She opened her eyes but didn’t see her captor. All she saw was her father lying in that street, rubbing his spectacles. Signaling her to run. To spare her life, but more than that, to resist evil and protect the cause of right.
That final act of courage, of selflessness, crept under her skin. Sharpened her wits. Stiffened her determination.
Lockhart thought to weaken her spirit, to force her into a corner with an impossible choice.
Well, she happened to know someone who specialized in the impossible. She’d not leave the future in Lockhart’s hands, not when there were better hands for the job.
Grace drew in a steadying breath, then stared Milt directly in the face. “‘The salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: he is their strength in the time of trouble.’”
His mouth pursed and the veins in the side of his head started to bulge. “Not this garbage again.”
She ignored him and continued on, her soul and her voice growing stronger with each word. “‘He shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.’”
Eyes glowing with rage, Lockhart uncrossed his arms, lunged forward, and slapped Grace across the face. “Shut up!”
Her cheek stung and her jaw ached, but her heart clung fast to hope.
29
Get back in that bed, Leander, before I fetch the rope and tie you up again.” Helen stood, hands on hips, and glowered at her hardheaded mule of a patient, who didn’t have the sense God gave a blind armadillo.
“Get out of my way, Helen, before I pick you up and move you myself.” The fool stood in his bare feet, shredded trousers, and mussed hair like some kind of crazed warrior, ready to defy any obstacle that dared block his path.
Well, she dared. And she wasn’t backing down.
“You were practically dead yesterday. It’s too soon to be out of bed, and you know it. Let the marshal handle it.”
He strode toward her without a wince, the crutch he’d fashioned from a tree branch and a wad of old rags supporting him as he moved. Bearing weight on his injured leg must have been excruciating, yet he didn’t let on.
Helen had to admit that he’d accomplished more than she’d ever thought possible while she’d been gone. He’d found his discarded trousers, somehow managed to get his one good leg into the right side and fastened the top about his waist with a white braid that seemed to have been woven from strips sliced from one of the extra bandage rolls. Not only that, but he’d bypassed her barring of the door by taking the entire thing off its hinges. Then he’d proceeded to make his way to the pecan grove, find a suitable branch to use as a crutch, and drag it back to the cabin.
Helen eyed his flushed face and perspiring brow, then frowned. The starch went out of her spine as she hurried to his side and lifted the back of her hand to his forehead. Warm.
“You’re pushing yourself too hard, Lee. Please. I know you want to help Grace, but killing yourself in the process does no one any good. Think of Rachel. Think of—”
His rigid posture relaxed just a bit, and something softened in his eyes. “Think of who, Helen?”
She turned away, marched over to the stove, and started slamming pans around. Well, pan, really. There was just the one. But she made the most of it, getting a spoon in on the action. She needed to fill the silence with something, anything, other than the words burning on the tip of her tongue.
Then a hand touched her shoulder.
Slowly, taking special care not to move too fast and throw him off-balance, Helen turned toward the man who was trying to walk out of her life. She might be an expert at avoiding men, but that didn’t make her a coward.
Lee met her gaze, his eyes penetrating. “Think of who, Helen?”
“Think of me. All right?” She twisted sideways and tossed her spoon back into the pan on the stove. The rattle echoed loudly in the room, but not as loudly as the thumping of her heart. “I gave up four days of my life saving your sorry hide,” she spouted, “and you just want to throw it all away, as if it doesn’t matter. Well, it does matter. You matter.”
“So does Grace Mallory.” His quiet voice, so calm and controlled, stoked her outrage.
“You think I don’t know that? That I don’t care?” She sidestepped him and paced to the hole where her door used to be then pivoted sharply to face him. “Grace is my friend. I want to do whatever I can to help her. But you killing yourself won’t do her any good. You’re barely strong enough to stand. How do you think you’re going to mount a horse with that leg? If you can even find a horse. Yours is roaming the countryside at the moment.”
