COYOTE EYES CRACKED TO NARROWED SLITS THAT BURNED WITH FRUSTRATION.
“Beau,” she whispered. When he blinked and lifted his lids higher, Roslyn leaned over him. “Beau, can you hear me? Beauregard?”
Chapped lips parting, his eyes twitched to hers. Awareness honed his gaze into a piercing blade.
“Oh, Beau.” Roslyn rushed to the kitchen grabbed her glass and filled it with water. “Hold on,” she muttered. “Stay with me.” She skip-limped back into the bedroom and fell to her knees.
Cold and cutting, his eyes tracked her.
She lifted his head, put the glass to his split lips. “Drink this. As much as you can.”
He got down two gulps before his lids slid closed and he was gone again.
Hope flared bright in her heart.
He’d woken. There was a chance he wasn’t slowly dying. He may yet heal and live on. This wasn’t the vain wish of a silly girl, but a real and true sign of recovery.
She ran her fingers through his hair and praised his strength.
After checking the chicken and marvelling at how it browned, Roslyn took a trip to the creek and got more icy water.
She changed the cold cloths on Beauregard, and talked at him in a stream of excited nonsense. She kept checking to see if his eyes were open, and tried not to feel disappointment as they remained shut.
The sun set and Roslyn ate chicken.
Beauregard slept on, waking once to sip half a cup of water.
The hope didn’t die.
Holding his hand tight in hers, belly full, Roslyn crawled onto the bed beside him. Her eyes dropped closed in sleep before she’d fully stopped moving.
Morning came, and with it a joyous sight.
Beauregard’s eyes were wide open, and fixed on her face. They exchanged a long look before he finally spoke. “Miss Roseberry.”
She blinked at the formal address. She’d spent the last two days and nights thinking of him as simply Beauregard, not as Mr Kellington.
He drifted off and she went about her new morning ritual of cleaning him then herself. Breakfast was another boiled egg and left over chicken. She dribbled warm broth into Beauregard then lightly patted his stomach.
She had no idea what to feed her pen full of animals. Giving them water, she worried over it and decided she had no choice but to ask Beauregard the next time she caught him awake.
She spent most of the morning elbow deep in soapy suds. Doing the laundry in the tub instead of enjoying a bath seemed the ultimate travesty, but Beauregard needed clean sheets.
After she hung them on the veranda, she took a basket to the vegetable garden and used her fingers as rakes to burrow under the earth. She pulled out some potatoes and carrots. After her fingers encountered a worm much larger than her own middle finger, and a beetle perched on her knuckle, she gave up being courageous in her practicality. She ran into the house screaming, jumping, and trying to scrape the fantasy creepy crawlies off her arms and legs.
One mental breakdown later, taking another cup of broth into Beauregard for a late lunch, she smiled when she found his eyes open and focused on the door.
He drank most of the cup and grunted then glared when she tried to force the rest. Sighing, she set it aside and bathed his face and neck with cold water.
With a brief hesitation, she smoothed his hair back wondering if he could accept tenderness from her. “Can you drink more? Water this time.”
“Fetch me a bucket?”
“Why?”
“Enjoy cleanin’ my waste do you?”
Heat suffused her cheeks. “I preserved your modesty, I swear to it.”
There was a glint in his eye plainly amusement.
“Beau, what can I feed goats and cows?”
He blinked. Confusion clouded his gaze. “What?”
“I found a mama goat and a milking cow. I put them in the pen next to the corral. I’ve given them water but they need to eat.”
“Cows eat grass.”
“And the goat?”
His breathing grew heavier. “Thistle, bramble, oats. Grass. There are bales of hay in the barn. Winter leftovers.” He wheezed. “My horse?”
“I let him go. He hasn’t travelled far.”
“If they return ride to town. Find Sheriff Cooley.”
He passed out while she scowled at him. If they came back she wouldn’t run away and leave him. She wasn’t a coward anymore. She was a savage now. Hadn’t she proven that as he’d proven he was decent?
