“Aye.” He turned and hurried to the door on his hands and knees.
As soon as one of the other men dragged the horses out of the barn, the lieutenant slammed the door. He briefly stood up to put the bar across it then dove under a window to the right. She jumped when he threw open the window and started firing at the men outside. The four men with him did the same and she stayed crouched on the floor and covered her ears.
Abigail looked toward her mother. The woman was still at her father’s bedside, which made her a target. On her hands and knees, trying to stay low to the floor, Abigail scrambled up behind the woman and yanked hard on her skirts. When her mother sat down hard on the floor, she spun around and glared at Abigail with such fury, Abigail let go of her skirts and backed up a little.
“You stupid girl, what are you doing?”
“The men are shooting. You were making yourself a target. You have to keep low to the floor.” Abigail did all she could to keep her voice calm and steady.
“I need to protect your father!”
“You cannot protect him if you get yourself shot,” Abigail snapped. “Stay down!”
The punch to the face her mother gave her caused Abigail to fall backward. She stared up at the ceiling, rubbing her cheek and fighting the very strong urge to weep. Her mother had never struck her before, not even when she had been small and troublesome. She had never spoken so harshly before either.
Her mother was not well, Abigail told herself as she slowly sat up. The woman had been broken by the loss of her son, the abuse she had suffered at the hands of the soldiers, and by what had happened to her husband. In truth, her mother had not been herself, had in fact been growing worse every day, and nothing Abigail had done had pulled the woman free of the growing darkness in her mind.
There was one thing she could do now, she thought, and scrambled to the front window. The man had set her rifle down on the floor in front of the window and she grabbed it. She would do her best to end the threat her mother chose to ignore.
“What are you doing?” demanded Lieutenant MacEnroy.
“Making certain the fools shooting up my home do not shoot my mother.” Abigail took careful aim at one of the men in front of the house. “They will not shoot my mother.”
“Tell her to get down,” Matthew said.
“I did. She did not care to listen.”
Matthew saw his men looking at him and shrugged. He turned back to find the girl holding the rifle as if she was very sure of what she was doing. Just as he opened his mouth to ask if she was certain she wanted to shoot a man, she fired. The man outside yelled and then fell silent. James cursed softly and turned to look at the girl. Matthew chanced a look out of the window to see that one of the ten men attacking the cabin was sprawled on the ground, his mount already disappearing into the trees. The girl had already reloaded her gun and was calmly taking aim again when he turned back to look at her.
“You killed him,” he said.
“That was my intention.”
“He was a moving target.”
“Da always said I had a good eye.”
Matthew just shook his head and returned to his own shooting. It was somewhat humiliating when she picked off another man before he had even managed to wound one. She did have a good eye and remained steady. He had to wonder what she had experienced in her life that had made her so calm about shooting at men.
One soldier pulled away and went to the side of the house. He winged another one who moved to follow. Not sure what the soldier had been trying to do, he turned to ask the woman about what other windows and doors there were, only to see her hurrying toward the back of the house. Cursing, he moved to follow.
“Do you ken where he is headed?” he asked as she opened a door and ducked into another room.
“Just a suspicion.” Abigail kicked a stool in front of a small high window and got up on it so she could peer outside. “Oh no, you don’t,” she muttered when she saw the soldier hurriedly picking the crop and shoving it in the sack.
“What is he doing?” Matthew asked when she slowly, silently opened the window and aimed her gun.
“Stealing our crop. They have already taken my brother one time, and all our stock another time, and have murdered my father. I have had enough.”
The man by the garden must have heard her because he turned and looked right at her. Abigail felt her stomach turn as she pulled the trigger and his eyes widened in shock and horror when the bullet hit him square in the chest. She swallowed a sudden rush of bile in her mouth as she watched his body fall. Quickly stepping down, she took a deep breath to steady herself and then headed back to the post she had chosen by the front window.
Matthew looked out the window she had just left and shook his head when he saw the dead soldier. This one had troubled her for he had seen how pale she had gone. As he moved to follow her he wondered why she was so shaken this time but not the others.
The moment he entered the main room he heard a cry of pain. He looked toward his men and saw Boyd on the floor, the top of his arm bleeding badly. The girl scrambled over to him, reaching Boyd before he could. By the time he reached the boy she had already cut his sleeve off and was tying what looked like a strip from her petticoat around the top of his arm.
“Bullet went right through,” she told Boyd.
“Is that good?”
“Well, yes, I believe so. At least it means I do not have to go digging for it.”
The young man paled. “Okay. That is good. Who are you?”
“Abigail Jenson.”
Boyd closed his eyes as she turned his arm to study the exit wound. “Thank you kindly, miss.”
She just nodded and scrambled over to the bed where her mother still knelt tending her father and ignoring all of them. Matthew moved closer to Boyd, politely ignoring how shiny his eyes were with tears he fought not to shed. He looked at the wound and winced. The bullet had made a messy exit. Matthew was not sure how well it would heal.
Matthew was just about to give Boyd a warning about what he may face when he was shoved out of the way. Abigail was back with strips of cloth and a small pot of something that smelled medicinal. He watched as she cleaned the wound, appearing oblivious to Boyd’s badly smothered sounds of pain. She studied the exit wound with a frown he was pleased Boyd could not see, faintly shook her head, and then turned to her pile of supplies to pick up a needle and thread.
“This is going to hurt,” Abigail said quietly. “Take deep breaths and let them out slowly. It sometimes helps. I will work as quickly as I can.”
She also worked fast, Matthew noticed as he grabbed Boyd’s hand and let the boy hang on to him. Wincing, he silently hoped Boyd would still be able to shoot. When she was done, she wiped the sweat from the boy’s face and kissed his cheek. The way the boy blushed made Matthew grin.
“Could you get on his other side?” Abigail asked Matthew. “We need to tie his arm to his side.”