Outlaw Wife. Ana Seymour

for back East and administer a paregoric now and then to ease the pain of the bloat. Animals in Bramble tended pretty much to themselves, just like the people.

      The thump against his front door had him lifting his bushy white eyebrows in surprise and crossing the room at a faster pace than he’d have used on his way to Koenig’s cow.

      He opened the door wide, then drew in a breath of genuine alarm when he saw the slumped body of Simon Grant. Blood covered his face and stained the entire side of his buckskin jacket. “Good Lord, Simon. What’s happened to you?”

      He went down on his knees beside the younger man’s inert body and put a finger alongside his neck, feeling for a pulse. It was reassuringly strong. “Can you hear me, Simon?”

      When there was no response, he dragged his friend’s body over to the cot where John slept when he wasn’t in the mood to deal with his landlady’s motherly scoldings.

      Simon may be alive, but it didn’t take John long to see that he was badly hurt. The sheriff’s first thought was that he’d been stomped by a horse. But he dismissed the notion as unlikely. There wasn’t a better horseman in all Wyoming than Simon Grant.

      “What happened to you, son?” he asked again, his voice cracking with distress. Simon had indeed been like a son to him over the years. He would have been one in fact if things had worked out differently between him and Cissy. He’d better go fetch his daughter now. There was no doctor in Bramble, and whatever had happened to Simon, his injuries were beyond John’s veterinary skills.

      He straightened up and started to leave, but a moan brought him back to Simon’s bedside. “Beaten… and…robbed,” Simon gasped.

      John’s face tightened. “Someone did this to you?”

      Simon gave a barely perceptible nod. “Took… all…the money. Took…Rain Cloud.”

      “Never mind the money and the horse, lad. What did they do to you? They’ve beaten you half to death.”

      “Kicked.”

      John blanched. “Who was it? Did you recognize anyone?”

      Simon’s head moved a half inch to each side. “Outlaws.”

      John clenched a gnarled fist. “Look, Simon. I need to get help. I’m going to fetch Cissy to start patching you up.”

      There was the faintest trace of a smile on Simon’s swollen mouth. “She won’t come.”

      “Of course she will.”

      Simon shook his head, more forcefully this time, then immediately thought better of it. The movement made it feel as if his brains had spun clear around inside him.

      “You underestimate my daughter if you think that hurt pride will keep her from helping you at a time like this, Simon,” John said sternly. “I’m fetching her. You stay right there.”

      Simon watched the sheriff leave, moving only his eyes. “I’m not going…any where,” he said with a half chuckle that hurt all the way to his toes. Then the blessed blackness came once again.

      

      His pa must have been right about his hard head after all, Simon decided. By midafternoon he could sit up for minutes at a time before the room started spinning again. He even managed to muster a smile of gratitude as Cissy pressed another cool cloth against his swollen cheek.

      The diminutive schoolteacher didn’t respond to the gesture. “I must look something fierce,” he said, gently moving her hand away with his.

      “You were never that pretty to start out with, Simon Grant, so don’t let your vanity suffer any.”

      He would have laughed if he hadn’t already experienced what that felt like along his ribs, which Cissy had pronounced broken. “At least three of them,” she’d said briskly.

      John had gone off to send some telegrams about Simon’s bushwhacking. It was the first time he and Cissy had been alone since he’d broken off a twoyear “understanding” that had been understood entirely differently by each of them. “Are we ever going to be friends again, Cissy?” he asked softly.

      “So’s I can bake you apple pies every Sunday and be conveniently available as a partner at the socials when it’s too much trouble to find yourself a girl?”

      “You do make heavenly pies, Cissy darlin’.” He tried a grin, but it didn’t work. The entire right side of his mouth felt as if it were swollen to the size of a pig’s bladder. It probably looked just about as attractive, too.

      Cissy gave a great sigh and slid backward on the sheriff’s tiny cot. “I think you’ll recover, Simon, more’s the pity.”

      The tired look in her brown eyes belied her words. He’d only been semiconscious when she’d arrived at the office with her father, but he’d been coherent enough to see that she’d been deeply distressed by his condition. And she’d worked for hours now to get him cleaned up, bathed, his side bandaged. She’d not left him all day, had sat patiently applying wet cloths to his face. A veritable angel of mercy.

      For a minute the vision of that other angel flickered through his head. Had he really come that close to heaven?

      “You should have been a nurse, Cissy,” he said.

      “I might have been. At the time I thought I had my reasons for staying in Bramble instead of heading East to nursing school.” Her reproachful look left no doubt what those reasons had been.

      Simon shifted on the cot, then regretted it. “Ahh,” he breathed. “You might as well light into me, Cissy, just like everyone else has today.”

      Her expression became contrite. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You don’t need hassling right now.”

      She reached toward his cheek with the cloth, but he pushed her hand away. “Don’t worry about it. I’m grateful for your help. Really, I am.” He tried to lean his weight back on his elbows to lever himself off the bed. “Now, if your pa would just get back here with a horse for me, I’ll be on my way.”

      Cissy opened her mouth in horror. “You haven’t got the brains of a tortoise, Simon Grant. You’re not going anywhere.”

      He slumped back on the bed, convinced by his body rather than Cissy’s words. “I reckon I could set a spell longer,” he gasped.

      “You’re not moving from here for the next three days. Maybe more. We’ll send word out to Harvey….”

      “No. Don’t send word. Pa’d just fret and probably hurt himself trying to come to town to see me. Chester’s getting too old to bring him in by himself.”

      “You need more help out there, Simon.” They both knew that up until a few weeks ago, she’d fully expected to supply that help herself. In fact, assisting Simon with his paralyzed father through the years had been one thing that had interested her in the field of nursing.

      “It was different when he had two good strong arms. But since the apoplexy last spring…” Simon shook his head. His father’s left arm was practically useless these days, making it even more difficult for him to get around in his wheelchair. And Simon was terrified that another stroke would take him away altogether. After everything the two had been through, he simply couldn’t imagine life without his father.

      “You need more help, is all,” Cissy said. Her tone was brisk, but a touch of sympathy lit her soft eyes.

      Simon made a move resembling a nod.

      “But right now you should try to sleep.”

      “I want to see if your father’s had any word about that gang. They took Rain Cloud, you know.”

      It was characteristic that Simon was more worried about his horse than the money he had lost. “I know. It’s a miracle you made it back into town.”

      A miracle. Angels