach
. “Can you move your legs and arms?” he asked.

“I think so.” She struggled to a sitting position and smiled weakly.

Relief gushed through Matt like water through a sieve. He caught Sarah in his arms and held her against his out-of-control heart. “I thought I’d lost you!”

A dirty but sturdy hand stroked his tear-stained face. “You won’t have to, Matthew. When Tice lost control of the coach, I knew I was going to die. My last thought was regret that I didn’t have the chance to tell you I’ve come to love you with all my heart.”

Too overcome with emotion to speak, Matt tenderly kissed her and thanked God.

Any lingering doubts Sarah may have had about her love for Matt vanished forever with their first real kiss. She returned it with all her heart then nestled in his arms, feeling like she had come home after a long, arduous journey. “How did you find me?”

“I had a little talk with your old friend, Red Fallon.”

Sarah gasped. “What did you do to him?”

“Gave him a quick punch to remember me by then told him to pack up and leave Madera or get jailed for kidnapping.”

A moan brought Sarah back to the present. Filled with dread, she quavered, “Gus? Tice?”

Matt placed his hands on each side of her troubled face. “Gus isn’t seriously hurt, but Tice is dead.”

Sarah slumped against him, feeling she had received a stay of execution. Never again would the riverboat gambler have power over her, even false power granted by those in high places who were as unscrupulous as himself. “Was he killed instantly?”

Matt sounded reluctant to tell her when he said, “It appears Tice’s neck was broken when the coach turned over.”

Sarah shuddered and grasped Matt’s strong hands. “The last thing I heard before Tice lost control of the carriage and it slammed into the boulder at the side of the road was him cursing the horses. Would he have had time to ask for God’s mercy before he died?”

“We’ll never know,” Matt quietly told her. “I hated Tice, but God help the man if Tice carried his sins into eternity.” Matt cleared his throat. “We need to head home. The coach is no use to us. We’ll ride Chase double. Gus will have to ride one of the coach horses. When we reach the place where Red Fallon left the horse and buggy, we’ll be right as rain.”

Sarah jerked her attention from Tice Edwards’s fate to the present. She hadn’t told Matt that every bone in her body hurt. Could she ride, even surrounded by Matt’s protective arms? She had to.
“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,”
she silently quoted, trying not to limp when Matt helped her to her feet. She needn’t have worried about him noticing. He stepped toward Gus, who lay moaning and cursing where Matt had left him earlier.

“Don’t stand there like a blitherin’ idjit, girl. Git over here and help me!” Gus barked. Another string of curses followed.

“Shut your dirty mouth, or I’ll gag you and leave you here,” Matt threatened. “The only reason you’ll get any help is so I can turn you over to the sheriff. And you’ll get no help from Sarah, ever again.” He hoisted Gus to a standing position.

“I didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” Gus whined. “Who’re you, anyway, to interfere with a man and his daughter? I come all the way from St. Louis to fetch Sarah home. By all that’s holy, that’s what I’m gonna do.” He put on an innocent air that sickened Sarah. “Tice is dead which means I ain’t owin’ him anything. Sarah, you’ve got no reason for not comin’ home. Your daddy and the young’uns need lookin’ after.”

The relief Sarah had felt when she heard the miserable wretch was still alive changed to outrage. “Gus Stoddard, you aren’t my father, and you know it! Never in this world would my mother have put you in charge of me.” Contempt for the pitiful excuse of a man underscored every word. “Your trumped-up claims are more worthless than Confederate money.” She paused, caught her breath, and drew herself to her full height. “This is my betrothed, Matthew Sterling. He has Sheriff Meade and half the men in Madera out looking for me.”

Gus sneered. “What’d that good-for-nothin’ Fallon do? Spill his guts?”

“Oh yeah,” Matt told him. “Mighty proud he was of helping Sarah’s ‘brokenhearted daddy and fiancé’ find her. You must have been mighty convincing, but you don’t sway me. You’ll have a snowball’s chance in August of making Sheriff Meade swallow your yarn. This is the last time you’ll stalk Sarah, Stoddard. Try it again, and I’ll see that you get everything that’s coming to you. If Edwards had lived, he’d have found out how the code of the West deals with citified dandies who bother our women.”

Gus cringed, as if each word were a heavy blow to his hapless head.
How quickly he lost his false bravado when confronted by a real man
, Sarah thought.

Matt freed the horses still harnessed to the overturned coach and quickly fashioned crude hackamores from the reins. “Time to be on our way.”

“I can’t ride no horse bareback,” Gus grumbled.

“Quit bellyaching and suit yourself. You can either ride bareback, or I’ll tie you.” Matt reached for the lariat coiled on Chase’s saddle.

Gus glared at him, face sullen in the dim light. “No one’s ropin’ me to a horse.” Groaning and complaining, he managed to get astride one of the coach horses and cling to the rude hackamore. He mercifully fell silent when they got to the Diamond S horse and buggy and clambered in for the ride back to Madera, which was closer than the ranch. Matt drove, leaving Chase and the other horses to tag along behind. But the moment the first lights of town became visible, Gus vaulted from the buggy and disappeared into the night.

“Shall I go after him?” Matt asked Sarah.

She sighed. The thought of Gus being in California left her shaken, but—“Let him go. He will find someone to fleece or lend him money enough to go back to Missouri. He’ll spruce himself up and court some well-to-do woman who won’t see through him.”

Matt helped her down from the buggy. “You look all tuckered out. First we see Doc Brown then the captain. You can stay at the hotel until you feel like coming out to the ranch.” A poignant light darkened his blue eyes. “Just don’t make it too long.”

Sarah’s heart gave a little skip. “I won’t. Right now all I want is food and a bed.” She looked down at her filthy hands and dress. “Mercy, the captain won’t want me dirtying up his nice hotel. I must look a sight.”

Matt cupped her face in his hands. “If we live to be a hundred, you will never be more beautiful to me than you are right now,” he said huskily.

“Dirt and all?”

“Dirt and all.” A teasing look crept into his face. “A little dirt never hurt a rancher’s wife.”

Long after Matthew headed back to the ranch, Sarah treasured his words and hugged to herself the joy in store for her as mistress of the Diamond S.

It took Sarah two days to get over her stiffness and soreness enough to leave the Yosemite Hotel. She chafed at the delay but was amazed to discover God had a reason for her to be there: her friend Abby. Along with clean clothing, Abby provided information that sent Sarah’s spirits sky-high.