Liz Ireland (24 page)

Last night had been the most wonderful of his life. His time with Emma had given him extra reason to want to live to clear his name, to live to see Emma returned to her farm, and to make her his wife. If he’d ever worried that Emma was a bit like Lucy, those worries were gone now. Emma was a different animal entirely. Her generosity alone set her apart. She’d saved his life, and given him encouragement, and when they were both finally stripped of everything except a mere blanket underneath them and the stars overhead, she’d given him herself without hesitation.

Her boldness shocked and pleased him; their lovemaking
had been both wanton and tender, both an adventure and a pledge. As they lay in each other’s arms afterward, Lang had been tempted to make lavish promises he had no assurance of keeping. But Emma hadn’t asked for promises, nor had she been using feminine persuasion to get what she wanted. She just wanted to be with him, through thick and through thin. To Emma, his love was his most valued possession. That realization awed him.

And now it stirred him to fear, and anger. Where could they have gone? How would he ever find them? The thought of her being all alone and terrified in his brother’s clutches brought out a fury in him. It had been an hour now, and she was probably losing hope. He scanned the horizon, hoping for the slightest movement. There was nothing.

Impulsively, desperately, he called out her name—threw back his head like a wild man and shouted it into the breezy afternoon air. It was an insane thing to do, since it could very well tip off his brother that he was still being followed. But if Emma was anywhere nearby, he wanted her to know that he would hunt until he found her, no matter what.

“Sit down!”

When Amos Tupper commanded, Emma did as she was told. Now that she’d known him all of an hour, the man no longer exuded danger so much as lunacy, as if he were always on the edge of control. Plus he wore a large revolver on his hip, and didn’t look as if he’d be the least bit shy about using it. He frightened her.

But she wanted to look for Lang. One hour they’d ridden, she estimated. One jostling, terrifying, bone-rattling hour swung across the front of Amos’s saddle, riding hell-for-leather over dusty hills and plowing through streams.
She’d never been so glad to stop moving in her life as she’d been when Amos reined in his horse, pulled her down and shoved her into this cave. But now she realized that she was probably safer when they were out in the open. She kept trying to edge toward the mouth of the cave, so she could look for Lang. Amos would have none of it. He barked at her every time she crept so much as an inch.

“I just wanted to get a little exercise,” she said.

Amos glared at her. “I’ll bet!”

How could a man look so like Lang and yet be so completely different in temperament? Glancing at Amos, she thought that it was easy to be fooled into thinking he must have some of Lang’s personality, yet he was as cold-blooded and mean as a rattlesnake. And he was surprisingly strong. She’d be a fool to try to cross him. But she just couldn’t sit in the dark indefinitely, or she would go insane with fear.

“I need some fresh air,” she insisted.

“If you ask me, you’re lucky to be breathing anything.”

She bristled at the implied threat. “So are you, if you want my opinion.”

Amos spat, sending a thick wad of tobacco arcing through the air. It landed on the dirt inches from Emma’s hand with a wet
splat
. “Why? You think that brother of mine was aimin’ on killin’ me?”

“No, but I was.”

For a moment his hard, steely eyes bored into her, then, to her shock, he clapped his hands together once and emitted a sharp laugh. “That’s a good one!”

Her face reddened. “You think I wouldn’t have?”

He shook his head, still grinning like a fox. “Lady, you probably wouldn’t kill a cockroach. I’ll bet you’re the type
who steps around anthills, and can’t sleep the night before you’ve got to kill a chicken.”

She was shocked that he was astute enough to have gauged her personality perfectly. And his reminding her of how normally peace loving she was made her marvel at her own darker side. “I killed that man today, though,” she said.

Amos gaped at her. “What?”

She lifted her head high, taking what pride she could in her terrible deed. Maybe she had saved Lang’s life. “Your Mr. Gonzales. I killed him.”

Amos threw back his head and laughed again, a sound that practically curdled her blood. “Is that what you think?”

“I know I did. I saw the blood.”

He laughed again, and his mirth was beginning to anger her. “Lady, I saw the entire gunfight. My brother shot Gonzales.”

Emma hadn’t dreamed pulling that trigger, and seeing the blood. “But I shot—”

“A prickly pear,” Amos finished for her. Her expression sent him into new spasms of laughter. “Did you actually think you’d done any good back there?”

