Shotgun Bride (20 page)

M
andy looked neither to right nor left as she brought Kade through the now empty and darkened lobby of the Arizona Hotel, up the stairs, and into the small room at the end of the hall.

There, once again, she took him into her arms.

“Mandy,” he whispered, and it seemed to her that one word became a small universe in itself, that it held all his misgivings, all his hopes, all his sorrows.

“Just now. That’s all we’re going to think about, Kade. Now.” She splayed her fingers and buried them in his hair.

He kissed her, and everything inside her, everything real, rose to meet him in some strange and singular space, heretofore undreamed of, let alone explored, rarefied and apart from commonplace things like floors and walls and windows.

The kiss deepened, and when it was over, Kade cupped her face in both his hands and held her firmly. “Mandy, you have to be sure.”

She merely nodded. She’d never been more certain of anything in her life; there could be no going back.

He lifted her into his arms, carried her to the narrow bed where she had dreamed alone, so many nights, since coming to Indian Rock. She knew that when she rose from it again, she would be a different person, for better or worse, and she was glad.

The light of the moon gilded his hair, rimmed his head and shoulders. For what seemed like a long time, he simply gazed down at her. When she extended her arms, he lay down beside her, and touched her as gently as any man had ever touched a woman.

They were a long time shedding their clothes—a button here, a sleeve there—the process was a ritual of ancient magic, full of mystery. Presently, they were both naked, and the spell deepened even as their caresses became more urgent.

“Mandy,” he said again, braced on his elbows as he lay between her legs. It was a question, it was a statement, it was a plea.

“Yes,” she said simply.

He entered her then in one powerful thrust, and the pain was blinding, but joyous as well.

“Dear God, Mandy,” Kade rasped. “You’ve never been with a man.”

Fire seized her in the wake of the sweet injury he’d done her; she ceased being one woman and became all women. She laughed softly, and hers was the mirth of a goddess set loose from her bonds, free to soar. “That,” she answered breathlessly, “might have been true a moment ago.”

She felt a charge of passion surge through him, answered in her own body, and she was more than flesh, she was essence.

“Sweet God,” he muttered, “I thought—”

“Never mind what you
thought,
Kade McKettrick,” Mandy gasped, straining to take everything that was this man, seen and unseen, inside her. “Stop talking and make love to me!”

He laughed at that, a ragged sound, purely masculine, and began to move upon her, slowly and with a consummate control that soon drove her straight into madness.

Mandy lost herself in that madness, willingly, in celebration of everything holy.

There would be time enough for penance in the morning.

She heard horses and men in the street below, quiet voices in the hallway outside.

Last night, she’d been to heaven; today, she might see the far horizons of hell. She got out of bed, washed, and dressed, putting on trousers, a shirt, and boots.

She met Becky in the hallway, a brave and befuddled wraith, holding herself together by God knew what means.

“Emmeline lost the baby,” Becky said.

Tears sprang to Mandy’s eyes, and words failed her.

“John—” Becky paused, reached out to set one hand against the wall, as if to keep her balance. She drew a deep, tremulous breath, met Mandy’s blurred gaze. “He’s gone, Mandy. What will I do without him?”

A sob caught in Mandy’s throat; she went to Becky and took her into her arms, held her hard. She wasn’t sure whether she was giving comfort or taking it—both, perhaps.

They clung to each other, two women, one broken, one newly made.

“I won’t say it’ll be all right,” Mandy said.

“Don’t you dare.” Becky stepped back, clasping Mandy’s hands, and took in her riding clothes. “You’re going…?”

“With Kade. If he’ll let me.”

Becky shook her head. “Mandy—”

“He’s headed out after those outlaws. I have to be there, even if I can’t do anything.”

Becky started to protest, stopped herself, and nodded. “I think you’re a damn fool, Amanda Rose, but I understand. I’d have done the same thing for John, I suppose.” She squeezed Mandy’s hand. “God help us both.”

“Amen to that,” Mandy said ruefully. Then she hugged Becky once more and left her, descending the stairs in a hurry.

T
he posse gathered in front of the jailhouse at dawn, as agreed the night before. Captain Harvey and his troops presented themselves, grim-faced and ready to ride, as did Jeb and Holt and a good many of the townsmen and ranch hands from every spread within a hundred miles. Kade, fresh from Mandy’s bed, where he’d known impossible delights, had been met with two kinds of bad news when he reached the street: Emmeline had miscarried in the night, and John Lewis was dead. He felt disjointed, torn between the pleasure he’d known with Mandy and pure sorrow.

Then he spotted her, his attention veering toward her like scattered metal shavings scrambling for a magnet. She kept to the back of the crowd, mounted astride Sister, the pinto mare, and carrying the spanking-new shotgun he’d bought himself at the mercantile.

He strode between horses and men to stand looking up into Mandy’s stubborn face. Her eyes were redrimmed, probably from weeping over John and Emmeline, her hair was tucked up into an old hat, and her chin stuck out.

