Wildfire in His Arms (33 page)

Grady got into the stage first, then Andy pushed her up into it. Grady had her sit between him and Andy, and Saul took the last spot on the bench next to Andy. Across from them sat a dark-haired man dressed in trousers and a suit jacket and a woman with a big bonnet and her young son, who amused himself by playing with a big wooden toy horse. They'd joined them at the last stop, and the man didn't appear to be traveling with the woman and the boy. A cowboy joined them at this stop, tying his horse to the back of the coach.

The coach was full now, which might slow it down a little. The dark-haired man mostly slept and didn't say much when he was awake. The older woman had given Max some disapproving glances when she'd seen that Max was gagged and her hands were tied. The little boy had stared at her and asked his mother why the man had a scarf tied over his mouth. “Don't look at him, Tommy. He's an outlaw,” the mother had said. Grady nodded.

Now, the cowboy was staring at Max with interest. “Why's he being restrained and gagged?”

Grady merely showed him his badge in answer.

Max wondered if Grady would punch her in front of these witnesses if she tried fainting right there in the coach. It wouldn't be as dramatic as it would be if she were standing. She'd just have to slump over Grady or Andy. They'd have to conclude that something was wrong with her when they couldn't revive her. She'd have time to do it again before they reached Butte just in case they doubted that she was ill.

She was waiting until they were about halfway between stops before she tried it. But someone else had been waiting for that moment, too. The coach slowed and came to a stop. The dark-haired man had already drawn a gun. Grady was looking out one window, Saul the other, to see why they'd stopped. She was probably the only one who had noticed that the gun across from them hadn't been drawn in self-defense; it was pointed at them. They were being robbed from
inside
the coach?

“Drop your weapons,” the dark-haired man said.

Max would have grinned if she weren't gagged. With their money stolen and no quick way to get any more, Grady and his men would end up stranded in Butte for weeks! Well, that was, if they remained alive. But from the expression on Grady's face she could see he had realized that, too, and he wasn't about to get robbed without putting up a fight.

He didn't immediately reach for his gun. Saul had already dropped his on the floor. Andy, apparently, had decided to be the hero; he drew and aimed. He got shot for it. Which was when the woman, instead of screaming, hit the dark-haired man, who was sitting next to her, with her purse. And she hit exactly what she was aiming for, too, the hand holding the gun.

The stage robber's weapon didn't fall out of his hand, but it got pointed toward the floor. That was when Grady drew and shot the robber. Grady then jumped out of the coach to deal with whoever had stopped it. Saul quickly retrieved his gun and went outside to help Grady. Andy was slumped forward, still holding his gun, although it was lax in his hand, now lying on the seat. Right next to Max . . .

“I wouldn't,” the cowboy warned her.

Well, hell, Max thought.
Now
he had his gun drawn? She couldn't tell if he was with the robbers or just doing a good deed for the lawmen. Probably the latter, since he didn't say anything else. The woman with the lethal purse only gave him a brief glance before she gathered her boy in her arms to shield him from the dead body on the seat next to her.

Max leaned forward to see if Andy was still alive. He was. His eyes were still open and his face was contorted in pain. She looked for the wound, then winced, finding it near his heart.
He
was going to need a doctor—as long as he didn't die before they could get to one.

T
HERE HAD ONLY BEEN
two stage robbers, and now both of them were dead, their bodies tied to the top of the coach. They would be turned over to the sheriff in Butte for burial.

The failed robbery hadn't delayed them long, only about twenty minutes. Andy passed out soon after the stage starting moving again, but he was still breathing. Saul was pressing a cloth the woman had given him to the wound to stanch the blood flow.

One more stage stop was before Butte, but it was just a house and a stable. Still, Max lowered her gag long enough to suggest they pause there to take the bullet out of Andy. Grady didn't answer, just lunged toward her to put the gag back in place. She did that before he could reach her. Bastard. It wasn't as if she couldn't remove the gag herself with her hands tied in front of her, but every time she did it, Grady tied the gag even tighter. Which hurt.

She finally got the message and stopped trying. But the last time he'd also warned her that he would tie her hands behind her back if she removed the gag again. The only reason he hadn't done that to begin with was because they'd have to untie her and retie her every time they ate, which would have been too much trouble.

They arrived in Butte early the next morning. Andy was taken straight to the doctor on a stretcher. Saul took his bag and Andy's with him and went to find the local sheriff to inform him of the attempted robbery. Grady picked up his own valise and her saddlebags and, with her arm in his other hand, followed behind the stretcher.

On the way, she heard the train whistle blow. Grady swore, hearing it. She would have laughed, was almost tempted to remove the gag so she could. They would probably have
just
managed to catch that train if the stage robbers hadn't shown up and shot Andy.

Grady still went to the train station, dragging her with him once the doctor started treating Andy's wound. That worried her. He wouldn't leave Andy behind, would he, just to catch the next train? He and Andy were friends, had worked together for years. Of course he wouldn't leave him. That would be too coldhearted, even for Grady.

