Rocky Mountain Man

Blood. There was so much of it streaming from the open tears in his flesh. Panic threatened to overtake her, but she couldn’t let it win. She couldn’t sit here, holding his head and fighting off a case of the vapors when she had to try to save him. She had to think. She had to remember what the doctor had done for Charlie.

She had to stop the bleeding, she knew that. But how? There were so many wounds, and the buggy was long gone. All she had were her petticoats, so she yanked them off and tore at the fabric. As fast as she could, she bunched wads of muslin into the wounds. The white material quickly wicked up the blood, turning red even as she pushed more into place.

Okay, that wasn’t going to work. Her fingers felt clumsy as she pulled her little sewing pack from her pocket. The needle was small, but she had enough thread to sew the worst wound.

She pressed her hand against the curve where shoulder met neck and the bleeding slowed. She broke off a length of thread with her teeth, working quickly. She couldn’t let him die. She wouldn’t. But she knew it was hopeless as she licked the end of the thread to stiffen it. She could feel his pulse quicken as she threaded the needle.

Crimson continued to pool on the earth beneath him, staining them both, making it impossible to see as she probed the gaping wound. Her stomach went weak and her knees to water at the sight of torn muscle and exposed bone. As if she were basting a collar, she nudged the edges of jagged skin together, fitting them as a seam and took one stitch deep. Then another.

Her heart beat as fast as his. A creature in the shadows howled. She couldn’t see it through the dense ever-greens, but she could feel it. A wolf pacing and waiting for the right moment to strike.

She’d stopped the most profusely bleeding wounds. Encouraged, she kept going. He lay as if dead, but he was still breathing. It wasn’t enough. He was going to die, just as Charlie did. This time there was no doctor nearby. There was no one to help. Shelter was over a third of a mile through the woods where the brisk winds were quickly spreading the scent of fresh spilled blood.

If meat and strawberries had brought a hungry bear and his mate, then what would this bring?

Fear shivered through her. The forest had gone quiet and it felt as if the trees had eyes. Had every predator within a five-mile radius come to hunt?

Mr. Hennessey lay as limp as a rag doll, all six-feet-plus of him. The hue had washed out of his face and he looked ashen and lifeless. His chest barely rose with each breath. His pulse fluttered wildly in the base of his throat.

Death. It hovered close, waiting for him. Betsy knew. She had felt it before. She’d been there when it had stolen her husband away.

But this man, he had no woman to mourn him. He lived alone. If he were to die, then how sad that was. With no one to miss him, then it would be as if his life never was. He didn’t deserve that. Nobody did. She brushed her fingertips along the stubbled curve of his jaw. She stared into the shadows that were growing darker as the sun sank in the sky. The silence seemed to grow and lengthen. The small animals of the forest were hiding from the hungry creatures that watched and waited.

She had to prepare for the worst. She retrieved the handgun from where it had landed in the tall grass and checked the chambers. Five shots were left. She closed the chamber and cocked it.

Thank goodness she’d grown up with four brothers. She’d been around guns all her life. She took some comfort in that. The weapon was ready to fire and she was confident she could use it. If only she felt as confident with her aiming ability.

“Don’t worry.” She let her hand brush across his hairline and along his temple. She hoped if he was somehow aware of what was happening, that she could give him some comfort. “I promise, whatever happens, I’ll stay right by your side.”

There was no answer. She didn’t expect one.

Because the sun was slipping behind the tall trees, it felt as if the day were almost over. Long shadows crept across the ground, chasing back the scant amount of sunlight. The wild sunflowers with their petal faces began to bow.

It was as if the entire mountainside waited.

She had to move him, but memories haunted her—of the doctor and Charlie’s brother moving him from the barnyard to the house. That’s when the wounds had broken open again and there’d been no stanching the blood loss. Charlie had been dead less than five minutes later.

She thought she spotted a movement in the shadows. The glint of luminous yellow eyes behind a fern leaf, and then only shadows.

She had a small length of thread left. She’d work until it was gone and then she’d have to move him.

