Page 26 of The Gunslinger’s Bride (Montana Mavericks: Historicals #1)

“Maybe. But what would he be doing here? We don’t have any range wars or need for a marshal. S’pose he’s followed someone here for bounty?”

“This Spade fellow’s a bounty hunter, too? Where’s he find time to change his drawers?”

“Granted, the dime novels probably have him drawn a little larger than life,” James said with a wry grin.

“You’ve read them?”

“Hasn’t everybody?”

“I haven’t.”

James opened a drawer and shuffled through until he found what he wanted. Handing a dog-eared, softcover book to his cousin, he grinned. “It’s winter, you know?”

Brock studied the drawing of the mustached gunfighter, garbed in black, captured in a lethal-looking stance with a blazing revolver in each hand.

He raised a finger to rub his bare upper lip thoughtfully.

Slipping the book into his coat pocket, he headed for the door.

If James did have real questions, he was keeping them to himself. “I’ll check out that horse for you.”

Lionel Briggs was eager to talk to someone who’d witnessed the excitement firsthand. Brock gave him a quick explanation and asked to see the horse belonging to the cowboy.

The superbly proportioned gelding, a chestnut with a white blaze and white stockings, was healthy, with good teeth. It bore a clearly altered brand. “This is the stolen baby,” Brock told him. “I’ll let James know and someone will come for him.”

“I don’t mind the horse,” Briggs assured him. “Horses are my business, but I ain’t takin’ care of that mangy mutt.”

“What mutt?”

“The one came in with that fella. I let it rest in a stall back there and gave it water, but I ain’t no vet. Hasn’t gone farther than a few feet. Don’t think it can, really. Somebody ought ta put a bullet in its head.”

In the stall indicated, Brock discovered the animal, a yellowish, long-haired breed of some sort, with a well-shaped head and muzzle. The poor thing was half-starved, its hair matted, and a raw wound glistened on one shoulder.

The creature raised its head in a weak greeting when Brock entered the stall and bent down on his haunches to look it over. The mutt wagged his sweeping tail a few sluggish times.

Brock reached out a hand to let him sniff. The dog licked his fingers with a warm dry tongue, a display of needy affection and desperate trust that injected Brock with instant sympathy. “What happened to you, boy?”

Dark eyes showed flickering interest.

“What’re you going to do with him?” he asked the livery man.

“Put ’im out of his misery, I reckon,” Briggs replied.

“Think he belongs to someone?”

“Couldn’t say. He showed up when that Ajax feller rode in.”

“Can’t leave him here to suffer,” Brock murmured, thinking aloud.

“Can’t leave ’im here period.”

Brock touched the dog’s bony head, petted his silky long ear. “Got a bucket and water I can use to wash his cuts?”

“Buckets are in the tack room. Horse tank out back’s had the ice busted off. You can heat it on the stove back there.”

“Thanks.” Brock strode off to heat water.

It was nearly midnight by the time he’d washed the dog’s cuts and gotten him to drink.

He needed food and something for the wounds, but Brock couldn’t see making him endure a ride, even if he carried him carefully to the ranch.

He could take him to Will’s or James’s, he supposed, but at this hour their wives wouldn’t appreciate an intrusion from their troublesome Kincaid in-law.

There was always Abby’s place, he surmised. He’d intruded on her so much already that another time probably wouldn’t make a difference in her opinion of him. She couldn’t get any angrier than she already was. Anyway, it would just be a couple of days until the dog was able to travel farther.

Borrowing a horse blanket, he wrapped the animal and let Lionel know he was taking the dog.

Keeping an eye out for anyone observing, Brock carried him through the alley, around the corner of the building and up the flight of stairs.

He waited, cringing inwardly at imagining her reaction, but feeling rather clever at having thought of another means to wile his way into her place.

Sitting at the kitchen table with a ledger and a lamp, Abby was startled by a light knock at the door. Her heart lifted in an odd little tug. No one had ever come to her door late until Brock’s return.

She stepped close to the wooden barrier. “Who is it?”

“Brock. Let me in.”

“It’s late.”

“I know it’s late. Open the door.”

“You told me to ask who it was before I opened the door. Since I know it’s you, I don’t want to open the door.”

“Open the door or I’ll cause a scene.”

She considered his threat. A heartbeat later, before he had a chance to fulfil it, she opened the door. He stood silhouetted against the dark sky, his hat pulled low over his forehead, a covered bundle in his arms. He pushed past her impatiently. “Got an old blanket?”

