RenegadeHeart (4 page)

“I know the type.”

“Then you know what we’re up against.”

“I know you’re a fool.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You heard me. You’re out of your mind if you’re bucking the
Apaches on one hand and a land-grabber like Walsh on the other.”

“That may be!” Rachel replied curtly. “But our roots are
here, on the Lazy H. My mother and my little brother are buried here. We’re not
leaving.”

“Suit yourself. It’s no skin off my ass.”

“No, it isn’t!” Rachel snapped crossly, and stalked out of
the room, slamming the door soundly behind her.

John Halloran smiled fondly at Rachel as she moved about the
spacious kitchen preparing their dinner. She was a lovely young woman, every
inch a lady despite the rugged life she led. He was proud of her quiet beauty,
proud of the way she carried her share of the work load without complaint,
proud of her inner strength and character.

We did ourselves proud, Ellen
, he mused to himself.
Proud
indeed!

“He’s wanted by the law, you know that, don’t you?” Rachel
said irritably. She was still angry with the man who called himself Smith. His
language and his arrogance were beyond belief. “We’ve no business keeping him
here any longer.”

“Another day or two won’t hurt,” Halloran countered mildly.
But Rachel was right. The man was obviously on the run. He had that hunted air
about him, that wary alertness common to all hunted creatures, be they man or
beast.

“I don’t like him,” Rachel muttered, spreading a red and
white checked cloth over the table.

“He’ll be moving on soon,” Halloran said. Rising, he poured
himself a cup of coffee from the big black pot that was always simmering on the
back burner of the stove. “I wish I could—”

“Could what?” Rachel asked suspiciously.

“Nothing, nothing,” Halloran answered quickly. But the
thought lingered in his mind. The man calling himself Smith might be a wanted
man, a dangerous man, but he could definitely be an asset to the Lazy H. He had
gunman written all over him, and a good, fast gun was something the Lazy H
desperately needed.

John Halloran’s thoughts were temporarily interrupted as
Rachel put dinner on the table. She was a good cook, he mused, but then Rachel
had always excelled at anything she put her mind to.

They made small talk about the ranch during dinner. It was
Rachel’s habit not to discuss anything unpleasant during meals and Halloran
obliged her. Thus, the time they spent dining together was always a time to
relax and enjoy one another’s company because, besides being father and
daughter, they were good friends.

Rachel smiled at her father as he filled his plate a second
time. It amazed her that he never gained any weight, for he ate enough for two
hearty men. He was a rare and warm human being, she thought fondly. Despite the
harsh land and their never-ending troubles with Job Walsh, her father remained
a gentle man with a kind heart and a good soul.

Laying her fork aside, Rachel prepared a plate for Smith.
She dreaded the thought of seeing him again. It made her uncomfortable, just
being in the same room with him. He was, she decided, the most aggravating man
she had ever met.

She felt his eyes on her face the minute she entered the
room. The force of his gaze made her uneasy and two bright spots of color
appeared in her cheeks.

“Smells good,” he drawled.

Wordlessly, Rachel placed the tray on the bedside table. Her
whole attitude screamed that she did not appreciate his presence in her house.

“Sorry I didn’t die,” Tyree muttered irritably. “It would
have saved you a lot of extra work.”

“Yes, it would have,” Rachel agreed. “I’ll be back later for
the tray.”

Tyree scowled as she swished out of the room. Never had any
woman looked at him with such loathing. He attacked his food with a vengeance,
admitting, grudgingly, that she was a hell of a good cook.

In the kitchen, Rachel put the last of the dinner dishes
away, then joined her father in the den for a game of checkers. It was the best
part of the day, a time for sharing the day’s problems, a time when decisions
were made, ideas exchanged.

A knock at the front door interrupted their game. John
Halloran opened the door cautiously, frowned as he invited his visitors inside.

The voice of the fat, territorial marshal penetrated Logan
Tyree’s dream, waking him instantly. Eyes closed, Tyree listened while John
Halloran assured Marshal Brody that no one answering Tyree’s description had
been seen on the Lazy H.

“But you’re welcome to search the place if you’ve a mind
to,” Halloran offered.

