“This isn’t finished,” he said, a promise glittering in his icy eyes.
Then he followed Freddy’s screams to the tent, steeled himself, and looked inside. John had tied her to a board so she couldn’t hit out or thrash while he probed her wound for the bullet. He’d ripped her shirt open to expose an ugly raw opening that bubbled red. Dal watched the cords rise on Freddy’s throat as she arched her neck and screamed, and he felt sick to his stomach. John didn’t look up, but Alex glanced toward him, her face the color of whey. Her hands were bloody.
“She’ll be all right,” Alex whispered. But the fear in her eyes told him that she was saying what she needed to hear, not what she knew as a fact.
Freddy’s screams cut through him like a hot knife. He’d seen men shot before, had heard them scream. Hell, he’d been shot himself. But nothing had been as painful to witness as this. If he could have, he would have traded places with her in an instant.
Shaking with helplessness and rage, he swung up in his saddle and lashed the reins across the horse’s flanks. If she died…
But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. That was Joe Roark’s daughter back there in the tent. She could be as tough as nails when she needed to be. He hoped she remembered that and pulled through, because he needed her.
He loved her.
It was after midnight before Dal returned to camp. Alex offered him a plate of food, but he was too exhausted, too worried to eat, and he waved aside the beans and fried meat. Picking up a lantern, he walked directly to Freddy’s tent and stepped inside. “You idiot,” he said, looking down at her. Grady had set up the cot they used in cases of serious injury or illness, and he’d fashioned a makeshift pillow. Her hair covered the pillow like a dark cloud, and her left arm was bound in a sling that rested on top of a light blanket.
“Feels like I’m floating,” she murmured, reaching for his hand.
“That’s the laudanum John gave you.” He sat on a low stool beside her. “What in the hell did you think you were doing? Chasing beeves when you had a bullet in your shoulder? If you weren’t already shot-up, I’d shoot you myself for being so damned dumb.”
“Didn’t want any to escape.” She started to shrug, then sucked in a breath and winced instead. “How many?”
“It’s bad, Freddy.”
“How many?”
“We lost fifty-eight.” John McCallister had shot three. There were four dead cattle on the range, two of which he’d put down himself when he saw they wouldn’t recover from bullet wounds received from the outlaws’ guns. Fifty-one additional longhorns were missing. Some might still be found in the morning if they hadn’t joined another herd by then, or found a hiding place in the brush. He figured the rustlers had made off with the rest while he and his drovers were chasing down the stampede. Closing his eyes, he pulled a hand through his hair and swallowed the bitter taste of frustration and fury.
Reason told him he shouldn’t blame himself, but he did. Haltingly, he told her about his bathhouse conversation and the probability that the rustlers had been hired by Caldwell. “I should have pulled a couple of the boys off the line and sent them out to watch for strangers.” He had assumed any attack would come at night, and he’d beefed up the watch. Now they were paying for his error.
Freddy’s eyes sharpened through the pain and laudanum. “This was Jack’s fault, not yours.”
“The problem is proof. There isn’t any proof.”
Wetting a finger, he rubbed a speck of blood off her throat before he drew a long breath, held it a minute, then took her hand again. “We’ll stay here until noon tomorrow, but I can’t give you more time than that, Freddy. I’ll put you back on drag, that’s the best I can do.” She was going to have an agonizing few days, and he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.
“Don’t worry,” she murmured, her eyelids drifting shut. “You always said the horse does most of the work anyway.”
He stayed with her after she slept, blowing out the lantern and sitting in the darkness listening to her breathe and holding her hand. She had calluses now, something he hadn’t noticed that night in Fort Worth. He ran his thumb over the rough pads on her palm. And he wished he had killed Jack Caldwell.
Fifty-eight. He was down to a margin of ninety-one.
He stared out the tent flap at the boys gathered around the campfire drinking coffee. Everyone was too worked up to sleep. He doubted the drovers on night watch would have to rub tobacco juice in their eyes to stay awake tonight; the day’s excitement would reverberate well into tomorrow.
Ninety-one. And Red River wasn’t far ahead; he’d heard it was swollen and running fast with the worst of the spring melt. Even in the best of conditions, it was a rare boss who didn’t lose a few beeves crossing the Red River. Christ. Dropping his head, he rubbed his forehead.