Authors: Kat Martin
When the meeting ended, all four men mounted their horses and headed back into town. It wasn’t far, and the countryside was pleasant: green forested hills and deep ravines interrupted by gently tumbling streams. He recalled scenes from his childhood, drawing his attention astray. Wasn’t it just around that bend he’d made love to Prudence Mayfield, the mayor’s daughter? Memories of ripe ivory breasts and a slightly too-wide bottom drew the pull of a smile.
As he returned his attention to the present, he glanced ahead and caught a flash of sunlight on metal and a slight movement in a copse of trees. His senses alerted, he reined up his horse just as a series of shots rang out and a fiery, burning sensation tore through his chest, the impact of the bullet nearly knocking him from the saddle. At the instant the black horse leapt toward cover, a second bullet slammed into his thigh.
Though he fought to stay in the saddle, great waves of pain swept over him, numbing him with the force of a blow. Gripping the horn so hard his fingers ached, Morgan battled the beckoning darkness. Then he pitched forward, plunging into the rocks at the side of the road.
“Damn!” Chuck Dawson dismounted hurriedly and crouched among the boulders, Redmond and Henry Dawson close behind. The shooting had ceased after the first few shots, and they saw no sign of the man who’d been hiding among the trees, but, to be certain of their safety, they waited a few minutes longer before moving into the open.
“He’s long gone by now,” Henry Dawson said. The men rose cautiously, checked again for any sign of their attacker, then approached Dan Morgan’s crumpled form.
“Anybody get a look at him?” Redmond asked.
“Too damn busy tryin’ to save my own hide.” Henry Dawson spoke the thoughts of all three.
“He still alive?” Chuck pointed to Morgan, and the men knelt beside the injured man. Redmond felt Morgan’s pulse.
“He’s alive. At least for now. We’d better get him to the hotel and fetch Doc Willowford.”
Saddle leather creaked, but the big black gelding stood stock-still as the men threw Morgan’s unconscious body across the horse. All three mounted and rode at a fast pace toward town, leading the big black behind them. Chuck went to fetch the doctor, and the two older men carried Morgan into the hotel.
Elaina opened the dining room door just as Redmond and Dawson entered the lobby. She paled at the sight of the blood-covered stranger who, only hours before, had mocked her at the hall.
“He’s been shot,” Dolph Redmond informed her with an almost casual air.
His even tone made her bristle. Did the man have ice water for blood? Closing the door behind her, she walked along beside the wounded man.
In his unconscious state, Morgan’s hard features had softened. His dark hair fell across his brow, and Elaina thought how much like Ren he looked. How handsome and vulnerable. Suddenly Elaina felt a terrible responsibility for the tragedy. Had she been the cause of the gunman’s injuries? She’d been afraid her speech would incite the miners to violence. Could the man’s condition be partly her fault?
Chuck Dawson pushed through the front doors. “Doc Willowford’s out delivering a baby.”
“Put him in the room next to mine,” Elaina said. Though the third floor had never been finished, there was one empty room adjacent to hers and another down the hall.
Chuck looked skeptical.
“Do as she says,” Redmond ordered. “Maybe she can keep him alive and we’ll get some use out of him yet. He ought to be good and mad if he lives through this.” Both Dawsons smiled.
“Sometimes yer a whole lot smarter’n you look, Dolph,” Henry said.
Chuck’s expression mirrored wholehearted agreement.
Elaina passed the men on the stairs and dashed ahead to ready the room, then hurried to her own room for a pitcher of water and the other items she needed. When she returned, she found the stranger on the bed and the elder Dawson removing the man’s boots.
“Why don’t you leave him to me?” she said. “If I need your help, I’ll come down and get you.” Though she could have used their assistance, just being in the same room with the three men made her nervous.
Redmond nodded his agreement and motioned the others to follow.
“You’d better tell Ada to find someone else to work the dining room for a while, if you want this man to live,” she warned.
“I’ll take care of it,” Henry Dawson assured her. “You just git that gunman back on his feet.”
