Rachel was cantering down the river road when suddenly through the gray mist of rain she saw the buildings of Jackson Hole. She slowed the mare to a walk when she caught sight of passengers a couple blocks away descending from the coach. When she came to the alley of the station building, she turned Goldie’s head toward its entrance. Midway down the narrow passage, she reined the mare in. She sat a moment, her body sore and weary from the beating she’d suffered the day before and the long hours in the saddle.
Finally she told herself that she couldn’t sit here all night and, dismounting, she walked to the end of the alley and peered through the rain.
She spotted Dylan right away. She would know that tall figure anywhere. He was as handsome as ever, she thought, studying him as he stood beneath the light of a lantern hanging on the station wall. And just as arrogant looking, she added. Even in buckskins, with water dripping from the fringes of his pants and jacket, he stood tall, his pride in himself evident.
What should she do now? Rachel asked herself as the last passenger left the coach and hurried inside the station. She stepped back into the shadows when she saw Dylan turn his head and look in her direction.
“I’ve got to make myself known to him,” she muttered to herself. “If he sees me lurking out here in the dark and rain, he’ll think I’m woods-queer for sure.”
She was ready to step out into view when Dylan hopped down from the porch and splashed through the mud and water to stand before her.
His eyes were level and hard beneath the rim of his hat as he asked coldly, “You’re Rachel Sutter, aren’t you?”
Rachel swallowed and answered through chattering teeth, “Yes, I am.”
“Why are you standing out here in the rain? Why aren’t you inside with the others?”
Rachel shrugged and looked at the ground.
Dylan cast a glance over her soaked body and decided that he knew why she stood outside. She was embarrassed to be seen by the other passengers because of her clothes.
After a pause of a few seconds he said gruffly, “Uncle Silas told me what happened to you, but I don’t know where he got the idea that I could take you in.”
Rachel lifted a surprised gaze to him. “But he told me it was all settled.”
“The old buzzard!” Dylan swore savagely. “He just wanted to get you out of his shack. He should have known a bachelor like me couldn’t take you in.”
When Rachel made no response to his anger, only kept her gaze on the ground, Dylan peered closer at her. But what with the rain and her soaked hair hanging in her face, he couldn’t see much of her. He skimmed his gaze over her body and thought that she certainly was shapely.
What in the hell was he to do with her tonight, though? he asked himself. He couldn’t just ride off and leave her standing in the rain.
Dylan looked at her again, saw the pitiful sight she made and came to a quick decision. At his ranch there was a cot in the tack room where the teenage stable boy sometimes napped. There was also a stack of horse blankets for covers. She could sleep there tonight, and tomorrow he would take her down to the trading post and see if the new owner, John Jacob Andrews, could give her a job of some kind. He would make it clear that Rachel was a decent girl, that she was not the kind of woman to service the trappers. If there was no work for her at the post, she’d just have to ride back up the mountain.
“Get your horse and we’ll ride out to my ranch,” Dylan said and stepped up on the porch to wait for her.
His eyes opened wide when she led the golden palomino out of the alley. Never had he seen a more beautiful animal. It was perfect in all ways: color, limbs and arched neck.
“Does that animal belong to you?” he asked suspiciously.
“Yes, she does.” Rachel answered so sharply Dylan stared at her. “I caught her when she was a filly. I tamed her, and nobody but me can ride her.”
“You mean you won’t let anyone else ride her,” Dillon said with dry amusement.
“I mean she won’t let anyone else ride her,” Rachel answered curtly.
Dylan gave her a curious look. Maybe she had more spunk than he’d thought, he told himself, watching her throw a long, shapely leg over the back of the mare. Without another word, he mounted his own horse, whistled for Shadow, and headed down the street with Rachel following him.
As Dylan and Rachel traveled down the river road, the rain slackened and by the time they rode into the ranch barnyard it was only a drizzle. Rachel threw him a surprised look when Dylan dismounted and said, “The tack room is this way.” Why did she need a tack room? she asked herself as she followed him into the barn.
In the dry, warm darkness of the barn, which smelled like new hay, she heard a match scratch against wood, then blinked when a light flared up. She watched Dylan lift the chimney of a lantern and hold the flame to the wick. When it was lit, he told her to dismount, and when he had done the same, he gathered up their reins in one hand, and with the lantern swinging from the other, started walking down the wide aisle.
“You’ll be warm and dry in here for tonight,” he said, pushing open a narrow door. “Tomorrow I’ll take you down the river to the trading post. The owner is a decent man, I hear. I’m pretty sure he’ll give you a job.”