In the back bedroom, Tyree held his breath as he waited for
the marshal’s reply.

“No need,” the lawman responded gruffly. “But if he comes
sniffing around, you shoot first and ask questions later. He’s a hired gun. A
killer.”

“A killer?” There was genuine alarm in Rachel’s voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” Brody said. “A cold-blooded murderer. Gunned
down two men in a Texas whorehouse for no reason at all some years back. Never
even gave ‘em a chance to draw. Killed a man here in Arizona, too. And that’s
just three of many.”

In the bedroom, Tyree had a mental picture of the worried
glances passing between Halloran and his daughter, and his hand closed over the
.44 lying under his pillow. Would Halloran turn him in, now that he knew he was
harboring a fugitive?

Tyree’s eyes probed the dusky room. The window was the only
way out of the house other than the door, and while he didn’t particularly
relish the prospect of running off into the night stark naked, he would do it
if he had to because, by damn, he wasn’t going back to prison!

“He sounds quite desperate,” Rachel said anxiously.

“Yes, ma’am, damn desperate,” the marshal replied, warming
to his subject. “And lucky to boot. We lost his trail out in the desert a
couple weeks back, but we figured he’d head south for the border, so we trailed
in that direction. We were circling back when a sandstorm caught us. Damned if
it no sooner blew over than a handful of redskins run off with our horses. Damn
savages! Took us three days to walk to the Bar J for fresh mounts. Three damn
days! If I ever catch that bastard, Tyree, he’ll pay for those three days.”

“Well, we’ll keep our eyes peeled for him,” Halloran said
sincerely. “You can be sure of that.”

“Pa—”

“Later, Rachel,” Halloran said. “You and your men are
welcome to spend the night in the bunkhouse, Marshal. You’ll be comfortable
there. It’s the first building on the left.”

“That’s mighty kind of you,” Brody said. “Evening, ma’am.”

“Breakfast is at six,” Rachel said. “You and your men are
welcome to join us.”

“We’ll be there.”

Rachel turned angry eyes on her father as she closed the
door behind the marshal and his posse. “Pa—”

“Hush, daughter.”

“I will not hush. And I will not have that dreadful man in
this house another night.”

“You wanna turn a sick man over to a lawman like Elias
Brody? Why, I’ll bet Tyree would never make it back to Yuma alive.”

“That’s not our concern.”

“Isn’t it? He’s a human being, Rachel. It’s not for us to
judge him.”

“Oh, Pa,” Rachel murmured helplessly. “You should have been
a preacher.”

Halloran chuckled. “Maybe. Let’s go check on our patient.”

Tyree was sitting up in bed when Rachel and her father
entered the room. The .44 was nestled in his right hand, aimed in the general
direction of the door. Rachel could not help thinking the gun looked right at
home in Logan Tyree’s calloused hand.

“That’s two I owe you,” Tyree drawled.

“You heard?” Halloran asked, dropping down onto the foot of
the bed.

“Enough. I’m obliged to you for not turning me over to the
marshal. Fat Ass never takes his prisoners in alive.”

“I’ve heard rumors to that effect,” Halloran remarked,
glancing pointedly at Rachel.

“I don’t care,” Rachel muttered defensively. “The man’s an
escaped convict, and we’re breaking the law by having him here.”

“I don’t want to discuss it now, daughter,” Halloran said
sternly. “Why don’t you go get us some coffee?”

Rachel left the room without another word, her mind in a
whirl. She had heard of Logan Tyree. He was a gunslinger, a known assassin,
reported to have killed at least a dozen men in cold blood. Even here, in their
small town, his reputation was well-known. It was rumored that he sometimes
killed for money and sometimes just for the sheer love of bloodletting and
violence. Dear Lord, Logan Tyree!

Chapter Two

The days passed slowly for Tyree. He chafed at lying idle
day after day, but his protests fell on deaf ears. Rachel was an efficient,
cool, competent nurse. She anticipated his wants, satisfied his needs, made him
as comfortable as humanly possible. But she adamantly refused to let him get
out of bed.

