Liz Ireland (15 page)

Paulie’s brows lifted. “The Three Queens? Why would we go there?”

“I’m
going there because it’s the one place where we know Tyler has been.”

Her expression slowly indicated agreement with this
idea. “I see. You could have brought Trip along, you know. I bet you would have let him go into the saloon with you.”

Will turned and started walking, knowing she would be right on his heels. “He wasn’t available. Besides, a person in love’s never the best backup. They tend to be preoccupied.”

Paulie stumbled over a root sticking up in their path and pitched forward. Will caught her arm just before she would have lost her equilibrium and brought her back to standing next to him. “You’re beginning to resemble Trip in some ways,” he observed with a chuckle.

She wasn’t laughing. “I just stumbled,” she said sheepishly.

Will clamped his mouth shut and continued on his way, kicking himself for saying such a thing. Poor Paulie. She was bucking up so well to Trip’s defection that he sometimes forgot that she must be brokenhearted over his decision to finally marry Tessie. He would have to be more careful of what he said to her in the future, and try to avoid discussing Trip.

They continued on in silence, with Paulie openly gaping at the sights of the burgeoning city, until they reached Las Tres Reinas. Paulie bumped against his back when he stopped abruptly a few feet away from the entrance.

“Peek inside,” he instructed her. “If he’s in there, point him out.”

She nodded and stepped forward. Standing on tiptoe, she peered into the saloon. Her gaze soon honed in on something, and after a moment of observation she turned back to him, her lips pursed in disgust. “Wouldn’t you know it!” she exclaimed, her hands on her hips. “The devil is having breakfast with
her.”

“Who?”

“Iris!” she spat angrily, the memory of her brawl with the woman still fresh in her mind.

Will put aside the thought of Paulie’s hatred of Iris and focused instead on the good news. “That’s fine,” he told her. “Just wait here while I talk to the man.”

As he approached the doors, he was surprised to feel Paulie’s hand snake out and capture his arm, stopping him. “Don’t go, Will. There’s bound to be trouble,” she argued quickly. “And anyway, Mary Ann’s not worth it.”

He shook his head and slowly removed her hand from his arm, thinking of Gerald. “It’s a matter of honor, Paulie.”

She looked at him sharply. “Mary Ann doesn’t care about honor. She’s not worth it—you just think she is, because you’re chivalrous.”

“I’m what?”

She blurted out, “You’re all mixed up, just like a Spanish fellow I read about once. He was in love, too, and overly chivalrous, and once when he saw some windmills he thought they were giants and so he started fighting them.”

Will looked at her, sure she had gone mad. “What kind of crazy book was that?”

She lifted her shoulders. “It was one of my pa’s, about Don Somebody. It’s a true story, though.”

He leveled a calming gaze on her. “Look, Sprout, you have my word. I’m not going to shoot anything, windmill or man.”

“Then what’s the gun for?”

“I just thought it might make me look a little more authoritative.”

“That it does,” Paulie agreed, then she frowned. “But you never were a man to rely on a gun for persuasion, Will.”

“I’m just going to talk to the man.” He glanced inside, spotting Oren Tyler.

Swarthy.
That was his first thought upon looking at the man who was supposed to be Oren Tyler. The man had a head of thick black hair, a dark complexion, and a long, well-groomed mustache that looked like tending it would take more trouble than it was worth. Even from a distance, Tyler had an imposing stature, and his glittering dark eyes as he flirted with Iris bespoke the attitude of a man who was accustomed to getting just what he wanted out of life. No sacrifices. No responsibilities. Just pleasures of the moment. If Tyler hadn’t been lucky enough—or cunning enough—to be able to afford fine clothes, society would have deemed him a reprobate.

In short, Will didn’t see much to like in the man. Nevertheless, he had made Mary Ann a promise. And before that, he had made Gerald a promise. Will pushed through the bat-wing doors and wasted no time approaching Tyler.

The gambler continued to laugh with Iris, but Will knew he was watching his approach. When he stopped by the table, Tyler glanced up questioningly.

“Is your name Oren Tyler?” Will asked.

“Sure is,” the gambler answered, “and if you haven’t noticed, I’m having my breakfast.”