The trading post! Rachel thought, appalled. She didn’t want to end up there. Silas Quade had warned her about that place and the kind of work she’d be forced to do there. “Maybe I could find work on a ranch, cooking or doing housework,” Rachel suggested as she followed Dylan into a small room.
“That’s very doubtful,” he said gruffly. “Housewives around here do their own cooking and household chores. Your best bet is waiting on customers at the post.”
He placed the lantern on a feed box that had been turned upside down, then pulled some blankets off a shelf. Tossing them on the narrow cot, he said, “We eat breakfast around eight o’clock. We’ll go down the river as soon as you finish eating.”
“It’s plain that you can’t wait to get rid of me,” Rachel accused as Dylan turned to leave. “Why can’t I do your cooking and cleaning? You don’t have a wife.”
“And that’s the way I want to keep it,” he shot back, turning to face her. “If I had a young girl like you working in the house, folks hereabouts would have us married in no time. You’ll be better off at the post,” he said with finality and stalked out the door.
“Arrogant beast,” Rachel muttered, then decided she’d do better to think about getting out of her wet clothes. But what would she put on? she worried as she sneezed three times in a row.
She hurriedly spread three blankets over the cot, then stripped off her soaked clothes. She wondered why her body could feel so hot even though she was shivering so hard her teeth were chattering.
She crawled onto the cot and, lying on one blanket, pulled the other two up over her shoulders. She drifted into a sleep of delirium, moaning and muttering.
Monty Hale first noticed the rain when he stepped outside the trading post. By the vivid streaks of lightning, it was a frightful storm. Anyway, that was the way it looked to his fuzzy brain. He had been in the post all afternoon drinking John Jacob’s corn whiskey. He staggered to the long row of open-ended stalls that had been built to shelter the patrons’ horses when the weather turned bad. He struggled onto the back of his roan and, gathering up the reins, left the post and cut across country. He wanted to get to the Bar X ranch just as soon as he could.
To Monty’s disappointment, the shortcut did him little good. Within minutes he was soaked to the skin. He had sobered considerably by the time he rode up to the ranch house.
“Son of a gun, Dylan’s back,” he muttered, noting a light in a bedroom window. Dismounting, he led his horse into the barn, stripped the gear off and wiped it down with a piece of blanket, then started to leave the barn.
As he walked past the tack room, Monty paused and strained his ears toward the small room. Was he mistaken, or had he heard a whimpering sound coming from it?
When the sound came again, he pulled his Colt, sidled up to the tack-room door and eased it open.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed when he saw the figure of a woman lying on the narrow cot. He walked across the floor and stared down at her. Her face was as white as the pillow her blond head lay on. He cautiously picked up her wrist. Her pulse was beating frantically. He laid his palm on her forehead and found it red-hot.
“She’s awfully ill,” he whispered and wondered who she was and what she was doing in a room full of saddles, reins and such. “I’ve got to let Dylan know she’s in here,” he muttered and stepped back into the rain.
Dylan heard a pounding on the kitchen door. He scrambled out of bed and yelled loudly, “Settle down, whoever you are. I’m coming.”
He swept open the door and swore when he saw his foreman and best friend staring at him with glazed eyes. “Dammit to hell, Monty,” he swore, “don’t you know it’s raining like the very devil? You’d better get to bed and sober up.”
“Dammit to hell to you too, Dylan. And welcome back. Did you know there’s a sick woman in the tack room? I think she may have pneumony. She’s shivering and talking out of her head.”
Damnation, Dylan thought as he swung his feet to the floor. He hadn’t known the girl was sick when he’d banished her to the tack room.
As he stumbled his way across the pitch-black yard with Monty fumbling along behind him, Dylan regretted his earlier decision to keep her out of the ranch house. He’d wanted to make it clear to both the girl and the local gossips that she would not be living with him.
He entered the tack room, where the lamp still burned. Its yellow light shone softly on the girl’s face. This was the first good look he’d got of Rachel since she’d arrived.
Monty had smoothed the white-blond hair off her forehead, and, looking down at her fair, unblemished face, Dylan thought that never had he seen a lovelier woman in his life.
“We’ve got to get her to the house and warmed up,” Dylan said, looking up at Monty with worried concern. When Monty asked him how the girl had got into his tack room, Dylan pretended not to hear him. He was too ashamed and embarrassed to tell the truth of it.
Gathering Rachel up in his arms, blankets and all, he said to Monty, “Grab her things, then go on ahead and lay some more logs on the fire. We can get her warmed up faster in front of the fireplace.”