“Dammit!” Tyree fumed one afternoon, exasperated by her
stubbornness. “I know you’re anxious to be rid of me, so why not just give me
my clothes and let me get the hell out of here?”

“Because I don’t want your death on my conscience,” Rachel
retorted. “You’re too weak to walk to the front door, let alone ride across
country alone. You still have a bit of a fever, and you’re not getting out of
that bed for another five days.”

Another five days, hell, Tyree mused irritably. He had
already spent close to two weeks in bed and that was enough for any man.
Another five days would have him climbing the walls.

Later that afternoon, Tyree slipped out of bed and began
pacing the floor. Rachel, damn her, had been right as rain, he thought dourly.
He was weak. And his side hurt like the very devil. But he closed his mind to
the pain and continued to walk up and down the length of the room, silently
cursing Rachel all the while. Damn the woman for always being right!

He had never been fond of small spaces and being confined in
Halloran’s guest bedroom, comfortable as it was, was almost as bad as being
shut up in the Yuma hotbox…

He had spent ten days in that hellish contraption, and he had
been naked as a newborn babe then, too, Tyree mused ruefully. You couldn’t lay
down in the hotbox. You could only stand erect hour after hour, or squat on
your heels. Or kneel, if you had a mind to pray. But nobody had ever prayed his
way out of the box. You stayed inside until the warden decided you had learned
your lesson; stayed, baking in the desert heat as the temperature soared to
over a hundred and ten degrees. Stayed, shivering from the cold as the mercury
plummeted to below sixty in the dead of night.

Some men died in the box. Some went crazy, but Tyree had
managed to cling to his sanity, though ever afterward he harbored a strong
aversion to small, closed-in spaces…

He paced the bedroom floor a few minutes at a time several
times a day, and when he wasn’t pacing, he often stood at the window, staring
hungrily at the timbered hills visible beyond the western boundary of the Lazy
H. And sometimes he just watched Rachel as she worked in the flower garden that
bloomed alongside the house. She raked and weeded and pruned at least a couple
of times a week. It was a purely pleasurable way to spend half an hour, Tyree
mused, because for all her stubbornness, Rachel Halloran was a mighty pretty
woman, especially when the sun danced in her golden hair, reminding him of a
painting of the Madonna he had seen one time down in Santa Fe.

Damn the woman! He knew she disliked him. Knew she could not
wait until he rode out of her life, and yet she refused to give him his clothes
so he could go. Frowning, he fingered the heavy growth of beard on his jaw.

He was standing at the window that evening, entertaining
some decidedly unpleasant thoughts about the perverse nature of some women,
when the bedroom door opened and Rachel stepped into the room bearing his
dinner on a tray.

She came to an abrupt halt just inside the door. Tyree had
shaved off his beard and she could only stare, openmouthed, at the change the
razor had wrought.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” he drawled, making no effort to conceal
his nakedness. “Sorry I’m not dressed for company.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment, so enchanted with
the change in his appearance she had not even noticed he was nude.

“Please cover yourself,” Rachel said, feeling her cheeks
grow hot.

“Afraid I don’t have a thing to wear,” Tyree said,
smothering a laugh. “Somebody took all my clothes.”

“Please use the sheet,” Rachel implored, unable to draw her
eyes from his face. He looked so different. Not handsome, exactly, but still
very attractive in a rugged sort of way. His face was totally masculine, even
without the beard. She was glad he had not shaved off his moustache. It drooped
lazily over his upper lip, giving him the look of a Barbary pirate. His jaw was
firm and square, his mouth wide, sensual. She wondered, with shame, what it would
be like to press her lips to his, to have that soft moustache tickle her lip.

Tyree chuckled softly as he pulled the sheet from the bed
and wrapped it around his waist.

Rachel placed the tray on the bedside table, careful not to
meet Tyree’s mocking gaze. Darn him! He was laughing at her because she had no
one to blame for Tyree’s nudity but herself. He had asked for his clothes at
least a dozen times.

Hoping to hide her discomfort, Rachel snapped, “What are you
doing out of that bed?”

“Getting some exercise,” Tyree snapped back, annoyed by her
shrewish tone. “I’m going crazy, cooped up in this room.”