The men left quietly, and Elaina relaxed a little. Glancing down at the deathly pallor of the man lying on the bed, she began to assess his condition. She’d always been a fair hand at doctoring. It was just something she had a knack for. Even Ada couldn’t heal a sick boarder the way Elaina could. It had been a passion of her grandmother’s. Elaina had followed the skinny little woman around whenever she had the chance, so Grandma McAllister had left her healing book to Elaina when she died. Over the years Elaina had gotten better and better at it, considering she’d had no
formal training. People had confidence in her. Next to Doc Willowford, she was the best the small town had to offer.
Elaina washed her hands in the basin on the bureau, then unbuttoned and opened the man’s blood-soaked shirt. Taking a hard look at the wound, she determined the bullet had gone into the area just below the shoulder. It was difficult to tell whether or not it had punctured a lung, but his blood didn’t look frothy. Still, with the shallow way he was breathing, she couldn’t be sure.
Elaina took her scissors to the gunman’s bloody shirt and eventually was able to get it off. Then she realized the man had a leg injury as well. No wonder he looked so pale. He must have lost a lot of blood.
Elaina walked into the hall. At one end a huge closet lined with shelves was filled with bedding, towels, and clean sheets. It was dark inside, so she carefully propped open the door. Just the thought of being in the room with the door closed and no light prickled her with fear. Quickly she removed a sheet and hurried back to the injured man, shredding the sheet into bandages along the way.
The chest wound was going to take some time, so she decided to deal with the leg injury first. Stuffing some of the clean sheeting into the shoulder to stem the bleeding as best she could, she moved on to the leg wound.
For an instant she hesitated, her hand poised above the buttons of the gunman’s snug black breeches. She’d cared for injured men before. Why did removing this man’s clothes seem different? Because he looks like Ren, her mind said. Because you’ve dreamed of the body beneath Ren’s clothes. Forcing the ridiculous notion aside, she worked the buttons, cut away some of the blood-soaked material, then worked the breeches down over the gunman’s narrow hips and muscular thighs. As she removed his bloody woolen underwear, she said a prayer of thanks the man was unconscious.
Though she hated to admit it, Elaina had never seen a finer specimen than the one on the bed. Lying naked, his
body looked lean and hard, his waist narrow, his hips taut. She tried not to notice the dark hair curling across the width of his chest, forming a thin line down his flat stomach to protectively surround his male organs, but she’d seen only one other man completely naked, an injured miner from Middleton, and the sight of this man was more than intriguing.
Intriguing!
What in God’s name was the matter with her? The man was near dead and here she was staring at his physique! Wiping away more blood, she probed the leg wound and discovered the bullet had exited through the back of the thigh. The leg wound should be simple, as long as it didn’t fester—and with her grandmother’s herb dressing she was certain it wouldn’t.
After thoroughly cleansing the bullet hole, she fished through her small leather medicine bag and found some powdered dog daisy, useful for control of the bleeding. She sprinkled some in, along with some alder bark to keep the inflammation down, placed a compress on the wound, and quickly swathed the leg in bandages.
“Anything I can do, Laina honey?” Ada Lowery stuck her head in just as Elaina was pulling the bloody wrappings from the wound in the man’s wide chest.
“Thanks, Ada. It looks like this could get a bit rough.”
“You know I never been much good at doctorin’, but I’ll do whatever you say.” She moved to the man’s bedside. “Lord A’mighty! Ain’t he a dandy. Ain’t seen a man built like that ’round these parts in a coon’s age.”
Elaina flushed. At least she felt a little more justified in her earlier reactions. “Ada, you’re terrible,” she chided without looking up from her task.
“Kinda reminds me of my dead husband Jake—in his prime, I mean. ’Course Jake was about three inches shorter’n this one.” Ada grinned broadly. “Not where it counted, mind you.”
Elaina laughed aloud, glad for a break from the tension. “Here.” Grabbing the older woman’s hand, she pulled her into position. “I’m going to probe for the bullet. I don’t think he’ll wake up, but you’d better get ready to hold him down just in case.”
Ada nodded.
Elaina washed her hands a second time and carefully set out the herbs she would need. Though the room was cool, perspiration beaded her forehead.
With infinite patience, Elaina probed the wound. Ada pressed her weight on the man’s upper body but he didn’t stir. The bullet was deeply embedded just below the collarbone, but it was easy to locate, and no other damage had been done. As she pulled the offending lead from the wound and the man’s breathing continued evenly, Elaina breathed a sigh of relief. She finished her cleaning, applied the herbs, and bound the wound tightly, smiling with satisfaction at her handiwork. If all went well, the man would live.