“Get off that horse and go back to the hotel, where you belong,” Kade said evenly, taking hold of the bridle. He’d had no choice but to set his own grief aside, to be reckoned with later. John would want those outlaws caught, first and foremost, and Emmeline would recover, if there was a God in heaven. In the meantime, Kade was determined to fix his mind on the job at hand—finding the gang that had shot up the jailhouse—and he meant to see the task through, no matter what it took.

“I’m not accountable to you, Kade McKettrick, not yet, anyway,” Mandy said, with a toss of her head. “I can ride and I can shoot, and the plain fact is, you need my help, whether that sets well with you or not.”

Kade closed his eyes, counted mentally, accompanied by a murmur of laughter from the rest of the posse, the members of which had obviously been listening shamelessly, then looked at her again. “What I need,” he said, in what he hoped was a reasonable tone of voice, “is to know that you’re safe. If you really want to help me, Mandy, you’ll stay here and look after Becky and Emmeline.”

She probably didn’t give a damn whether he was worried about her or not, but he could tell that he’d gotten to her, and he didn’t hesitate to press his advantage.

“How are they holding up?” he asked.

Mandy raked her lower lip with her teeth, sniffled once. “Becky’s staring at the wall of her room like she can see right through it, and she won’t talk to anybody. I haven’t seen Emmeline.”

Then Rafe appeared, leading his horse and looking like a man who’s just spent the night wrestling with the devil.

Kade left off arguing with Mandy, for the moment, and approached his brother. “What are you doing here?” he asked quietly. There was an incendiary element to Rafe’s countenance, as if he’d explode at a single spark.

Rafe wouldn’t meet Kade’s eyes, and maybe that was for the best. “Same thing you are,” he said. “We’ve all got a stake in this.”

Kade wanted to lay a hand on Rafe’s shoulder, the only way he knew to offer comfort, but he didn’t dare; everything about Rafe warned him to stay clear. So he held back, not for his own sake, but for his brother’s. “I’m sorry about the baby.”

“Better if we don’t talk about that just yet.” Then Rafe turned his back on Kade and swung up into the saddle.

Kade stood for a moment, absorbing yet more grief, then turned back to Mandy.

Her chin remained at that familiar, obstinate angle. “Rafe was right,” she said. “I’ve got a stake in this, just like everybody else.”

“Are we set to ride, Marshal?” one of the men called from the safety of anonymity. “Or are you going to stand out here jawing with the little woman all day?” This query was followed by a few others, all of them calculated to get right under Kade’s hide, which they surely did.

He simply watched Mandy, willing her to give him a break. “Think about Emmeline,” he said. “If you were in her place, and she were in yours, what would you want her to do?”

Mandy’s cheeks went bright pink and her eyes snapped with rebellion. “Damn you, Kade, that isn’t fair.”

He raised an eyebrow, waited.

“Oh, all right,” she said in the end. Then she reined the pinto around and rode off toward the hotel, her head high and her back straight. On the one hand, he was relieved, considering that he would have been forced to lock her up someplace if she hadn’t seen reason. On the other, he felt knee-high to a bedbug, seeing the slack in her shoulders as she rode away.

W
ith Old Billy guarding the prisoner and Mandy headed for the hotel, Kade mounted up and divided the posse into smaller groups, sending each one in a different direction, some looking for tracks, some fanning out over the countryside. Captain Harvey and his men went their own way, while Kade and Holt and two men from the Circle C set off for the timberline, and the Kincaid place.

It took nearly two hours of hard riding to reach the shack of a cabin, which was wedged up against a cliff of red rock, affording the residents a clear view of anyone approaching, and plenty of time to prepare.

Their greeting came in the form of a rifle shot, missing Holt’s head by two inches and splitting the trunk of a mesquite tree behind him. The oldest man Kade had ever seen came hobbling and wobbling out of the cabin, clad in faded red long johns and mincing along on bare feet. He carried an old carbine, its barrel still smoking from the howdy, and he was already reloading.

“Hold your fire, you old coot,” Holt called out to him. “We’re not here to make trouble and we sure as hell don’t want any from you.”

Kade wouldn’t necessarily have put it that way; if Davy Kincaid was around, there would be trouble for sure. The place had an empty look about it, but that didn’t mean much of anything. Avery was not the sociable sort, and Davy might take a shot at them at any moment, from any point on the compass. Only difference was, he wasn’t likely to miss, the way his pappy had.

Kade rode straight up to the scrawny little figure in the union suit, touched the brim of his hat by way of saying hello. “We’re looking for your boy Davy,” he said, straight out. Obviously, Pappy Kincaid wasn’t the patient sort.

