“Mrs. Thornton.” He gave her a benevolent smile, as if he were here to help her in some way. “Or is it Mrs. Wendler? I find this all so confusing. As you can see, we found your wayward husband. Or rather—” He looked down at Jack in disdain. “He found us.”
“Please, let him be. I can help you.” Celia didn’t think about the words as she said them. All she wanted was for them to leave Jack alone. “I can see that you get paid.”
Mr. Shane sneered at her. “Pardon me, ma’am, but I don’t believe a word you say. Your husband here has quite the way with words, and forgive me for assuming that you must also.” He glanced at his colleague. “Mr. Fain, if you will assist here. We ought to keep this moving along. I’d like to be out of this godforsaken place by morning.”
The tall man peeled himself off the tree and stepped toward Celia. She took a step back, alarmed. “I promise you he will pay it back. We will pay it back.” But her pleading words fell on deaf ears.
Mr. Fain reached out for her arm, and just as his grip clenched around her wrist, Jack lurched toward them, unsteady on his feet. “Don’t you touch her! It’s me you want. She has nothing to do with this.”
Mr. Fain jerked Celia around, away from Jack’s reach as Shane threw Jack back to the ground. Celia tried to shake off Mr. Fain’s grip, but he only held tighter and grabbed her other arm for good measure. Shane pulled a fist back again, aiming squarely at Jack’s face.
Celia opened her mouth to yell, plead, beg, offer anything for him to stop—but someone else did so first.
“You leave that man alone!” a woman’s voice shouted from somewhere back in the trees.
Mr. Shane stopped, his fist in midair, and Mr. Fain jerked around, placing Celia in front of him. She strained to look through the trees. She didn’t have to search for long when Penelope Purcell, armed with a closed umbrella, stepped forward.
Mr. Shane began to laugh, slowly at first, and then building, until Celia could also feel the stoic Mr. Fain chuckling behind her.
“All you’ve got is a bunch of women coming to your rescue, Wendler.” Shane laughed again as Jack looked between Celia and Mrs. Purcell, clearly confused.
“Leave,” he said to Mrs. Purcell. “Please.”
“I’ll do no such thing, Mr. Wendler. And neither will these ladies.” And behind Mrs. Purcell, women began to emerge, one by one, until it seemed the entire town of them stood there.
Chapter Twenty-one
The women stood there, holding the line like an army battalion and wielding shovels and pitchforks and fireplace pokers. A few even held pistols or shotguns. Crouched on the ground, the side of his face feeling as if it were swelling rapidly, Jack lost count of them. Here and there, he recognized a few he’d met from his time in town. They couldn’t have simply wandered over here. They’d come to help him.
He glanced at Celia. Had she organized this? But she looked as surprised as he was
“Why don’t you leave that be?” Mrs. Graham, the woman Jack helped with her saddle several weeks ago at the livery, aimed her shotgun at Fain, who’d reached for his pistol. “Mr. Wendler? If you’d be so kind as to relieve your friend of his pistol, we’d all be grateful. And please, sir, do release the lady.”
Jack rose slowly, half expecting Shane to take the opportunity to land another fist in his stomach, but Shane remained put, gaping at the crowd of women.
Fain had released his grip on Celia, and the moment Jack pulled the man’s pistol from his belt, he turned to his wife. She nodded at him, and he breathed a little easier.
“Gentlemen, why don’t we go have a little chat with our new sheriff? I’m sure he’ll help us see you onto the next stage back to wherever it is you came from. Or perhaps a jail cell,” Mrs. Purcell said. And with that, a few of the women moved forward and led a befuddled Garrity Shane and his companion away, back through the trees and toward town. The rest of the ladies began to follow, a few coming to ask Celia and himself if she and Jack were all right.
Still stunned by the turn of events, Jack couldn’t call up his most pressing question until Mrs. Purcell came to check on them.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why were you all here?”
“Last Chance protects its own,” she said, standing a little taller, her umbrella in hand.
“But I’m—”
“You’re one of us, as you’ve shown us time and again. Of course we’d do everything we could to help.”
“I ran into Mrs. Purcell when I was searching for you,” Celia added.
“It’s a good thing you did. You folks let me know if you need anything.” The older woman smiled warmly at them before following her friends back through the trees.
“I don’t . . . I still . . .” Jack shook his head, trying to make sense of it all. “You came for me. They came for me.”
“Of course I did. You’re my husband,” Celia said. She smiled as she looked at the trees where the ladies had disappeared. “Mrs. Purcell told me just this morning that you’d helped her carry some purchases from the mercantile one day. Mrs. Zack, the woman with all the children I asked you to bring meat to, found you thoughtful and kind. Mrs. Young appreciated you helping her daughter when she slipped on some ice. Gretel said she was grateful for you chasing down her little son when he went running across the road. And there were so many more.” Celia gazed at him, pride in her eyes.
She
