Loner's Lady. Lynna Banning

back tears, she marched out the barn door and slammed it shut, wondered why she’d let that drifter stay.

      Because you are lonely. Because she wanted to hear the sound of another person’s voice. She wrapped her arms over her belly and shut her eyes. She hurt so much she didn’t realize how furious she was until she began to tremble.

      Oh, for Lord’s sake, pull yourself together.

      She snapped open her eyes. Just as she took a step toward the house, something moved in the alfalfa field beyond the creek.

      Florence! Thank God. At least he’d left her the cow. Brushing the tears off her face with her shirtsleeve, she gathered up her skirt in one hand and began to run toward the animal.

      Her breath hitched, and when she reached the creek bank, she felt a bit dizzy. No time to remove her boots. Instead, she hiked her skirt higher and splashed into the burbling water.

      The thin, sharp-faced man behind the counter sent Jess a look of disbelief. “You say Miz O’Brian sent you?”

      Jess tightened his lips. “No, I didn’t. I said I’d come for her supplies. She didn’t send me.”

      “Fine distinction, mister,” the mercantile owner said. “We kinda look out for the lady, see. Ever since her husband run off. No one’s ever bought supplies for her before.”

      Jess shifted his weight to his good leg. “I didn’t say I was buying the goods, just delivering them.”

      “With what?” Gabriel Svensen had sold sundries in Willow Flat for thirty-five years; no one had ever gulled him out of so much as a stick of peppermint candy.

      “I’ve got a horse outside.”

      “Yeah, I recognize Tiny all right. You ain’t never gettin’ a barrel of molasses on that snake-blooded old nag.”

      Jess bit his tongue. Most times he didn’t have to ask for anything twice. But that was back when he was well known. Those days were long gone. “Don’t want molasses. What I—Miz O’Brian—needs is a sack of sugar.”

      “White or brown?” the proprietor snapped.

      “White.”

      Svensen’s gray eyebrows shot up, but he said nothing, and Jess pivoted to survey the bushel baskets of produce arranged at the front of the store. “And a dozen lemons,” he added. “And six oranges. She’s got credit here, doesn’t she?”

      Svensen opened his angular jaw with a crack. “She does. You don’t. And Miss Ellen’s not one to add the fancy things onto her bill. You sure she wants white sugar? And oranges?”

      Jess grinned in spite of himself. “I’m sure. She…needs them.”

      “Hell, maybe she’s makin’ a batch of marmalade, or a cake, like every other woman in town. What do I know? I’ll just wrap ’em up if you’d care to look around.”

      “I’ll wait. It smells good in here.”

      Svensen spread a length of brown wrapping paper on the counter and went to work. “Reckon that good smell’s coming from Iona Everett’s bunches of lavender hangin’ there on the beam.” The shopkeeper tipped his chin up to the timbered roof. “And the shipment of spices and brown sugar that came in yesterday. The ladies are havin’ a big cake-baking hoo-rah on Sunday, raisin’ money for the new church.”

      As he talked, he rolled up each orange in a square of paper—“special for Miss Ellen”—laid them on top of the ten-pound bag of sugar and corralled the lemons into a paper sack. Then he bundled all the items up in one neat package and tied it with grocery twine.

      “Remind Miz O’Brian about the cake do, will ya? She deserves an afternoon off.”

      Jess nodded. “She does.” He scooped up his package and had turned to go when he heard Svensen’s raspy voice.

      “You watch your step around Miss Ellen, mister. She’s a real lady, even if she does work a farm.”

      Jess nodded again and strode outside to the hitching rail where he’d left the horse. Tiny, was it? He chuckled. The only “tiny” things were the other horses tied at the rail. The huge head of the plow horse towered over all of them.

      He plopped the bulky package on Tiny’s sturdy back and heaved himself up. The horse was so broad his saddle wouldn’t fit; he’d left it in the hayloft with his saddlebag, and ridden bareback. Clicking his tongue, he walked the animal down the main street and onto Creek Road.

      Ellen. So her name was Ellen. He wondered how long it would take before she let him call her that. She didn’t know it yet, but he planned to stay. For as long as it took.

      He reined up at the sagging front gate and slipped off the horse to wrestle it open. It needed another screw and ten minutes of his time. He’d do it after breakfast.

      His stomach gurgled as he led Tiny through the gate and maneuvered the rickety thing closed. Maybe another hinge, as well. And some real wood, not these curlicue pine branches she’d used.

      At the back porch steps he halted and peered through the screen door. “Miz O’Brian?”

      The kitchen was empty. He scanned the garden and the spindly looking apple trees at the back fence. Where the hell was she?

      He tramped into the house, checked the neat parlor, where crocheted doilies lay on the arms of the faded green velvet settee, then climbed the stairs and checked each of the four bedrooms. All empty. Maybe the barn?

      By the time he’d rubbed Tiny down with an old gunnysack and given him some oats, there was still no sign of Ellen. An odd prickle swept up the back of Jess’s neck. He headed for the henhouse, but found nothing but clucking brown chickens and one lordly rooster. Maybe she was visiting a neigh—

      He heard something. He shushed the chickens and listened.

      A voice. Thin-sounding and some distance away, but calling out at regular intervals.

      “Miz O’Brian?” Jess shouted. He took a step toward the sound. “Ellen?”

      Another faint cry, and Jess headed toward the creek. What was she doing down there? “Ellen? Miz O’Brian?”

      A weak cry carried to him and his breath stopped. She was hurt. A cold sweat started at his hairline. Oh, God, no. What had they done to her?

      Without thinking he began to run.

       Chapter Three

       S he lay in the creek bed, the lower part of her body half in the water, her skirt rucked up to her knees. Her head rested on a lichen-covered stone, and he could see one leg was folded under her at an odd angle. Jess stumbled down the bank and splashed across to her, a rock lodged in his gut.

      She looked up at him with weary eyes. “What are you doing here?”

      Jess knelt beside her, his heart hammering. “A better question might be what are you doing here?”

      She tried to smile. “Chasing the c-cow into the pasture, and I s-slipped on a rock.” Her voice sounded close to breaking. Her body shivered violently, and Jess reached to touch her arm. Her skin was like new snow.

      “How long have you been here?”

      Her eyelids fluttered closed. “Since dawn. I got up to milk…” Her voice trailed into silence.

      “I milked earlier,” Jess said.

      “Tiny was gone, and… Anyway, the cow…”

      Jess leaned over her. “Don’t talk, Ellen. Save your strength. I’ve got to get you out of the creek, and it isn’t going to be easy.”

      “Hurts when I move,” she murmured.

      “Got any laudanum up at the house?”

      She shook her head.