The Texan's Reward (8 page)

spent an hour trying to get comfortable again. Moving pillows. Adjusting covers. Listening to the clock tick away

the night. She hated the darkness when she hardly slept, and when she did, the old nightmare returned to

frighten her once more.

The dream started out the same as every night. She was driving a borrowed buggy on a rough road. Her

thoughts were ful of worry about her three dear friends. They were being threatened by an old buffalo hunter

who thought they’d stolen his gold. She held the reins easy between her fingers as she planned how to help

them. One of them was safe in town, another hidden away. Bailee would be the easiest to get to on her farm

outside of town. Nell pushed hard, wanting to get to her friend as fast as possible.

Then, without warning, shots rang from nowhere. For a moment, she thought someone must be target shooting

or hunting. Suddenly, bul ets pinged against the buggy, spooking the horse. Frantical y, she tried to drive as it

rained bullets. She ignored the first sting on her arm. One more plowed into her back a second before the horse

missed a curve in the road. Then, she was tumbling . . .

Nel always woke before the tumbling stopped. She had a fear that if she didn’t, she’d die.

She struggled through the rest of the night, losing the battle to sleep more often than not. Lying in the darkness

before dawn, she tried to ignore the pain. Sometimes she played a game. She’d pretend that the ambush never

happened and there was no bul et lodged in her back. In her mind, she’d jump from the bed and run across the

room to open the huge bay windows. Curling up in a blanket, she’d sit on the sil while she watched the sun rise.

With her feet ice cold, Nel would dart down to the kitchen and make hot tea.

Once the water boiled, she’d snuggle against the cooking hearth, like she had a hundred times in boarding

school, her legs curled beneath her, while she warmed and listened to the house awaken. She’d hear Marla up

dressing, getting ready to start the bread, and Gypsy snoring away in the room beyond the back porch.

Nell loved everything about the morning. The steamy water she saw herself hauling upstairs for her morning

bath. The smell of breakfast. The way houses creaked with age as they warmed to the day.

Fighting tears, she returned to reality. She couldn’t watch the dawn, and there would be no hot tea until

someone remembered to bring it to her.

Nell pulled herself up as the night turned from black to gray. She wanted to be fully awake to face the day, like

an old warrior preparing for battle. A tiny part of her believed that if she didn’t stand ready at dawn, she’d miss

a whole day of her life. The fear might have been born that first month after she’d been shot, when al hours

blended in pain. Each time she could get her thoughts together enough to speak, she asked the same question,

“What day is it?”

Those around her always seemed to pick a day at random, for when she closed her eyes for only minutes, they’d

change their minds and name another.

She shoved the covers aside and slowly scooted her legs to the floor. With her hands on the iron railing, she

moved from the bed to the invalid’s chair. The movements might look like only a small victory, but Nell

considered it a mountain conquered when she no longer had to cal for assistance to use the chamber pot.

If Gypsy had left the wheelchair near, she might have been able to twist enough to get in it. But the housekeeper

had rolled the chair where Mary Ruth always insisted it be . . . out of the way in case Nell cried out in the night

and the nurse had to rush across the room in the shadows. The chair by the window might as well have been a

hundred miles away. She’d never be able to walk to it.

Nel struggled back to the bed and reached for her brush. Hopeful y, Gypsy would wake up in time to help her

dress before Jacob came in from the barn. Nell felt like swearing. She’d been so tired last night, she hadn’t told

Gypsy or Marla to sleep across the hall. They were probably both downstairs drinking coffee, totally unaware

that she was awake.

Leaning onto her pil ows, Nell listened, waiting for the sound of footsteps on the stairs. They’d check on her as

soon as it was light, she told herself, hating her helplessness.

In the silent dawn, Nel heard the sound of a rider coming from the direction of town. It took her a moment to

realize that whoever it was traveled fast. A dangerous thing to do in the shadows. During the day, riders passed

by the house heading for the ranches past the tracks, but the trail was rarely used after dark. The ground wasn’t

level and curved enough times to be dangerous at night unless the traveler knew the path well.

