Wild Burn (27 page)

A movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he saw a body fall on the far side of the camp, mostly hidden by the smoke and trees. John’s doing, he realized, and hoped the Indian had maintained the presence of mind to keep from killing that particular miner. Though if any of the women were harmed, Del wasn’t sure he could keep John from retaliating. Del had no doubt John wanted to—and he’d do it so swiftly and so precisely, the men wouldn’t know what hit them.

He sidled closer, easing around animal-hide structures untouched by the fire. The flames, for the most part, appeared to have been put out, but the sizzling crackle of embers remained, and the smoke itself was nearly as deadly. Adjusting his hold on the Remington, Del took aim at the miner on the outside edge of the group of vulnerable Cheyenne.

The echoing report of the gunshot silenced the entire scene for less than a second. After that, chaos reigned. Before the dead miner crumpled to the ground, the women scattered into the trees, dragging the elderly along with them. The miners, on the other hand, took aim toward the source of their fallen comrade’s murderer and let loose with a barrage of gunfire.

Excitement lit his veins, a grisly high he hadn’t experienced in long months…not since the day he unwittingly saved the Union bastards who’d burned the Crawford plantation and who, as he’d learned from his cousin, caused his father’s fatal heart attack. He dropped to the ground, firing a well-placed round into the chest of another miner. An arrow pierced the shoulder of a man right before he lifted his rifle, and then John was in the middle of the fracas, fists flying, blades flashing, his shoulder wound from the week before not slowing him in the least.

By the time Del regained his feet, the other two miners had fallen, assisted into an early demise by the braves who’d flanked Walking Bear. Del scanned the camp as he strode forward, gun arm raised in front of him as he looked for Nelson and, more importantly, Matthews.

John shouted something in the Cheyenne tongue, and the braves lifted the chief, one under each arm. The old man was bleeding profusely from a wound in his stomach, something Del hadn’t noticed earlier, and the men half carried Walking Bear between them, disappearing into the trees as they followed the wake of women.

The sounds in the camp were minimal now, save for a few groans from those miners who hadn’t yet met their maker. As Del rounded the tallest central structure, where Walking Bear had invited him to sit only last week when he and John paid their visit, he stumbled to a halt, quickly assessing the scene before him.

It wasn’t pretty.

John had an arrow nocked and ready and trained on the sheriff. Nelson, in turn, had that gleaming, beloved rifle of his pointed square at John’s chest. Matthews stood no more than ten feet away, framed in the charred support beams of a smoky sleeping hut, one hand clenched tight in a little boy’s hair as he held a cocked pistol to the child’s temple.

Del recognized the boy as one of Moira’s students, the one to whom she had given such a gentle, reassuring smile. He adjusted his aim, trusting John to keep Nelson in check. “Matthews.”

The mine owner squinted at him. “Crawford? I thought you left town.”

“Nope. Still here.” He kept his tone bland. “Let go of the boy, Matthews.”

“No,” the other man spat out. “I’m doing what I should’ve done weeks ago and handling this myself.”

“Handling what, exactly?”

“Getting rid of these fucking savages. I can’t have them in my town any longer. I’ve lost investors, Crawford.” Matthews shoved the muzzle more firmly against the boy’s head, and the child winced. “You were supposed to take care of it.”

“When I said I don’t kill innocents, I meant it.” He edged a step nearer, then another. “Let go of the boy.”

Matthews, red faced and sweating, wasn’t willing to listen. “Hank said you quit. He said you left.”

Another step. “I ain’t gone yet.”

“Would it have been so bad to lance this disease from Red Creek, Crawford?” Matthews’s eyes were wild, glassy. “They’re animals, the lot of them. It’s like hunting—that’s what I told the men. Just like hunting.”

Del’s stomach wanted to revolt. “There’s no sport in this, Matthews. So hand over the boy, and call it a day.”

Matthews curled his finger around the trigger, stroked it tauntingly. “What’s a little more bloodshed? I reckon, if I take off this one’s head…” he jerked the hand in the boy’s hair, forcing that little chin to lift even higher, “…the rest will be easy pickings. The weakest prey, the smallest target…”

The man was rambling, lost in the rush of his fiendish mission. Brows lowered, Del straightened his shoulders. He needed to do whatever he could to disarm Matthews and free the boy, but he couldn’t risk taking a shot, knowing that nervous reflexes could have the mine owner pulling the trigger and blowing the boy’s head to pieces. He had a flash of memory, the vision of his cousin Peter as the sniper shot exploded in his skull.

