A Fire in the Blood Page 6

  Jess leaned to the left side of Blaze and slid his 44-40 Winchester from its scabbard just as the first shot whizzed over the stallion's head with a high-pitched whine. He urged the horse into the small swale by the east side of the road and rolled from the saddle as another barrage of rifle shots shattered the high plains stillness.

  Before he reached cover, one shot found its mark, tearing a long wicked slash across his right side. He gritted his teeth and levered the rifle, then searched the pines along the rim of the outcrop.

  Amateurs. He had the sun behind him, obscuring their vision while it reflected off their guns. Seeing a flash of metal, he aimed his Winchester and squeezed off a shot. Jess was rewarded by a low guttural cry and the sound of a body rolling back into the brush. He scanned their cover. There were two of them left—unless he had counted the rifle reports wrong or someone had held his fire. Pulling a bandana from his pocket, he stuffed it against the seeping wound in his side and hoped the blood flow would slow down soon.

  Rather than wait and risk growing light-headed or having his attackers come after him, Jess began to crawl along the ravine, gaining higher ground. After a few more desultory shots which he did not return, he heard the two bushwhackers calling to each other.

  "You think we got 'im, Wilt?"

  "Don't use my name, you dumb son of a bitch!"

  The latter gravel-voiced command came from a cluster of greasewood about thirty feet from him. Jess tossed a fistful of pebbles near the bushes and waited a beat. A shot zinged out, revealing Wilt's location. Jess fired so closely after it that the two reports almost blended. His blind shot hit its mark. Wilt tumbled backward and landed with a thud, followed by more questioning from his youthful-sounding companion.

  Billy Argee was sweating in the cool evening air. This was not going according to plan. First he had missed what should have been an easy shot when that damned breed dived off his horse for no reason—no reason at all. Then Ace took a slug and now Wilt was dead enough to skin. That just left him and the breed. Indians could creep up on a man and shoot him before he even knew one was there. He swallowed the brackish metallic taste of fear and began to move. Maybe he could circle around the breed. After all, he had hit the bastard after he rolled off his horse.

  Probably gutshot and bleeding, he reassured himself.

  Jess watched the curly-headed young bushwhacker clumsily thrash through the underbrush. Then Argee turned his head, and Jess got a close look at his face. One of the J Bar hands! He stepped out from behind a hawthorn tree and leveled his rifle.

  "Drop the weapon, boy. Right now." He watched for any sign the kid would try to make a break, but Argee threw the rifle to the ground.

  "Damn you, you gut-eatin' greaser," Argee screamed as he whirled around and grabbed the Army Colt on his hip.

  Jess shot him before he cleared leather. As the youth lay sprawled on the hard, rocky ground, Jess muttered, "Second dumb thing you did today." He shook his head. "Stupid way to die, especially considering I didn't want to kill you."

  He walked over to the still form, knelt, and began to search the dead man, hoping for some clue to the rustlers. He found a couple of dollars, a photograph of some saloon girl, and makings for cigarettes. He studied the dog-eared picture, then put it in his pocket. "Maybe if I can find her, she'll be able to tell me something about the man you worked for."

  A search of the other two men and their gear yielded nothing of any use. By this time, Jess was growing decidedly light-headed. He leaned against the nervous bay and whistled for Blaze. When the stallion trotted up dutifully, Jess held on to the saddle horn for a moment to steady himself before attempting to mount. He was several hours from the ranch and not at all optimistic about his chances of staying conscious long enough to get there. As he rode, he wrapped his soogan around his waist, letting the excess of bedroll fall over his leg. Bulky and hot, it at least staunched the blood. He gritted his teeth and kept his eyes on the horizon.

  Chapter Five

  Lissa dashed across the grass at the side of the house, darting between two birch saplings. The huge gray dog loped effortlessly at her heels, emitting low rumbling woofs as he followed his mistress in the familiar game.

  "You awful fellow, Cormac. You know you're not supposed to catch me. Wait until I throw the ball," she said, laughing as she leaned against his rough- coated side and let the dog nuzzle her. Standing on four feet, he could reach her face. His shaggy chin whiskers tickled her as he slurped her, making halfhearted attempts to seize the small leather ball she held aloft in her right hand.

