Setting the tin aside, I pull my small sack from its spot next, steeling myself for the sight of my ruined gray dress inside. Even the idea of wearing it makes me feel ill, but I examine it closer anyway, folding up the hem until the now brown-black splotches are successfully hidden from sight. The adjusted length won’t exactly be fashionable. It will actually come dangerously close to obscene, but I figure that a potential peek of stockings will be better than a certain view of bloodstains.
I sew fast, trying not to add more blood to the dress as I jab my fingers in the dwindling light of the day. After the last stitch, I hang it from a nail in the rafters in hopes that some of the wrinkles will also fall away overnight, and that it will remain free of the random bits of hay that always manage to cling to myclothes no matter how careful I am to stay on my bedroll.
Finished with my task, I give the dress a satisfied nod before stepping toward the hayloft hatch, falling back into my usual routine as I pull it up to go check on Tess in her stall now that she’s in for the night. Instead, I immediately drop to the hayloft floor, too surprised to stop thethumpof the hatch closing again or to even pray that I hadn’t been seen by the figure below.
I hadn’t heard him come in, a dead giveaway that this isn’t Elliot swaying his way through the aisle while he belts whatever songs the girls had sung at the saloon. And if that hadn’t already been enough to convince me, the blinding speed and steady aim with which this man pulled a gun certainly would have been.
Oh, God. Oh, God.I am frozen in place, too afraid to reach for the knife I have hidden under my skirt or to crawl for the gun still tucked away in my sack.No. God, please not like this.
“I know you’re up there. Best show yourself,” a deep voice barks out from beneath me, and I can’t breathe as I listen to him step closer to the ladder leading up to the hatch. “I’ll give you to the count of three.”
He is directly below me now, but I still can’t get myself to move. “One.” The ladder creaks when he sets his weight on it. “Two.”
Move, I will myself.Move. Don’t just let him kill you.There is a long pause, as if he is waiting for me to act as much as I am. Or, maybe by some miracle, he has simply dismissed me as unimportant and gone on his way?
My answer comes with the sudden upward explosion of the hatch door, lantern light spilling in as I startle backward and find myself squinting down the barrel of a gun.
“I haven’t done anything,” I say, the first defense that comes to mind as my spine hits the bale of hay behind me. “Please, I haven’t done anything.”
The lantern lowers slowly, enough that I can make out the manwho is holding it. Beneath a well-worn black hat, he stares at me from a pair of deep brown eyes set above a strong nose and jaw. A few days’ worth of dark whiskers and a mustache marking an undeniably handsome face that is likely only a few years younger than my father’s had been. Although he looks like he’s lived an entirely different kind of life in that time.
The man cocks his head, appearing as caught off guard to find me up here as I was to find him down below, but after a few more seconds, he lowers his weapon. “Christ, you’re— you’re just a girl…” I hear him mutter. I sit up straighter at the offense while he takes a quick look around, still with little more than his upper body through the opening. A pretty tight fit given the breadth of him. When his search pauses on my dress hanging in the rafters, he looks back at me, and color rushes to my cheeks.
“You alone up here? Or you got a beau who is planning to be stupid?”
“A beau?” My blush deepens. “No, no one else is up here.” I feel a pulse of fear at the realization that I just admitted to being alone, sharp enough that I do reach for my knife now, disentangling it from my dress and gripping the handle of the blade tightly as I hold it out in his direction.
“Little late for that, don’t you think?” he says, enough of a gentleman to avoid looking too long at the place where I had undoubtedly revealed an actually obscene flash of my undergarments as I’d gone for my weapon. “Don’t you have a gun?”
I glance toward the corner.
“Christ,” he mutters again, before ducking back down the ladder. “Put that can opener away and come down here. I won’t hurt ya.”
Can opener?I stare at the knife in my hand, my body still stuck in place until he whistles up at me. “You comin’? Or do I need to haul you down?”
“I can manage,” I mutter, scooting over with my heart pounding and crawling down the ladder against my better judgment. However, I don’t get the impression that I have much say in the matter. “No need to be so pushy about it.”
He lets out a half-laugh, the unexpected sound making me slip on the first rung almost as soon as I’ve stepped onto it. His hand snaps out to catch my waist to steady me, but he releases me the second I have my feet on the ground.
Now that we are both standing on the stable floor, I have a chance to fully appreciate the size of my would-be opponent. He towers over me so much that I have to tilt my chin up to meet his eyes as he stands with a strong pair of arms banded across an equally strong chest.
Good God.For some reason, my mouth has gone dry, and I look down to swallow in hopes that it will help me speak. But all it does is help me take in the rest of him. His dark clothes with a fair share of trail dust and dirt on them, his scarred-up brown leather chaps and scuffed-up boots that look like they have survived several years of hard use. The shiniest thing on him is the gun at his hip, which looks decades newer than my own now that I can see it properly. And now that it isn’t being aimed at my face.
“I’m not gonna hurt ya,” he repeats, his voice kinder this time. He holds his palms up as if to prove it before briefly lifting his hat to push back loose brown waves in need of a trim. “As long as you don’t go messin’ with what’s mine.”
“What’s yours?” I question. “What precisely is it that you think I’m going to take?”
He pivots, pointing toward the only other horses stabled along with Tess, one a curious but regal black stallion and the other a buckskin mustang with a dark streak down its back like a snake lying in the sand. The antsy toss of its head suggests it would throw me just as soon as look at me. That one must be his.
“Why would you assume…” I start to say, turning my attention back to its owner and doing my best to draw myself up to my full height, because really,whyis he so big? So overwhelming when each breath I take in carries the scent of simmering campfire and aged leather? “Fine. I won’t gomessin’with what’s yours.” I narrow my eyes as I meet his gaze and point my finger at him, my best imitation of a threat in an attempt to recover from my initial reaction. “But you have to do the same.”
He glances up in the direction of the hayloft, and I correct him by pointing in Tess’s direction. His eyes flick between me and her. “The brown and white paint there?”
He walks away from me without waiting for an answer, heading straight for her stall to look her over. Tess—sweet, trusting girl that she is—sticks her head out at once to greet him, nosing at his pockets until he produces an apple. I cough to cover the way my stomach pipes up in envy.
“She looks well.” He gives her forehead a friendly scratch. “You take good care of her.” He says it as a statement of fact, and a small part of me lights up with the praise, because Ihavebeen doing my best to take care of Tess. Isn’t her fault she is stuck with me.
He gives her a final pat before turning to me again, his eyes lingering on my face for what feels like a heartbeat too long before he bends to pick up the rucksack at his feet. “Next time someone threatens you, don’t hesitate,” he directs, as he begins to rifle through its contents. “You either fight or flee right then, you hear me? Don’t wait for someone to choose for you.”