He didn’t know how it happened, but he was back in the quarry. The sun blistered his skin and burned through flesh and bone until he was on fire from the inside out. His eyes stung from the salty sweat pouring down his face and pain was a living enemy that could not be killed. The places where his flesh gaped open from the lash of the foreman’s whip throbbed fiercely. He was beyond exhaustion and thirst. Hunger and hope.

He heaved the rock from the ground into the wagon behind him again and again. Minute after minute, hour after hour without end. The sun was motionless in the cloud-streaked sky.

It was his second day as a guest of Montana territory. His second day serving time. The prison clothes were scratchy and too tight at the shoulders. His stomach twisted in nausea from the morning’s gruel. Although nearly ten hours had passed since he’d eaten, his breakfast remained a sour lump in his gut.

He left bloody prints on the twenty-pound boulder he heaved into the wagon. As he stepped back, his chains jangled and tore at the raw flesh above his ankles. The boulder, gaining momentum, rolled over the pile, bounced off the railing on the other side and sailed over the edge.

The quarry silenced. Duncan read the faces of the men surrounding him, chained as he was, and saw the knowledge of what was to come. He was not surprised by the piercing sting of the bullwhip or the burst of pain spraying across his shoulders. He stumbled beneath the force of the next blow; sagged against the wagon, clinging to the rail boards as the whip snaked and hissed and sliced.

“Maybe that’ll teach ya,” a hate-filled voice growled out. “Now git back to work.”

His vision was hazed. Dark spots swirled before his eyes and shock rolled through his body. He fought nausea and dizziness to kneel and heft another boulder into the wagon.

Across the rails, there was a hard thud. The boulder that had fallen was back in the pile, as it should have been, lifted into place by a man who was also bleeding. Duncan realized that he’d not been the only one punished for his mistake.

A week ago at this time of day, he’d been getting ready to close up his shop. He’d have been thinking ahead to getting supper over at the hotel—it was usually fried chicken on Fridays with fluffy biscuits and fresh buttered peas and mashed potatoes. As he did every evening, he would have followed the meal with coffee and a slice of pie and, content with his life, he would have settled down at his lathe to work before bedtime.

It seemed impossible that he’d lived that life, that it had ever been real. Now it seemed like a dream, Duncan thought hours later, when twilight fell. His old life was as if it had never been.

At the workday’s end, when the last light was wrung from the sky and it was nearly ten o’clock, Duncan stumbled along the path through the quarry and into the prison yard, where he lined up among the other men waiting to enter the dining hall. How was he going to eat feeling the way he did?

“Hey, you.” It was the man who’d returned the fallen boulder to the wagon. The whip’s lash across his forehead had clotted and left a rough black-red streak between his eyes.

Duncan didn’t see the first blow. It had come from another direction. The second punch had his knees knocking and he fisted his hands, but it was eleven men to his one, and he didn’t have a chance. He choked on blood as he fought off one blow after another until he caught a right hook beneath his jaw and landed face-first in the dirt. A kick struck him in the gut. The beating continued until the line moved forward, and he was left to huddle, bleeding and vomiting.

The young man he’d been had died in the dark prison yard that evening, wearing prisoner’s garb and a convict’s ankle cuff. The man who’d risen from the ground and wiped the blood from his eyes was someone else. There’d been no softness or emotion in the cold-eyed figure that took his place in line. Who’d turned his back on the small glimpse of sky above the high walls.

Like a dead man, he’d had no feelings, no dreams, no needs.

He was made not of flesh and bone, but of iron and will.

It was that iron will that remained as the pain changed and he fought to open his eyes. It was twilight. He was bloody and hurting. But he was not trapped in the nightmare.

He was in a forest, gazing up at a woman. Her features were blurred because he couldn’t see clearly. He hurt everywhere, as if he’d been lit on fire, but that didn’t bother him nearly as much as the woman. Who was she?

“Don’t you dare die on me, do you hear? Not that men ever listen to a woman, no, they wouldn’t dream of doing that, but don’t let me down, Mr. Hennessey. Stay alive for me, all right?”

Lustrous curls tumbled around her face, tangled and wild, and her sweet heart-shaped face was familiar. Worry crinkled the corners of her eyes and emphasized the dimple in the center of her delicate chin. She was a petite thing, and she smelled good. Like sunshine and clover and those little yellow flowers that used to grow on the fence in his mother’s backyard.