  The sound of a rider approaching caused the hound and and his mistress to cease their roughhousing. Glancing toward the western horizon, where the sun was setting in a glorious ball of orange fire, Lissa saw the man leaning over the neck of his blaze-faced horse.

  "Jess!" She dropped the ball and raced toward him. Cormac loped past her in long, ground-eating strides.

  Jess saw the specter galloping across the yard, too small to be a horse but too large to be any kind of dog he had ever seen. A timber wolf? He shook his head, which was spinning from loss of blood. Was he seeing things? He reached for his gun, aware that his hand was moving horrifyingly slow. Then he heard Lissa’s cry as she ran up behind the brute.

  "Don't shoot, Jess. He's only a dog—an Irish Wolfhound. You're hurt. What's happened?"

  She reached up as he started to dismount. When he stumbled against her, the dog interposed his considerable bulk between Robbins and his mistress. Shooing him away, she placed Jess's left arm on her shoulder and began helping him toward the house. When her right hand touched his side and came away wet with blood, she gasped.

  "You're bleeding!"

  "Sometimes that happens when I get shot," he said through clenched teeth.

  "But who? Where?"

  "Three rustlers—one of them worked for your father. Don't recall catching their names."

  "Worked . . ." she said with dawning horror.

  "Yeah. I tried to bring in their horses but couldn't pull the reins. Had to turn them loose about an hour ago."

  Swallowing her bile, she said nothing.

  They were approaching the ranch house porch before Jess realized where she was headed. "Not here. I need to get to the bunkhouse."

  "Don't be foolish. You'll never make it that far."

  “I need patching up. That's usually the cook's job."

  "Not at J Bar. I'm the nurse. Come on." She tugged him toward the steps.

  Jess considered resisting but knew he would pass out soon and opted not to do it in the yard. A grim-faced Germaine came charging down the hall to head them off at the front door.

  "He can't come in here," she hissed at Lissa.

  "We always treat injured hands at the big house."

  "He's no cowhand," Germaine replied.

  "Get out of my way or I'll turn Cormac loose on you."

  Germaine gasped in indignation but backed stiffly aside as Lissa and Jess entered the front door. "He'll bleed on my carpets," the housekeeper said tightly.

  "Thoughtless of me, ma'am," Jess said with a grin that ended in a grimace.

  Lissa ignored the woman's hateful remarks and headed down the long hall to the kitchen. "Make yourself useful, Germaine, and boil me some water."

  They made it into the kitchen and she eased him onto a high-backed chair, then set to work gathering bandages and disinfectant while Madame Channault, moving as stiffly as if she were moribund, boiled a kettle of water on her fancy new cast-iron stove.

  "Let me help you take off that shirt," Lissa said with a briskness she was far from feeling. "You've lost a lot of blood. You're soaked all the way down your pant leg!" Beneath his swarthy skin, his face was deathly pale.

  "You should've seen the soogan I wrapped around me. It took the worst of it," he said as he fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. "You got something to drink around this place? I need reviving."

  "Germaine, fetch a glass of brandy from Papa's stock."

 
"I do not think your father—"

  "Considering how much of his liquor you consume, I'm sure he won't mind Jess having a small draught for medicinal purposes." Her eyes met the housekeeper's in a steely glare which convinced the older woman to capitulate.

  Lissa finished unbuttoning Jess's shirt and peeled it off, trying not to cause him any further pain.

  Germaine returned with the brandy and handed it to Jess, then attended to the water now boiling on the stove. He raised the delicate crystal glass in a mock salute, then downed its contents in a quick gulp and shook his head. "Better," he pronounced.

  Kneeling, Lissa inspected the deep gash. "I've never treated a gunshot wound before," she said, chewing her lip as she wrung out a cloth soaked in the hot water and began to cleanse the affected area.

  He cocked an eyebrow. "You've treated injuries before though?"