Retrieving him a shallow pan, she set it right at the edge of the mattress level with his hips. All he’d have to do is roll around a bit. His man bit would do the rest, surely?
Humming a jaunty tune, she washed the vegetables, and stored them next to the eggs in a wooden crate.
While she worked she mulled over Beauregard’s heavy breathing.
Settling on the rocking chair cradling the warm weight of a black coffee, she flicked through the medical book and discovered a passage about rib injuries. It advised patients with suspected broken ribs were wrapped tightly about the abdomen to restrict movement and protect against the ribs puncturing internal organs.
This wouldn’t have been a problem after she got him on the bed, but since that morning he’d moved around a fraction.
Roslyn creased the page to save her place then rushed into the bedroom. Teary in her worry, she used a wide strip of torn sheet to wrap his torso.
The pain woke him.
“I’m sorry,” she babbled as she wrapped the mottled flesh as tight as her physical strength allowed. “So sorry. It must be done.”
“Smarts a bit, is all.”
He fell into unconsciousness before she finished.
Huffing a sigh, she was grateful. She hated to hurt him. Sweat rolled down her temples and throat from the exertion of moving his body to and fro. More bathing with soap. More cold compresses. She looked in the pan and was gratified to see faint swirls of blood in the fluid. That was a vast improvement from the red puddle of before.
That evening she ate well.
Dragging a dining table chair into the bedroom, she felt able to stay awake well into the night, keeping up a constant vigil.
She read aloud to Beauregard from a fiction novel with a pretty cover. It was a romance about a woman who saved a sailor’s life and fell into shame when she went willingly to his bed out of wedlock.
Before the mob she would have viewed the tale as scandalous. Now she thought the restraint of society on true love a sin.
Roslyn dozed, the open book on her lap. She woke to find Beauregard peering at her past shuttered lashes.
Though red and irritated his eyelids weren’t puffy anymore. His golden eyes were bright and keen in his swollen face.
She set the book aside and bullied him into drinking a whole mug of cold broth then a glass of tepid water.
He cleared his throat. “Are you sore?”
“Some.”
“There may be a baby.”
Puzzlement furrowed her brow. It smoothed when she recognised the unhappy look in his eyes. “I fought, Beau.” She leaned forward and confessed her greatest victory in a clipped, quiet voice. “I fought until the bastard bled. He’ll scar.”
Patting his chest, thinking the matter closed, she jolted as he snagged her wrist. Long, calloused fingers closed around the joint in steely grip. She tugged, astounded by the uncompromising strength of his hold.
How his ravaged face retained his former remoteness, she didn’t know, but she found it encouraging witnessing the force of his personality after days of deadly stillness. His cold scrutiny roamed from the top of her head to her knees, which pressed into the mattress near his side. Her clothes were rumpled and stained, and she experienced a pang of regret for not maintaining a more ladylike appearance.
“I’m hungry.”
She flashed pearly teeth. “I have food, but the book says you should ingest liquids until you stop passing bloody fluid.”
“Book?”
“You have a very useful collection. Yellow back novels too. I’ll read to you if you like?”
He let go of her wrist and stared straight ahead. “I dreamed of you.” His eyes flickered, shot to hers, then returned to the ceiling. He cleared his throat. “You found a cow?”
“And a goat. Tomorrow morning I’m going to milk her.” She chewed her bottom lip. “I’ll work up to the cow. It can’t be so hard.”
Giving her the strangest look, he didn’t offer an opinion.
She was happy to sit in silence, thinking his head must be painful with all the bruising. Her own stopped aching only that morning.
Her bladder bothered her, so Roslyn left Beauregard to his thoughts and padded outside to the privy to relieve herself.
Halfway there she stilled, a primal part of her scenting danger.
Near the corral the dark figure of a man froze in a half crouch.
The figure was cloaked in shadow, but even she could see the black hair rippling down to his waist. Narrow chest defined with sinewy muscle, his buckskin britches were loose until snugly laced moccasins bound his feet and calves.
Roslyn’s calm shattered. Her heartbeat surged into a single humming note, and her lips parted in a trilling scream that smashed the silence into a million fragments of chaos.