The train schedule was posted. The next one wasn't leaving until tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Grady bought three tickets. That answered her question. He was going to leave without Andy. But this delay might still be all that was needed for Degan to catch up. If he'd found out in which direction she'd gone in time to catch the next train in Bismarck. If he'd taken the same stages she'd taken after that. If he was even following her. That was too many ifs to ease her anxiety.

They returned to the doctor's office to await news about Andy's condition. When Saul joined them a while later, Grady sent him to get them a room at the nearest hotel. One room. Max started making noises under her gag, a lot of them. She needed a damn bath. She hadn't had one since they'd captured her at the pond a week ago.

Grady finally lowered her gag to demand, “What?”

“I need my own room.”

“No.”

“Then I need time alone in the room for a bath. You do, too. We all stink.”

He couldn't dispute that. He put her gag back in place and took her to the hotel. Saul was still at the desk checking in. Grady left her and the bags with him.

“See that she gets a bath, but don't leave her alone in the room,” he told Saul, then left to go back to the doctor.

Red-faced, she followed Saul up the stairs. But he was even more embarrassed than she was. As soon as the water arrived, he got a chair, took it to the window, and just sat there, looking out at the street with his back to her. She could have told him not to bother, she wasn't taking her clothes off. She
did
take the gag off. She ended up dripping water all over the floor, too, when she got out of the tub. She didn't care. Didn't apologize either when Saul used one of the towels to wipe the floor.

“You should change into dry clothes at least,” he mumbled.

“I shouldn't be here at all,” she mumbled back. “Degan was already taking me home, you know.”

“Yeah, sure. Jackson Bouchard said the gunfighter was wounded bad.”

“Jackson was a train-robbing liar,” she retorted. “Degan had mended enough to travel. We were leaving for Texas the next day. All you accomplished in stealing me from him was to piss him off. Betcha can guess how that's gonna turn out when he finds you.”

Saul backed away from her. “Grant won't think we headed west to go to Texas. Grady outsmarted him. I think you should put that gag back on before Grady gets here.”

She ignored the suggestion and went to stand at the window, letting the warm breeze help her clothes to dry. It was pointless to lie to Saul. He might be gullible enough to believe her every word, but what good would it do her? Grady was the one in charge, and Grady wouldn't leave her ungagged long enough to let her say anything to him. Nor would he believe her if she did. None of which mattered. The deed was done. She was in their custody now. And Degan would come or he wouldn't.

G
RADY AND SAUL LET
Max have the bed that night. She was surprised until she saw where they were sleeping. Grady stretched out in front of the door despite its being locked. Saul lay down in front of the window. She supposed that was one way to make sure she didn't sneak off while they slept. But if there had been something hard in the room that she could have used to hit Grady over the head without waking Saul, she would have tried. But there wasn't, at least not anything that wouldn't make too much noise when it broke. So she was the first to drift off to sleep, and the last to rise.

Saul took her downstairs to eat breakfast while Grady went to visit Andy. Saul told her Andy was lucky. The bullet had lodged against one of his ribs before it could hit his heart. He had a cracked rib as well as a gunshot wound, but the doctor was optimistic and had assured Grady that Andy would make a full recovery with proper care—which didn't include traveling anytime soon.

Grady obviously did care about his friend, but something was driving him to get back to Texas immediately, and it wasn't her. Bingham Hills had waited nearly two years to hang her. A few extra weeks wasn't going to make a difference. She suspected Grady's fear of Degan was making him hurry. It had to be.

Did Grady expect to be killed the very moment Degan spotted him, no questions asked? Maybe. But then he didn't know Degan, just that he was a gunfighter, dangerous, and fast. Reputations got exaggerated and tales got tall, depending on who was doing the telling, and Grady could have heard one of the more colorful tales about Degan that included body counts and the names of other famous gunfighters he'd supposedly killed. Either way, Grady wouldn't know that Degan had a code of honor that demanded fair fights, and she wasn't about to volunteer that information. Grady, worried, suited her just fine.

Grady returned before Saul and she finished eating and hurried them out of the hotel. By her reckoning they had about thirty minutes before the train departed. She was running out of time to come up with a plan to avoid getting on it. She gazed up and down the streets, looking for Degan. He'd be so easy to spot. But he wasn't there, and the station was now in sight, the small building that housed the ticket-sales window and the telegraph, the platform where quite a few people were waiting to board or saying their good-byes, and the long train stretched out behind it. Degan wasn't there either, the one place she figured he'd be—if he was in Butte.

She hadn't done much fighting when she was put on that first train because her hands had been tied behind her back and the gag had been so tight. But knowing she was a dead woman the minute she stepped on this train, she yanked off her gag and started screaming and trying to yank her arm away from Grady. People began coming out of the shops to see why. Grady didn't like that. She was making a spectacle of them. He was about to slap her into silence, drew his hand back for it. A shot was fired.

The sound wasn't near them, but it was loud enough to give Grady pause. Max stopped screaming and tried to figure out where the shot had come from. She looked behind them, expecting to see the local sheriff or Deputy Barnes, but neither man was there. Ahead, the people on the platform had scattered and her heart leapt. Degan was stepping off the train. He'd heard her screaming! He'd been on the train making sure she hadn't already boarded it.