The Ranger's Bride

Reluctantly, he let her go. “Remember now, when they ask you about the dead folks, tell ’em Rede Smith is the one lyin’ out there with the star on his shirt.”

She shuddered. “But how would I know he was Rede Smith? We didn’t all introduce ourselves while we were traveling. I couldn’t tell them the names of the others. If I just knew your name, it would make it look as if we were…well, carrying on a flirtation or something. And I’m a respectable widow—I have a reputation to maintain here,” she told him tartly.

She had starch all right, Addy Kelly did.

“All right, just be sure and mention you noticed the man was wearin’ a Texas Ranger badge.”

She nodded her assent, started to walk out of the room, then suddenly asked, “Who wants you dead, Rede? Why don’t you want anyone to know you’re alive?”

“The Fogartys. The same bast—Excuse me, ma’am, the same outlaws that attacked the stage today.” He’d been trying to come into the area secretly, to find their hideout before they knew he was here, but somehow the word had gotten out.

Which meant someone in his Ranger company had talked. He’d have to find out who that was, preferably before the company joined him to capture the Fogarty Gang. It could be that one of them had just babbled too much while drunk. He didn’t want to think that a Texas Ranger could be bribed.

She seemed to want to discuss it further, but he wasn’t ready to trust her that much yet. “Are you up to drivin’ that stage into town?” he asked, to divert her.

Addy nodded. “I think so. I—I don’t like to think of that man lying dead in there, right in front of my house.”

He was glad she felt that way, because that meant the sheriff wouldn’t be nosing around here right when Addy was about to dig that bullet out.

His stomach clenched all over again at the thought. “Say, Miss Addy, maybe you’d better buy some whiskey while you’re there. Sure would be easier to stand you operatin’ on my arm if I could get good and drunk before you start.”

“Now how am I going to explain a sudden fondness for whiskey?” she demanded.

He hadn’t thought of that. Good Lord, was he going to have to go through this ordeal sober?

He must have looked as uneasy as he felt, for she smiled. “Don’t worry. Fortunately for you, there’s still some of my uncle’s supply here. My aunt didn’t dispose of it when he died—I think she used to sip it herself. There’s one bottle left. You want it now?”

Rede shook his head. He didn’t know how long it’d be before she could start her digging, and he’d have a better chance of passing out and avoiding the pain if he drank a whole lot of it right before she started.

He’d drink the whiskey while she was boiling the knife before she went to work on him. He didn’t know why it was, but from what he’d seen, a wounded fellow just seemed to do better when the bullet-digging instrument was boiled first.

“Oh, Miss Addy—before you leave, will you bring in my saddlebags?” he called after her retreating form. “They’re still inside the coach. My pistols and gun belt are in ’em.” Since he was still alive, he figured, he might need them again.

Chapter Four

If it hadn’t been for the tragedy that had necessitated her driving the stagecoach into Connor’s Crossing, Addy would have been amused by the reaction that greeted her as the coach rolled onto Main Street after crossing the bridge over the Llano River.

Dogs barked and scurried out in pursuit of the stage. A pair of ladies strolling onto Main Street—ladies she recognized as two of her best customers—stared in slack-jawed amazement, one of them dropping her parasol. The town ne’er-do-well, lounging outside the barbershop, turned to run inside—no doubt to tell the barber what he’d seen—and ran right into the support pole holding up the roof that jutted out over the shop. As the horses trotted farther along Main Street, cowboys loitering outside the saloon shouted questions at her and the news of a woman driving the stage to patrons inside.

Addy ignored them all, determined not to be delayed. She wanted to tell the story only once. Approaching Miss Beatrice Morgan’s trim cottage, she spied a towheaded, freckle-faced boy of five staring between the slats of the white picket fence. It was Billy, the sheriff’s son, whom Miss Beatrice looked after during the day while his widowed father served as Connor’s Crossing’s sheriff.

“Billy!” she called, “run ahead and find your father for me, will you? Tell him to come to the jail, that I need to speak to him right now!”

If he had no prisoners to guard, Sheriff Asa Wilson spent little time in his office at the jail. Usually, at this time of day, he was ensconced in the general store playing checkers, but there was no guarantee of that, and Addy didn’t want to spend valuable time looking for him. She was eager to turn the coach and its dead passenger over to him as soon as possible so that she could get back to the wounded Ranger in her house.