Del wouldn’t let that happen here. He didn’t deal in death any longer, not after today. Not after everything Moira had said to defend his actions as the Dog Man Killer, and certainly not after everything she’d done afterward—hearing his confessions, absolving him with her body. He’d left that ring box in her hand when he ran with John for the tribe’s camp, and he’d seen the way her slender fingers, dotted with those lovely freckles, curved wonderingly around it.

If she wanted a future with him, he wanted one with her, free of the hell he’d built for himself as he rode from state to state, territory to territory. He was done with it all…as soon as he put Matthews down like the animal
he
was.

The Remington still felt right in his hand, a simple extension of his arm, feeding off his lifeblood from the veins that ran from wrist to palpitating heart. He cocked the revolver, settled his aim between Matthews’s brows and strode purposefully forward. Matthews, the imbecile, just stood there, supremely confident that no one would dare harm him.

When Del was only a few feet away, Matthews appeared to rethink his stance on personal safety and changed his aim from the boy’s temple to Del’s chest…which had been Del’s goal all along. “That’s close enough, Crawford.”

Del shook his head. “Remember when I said you were on my list?”

“So?”

“Well, now you’re at the very top, you sonofabitch.”

The sharp
crack
of a pistol being fired filled the clearing. Matthews jerked, his suddenly nerveless fingers releasing both the boy and his gun. As the child leapt to hide behind Del, blood blossomed on the front of Matthews’s soot-streaked white shirt. He was dead when he hit the ground.

Del glanced up, his jaw slackening. There stood Moira, her little Colt raised confidently—defiantly—in front of her. Her shirt and jacket were still haphazardly buttoned from the wagon ride, and her hair hung in messy tangles around her face. Her chest rose in heaving breaths as she lowered the small gun to her side.

Her blue gaze clashed with his, a dangerously impish smile teasing the corners of her mouth. “I told you I knew how to use this thing.” She sobered instantly as her eyes locked on the child behind Del. Lowering to a crouch, she opened her arms and softly called out, “Maahe.”

The little boy made a mad dash for her, flinging himself into her arms, much as Del longed to. As she shushed the boy, holding him while he clung to her and mumbled incoherently in his native tongue, Del turned his head.

Moira had just killed a man. For him, and for Maahe. He had no doubt she’d done it to protect them, but he knew better than most the kind of toll such an act would take. Perhaps she knew too, given what they’d discussed that day, but she had made the sacrifice nonetheless. She had taken that last kill from him, and what a burden it would be for her. It tore at his chest, scraping against the insides of his ribs until his heart was pierced with vicious talons.

He didn’t deserve her. But good God, he needed her.

Unable to face her, he strode to where John stood, an arrow still aimed at the sheriff’s throat. The sheriff had had enough sense to relinquish his rifle and had lowered to his knees, his hands linked across the back of his head in a prisoner’s surrender. “John, go see to your people.”

The Indian departed without a word, vanishing into the smoky forest.

Nelson stared resolutely at the ground. “This was all a mistake,” he muttered bitterly.

“No, this is a fucking miracle.” One that could’ve easily been a massacre. The adrenaline that had blasted through him waned, and Del was suddenly so, so tired. “You knew this was going to happen.”

The sheriff took a long time in answering. “I knew something like this
could
happen.” He paused, before adding defensively, “It was a lot of money, Crawford.”

Del’s jaw clamped shut, and he had to fight through the bloody mess of emotion scrabbling for footholds within him. Finally, he said, “You knew it was wrong, but you turned a blind eye. You turned a blind eye, and you
profited
from it.” It was a pattern he knew, intimately. “What kind of man does that make you, Sheriff?”

Nelson lifted his head to glare up at him. “A better man than you.” He spat on Del’s boots.

