When a Texan Gambles (11 page)

She jerked the linsey-woolsey dress from her bundle. He’d bought her the dress the morning after they’d married, and she was running out of places to cut strips along the skirt. “I’ve made up my mind that I don’t have any place to go, so I might as well stay here with you and be your wife.” Sarah washed away blood so she could see how much damage he’d done to himself getting into a gunfight. “Devote my life to patching your already beat-up body.”

She smiled, remembering what the women in the store had said. “I guess I’m the one woman in the state who’ll stay married to you. But I’m giving you fair warning, you need to think about changing your habits.”

Sarah let her fingers slide along the unharmed muscle of his thigh. Touching him was like brushing over fine mahogany; she could feel the solidness with her fingertips. The scars only added character to him.

“All my life, all I’ve ever wanted was someone to love, and it looks like you’re the only one who applied.” She continued to touch him, hoping he’d know that someone cared. “So I’m going to love all six foot of no-good, drunken, worthless inch of you. I’ve heard folks say not to try to make a man over when you marry him, but they never met you.”

She dusted a little of her herbs and wrapped his leg where one bullet must have slid along his thigh. He’d been right, the bullets had passed clean through.

“You see”—she pointed her knife at him as she moved to the next wound—“I figure anything I do is an improvement ‘cause you’re about the most low-down, mean, worthless man I could ever hope to run into. You’re less than not-much-of-a-father to those kids, you got people trying to kill you at every turn. Even respectable ladies gossip about the mean things you’ve done. Far as I know, not a soul cares if you live or die.”

Sarah smiled. “Except me, Sam Gatlin. There’s something good left in you or you wouldn’t have bought me a dress or told that shopkeeper I was your wife. So I’ve made up my mind, and there isn’t anything you can do to change it. I love you.” She knew she made no sense, but Sarah had to start somewhere. If she was afraid of him, or hated him, she’d just be standing in the crowd. For some reason he’d married her, and he hadn’t forced himself on her. It wasn’t exactly a long list of good traits, but it was a start.

She cleaned the next wound while noticing his back had healed nicely. None of the bullet holes were as bad as she’d feared. The lead only grazed his arm deep enough to cause bleeding. His legs would heal as soon as scabs formed.

Finally all the blood was removed and the damaged skin doused with whiskey, sprinkled with Granny Vee’s herbs, and wrapped. She flattened her hand against his heart and felt the warmth of his skin along with the steady pounding. She’d done the best she could do. Maybe, if they ever made it into town again, she’d buy a medicine box.

Looking up, she found dark eyes staring at her. Pain still clung to the edges, but his gaze was clear.

His eyes were brown, she thought, deep chocolate brown.

Neither of them moved. They just looked at each other as if they had never seen the other before. She left her hand resting against his chest as she lifted her chin, slightly challenging her right to touch him.

“I’m not dying, Sarah.” He rubbed the bump on his forehead. “These were no more than scratches.” Bracing himself, he sat up slowly, nursing his bandaged arm.

“You can’t promise that.” She let her hand fall away, brushing against scars as she moved. “We’ve been married less than a week, and you’ve been attacked twice. I’d say you were accident prone, but none of these wounds are accidents.”

Sam stared at the bend where they’d turned off the road, then checked to make sure his Colt was within reach. “I’m not dealing with anything new here, Sarah.” He closed his eyes, as if dreading what he had to say. “I was ten when my father was killed in the War Between the States. I was big for my age, so I went along with my uncle and grandfather to bring his body home. My mother had died a few years before in childbirth. I guess the Yankee scouts thought we hauled supplies when they ambushed us. Within minutes the fighting was over. All my family, except my baby sister, died that day.”

His voice remained flat as if the memory had grown too old to stir emotion. “A Confederate scout found me a few days later on the road, a bullet wound in my chest. I told him I was walking home.”

Sarah’s fingers brushed over the scar on his chest. The twisted flesh lay only an inch from where she’d felt his heart pounding.

“The Reb took me to a doctor working behind the lines. The doc just glanced my direction and asked me to rest outside the hospital tent. I heard him say that with the amount of blood covering me, it wouldn’t be long. There was no use wasting time patching me up.”

Sarah felt a chill. “What are you saying?”

He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “I fought along the frontier line near Fort Griffin soon as I got old enough to sign up. Twice I was left for dead by war parties, the only survivor in a scouting company. The first time the men welcomed me back to the fort, thinking I escaped death, but the second time they avoided me as if I’d somehow cheated it. The blessing became a curse.”

“Maybe you were just lucky.”

“No, if I’d been lucky, I wouldn’t have been shot in the first place. A few years after the army, an old doctor in San Antonio patched me up after a gunfight. He told me that I heal faster than most. He said some men get a scratch and die of poisoning in the blood, but with me it’s going to have to be a straight shot to the heart before I drop.”

“So, what are you trying to tell me?”

Sam frowned. He looked down at her hand resting on the blanket only a few inches away. “It seems I’ve been trying to die for years, Sarah. For a long time after I saw my family die, I wanted to go with them. Then when I grew up and watched my friends shot while I stood right beside them, I thought nothing made sense.”

“So you became a bounty hunter?”

He laid his fingers over hers. “Life lost all reason. I didn’t really care if I lived or died.”

“And now?”

His dark eyes met hers. “You gave me a reason to care.”

NINE

SAM SAT ON THE BACK OF THE WAGON AND WATCHED his new wife as she walked down the creek’s bank. Eventually she’d turn around and come back. Then she would have to talk to him no matter how much she hated the idea.

