Chapter Eleven

Dead-Eye Dan struggled to remain upright after an hour in the saddle, but strength leeched out of him along with his blood. He slumped against Mary Ellen.

“Dan?” She tried to twist around to look at him. “Dan!”

“Farmhouse,” he murmured. “Up ahead. You’ll . . . be safe . . . there.”

The last thing he remembered was Mary Ellen’s arms locking about his and her dire threat of never forgiving him if he fell off their horse. Nearly made him smile as he plummeted over the cliff of oblivion.

For two days, Dan battled an unseen enemy. He vaguely recalled a man with graying hair dragging him into a house and a woman with a plump middle and kind eyes bending over him with a threaded needle. The pain. The fever. The confused nightmares of not reaching Mary Ellen in time.

But then, he also remembered her voice. Mary Ellen’s. She was there, too. Her cool hand on his forehead, her demands that he get well, her agonized prayers when no one was around to see her tears.

Mary Ellen. He didn’t want to leave her. But he could feel himself slipping away. Perhaps it was for the best. She never would have been taken in the first place if she hadn’t been connected to him. But he couldn’t go without saying good-bye. He dragged himself out of the pit far enough to open his eyes and behold her beloved face one last time.

“Good . . . bye . . . Mary . . . Ellen,” he rasped.

She started and clasped his hand to her bosom. “Dan? I’m here.”

“Love you,” he managed, even as his eyes slid closed again. “Always . . . love you.”

Then with the sound of Mary Ellen’s quiet weeping surrounding him, Dead-Eye Dan let go of the pain and took that final ride to the great beyond.

Then Dead-Eye Dan passed out. He slept for three days and only woke up when the farm woman poured broth down his throat. On the fourth day, he recovered enough strength to keep his eyes open longer than five minutes, and after a week, he was sitting up in bed and driving Mary Ellen crazy with his complaining.

When he was able to stand on his own two feet again, he asked Mary Ellen to marry him. She said yes, and they were hitched the following Sunday.

Dead-Eye Dan retired from the bounty-collecting business to raise mules. Mary Ellen was never abducted again, and she and Dan went on to have three strapping sons and a little girl who looked just like her mama.

The End.

—from Dead-Eye Dan and the Outlaws of Devil’s Canyon

—revised by
Daniel Barrett,
mule trainer

“Three boys and a girl, huh?” Marietta looked up from the wedding gift her husband had just given her and smiled at the man sitting beside her on the sofa in the small parlor of their new home.

Daniel shrugged. “I’d be willing to consider other combinations.”

Marietta laughed as she nestled deeper into her husband’s arms. They’d had a blessedly short courtship, enduring only a month of chaperoned calls with her father hovering over them like the hawk he was named for. Daddy had given her a stern lecture about the improprieties of coming to the ranch alone and trying to maneuver poor Dan into a proposal. Said he aimed to protect his favorite ex-foreman from her plotting by ensuring she was never left alone with him. Which led to Daniel moving up the date of the wedding. By six weeks.

With a contented sigh, Marietta closed the creased cover of the dime novel in her lap and smoothed her hand over the picture of the fiery-haired man with the long-range rifle in his hand. A man who bore a striking resemblance to her groom.

“The new version of the story is much improved,” she commented as she set the book on the cushion to her left then turned to curl up more deeply into the side of the man she’d married mere hours earlier. Daniel’s turn of phrase might be less polished than that of the actual author, but Marietta much preferred his ending to the original. “I was quite angry when I read the book the first time.” She tilted her head back to meet her husband’s gaze. “Imagine! Killing off Dead-Eye Dan. It was a travesty! What was the author thinking?”

Daniel dropped a kiss on Marietta’s forehead. “I suppose he thought killing him off would keep the legend alive.” His fingers danced over her hair and tugged a pin free. Then another. And another. “Retirement and mules don’t really fit Dead-Eye Dan’s larger-than-life image.”

Marietta lost track of the conversation as her husband continued pulling pins from her hair. He even sat her up a little so he could reach the ones she’d been lying on against his chest. Her hair spilled down, one section at a time, until it finally all hung free about her shoulders.

Daniel’s eyes darkened as he took in the sight. He ran his fingers through her tresses, and tingles danced over her scalp at the gentle tugging. Then he started massaging where the pins had held up the heavy mass, and Marietta couldn’t help but sigh in pleasure.

“There’s one good thing about Dead-Eye Dan dying in the last book,” she murmured as she placed a palm upon her husband’s firm thigh for balance. If he kept up his ministrations much longer, she was going to melt into a puddle at his feet.

“What’s that?” he asked, leaning his face close to hers, his lips stopping a breath away from her mouth.

“I don’t have to share you anymore,” she whispered. Her gaze fell to his lips. Warmth spread through her as she waited, silently pleading, for him to kiss her.

His mouth curved in a cocky grin, still not kissing her, the rogue. “I’m all yours, Mrs. Barrett.” He touched his lips to hers in a soft caress that was as frustrating as it was delightful. “Only yours.” Another barely-there kiss. “Forever.”

Finally, his mouth slanted upon hers, releasing all the passion and fervor she craved. Daniel leaned her back against the sofa cushions, shoving the dime novel carelessly onto the floor as he followed her down. Marietta didn’t protest in the slightest.

Daniel Barrett, the man, beat out Dead-Eye Dan, the legend, every time.

Keep reading for a special sample of No Other Will Do by Karen Witemeyer.