She pushed herself up as she realized the rider must be heading straight toward them. What might have

happened that could be so important someone in town had to notify them at once? Dalton. If there was trouble

in town, Parker would send for the ranger who slept in her barn. Jacob had backed the old man up a hundred

times over the years. Maybe he was needed now.

Nel knew Jacob wel enough to bet he’d already be on his feet, probably with his gun in his hand.

She expected the rider to slow, pul up his horse at the broken gate, but he didn’t. The horse thundered past her

window at full speed.

Nel clawed at the sheets, wishing she could see out. A shot rang out in the gray dawn with the sharp pop of a

whip. Glass shattered and echoed across her bedroom.

Nel jerked, remembering how, months ago, the same sound rang in her ears a moment before pain exploded

through her body.

She’d felt helpless that day. As helpless as she did now.

Other shots rang from the barn in rapid succession as the intruder rode past the house and barn. Then she heard

Gypsy scream and footsteps tapping up the stairs. A heartbeat later, the front door sounded like it had been

rammed, and heavy stomps took the stairs in great strides.

“Nell!” Jacob yelled from the hallway.

“Yes.” Nell tried to cal back, but fear choked her answer.

Then, as always, he was there, her own private Texas Ranger ready to fight whatever frightened her. His big Colt

was in his right hand, his rifle in his left. “Are you all right?” he asked as he crossed to the window.

“I think so,” she answered, realizing his boots crunched glass when he moved from one window to the other.

“What happened?”

“Someone rode past and fired at your window. I returned a few shots, but I don’t think I hit him.”

Light fil ed the room enough now to see his movements. He looked angry, deadly, but Nel was glad to see him.

He bent over her wheelchair at the window, then laid his rifle across the arms of the chair and holstered his Colt.

He turned up the lamp Gypsy left burning low, then crossed to Nell. “Are you sure you’re al right? There’s glass

everywhere.”

“I’m fine.” She spread her hands out over the covers, expecting to touch pieces of the window.

Gypsy and Marla ran into the room buzzing like horse-flies in a cow lot. They both asked the same questions,

echoing one another before Nel had time to answer. Gypsy got her robe and Marla found her slippers, but

when Nell asked for her chair, Jacob shook his head.

He lifted her up and carried her downstairs, ordering Marla to run through the trees to town for the sheriff and

telling Gypsy to roll the chair after them.

Nell started to tell him that she preferred to dress before going down, but the words froze in her throat when

she saw the bul et hole in the wicker of her wheelchair.

“Jacob?” She gripped the lapels of his unbuttoned shirt. “Jacob, someone . . .”

“I know,” he answered before she could finish. “Someone tried to kil you. They couldn’t have seen clearly

enough to know that you weren’t in the chair.” He hesitated. “But the rider was definitely aiming at your

window.”

She tried to think of who might know that normal y she watched the sun rise from the exact spot where the

chair had been. Everyone, she realized or anyone who passed by the house. From dawn until dusk that spot had

become her place to watch the world go by. Even the people passing in the trains leaving town might look over

and see her sitting in her window.

Nell leaned her head against Jacob’s shoulder and let his arms surround her. She might be fully grown, a woman

of means who knew her own mind, but right now she needed to be protected. The only safety she’d ever known

had been with him near. He’d always been the one rock in her ever-shifting life.

“It’ll be all right, Two Bits,” he whispered in her hair. “I won’t let any harm come to you.”

They’d reached the main room, but he stil held her tight. For a few minutes, she curled into his arms, closed her

eyes, and let the world go away. He’d always been near when she needed him or couldn’t make sense of life.

When she’d been a kid, everyone she’d ever known had let her down. Then, Jacob came along, little more than a

kid himself, but thinking he was al big and grown. He’d made her believe in the goodness of people.