“Eneoestse.” The figure bolted towards her. “Hová'ȧháne, nóxa'e.”
Hair whipping in a tornado bleached pale by the lunar light, Roslyn spun, and sprinted to the house. She took the veranda steps in one bound, and flew to the dining room table.
“Roslyn?”
Beauregard’s guttural rasp barely punctured the haze of terror descending upon her.
“Indian,” she screeched. “I have the rifle. What do I do? God, Beau, what do I do?”
“It’s loaded. Chamber a bullet.”
Helpless panic returned with punishing force. She howled, “How?”
A hoarse curse split the air. “Keep your back to the kitchen with the barrel pointin’ out. Come here.” Beauregard sounded calm. “Come to me, sweetheart.”
Defused by his steady tone, and used to accepting direction from a man, she immediately did as told. Hysteria mounted inside her. She’d heard stories of renegade Indians raping women for days. They scalped them before slitting their throats in heathen sacrifices to totem gods.
Her knees threatened to cave, so she locked them together.
Rather than wilt under the strain she worked up a goodly amount of venomous anger. The Indian probably heard the landowner was dead and was the first in a long line of scavengers.
It was just a bonus she was here for him to have his way with.
Easy pickings.
The scent of a foreign male blew in on a warm breeze. Horse, leather and earth combined into a fresh bouquet she would have found pleasant any other instance.
An imposingly large body filled the threshold.
Quivering, Roslyn whimpered. It was a pitiful, broken sound, but she kept shuffling toward the bedroom, her knees pressed together making her cock-legged.
Silent, the Indian watched her. He made no aggressive movement, which gave her the courage to speed up.
Roslyn reached the bedroom doorframe and halted. Gulping air, she tried to stop panting. The rifle aimed at the Indian’s gut, but if she moved to Beauregard’s side where it was safer the Indian would be beyond her line of sight.
That felt dangerously wrong.
Wracked with indecision, she ended up light headed under the escalating pressure of what was the proper course of action.
She smelt her own fear. It was pungent.
After a painfully extended pause where Roslyn convinced herself her heart would crawl out her throat, Beauregard’s voice rose evenly from the mattress in the melodic, lilting language the Indian previously shouted at her.
Head cocking, the stranger responded in a similar tone.
Beauregard spoke, and this time the Indian brave nodded along with the words before offering a short reply in a relaxed, harmonious timbre.
“Roslyn, he’s goin’ to sit. Don’t shoot. He’s sorry for scarin’ you.”
Palms open and lifted from his sides, the brave lowered to the floor in a graceful dip. His hair flowed over his shoulders and trailed across his lap. He sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room then unhooked an axe from his belt. He set it an arm’s length in front of him.
“This,” Beauregard said, “is Kohkahycumest.” He paused. “White Crow.”
Roslyn’s arms shook but she never lowered her weapon.
“He means you no harm.”
“Alright.”
“He came because he needed a safe place to sleep.” Beauregard’s breathing coarsened. “He heard I’d offered sanctuary to peaceful tribe members in the past.”
“Make him leave.”
“He can help.”
Roslyn’s newly developed survival instinct protested this statement. Sceptical, she demanded, “Why tell me to use the rifle if he’s tame?”
“Safety comes first. Now we’ve spoken I’m sure he wants to help in exchange for a meal and shelter.”
“No. I’m scared.”
“White Crow said he’d remove his weapon. Has he?”
“Just an axe. He’s got more, I’m not stupid.”
“Partin’ with his tomahawk was a gesture of respect to you.”
“If he lies?”
“Then you shoot him, or stab him, or do anythin’ you need to make him pay for betrayin’ our hospitality.”
“Too risky. Make him go away please.”
“I’m too tired to argue. White Crow needs a place to lay his head, and we need help movin’ me off the floor. The mice are gettin’ cocky.”
Her lip trembled and she fought the urge to cry.
The brave chuffed a laugh, his dark eyes luminous. Studying her, he leaned back on his hands, unmistakably amused by the verbal sparring and her resistance in obeying her male.