“I have some business with you.”

Tyler shook his head and winked slyly at Iris. “I never mix meals with business.”

His blithe dismissal didn’t sit well with Will. “I’ve come to talk about Mary Ann Murphy.”

The man looked up at him with just the hint of a sneer. “Are you an outraged relative?”

Will stiffened. “I’m not related to her.” But he
was
growing more outraged by the second.

Iris jumped in, leaning close to the gambler’s ear. “He’s
the one I was tellin’ you about, Oren. The man that came here with that queer girl yesterday lookin’ for Mary Ann.”

Oren’s gaze narrowed. “What’s your stake in the outcome of my little romance with Mrs. Murphy?”

“I was her husband’s friend,” Will said, feeling the words more strongly than he would have ever thought possible. God knows he missed Oat more than he had ever missed Mary Ann.

The man’s eyebrows shot up to his forehead. “Was?”

“Oat Murphy’s dead.”

Oren Tyler took in this information for a moment, then, after some consideration, shrugged. “Then everything should be fine.”

“There’s going to be a child,” Will said in a clipped voice.

“Don’t widows ever have children?” the man asked glibly.

Quaking with rage, Will leaned down just enough to swipe the man by the collar and drag him to his feet. He was surprised at how easy a task it was. Oren Tyler was about his height, but heavier. His anger tipped the scales in his favor, Will decided. “I should knock your teeth in for saying that. You know whose child it is.”

“Do I?” Tyler’s lips turned up cynically. “How can I be sure an eager young buck like yourself didn’t come along after me?”

Tyler wasn’t smiling now. “I never told her I would marry her,” he said. “How could I? She was married already.”

“Then you should have left her alone.”

“I did,” Tyler said. “Then she trotted after me.” His lips turned up cynically. “A girl who’s come all that way deserves something for her troubles, don’t you think?”

Will wasn’t a violent man—normally. But Oren Tyler
was no normal adversary. Feeling no remorse, Will hauled back and punched the man, sending him flying back into his chair.

“Oren, watch out!” Iris cried. She lunged at Will. “He’s got a gun.”

But the odd thing was, he
didn’t
have a gun. When he reached down to the holster, the Colt wasn’t there. Not that he intended to use it anyway. A low-down snake like Tyler wasn’t worth the price of a bullet. But when he looked over and saw Iris pointing the gun straight at his chest, Will sorely missed the firearm.

He stiffened, knowing immediately from the glitter in Iris’s eyes that he had underestimated the impact that the news about Mary Ann would have on the woman. He should have waited until he could speak to Tyler in private. Or set up a meeting in the boardinghouse. Now he was in a real spot. Iris was probably kidding herself that she had a chance with Oren Tyler—just as Mary Ann had done. And she apparently wasn’t going to let him—or the mere matter of Mary Ann’s baby—get in her way.

“You step away from him!” she cried.

Will was glad to oblige, but from behind him, he heard Iris’s words echoed in a fierce familiar voice.

“Get away from him!”

Will turned in surprise just in time to see a streak of white and brown pass him. Paulie launched herself at Iris with the ferocity of a mountain lion pouncing on a rabbit. Only this rabbit was armed.

“Paulie, stop!” he hollered, but his command was ignored as Paulie and Iris wrestled with the gun. Behind them, he saw Oren Tyler shaking his head, then leaning forward woozily. The gambler watched the women in confusion for a split second, then stood.

“Watch out!” Will said, rushing forward to untangle Paulie from the mass of limbs, flounces and firearm.

But as he took a step, an explosion sounded that seemed to make the very walls of the saloon shake. After a blinding pain that practically doubled him over, Will’s world went black.

W
ill’s face was as white as chalk. Paulie knelt over him in the rickety buckboard she had managed to procure for conveyance, and prayed that he wasn’t dying. He looked like he was.

Iris’s bullet had gone into his shoulder, and the wound still bled profusely. Paulie had never seen so much blood. But then, she’d never actually seen a man shot before. Things like this just didn’t happen in sleepy Possum Trot.

