The Lone Texan

CHAPTER 7

DRUM REACHED THE BEATEN WOMAN FIRST. HE KEPT the shock from his face as he looked down at her. The bruising looked far darker, turning half her face a smoky red. The other half looked muddy-water blue, but one of her eyes had opened only enough for him to tell she studied him. Raising her bandaged hand, she touched him as if making sure that he was flesh.

"You're Roak. The one who saved me?" she whispered. "I was there. I brought you in for care."

"You killed the men who were torturing me?"

Drum nodded. He saw no reason to lie. She was there. She knew what he did, but it bothered him to talk about it.

"My boys?" she whispered, an edge of panic in her voice. "They're both safe," Drum answered. "They're upstairs asleep."

"Good!" She seemed to relax. "Would you tell me if my Lloyd is dead?"

Drum knew she trusted him to tell her the truth, and he didn't lie. "Your son Will said he hid his father in the brush so the raiders wouldn't know." Drum wished Sage would move from the shadows and talk to the woman. He didn't have much to tell her that wasn't bad. "Your boy kept his senses about him. If they'd thought your man was dead, they might have killed you and the little one."

"He was right. That was the only reason I was kept alive. They were hoping my screams would make Lloyd come in. But he wouldn't have. We knew almost from the first that they were there to kill us”

Finally Sage moved to Drum's side. She didn't touch him, but she was close enough that he would have known she was there even if his eyes were closed.

"You need to rest, Meg." Sage straightened the blanket over her patient. "You'll have more time to talk to Roak tomorrow.”

"No." She gripped his hand. "I have to tell you something.” Her words were muffled by the swollen jaw and lips, but he could hear the desperation in her tone.

"I'm listening” he answered, holding the bandaged hand without closing his fingers.

"Meg?" Sage tried again just as gently.

"I'll rest” the woman promised. "But first I have to talk to Roak alone."

Sage hesitated, then said. "All right.” Without another word, she motioned Bonnie to follow her out of the room.

When the door closed, Roak leaned closer to Meg. "Tell me now.”

Her swollen eyes were only open a slit, but he knew she was taking in his worth. "The two men you killed were not the leaders."

He'd already figured that out and planned to tell the captain when he had time. "I know. I heard them talk of a boss. Someone else must be planning the raids”

She patted his hand. "It wasn't a raid. They came after us. They came to kill all the males. I just got in the way.”

He nodded slowly, trying to understand. He'd already wondered why one ranch was all that had been hit. He figured it must be the first, and others were between the Smith place and the border. Usually raiders came in and hit several fast and hard, sometimes only stealing cattle in the night, and by morning they'd be miles away. They didn't stay around long enough to sleep or to torture folks.

Meg continued, "They didn't come to rob. They wanted my husband and my sons. They were planning to make it look like a raid so that no one, including the Rangers, would ask too many questions. They talked openly about their plan because they knew they'd be leaving me and Andy dead within hours."

He thought he heard a refinement in her voice, almost an English accent blanketed in a slight southern drawl. "But…"

"They wanted it to cover up the murder of us all." She cried out softly as if the effort to talk was hard.

"But why?" Drum asked.

She leaned her head to the side against a pillow.

"Why?"

Her voice was so weak he could barely hear her. "When the man who wants us dead finds out the boys are still alive, he'll send more men to kill them. He won't stop. He'll never stop until the bloodline is wiped off the earth."

Roak didn't understand why, but he believed the woman. "What can I do?"

"Keep my boys safe," she whispered, out of breath and energy. "Keep them safe.”

"I promise."

She nodded once and curled around the pillow at her side, like a child going to sleep.

He tried to ask more. He even called her name, but she didn't answer. Her bruised cheek rested against the lace pillow, and he wondered if she'd been beautiful, for even battered, she had a delicacy about her.

Sage stepped back into the room when he called and checked on her patient. Drum stood back, wishing he knew more about why someone would hate a family so much that he wanted them all dead. It couldn't have been for money; the Smith family barely had enough to run the farm. Hate could run deep, but Drum doubted it could run deep enough to kill two little boys for something their father had done.

"She's gone” Sage said calmly as if the woman had simply left the room.

Drum backed to the door and watched Bonnie and Sage pull the sheet over Meg's face and straighten it as carefully as a mother straightens her daughter's wedding veil. He couldn't watch any longer; he stormed from the room and didn't stop until he made it to the cool darkness at the corner of the wide porch.

The town was quiet with few lamps still lit. The cloudy day had settled over the streets, and rain hung in the air as if debating falling. When this storm came, it would be a bull. Roak hoped he'd be somewhere dry to wait it out, only the way his luck was running, he'd probably be hit by the lightning.

He took a deep breath. One good thing, in this kind of night, this kind of darkness, he felt safe. When he'd been a boy, nowhere in the outlaw camps had ever been safe but the shadows. He'd learned early to disappear at nightfall, when the drinking started, and never sleep where anyone could find him.

