Branches broke with a snap-snap in the woods behind him. The womans eyes flashed wide and utter fear twisted on her lovely face. Duncan pivoted, hauled his rifle up by the stock, but the big black bear was moving fast.
Too fast.
He got off a shotmissed the heartand cocked, but that was all before the bear pushed away the smoking rifle barrel with the mighty swipe of one sharp claw.
Oh, hell. Duncan watched his favorite rifle crack apart and fall in two pieces to the rocky ground. Good thing he was prepared. He drew so fast, he got off a shot, but two bullets in the chest didnt stop this bear. He charged, and both foot-wide paws scraped deep into Duncans shoulders.
Claws sliced him like a dozen razor blades. He was a dead man. Duncan tried to fight, but the bear was twice as strong and clawed through both shoulder muscles and downward, breaking ribs. Duncan fell to his knees as the bear knocked him to the ground and bent to sink his teeth into Duncans neck.
Its over. Just like that. Duncan met the bear head-on, fighting even as the animals jaws parted for the death bite. He saw the woman out of the corner of his eye. She had climbed to her feet and was shouting and throwing rocks at the big animal, but the hunks of granite didnt harm the bear. Or stop him. Still, Duncan appreciated the effort as his left hand groped along the top of his boot.
The first prick of incisor drilled into Duncans throat, but his fingers closed around the knife handle. He was dying, fine, but hed take the bear with him. Hed make sure the pretty laundry lady with her sunshine and freckles would live.
With a roar, Duncan slid his bowie knife into the bastards ribs. He ignored the spray of blood as he twisted and turned the blade deep. He felt death come in a swift black wave that drained the light from his eyes and the strength from his body. He was falling. Vaguely he felt the brutal impact of hitting the rocky ground, knew blood was gushing out from his neck and chest, but the bear was dead. That was all that mattered.
He was drifting like a dying leaf on the wind. Her voice was the last thing he heard. She was speaking his name, calling to him, but he was already floating away.
When he looked down, he saw her huddled in the road, flanked by two dead bears, cradling a bloody man with his head on her lap. Her hair had tumbled free and her dainty yellow dress was stained crimson.
It was the sound of her tears that drilled deep into his steeled soul.
She was crying for him.
Betsy held on to him. She didnt know what else to do. Blood was everywhere and her nightmare was happening all over again. Times shed rather forget rolled forward and she couldnt squeeze off the rush of memories. Years ago shed held another dying man in her lap just like this and watched the blood drain out of him. The doctor had worked frantically but couldnt save her husband.
How on earth could she hope to save Mr. Hennessey? Despair overwhelmed her. Trembling, she wiped blood from his face. His was a strong face, with high and sharp cheekbones and a profile like the Rocky Mountains that soared so strong and unfailing into the cloudy sky. But Duncan Hennessey was not made of granite, no, he was as vulnerable as any human. No growling demeanor and intentional rudeness could make him more immune to death.
Blood. There was so much of it streaming from the open tears in his flesh. Panic threatened to overtake her, but she couldnt let it win. She couldnt 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 wasnt 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 couldnt let him die. She wouldnt. 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 couldnt see it through the dense ever-greens, but she could feel it. A wolf pacing and waiting for the right moment to strike.
Shed stopped the most profusely bleeding wounds. Encouraged, she kept going. He lay as if dead, but he was still breathing. It wasnt 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. Shed 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 didnt 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 shed grown up with four brothers. Shed 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.
Dont 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, Ill stay right by your side.
There was no answer. She didnt 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 herof the doctor and Charlies brother moving him from the barnyard to the house. Thats when the wounds had broken open again and thered 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. Shed work until it was gone and then shed have to move him.
He didnt 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 foremans 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 mornings gruel. Although nearly ten hours had passed since hed 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 thatll 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 hed not been the only one punished for his mistake.
A week ago at this time of day, hed been getting ready to close up his shop. Hed have been thinking ahead to getting supper over at the hotelit 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 hed 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 workdays end, when the last light was wrung from the sky and it was nearly ten oclock, 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 whod returned the fallen boulder to the wagon. The whips lash across his forehead had clotted and left a rough black-red streak between his eyes.
Duncan didnt 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 didnt 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 hed been had died in the dark prison yard that evening, wearing prisoners garb and a convicts ankle cuff. The man whod risen from the ground and wiped the blood from his eyes was someone else. Thered been no softness or emotion in the cold-eyed figure that took his place in line. Whod turned his back on the small glimpse of sky above the high walls.
Like a dead man, hed 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 couldnt see clearly. He hurt everywhere, as if hed been lit on fire, but that didnt bother him nearly as much as the woman. Who was she?
Dont you dare die on me, do you hear? Not that men ever listen to a woman, no, they wouldnt dream of doing that, but dont 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 mothers 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 winds 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 wasnt harsh. No, it was tender, as if she didnt 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 dont have a lot of money.
Money? I might charge you a fee for doing your washing and ironing and mending, Mr. Hennessey, but Im 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 wouldnt 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 couldnt 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 wasnt right. He had to move, he had to get away from her