Sweetwater Seduction (18 page)

Eden, on the other hand, had spent a lifetime refusing to take risks, fearing the pain that might result. She was beginning to have an inkling of how much she had given up.

It was Kerrigan, with his kisses and his questions, who was forcing her to face the fact that she couldn't simply deny certain feelings and have them cease to exist. The feelings were there. Repressed maybe. Under control maybe. But there.

Now that she had acknowledged them, she wasn't quite sure what to do about them. Certainly she could never go back to the way things had been before. Eden needed to find the courage somehow, somewhere, to come to terms with these new feelings.

Having gotten that far, she began to examine her feelings for Felton. And for Kerrigan. She didn't like what she found. Because the emotions Kerrigan aroused in her were far stronger than her feelings for Felton.

But it was Felton who was offering marriage and a home and family. Kerrigan only wanted . . . her. Besides, Kerrigan was a hired gun. It would be crazy, not courageous, to hope for any sort of happiness with a man who was bound to get himself killed.

And it was pretty far-fetched to imagine Kerrigan changing his ways. Impossible to imagine him behind a desk. Or even behind a plow. Perhaps he could work for one of the ranchers in the area. But Eden realized it was impossible to imagine Kerrigan taking orders from someone else. He was a leader, not a

Her dreams of reformation faded. Kerrigan was a gunslinger. He lived with violence. He would die that way. Letting herself dream about him, about a future with him, was futile. She should know better. She should know—

Miss Devlin's bitter thoughts were interrupted by an outbreak of the very violence she so abhorred.

Eden hurried over to see if she could help stop the fracas in the corner. She couldn't see who was involved, but it was obvious from the shouts of the crowd, and the way they were arranged in the circle surrounding the fight, that it was rancher against nester.

To her horror, she found mild-mannered, over-the-hill, rattlesnake-lean rancher Cyrus Wyatt fighting tooth and nail with an equally unprepossessing, equally weathered, and equally lank farmer, Bevis Ives. Nearby, Lynette had a firm hold on a banged-up twelve-year-old Daniel's suspenders, and Mabel restrained an equally bloodied eleven-year-old Wade by the ear.

Apparently a fight begun between the men's younger sons, who had obviously not learned a thing from the lesson taught by the gunslinger to their older brothers, Keefe and Jett, had been taken up by the fathers. While the mothers had been able to subdue their sons, they stood powerless in the face of their husbands' wrath. The men in the outer circle egged the combatants on, despite the shrill cries of their wives to end the fight.

Cyrus already had a black eye and a bloody lip, and Bevis had a cut on his cheek that was dripping blood into the sawdust on the dance floor.

“Stop it! Do you hear me? Stop it!” Miss Devlin's cries were lost in the confusion. “Somebody get the sheriff,” she shouted. “Where's the sheriff?”

But Felton Reeves had disappeared and nobody seemed to know where to find him.

Kerrigan realized it would be a mistake to confront the rustlers in the open where the odds were in their favor and they could make a run for it. Better that he follow them. He felt a grim satisfaction when he saw the rustlers broach the head of Sweetwater Canyon. Once they started down into that dead-end canyon, they would be trapped. They couldn't run, and there wasn't any way out past him. He followed them down the trail, keeping his distance so he wouldn't spook them.

When the rustlers reached the end of the blind canyon, where a boarded-up line shack stood, they built a fire with some dry grama grass and a few cow chips. Soon they'd have a red-hot running iron. It wouldn't take them long to alter the brands, and then they'd be heading back up out of the canyon. He would be waiting for them. One way or another, he would be taking the rustlers back to town.

But the rustlers seemed to be in no hurry to finish their work. The longer it took them, the more uneasy Kerrigan got. It was as though they were waiting for something . . . or someone. The skin prickled on the back of Kerrigan's neck and he took a quick look around. Suddenly he felt the sharp threat of danger like cockleburs on a coyot

He ducked and threw himself off his horse just as he heard the shotgun go off. The blast that would have taken his head off passed by harmlessly. He rolled out of his fall and was on his feet in an instant, running down the canyon, zigzagging in a path impossible for the bushwhacker to calculate, looking for cover. It was pure bad luck that the second shotgun blast hit him square in the back, knocking him flat on his face.

The pain kept him semi-conscious, so he felt the pounding footsteps of the men who soon surrounded him. He was unable to recognize more than the grating edge of nervous voices and the words they spoke.

“You got 'im! Good thing you got here when you did. I was gittin' nervous.”

“That buckshot sure put a hole in 'im!”

Someone kicked him and he groaned.

“He ain't dead yet.”

“Another blast'd finish 'im for sure.”

“No sense wastin' shot. He ain't goin' nowhere. Nobody'll find him in this canyon. If the cold don't do him in, the wolves will. Take his guns and his horse. Then let's get the hell outta here.”

“Hey! His horse bolted. Want me to run 'im down?”

“Naw. Forget it. Probably halfway to the stable in town by now.”

The last thing Kerrigan saw before he fainted was the glimmer of moonshine off a roweled Mexican spur. The silver center of the rowel held a distinctive design. He'd seen it somewhere before. When? Where?