He seemed to have found the one thing that would make her think less of him. In truth, if he had any good traits, he might have told her about them. But he was a loner who had few friends. And the good he’d done, he couldn’t tell anyone about, not even Sarah. Lives depended on his silence. He’d buried more than one coffin filled with rocks to give an outlaw a second chance. Now he only wished he had another chance with her.

She knew all of it now. He was a bounty hunter.

Hell, he thought, he would settle for a first chance. She hadn’t liked him from the start. The silence right after they married had been their best time together. Now that she knew half the outlaws in the state would gladly kill him, conditions between Sarah and him were not likely to improve.

But in his line of work, every year he made a few more enemies who thought they would be doing the world a favor if they killed him. Every year more tried. Sometimes he thought he was the one with his picture on a Wanted poster. Folks thought the bad guys should be brought to justice, only no one wanted to get too friendly with the man who did the job.

He’d lived the life of a bounty hunter for so long he hardly knew how to talk to normal folks. Maybe he should have tried to visit with her the night they married. If she’d learned about him then, she might not look so angry now.

But she seemed so frail and frightened, he decided to wait. Then there had been no time to explain why a man like him would even want a wife.

“One question?”

Sam hadn’t noticed Sarah turning around and walking back to the wagon. Now she stood eye level to him almost bumping his knees as she leaned toward him.

“Just one?” he asked, trying to act as if the sight of her standing so close didn’t bother him. People usually made a point not to get within reach of him.

“Why’d you marry me?” She narrowed her eyes as if she planned to evaluate his answer carefully.

Sam wasn’t sure he knew the answer. Maybe because she looked so helpless in that jail. Maybe he was sick of being alone. Maybe the thought of her going home with one of the farmers rubbed him the wrong way. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “Maybe I thought I was doing you a favor. I had this idea life with me might be a little easier than jail.” He almost laughed.

“Well, I know.” She paced in front of him with her hands locked behind her back like a tiny general before troops. “You wanted someone to nurse you through all your ‘accidents.’ You wanted a mother for your children....”

“I haven’t got any children,” he reminded her.

She ignored him. “You wanted someone to keep your house, only you don’t have a house. And cook your meals and sleep in your bed.”

She looked like a top going faster and faster in the wind. “You wanted someone who would be at your beck and call but who wouldn’t mind being dropped from a window or two if the need arose. Well, Sam Gatlin, I—”

“I never said I didn’t have a house.”

Sarah whirled around. “Yes, you did!”

“I said I didn’t have a
cabin.
I have a house.”

She looked confused. “Tell me true: Do you have a house the way you don’t have children?”

He raised an eyebrow, having no idea how to answer her.

When he didn’t say anything, she added, “Maybe I should hit you on the other side with my sewing box.”

To his surprise, she drew closer. With him seated on the wagon’s gate, they were eye to eye. “I forgot to check that bruise,” she whispered as she brushed against his leg, leaning in to look at his forehead. “A bruise can be as bad as a cut sometimes.”

Her face was so close he almost bumped noses with her. Her fingers shoved the hair away from his forehead, then remained in his hair to hold it away so she could finish her examination.

Sam remained perfectly still while her other hand brushed across his forehead.

“Does this hurt?” she asked as her fingers pushed against his tender skin.

Sam felt her words fan across his face. Her left breast pushed against his arm so slightly he wasn’t even sure if they touched or he just felt the warmth of her body so close.

She moved between his knees to look closer. “Now, you tell me if I’m hurting you,” she said as she tested the skin of his forehead.

She was killing him, Sam thought. With every breath he filled his lungs with the fresh honeysuckle smell of her. He fought the urge to pull her closer. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t touch her until she asked him to, and if nothing else in this world he was a man of his word, no matter how she tempted him.

She treated him like a head of livestock she was examining for barbed-wire cuts, but he didn’t care. He enjoyed it anyway. He liked the feel of her fist tugging at his hair and the way she leaned close.

“I have a house,” he finally whispered when she didn’t go away. “It’s north of here on a small farm. I haven’t been there in a long time, but I think I can still find it. It’s got trees running along one side to hold the wind at bay and a well out back with the sweetest water in it.”

Her laughter touched his cheek.

“I wish you did have a farm. I’ve always wanted a place to call home. My first husband promised me that dream. He told me he had a farm when we married, but I soon learned the bank owned most of it. I’ll not fall into believing it a second time.”

Sam frowned. He didn’t want to hear about a first husband.

She returned to the study of his forehead. “I don’t think you did any permanent damage except to my sewing box.”

Moving away as fast as she’d stepped near, Sarah mumbled, “If you’re able, I’d like to try and reach the children before dark. I don’t want them thinking we just left them, as Tennessee Malone did.”

Sam felt pain when he wrinkled his brow. “What children?”

“Your children. I don’t care what you say, we’re not leaving them to die in that clearing.” She folded up the blanket.

“I’ve told you I don’t ...”

She was back an inch from his face again staring at him as if she planned to call him out for a gun battle. “How about we go to the clearing and get your real children, and then tomorrow we can start for your imaginary farm?”

Sam smiled. “Or pick up my imaginary children and go to my real house.”

Sarah glared at him, not backing down an inch.

“I’ll make you a deal. We’ll spend the night at the clearing, but if there are no children by sunup, we load up and leave. I need to get you somewhere safe as fast as I can. Reed is determined to see me dead, and I’m in no hurry to give him another shot.”

Worry brushed her eyes. “All right. One night in the clearing and then we lay low. Shake on it?”