“Roslyn.” Beauregard’s voice was annoyed now.
Shoulders sagging, she let the barrel hit the floor and brought her finger off the trigger. She exhaled shakily. “I don’t like you right now.”
White Crow rose and crossed the room in giant strides.
Alarmed, she tripped over her feet trying to keep space between them. She flinched as he reached out and steadied her.
Eyes wide with fright, she stared at him in mute horror wondering what came next.
Expression tranquil, the brave remained still. His large hand wrapped around her upper arm with firm yet gentle pressure. His presence was commanding yet polite.
Roslyn’s muscles relaxed when she realised he wasn’t going to throw her to the ground and ravish her.
Feeling foolish she flushed, and offered a genuine smile of apology.
Nonplussed, White Crow eased behind her. “Nénáasėstse, kȧse'ééhe.” Lifting her hands, he adjusted her hold on the rifle. “Héehe'e?” He tapped a silver lever, and hearing the click, she realised he’d chambered a bullet. He mimed squeezing the trigger with a thick finger softly pressing over hers. Stepping away, he let go. “Hena'háanehe.” He patted her head as if praising a child, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Tȧhého'xeehahtsėstse.”
Dismissing her, the Indian stood next to Beauregard and conversed.
Bedraggled and glowering, Roslyn was chagrined to realise why the brave seemed relaxed during the confrontation. She couldn’t have shot him even if she’d wanted to. She didn’t know whether to be happy or dismayed at the revelation a potential foe knew she was hopeless with weapons. She decided to be cautiously pleasant. He’d shown her how to work the gun, hadn’t he?
White Crow helped Roslyn get the mattress and Beauregard onto the bed. In return she fed him a midnight supper of left over chicken, boiled potatoes and sugared carrots.
“Néá'eše,” he rumbled when she handed him the loaded plate and a glass of water. He took a bite of chicken. “Épéva'e.”
She eyed him warily wondering if he complained about the taste.
Sensing her caginess, Beauregard said, “He thanked you, and said the food’s good.”
Cheered by this politeness, she smiled. “You’re welcome,” she replied sweetly as if he were a guest, which she was surprised to realise he was.
Beauregard grumbled over his chicken broth, but she paid him no mind.
As the night wore on he subtly indicated that she wasn’t to sleep, and that she was to stay close. Quietly following his dictates, she made up a pallet for White Crow in the living room then read to Beauregard until dawn.
She whined when he wouldn’t let her go to the outhouse, and was furious she had to use the pan in his presence. He wouldn’t budge.
After she finished she realised she’d let a bed-ridden man order her around. She found she wasn’t cross anymore. It was too silly.
She heard White Crow leave the house, but figured he visited the privy. It was only when he returned an hour later presenting two skinned rabbits did she realise he’d been hunting.
“Pévevóona'o.” He thrust the meat at her.
She thanked him with a smile then herded him into the bedroom so that Beauregard could translate proper appreciation. He and their guest talked. From the brave’s earnest expression and deferential air she guessed Beauregard asked him not to speak of his stopover at the ranch, and he agreed.
White Crow left less than an hour later on his dappled mare after a quietly spoken, “Nėstaévȧhósevóomȧtse.”
Nodding as if she understood perfectly, Roslyn waved goodbye.
No one from her old life would believe she’d met a full-blooded Indian and lived to tell the tale. She liked the quietly imposing male, and hoped to see Kohkahycumest again when she could offer him appropriate hospitality. She might ask if she could shorten his name to Kohkah, though, as it was a bit of a mouthful, and she didn’t want to call him White Crow as it seemed more respectful to speak his real name.
Roslyn returned to the house and curled up next to Beauregard.
Vowing to learn how to milk a goat, she slept until lunch.
SHERRIFF EMMITT COOLEY SMELT BULLSHIT. Even the rock and sway of his beloved horse Legs wasn’t enough to appease his foul mood. His shoulders were hunched and his eyes shifty.
After years of enforcing the law in a county dead set on being lawless, he found no peace in the rolling green hills that gave way to acres upon acres of prime land.