He lowered her to the couch by the fireplace. Gypsy covered her legs with a blanket while Jacob built the fire.

Once he finished, he stood and faced her. “As soon as the sheriff gets here, I’l saddle up and see if our early

visitor left enough tracks to follow. If he headed away from town, I’ll follow him. I’d have trouble tracking him if

he rode in, but it looked like he was heading away.”

“Why would anyone shoot at me?” Most of the folks in town didn’t bother speaking to her, but they didn’t wish

her dead, or at least she didn’t think anyone did.

Jacob lowered to one knee in front of her and pul ed a smal pistol from his boot. “I don’t know, but whoever

rode by and fired that shot was on a mission. It wasn’t an accident. No drunk riding home from a wild night. No

young cowhand testing his gun. I watched him coming. When I realized he was headed here, I stepped from the

barn, thinking he had a message to deliver.”

The pistol felt warm as he placed it in her shaking hands. “Only he didn’t see me. He was staring up at your

window as he rode by at ful speed. He got off one shot before I saw the gun. He didn’t have time for another.

When I returned fire, he leaned low, and his horse ran like ground lightning across the open range behind the

house.”

“It was too dark to see him. How will you ever find him?”

“I know two things about him. He’s a good shot, too good not to have been trained to fire from the saddle, and

he rides like he was born on horseback.”

Nell smiled. “I guess that eliminates two people in town. Randolph Harrison and Sheriff Smith.”

Jacob squeezed her hand. “You know of any reason why someone would want you dead?”

She shook her head. “Maybe it’s just a case of mistaken identity like the last time I was shot. Maybe something

about me reminds people of a target.”

“Know anyone else in a wheelchair who lives out by the tracks?” He smiled, looking almost as if he believed she

might say yes. “Our visitor was firing at you, no one else. Promise me you’ll keep this gun close. Odds are it

won’t stop anyone, but at least it will sound an alarm.”

“I’l do that,” she answered as she slipped the pistol into the drawer in the table beside her. She’d handled

weapons several times over her life and never thought much about it. But since the accident, they’d made her a

little nervous. She knew it wasn’t the gun that had hurt her, but the man behind it, yet somehow she related the

pain to the weapon.

Jacob twisted and sat on the floor beside her knees. His long legs stretched toward the fireplace, his shoulder

touched her leg. His nearness and the comfortable silence between them slowed her pounding heart. She

brushed her fingers over his sun-lightened hair, wishing she could find the right words to thank him.

The fire popped, and she could hear Gypsy talking in the kitchen, but for just a moment the world stil ed as she

moved her hand through his hair. Something passed between them, a feeling, a bond. Neither had the words to

say, but they both needed to know the other was near.

The sheriff walked through the front door without knocking. Jacob stood and stared down at her, his face

unreadable as his big hand plowed through the strands of hair she’d just straightened. Then, almost by accident,

she saw something in his eyes. A longing she’d never seen. A need.

“What’s going on here!” Parker yelled to no one in particular as he neared. “Marla interrupted my breakfast to

tell me someone’s shooting at you. Who in the hell would want to do that?”

Jacob gave the sheriff his full attention. “Let me know, and I’ll make sure they reach hell by nightfall.” He was

back in ful control, two hundred pounds of Texas lawman.

Parker walked around Jacob like he was no more than a noisy tree and went straight to Nell.

Jacob moved to close the door the sheriff left open, but before he could reach the knob, Rand Harrison darted

through.

“You’re here early,” Jacob grumbled. “I thought accountants had banker’s hours for starting work.”

Harrison didn’t look frightened by the ranger’s frown. “I heard about the shooting. I’m here to help. Is anyone

hurt?”

“No, no one is hurt, and yes, you can help,” Jacob answered. “Can you use a gun?”

Rand nodded. “If I have to. I’m not fond of them.”

Jacob glanced at Nel . “There seems to be an epidemic of that around here. I don’t care if you like them or not.

Would you use one if need be?”