Something that might have been compassion flickered in
Rachel’s lovely blue eyes and then was quickly gone. “Candido’s wife made
dinner tonight,” she said stiffly. “I hope you like Mexican food.”

She was backing toward the door as she spoke. Coming to an
abrupt halt, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin defiantly. He wasn’t
going to intimidate her. Not in her own home.

“I’ll be back later to pick up the tray,” she announced
icily, and walked out of the room feigning an outward calm that was sorely at
odds with her inner turmoil.

A sudden burst of masculine laughter shattered Rachel’s
serene façade and she felt her cheeks flame again. Darn him! He seemed to know
her every thought.

Tyree found his clothes neatly piled at the foot of his bed
the following morning, and he grinned wryly, wondering if Rachel had decided he
was well enough to get up and ride on, or if returning his clothing was just
her way of making sure she didn’t walk in and find him strutting around the way
nature had made him.

He dressed slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves. His
left side was stiff and a little sore and he winced as he bent over to pull on
his boots, noting, as he did so, that someone had given the leather a nice
shine.

He was stuffing his shirttail into his pants when he heard
voices. Angry voices. Shoving the .44 into the waistband of his pants, he moved
noiselessly down the hallway to the front door where he stood out of sight,
listening.

“Last offer, old man. Take it or leave it.”

“Be reasonable, Walsh,” John Halloran replied in a
conciliatory tone. “You know darn well I can’t—”

“We’ll leave it, Mr. Walsh.” Rachel’s voice cut across her
father’s, quick and angry. “Now kindly get off our property. And take your
hired killers with you.”

Tyree peered around the front door to get a look at the man
called Job Walsh. He saw a tall, powerful-looking man somewhere in his late
forties. Walsh sat ramrod straight in an expensive, hand-tooled saddle, his
work-worn hands folded negligently over the horn. His face was deeply tanned,
his eyes were a hard, flat brown beneath straight black brows. Eight riders
flanked him. Like wolves in sheep’s clothing, they were gunmen all, masquerading
as cowhands.

“I’m getting almighty tired of haggling with you people,”
Walsh growled impatiently. “I’d advise you to reconsider my offer while you
still can.”

Rachel stepped to the edge of the front porch, her head
high, arms akimbo. “Is that a threat, Mr. Walsh?”

Walsh shrugged elaborately. “Take it any way you like,
missy, but next time I come, I might just have to—”

“Have to what?”

John Halloran smiled broadly as Logan Tyree stepped outside,
one dark-skinned hand resting lightly on the butt of the Colt jutting from the
waistband of his pants.

Job Walsh swore softly. “Looks like you’ve gone and hired a
killer of your own,” he muttered, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rachel
replied haughtily, but there was a faint touch of guilty color in her cheeks.

“Don’t play Little Miss Innocent with me,” Walsh retorted
crossly. He stabbed a fleshy finger in Rachel’s direction. “What I want to know
is, where did you get the money to hire a professional slinger like Logan
Tyree?”

“You heard the lady,” Tyree interjected smoothly. “Take your
men and ride out of here.”

“Sure, sure,” Walsh said amiably. “But this ain’t over yet.
Not by a long shot.”

Walsh was mounted on a flashy palomino stallion with a snowy
mane and tail. The stud had stood quietly during the heated discussion but now,
as Walsh sank his spurs into the stallion’s golden flanks, the horse reared up
on its hindquarters and whirled around, then pranced out of the yard. Walsh’s
men trailed behind him, like smoke.

All but two. Eyes hard and calculating, they measured Logan
Tyree, wondering. And Tyree measured them. No words were spoken. Indeed, the
three men might have been carved from granite. Taut seconds stretched into
minutes. Once, Rachel started to speak, but the touch of her father’s hand on
her arm kept her mute.

The tension grew unbearable and Rachel glanced anxiously at
her father, hoping he would do something to break the grating silence, but he
was staring at Tyree and the Walsh gunmen. Rachel felt her eyes drawn in that
direction, too. Once, she sent a quick glance down the road to where Job Walsh
and the rest of his men sat their horses. But no help appeared to be
forthcoming from that quarter, either.