Pain scoured his chest. His thoughts cleared and he knew where he was. The dark shadows were his trees and it was his laundry lady kneeling over him with her riot of dark gold curls bouncing everywhere, thick and lustrous and rippling from the wind’s touch.

Another wave of pain crashed through him. He was here, in the present, the past vanishing like fog.

Her eyes, so blue and gentle, gleamed with an unspoken kindness. “Oh, thank Heaven. I knew you were too ornery to die on me.”

But the way she said it wasn’t harsh. No, it was tender, as if she didn’t think he was ornery at all. And he was. All he could think about was how he despised women like her, so delicate and soft and sheltered. She wanted something. All women wanted something. A woman like that had ruined him. Maybe it was bitterness, or maybe it was just his broken spirit that made him believe a woman could be no other way.

“What do you want?” he snarled as she whipped out a needle and stuck it into his neck. “I don’t have a lot of money.”

“Money? I might charge you a fee for doing your washing and ironing and mending, Mr. Hennessey, but I’m not about to bill you for patching you up. Not when you saved my life as you did.” She tugged the thread through his skin, quick and tight.

Agony drilled through him. He lifted his head and tried to get up, but his body wouldn’t move. He was wet with his own sweat and blood, and he began trembling. She leaned over him, giving him a perfect view of her white chemise. Lace edged the top where the soft creamy curves of her full breasts strained at the fabric.

Panic overrode pain. He was alone with a woman in her underclothes. That couldn’t be good. Memories rushed into his mind and he was too weak to stop them. Memories of another woman in her lace-edged chemise, memories of a pack of men shouting and beating down his door. The splinter of wood breaking. The rage of the crowd as it crashed through his shop—

“No!” He heaved to the side, but his body felt distant and wooden. His strength was gone. Gone. No, that wasn’t right. He had to move, he had to get away from her—

“Wait, oh, no! You’re tearing up my work. Please, Mr. Hennessey.” Her cool hands grabbed at him and pushed him back down. Her face hovered over him, full of concern, like an angel of mercy. He didn’t believe in mercy. “Please, you have to let me do this. You have to. I can’t watch another man die. So you have to let me help you. That’s all I want to do.”

“I don’t want your help. Get away from me.”

“You’d rather bleed to death, is that it?”

“Yeah, now get off me.”

“No. I’m going to save you whether you like it or not.” She rose over him and sat on his waist. Silver tears filled her eyes but they didn’t fall, and he could only stare.

Were those genuine? He remembered how it had seemed he was looking down on her and she’d been crying over him. He could see the faint tracks on her cheeks.

She meant to help him, he could read that plain enough on her face. But she would bring him harm, just the same. Whatever it cost him, he had to get up, he had to find her horse and buggy and send her on her way. She’d bound him with her dress and petticoats, and while any fool could see the yellow gingham wrapped around his wounds, it didn’t change the fact that she was alone with him—in her undergarments. And with his past—

He had to get up. He tried. He really did. His left arm moved and his left hand scrabbled along until he seized on something. He turned toward it. The low branch of a tree. It looked sturdy enough. He pulled, dragging his body along the gritty earth. Rocks jabbed into his spine, but he was moving. Something hard slid off his chest and poked him in his ribs.

His Colt. 45. Relief made him forget about the woman trying to hold him down, talking a mile a minute as she kept on stitching. He pulled on the tree branch with all his might. The tree shook, the limb groaned as if on the breaking point, but he was sitting up. Now if he could just stand—

“No, hold still, I have to knot it.” Her words came in and out, fading along with his vision.

Duncan fought the blackness. Breathing hard, as if he’d worked a sixteen-hour shift in the quarry. He fought to stand. And then he saw movement in the shadows. A wolf leaped through the trees.

He let go of the branch and grabbed the Colt. Missed. His reflexes were too slow and his hand was no longer working.

There was a shot, a flash of fire, and the last thing he remembered was his laundry woman kneeling beside him, protecting him with her body, as she fired off a second round.

The darkness stole everything—his sight, his hearing, his thoughts, and even the pain. There was nothing but blackness taking him down like deep water.