  She forced a gamine grin. "You afraid of my skills, Robbins? I was a hospital volunteer in St. Louis." She did not add that she had only been allowed to tend women and children in the hospital. Here at J Bar her duties had never been more serious than to bind up blistered feet or rope-burned fingers.

  She felt the housekeeper's eyes burning into her back as she worked. "Hold that pot of water closer, Germaine."

  Casting a half fearful look at Jess, the housekeeper spoke in rapid French. "You have never tended a half-naked man before. You should have had the hands carry him to the mess kitchen for treatment. You are only doing this because you desire him. Tis a foolish schoolgirl's fancy."

  "Somehow I suspect Miss Lissa's touch is a lot gentler than the mess cook's, whatever her motive," Jess replied in smooth, idiomatic French.

  Germaine Channault almost dropped the pot she was so reluctantly holding. Her face took on a hue even darker than the rosy color of the bloody water inside the pot. She sputtered but said nothing.

  Lissa jerked the cloth away from his wounded side, her cheeks, too, scalded with a blush. "Where on earth did you leam to speak French?"

  His voice was amused. "Not in the same place you did."

  "Certainly not likely, since I learned in a girls' school—Miss Jefferson's Academy in St. Louis. Every lady must possess the social graces of French conversation," she parroted in that language. "Where did you study?"

  He shrugged, then winced as she resumed her ministrations. "North Africa. I was in the French Legion."

  "The French Foreign Legion?" Her eyes were round as Mexican gold pieces.

  "It's not as romantic as they'd like you to believe," he said drily, then changed the subject. "You ever sew up flesh before?"

  She blanched but met his eyes. "I've embroidered hundreds of samplers." She swallowed. "It can't be all that different. The gash is clean now." She stood up and began to search through the medical supplies for a needle and thread.

  Jess watched her work, noticing the faint trembling in her hands. For all that, she had been amazingly calm and levelheaded at the sight of so much blood. "Most women I know would have a fit of vapors and leave me to tend myself. I've sewn up more than a few of my own wounds."

  "I think you'd better let me handle this one," she said as she pressed a fresh cold towel to his side. "This will slow the bleeding," she added. Covertly Lissa studied his bronzed, muscular arms and chest. His skin was marred in several places by small white scars. What a pity such a beautiful body has to be disfigured. Heat flamed her cheeks again as she tore her eyes from the sleek muscles and patterns of crisp black hair. On second thought, the scars were not very discernible and only added to his exotic virility. She fought the urge to run her hands over his skin. "I see you've led every bit as dangerous a life as your reputation would lead me to imagine."

  "A debauched and disreputable life, too." He smiled cynically, as if reading her mind, and watched her blush again.

  She eyed the needle and thread. "You're the one who'll pay for making me nervous. Her tone was acerbic.

  "I make you nervous because I'm forbidden, Lissa. You're just intrigued because you're defying convention." He turned his gaze to Germaine.

  The housekeeper's lips thinned, but she said, "He is telling the truth, Lissa. You should leave him alone."

  "Is that what you really want, Jess? For me to leave you alone?" she teased as she reached for the needle she had laid out on the table beside them.

  Ignoring her taunt, he removed the cold towel and said, "What a man wants usually has little to do with what he gets. Just sew me up and be done with it."

  "First I have to put this carbolic solution on the wound." He held still as she poured the fiery liquid into the gaping slash. "You're amazingly stoic. Is it because of your Indian blood?"

  "No. My Spanish blood. My mother was half Mexican, remember? They're a cussed tough lot."

  Taking a deep breath, she punctured the skin and pulled the needle through, then connected the lower side to the upper. Puncture. Pull. Tighten. She repeated the methodical stitching, drawing the ragged edges of flesh closed. He held perfectly still, the only indication of his pain a fine sheen of sweat dotting his forehead.

  "You're not going to pass out and ruin my stitches, are you?"

  "No. The brandy had remarkable restorative powers," he replied through clenched teeth as she tied off the last stitch.

  "That wasn't too hard, considering it's the first time I've done it," Lissa said speculatively.

