darted to the nightstand and caught up the loaded Peacemaker. Maybe it was nothing—one of the vaqueros returning early from the mountains, where they’d moved the herds for spring grazing, or some visitor from Tucson, or—
But what was she thinking? The grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway chimed two in the morning. No one would be so foolhardy as to travel at this hour. No one, at least, with any good intent.
Gripping the heavy pistol, Rose crept along the wall and peered around the edge of the window. Except for the baby, she was alone in the house. The vaqueros were out with the herd. Esperanza, the cook, and her husband, Miguel, who tended to things around the place, had left that morning to visit their newborn grandchild in Fronteras. Rose herself had insisted they go—foolishly, she realized now. Whatever trouble lurked outside, she would have no choice but to deal with it alone.
An artery pulsed along the curve of her throat as she scanned the moonlit landscape, the barren front yard where John had never allowed so much as a paloverde or creosote bush to sprout because it might provide cover for marauding Apaches; the open-sided ramadas and the adobe bunkhouse; the corrals where those horses not taken on the cattle drive milled and stamped.
Yes, something was out there.
Rose pressed closer to the glass, the pistol leaden in her shaking hand. She had fired the big gun at tins and bottles, but never at any living target, let alone a human being. Her Quaker parents had raised her to detest violence. All the same she knew, with a ferocious maternal certainty, that if threatened, she would kill to protect her child.
At first she saw nothing. Then, directly below her, almost hidden by the overhanging shadow of the roof, the dark shape of a solitary horse emerged, its head drooping, its saddle empty.
A gasp of relief escaped Rose’s taut lips as she sagged against the wall. A riderless horse was a matter for concern, but it posed no immediate danger, unless—
Nerves screaming, she pressed toward the window again. The horse could be a ruse, she reminded herself, a trick to lure her outside. She would be a fool to drop her guard now, when an army of intruders could be waiting in the shadows.
Rose’s breath stopped as the horse shifted its stance to reveal, dragging from a stirrup by one entangled boot, the dark, limp form of a man.
She pressed close to the glass, forgetting to hide herself. Judging from what she could see, the rider appeared to be a stranger. He was tall. Rose could calculate that much from the length of his trapped leg and the lean sprawl of his body. His clothes were plain, dark and trail worn. But beyond that, she could not tell how badly he was hurt, or even whether he was still alive.
She gripped the gun in an agony of indecision. To go downstairs and open the door would jeopardize her own safety and, infinitely worse, that of her baby. But how could she leave a man—a good man, for all she knew, maybe with a wife and children waiting at home—to die on her very doorstep?
As Rose hesitated, torn to the point of anguish, she saw the man’s arm move, saw his hand stir and lift. His fingers strained, quivering toward the stirrup, only to fall back, clenched in pain and frustration.
A moan of pity broke in Rose’s throat Whatever the peril, no decent soul could turn away from this human being.
Laying the gun on the bed, she flung on her flannel wrapper and knotted the sash tightly around her waist. Then she picked up the weapon again, paused to thumb back the hammer and, with a last glance at Mason’s small, sleeping form, hurried down the dark hallway toward the stairs.
Her steps faltered as she neared the massive front door. For the space of a heartbeat she clung to the heavy crossbar, gathering her courage. The entry way was pitch-black, the house eerily silent. If only she’d thought to bring a lantern…
But the stranger was in pain and need, and there was no more time to be lost. The moon was shining outside, Rose noted as she shoved back the bar. She would be able to see well enough.
Her knuckles whitened on the pistol grip as the door creaked open. For a moment she held her breath, gulping back old terrors as she waited for a rush from the shadows. But this time, except for the solitary horse drooping next to the hitching rail, there was nothing.
“Steady, boy.” Rose approached the animal cautiously, fearful that it might bolt and drag its injured rider back into the scrub. “That’s it…easy…” She caught the reins that were dangling loose over its neck and looped them around the rail.
The rider had neither spoken nor moved. He lay as still as death in the moonlight, while Rose labored to free his worn boot from the stirrup.
The leathers, she swiftly discovered, had become twisted around his ankle as the horse dragged him along the ground. So stubbornly were they tangled around his high-topped boot that she could not tug it loose. Rose hesitated, then laid the pistol on the ground. The man was surely too far gone to pose any danger.
Panting with effort, she tugged and twisted, but the stranger’s boot was caught fast. To free him, she would need to slide the boot off his foot, worsening any possible bone fractures in the process.
Praying she wouldn’t hurt him too badly, Rose cradled his leg against the curve of her waist and began, slowly and carefully, to work away the boot, which was so old and worn that the leather had molded like a second skin to the lean, bony contours of his foot. She was so intent on her task that she forgot her peril until the stranger spoke.
“No tricks, lady.”
The hoarse whisper struck Rose like a bullet. She turned to find herself staring down the barrel of her own discarded gun. The stranger’s face lay in shadow, but there was no mistaking the raw desperation in his voice.
“You heard me, lady. I don’t want to hurt you, but try anything cute, and you won’t live to be sorry!”
Rose knew she should be frightened, and she was. But bubbling hotly over her fear was a tide of anger. Her trembling hands balled into fists as they dropped to her sides.
“You crazy fool!” she snapped. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help you? I could’ve left you out here to die, and maybe I should have!”
Her words echoed on the silent wind. For the space of a long breath the stranger did not respond. Then Rose heard the sound of sharp-edged laughter in the darkness. Laughter that ended in a grunt of pain.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
“Hell, yes, I’m hurt,” he snarled. “Get me loose from this horse, and then you can do something about it.”
“That’s exactly what I was trying to do when you interrupted me,” Rose said coldly. “May I go ahead now?”
“Go on.” His hand held the pistol steady as she turned back to working the boot off his foot.
“You could have broken bones,” she said. “Tell me if I hurt you.”
“Won’t make much difference if you do.” His breath sucked in, then rasped painfully out of his lungs. “I’m looking for John Colby. Is this his place?”
“It is. But he’s…not here.” It would not be wise to tell the stranger John was dead, she reasoned, at least not until she knew who he was and what he wanted.
“Are