Her cheeks were on fire. She
had
thought she’d done good—thought she’d saved the day, in fact. When really she’d only served to get in the way. Lang might have captured his brother as planned if Amos hadn’t used her as a shield to get away. How could she have been such a fool?

Amos was still enjoying the big joke at her expense. “Leave it to my brother to get involved with a woman like you!”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, the schoolmarm type. Why he’d want to saddle himself down with an old lady like you is beyond
me. He should have run off to California and forgotten all about me and Texas.”

“That’s what
I
told him,” Emma said. “I thought we should just run away.”

He raised a skeptical brow. “Him
and
you? Pardon me, but you don’t exactly look like the running type.”

“That just proves how much you know about me!”

“I’ve met your upstanding, goody-goody kind before, lady. Though not often, thank goodness.” He spat again.

She lifted her chin, tempted to tell him how un-upstanding she had been last night—as if that were something to brag about! But it was, she realized. She was proud that Lang had made love to her. Not for anything would she hang her head low about the love they’d shared.

She only wished she could have done more to help Lang.
Oh, Lang!
Where was he now? What if he had been shot during the gun battle?

“Emma!”

Amos’s and Emma’s heads snapped up straight, and they stared at each other in astonishment.

“What the hell?”

Amos pushed to his feet and moved quickly to crouch at the mouth of the cave. He glared back at her. “Stay there or I’ll shoot you and leave you here to be some wolf’s dinner.”

Emma cringed back into the darkness, yet her heart was pumping pure hope. Lang had called her name! He was nearby—he would find her!

Amos unholstered his gun, which glinted from the dying sunlight outside. Emma gasped. Did he really intend to shoot his own brother? Again? She itched to do something, but she couldn’t think what. And then there were Amos’s threats to leave her to the wolves. She’d heard a whole
pack of them howling the night before, and they’d sounded hungry.

She looked at Amos’s body, tensed like a cat’s, all his concentration focused outside the cave. He knew she wasn’t armed, of course, but there seemed something almost arrogant about the way he could simply growl a threat at her and then turn his back, assured that she posed no danger.

Emma glanced around her and found a weighty stone with a sharp edge and quietly lifted it. Perhaps it weighed fifteen pounds—heavy enough for her purpose. Upstanding and inflexible, indeed!

Quietly, minding her skirts, she crept toward Amos, the rock lifted and ready. Once again she heard Lang call her name, and held her breath lest Amos should turn around.

Instead, he cursed, and began muttering to himself. “Son of a bitch! What in tarnation is he doing? Doesn’t he know I’m gonna hear him?”

Amos turned to spit again, and just as he noticed that Emma was not where she had been cowering before, Emma brought the rock down on the side of his head. The strike of stone to bone made a cracking sound that she would never forget, and his stunned body slumped to the cave’s earthen floor at her feet. Emma stared in horror at the trickle of blood coming from the wound she’d inflicted, and instinctively she dropped to her knees to test for a pulse. Amos was still alive.

And so was Lang! Grabbing Amos’s gun, she leapt to her feet again and ran out of the cave, waving her arms and hollering at the top of her lungs. “Lang! Lang!”

She nearly tripped over him. He appeared from behind a scrub oak, and yanked her toward him. “Get back!”

She flourished her gun, smiling. “We’re safe!” she said, throwing herself into his arms. “I knocked him unconscious!
” She hugged him around the middle so tightly she might have cut off his circulation, but she didn’t care. She was so glad to see him she never wanted to let him go. “Oh, Lang, I was so nervous—”

“
You
were?” Lang swore. “I thought I’d never find you!”

“I was worried you’d been hurt.”

“I heard a gunshot back at the shack. I thought Amos had hit you.”

“No, that was me!”

She explained her blundered attempt to help, though she felt somewhat redeemed for having clubbed Amos.

“The important thing is that you’re all right,” Lang said as they stood over Amos’s body. His brother grunted. “He’s beginning to come to.”

“Given the size of the lump on his head, he’ll probably wish he hadn’t.”

Lang nodded. “You’re one of a kind, Emma. Did you know that?”

She blushed with pleasure. If he’d told her that she was the most beautiful woman on earth, she couldn’t have been more pleased. “I love you so much, Lang. I never want us to be apart again.”

“We won’t be,” he promised her. “Maybe you’re right, and we should go to California. We can drag my brother with us if need be. All I know is, I can’t stand the thought of being away from you for a single day.”

They were the most glorious words she’d ever heard. “You won’t be!”