Monty left at a run, suddenly very sober. By the time Dylan got to the ranch house, Monty had flames leaping up the chimney and had put a pot of coffee on to brew in the kitchen. “Where do you suppose she came from?” he asked as Dylan gently placed his unconscious burden on the settee in front of the fire.
“She came down from the mountain,” Dylan explained reluctantly. “She’s one of the Sutters from Tulane Ridge.”
Monty was filled with curiosity at this news, but decided it was best not to press his friend for all the details just yet. “We need to get some clothes on her so she’s decent. Have you got a shirt she can wear?”
Dylan frowned. “I’ll find something.” He didn’t like the idea of dressing Rachel in front of another man. It was up to him to do what he could to preserve her modesty. He looked at Monty and said gruffly, “You can go to the bunkhouse now.”
Monty sat down in a rocking chair close to the fire and, with amusement glinting in his eyes, said, “I’ll just stay a bit longer, see if the girl comes around alright.”
Dylan gave the other man a dirty look but didn’t argue with him. Monty was more friend than hired hand. They had known each other since they were youngsters. “Do as you please,” he muttered and went up to his bedroom, leaving Monty to keep an eye on Rachel. As he searched for a clean shirt, he cursed himself for the uncaring way he had put her in the tack room. He had told himself he was doing it to protect her reputation, but now he realized it was mostly because he’d been afraid of being stuck with her.
But what if he did get stuck with her? he asked himself. What harm could it do? He could afford to give the girl a home. So what if the local gossips thought the arrangement improper? He had never cared much what others said of him.
Returning to Rachel with a clean linen shirt draped over his arm, Dylan moved toward the hearth wondering what would be the best way to put it on their patient. “I’ll hold her up with the blanket covering her front while you put the shirt on her,” he suggested to Monty. When a moment later his friend exclaimed in horror, he frowned.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“Dylan, look at her poor back and arms. She’s been beaten!”
Dylan’s stomach turned over when he looked down at the white flesh marked with angry-looking red welts. Savage oaths ripped out of his throat. “I’ll kill the bastard who did this to her.”
“Whoever did it used a wide leather belt,” Monty observed. “Find the man who wears such and you will have her beater.”
“Homer Quade!” Dylan exclaimed, swearing again.
His cousin was well known for the four-inch belt he wore. He used it in fights and was very adept at wielding it like a whip. He had maimed many men with it.
“Your cousin Homer?” Monty said, his fists clenched. “Let’s go get him.”
“Hell!” Dylan gave the hearth a savage kick. “The bastard’s already dead. My Uncle Silas came and told me about it this morning. He’s the one who sent the girl down here.”
Dylan sighed. He might as well tell what he knew of Rachel and Homer’s marriage. It would all come out sooner or later.
He cleared his throat and said, “This girl, Rachel Sutter, was married to Homer a couple hours before he was shot and killed. The marks on her back were probably his wedding gift to her.”
“I wonder if she realizes how lucky she is that Homer Quade is dead,” Monty said, then, looking at Dylan, he added, “We’ll need a basin of warm, soapy water to bathe the cuts that are bleeding. They may have dirt in them. In the top right-hand kitchen cabinet you’ll find a jar of Balm of Gilead salve. It’s real good for healing cuts and burns and such.”
When Dylan had brought the water and salve, the two men turned Rachel onto her stomach and set about treating her cuts.
While they worked, Monty asked, “Why did Silas send the girl to you? You’re not related to her.”
Dylan gave a short laugh. “It seems that my kinfolk got together to decide what was to be her fate. None of them wanted her, and it was decided that since I have a ranch and earn a decent living, I should take her in.”
“You fell for that bull!” Monty snorted.
“Hell, no, I didn’t,” Dylan denied vehemently. “But the old reprobate had already told her that she’d be welcomed by me and had sent her on.”
Dylan looked away from Monty and said with some shame in his voice, “I shouldn’t have put her in the tack room. She was soaking wet and shivering. It was just that I was so mad at Silas, I took it out on her. And I didn’t want the gossips to get going about an unwed girl staying in my house.”
“Let’s hope that she don’t come down with pneumony and die,” Monty said morosely. “She’s the prettiest little thing I ever did see.” He looked at Dylan. “Don’t you think so?’
Dylan reluctantly agreed, but added, “I wouldn’t want her to die if she was as ugly as a mud fence.”
“Well, yeah, me neither,” Monty hurried to agree. With that, Dylan poured them each a cup of coffee, and they settled down in front of the fire to watch over their patient. They had bandaged her wounds and managed to put Dylan’s shirt on her, but she continued to toss restlessly. “I’m afraid she may have lung fever.” Monty said half an hour later, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. “I think you should go fetch the doctor.”