The Kellington Ranch.
If gambling outlaws didn’t run him into the ground the gossiping lady folk of Dawson Lake would.
All over town women suffered fainting spells in the street. They simply keeled over when they heard the news that half-breed Indian Beauregard Kellington kidnapped Roslyn Roseberry from her farm and raped her in his front yard in full view of her erstwhile fiancé Franklyn Buckley Junior.
Here the tale broke down, but either Beauregard was dead and Roslyn dying, or Beauregard was alive and tormenting her still, much to the distress of her family.
That none of the Roseberrys had come to him with a plea to save the young woman wasn’t lost on Emmitt, who had a sharp mind, and a keen nose for a lie.
Something about the entire situation stank funny.
Calls for Beauregard’s execution from the older dames had Emmitt tied up all damn afternoon the day before. The gentleman of the town even gathered late in the evening with the intention of riding to Beauregard’s corner of the ranch and burning him alive.
It took him and the Deputy Sherriff most of the night to calm them, making the rounds to be sure nobody slinked off to accomplish the deed.
Dawn hadn’t yet turned the sky pink before Emmitt knocked on Elstein Roseberry’s front door demanding answers. It turned out his oldest son Homer was the one spreading the vile story.
Pushing a glass of lemonade into his hand, Elstein blathered about the sins of the father infecting the seed, and the many soul-sucking evils of Indian squaws before Emmitt cut to the chase and asked pointed questions about what happened out there on the Kellington ranch between Miss Roslyn and Beauregard.
The responses were garbled one moment, nonsensical the next then eventually downright misleading.
Knowing he’d not get a straight answer from the bible-bashing rancher, he’d tipped his hat to Ms Roseberry, and offered to retrieve Roslyn himself.
The look of horror he caught on Benjamin Roseberry’s face as he departed made Emmitt uneasy.
So there he was, sweating his balls off under the hot summer sun while wondering if he’d arrive to discover rotting corpses, or a woman under siege by a raving lunatic out for white man’s blood.
Truth be told, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to find.
If the mob tried killing Beauregard in retaliation of Roslyn’s stolen innocence trying to prosecute his murderers would be a damn waste of time not to mention inconvenient as the town judge was a racialist.
Trouble was Emmitt knew the half Indian. Their casual acquaintance had possibly lulled him into a false sense of security that though harsh, the rumours about the man circulating for years were hooky, and that for the most part he was safe.
This shot that all to hell.
Then again it wasn’t a secret Elstein Roseberry had it out for that boy.
If Beauregard had fallen to foul play it would haunt Emmitt for the rest of his life to let it slide, but there was still no way he’d be able to prosecute or find any satisfactory kind of justice.
The modest house came into view on the horizon and Emmitt straightened in his saddle.
Bits of information he’d gathered on the Kellington family flitted through his mind until he had a rough tapestry.
Long time settlers in the Colorado area, the Kellingtons were old money. Old Man Kelly married a native he rumoured to have fallen in love with after she convinced her chieftain father to save his life after he wandered into their territory, wounded and confused after a fall from a spirited horse he hadn’t quite broke yet. Riverbird, Beauregard’s mother, had apparently been a beautiful women, but still an Indian, and not worthy of the town’s welcome. Her son was barely tolerated to this day, and only because the Older Kellington brothers were known to get mighty testy when their youngest brother was slandered in hearing – even if they were said to hate him. Family is family, after all. Beauregard was said to have been a quiet, solemn child who dealt with the circumstances of his birth with commendable maturity. Then came his thirteenth year. Something changed, and the boy became an animal. It was to this day unproven, but it was widely accepted as fact he killed Franklyn Buckley Senior, then burned the man’s remains in a barn bordering the Roseberry Ranch. He got off by claiming the man attacked him, and that he hit back in self defence knocking the man unconscious. When asked why he burned down the barn, he said he’d been camping inside, and his small fire burned out of control during the struggle. Since Buckley Senior was unconscious from the fight, he burned to death before help arrived. This testimony alongside the formidable lure of Old Man Kelly’s money had the boy escaping the hangman’s noose. From then on there was a dark and feral air to the youngster that intensified to a chilling ferocity when he became a man.
