fingers clutched at the horn but slipped off it. As he tumbled off the roan, he vaguely heard a voice--no, two voices, female voices, cry out, 'Custis!'
One of the voices belonged to Aurora, the other to Molly Kinsman. Aurora and Molly... that might prove to be interesting.
Too bad he wasn't going to be awake to see what happened.
That was his last thought as he slipped away into nothingness.
CHAPTER 10
Longarm woke to a soft, cool touch on his brow. Angels? he thought. Not likely. Not after the life he'd led. A fella with a tail and a pitchfork would be more like it.
But wherever he was now, it wasn't hot, and instead of brimstone, he smelled the clean fragrance of a woman's hair. More of his senses began to return to him, and he realized he was lying on his belly on soft sheets with his face turned to the side so that it wouldn't be buried in the pillow underneath his head. A sheet covered his lower half.
He was stark naked too. That discovery made Longarm open his eyes to see what the hell was going on.
'You're awake. Good. I was worried about you, Custis.'
It was Molly Kinsman's voice, hovering somewhere closely above him. With a grunt of effort, wincing from sore muscles, Longarm pushed himself up slightly so that he could look around. Molly was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, and he could see genuine concern in her green eyes. He saw something else too... anger maybe. 'What...' he managed to say.
'You're in the spare bedroom in the ranch house,' she told him. 'I figure where you are is what a man like you would want to know first. A U.S. marshal.'
Yep, she was definitely mad at him, he thought. Her voice had dripped scorn when she mentioned his real identity.
'Deputy U.S. marshal,' he corrected her. 'My boss is the chief marshal in the Denver office.'
Molly stood up, making the bed's mattress bounce a little. Longarm's injured back twinged.
'What does it matter?' she demanded. 'You still lied to me, lied to all of us. The only reason you came here is to spy on us!'
Longarm propped himself on his elbows and regarded her solemnly. 'I got the impression a few minutes ago, Molly, that you were worried about me.'
'I was,' she snapped. Her voice softened a little as she went on. 'When I saw you fall off your horse outside, and when I saw the bloodstains on your back, I knew you'd been hurt bad.' She drew a deep breath. 'But that was before I thought about who you really are and why you came to the Diamond K! You're just here to protect that... that hussy!'
'You mean Aurora Mcentire?'
'Of course that's who I mean! All you care about is that government timber contract I heard you talking about. I was right inside the parlor, watching through the window. I heard the whole thing.'
Longarm looked her over. She was wearing a dress again, a simple dress of light gray cotton. It clung to her lithe young body. At the moment, however, Longarm was less interested in her coltish figure than he was in whether or not she had been hurt in the fighting before he got there. He didn't see any sign of bulky bandages under the dress.
'Are you all right?' he asked her. 'I was afraid you might catch a bullet, the way they were flying around so.'
Molly shook her head. 'A couple of the hands were wounded slightly when those loggers attacked the ranch, but that was all. No one was killed--on either side.' She sounded a mite disappointed as she added that last part, thought Longarm. He breathed a sigh of relief. 'Glad Mrs. Mcentire and I were in time to stop that battle 'fore it was too late.'
'She's the one you ought to arrest. We haven't done anything wrong since this whole thing started.'
Longarm didn't remind her of the ruckus in Timber City the day she had arrived from the East. That brawl wasn't the only one that had broken out between the cowboys and the lumberjacks either.
Fist-fights were one thing, though, and full-scale war was another. If the truce between the two factions didn't hold long enough for him to run the real rascals to ground, war was what they would have here in the Cascades.
He put that thought aside for the moment and asked, 'What time is it?
How long have I been in here?' A glance at the window had already told him that night had fallen.
'It's about eight o'clock,' Molly told him. 'It was around five when you passed out in the yard.'
So he had been unconscious for three hours. And before that, the day had been too busy for him to grab anything to eat. Breakfast in the hotel dining room in Timber City had been over twelve hours earlier, so no wonder he was suddenly ravenously hungry. And thirsty too, he realized.
'You think I could get something to eat and drink? My stomach thinks my throat's been cut, and I'm so dry I'm spitting cotton.'
'Of course.' Molly started toward the door, but added over her shoulder, 'I'm still not sure you deserve it, but no one can say the Diamond K is inhospitable.'
Longarm didn't argue the point with her. He just sank back down on the pillow and waited for her to return.
It wasn't Molly who came into the room a few minutes later carrying a tray, however. Wing grinned at Longarm and said, 'Mist' Custis feelee much better now, yes?'