Still paying no attention to the questions called out by every soul she passed, Addy had just reined in the team in front of the jail and was setting the brake when Asa Wilson catapulted out of the general store with Billy on his heels.

“Miss Addy! I thought Billy had lost his mind when he told me you were driving a st—Dear God, what’s happened to you? You’re all bloody! Are you—are you shot?”

Belatedly, she gazed down at her dress and saw the blood that had dried into dark-brown splotches and streaks across the front of her bodice and skirts. Dear God, indeed! But her appearance was of no concern to her right now.

“No, Asa,” she said, as she took hold of his hand and allowed him to help her down. “I’m unharmed. But…I’m afraid we were robbed back there.” She gestured back up the road that led past her house into town.

“Wilson, there’s a dead man in here,” called the barber, who had apparently been peering inside the coach while she spoke. “He’s all shot up.”

Asa’s eyes flew to her face, and he seized her other hand.

Addy nodded in confirmation, feeling her knees starting to turn to jelly now that she had accomplished her mission of bringing the coach—and the news—to town.

“Th-that’s how I got so bloody,” she told him, aware that more than half the town was clustered around the coach and hearing every word. “I was crouched down in the floor of the stage…and he fell over on me.”

A buzz arose from the crowd at her words, but over it she could hear Asa murmuring, “Dear God,” once again.

“You could have been killed,” he added in a hoarse whisper. “Oh, Miss Addy, I knew I shouldn’t have let you go by yourself!”

Her eyes dropped, uneasy at the naked devotion in his eyes. His kindness and caring made her feel guilty. Ever since she had come to town and made his acquaintance he had always been a gentleman. He’d said he understood that she couldn’t return his feelings just yet since she had only been a widow for half a year. But she couldn’t think about the way she’d been deceiving this good man, not now.

“Asa…there’s five more people dead out there, about three miles out, where we were attacked. The driver, two women—”

“Women?” someone cried. “They killed women?”

Suddenly feeling more weary than she ever had in her life, she nodded and went on. “Another man who was a drummer, and the sh—” She shut her mouth. She had almost said, “the shotgun guard.” Quickly she corrected herself and told the lie. “And a Ranger.”

“There was a Ranger aboard? They killed a Texas Ranger?”

“Where was the shotgun guard? The stage company usually has a shotgun guard riding up top with the driver.”

“I—I—” Addy stammered. Was her lie to be exposed so easily? She thought fast. “The Ranger was riding up on top…I guess he was acting as the shotgun guard?” Then she thought it would be best to mix in as much truth with her lie as she could. “The stagecoach driver was killed first, and he fell off the top. Then I think the—the Ranger grabbed the reins and tried to fire back at them…but they caught up and then the man…inside there—” she shuddered as she gestured at the interior of the coach “—was shot and fell over on me. I guess I must have fainted, for when I awoke and managed to get out from under…the body—” she closed her eyes, and her shudder was not the least put-on “—I found everyone else lying dead outside the coach.”

“Sweet heaven,” someone muttered.

“Sounds like the Fogarty Gang,” someone else said.

“Didja see their faces, Miss Addy? Any of them buzzards?” someone else asked.

Addy shook her head. “Not really,” she said, though the image of a face half-concealed by a red bandanna as he stuck a pistol in the window flashed through her brain.

She shut her eyes again, suddenly feeling more than a little dizzy. She swayed.

“Miss Addy, didja—”

“Shut up! Can’t you see she’s about to swoon?” snapped Asa. “Back away, gentlemen, back away. I’m gonna take Miss Addy inside so she can sit down where it’s cooler.” Asa Wilson inserted an arm bracingly around her and guided her firmly but gently toward the door of the jail. “You men, stick around,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re going to have to form a posse—and if someone can drive a buckboard out there, those bodies have to be brought in for identification and proper burial. Oh, and Miss Morgan, would you have any smelling salts with you?”

“Oh, dear me, no,” Addy heard Beatrice Morgan say. “But I could run back to my house….”

Beatrice Morgan was a plump old maid of perhaps sixty years who had already come to Addy once for the making of a new black bombazine dress. Black was all she seemed to wear, though who she was in mourning for was a mystery to Addy and the rest of the town.

“No smelling salts, Asa,” Addy protested. The stinging scent of hartshorn always nauseated her.