Emmitt shook his head to clear the cobwebs. He had to stay sharp.
Unlike others he’d never felt fear when he’d passed Beauregard Kellington by in the street. Wariness because of his reputation, yes, but never had he felt evil emanating from him as he had other bad men.
Dismounting in the yard, Emmitt gave the outbuildings and corral a careful once over. Things looked ramshackle, but it wasn’t the squalor the town people claimed Beauregard dwelled in.
Hitching Legs to a low shrub, he’d taken not two steps before the front door flew open.
Roslyn Roseberry strode onto the veranda pointing a rifle as big as her at his chest. Blond hair blowing about her battered face, she looked half-crazed and spitting mad.
Ignoring the urge to draw, Emmitt lifted his hands and slowed to a stop. “Morning, Miss Roseberry. Sheriff Emmitt Cooley, in case you’d forgot.”
Blue eyes tracked the space around him before drilling holes into his head. “Sheriff.” Her voice was chill, but years of detective work let him hear the quaver of fear beneath the bravado. “Aiming to finish what they started, are you?”
Scared she might be, but Emmitt sensed something fundamental had broken in Roslyn Roseberry. She’d shoot him down like lame horse, let the coyotes chew his bones, and not lose a wink of sleep.
Experiencing a creeping dread, Emmitt realised whatever happened here four days ago was a beginning not an end.
“People in town are sick with worry for you.”
“Over me, you mean. I doubt they’d trouble themselves to actually worry for me.”
Saddened to realise she was right, he took a careful step keeping his demeanour non-threatening. “I’m here for the truth, and to help if I may.”
Roslyn cocked her head. The rifle dropped. “You may. Won’t you come in?” Twirling, she disappeared into the house.
Emmitt stood there stunned. His imaginings of her running into his arms weeping as he spirited her away from her captor evaporated in a cloud of trail dust.
A young woman had no business being alone in a bachelor’s house, especially a bachelor of Beauregard’s notoriety.
He’d never before gotten a whiff that the man was violent towards women, but even from where he stood he saw Miss Roslyn took a beating most males would find challenging.
Sighing, he rolled his shoulder, unclipped his holster and put a hand on his pistol. He made sure to inspect his surroundings as he climbed the steps and entered the house.
“Hello? Beauregard?” He rapped a knuckle on the doorframe before stepping in. “Beauregard, it’s Sheriff Cooley.”
The house was dark and stuffy. Strangely, it smelt homey, like fresh soap, stew and hot coffee. Drab fabric covered an old, saggy couch and depressingly yellow lace hung about the dirty windows. The heat of the place was oppressive with the all glass shut and locked as it was. The kitchen looked clean at least, and there was a pot bubbling. Something savoury teased his nostrils.
Kellington wasn’t starving her at least.
Lord knew a lady like Miss Roslyn wouldn’t know how to fend for herself as the average farmwife.
The young woman herself stood in the middle of the room next to a table. “He’s asleep. My apologies for not extending a more friendly welcome. Things have been difficult. May I offer you a drink? Coffee, maybe? We have no lemonade.” She sounded truly dismayed by that lack of provision.
The rifle was set down, but there was a wary, caged look about her Emmitt felt the need alleviate.
He was a man’s man, but damn if a woman being afraid of him didn’t make him sick in the innards. “That’d be mighty fine, Miss Roseberry.”
“Call me Roslyn. How’d you take it?”
“Black with sugar.”
A small hand waved to the dining table after she removed the rifle. “Sit, please. Be welcome in our home.”
Feeling uncertain about what precisely was going on, he sat.
Our home?
As she busied herself in the kitchen, Emmitt thought careful about how to approach the questions he needed answering. “Miss Roslyn, it’s with a glad heart I find you alive and,” his gaze flashed over her bruises, “well.”
“Miraculous, isn’t it?”
From what he guessed was the bedroom Emmitt heard a low, questioning, “Lyn?” The concern in the tone shocked him as much as the intimate address.