The softness left Lee’s gaze. His eyes narrowed in warning. “Helen.”
“Do you think I don’t understand? That I don’t know what it’s like to feel powerless when someone stronger steals away something you are responsible for? Something you love?” She stormed back toward him and jabbed a finger in his face. “You’re not the only one to grow up in a house filled with violence, under the thumb of a man who thought he controlled you. Who stole everything you ever loved and used it against you.
“I watched my mother die, Lee.” Helen’s arm fell to her side. “Watched her body break and her spirit wither away. And I was powerless to stop it. I know how helplessness eats at your soul and drives you to take crazy risks. I went so far as to purposely incite my father’s wrath so he would take his nightly anger out on me instead of her, but it didn’t save her. She died anyway.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but she shook her head. She wasn’t finished.
“I know how much you want to help Grace. How you feel like she’s your responsibility, your victim to save. But you’re not the only one shouldering this load. There are good men looking for her. Smart and capable men who know Grace personally and care about her. Doesn’t the Bible say there’s a time to kill and a time to heal? Well, this is your time to heal, Lee. So stay put and heal. Please.”
“I can help, Helen.” He limped toward her, a muscle in his jaw twitching each time he put weight on his left leg. “I might not know Miss Mallory as well as these friends of yours, but I know Lockhart. I’ve studied him for months. I know how he thinks, the games he plays. My information can aid their search.”
Helen swallowed. He was right. And heaven help her, when he looked at her with those heroic green eyes, glowing with the fire of determination, she melted inside.
Yet not to the point of becoming a mindless puddle. The man still needed a keeper, and she was the only one fit for the job.
“All right,” she said. He blinked, no doubt stunned by her capitulation. Well, brace yourself, cowboy. This bronc ain’t done buckin’ just yet. “I want Grace found as much as you do, and if you have information that will help, I’ll get you in on the rescue action. But on my terms.”
The smile stretching beneath his mustache faltered. “What terms?”
“The men will return to town at nightfall. Hopefully, they’ll have found Grace by then. But if not, I’ll be sure you’re there to meet them. I’ll borrow Betty’s buckboard and drive you there. You are not to get anywhere near a horse.”
His mustache twitched suspiciously, but his lips didn’t curve. “I suppose I can live with that.” He gave her a pointed look. “For now.”
Helen ignored the qualifier. “And while we wait for the marshal and the others to return, you’ll do nothing more strenuous than lie around and run your mouth with all that essential information you feel so compelled to impart.”
“Anything else?” He spoke in a stern tone, but Helen was almost certain she saw a twinkle in his green eyes. It set her pulse to jumping like a pack of startled katydids.
“As a matter of fact, there is.” She eyed him from top to bottom. “You’re not going anywhere until we find you a decent pair of pants.”
Lee laughed. The deep, rich sound echoed through the tiny room and flooded Helen’s chest with an unfamiliar yet thoroughly delectable warmth. She wanted to grasp it, nestle it close, and never let it go.
But that would mean holding fast to the man before her. A man she had no right to hold.
Unless, of course, she was holding him in order to help him back to the bed, which might be required. As his laughter faded, so did his color, leaving him pale and bit unsteady on his feet.
Helen moved to his side and slid an arm about his waist. He smiled his thanks, a sheepish grin that seemed to admit his show of strength had been a thin veneer all along. It brought an answering smile to her lips, because it meant he trusted her enough to expose his weakness. Something people who’d grown up in their circumstances rarely did.
As she helped him to the bed, he wrapped his right arm around her shoulders. Surely just to ease his balance, but little frissons of awareness danced over her skin anyway. He limped, she supported, and the crutch mostly got in the way, but they managed to get to the bed in one piece. Not wanting to drop him into place and jar his wounded leg, Helen eased him down by sitting with him. His fingers dug into her upper arm as he let the crutch clatter to the floor and reached for the mattress with his left arm.
Thinking to fetch a cool cloth to wipe his brow, Helen started to rise, but Lee’s grip held firm on her shoulder.
