Page 45 of Wellspring

IF ANYTHING, the return to Eldorado was even more tense than the ride to Wellspring had been.

Then he’d been able to force aside thoughts of Erick by focusing on the danger bearing down on his friends.

Now, while he knew things could still go badly if Mac wasn’t able to reach the marshal in San Angelo or if that marshal was just as corrupt as Lutz, his only real thought was for Erick and whether he’d survived the night.

Sanders was a dead man either way, but if Erick died, Cade would make Sanders pay for it before killing him.

Cade decided to chance riding back across JR land rather than the more treacherous southern route.

He was pretty sure Reichardt had sent most of his men in the attack on Wellspring.

Even if some had remained or returned, the risk of their spotting two riders in the dark was worth taking if it got him to Erick faster.

He could only pray, to his birth parents’ God or his adoptive parents’ Great Spirit or any other power that might be listening, that Erick had survived.

The part of him that had watched cavalry soldiers gun down his Comanche brother argued that Erick’s wound was fatal, that he couldn’t survive after all the blood he’d lost, but he wouldn’t let himself believe that.

“Erick is strong,” Chel called to him, as if she could read his thoughts. “He has you to hold on for.”

Cade just dug his heels harder into Nahnia’s flanks and sped on.

The sun was rising as they hit the edge of Eldorado. Cade reined Nahnia in at Dr. Lillard’s office and slid down. Exhaustion pulled at him, but he forced his knees to hold and braced himself to deal with whatever awaited him inside.

“You ready?” Chel asked.

Cade nodded and pretended it was the truth. He rapped on the door and waited.

“Who is it?” Javier called through the door.

“Chel and Cade.” He hoped Javier still being on guard was a good sign. If Erick were dead, Javier wouldn’t be worried about Sanders coming to finish the job.

“Webster!” As Javier was opening the door to the surgery, Sanders stumbled out of the saloon with Lutz on his heels. “I was hoping Carter would save me the trouble of having to shoot you too.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Frank, but Chel here slit Adam’s throat while he and his men were attacking Wellspring.

” Cade drew an arrow and ran the fletching through his fingers, while Chel gave Sanders a wicked smile.

“Reichardt may not be happy when he hears you sat here drinking while we were kicking JR’s ass. ”

The shouting brought Javier outside, cradling his massive gun in his arms. Several other patrons staggered out of the saloon, followed by the Meier brothers, and Lizzie Hart stood outside the door of the mercantile.

That was fine with Cade; he didn’t need an audience but it wouldn’t stop him either.

“Erick’s in bad shape, but he’s still alive,” Javier murmured as he came to stand alongside Cade and Chel.

Sanders drew his pistol and took aim toward the three of them, but there was no question who he was gunning for.

Cade dove to the side, taking cover behind a horse trough as Sanders fired.

The shot went wide, but Cade wasn’t taking chances on being as lucky a second time.

He fit the arrow to the bow’s string and aimed at Sanders.

As he drew back his arm, a second shot rang out, followed by the explosive retort of Javier’s Nock gun.

Cade watched Lutz sink to the ground, trying to hold his guts in, but he swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat at the sight.

He could get sick later. Sanders took another shot that set chips of rock flying from the trough—how had he survived this long with such lousy aim?

—and that was all Cade could take. He rose up on his knees and fired, his arrow hitting Sanders in the eye.

Too quick a death for him, but he wouldn’t be shooting anyone in the back ever again.

A couple of people applauded, but Cade ignored them.

He burned with the need to take Sanders’s scalp so he would never be reincarnated to make someone else’s life hell, but half the townsfolk already thought he was a savage.

He’d never shot anyone in the back, but that vengeance was denied him. He just needed to see Erick.

The gunshots had drawn Tatum out of the sheriff’s office. He looked sick when he saw what Javier’s gun had left of Lutz and Cade’s arrow sprouting from Sanders’s face, but he drew his Colt as he walked toward them. “I don’t want any trouble, but I’m going to have to take you in.”

“It was self-defense!” Chel protested, knives in hand. “Sanders fired at us first, and so did Lutz.”

Several people in the crowd that had gathered called out their agreement, but Tatum didn’t back down. “There are two men dead. I didn’t see it happen, so we’ll just have to send for a judge and let a trial sort things out.”

“MacRae rode to San Angelo before the JR attack to find a marshal who wasn’t being paid off by Reichardt.

” Chel didn’t look happy, but she sheathed her knives as she glanced at first Cade and then Javier.

“Maybe it would be safest for you to go with Tatum until he gets here. At least it would keep any other JR hands from gunning for you.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Cade insisted. “I need to see Erick.”

“I don’t want to fire on you, but I will if you don’t come with me.” Tatum wasn’t under JR’s thumb, as far as Cade knew, but that was probably because Reichardt hadn’t needed anyone but Lutz to do his dirty work.