But he wasn’t alone. He felt soft fingertips brush his brow. It was the woman.

Chapter Three

It was hard to look at this unconscious man and to not remember another. Betsy let the swell of sadness fill her up. Time had healed her grief, but she’d never forgotten. When Charlie had died, it had been a moonless night like this, too, and silent, as if the entire world had lain in wait for him to pass. She’d been just as helpless then.

Like Charlie, Duncan Hennessey had lost too much blood. He’d fought her, breaking open his worst wound. Getting him down the rocky road and shooing off the coyotes that were brazenly following them had drained every ounce of her optimism. She’d had to finally fashion a torch out of a branch and keep it lit to ward off the more dangerous predators.

It had worked, and now the stout log walls of his house protected them. But the animals were outside the door. Even with a torch, she didn’t dare head out into the night to fetch more water. She wrung the washcloth from the basin at her side and carefully cleansed the dried blood from his chest. His pulse thudded too fast at the hollow in his throat and his breathing was shallow.

He wasn’t nearly as disagreeable unconscious. He was a big man, over six feet, and his build was strong. Even slack, muscles were visible beneath his sun-bronzed skin. He radiated pure masculine strength, as if it came not only from his physical form but also from his spirit.

His skin was hot. The male scent of him—salty and woodsy—made her remember what it was like to be married. To share intimacy and morning cups of coffee and quiet evenings, of the immeasurable emotional bond that bound a man and wife. She hadn’t minded these years spent alone. That didn’t mean she liked it. Only that she hadn’t found a man who she could laugh with. One who seemed to fit with her.

The lantern light flickered. The oil was low. She should get up and search through his cupboards for more, but she didn’t want to leave him. Not unless she had to. He was dying, she knew it. She feared nothing could stop it. And it was her fault. He’d been protecting her.

He moaned low in his throat, troubled by dreams. Was a fever setting in? She leaned her cheek against his brow. He did feel warm, but not too warm. Yet. The pungent odor of boiling onions mixed with the nettles she had stewing on his stove—both smelled nearly done, she figured. Soon she would have to go check on them and see. She’d search for the oil can then.

“In the meantime, just rest.”

The flame writhed and swelled, and the strange orange light swept over the hard crags of his face and the vulnerable underside of his jaw. The shadows seemed to cling to him, as if he belonged to the night. As if there were only the shadow of him remaining.

She finished washing the blood from his chest and wondered, Did she finish stitching the lesser wounds? The horrible gashes spread nearly a foot and a half from his chest to his shoulder. Several were still seeping, but she feared by removing the bandaging, she would break open the clotted places.

He grew still. Was he breathing? Was his heart beating? Fear quickened through her veins as the long second stretched out and then his chest rose faintly, dragging in a ragged breath.

Thank goodness. Just continue breathing, all right? She couldn’t help stroking the iron curve of his face. The rough texture of several days’ growth abraded her fingertips. He was dreaming. His eyes were moving beneath his lids, and his mouth tightened. The hard thin lips that seemed to have been in a permanent frown twisted, not in anger but in agony.

The flame in the glass chimney flared with one last effort before the brightness waned and plunged the cabin into darkness.

Outside the thick walls, a wolf howled. Another answered. So close, she could hear the scrape of paws outside the window. Betsy did not consider it a good sign for the long night ahead. There was no way the predators could find their way inside, but still, it unsettled her to be in a wild land where only the strong and the cruel survived. What benefit did Mr. Hennessey—or any of the mountain men—see in living so far from civilization?

Shivering, and not with cold, she hurried to the warm stove where her home remedies simmered and seasoned. She knew there was a second lantern on the shelf next to the stove. As she struck a match, she heard a thump on the roof overhead and the scrape of claws digging into the wood shingles. A cougar.

The match flared, light glowed, and Betsy quickly lit the cold wick. Bright lemony rays pushed back the wall of darkness, but her fears remained. It was as if death were outside, looking for a way in.

Betsy knew all too well that was one predator no one could lock out.