She turned to him, her brows arching in question.
“I’m sorry about your mother.”
Five simple words shouldn’t have such a profound impact on her, but they did. Helen’s chin trembled slightly. She gritted her teeth to still the reaction. “Thank you,” she whispered as she dipped her head, the empathy radiating in his gaze too much to absorb.
People had said the same words to her countless times at her mother’s funeral, and even Betty and Katie had murmured similar sentiments when they learned of her history. Yet no one had ever spoken them with such depth of understanding, as if they recognized her pain because they had lived through it themselves. Somehow it hurt and healed at the same time.
He didn’t say anything else for a long minute. Just sat next to her and gently rubbed her arm with the fingertips that draped over her shoulder. Then, after a final squeeze, he withdrew his arm and braced it behind his back to better support his weight.
“Lockhart is a master manipulator.” Lee frowned at his injured leg, and Helen imagined the thoughts running through his head. Frustration at his limitations. Regret, perhaps even guilt, for letting himself be shot in the first place. As if he could have stopped such a thing from happening.
“We know,” Helen tried to reassure him. She pushed to her feet and crossed to the washstand to pour him a glass of water and fetch a cool rag. “The marshal is taking that into consideration.” She wrung out the excess water from the cloth, the droplets tinkling as they splashed into the basin. “Before I left town, I heard Tori say something to Emma about grabbing a list of all the ranchers and farmers in the area from her delivery records. She and Ben were going to mark the households that would be the most likely targets for a confidence man like Lockhart. Secluded places, homes with adult daughters or widows who would be susceptible to his flattery.”
Lee straightened, his forehead wrinkling. “Wait. There was a woman. On the train.” He shut his eyes tight. “Dark hair, I think. She wore a straw hat trimmed with a thick black ribbon. A schoolteacher.”
Helen stilled halfway around the bed. The water sloshed slightly in the glass, but it made no sound. Neither did she. Not even to breathe. She wanted nothing to distract Lee from his recollections. This could be the key to finding Grace.
“She boarded the Fort Worth & Denver City line in Washburn.” He moved his hands in the air as if physically arranging the train car and its passengers. “I was in the rear of the car, pretending to sleep with my hat pulled over my face. Lockhart sat four rows ahead, chatting across the aisle with some drummer selling patent medicines. The only females in the car were attached to families. Up front, a young wife, giggling and hanging on her husband’s arm as if they were on their wedding trip. And in the rear opposite me, a middle-aged woman traveling with four children who seemed determined to either climb on her, climb on each other, or climb over the seat in front of them to annoy the other passengers. Then the teacher boarded, and Lockhart lost all interest in the drummer.”
Lee finally opened his eyes, but his gaze remained unfocused and distant.
“Lockhart jumped to his feet to help her with her bag then offered to share his seat with her. She tried to refuse at first, but the only completely unoccupied seat was the one in front of the mother with the monkey children. When she pursed her lips in disapproval, Lockhart made some comment about how she reminded him of his favorite teacher, who’d been a strict disciplinarian but who’d also gone out of her way to ensure that he didn’t fall behind when he had to miss school to work the family farm. He quoted a poem or something fluffy and romantic, and the woman smiled. A gentle steering was all it required after that for him to get her to sit with him.
“I tried to follow their conversation but only caught snatches of it here and there. She said something about her mother passing, which made sense because she was dressed in black. Probably traveling for the funeral.” Lee turned his head, and his gaze sharpened as he met Helen’s eyes. “Which means she wouldn’t have been on your friend’s list. If they were picking out homes with single women, they wouldn’t choose an elderly couple.”
Helen winced. “And if Lockhart had already made inroads with this woman on the train . . .”
“She would make the easiest mark,” Lee finished. “He’ll go to her.”
Helen handed Lee the glass of water and draped the damp cloth over the end of the bed frame. “But where is she? Do you know her name?”