It was still dark when Kerrigan regained consciousness, but he had no idea whether it was the same night or the next. For a second he thought he might be paralyzed, but with painful effort he was able to move his legs, and he realized it was the bitter cold that had robbed him of feeling in his hands and feet. He supposed he ought to be grateful for the wintry weather, because that same cold had apparently kept him from bleeding to death. He felt a breath on his face and froze for a moment, afraid it was a wolf or cougar come to make a meal of him.

But the soft lipping motion on his hair was the way his horse had woken him from sleep in the past. “Howdy, there, Paint. Nice of you to drop by.”

The horse lipped his ear, and Kerrigan knew that if he didn't move, the gelding would bite him next. It was a game they had often played, but Paint wasn't known for his patience. This time Kerrigan was afraid he might lose an ear before he managed to get his body up off the ground. He wanted to laugh, but that was sure to hurt like the very devil, so he contented himself with a wry smile. If he still had a face to smile with, all was not lost.

The reins trailed close by, and Kerrigan reached out and grasped them in his hand. Even that much effort took a great deal will, but he was evidently not as close to death's doorstep as the rustlers had hoped. Of course, if his horse hadn't come back, he'd have been a dead man. Now at least he had a chance. His back hurt like the devil, and he felt damn weak, but he wasn't going to die out here alone if he could help it.

He wrapped the reins around his gloved hand a couple of times, planning to use them to lever himself up. He put his mind on things other than the pain. His only chance of survival was to get up and get on his horse.

It was a journey of inches, and several times Kerrigan thought he wasn't going to make it. When he was on his knees, he managed to grasp a stirrup, and used that to help him get all the way to his feet. A hand on the horn kept him upright. He led his horse to a nearby outcropping of rock and used it as a stepping-stone to get into the saddle.

He sat there slumped, wondering where to go. The way he figured, it might not be such a bad thing to let the rustlers think they had succeeded in killing him. He would have the advantage of surprise on his side when he was ready to deal with them again. Meanwhile, he needed a place where he could recuperate, sight unseen. Someplace close.

“Giddyap, Paint. Let's go see if that spinster lady is as good at nursing as she is at cussing a man out.”

Miss Devlin was furious. She started the walk home with her gloved hands balled into fists. Men! They were totally impossible! Ornery. Disgusting. Unreasonable. Foolish. Bullies. Why did women fall in love with them? Why did women choose to mate and spend their lives with them? She would never be able to understand it if she tried for a million years.

Sheriff Reeves never had been found, and nobody had bothered to send for Deputy Joe. The fight had ended only when both men were too tired to stand up anymore. As the battle wore on, the ladies of Sweetwater had exchanged despairing glances that forewarned Miss Devlin their resolution was faltering. She had made a point, when the melee was finally over, of taking Regina Westbrook and Persia Davis aside to talk with them.

“You see what will happen if you don't stand firm, don't you?” she said to the two irresolute faces before her.

“Your plan isn't working fast enough,” Regina said. “At this rate there won't be a man around who can see how attractive his wife is, let alone appreciate her efforts to deny him his conjugal rights.”

“We might as well give up now,” Persia agreed. “We're wasting our time.”

“You're not wasting your time,” Miss Devlin argued. “You're doing something to force your spouses to see reason. There's too little of that around here right now. If you give up, there will only be more violence, and more and more—”

“I get your point,” Regina interrupted. “But I can't see any reason—”

“I'll giv reason,” Miss Devlin said. “Think of your children. Hadley and Bliss—”

Miss Devlin barely got the names out before the two mothers rushed to deny any attraction one child might have for the other.

“I hope Hadley knows better than to see that girl—”

“Bliss is too good a girl to be wasted on the likes of—”

“That's quite enough. From both of you!”

Regina and Persia stared at an enraged Miss Devlin in astonishment. She took advantage of their silence to make her point.

“Suppose—just suppose, I say—that your children should decide that they love each other and want to get married.”

“Bliss would never—”

“Hadley would—”

“Just suppose—”
Miss Devlin interrupted fiercely, “that they
did
love each other and decided to get married. Don't you see they could never be happy if their fathers were as ready to kill one another as not? Just remember the fight tonight started between two children. It was only carried on by their fathers.

“For your children's sakes you must stay firm, and convince the other women to do the same. You are making progress. The testiness of the menfolk tonight is proof positive that they aren't unaffected by the situation at home. You have to believe that this plan will work, and you must reinforce that belief in the others who've taken the oath. Because if it doesn't work—”

Miss Devlin halted abruptly. Her chest heaved, her eyes sparkled with tears of frustration she refused to shed, and her hands trembled with emotion. She clasped them together in front of her and lowered her eyes to stare at her whitened knuckles. It was frightening how much this mattered to her. Her whole being vibrated with outrage against the violence for which they all seemed destined. Such a useless, senseless waste of life. Was she the only one who could see where they were headed? She had to make them understand.

“Because if it doesn't work,” she continued in a hoarse whisper, “there will be such bloodshed in this valley that what happened here tonight will seem like a picnic.”