Dylan groaned inwardly. It was just as he had feared. And if the girl died, it would be his fault. He clenched his fists. He didn’t think he could live with that on his conscience. Dylan splashed his way to the barn and walked down the wide aisle to the last stall on his right. It held the fastest horse on the ranch. It took but a few minutes to saddle the animal and lead him outside.
As Dylan rode through the wet night, he wondered if Homer had slept with his new bride before he was shot to death. He found himself wishing that his cousin hadn’t. The girl was too beautiful, too fine-boned to have mated with such an animal.
When Dylan arrived at the doctor’s office, he pounded so hard on the door that the middle-aged man awakened immediately. Dressed in his red longjohns, he threw open the door and stared at Dylan. “What in tarnation are you trying to do, Dylan?” he demanded in a rough voice. “Are you trying to break my door down?”
“Sorry, Dr. Johnson, but I have a very sick woman out at the ranch. I think she may have pneumonia. I wish you’d come and have a look at her.”
“And catch pneumonia myself,” the doctor complained. He sighed and said, “While I get dressed, you go to the livery stable and have the teenager there hitch up my buggy.”
Fifteen minutes later Dylan led the way out of Jackson Hole, the buggy wheels whirring along behind him.
When Dylan and the doctor arrived at the Bar X ranch, they turned the buggy and horses over to Monty, who was waiting for them anxiously.
Dr. Johnson grabbed the small bag from the seat beside him and sprang nimbly to the ground despite his age and considerable girth.
In Dylan’s absence Monty had built a fire in a potbelly stove in one of the bedrooms, spread Rachel’s things out to dry before it and tucked the girl into bed. They found the girl tossing and turning beneath the covers, her face flushed with fever.
Monty joined them as the doctor took off his wet coat and unwound a scarf from his neck.
“Do you think it’s pneumony, doc?” Monty asked worriedly. “She is burning up with the heat.”
The doctor sat down on the edge of the bed. He took Rachel’s limp wrist in his hand and while he felt her pulse said gruffly, “You two men can leave the room now.”
Both men blushed. They weren’t hanging around in hopes of seeing some bare flesh, and Dylan angrily told the doctor so. “We’ve done what we could to make her decent,” he said defensively.
“I’m sure you have,” Dr. Johnson replied, hiding his amusement. “I just thought that maybe I should remind you.”
Dylan’s only response was a loud snort as he and Monty walked down the hall to the kitchen.
“What do you think? Does she have pneumony?” Monty repeated as Dylan placed two cups on the table, then filled them with coffee that had been keeping warm on the back of the range.
“I hope not,” Dylan answered, a serious note in his voice. Monty gave him a quick, searching look. Had his friend finally fallen for a woman?
When Monty had drunk half his coffee, he said in slightly chastising tones, “You shouldn’t have put her in the tack room, wet and all.”
“I told you why I did it!” Dylan shot back. “I was mad at old Silas. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Are you gonna give her a home now?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” Dylan said in frustrated tones. “I feel I ought to—she’s got nowhere else to go. When she’s feeling better, I may make that old bastard find her a husband up there in the mountains.”
There was a long pause, then Monty shook his head saying, “If you think about it, it would be a shame for such a beauty to be married to one of your uncle’s kin. She’d be old and worn out from having younguns by her early thirties. It was God’s mercy that Homer was killed before he could do any worse to her.”
Monty waited a minute for Dylan to make a response. When his friend didn’t answer, he asked gruffly, “Don’t you think so?”
“Yes, dammit, I do,” Dylan said impatiently. “Can we stop talking about it now?”
Monty’s answer was a disgruntled grunt. Several seconds went by, and then he said, “I’d marry her myself before I’d let that happen to her.”
Dylan was too stunned to respond to that remark for a second, then he gave a short, disdainful laugh. “How would you take care of her? You can only halfway take care of yourself.”
“That’s true,” Monty agreed. “I don’t have anything but my gun and horse, but I’d work myself to the bone to take care of her.”
“Let’s don’t argue about it,” Dylan said, surprised at the jealousy sparking in him. “Why would she want to marry a cowpoke anyway?”
“I’ll bet she’d take me over them wife-beatin’ mountain men,” Monty said, becoming a little heated. When Dylan only shrugged his shoulders indifferently, Monty announced that he was going to bed. After he left for the bunkhouse, Dylan walked back down the hall to talk to the doctor.
“Come on in,” Dr. Johnson responded to his knock on the door.
