The Ranger's Bride

He opened his eyes again and looked at her, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She just knew that the eyes she’d thought might be black were brown, but the deepest shade of it she’d ever seen.

Wrenching her gaze away from those fathomless pools, she pushed aside his shirt.

The bullet hole was higher than she’d expected, just over his collarbone. It must have gone in higher than the lung. That’s why he still lived, then. But if the bullet was still in him, he could die of blood poisoning. Reaching down his back, though, she felt a larger, bloodier wound in the back of his shoulder, and breathed a sigh of relief. The bullet had apparently exited there.

He’d shuddered even at her gentle touch, but now the stranger’s eyes drifted shut.

“We’ve got to get you some help,” she said urgently. Then, when he seemed reluctant to reawaken, Addy shook him by his left upper arm.

That brought instant results.

“Judas priest, woman, let go! That hurts like fire!”

Looking down, she saw a bullet hole she’d missed before in the cloth of his sleeve. Easing the shirt down from his shoulder, she saw another wound in the fleshy part of his upper arm. Probing the muscle with careful fingers, she could not find a second hole. That bullet must still be in there.

A horse whinnied behind her, and Addy darted a look over her shoulder, half expecting to see the outlaws had returned to finish them off. But it was only one of the team, still hitched to the stagecoach.

“Fogartys…they’ll come back….” he muttered.

They had to get out of here, and get him to a doctor, but how? It wasn’t as if she could carry him, and from the pallor beneath his sun-bronzed face, he sure couldn’t walk the two miles to her place.

There was only the stagecoach—and of course she’d never driven one. The body of the dead man was still inside it. But what other choice did they have?

Addy touched the man’s other shoulder to rouse him. “Mister, we’ve got to get you out of here, get you to some help,” she said, nervously eyeing the horizon lest the outlaws come galloping over it.

He didn’t open his eyes. “Everyone’s dead….”

She nodded, though she knew he couldn’t see her. “Yes, everyone’s dead, except you and me.”

“Just…witnesses. ’Sposed to be me….”

She didn’t know what he meant by that, and at the moment, she didn’t care. “Look, we’re going to have to get you into the stage. That big man who was sitting next to me is lying dead in there, but I can’t move him, and neither can you.”

He shrugged, a movement that instantly made him groan in pain. “I’ve been around dead bodies before.” He opened his eyes, and pierced her with his dark gaze. “You ever driven a stage team?”

She fought the urge to laugh hysterically. “No, of course not. But looks like I’ll have to try, doesn’t it?”

His mouth twisted wryly. “Don’t think I could climb up on top if I had to….”

“No, of course not.” She squared her shoulders. “Well, you’re going to have to help me get you to your feet.”

He’d closed his eyes again. For a moment he was so still, she thought he’d passed out; and then he reached inside his vest and fumbled at something for the longest time.

“Whatever you’re trying to find can wait,” she said. “We need to hurry and get you to a doctor.”

Opening his eyes again, the man shook his head. “No doctor…” He held out his hand, the one that had reached inside his vest. His fingers were folded around something. “Here—put this…on one of the men. The shotgun guard.”

Her eyes locked with his, Addy allowed him to drop the object into her hand. Its hard coolness told her it was metal before she looked down.

When she did, Addy was startled to see it was a lawman’s badge. She squinted in the strong afternoon sunlight. It was the badge of a Texas Ranger.

Her eyes flew to his face. “You’re a Ranger? I thought…” She shut her mouth before she could say, “I thought you were an outlaw or a gunslinger,” but his raised brow and the wry twist of his mouth told her he’d guessed exactly what she’d been thinking.

He was too pale, and the sun above, too fierce. She had to get him to shelter. “Well, never mind. I’ll do as you said.” Later, she would find out why he wanted her to make it look as though the dead shotgun guard had been him.

Addy avoided the sight of the dead guard’s staring eyes, but couldn’t help flinching as she pierced the blood-caked cloth with the pin of the badge.

She came back to find the Ranger struggling to his feet, his left arm dragging. He swayed, and she was just in time to put her shoulder underneath his arm to brace him.

His face had gone gray with the effort, but his gaze was direct as he spoke. “From what you said earlier, sounds to me as if you live a ways outside town?”

Puzzled, she nodded. “About a half mile this side of Connor’s Crossing. We’re just a couple of miles away.”

“That’ll do. You can take the bullet out there.”

“I can’t remove a bullet—I’m no doctor!”

“Lady, there’s men lookin’ t’ kill me, and they will if it gets ’round that the doctor’s been called to tend some fellow wounded in a stage robbery. I reckon if you don’t care about that, you can take me on into town.”

“Well, of course I don’t want you killed,” she protested. “But don’t you see, I can’t…”

“Look, lady, whatever you decide is fine by me,” he snapped. “I don’t have the strength to stand here and argue with you. Let’s just get out of here, all right?”

Startled at his tone—and embarrassed that she’d forgotten how much blood he’d lost and how much pain he must be feeling—she nodded.

He gave her a wan smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bite your head off. If you can hold the horses steady, I think I can climb in.”

The leaders shied and sidestepped nervously, obviously smelling blood as he drew near, but Addy went to the head of the nearest one and held its chinstrap, murmuring soothing nonsense to it.

Addy watched the Ranger take hold of the side of the coach with one hand and grab the window frame with the other, uttering a barely muffled groan as he did so. She wished she could be in two places at once so she could hold the horses and help him somehow. He more or less fell inside, landing on the seat with a thud and a smothered curse.

“Okay, lady, I’m set,” he announced from within. “You ready to drive?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she called back, then said, “Addy. My name is Addy—Adelaide Kelly.”

He made no answer.

She stared over the empty road again, but saw nothing but a jackrabbit pausing to nibble some gramma grass.

Chapter Three

She’d probably never be hired as a driver for the stagecoach company, even if she wanted to be, but she wasn’t doing too badly, Addy decided. It helped that the team was an obedient, willing foursome who seemed to appreciate having a human controlling them again.

She had to steer to the left when they’d come across the body of the murdered stagecoach driver around the bend in the road. As the coach passed around the corpse, Addy said a prayer for the dead driver and for the other slain passengers she’d left behind. She’d have to let the sheriff know what had happened as soon as possible, so he could have the bodies brought in for burial.

But first she had to see to the wounded Ranger. She’d heard nothing from within the coach since they’d left the scene of the attack. Had he passed out from pain during the long bumpy two miles to her house? She would soon see. She turned the coach off the main road and into the rutted path that led up to her house.

Reaching the front of her house, Addy threw the brake on the coach, then clambered down and tied the reins to the porch rail. The two leaders were going to devour the primroses in her flower bed, but that was the least of her problems after what had happened.