Shotgun Bride by Linda Lael Miller Page B

her in that place to be doctored.”
    Mandy’s throat ached fiercely. He’s lying, her reason said. “What place?” she whispered, because this was bait she couldn’t help taking, even though she knew a hook was hidden inside.
    “It’s a sort of home for people like her. Consumptives, they call them. Nothing fancy, but she’s got a bed and a roof and enough vittles to keep body and soul together. That’s more than you and I can say most of the time, isn’t it, Mandy?”
    “More than you ever provided for her, too,” Mandy said.
    For a moment, she thought Gig was going to grab her by the hair again, or even slap her, but he restrained himself with a visible effort. “Where’s Cree?” he asked.
    “I don’t know.” In this case, she was telling the truth, though she knew Gig wouldn’t believe her. Even when the two of them were far apart, she and Cree generally found ways to stay in touch—letters, telegrams, messages carried by stage drivers, peddlers, drovers, and drifters. As it was, she hadn’t heard a word from Cree in almost a year.
    “Don’t make me hurt you, Amanda Rose,” Gig cajoled. “I’ll do that, you can be sure that I will, if that’s what it takes to smoke him out into the open.”
    She knew Gig wasn’t bluffing. He’d kill her without a flicker of hesitation or remorse—but not if she was of some use to him. “Suppose I did know where he was,” she allowed. “I’d be crazy to tell you, wouldn’t I? You’d cut his gizzard out just to eliminate the threat, soon as he showed himself.”
    “I reckon he’d come back if you were ailing or bad hurt,” Gig mused, chewing pensively on a blade of grass and squinting as he watched the late-afternoon light frolic on the waters of the creek. “Or dead. He wouldn’t miss your funeral.”
    Mandy felt a chill spill over her. She’d been a fool to stay around Indian Rock this long, pretending her life could be any different from what it had ever been, making believe she might find a way to fit in. If she’d moved on, found a Wild West show to join up with, the way she’d planned in the first place, maybe Gig wouldn’t have caught up with her and she might not be in this fix.
    “Cree’s probably a thousand miles from here,” she said. “If he heard I was dead, he’d be right sorry, but he’s not stupid, Gig. He’d guess that you were laying a trap for him.”
    Gig took her chin in a bruising grip. “Get him here. Tell him you need him. I just want to talk to him, that’s all. Come to some kind of terms. You do that, I’ll ride out of here, and neither one of you will ever lay eyes on me again.”
    “You’re a liar.”
    He drew back his hand to strike her.
    The click of a rifle being cocked stopped him in mid-motion. “I wouldn’t do that,” Emmeline said, calm as all get-out. Last Mandy had seen her, she’d been in the house, about to stretch out for a nap, but she looked wide-awake now, and her aim was dead-on.
    Gig scrambled to his feet, hat in hand, smile anxious and affable. “Now, ma’am, don’t you go shooting me. Sister Mandy and me, we’re family, and we have our little tiffs, it’s true, the way all kinfolks do, but I wouldn’t do this sweet girl any sort of injury. Surely, ma’am, I wouldn’t.”
    Emmeline didn’t lower the rifle, and she still had Gig’s head in the crosshairs. “Amanda,” she said, “get away from that man right now.”
    Mandy got to her feet, groping for her book and wimple, and rushed to Emmeline’s side.
    “Now, ma’am,” Gig rattled on, raising his hands at his sides, to show he wouldn’t go for his gun, “you’ve misjudged me grievously—”
    “Get out of here,” Emmeline said with no wavering in her, anywhere. She might hail from the big city, but she was plenty tough, and she knew one end of that rifle from the other, for sure and certain. Rafe must have taught her. “This is McKettrick land. I’ll thank you to get off it right now, and don’t bother coming