Rachel could not say when it began. She heard no words, saw
no signal, but suddenly three hands were streaking for three guns. The slap of
flesh upon walnut and ivory gun butts was very loud in the oppressive
stillness. Two gunshots shattered the eerie silence, the second shot coming
hard on the heels of the first so that the two shots blended into one long,
rolling report. And both of Walsh’s gunmen went down, dead before they hit the
ground.

Job Walsh did not move. His mouth thinned into a tight white
line as he stared at Tyree.

The men backing Walsh reacted like a single being as six
hands hovered over six revolvers.

Logan Tyree’s cold yellow eyes darted swiftly from man to
man, challenging each one in turn. “Anybody wanna buy into this hand?” he
asked.

There were no takers.

“You killed ‘em,” Walsh growled, gesturing at the two bodies
sprawled in the dirt. “You bury ‘em.”

Rachel stared after Walsh and his men as they rode out of
sight. Then, eyes filled with accusation, she focused her attention on Tyree.
“I thought you said you didn’t know Walsh?”

Tyree shrugged. “Didn’t think I did. Last time I saw him, he
was calling himself Jacob Warner.”

“I see. Well,” she went on briskly, “you seem to be feeling
much better.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I trust you’ll be riding on then.” She glanced at the two
men lying dead in the yard. “The sooner, the better as far as I’m concerned.”

“Hold on, daughter,” Halloran snapped. “This is still my
place, and I’ll decide who stays and who goes. Tell me, Tyree, just how high do
your services come?”

“Pa!” Rachel stared at her father in disbelief. Surely he
didn’t mean to hire Tyree!

“Depends on what you want me to do,” Tyree replied, ignoring
Rachel’s shocked expression.

“I think you know,” Halloran murmured, and his voice was
suddenly old and tired.

“Walsh,” Tyree said flatly.

“Yes. How much?”

“For you? Five hundred dollars, a hundred in advance, and
the loan of a horse.”

“Done,” Halloran said quickly, as if he were afraid he might
change his mind if he gave the matter any thought.

“Pa, you can’t do this.”

“Rachel—”

“You’re hiring a killer, a man who’s already wanted by the
law.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Halloran replied. He did not sound
very happy about it, only resigned.

Rachel shook her head, unable to believe he meant to go
through with it. “Pa, please reconsider. No good will come of this.”

“Rachel, that’s enough,” Halloran admonished sharply. “I
know what I’m doing.”

Rachel was sullenly silent at dinner that night, refusing to
be drawn into the quiet conversation between her father and Logan Tyree. Job
Walsh and his nightriders were the main topic of discussion, as they had been
between Rachel and her father nearly every day and night for the past six
months, ever since Walsh’s men started riding roughshod over the Lazy H.

In the beginning, Walsh’s hired guns had only roughed up the
Halloran cowboys. But when that failed to scare off the hired help, Walsh’s men
began shooting the Lazy H riders out of the saddle. A few were killed outright.
Those who recovered drew their pay and quit; the remaining cowhands refused to
ride the open range. As a result, most of the Halloran herd had been run off,
either by Walsh’s men, or by the Apache, who were not averse to eating beef
when nothing else was available. The last straw had come only a few weeks
earlier when the Lazy H foreman had come home tied face down across his saddle,
dead from a bullet between the eyes. That night, two thirds of the remaining
cowhands quit, and Joe Cahill took over as foreman. Now there were only five
men left on the payroll, and less than three hundred head of cattle where there
had once been thousands. Three hundred cattle that were scattered across miles
of broken grassland.

“Pa, how could you hire that awful man?” Rachel demanded
later, when they were alone in the house.

“Honey, what else can I do? Cahill and the others are no
match for Walsh’s men. And Lord knows I’m too old to strap on a gun and go
after Walsh myself. Who else is there? You?”

“There’s Clint.”

“Clint Wesley is a fine young man, Rachel, but he’s just a
town marshal. Job Walsh would gobble him up and spit him out. Anyway, we’ve got
no proof that Walsh’s men are killing our cattle, or back-shooting our
cowhands. And Clint needs proof, not just an old man’s say-so.”