Face flaming, Roslyn reacted as if a gun went off. She rushed to fill a mug with dark broth, and a glass with water. She shot the Sherriff a harried look. “A moment for your coffee.” She pushed into the bedroom and toed the door.
Wondering if he was about to lose his scalp, Emmitt stood, crossed the room, and pushed the door back open.
What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
On the bed was a man. Hell, that disfigured, misshapen thing had to be a human male. His eyes flitted over the ebon hair, its unruly waves and indigo sheen. Emmitt took another nasty jolt when he realised he could identify the man in the bed.
Chattering like a magpie, Roslyn bathed the swollen, tattered face in delicate swabs. Methodical yet gentle, she worked her way down his neck and chest. The face grimaced when she reached his ribs, the contortion of bloated features grotesque, but the man didn’t lash out or say an unkind word as she laboured over him.
Removing his hand from clutching his weapon, an instinctive action when he was out of sorts, Emmitt cleared his throat.
The body on the bed stiffened, groaned, and then lost all tension as its head lolled.
Crying out, Roslyn spun toward the door. She had a pistol cocked a second later. This time there was no cultivated coolness, just a scared creature succumbing to survival instinct, and the overruling urge to protect.
“Here to help, remember.” Emmitt took a step back. “Is that truly Beauregard Kellington?”
“The one and only.” Roslyn tossed the pistol aside. “Oh, Beau. You tensed so hard you passed out, didn’t you?”
Emmitt winced as the gun thumped the floor. “Miss Roslyn, why are you in here?”
“I try to get as much broth and water down him as I can when he wakes. He drifts in and out more regular now, but I’m worried he’ll dehydrate. He’s stopped passing blood, which is good, but the swelling is still so bad around his face and joints. The cold creek water helps. I don’t know what else I can do for him. Do you?” She cast him a wide-eyed look. “Do you think you could convince the physician to make a house call? I know people are scared to come out here, but I’d feel better if someone knowledgeable tells me he’s on the mend, and I’m not making things worse. We have money. We can pay for medicine. Rumours are rumours. Beau won’t hurt anybody who comes out here is friendly. Would you tell the physician that? You said you wanted to help.”
Emmitt’s skull ached.
Something was very wrong here. Roslyn Roseberry looked as if Beauregard had beaten her up and down the room, but she didn’t look afraid of him.
Women who were made to suffer a man’s lust, unwilling, didn’t turn around and tirelessly nurse them from death’s door. They didn’t carefully bathe them, change bloody, pissed on sheets, and fret over if they’d get well. They most certainly didn’t beg the town Sheriff to fetch a doctor rather than hang the man from the nearest, highest branch.
No woman was that Christian, and towards a man considered by most as unholy and unclean?
Or maybe she’d thought she had no choice. Look at how she was left in the middle of nowhere, abandoned by her so called family, defenceless, and frightened. She was raised following a man’s command. Poor thing simply did what came natural by tending to the very man who’d hurt her.
“Sheriff?” Roslyn’s big blue eyes watered and her voice had taken on a keen edge of vulnerability. Interestingly, while she appeared to be falling apart on the outside a part of her on the inside was raging.
Her fingers inched along the floor towards the pistol.
Emmitt realised he’d stared agog for five minutes after her outburst on Beauregard’s condition. He’d made her uncomfortable, doubt the legitimacy of his nonviolent intentions. “Is he sleeping?”
“He’s unconscious.”
“Come with me then. We’ll visit the main ranch house to advise the Older Kellingtons of their brother’s condition then we’ll get you home to your father.” Emmitt held out a hand. “Beauregard will pay for what you suffered, I swear it.”
Fury blasted through the room. “Touch him and I’ll shoot you. I swear it.”
“There’s no greater testament to your Christian goodness, but he’s hurt you. I can’t walk away. Town Council holds me accountable, you see?”
“I see very well.” She pushed onto her feet, small hands clenching until the knuckles were white. “You’re just like the rest. A no good bible bashing hypocrite who doesn’t care for the truth, and couldn’t handle it even if it were known.”