Unmoved, Del holstered his gun, reaching for the sheriff’s Henry. He idly studied the rifle’s stock. “No doubt that was true. Until today.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Moira cancelled classes on Wednesday. She sat on the schoolhouse steps in a simple dress of yellow lawn, leaning back against the closed front door painted its cheerful blue. As the children warily approached, she gave them their good news with a smile and watched them run back home, no doubt pleased that their day could be filled with far more useful activities, such as jacks or fishing or a rousing game of walk the plank.

That Irwin Matthews wasn’t among them hadn’t escaped her notice.

Even after sending her students on their way, she remained on the front step. Her shoulders pressed uncomfortably against the wood panel at her back, but she didn’t move. She wanted to sit, sit and watch as the town bustled to life around her.

She sat there for hours.

She was slow today. Her morning ablutions had seemed hideously tedious—she barely remembered the walk from her cabin to the schoolhouse—and every breath, annoyingly enough, had to be measured and thought out. Her instincts, so strong the day before, had abandoned her, and she was bereft, having to slog through her day—and all the days to come, she feared—in a perpetual state of foggy slowness.

Eventually, the sun shone directly overhead, and she could feel the bridge of her nose burning beneath its rays. She’d forgone, or rather forgotten, a hat this morning. She palmed a red apple one of the children had given her, rubbed it over her sleeve and bit into the fruit. The satisfying crunch, followed immediately by a rush of tangy sweetness, shook her out of stasis, and she closed her eyes on the sunny day, needing a moment to come alive again without knowing everyone around her was already living.

If her day had a theme, it was that—life. Living. She had come to the realization, belatedly so, that what happened in Boston could’ve been far worse. She could be dead, after all. Instead, she’d been given something she could survive. And if she could survive, she could prosper. And if she could prosper…then she would prosper in the manner in which she wanted to, and to hell with the consequences.

Her eyes still closed, her head still tilted back on the door, she sighed. She wanted to see Delaney, but she dreaded doing so, at the same time. He was a rock and a lodestone, a sheer cliff face and an earthquake. He hadn’t said a word to her since he rushed off to help the tribe, and she found she couldn’t speak with him, either, settling instead for speaking glances and tense silence when they were forced into proximity. But she wanted to see him, her need so visceral she could almost feel phantom arms wrapping around her and tugging her into his strong chest.

A shadow fell over her where she sat, and she blinked open her eyes, shading them with the flat of her hand as she stared up. “Marshal Hood?” In the turmoil of yesterday, she’d forgotten he meant to come to Red Creek, ostensibly to investigate Jacob Matthews’s suspicious behavior. An unsteady laugh bubbled up within her, but she managed not to loose it, pressing a staunching fist to her mouth.
Too late, Marshal. I got it sorted.

“Miss Tully.” Surprising her, the large man lowered into a graceful crouch in front of her. His dark eyes shone with gentle concern. “I heard you had quite the busy day yesterday.”

That mad laugh escaped, though it was really more of a gasping wheeze, and her chin dropped as she fought for composure. “You could say that.”

He gave her a moment, though he didn’t shift away. When she lifted her head again, he murmured, “It was self-defense.”

“He wasn’t aiming at me.” Her fists fell to her lap. “It wasn’t myself I was defending.”

“It was Crawford and the Indian boy. I know. But what I’m saying is that charges won’t be pressed against you for your actions.”

She stared at him blankly. “Why not? I k—” She broke off, swallowed, started again. “I killed a man.”

Hood shrugged his massive shoulders. “I’ve killed men. You don’t see me swinging for it.”

“That’s different. You have a badge.”

He smiled. “Oh, would you like one? Apparently, I can arrange that.”

Some of the tension trickled from her at his teasing, and she straightened away from the schoolhouse door as she rolled her eyes. Exhaling slowly, she fidgeted with the buttery yellow fabric of her skirts. “I don’t regret it. I thought I would, but I don’t.”

“You don’t have to.” Rising from his lowered position, he extended a hand down to her. When she took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet, he said, “You chose a dangerous place in which to start your life anew, Miss Tully. It’s harsh and wild, and completely different from the East. You’ll likely be forced to do things you’d never have dreamed of doing back home, as a result, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t necessary. And it doesn’t mean you are a bad person.” He applied the slightest of reassuring pressure to her hand before releasing it. “You’re still the strongest woman I’ve met, Miss Tully. Don’t turn into a watering pot on me now.”