Revenge and the Wild(27)

The leprechaun fumbled with the six-shooter beneath his vest but dropped it on the ground. He turned to the holster keeping his rifle strapped to his saddle.

Before he could reach it, Alistair put a window in his skull, and two more bullets in the men on either side of him.

Gunpowder filled Westie’s nose and stung her eyes, the screams of the old leprechaun pulsed in her ears. Alistair put a bullet in his chest, shutting him up for good.

One of the outlaws turned his gun on Bena. She darted around to confuse his aim, then reached for her pony’s mane and swung onto his saddleless back to get above the man. She leaped from her horse with a battle cry, her knife in her grip, two graceful ladies dancing through the air. A violent pink mist dappled her skin as she hacked through the man’s neck before he could get his shot off.

Another of the outlaws took aim at Alistair and fired.

The bullet hit Alistair in the face and threw him back against a tree, where he crumpled to the ground like a discarded jacket.

“Alley!” Westie cried as she unsheathed the blade in her parasol.

She lunged at the outlaw who’d shot Alistair, her sword high over her head, gripped in both her hands. She brought it down upon his head where he was bent on one knee, reloading. He didn’t look up until she was right in front of him. The blade cut through the air with the full force of her machine and sliced the man clean through from skull to groin. His twin halves fell apart with a sticky sound.

Westie’s breath was erratic as she looked around at the six dead bandits lying in pools of blood and loosed bowels. She turned her desperate gaze to Alistair.

Bena was by his side. Westie was afraid to go to him, afraid of what she would see. Bena dabbled in gore and could stomach such things, but Westie wasn’t sure if she had it in her.

“Is he . . . ,” Westie started to say, but her voice shut off before she could get the words out.

“No,” Bena said.

“No?” Westie went to him then. She thought there would be blood or worse, but all she saw was Alistair’s dented mask. His eyes were closed, chest moving with each breath. It simply looked as though he were sleeping.

“It was his head hitting the tree that knocked him out, not the gunshot,” Bena said. She poked at his skull with the tips of her fingers, then reached behind his head to unsnap his mask.

“Wait,” Westie said, and turned her back to Bena. “Alistair wouldn’t want me to see his face.”

She waited, wanting so badly to see what Bena was doing, but she knew how angry Alistair would be if she watched.

“You can look now,” Bena said. When Westie turned around, Alistair’s mask was back on. “A shot like that should have knocked all his teeth out and crushed the bones in his face. There is no damage from what I can see, just a bump on the head.”

Westie wiped a tear from her cheek. “Nigel makes durable machines,” she said in a strangled voice.

“Help me get him on his horse,” Bena said. “We need to get him back to town to make sure there is no other damage.”

When Alistair was draped over his saddle and Bena was back on her paint, Westie took a moment to secure his body with rope and make sure he didn’t fall off. She touched his hair and the skin on his neck. He looked so peaceful. She kissed each of his closed eyes and quietly thanked the maker for saving his life.





Fourteen


Alistair had stirred along the way but had yet to wake by the time they stopped to camp. He still hadn’t woken the next day when they got back to Rogue City. Bena and Westie took him straight to Doc Flannigan’s.

Westie held her head in her hands as they sat in the doctor’s office, waiting. “Thank you for coming with me. I couldn’t have gone through that without you,” she said.

Bena’s copper-colored eyes looked straight forward, but she reached over and put a hand on Westie’s back. The gentleness of Bena’s touch made Westie want to weep, but she knew how uncomfortable her friend was with tears, so she held them in.

When the doc confirmed Alistair would be fine, Westie let out a sound of relief and left for the mansion to change her clothes.

Nigel waited for her on the stoop with a crushed piece of metal in his hand that had once been a telegraph bird. Westie looked at the broken bird. She should never have believed Doc Flannigan when he said he would wait an hour to tell Nigel about Alistair.

Westie dismounted and climbed the steps. Jezebel pushed her bucket head into Westie’s hand, forcing her affection. She scratched the beast dutifully in the spot behind the ear where she liked. Nigel watched her expectantly.

“Would you like to tell me why you weren’t in Sacramento with Isabelle as your note said, and how Alistair was shot in the face?” He asked the question as if he were asking about the weather, but Westie could see the emotion of that news lingering in the tremble of his lips.

It was an honest question, so she gave him an honest answer. “No.”

His eyes examined the dried blood covering her riding clothes. “Very well.”

She opened her mouth to counter his objections, but tilted her head when there was no resistance and closed her mouth again, happy not to disappoint him further.

He said, “I was hoping we could talk a bit.”

Talk. Nigel always wanted to talk. He knew a lot of words and he liked to use them: big ones, fancy ones, and some she was sure he made up.