Their lips touched, and suddenly it seemed as if they were in a world all their own, of love and enchantment, where time was an endless commodity. She reveled in the taste of him, the feel of his strong arms holding her, and the memory of their night together. The thought of the
possibilities of nights to come made their embrace all the sweeter.

“I’ll never leave your side, Lang.”

In answer, as if a third party had entered the conversation, a bullet whizzed by their heads as a sharp crack of gunfire shattered the still evening air.

L
ang and Emma hit the ground, whereupon Lang rolled them both away from the opening of the cave.

“Who is that?” Emma asked.

Lang shook his head, puzzled. “I don’t think this is one of Gonzales’s gang. I’m certain there were only three people back at the shack. Otherwise I would never have been able to follow you.”

“Do you think it’s the law?”

As understanding dawned, Lang looked regretfully at Emma. “I’ve got an idea your sheriff has caught up with us.”

“Barton?” The very name filled her with dread. “But you said you thought he wouldn’t come after us!”

Lang poised his gun on a rock and trained his eyes on the landscape outside the cave. “Or it could be a posse. Maybe William put some people together.”

“What should we do?”

Lang’s lips twitched wryly. “First, pray that whoever it is stops shooting.”

At that moment, as if they didn’t have enough problems, Amos turned over and groaned, clutching a hand to his
head. “Good Lord!” he exclaimed groggily. “Was I shot?”

Emma looked down at him, feeling an instinctive sympathy for someone in pain. And she could afford to be sympathetic, since she had his own gun safely in her hand, trained on him. “You’re not shot,” she explained. “I clobbered you with a rock.”

He squinted up at her, too weak apparently to care that their captor-captive positions had been reversed since the last time he was conscious. “I thought I heard a gunshot.”

She nodded. “We’re under fire—maybe from the law.” And what shocked her most was how calm she felt with people shooting at her. How long would it be before violence seemed second nature to her? She hoped never, but she was already somewhat inured to the pressure of having guns going off around her. Or maybe she just felt safer now because Lang was beside her.

“Move back,” Lang instructed his brother.

Instead of doing what he was told, Amos crouched at the mouth of the cave, much as he had when he’d been looking out for Lang. Now that they were side by side, he eyed his big brother matter-of-factly. “You should have gone away and left me be, brother.”

Lang swallowed. “I intended to hand you over to the law.”

Doesn’t he still?
Emma wondered nervously.

“The law would’ve caught up with me eventually.”

“With me, too,” Lang said. “
That’s
why I couldn’t leave you.”

“You sure handled the boys,” Amos said, expressing little grief for his compadres. He looked at Lang with grudging respect.

Their conversation was cut short as a gunshot exploded from nearby and hit the cave wall next to Lang, sending a
blast of sand and chipped rock around them. Emma jumped, but leaned forward, still holding tight to Amos’s gun.

“Damn!” Amos muttered. “What the Sam Hill is goin’ on? Why doesn’t whoever’s shootin’ at us just wait for dark or hunger or cold to flush us out?”

“He does seem to be in a hurry,” Lang noted.

Emma paled at the thought of being
flushed out
of anywhere, as if they were rabbits.

“Why don’t you shoot back?” Amos asked impatiently.

Lang’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t want to waste bullets.”

“Well, maybe one of us should distract him. I could draw him out, I bet.”

Lang shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. This fellow’s trigger-happy.”

“Well, I can’t sit around here all day with no water to clean this wound on my head,” Amos grumbled. “I can’t wait around forever.”

Lang tossed a glance back to Emma, and she nodded. Amos’s head wound was dirty from where he’d fallen. “We do need water, and some alcohol, too.”

“I’ll say!” Amos muttered. “I could use a drink.”

That wasn’t quite what Emma wanted the alcohol for, though her own nerves were wearing thin, too.

“Just give me my gun,” Amos said. “I’ll make him move so you can get a good shot.”

Lang hesitated, then nodded at Emma.

But Emma was too horrified to follow directions.
Give Amos Tupper his gun back?
Was he crazy? The man could have killed her—and probably would when he got the chance again! Or what if he just took off running? Then they’d be back where they’d started! She returned Lang’s silent command with an anguished stare.

Lang eyed her steadily.
Trust me
, his dark eyes seemed to say.

Amos shot a grin Lang’s way. “Your little schoolmarm’s got more brains than I gave her credit for. You might want to hold on to her.”

“I intend to.”

