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  “Where’s Fronteras?” Lucas asked as he gently placed Dee on the wagon bed. She didn’t move.

  “Here.”

  “Put him on the wagon, too.”

  Two of his men lifted one of the wounded and laid him on the wagon. Lucas saw the Mexican’s dark eyes open. “Is she all right?” he asked huskily.

  “She’s hurt,” Lucas replied, his voice tight. “Fronteras, you have a place on my ranch for the rest of your life if you want it.”

  Luis managed a semblance of a smile, then his eyes closed again.

  “Will, get them to the doc. I’ll be along in a few minutes.” Lucas stepped back. William nodded and slapped the reins against the horse’s back.

  Slowly Lucas turned his head to look at the Bar B men. Killing rage was bubbling in his veins, and it was cold, ice cold. Kyle Bellamy stood with his men, his head down and his arms hanging loose at his sides.

  Lucas wasn’t aware of moving, but suddenly Bellamy’s shirt was knotted in his big fist. The man looked up, and Lucas’s powerful right arm cocked back, then drove his iron-hard fist into Bellamy’s face.

  He had never before taken joy in fighting, but he felt savage satisfaction every time his fists thudded into Bellamy. He beat the man to the ground, then pulled him up and beat him some more. He kept seeing Dee’s blood-soaked body, and he hit Bellamy even harder, feeling ribs crack as he drove his fists into the man’s sides and midsection. Bellamy made no effort to fight back, merely raising his arms to try to block some of the blows. That didn’t incline Lucas toward mercy.

  Finally Bellamy pitched forward and lay still, and one of the Double C men caught Lucas’s arm as he started for him again. “No point in it, boss,” the man said. “He can’t feel a thing.”

  Lucas halted and stared down at the motionless man at his feet. His face was unrecognizable, but Lucas didn’t feel the satisfaction of vengeance. His rage was so deep that even killing Bellamy wouldn’t ease it.

  He hadn’t promised Tillie that he wouldn’t kill Bellamy, but he owed her. If she hadn’t ridden her heart out to reach him, Dee would have died alone in her cabin. He let his hands drop.

  “What do we do with them?” one of the men asked.

  Lucas growled. There wasn’t any use in taking them into town; they hadn’t broken any of the laws within the marshal’s jurisdiction. Unless he was willing to string them all up right now there was nothing to be done. “Let them go,” he said.

  He looked at the Bar B men, and his voice was almost a snarl when he said, “Get off this land, you bastards, and take your scum with you. If any of you ever feel brave enough to attack a lone woman again, I swear to God I’ll make you think hell is paradise compared to what I’ll do to you before you die. Is that clear?”

  The Bar B men answered with sullen mutters. Lucas went to his horse and mounted. If he didn’t leave, he was likely to kill them all anyway.

  It was full dark, and the moon hadn’t yet risen, but the light from the countless stars was enough to let him see the road. He rode as fast as he dared and caught up with the wagon just before it got to town.

  Doc Pendergrass and his wife, Etta, swiftly went to work on Dee. Luis Fronteras had been put in another room, and he was deemed less critical since he was still conscious and Dee wasn’t. Lucas was pushed from the room as soon as he had placed Dee on the table, and he paced back and forth like a caged animal.

  Tillie slipped in the door. Though the saloon would be busy now that it was night, she was wearing a dark green dress with long sleeves and a high neckline rather than the short, gaudy outfit she wore when working. Her face was very pale, but her expression was calm. “Did you get there in time?” she asked.

  Lucas took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah. I hope. She’s cut up pretty bad from the glass where they shot the windows out, and she’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “But they didn’t—”

  “No. She was still holding them off when we got there.”

  He hadn’t realized how taut she had been until he saw her subtly relax. Her enormous brown eyes never left his face. “Kyle?” she whispered.

  “I beat the hell out of him.”

  She flinched, then controlled herself again. “Thank you, Lucas.”

  He shook his head. “No. She’d be dead now if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “And Luis Fronteras. Is he all right?”

  “He’s hurt, but he’ll make it.”

  She stood with her head bent for a minute, then sighed and straightened. She squeezed his arm in a gentle caress before she left.

  It was over an hour before Doc Pendergrass came out, and he firmly shut the door behind him when Lucas started forward. “I got all the bleeding stopped,” Doc said. “Etta’s cleaning her up now.”

  “Is she conscious?”

  “Not really. She roused up a little a couple of times but drifted out again. Sleep’s the best thing for her right now. I’ll tell you more after I take care of Fronteras.”

  Lucas sat down with his elbows propped on his knees and his head hanging forward. He needed to see her, to reassure himself that she was all right.

  It didn’t take the doctor as long with Luis as it had with Dee. He was out again in fifteen minutes. “Stitched up and sleeping,” Doc said tiredly. “He’ll be all right, probably up and around in a couple of days.”

  “What about Dee?” Lucas asked in a hard voice.

  Doc sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was a slim, good-looking man in his early forties, but right now weariness made him look ten years older. “There were a lot of cuts. She’s had a bad shock to her system. She’s going to be a very sick woman for several days, feverish and weak.”

  “I want to take her to the ranch. Is it safe to move her?”

  Doc looked up in surprise, then comprehension showed in his face. Like everyone else in town, he had thought Lucas connected with Olivia Millican. Lucas Cochran and Dee Swann . . . well, well. “No,” he finally answered. “Not for a couple of days, maybe longer. It’d be better for her to stay here with Etta to look after her anyway.”

  Lucas’s face was hard. “When she’s well enough to travel I’m taking her to the ranch.” There was a part of him that wouldn’t relax until he had her safe under his roof. Until the day he died he would never forget how he had felt when he had first seen her soaked in her own blood.

  16

  LUIS WAS HURT. OLIVIA DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT WHAT HAD happened until the next morning, when Beatrice Padgett visited and was relating, in shocked tones, the events of the day before to Honora. “. . . and one of Mr. Bellamy’s men, a Mr. Fronteras—I believe he must be a Mexican—decided to help Dee hold them off, and he was shot, too.”

  Olivia made a muffled sound of shock. Honora and Beatrice looked toward her, and Honora quickly got to her feet at the sight of her daughter’s white face. “Sit down, dear,” she said, urging Olivia toward a chair. “It’s horrible, isn’t it?”

  But Olivia pulled back, her eyes full of anguish. “Where—where is he?” she gasped. “Mr. Fronteras. Where is he?”

  “Why, at Dr. Pendergrass’s, of course. Mr. Cochran took both him and Dee to the doctor’s to be tended,” Beatrice answered. “That saloon girl, the one called Tillie, fetched Mr. Cochran to help. Isn’t that the strangest thing? I wonder why she rode all the way out to the Double C.”

  Olivia whirled and ran from the house, ignoring Honora’s alarmed cry.

  Luis! Beatrice hadn’t said how seriously he was hurt, but it must be bad if he was still at the doctor’s. For the first time in her life Olivia forgot about decorum and dignity; she snatched her skirts up and ran, her heart thudding in a sick panic. It was three blocks to Dr. Pendergrass’s office. She darted around people on the sidewalks when she could and shoved past them otherwise. By the time she reached the office her hair was falling down and she was gasping for breath, but she had never cared less for her appearance.

  She shoved the door open and stumbled inside. The first pe