He moved farther into the moonless night, thinking of the woman who'd just died. She hadn't said a word about her own life; she'd worried about her boys.

Swearing softly, he realized she had a right to worry. If they had no kin, the boys would be on the streets before her body was in the ground. Only, he'd asked what he could do to help, and with her last breath she'd told him. He had to keep them safe, and doing so would probably get him killed.

Drum smiled. For as long as he could remember, he'd been making a list of what would kill him. At first it had been all the animals and half humans in camp. Once he'd started to roam, Apache in the area made several additions to the list when he kept stealing their game. Then, of course, there were the McMurray men, Sage's big brothers. Teagen, the oldest, swore once that Drum was worse than any of the plagues of Israel. Tobin, the youngest brother, had given him the meanest McMurray horse on their ranch in payment for a favor. He'd been so sure Drum would kill himself on the horse that he'd slipped a double eagle inside the saddlebag to help pay for Drum's funeral.

And Travis, the middle brother… Drum drew in a deep breath. Travis had found him a job. Correction: the most dangerous job in Texas. Drum had made that death wish by showing off one night to Travis and his Ranger buddies. He not only was fast with a gun and accurate but, thanks to good night vision, he was as good in almost total blackness as he was in daylight.

He outshot them all that night, and now they paid him well for doing what none of them dared.

Lighting a thin cigar, he leaned against the railing and got back to the problem at hand. How was he going to keep the Smith boys safe, when he could barely manage to keep himself alive most of the time? He knew nothing about taking care of kids. The only role models he'd ever had on how to be a man were the McMurray brothers, and they occasionally took turns arguing over which one of them got to shoot him.

Even in the darkness, with his head full of worry, he sensed Sage was near before he heard her footsteps behind him. He waited without turning around until she halted next to him.

For a moment she didn't speak, she just stood beside him. then she asked. "What did Meg need so desperately to tell you?"

"That her boys are in danger. Great danger. She wanted me to get them somewhere safe."

"Relatives?"

"I asked. Both boys said they had none. They'd only been out here for a year, and before that, they were in Virginia for a while. Will said they kept to themselves. The boys couldn't name their nearest neighbor."

Sage brushed his side as she folded her arms. "Do you think there is someone trying to kill them?"

"Yes," he said, wishing he didn't. If he could convince himself they were in no real danger, maybe he could find someone to take them in and walk away. But Drum made a point of never lying to himself.

She twisted and leaned against the railing. "I hate losing someone. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a game, doing the best I can, and I still can't win. The angel of death seems to hold an extra ace”

Drum knew she was talking more to herself than to him. He tossed his cigar and put his arm around her shoulder. "You did the best you could” She felt so right, close like this. He had to fight the urge to crush her to hint

When she didn't comment, he tugged her away from the railing and kissed the top of her head. She had no idea how long he'd waited for her to come back. She'd probably laugh if he told her about how he dreamed of going up to Boston and seeing her. Sage was the one dream he let himself believe in.

Without giving it much thought, he leaned down and kissed her gently, a soft hello kiss with a promise.

For a moment she didn't react. When she did, she pushed hard. "What do you think you are doing?"

"Kissing you." He frowned. "We've done it before. I thought you'd recognize it. It happens when two people touch lips."

She stomped halfway across the porch, then turned back to him. "There for a minute I forgot how infuriating you can be. It's been almost four years since I've seen you, Drummond Roak, and, if you ask me, that's not half long enough. I'm a widow in mourning. I'm older than you. I'm…" He was making her crazy. She couldn't even think, but she knew the list was long. "Men don't just go around kissing women when they feel like it."

"Sage, we need to talk about this…" He had no intention of stopping, so to his way of thinking, she might as well settle into the idea.

"No. We need to talk about the boys, and that's all. This” She waved her hand at the space between them. "This, you and me that you seem to think exists has never been more than a boyish infatuation on your part”

"I'm not a boy.” He was getting real tired of having to remind her. He'd been a man since she left. "I'm man enough to be your man," he said in a low tone.

"No," she answered. "Never, Drum”

He watched her walk back into the hotel without another word. He told himself the gun on his hip had more to do with why she didn't want him than his age, but he couldn't be sure. The night he'd first seen her, she'd been crying because her first love, a young Ranger, had been killed. She'd sworn then that she'd never marry a man who lived with a gun within arm's length of him. She'd fallen for a preacher who proved to be an idiot before she married him, and she'd evidently fallen for a doctor who'd died on her right after the wedding.

Drum figured she'd been unlucky in love enough to be marked as trouble by most, but that didn't matter to hint in his mind, she was already his woman.

If I had a heart, he thought that woman would not only break it, she'd stomp on it and set it on fire. There must be something, wrong with me, Drum decided as he followed her inside. Shooting his toes off one at a time couldn't be any less painful than trying to court Sage McMurray.