She leaned over Will’s half-conscious form, brimming with regrets. “Oh, Will, forgive me,” she whispered fervently. “I shouldn’t have jumped on that woman—I should have stayed outside.” He had specifically instructed her to keep out of the bar, and she should have, she knew that now.

Yet the minute Iris had raised that gun, Paulie had known Will’s request would prove impossible. Seeing his life in danger, there was no way she would stand outside and simply let the woman gun him down. Of course, that’s exactly what had happened despite her blundering intervention….

The wagon rattled up the street to Maudie’s, and Trip, who had been sitting on the porch outside, saw Paulie and came running.

“What happened?” he asked, not waiting for the answer. “Is he hurt bad?”

“It’s all my fault,” Paulie said, as if that answered anything. “Please, just tell Maudie to fetch a doctor—quick. Will’s lost a lot of blood.”

Trip nodded, turned, and ran back to the house. In a crisis, the man could be surprisingly steady on his feet.

“We’re getting help, Will,” she whispered, watching as Trip quickly ran out the door and waved to her as he dashed down the street. She prayed he would find a doctor quickly.

Maudie burst through the door next, ran down to the wagon, and immediately inspected Will. Then she glanced sympathetically at Paulie and didn’t even raise a squeak at having a man injured by gunplay quartered in her house. Between her, Paulie and the driver of the wagon, they managed to get Will up to his room. Mary Ann was nowhere in sight, Paulie noted bitterly.

Once Will was settled on the bed, Mrs. Maudie explained the woman’s absence. “Mary Ann went shopping for a new bonnet,” she explained, seeming to know intuitively that Paulie would share her disgust. “Said if she was going to wear black, she at least wanted to look fashionable.”

Paulie frowned, telling herself she didn’t care. All that mattered was Will, and Will getting better. If only he would live, she thought fervently. If he lived she would try not to mind even if he did marry Mary Ann.

“I’ll feel so terrible if anything happens to him,” she said, hearing the hysterical edge in her own voice. His face was so pale…so cold-looking. She pulled the woolen blanket on the bed up over him, blessedly covering the deep red patch seeping across his shirt. “He’s got to get better…he’s got to.”

Maudie looked at her with a certainty Paulie wasn’t close to feeling. “He will. I can tell—Will’s a fighter. ‘Sides,
when the good Lord makes a specimen as fine-looking as Will, He likes to keep him down here on earth for a long spell and show off His handiwork.”

In spite of her fear, Paulie nodded. Will
was
a fighter. But in this instance, this fight might have been one he could have avoided altogether if he’d had the opportunity to reason with Iris. If she herself had simply stayed put.

Maudie patted her shoulder. “You did right to bring him here. Dr. Branson is the best in town.”

He certainly must have been the quickest. Though for Paulie the wait seemed an eternity and then some, barely fifteen minutes passed before she heard Trip’s bootsteps followed by the doctor’s coming up the stairs. “Thank heavens!” she said, gratefully relinquishing her seat to the doctor so he could examine Will.

She stepped away, trying not to hear Will’s groans when the doctor inspected the wound that the bullet had made. During the extraction that followed, she blindly did as she was told, wishing she had done just that when Will told her to stay outside that barroom. She fetched hot water and bedsheets, ripping the latter into even strips to be used as bandages. The simple task made her feel less helpless.

Finally, as the doctor was wrapping Will in the bandages she had made, Paulie stepped out into the hallway. Trip was there, waiting anxiously for news of Will, trying to stay out of the way.

“The doctor said Will’s going to be fine,” she told him, wiping her brow.

Trip looked relieved, and then frowned, his face becoming almost as pale as Will’s had been in the back of the buckboard. “What did he say about that?”

Paulie looked down at her sleeve, where Trip’s gaze was pinned. The material of her shirt was plastered to her arm
with dried blood. She gasped. The bullet must have nicked her without her realizing it!

Trip, biting his lip and steering her stiffly back into the sickroom, immediately presented her to the doctor for inspection. Though her wound was insignificant compared to Will’s, it stung like the dickens to have it cleaned. Just peeling the shirt off the scrape made her wince.

“I should have gone with Will,” Trip said, his tone remorseful once her ordeal was finally over. “He should have waited for me.”