“Ain’t here,” Pappy said, and spat. “Polecat. He took my three dollars and half the ammunition I had. How’s a man supposed to defend hisself and his property, I ask you, without no bullets?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Kade allowed. “That is a problem.” He shifted in the saddle. “You have any idea where Davy might be now? Maybe I could get your money and shells back for you, if I could find him.”

Pappy looked a little more interested, now that his grievances had been addressed. His toothless mouth worked furiously, gumming at something, and his eyes went squinty and narrow. “You one of them McKettricks?” he asked. “You put me in mind of a fella I knew once. Angus was his name. Big Scotsman from down Texas way. Mean sum-bitch.”

Kade suppressed a smile, though he felt tension coiled in the pit of his stomach, like a snake. “I’m a McKettrick, all right.” He leaned in the saddle to put out a hand. “Name’s Kade.” He wouldn’t have predicted it, but the man he’d privately dubbed Pappy responded with a handshake. “Angus would be my pa.”

Pappy drew back his hand, wiped it unconsciously on the stained bottoms of his skivvies. A look passed between Kade and Holt, tinged with amusement and shared curiosity. “He’s a sum-bitch,” the old man repeated.

Holt leaned on the pommel of his saddle, pushed his hat to the back of his head. His tone was conversational, with a conspiratorial note to it. Kade felt his neck redden, even though he knew well enough what Cavanagh was up to. “I’ve got my own score to settle with Angus McKettrick,” he said easily. “What’s yours?”

“Took my cattle, that’s what he did. Had me two good heifers and a bull, and he just
took
’em. Said I’d stolt ’em from his herd. Lyin’ sum-bitch. His wife gave me them critters herself. I tolt him that a couple of days after her funeral, and he still wouldn’t give ’em back. Drunk as a fish, he was. Had me thrown clean off his place.”

Kade had gone still inside. He recalled the incident clearly, now that he’d been reminded. Back then, Angus had been wild with grief, and he wouldn’t have been inclined to listen to anybody, least of all a crazy old man trying to lay claim to three head of cattle. The truth was, Georgia McKettrick had cut the heifers from the herd herself, and turned them over to Kincaid personally, telling him to come back for one of the bulls. Kade had witnessed the whole exchange, but he’d forgotten in the storm of sorrow that had swept over the Triple M after his mother’s passing.

“You’ll have your cattle,” Kade said. At the corner of his eye, he saw Avery slinking toward them on foot, out of the scrub pine trees at the timberline. He didn’t appear to be armed.

Pappy stared up at Kade, squinting. “You mean it, mister? You really gonna make this thing right, after all this time?”

“Yes, sir, I am,” he said. “Avery’s not fixing to do anything stupid, is he?”

“You just never know with Avery,” Pappy replied sagely.

Avery hid behind the chicken coop. Kade turned his horse and rode slowly toward him. “I’m looking for your brother.”

Avery was thin, and as bald as his father, though he couldn’t have been more than twenty. His eyes were bulbous, giving him a buglike air. “You got any more tobacco?”

Kade smiled. Seemed like Avery wasn’t so crazy as folks thought; he obviously remembered the snowy night at the line shack well enough, for all the time that had passed since then, and the pilfering he’d done while Kade had slept. “I might have. And I might not. Depends on whether or not you can tell me where Davy is right now.”

Avery looked all around, as if to make sure nobody had crept up close enough to listen in. “I reckon he could be with that redheaded woman in town, the one with all the kids.”

Kade shook his head. “He’s not there. Your brother’s in some trouble. Where does Davy hide out when he feels a need to lie low, Avery?” Kade took a half dozen cheroots from the inside of his coat pocket—all he had—and showed them to the other man.

Kincaid swallowed visibly. “I ain’t supposed to tell nobody nothin’. That’s what Davy said. Said he’d break my toes one by one if I did.”

Kade made sure he looked properly reluctant and moved to put the cheroots back in his pocket.

“Wait,” Avery said. “He warned me agin’ talkin’, but he never said nothing about showing somebody the way.”

Kade tossed down one of the cheroots, along with a wooden match, and Avery made a handy catch.

“Don’t you go running your mouth, boy!” Pappy ordered, gimping in their direction, elbows akimbo. “Davy’ll skin you alive for sure.”

Avery struck the match on the side of the chicken coop, lit the cheroot, and drew deeply on the smoke, patently ignoring Pappy. “You’ll give me the rest of them little cigars if I take you to Davy’s hideout?”

“I’ll see that you get enough of them to last a year,” Kade said.

“Avery!” Pappy squalled in hopeless protest.

Again, Avery paid his father no mind, but turned and started purposefully across the clearing, headed back toward the trees. Kade, Holt, and the two other riders followed at a discreet distance, and Pappy tried to keep up for a while, flapping and squawking like a hen come up one short on the last egg count. Finally, winded by the chase, the old man gave up and went turkey-trotting back toward the cabin.

Kade drew his pistol, checked to make sure it was loaded, and followed a crazy man into what might well be an ambush.