“How is she, doc?” Dylan asked, seeing that the doctor was closing his bag.
“Looks like pneumonia,” the doctor said. “I’ve given her medicine to bring down the fever. You let me know how she’s doing in the morning.”
Dylan sat in front of the fireplace, wide awake. His conversation with Monty kept running through his mind. Was he going to give the girl a home? He felt obligated to do so. She was seriously ill because of him. If she did stay, how would it work out? he wondered. She was so damn beautiful. Would he be able to keep his hands off her? A decent man didn’t play fast and loose with a woman like her, and he wasn’t about to settle down with a wife and children . . . even if she would have him. Which he doubted, after the way he had treated her.
A picture of his handsome friend Monty flashed before him. Monty was quite smitten with Rachel. How would he feel if his long-time friend started courting her? What if Monty asked her to marry him and she said yes? Would that bother him? He told himself no, but he knew that he lied. It would bother the hell out of him.
It was midnight according to the chiming of a clock in a distant room when Rachel came awake. She only listened and counted with half her attention. She was trying to figure out where she was and how she’d got there.
Then the name Homer Quade came to mind and every nerve in her body came alive, as well as a flood of memories.
Foremost was the horror of her forced marriage to Homer. Then hard on the heels of that was the travesty of a wedding party outside in the churchyard. She shuddered, remembering the drunken relatives snickering and making rude remarks, describing in detail what would go on in the wedding bed that night.
When Edna Quade tried to hush everyone up so the handsome young preacher wouldn’t hear, her father-in-law hit his wife with the back of his hand. As Edna tried to hide her tears, Silas looked at Homer and sneered, “You got to take the frost out of them, Homer. Show them who’s boss from the start.”
“I intend to, Pa,” Homer said. “I’ll learn her just like my brothers learned their wives.”
“Just don’t beat her unconscious, Homer,” Silas cautioned in an undertone. “You want her to have enough wits to do everything you tell her to do.”
“You’re right, Pa. I’m gettin’ hot just thinking about it. Let me get my jug and we’ll be off.”
Rachel remembered Homer picking up a jug, then jerking her to her feet and tossing her up on Goldie. As soon as they were out of earshot of the others, the beating had started. From then on everything was blurry. She recalled vaguely a man stepping from behind a tree and accusing Homer of raping his wife.
She remembered there was the retort of a gunshot and the smell of gunpowder. Then had come the sound of running feet and Silas and Homer’s brothers arrived on the scene. The man had watched them with rifle in hand as they carried her new husband to the house. She could only think how glad she was that he was dead.
As she stared into the darkness, she remembered the following morning, the way Silas had ordered her off to meet Dylan, the endless ride through the storm, Dylan’s cool reception.
Rachel eased over on her back. She realized now that the old devil had lied to her. Dylan Quade had no intention of giving her a home. He had barely allowed her to sleep in his tack room overnight.
But this was the strangest tack room she had ever seen. There was no ranch equipment that she could make out in the dim light, and the bed she lay on was warm and soft, something she had never experienced before.
Rachel started to turn over on her side and winced with pain. She felt her back and wondered a moment at the bandages her fingers encountered. She couldn’t remember anyone treating her cuts, but Dylan must have doctored her while she was unconscious. She blushed at the thought of his big, strong fingers touching her bare skin.
She sat up in bed and stayed there a moment until her head stopped spinning. She slowly stood up then and became so dizzy she almost fell. Her head hurt something awful, and she felt hot.
Even so, she walked slowly, hunting for her coat. She found it hanging before the stove. She was thankful that it was only a little damp as she pulled it on, over an oversized shirt that was not hers. Had Dylan put it on her, seen her naked? She shivered. Her shoes were still soaking wet when she pulled them on.
Very quietly then, she left the room and slipped down the hall. She paused a moment when she saw Dylan asleep in front of the fireplace. When he didn’t stir, she continued on. She carefully opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the damp, cold night. On cold and clammy feet she made her way across the dim yard to the barn.
Goldie whinnied softly to Rachel as she struggled to heave the saddle onto her back. She winced with the pain of her clothes rubbing against the cuts and welts on her back and arms.
She silently bore the discomfort as she mounted the mare and rode out of the barn.
Rachel looked often over her shoulder at her back trail. She’d heard stories of how outlaws roamed the territory, the mountains their refuge. I don’t want to run into any of them, she thought as she rode on in the piercing cold.
When Rachel came to a much-used trail that followed the river, her spirits lifted. In the distance she spotted a twinkling light. She squared her shoulders, and, so weary she was swaying in the saddle, she rode toward it.