the boot. Holding her breath, she began easing the leather from around the threadbare stocking. When she glanced around, she saw that his gun hand had fallen to the ground. He was watching her cautiously, his jaw clenched against the pain.
“So, when will your husband be back—uh—Mrs. Colby?”
“What is it you want with him?”
“I—blast it, woman—” He muttered a string of curses as his foot slipped free of the boot, allowing the leg to drop. His hand, however, kept its grip on the pistol.
“You can let go of my gun,” Rose said coldly. “I don’t intend to harm you.”
“I’ll think about that after I’ve seen John Colby.” His voice grated with determination. “When did you say your husband would be back?”
“I didn’t.” Swallowing her fear, she forced herself to crouch beside him. He had propped himself on one elbow, the pistol clutched in his free hand. A chill knifed through Rose, stabbing to the marrow of her bones.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, her throat dry and tight. “What do you want with John?”
A muscle twitched below his sharp cheekbone. “Let’s just say I’ve shown up to collect on an old debt,” he muttered.
“You mean to kill him, don’t you?” The words burst out of Rose with an audacity she might not have possessed if her husband had been alive.
“No, I only need his help…his word.” The stranger coughed, doubling over in sudden agony. “Get me in the house,” he said. “Now!”
Rose’s eyes swiftly measured his length and bulk. He was at least six feet tall, with broad, heavy shoulders and a deep chest. Too big a man for her to drag up the steps, let alone lift. “Can you walk?” she asked cautiously.
“My legs are fine. Just damned sore.” He struggled to rise, then sank back in obvious pain. As his arm shifted, the moonlight revealed an ugly, dark blotch still oozing crimson down the left side of his shirt.
Drops of sweat glistened on his skin as he strained to get up. “Give me your hand.”
Rose knew she had to take control now, while she could. “Give me the gun first,” she said quietly.
His black eyes flashed with sudden wariness. “Who’s in the house?”
“Nobody who could do you any harm. Give me the gun.”
He hesitated, then shook his head groggily. “Can’t trust you,” he mumbled. “Can’t trust anybody till your husband gives his word. Let’s go inside, Mrs. Colby.”
Rose thought of her son, asleep in his cradle upstairs. Anxiety made her bold. “No,” she said.
“No?” He glared at her, as if questioning her sanity.
“Not until you give me the gun.”
“From here, lady, I’d say you were in no position to argue.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Rose retorted, masking her fear with ice. “You’re badly wounded, and I’m the only one who can help you. Shoot me, and you won’t last till morning.”
He blinked, as if trying to clear some unseen darkness from his vision. His gun hand quivered. “Your husband—”
“John died four months ago.” Rose thrust the truth hard into him like the point of a lance. She saw him slump, saw the resistance ebbing out of him. “Give me the pistol,” she said more gently. “Believe me, I’m all you’ve got.”
His eyelids drooped, then, with effort, jerked upward again. The stranger had lost a great deal of blood, Rose surmised. It was all he could do to stay conscious. He did not even resist as she reached out, grasped the Peacemaker by its long barrel, lifted it from his hand and carefully released the hammer.
“Come on,” she said, shoving the weapon into the knotted sash of her robe. “Let’s get you up those steps before you pass out.”
Crouching close, she managed to work her shoulder under his right arm. His body was rank with sweat and blood, his clothes saturated with wood smoke. The blending odors ignited memories of death and terror in Rose’s mind, but she forced them aside. This man was too weak to fear, she reassured herself, even though every instinct whispered that she was wrong.
“Help me,” she ordered, gathering her strength. “Now!”
A grunt of agony exploded through his teeth as they lurched upward together. Rose staggered under his weight, fighting for balance as he struggled to get his footing. His body was as hard as ironwood, all bone and sinew through his clothes.
“Can you make it up the steps?” She strained against him, her flesh hurting where his hand gripped her shoulder.
“I’ll make it.” He gained the first step, then the second, biting back curses. She could feel his trembling heat along her side; she could feel the labored pounding of his heart.
Something flashed through Rose’s memory—the image of a wounded coyote whelp she had once found in the brush, half-dead, its eyes still glinting with a desperate defiance. Hungering for something to nurture, Rose had begged John to let her take the wretched creature home and care for it, but he had drawn his pistol and shot it before her horrified eyes. “You’ve got no sense at all, woman,” he’d said. “A coyote’s a wild animal. First chance a varmint like that gets, it’ll turn on you for sure.”
A wild animal
The man at her side had that same hunted air about him, and no matter how he might be suffering or what he might tell her, Rose knew she could not afford to trust him.
They had gained the porch. The stranger was reeling like a drunkard. It was all Rose could do to keep him upright. All the same, she forced herself to stop short of the door.
“I’m not taking you under my roof until I know,” she declared, bracing her weight against his ribs. “Who are you? What did you want with my husband?”
“Latigo.” He spoke with excruciating effort. “I knew your husband from the Apache wars. He said if I ever needed help…”
The words trailed off as his knees buckled, then his body collapsed in Rose’s arms. She tried to hold him, but his weight was too much for her. His blood left a streak of crimson down the skirt of her dark blue wrapper as he slid to the porch, shuddered and lay still.
Panic shrilled alarms in Rose’s head as she groped for his pulse. Reason argued that she and the baby would be safer if he died, but when her fingertips, searching along his jugular, found a weak but steady flutter, she broke into a sweat of relief. He was alive, but his life was trickling away with every heartbeat. There was no time to lose.
Urgency, now, drove her to fling open the door and seize the stranger’s feet, one booted, one covered only in a half-disintegrated dark woolen sock. As she dragged him along the tiles toward the kitchen, Rose prayed silently that she would know what to do. She had nursed the cuts and sprains of the vaqueros and cared for John during those last terrible months when he lay barely aware of her, but she was no doctor.