Lee chugged about half the water, then set the glass on the floor, the lines around his mouth tightening at the movement. Once upright again, he glanced at the ceiling. “The beginning of her name had something to do with feelings. Mad . . . Glad . . . Sad . . .”
“Madison? Gladney? Sadler?” Helen rattled off the first names that came to mind, but Lee shook his head and frowned.
“No.” He heaved a sigh and stroked his mustache in a slow movement that tugged his cheek downward. “I need to see your friend’s list. I’d probably recognize it if I saw it.”
Helen gave a sharp nod. “I’ll head to the farm and get the buckboard.” She glanced through the open doorway. The afternoon sun already dipped lower in the sky than she would like. The sooner she got Lee to town, the sooner they could help find Grace. “Betty should have some overalls or trousers from her late husband that you can wear. I’ll grab the first thing I see and be back in less than an hour.” She shot him a pointed look. “In the meantime, get as much rest as you can. If we’re going to find Grace, we need your mind sharp, not dull from exhaustion. Understood?”
He nodded. Helen turned to leave, but when his hand grabbed hers, she paused.
Twisting to face him, she tried to concentrate on the matter at hand and not on the distracting warmth of his fingers surrounding hers. “Yes?”
“Seymour.” His green eyes bored into hers. “The woman disembarked in Wichita Falls like we did, but stayed at the depot. Lockhart waited with her, seeing to her luggage and whatnot. If she wasn’t continuing on to Fort Worth on the original train, she had to have been taking the spur to Seymour. It was the only other option.”
Helen squeezed Lee’s hand, trying to offer a generous portion of the one thing she usually kept in very scant supply—hope. “We’ll find her.”
He squeezed her hand in return. “I pray you’re right.”
30
That’s the last one on the list.” Malachi Shaw sighed heavily, then glared at the rapidly darkening sky.
They had just finishing questioning Mr. Bedford, father of two grown daughters—one of whom was betrothed to a ranch hand from the Rocking T over in Knox County, and one who was so painfully shy that she never once looked the marshal in the eye. She’d glanced briefly at Amos when he asked her a direct question about Lockhart, but even then, she stammered her answer and blushed furiously. No
t exactly a woman who could be counted on to keep secrets. However, they’d searched the premises anyway. The house, the cellar, the barn. And came up empty. Again.
“I know you don’t want to hear this, Bledsoe, but we’ve got to head back. We’ll be pushing it as it is to get back before full dark hits.”
Amos shook his head. “I can’t go back. Not without Grace.”
The marshal folded his hands over his pommel. “And I can’t leave my wife unprotected.”
“I know.” Amos met his gaze. “I’m not asking you to.”
Shaw’s saddle creaked as he shifted his weight. “Look, Amos, I know what it feels like to have the woman you care about taken from you. I lived with that terror for hours piled upon hours when Angus got his hands on Emma last summer. It nearly drove me mad. You’re desperate to do something, anything, to ensure her safe return, I get it, but you’re a greenhorn out here. You don’t know the land. Probably passable at best with a pistol, and your opponent is a stone-cold gunman. He might have reason to keep Grace alive for her information, but there’s nothing to keep him from shooting you on sight.”
“Then I’ll have to make sure he doesn’t see me.” Amos set his shoulders, pretending he wasn’t already saddlesore and exactly as green as the marshal portrayed him. His inexperience didn’t matter. Grace mattered. And the longer they debated his retreat, the longer she remained in Lockhart’s hands.
“Porter might have already found her,” Shaw said, though they both knew it was a long shot at best. “Miss Mallory could be waiting for you in Harper’s Station even now.”
“If so, have her telegraph the depot in Seymour. I’ll check a few more houses in the area with what little light is left, then head to town. I’ll stop by the railroad’s telegraph office, touch base with the sheriff to see if he has any news to report, then find a room for the night and start fresh at dawn.”
Shaw raised a brow at him. “Folks aren’t going to let you search their property without my badge to gain you access.”