Then Dolph Redmond’s words crowded her mind: “He ought to be good and mad if he lives through this.” She wondered for the miners’ sake if she had done the right thing.
Chapter 4
S
IX HOURS LATER
Dan Morgan opened his eyes and squinted through a haze of pain. He tried to lift himself up off the bed, but a wave of dizziness forced him back into unconsciousness. Clouded images of a woman with red-brown hair leaning over him occasionally pierced the haze.
Morgan slept fitfully, waking sometime later when he thought he saw a man in a dark gray suit beside his bed. Again he drifted into unconsciousness.
It was the gentle warmth of the sun’s rays against the mat of crisp hair on his chest that finally awoke him late the following morning. Slowly opening his eyes, he allowed them to adjust to the sunlight that filtered into the room. As he heard the sound of footsteps near his bed, he blinked several times, trying to purge the fuzzy images. Then the rounded swell of two full breasts peeking above a dainty scooped neckline came into view as a dark-haired girl leaned over him. For a moment he thought he might be dreaming. Then, for the first time in two days, he lifted a comer of his mouth in a half-hearted smile. Raising a shaky hand, he gently cupped a ripe, full breast.
A shriek of outrage let him know for certain he was awake. He chuckled softly as his hand fell harmlessly back to his side.
“Well, Mr. Morgan, I see you’re going to live,” came the caustic retort of the woman with the shining hair.
He let the words sink in. Morgan. She’d called him Morgan. The name held no meaning for him, no sense of recognition. He tried to remember, but no thoughts came to mind. Nothing.
“Morgan,” he repeated, saying the name aloud, though his voice sounded thick and fuzzy. “You called me Morgan.” Still nothing. He no longer smiled. Instead, his eyes darted around the room, noting the peeling paper on the walls and the stains on the ceiling. A plain wooden bureau with an oval mirror above was cluttered with towels and bandages. Otherwise the room was empty and spotlessly clean.
“Well, that’s your name, isn’t it?” the woman retorted, still smarting from his rude behavior.
He lay quiet for a moment. “I don’t know . . . I can’t seem to remember. Where am I?”
The woman’s anger faded. She stepped closer to his bedside. “You’re in the Hotel Keyserville,” she told him, placing a gentle hand on his forehead. “You don’t have any sign of fever. Are you sure you don’t remember?”
He struggled, making every effort to form some thought about the past. Licking his dry lips, he sighed and fell back against the pillow, a knot of despair tightening his stomach. “Not a thing.”
“Doc Willowford was here late yesterday evening. He said you took a nasty hit on the head when you fell off your horse. I guess it was worse than he thought. I’ll have him come up and take another look at you.”
“My name’s Morgan, you say?”
“Yes, Dan Morgan. You’re in Keyserville, Pennsylvania. You were shot yesterday morning. Dolph Redmond and Henry Dawson brought you in. I’m Elaina McAllister.” Elaina smiled ironically at the sudden twist of fate. She’d worried about the gunman’s anger at the miners for the shooting. Now Black Dan couldn’t remember enough about what had happened to be mad. At least the men would get a slight reprieve from whatever punishment Morgan intended to mete out.
“How are you feeling?”
“Pretty rocky. You been taking care of me?”
“I was the only one available.”
“Thanks.”
“You’d better get some rest. Don’t try to do too much too soon.” She smiled down at him and felt a small tug at her heart. How could such a hard man look so helpless? She shook her head at the notion. There was nothing helpless about Dan Morgan, or at least there wouldn’t be as soon as he got back on his feet.
Elaina was checking the bandages on Morgan’s chest when the door to the room flew wide. She felt the usual chill as Chuck Dawson entered, his eyes narrowed and hot, his face drawn and red. Instead of his customary stiff greeting, he just clenched his teeth and stared at her.
The gunman eyed the two of them, but said nothing. She knew he had little strength and the less he exerted himself, the better off he’d be. Her gaze returned to her intended.
“Hello, Chuck,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. She had never seen quite that look in his dark eyes before. With cold certainty, she realized he’d heard about her speech at the meeting hall, and a trickle of icy dread snaked down her spine.