men are saying. The murderers have threatened to kill you, and you have no protectors. Why not take on Mr.—”
“Buchanan,” Billy put in. “His name is Noah Buchanan.”
Lest the conversation erupt into a shouting match, Isobel had agreed to walk a short distance from the men to discuss the situation with Susan.
“Isobel,” her friend said softly. “Can you trust me?”
Nodding, Isobel acknowledged the truth. Though she had not planned to get close to the others on the journey, they had won her friendship after all.
“This is a lawless land,” Susan said. “If you insist on finding your father’s killer and getting your inheritance back, you must have protection. I know you ride and shoot well, but you’ll never survive against fifty armed men. If you won’t go to Santa Fe and get married like you should, let Mr. Buchanan watch over you.”
Isobel glanced at the huddled group of men. Billy Bonney and Dick Brewer clearly were exhorting Noah to action. “Don Guillermo may not accept me now, anyway,” she murmured, finally admitting aloud her fear. “Without my dowry, I cannot push for marriage. By law he should marry me, but his family is powerful.”
“Then you must get your rightful land. And to do that, you must let Mr. Buchanan look after you.”
Isobel knew it was the right decision—the only possible conclusion. She gave her friend a quick hug and hurried across the slushy snow to the men.
“Very well, Señor Buchanan,” she informed him. “If you agree to protect me, I shall bear witness to the authorities about the murder.”
“Sure, I’ll take you on,” Noah said. “If you’ll marry me.”
She gasped. “Marry you? Borrachón! What have you been drinking?”
“Not a thing.” He studied her for a moment, then gave a nod. “We’ll get the preacher over there to hitch us up. I’ll tell folks you’re the wife I brought in from the trail. That’s true enough.”
She stared at the blue-eyed man. “But I am already engaged.”
“And the last thing I want is to get married.” He glanced at Dr. Ealy, a missionary who was standing quietly in the background. “We’ll get it annulled later. Extreme circumstances…marriage without parents’ consent…lack of consummation…we’ll think of something. Once I convince Chisum to sell me the land I’ve been after and you settle your business in Lincoln, you can go to Santa Fe and marry your don. Meantime, I won’t lay a hand on you.”
“Whoa, Buchanan!” Billy laughed. “Don’t get carried away.”
“Naw, kid. It’ll all be on the up-and-up.”
Again Isobel assessed the bearded, brawny trail boss. Did she really need his protection? Probably. Her father had been murdered despite his armed guard.
Could she delay marrying Don Guillermo? Certainly. Her fiancé had never even responded to her letter of intent to journey to America.
Retrieving the stolen land-grant titles was her primary goal. More than anything, she ached to possess those rich pastures on which to graze cattle of her own.
“Very well, Mr. Buchanan,” she declared. “If you will protect me while I search for my father’s killer and recover my family’s stolen land, I shall marry you and prove to Mr. Chisum that you are very settled. And I shall be your witness in the law courts.”
“Then I reckon we’ve got a deal.”
Dick Brewer spoke up. “Stay at my place tonight, Noah, and head for Chisum’s ranch in the morning. We’ve got to get Tunstall’s body to Lincoln, and we can see the others safely into town.”
The two conferred a moment before Dr. Ealy cleared his throat. Accustomed to unexpected weddings, funerals and the like, he had agreed to perform the ceremony and wanted to get on with it.
Isobel barely heard his words. Instead she stared down at the pointed toes of her red boots. What had she done? Minutes ago she had been planning to marry Don Guillermo of Santa Fe. Now this leather-clad cowboy who owned nothing but his horse and gun would be her husband.
The ceremony ended, and Susan presented her friend with a bundle of folded garments. “Not much of a wedding gift, Isobel. But wear them, please. Those killers will recognize you right away if you stay as you are.”
As the shaken group set off down the moonlit trail in one party, Noah explained to Isobel the situation in Lincoln Town.
Jimmie Dolan had profited from his store and vast acreage by keeping the small landowners financially strapped, until the young Englishman John Tunstall had moved to the area. On the advice of his business partner, Alexander McSween, Tunstall had started his own store and ranch.
Dr. Ealy added that he, along with his wife, two young daughters and Susan Gates, had been summoned to Lincoln by McSween. “It looks as if we’re already in McSween’s war,” he observed, “and we haven’t even arrived in Lincoln.”
“Just keep quiet about tonight’s business,” Noah instructed the group. “We’ll do the same.”
As Isobel watched her companions head north in the darkness, she and Noah turned their horses east. Less than an hour later, they arrived at an old cabin with a sagging front porch. With some trepidation, she followed this man who was no more than a stranger up the steps.
Without speaking, he lit two oil lamps and began to build a fire. She watched him work, appraising biceps that bunched as he placed logs on crackling kindling, brown fingers that set an iron pot he had filled with water on a hook above the blaze. Broad back. Shaggy brown hair and beard. Muddy boots. Leather chaps. Such a common man, this Noah Buchanan.
“Like to wash up?” He asked the question so abruptly that she took a step backward.
He dusted his hands on his thighs before pushing open a door and carrying her bag into a small bedroom. She followed, surveying with some dismay the narrow iron bed, the washstand with its chipped white crockery, the window fitted with paper. Noah filled a cracked bowl with heated water, then shut the door behind him.
Isobel walked to the door and listened to him whistling in the other room. Dare she trust the man? She slid her revolver from her bag and set it on a table near the tub. With another glance at the door, she changed into a nightgown. Then she removed her comb, dipped her hands into the water and finally began to relax.
Curling onto the narrow bed, she sighed deeply. But as sleep crept over her, a movement rippled behind her eyelids. Horses cantering up a trail. Men shouting. Gunshots.
Noah sat on a three-legged stool before the fire and warmed his hands. A second pot of water had begun to steam. The woman in the next room would be asleep by now. No matter how hotheaded, she must be exhausted.
He smiled and shook his head as he filled a large basin with hot water and set to shaving his whiskers off with Dick Brewer’s straight razor.
Good old Dick. As Tunstall’s foreman, he was bound to get into the thick of the trouble. Noah peered into a mirror hung by the iron cookstove. If Dick got hurt, he couldn’t stand by, no matter what he’d promised