Duncan saw the light as if from far away. A blurred image that hovered at the edge of consciousness. He felt weighted, as if the air had become heavier than he was and pressed down on him with a mighty force. He could not move. His mouth hurt with thirst. His tongue felt swollen and sandy. The acrid scent of blood filled the air and a noise rushed through the darkness. Something he couldn’t place.

Was he dreaming? Or awake? He didn’t know. Either way, it was memory that swept him backward to the crash of a door breaking open, the frame cracking into pieces. The drum of an enraged mob pulsed and shouted into his workroom. The hum of the lathe and the sharp, pleasant scent of walnut wood faded with the angry shouts and sweating men, the odor of whiskey strong on them.

“There he is!” Eldon Green’s baritone boomed deep with hatred. “Let’s string him up, boys.”

“Hanging is too good for him!” his brother Lindon shouted.

Duncan couldn’t move for a moment. He stared without believing what his eyes were seeing as men he called friends charged at him. Lindon held a rope coiled in one hand, a noose dangling at its end.

Shock numbed him as the table leg he’d been working on whispered to a stop, his chisel tumbling from his hand.

Pain sliced through his chest and he realized it was the noose closing around his neck. He grabbed it with both hands, desperate, panic roaring through him. He had to get it off. This was wrong. All wrong. Why were they doing this?

“Shh.” A low gentle sound tried to chase away the bad dream, which was no illusion but his life. A memory the cool brush of a cloth soothed into nonexistence.

He opened his eyes. He was in his cabin. In his bed. Staring at the circle of light on the open timbers of the ceiling, where lantern light gleamed. Pain began like a bullet, pointed and deep, then streaked outward. He took a shivery breath.

He already knew it was her. The tug of skin, the drag of thread through raw, ruined flesh. His fists clenched and his teeth ground together. There she was at the edges of his blurred vision, her hair falling over her shoulders and the white lace at her chemise. Her creamy skin looked as soft as silk and her sweet summer scent pounded in his head.

He heard the chink of a glass bottle and the glug-glug of liquid pouring. Whiskey. The sharp scent brought back the images of the memory as the noose burned into his throat, choking him as the end of the rope was tossed over the center beam and pulled. Some nightmares were real, and he was looking at another one.

It was night—his cabin was pitch-black. He was alone with her. There were signs of no one else in the room. Who else would be here? And she was in her underclothes, wearing one of his flannel shirts that, unbuttoned, slipped off her shoulders.

He tried to lift his head off the pillow. He couldn’t. His limbs felt as heavy and dull as lead. Weakness washed through his veins. He was too weak to move. Too weak to protect himself. Too weak to put Miss Laundry Lady on his horse and make her leave.

“I was beginning to worry that you would never wake up.” She chatted in that friendly way she had.

The way that he despised—because they weren’t friends. He didn’t want to be friends. He wanted to be left alone. Horror churned up inside him until he could taste the sourness of it filling his mouth. “Just go.”

“And leave you like this? Not for anything.” She seemed to float over him, but then he realized it was the light dancing on the wick. The golden glow lapped at her luminous skin and bronzed her shimmering hair. “I owe you my life. And I’m the kind of woman who pays her debts.”

“Git. Shoo.”

“Go ahead and growl. You don’t scare me a bit.” Her kindness warmed her soft words and added extra beauty to her serene face. She held a tin cup to his lips. “This will help with the pain.”

Whiskey fumes nearly had him coughing. His chest wheezed out and puffed in air, and agony drained him. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t push her away. He couldn’t move.

Shame filled him to the brim with darkness. He managed to turn his head away to stare into the shadowed room. He didn’t have the strength to do more than breathe. He was alone with a woman he couldn’t trust.

He’d rather bleed to death than let her touch him, and the truth was, he couldn’t stop her from it.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood.” She paused as, with a clunk of tin, she set the cup aside. “I’ve sewed up the worst of the gashes, but the truth is, you’re still bleeding. I’m afraid this is going to hurt quite a bit, but I’ll be as quick as I can. And as careful.”

He didn’t acknowledge her. He had his pride.

The first stitch hurt no worse than he was already hurting. He took it—he had no choice. She leaned forward and as she worked, he could feel her nearness like a breeze against his skin. The satiny tips of her curls danced and skipped over his arm and abdomen. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see the fullness of her breasts.