“What is that?”

He moved toward the other room and the heater.

She followed.

“Please bring me an old blanket,” he asked almost civilly, so she did his bidding. “Leave it folded some for padding and spread it out here on the floor.”

Once she’d done that, he lowered his burden to the pile. The blanket made a sound and moved, startling her.

Brock pulled the cover away to reveal a pathetic-looking mongrel. A rather large one. The beast barely moved, only beseeched Brock with doleful eyes and then cast pitiful dark eyes on Abby. What had the man been thinking to bring this near-dead animal to her home? What was she to do with it?

Her attention was drawn to a nasty gash in his golden fur. “Oh, he’s hurt!”

“Do you have anything? Ointment maybe?”

“I think so.” She hurried to the kitchen, wondering what she was doing, answering Brock’s beck and call in the middle of the night, and returned with a tin Laine had given her for an infected cut on her wrist. She handed him the salve. “Why have you brought this dog here?”

“Didn’t know what else to do with him. Briggs was gonna shoot him.”

Warily, Abby studied the dog’s sad expression and warm eyes. The pathetic thing was so thin that perhaps shooting him would have been the kindest thing to do. “And you couldn’t let him do that?”

“Let him sniff your hand,” Brock said.

She looked from the dog to him and back again. Something drew her to tentatively extend her hand.

The mutt raised his head enough to lick her fingers. At the pleading touch, Abby’s heart went out to the poor thing, even though she knew caring would be a mistake. “What if he dies?”

Brock hunkered down on one knee, his wrist dangling over the other one. “Then I tried.”

She let herself rub the bony head. “But what if he lives long enough for Jonathon to get attached, and then dies?”

Brock looked up with a worried frown, as if the thought had never occurred to him. “I won’t let him die.”

Gazing into Brock’s impassioned blue eyes, she wondered what it would be like to have such confidence in oneself, to believe you held the power over life and death just by the strength of your will. Oddly enough, when he spoke the vow, she believed it, too. He was a man who got what he wanted.

Together they doctored wounds, bandaging the largest one so the dog couldn’t lick off the medicine.

Abby warmed some broth and offered it, watching while the animal used what little strength he had to lap it up.

All through those tasks she kept thinking about Brock getting what he wanted, and wondering exactly what it was he wanted from her.

He wanted to be a part of Jonathon’s life. Fighting him was futile. But she didn’t have to let him hurt her again. She couldn’t. One time of having her dreams dashed and her heart severed into tiny bleeding pieces had been enough pain for a lifetime. And he hadn’t changed.

Except physically. His face was that of a man—leaner, harder, with weathered wrinkles at his eyes and across his forehead.

His hands were corded and strong, and fair hair dusted his wrists.

He was taller and broader than the young man she remembered.

Her appreciative gaze couldn’t miss the added span of his wide shoulders beneath the wrinkled chambray shirt or the flex of thigh muscle beneath his trouser legs as he bent and moved.

But there, tethered to those strong legs, were the guns she hated and feared.

Those weapons represented everything that had gone bad between them, still held a sickening connotation in her heart and mind.

She bent to pick up the empty bowl, but her trembling fingers lost their grip and it clattered to the floor, hitting the corner of the heater with a clang.

Brock bent to retrieve it, pointed to a chip. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

“No, it’s old. It doesn’t matter.” She took the bowl from him.

“Mama? What wath that?” Jonathon scuffed out barefoot and rubbed his eyes sleepily. “Mithter Brock? Whatcha doin’ here?”

“I needed your mom’s help,” Brock replied.

Jonathon caught sight of the dog and bounded forward. “A dog? Where’d we get a dog?”

“He’s not our dog,” Abby cautioned.

“I found him sick and hurt, and I brought him here for your mom to help me take care of him.”

“Bad hurt?” the boy asked, and he knelt cautiously.

“Not too bad,” Brock replied. “But his cuts haven’t been tended and he looks like he hasn’t eaten for a long time.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a fight with an animal. Maybe… maybe, I don’t know.”

Abby was grateful he hadn’t suggested that a person might have done that harm. She hoped Jonathon had a lot of time left before he had to learn the cruel reality of this world.

Brock didn’t have to suggest that Jonathon let the dog smell him. The child patted his furry head and the animal immediately turned his face to lavishly lick his hand. Jonathon laughed delightedly. “He liketh me! Look, Mama!”

“I see.”