“Very well. He is as anxious as I am to get to town. Why delay further?”
The driver grunted.
When the coach started up, his head slid forward against the siding. Then something soft and warm cushioned his cheek and he vaguely remembered a wet, cool cloth against his face and a not-to-be-denied voice saying crisply, “Drink this,” and the burn of straight whiskey from a tilted bottle.
When they pulled into the dusty town, he remembered that she climbed out and started giving orders. “Watch his head. If the doctor is nearby, you men can carry him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the driver said.
“Wait!” she commanded. “Should he have more whiskey if the pain gets worse?”
“We ain’t got more, ma’am. Only had one bottle.”
She looked up and down the dusty trail that passed for a street, pulled a bill from her reticule and handed it over. “Get whatever you think he might need, and bring me the change.”
They manhandled him out of the coach and he thought dimly that his chest might explode with the pain. But the only thing he could recall clearly were the bright red cherries on her hat.
When he finally regained consciousness, he was on a bed in the corner of the doctor’s office, trussed up in tape and bandages with one helluva headache.
Chapter One
Crazy Creek, Oregon
1883
Clayton Black drew rein at the top of the hill and gazed down at the secluded valley stretching below him. He sucked in some air, winced at the familiar pain in his rib cage and let his breath out easy. Two of his ribs were bruised, the doctor had said. One was cracked. He couldn’t take a breath without being reminded.
He rubbed his injured arm as he gazed down at the creek twisting through the land. Bordered by gray-green willow and cottonwood trees, it lazily encircled the tidy town and then meandered off to the west.
He hurt enough that camping out another night held little appeal, but still he hesitated. Crazy Creek looked too civilized to attract an outlaw like Brance Fortier, but you never knew. Maybe Fortier had passed through here. Maybe somebody had seen him, would remember which way he was headed. Not likely he’d stay long in a town as peaceful as this.
Clayton didn’t plan to, either. Just the look of the place—trim picket fences, rosebushes in bloom, boardwalks on both sides of the streets—gave him the jitters. Too orderly. Too civilized.
He squinted under the wide brim of his hat. Newspaper office, mercantile, hotel, livery stable, barbershop, sheriff’s office. A gleaming white church steeple drew his gaze and he groaned. It was one of those towns full of pious people and prayer meetings. A white steeple town.
Too much like his mother’s meticulously kept plantation in Louisiana, and not enough like the dusty, ramshackle ranch in East Texas he and his father called home. Or had, before Fortier killed him.
A lump the size of a walnut swelled in his throat. I’ll get him, Pa. You just lie easy and don’t worry. If he got back alive, he vowed he’d plant a sweet-briar rosebush on the graves of his father and his sister.
Once more, Clayton directed his gaze on the little town curled in the lap of the green valley. The late morning sun poured down like honey. The landscape was so different from the dry, sagebrush-dotted desert he’d ridden over the past four days for a moment he thought the view might be a mirage, a glimpse of some lush emerald and gold paradise. Only thirty miles from Cedarville, but it looked like another planet.
He’d bet money it was Fortier who had winged him and then kicked in his ribs. All he remembered was the thump and sting of the bullet in his shoulder and waking up with his arm in a sling. Now, in addition to the warrant he carried for the outlaw, he had a personal score to settle. His crippled arm was his gun arm. It would be weeks, maybe months, before he could shoot straight.
He tossed back his chin-length black hair and ran his tongue over dry lips. He knew Fortier had passed this way; the outlaw’s trail led straight toward town. He lifted the reins and stepped his horse back from the cliff edge. “C’mon, Rebel. Time to go.”
Funny name, Crazy Creek. There was something he should remember about it, but he couldn’t recall what. Since the shooting, there were still things he couldn’t remember, but something about the place tugged at his insides. It was so pretty and serene it looked painted. Except for that boy down there, larruping through an alfalfa field after his dog, it hardly looked real.
He urged his mount forward, letting it pick its own way down the steep path. However out of place the trim little village made him feel, he’d have to ask around. If he was lucky, he’d pick up Fortier’s trail on the other side of town.
And if he wasn’t lucky…well, then, Fortier would shoot him in the back, like he’d shot Pa and Jannie, and that would be that. In some ways, it would be a relief.
Clayton’s lips twitched into a lopsided smile. He knew only one thing for certain—he would capture his father’s killer or die trying.
The look of the town below him, so settled, so civilized, made him nervous. Yeah, a white steeple town, full of people with refined manners and an extra helping of bigotry.
He pursed his mouth and tried to whistle. No way. He didn’t belong here.
Hell, what was new about that? Being half Cherokee meant he didn’t much belong anywhere.
“There,” Irene murmured in satisfaction. She rearranged the in-work file on the large oak desk and glanced approvingly at her well-organized office. It looked much more tidy since she’d washed the front windows and painted the rough pine walls. The sheriff wouldn’t mind. Besides, he was out of town.
Her office adjoined his, but he didn’t own the building. Nate Cummings, the undertaker, did.
She’d paid Nate three months’ rent in advance and the stocky gray-bearded man had let her do anything she wanted. She’d even spread a large oval braided rug over the plank floor. While Nate’s watery blue eyes had widened, he had snapped his mouth shut and said nothing.
“Crazy Creek never had no lawyer before,” Nate told her. She’d been famous ever since her first afternoon in town when she’d hung out the engraved metal sign she’d brought from the East and promptly got involved in that hostage standoff. Now her pending work file—actually the oval top from one of her hatboxes—overflowed with appointment requests. In the sheriff’s absence, she noted with a flush of pride, people turned to her for advice. They had waited years to settle property boundary questions, draw up wills, have marriages and births recorded. Townsfolk streamed into her office like spawning salmon.
On impulse, she moved to the window. Oh, how good it was to be here in the West! She never wanted to see Philadelphia again. She’d had enough of wealthy clients suing other wealthy clients over some Thoroughbred’s bloodlines. Real law—the constitutional rights she believed in with every fiber of her being—was needed in the West. Out here, the country was still growing. Back East, life—at least for her—had stopped when pneumonia took her father. After that, she couldn’t wait to leave.
Irene’s throat closed. She decided to busy herself dusting out her desk drawers. Settling herself on the hard oak swivel chair, she pulled open the bottom right-hand drawer and leaned over to inspect the contents. A dried-up bottle of Sanford’s ink, two dusty cigars, and—
The door banged open. “Where’s the sheriff?” a low, gravelly voice inquired.
“Gone,” Irene said without looking up. “Is there something I can—”
“Gone where?”
Irene raised her gaze to the doorway and stopped breathing. A tall man stood before her, one arm in a black cloth sling, his leather vest coated with trail dust, his tanned