“Maybe we should go with him.” Javier looked green as he handed his gun to Chel. “One shootout was more than enough for me.”

“I won’t let anything happen to Erick,” Chel promised Cade. “Right now you haven’t done anything illegal, but if you don’t go with Tatum, it’ll make things harder when Mac and the new marshal get here.”

Cade looked back at Tatum, weighed his chances of getting to Erick before Tatum shot him, considered the likelihood of Erick getting hurt worse in the ensuing scuffle, and decided this wasn’t a fight he could win.

He gave a last, longing look toward the door to Doc Lillard’s clinic, aching at how close Erick was while still being so far out of reach.

Javier’s words were little consolation when all Cade wanted was to hold Erick’s hand, feel his heart beating, however weakly, watch his chest rise and fall.

Maybe kiss him, even though he wouldn’t be aware of it, if no one was around to see.

He swallowed all that down, keeping his face impassive as his brothers had taught him.

Fucking Tatum thinking he was the fucking sheriff now that Lutz was gone. Who’d gone and elected him anyway?

“Whatever.” He stalked ahead of Tatum toward the sheriff’s office at the other end of the street. He might be going, but he wasn’t going to pretend he was under arrest. He hadn’t done a damn thing wrong.

“I’ll need your weapons,” Tatum said when they entered the office.

Cade handed him his bow and the quiver of arrows from his back, then unstrapped his gun belt and handed that over too.

He still had a knife in one of the seams of his leathers, but Tatum didn’t seem ready to search him and Cade wasn’t about to offer it up.

“I gave my gun to Michele.” Javier held out his arms to show he didn’t have any other weapons. Tatum prodded them into the building’s one cell and turned the lock, then set the bow, quiver, and gun belt against the far wall.

“If anything happens to my bow, I’m taking it out of your hide,” Cade growled. Tatum must have felt braver with inch-thick bars between them, because he just rolled his eyes and settled in behind the postmaster’s desk.

The cell had two flimsy cots with chamber pots beneath them and nothing else. “Tell me about Erick,” Cade demanded as soon as they’d sat down, facing away from Tatum.

“It’s not a pretty story,” Javier said grimly. “Remember that he’s still alive, and it gets more likely he’ll recover with each passing hour.”

Cade hadn’t expected it to be anything but horrifying, but to have Javier lay it out so bluntly made it even harder to sit in that cell instead of breaking out and going to Erick’s side. “Tell me,” he repeated.

“Doc Lillard worked on him for hours,” Javier said. “He had to open him up pretty deep to find the bullet, and the way it was lodged, he had to cut from the front to get it out. It punctured a lung and shattered a few ribs.”

Bile rose in Cade’s throat at the thought of Erick’s strong chest torn open from behind and cut open from the front. He knew the damage a bullet could do, but he hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

“Once he had the bullet out, he did something to patch up the lung and stitched Erick back up. He used some kind of suction thing to get the air back in Erick’s lung, but he’d lost so much blood by then that Lillard didn’t think he’d make it.”

Much of the explanation went over Cade’s head. “But you said he’s still alive.” His voice sounded desperate to his own ears.

Javier gave him a sympathetic look and nodded.

“He is, I promise. Or at least he was when you arrived. I asked the doc if there was some way I could give him some of my blood. Doc said it was risky, that it was as likely to kill him as it was to help. We figured since chances were he wouldn’t make it unless we tried, it was worth the risk. ”

Cade reached out to squeeze Javier’s hand.

Fuck, he’d known things were bad, but he’d hoped…

. He didn’t know why he’d expected anything less, not after seeing what the bullet had done to Pahayoko, but a part of him had hoped it wasn’t as bad as it had seemed.

“You didn’t have to do that, but thank you. ”

Javier shrugged. “I don’t know him as well as I’d like, but Erick seems like a good man.

And Doc said there wasn’t any risk to me unless he took too much.

So we did it, and Doc said it seemed to help.

At least it didn’t make things any worse.

Doc is keeping him sedated so he doesn’t move around and tear the stitches open.

The biggest risk now is if the wound gets infected. So all we can do is wait.”

“Fucking Sanders,” Cade muttered, wishing desperately he could wait by Erick’s side, no matter the outcome.

“If Erick dies, I’m going to find a way to drag Sanders back to life just so I can kill him again.

Slowly this time.” If he got out of here before they buried the body, he’d be taking that scalp after all.

Javier stretched out on the cot, hands behind his head. “We may as well try to get some sleep. No telling how long it will take MacRae to get back here, if he’s even able to convince another marshal to come with him.”

Despite his exhaustion, Cade felt too keyed up to sleep, but he followed Javier’s example and lay down on the hard cot. He hoped Mac was successful, because if he wasn’t, Cade would need to start planning a jailbreak.