“It’s no use both of us being full up with regrets over this,” Paulie said, brimming with a new determination. “Will’s hurt, but he’s going to get better. I’m going to make sure of it.”

“How are you going to do that?” Trip asked.

Paulie frowned. How, indeed? “For one thing, I’m not going to leave his side till he’s able to sit up and give me the devil for the fool way I acted in Las Tres Reinas.”

“If I just could have been there…” Trip sighed. “After promising your Daddy I’d keep a lookout for you, too.”

Paulie huffed in frustration, and lifted her uninjured hand up to her forehead, almost as if in a salute. “I’ve had it up to here with men feeling responsibility toward females because of some promises made to their fathers! Do you know what the biggest favor you could do for me now would be?”

Trip hazarded a guess. “Getting you some whiskey to take the sting out of that cut?”

“No,” Paulie replied, although that wasn’t a half-bad idea. “I want you to go home.”

“Home?” Trip repeated. He looked hurt. “Back to Possum Trot?”

Paulie nodded. “And when you get there, tell the Breens to come fetch their daughter.”

“To fetch Mary Ann?” he asked. “How’s that going to help you or Will?”

“Because I’m not going to leave Will, and we’ll never get Will back to Possum Trot until Mary Ann is safe from the clutches of that gambler fellow. And since we can’t force Oren Tyler out of town, we’ll have to settle for trying to move Mary Ann.”

Trip looked at her dubiously. “Does Mary Ann know you’re asking me to get her ma and stepfather to drag her back to Possum Trot?”

“No, and I’m not gonna tell her, either. She can just find out when the Breens get here.”

“She ain’t gonna like it,” Trip warned, something Paulie didn’t need to be told. “Her folks might not even want to come.”

“Make them come. Tell them she’s in trouble.” She tossed her hands in the air. “Heck, tell ‘em she’s in jail. Just get them up here.”

“Back to Possum Trot,” Trip mused. He thought the matter over for just a moment. “I guess it would be good to go see Tessie.”

Paulie raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Will said you were off looking at rings. Find anything?”

He flinched. “Just lookin’. I didn’t say I was going to do anything rash.”

Paulie laughed, surprising herself. She hadn’t thought she would ever be able to laugh again. “I wasn’t thinking you would, Trip.”

Paulie hovered by Will’s side all afternoon, watching him drift in and out of consciousness. He never seemed to come fully awake, never seemed to really see her. The doctor had said that he would be fine, but Paulie couldn’t bring

herself to simply trust his word. To her, Will looked so terrible, so different from his usual robust self.

Terrible, that is, in that he was still pale and clammy in appearance no matter how many of Mrs. Worthington’s blankets Paulie piled on top of him. But in another sense, she had never been so free to gaze at Will, and to her eyes he seemed more handsome than ever. She had helped Mrs. Worthington give him a quick bath after the doctor had left, and the fleeting view of his muscled chest had practically stopped her heart. Especially when she saw the rippled muscles covering his stomach, sprinkled with a light dusting of hair that narrowed to a V before disappearing below the bedsheet and out of her sight. At that juncture in the bathing process, Maudie had sent her to the kitchen for more hot water.

But Paulie’s imagination was quick to supply what propriety forbade her to see. It wasn’t hard to guess that Will was handsome all over, and now that she sat by him, wiping the perspiration off his brow, she felt a little low thinking how physically mismatched they were. He was a perfect specimen of manhood, a man any woman in her right mind would be proud to have at her side, while she…

Well, she wasn’t any man’s dream. Or if she was, she would have serious doubts about that particular man’s sanity. Will could have any woman in the world, in her estimation. Why would he want her? What had ever made her hold out the vain hope that he would?

A shadow appeared from the doorway and Paulie turned, expecting to see Maudie. Instead Mary Ann stood there, watching Will, a stunned look on her face. She came forward in a rush, practically breathless. “What happened?”

“Will went to Las Tres Reinas this morning.”

Her blue eyes glittered eagerly. “To talk to Oren?”

Paulie nodded, feeling a familiar surge of dislike for the
woman. For a moment she had thought that Mary Ann might actually care for Will, but her words suggested that Tyler was still forefront in her mind, even while Will was lying near death—or as close to it as Paulie ever wanted him to be. “He took a bullet in the shoulder.”