His brother looked at her. “If you want me to promise not to kill Lang or you, I will. It’s up to you to guess whether you can trust the word of an outlaw.”

“I don’t,” Emma said flatly. “You shot Lang before.”

He squinted at her fiercely. “What’re you talking about?”

Before Lang could answer, Emma jumped in. “At the bank robbery. You shot him, didn’t you?”

Amos turned to Lang with a look close to raw hurt. “That what you thought?”

Lang nodded. “Was I wrong?”

“Gonzales shot you.” Amos shook his head. “I thought you understood. He didn’t trust you. He suspected you were going to tip off the bank clerk.”

“I was,” Lang said.

“I figured as much,” Amos said, nodding curtly. “When we got to the bank, I didn’t like the feel of the whole setup, especially that jumpy little clerk. Man made me nervous, so I shot him. I figured we could get out of there, but I didn’t know that Gonzales planned on getting rid of you. Otherwise I would’ve tried warning you.”

“But you just rode off with him—leaving Lang to die!” Emma exclaimed. As if to punctuate her words, another shot glanced off the rocks at the mouth of the cave.

“What should I have done? Got caught?”

“Yes!”

“Listen, lady, I’m sorry for getting Lang into all sorts of a mess. I’m even sorry for taking you.” Amos smiled
ruefully. “I wouldn’t have, if I’d known how handy you were with rocks. But now we’re in a spot, lady, and I’m willin’ to help get us out. Once we’ve taken care of this hombre who’s shootin’ at us, figuring out who was right and wrong, and who gets away and who doesn’t, will seem like a luxury.”

Emma still hesitated, but another bullet chose that precise moment to skim the ground inches from her leg. With a start, she practically tossed the revolver to Amos, who hefted the weighty gun, glanced one last time at Lang, then ran in a crouch out of the cave. Suddenly it seemed almost as if fireworks were going off. Gunfire cracked through the air so quickly, Emma had no time to gauge who was firing at whom.

She crept next to Lang in time to see Amos reach a tree, then fall awkwardly. The cacophony of violence suddenly stilled, and Emma felt sick inside to see Amos slumped on the ground. There was little hope that he was alive.

“Son of a—” Lang bit off his words angrily, and she touched his arm.

His brother. Looking into his brown eyes, she could only imagine his thoughts. All his life he’d tried to take care of Amos. He’d given up his own work and liberty to rescue Amos when there was little hope of rehabilitating the scoundrel. And now this—a fittingly violent end to a life lived so recklessly. Yet there was something heroic about it, too. He’d died trying to save them.

She touched Lang’s arm. He didn’t look at her, but continued to watch the outside, his jaw clenched tight. “You were right, Lang. He wasn’t all bad.”

Lang’s jaw clenched. “I’m afraid we’re in a tough spot, Em.”

The use of his nickname for her warmed her a little, even though her limbs quivered in fear. She looked toward
the jutting boulder that Lang’s eyes were trained on. “Is he there?”

Lang nodded. “We don’t have many shots left. Just three.”

Amos had taken his gun with its precious bullets with him. Emma swallowed. Things seemed grim, all right. “What will we do?”

As Lang was about to answer her, the sound of Barton’s voice carried toward them. “You can come on out now, Emma! I killed your boyfriend, but there’s no reason we can’t come to some kind of agreement!”

Emma’s and Lang’s startled eyes met. “He thinks he killed you,” she whispered, “and that I’m all alone now.”

Lang brooded over this new development.

“Let me go out,” Emma said quickly. “I can explain it all to him—this might all be over.”

“I don’t trust him,” Lang said.

She didn’t, either. But what choice did they have?

Barton shouted at them again. “If you come along peaceably, nobody’ll need to know that you were in love with that outlaw! We can get married, just like we bargained!”

His words made her blood boil. So he thought they could just pick up where they left off—and he was going to use Lang’s dead body as leverage. A wave of revulsion hit her. “And what about the fact that you were blackmailing me into matrimony?” she shouted back impetuously. “Can we tell the good folks of Midday about that?”

“Be reasonable, Emma! Running off with an outlaw puts you in no position to make threats.”

Reasonable? “I was kidnapped, didn’t you hear?”

“We both know that’s not true.”

“Don’t waste your breath, Em,” Lang whispered, raising his gun.

“Don’t waste your bullets,” she said, not wanting to see any more violence. Besides, the sheriff was her problem. “He probably doesn’t think I can shoot a gun, so he’ll try to come closer and reason with me.”