  "Easy for you to say," he countered, raising his arm and flexing his side experimentally. "What did you use—a braided reata and a Tuareg scimitar to draw it through?"

  "Number seven embroidery thread," she replied waspishly.

  As she tore off clean linen strips to bandage his wound, she looked at his ruined shirt and then turned to the housekeeper. "Germaine, go to the washroom and get one of Papa's old shirts. Mr. Robbins's is beyond repair."

  Madame Channault threw up her hands in disgust. With a few choice remarks in French, she swished out the kitchen door to do as she was ordered.

  Lissa knelt beside him, bandages in hand. "Raise your arms." He complied. Beneath his dark skin, sinuous muscles flexed in marvelous symmetry. Her mouth went dry. She licked her lips and reached around him with the bandages.

  Jess could see the tip of her pink tongue flick across her lips as she concentrated. Then, as she reached around him, her breasts pressed against his chest. Against his will he felt the blood rushing to his groin and cursed silently. I shouldn't have that much blood left!

  Lissa could smell the faint scent of horse and male sweat combined with that undefined essence that she now thought of as his own. A deep, pervasive heat stole into her limbs and pooled low in her belly, causing her pulse to race. She knew she was trembling as she wound the bandage repeatedly around his slim waist. Her blood thrummed through her veins. Every fiber of her being felt sensitized yet oddly lethargic at the same time. No man has ever made me feel this way!

  She tied off the bandage, but did not pull away from him. Instead she raised her face to his and their eyes met. Her hands fell to rest against his chest, her fingertips burying themselves in the springy black hair. He lowered his arms but sat very still, making no move to touch her.

  "Lissa, this is dangerous."

  "I know," she said in a small choked voice.

  Finally, hearing Germaine at the back porch, he brushed her hands away, then stood up on very shaky legs. His unsteadiness was caused by a great deal more than the injury he had sustained, and they both knew it.

  "Much obliged for the doctoring," he said hoarsely and turned away, reaching for the shirt the housekeeper thrust at him. With a grimace of pain he slipped it on and began to button it. It was a soft pale gray that emphasized his eyes and contrasted with his swarthy skin. Germaine had selected it because it was old and faded, but the effect was the opposite of what she intended.

  "You really should get some rest," Lissa said. Her voice cracked.

  He cut off her train of thought by saying, "I will—at the bunkhouse." Picking up his hat, he walked very careful
ly toward the back door. With one hand on the sash, he asked, "That great brute of a dog still around? I don't think I'm up to a tussle just now."

  "I'll keep Cormac from licking you to death," she replied, struggling to regain her composure. "Consider yourself lucky. He normally eats strangers. For some peculiar reason, he's taken a considerable liking to you." Lissa called the dog, who bounded up, tail wagging and tongue lolling as if he were a sheepdog instead of a yard-high behemoth.

  She held her arms around the great brute's neck while Jess whistled for Blaze. When the stallion trotted around the corner of the house and stopped next to him, he very carefully mounted and rode toward the corrals. She watched his retreating back, mesmerized.

  Germaine Channault studied the troublesome younger woman through slitted eyes. Marcus would not be pleased with Lissa's fascination for that savage. She considered how she could use the situation to her own advantage as she turned back to the kitchen.

  * * * *

  Late the following morning, Germaine watched from the kitchen window as Lissa slipped quietly from the side door carrying her medicine basket. The smitten girl was going down to the bunkhouse to tend Robbins's injury. If only Marcus would ride home in time to see his precious daughter acting like a common trollop, treating that half-naked mongrel alone in his quarters!

  Jess lay stretched out on his bunk, enjoying the blissful quiet now that the last of the hands had finished their chores around the corral and headed out for their day's assignments on the range. Normal rising time was four a.m., when the bunk-house cook yelled, "Grab it now or I'll spit in the skillet!"

  Cowpunchers had stumbled from their beds cussing and rubbing their eyes as they threw on their clothes and made halfhearted attempts at washing their faces in ice-cold water before lining up at the mess hall for their morning meal of bacon, beans, and sourdough biscuits.