Aware he was in the dark, Emmitt backed down. He’d worried something wasn’t right with this whole mess, and had a further suspicion it was about to get a whole lot muddier. Perhaps it was time to stop guessing. “That coffee still on offer, Miss Roslyn?”
Roughly scrubbing the back of her hand under each eye, she jerked her head. “After you help me change the sheets.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Beau is heavy, and my arms ache. If you could lift him at certain times it’ll be easy to do what I need.”
Taking a deep breath Emmitt strolled forward. “Damn day can’t any stranger.”
He was fussed at when his touch became too rough, so Emmitt gentled, and treated Beauregard’s flesh as if soft spun sugar. When Roslyn stripped the top sheet leaving the man exposed, Emmitt’s stomach pitched and shrank. Sweat beaded his brow, and sour saliva tinged with bile pooled in his mouth. “Christ Almighty. How is he still breathing?”
“If I knew the secret I’d be invincible.” Roslyn changed the sheets, and when Beauregard was down, she kept him naked, laying cold cloths over as much skin as she could manage.
Embarrassed for her, Emmitt blustered. “This isn’t proper. Ladies don’t tend naked bachelors in the middle of nowhere with no suitable escort and–”
“Assuming you were bullied here because the town folk want credible corroboration to whatever sordid story is making the rounds, I think I can safely say my reputation is beyond repair.”
“Still, a lady like you shouldn’t be–”
“I gave up troubling my tender sensibilities over what a lady like me should or should not do four days ago while crumpled in a half naked heap next to Beau while he lay dying in a pool of blood given to protect me.”
Blistering in their anger, blue eyes dared him to say another word reprimanding her decorum.
Ears red and mind reeling, Emmitt witnessed the one-time most eligible lady in Dawson Lake brush the hair from the town pariah’s face and murmur sweetly that she’d return, hoping he was awake and strong enough to drink.
He followed her to the living room and retook his seat while she handed over the promised coffee.
“Forgive my appalling tone. I shouldn’t have raised my voice. I’m capable of making my point without resulting to such uncouth behaviour.”
No apology for the actual reprimand was forthcoming.
She took a seat opposite him, looked him in the eyes, and told him what happened. She left out not one detail.
By the end, Emmitt felt sick to the core, and ready to bust heads. He removed his hat to rake a hand though his greying hair. “I can’t believe it.”
“I won’t leave him here alone, and I refuse to return to Roseberry Ranch.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Watch me.”
“Your reputation–”
“Is gone.”
“Your family–”
Brows lifting, she looked around. “Do you see any family? I have none.”
Emmitt sighed. “Miss Roseberry–”
“Actually,” her lips twisted in distaste punctuating her biting tone, “it’s Ms Kellington if you insist on using my family name.”
“Oh, yeah. This so called marriage you claim took place.” Jerking back in his seat, Emmitt resisted the urge to drop his head into his hands. “You want me to go back into town and tell folk you married Beauregard Kellington, and are out here of your own free will living as a couple?”
“See here, I know The Law of Dawson Lake isn’t beholden to anybody when conducting an investigation. Why say anything at all? Are you a gossipmonger? No laws are being broken here.”
“Well, that’s not necessarily true. Last I heard it’s illegal to marry a non-white.”
“Are you really saying this to me?” When he blustered and waved her on she huffed. I just love the freedom I’m granted by my homeland, she thought caustically. Owned by men and told who I can marry. “Nothing more needs saying. I was not kidnapped, I ran away. I was not raped, no thanks to my father, brothers, Pastor Arrowby and the other six men that attacked Beau and I when he tried to defend my honour.”
“You truly mean to stay?”
“I mean to never return to Roseberry Ranch. I allot upon leaving the state as I doubt my family will leave me in peace long.”
What else was there to say?
Shoving his hat back on, Emmitt stood. “I’ll ask Herbert to take a ride out directly. I’ll come back to make sure you’re safe out here alone with him. I’ll even give you a ride to the stagecoach if you need it.”
“As you like.”