“And then what are we going to do? Invite him to the wedding?”

“We can explain that it would be best all around to clear your name and forget all about the arrangement Barton and I had.”

Lang rolled his eyes. “That won’t work.”

“It might.”

“I don’t trust him with you. I don’t trust him, period.”

“What can he do to me?” But as she crouched on tired, shaking legs, one possible answer to that question rang ominously in her mind, an answer reflected in the skeptical glance in Lang’s eyes. But that was ridiculous. If the sheriff killed her, he wouldn’t get what he wanted—her land. “We can’t just sit here. If he comes up and discovers that it was Amos he shot, he’ll kill you.”

“I’ll be ready for him.”

“Lang, no.” If he shot Barton, how would they ever be able to prove his innocence? No one in Midday would believe that it was self-defense.

The only thing she was certain of was that she couldn’t let Lang be drawn into a gun battle, and the only way to ensure that didn’t happen was to put herself between Lang and danger. Not giving herself time to think twice, she followed in Amos’s footsteps and ran from the cave, ignoring Lang’s string of curses that followed her. He grabbed the skirt of her dress, nearly tripping her, but Emma yanked free and ran forward. Moving quickly, she sprinted and waved her hands in what she hoped would look like surrender, careful to keep herself between Lang and the rock where Barton had been hiding.

After she’d gone twenty feet, Barton stood, his rifle raised—and aimed straight at her. As she took in the sight of a deadly weapon trained on her, Emma’s legs went numb beneath her and she chugged to a stop, suddenly understanding. She could see the desperate glare in his squinty eyes. He wanted to kill her so that she would never be able to tell what he’d done, so she couldn’t shame him. Whatever pride there was left in the Sealy name, he intended to preserve it through her death.

“Emma, move!” Lang urged from behind her.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even glance over at Amos, at the gun that was her only hope of self-defense. She was too stunned that she had made such a fatal error. Once again she had misjudged the sheriff completely. How could she have been such a fool? Once she was gone, what chance would Lang have? Even if he killed the sheriff, how would he ever be able to clear his name?

As the last thought passed through her mind, she was deafened by a single gunshot. Expecting to drop to the ground, Emma held her breath, waiting. It was several moments before she opened eyes she hadn’t been aware of closing and saw the sheriff slumped before her, as lifeless as Amos had looked. Emma gasped in horror.

“Oh, Lang!” she cried, whirling to look at him. They would have to run, immediately. California wouldn’t be far enough. They would have to go to South America.

He was at her side, but instead of taking her in his arms and giving her comfort, he yanked her back into the cave.

“Watch out!” he said as he tugged her down next to him.

Emma stared at him in confusion. “For what?”

“For whoever’s shooting out there.”

Suddenly she understood. “You didn’t kill Barton?”

Now it was his turn to look confused. “Hell, no—I couldn’t. You were in the way!”

“Then who—”

She squinted out the mouth of the cave in time to see someone coming around the rock. Emma didn’t know what to expect. A stranger? One of Gonzales’s gang? But the marksman was neither of those.

It was her own sister.

Emma couldn’t believe her eyes. Holding a revolver limply at her side, a bedraggled-looking but straight-backed Rose Ellen stood over Barton’s body, gaping in amazement at what she’d done.

“I’ll be damned!” Emma exclaimed.

Both Lang and Rose Ellen stared at Emma as she stood. But Emma couldn’t think twice about the curse that had issued from her lips; she was too intent on giving her sister an ecstatic, heartfelt hug. She ran up to Rose Ellen and embraced her with tears brimming in her eyes, prepared to assure her that she had saved her life and that there had been no alternative to killing Barton.

But Rose Ellen needed no comforting. “That snake was going to kill you!”

Emma nodded. “I didn’t realize—”

“I knew something was fishy!” Rose Ellen exclaimed. “He told William, Joe and I to stay back at that little hovel and bury bodies while he rode ahead to find you. William and Joe are back there, but I was suspicious about Barton, so I sneaked off.”

“Thank heavens you did!”

Rose Ellen pulled back, put her hands on her hips and walked away from the grim scene. “Our Barton tried to keep anyone from following you at all. Now I know why! Letting a criminal go so he could blackmail you!” Her
words indicated that she’d heard the shouted conversation between Emma and the sheriff.

“But Lang wasn’t the criminal,” Emma explained, following her sister. “That was his brother.”