Mary Ann frowned, staring down at the blanket covering Will. “Oren didn’t do that!” she exclaimed defensively.

“A woman named Iris did it,” Paulie said.

Mary’s Ann’s tense shoulders sagged in relief. She clucked her tongue. “Oh, poor Will. Is he going to be all right?”

“The doctor says so, but he’s so pale—”

Mary Ann didn’t even hold her tongue long enough to hear the full prognosis. “I can’t wait to ask him what he said to Oren.”

Paulie bit her lip. “He went to Las Tres Reinas on your account, I know that.”

“Well of course!” Mary Ann said disparagingly, as if pleasing her were the only reason anyone did anything. “I just wonder if Oren’s coming here to see me. Were you there?”

Paulie narrowed her gaze on Mary Ann’s pinched, worried brow. “I couldn’t hear much from where I was.” She had assumed that Will was going to the saloon to threaten Oren to stay away from Mary Ann. Could it really be that the opposite was true?

“Then you don’t know what Oren said about me?” Mary Ann persisted.

“Not exactly. But I saw enough to know whatever they were talking about wasn’t working out very well.” Mary Ann’s eyes, feverish for a specific answer, took this in without appearing to register the meaning. “It didn’t look like Oren was being very cooperative, Mary Ann.”

“I was hoping Will would help me!” she exclaimed,
disappointed. The woman was hovering over Will’s seriously wounded body—a wound he had acquired on her account—and she acted as though he had let her down somehow. In fact, Mary Ann blinked unhappily, looking like she would gladly have kicked Will’s unconscious form.

“Oh, what am I going to do now!”

If there was one thing the whole sorry episode at Las Tres Reinas should have taught Paulie, it was to keep her nose out of other people’s business. But as she sat looking at Will, with Mary Ann standing fitfully next to her, she couldn’t tamp down her need to know one thing.

She tilted a glance at Mary Ann. “Do you mean you’re still interested in convincing that gambler fellow to marry you?”

Mary Ann took immediate offense. “Oren wanted to marry me—he just thought there were too many obstacles between ourselves and happiness.”

“Like what?”

“Well…like my marriage to Oat.” She lifted her pointy chin defensively. “But now that’s done with, I’m free to marry whoever I please.”

Paulie couldn’t believe how mixed up a woman could become in the space of twenty short years of life. She hesitated to point out the obvious to her, especially when it was not to her own benefit to do so, but curiosity demanded she find out what was going on beneath that blond cap of curls. “What do you want to chase after a man like Oren Tyler for? You could just marry Will, couldn’t you?”

“Will?” Mary Ann exclaimed in surprise, as if the idea had never even occurred to her before.

“Sure, Will. Hell, he’s risked his life for you. That’s got to prove he cares for you enough to warrant some consideration.”

“But what kind of a husband would he make? He’s a cowboy.”

“He’s always planned on starting up a ranch of his own,” Paulie pointed out.

“A ranch!” Mary Ann imbued the simple words with more disgust than Paulie would have thought possible. It was as if the woman were contemplating living in a leper colony. “What would I do on a ranch?”

“What have you been doing on that chicken farm all these years?”

“Work!” Mary Ann cried, the simple one-word answer backed by a wellspring of anguish. “That’s just the trouble! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing
that.
Why, everyone knows I wasn’t born to do manual labor, or slave over a hot stove all day so some cowboy will have something to eat when he comes in from the outdoors smelling like a farm animal.”

Paulie was curious. “So what exactly
were
you born to do?”

Mary Ann frowned in thought, then threw up her hands. “Goodness, I don’t know! Nothing in particular, I guess. Is it my fault that I’m a beauty? I’m sure you’re very suited to whatever it is you do in that place you run, but you have to admit you might have different ambitions if you had my looks.”

Her words made Paulie wince—and then think. Unfortunately, it took only a moment to realize Mary Ann’s reasoning was completely wrong. If she were pretty like Mary Ann, she would still want Will. Deep down she knew nothing would ever change that desire. And if she looked like Mary Ann, she bet she would get him. Life just wasn’t fair.