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  Chris sighed, nodding toward Callie. “Does this pretty little lady look like an outlaw?”

  Both men grinned a little. “Well, out here you just never know,” one of them answered. Then he nodded to Callie. “No insult meant, ma’am.”

  “I understand,” Callie answered.

  “You can have our weapons if that makes you feel any better,” Chris told them. “We just need to talk to Mr. Bailey for a few minutes. And we need to buy a couple of horses. Does he have any to sell?”

  The second man nodded. “Got plenty. Hand over your guns and come on in. You’ll get your weapons back when Mr. Bailey says you can have them.”

  Chris and Callie handed over rifles, shotgun, and handguns, then followed the two men up to the main house, a tidy but weathered-looking frame home. The boards of the porch that wrapped around the entire home were warped from years of rain and sun, and two windows were each missing a shutter. Some sorry-looking rose bushes decorated the sides of the front steps, their pitifully few blooms bringing at least some color to what was otherwise only hues of drab gray and brown.

  A big-bellied, aging man stepped outside to greet them, and a gray-haired woman with a plain, weathered and tanned face moved into the doorway behind him.

  “These two say they need to talk to you, Mr. Bailey,” one of the hands told him. “And they’re lookin’ to buy a couple of horses. We’ve got their weapons.”

  Bailey looked at Callie and grinned. “Well, this one here sure doesn’t look dangerous. Come on in, both of you.” He looked at one of the men who’d brought them in. “Bill, take care of their horses, will you? See that they’re watered, and give them a few oats.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sure appreciate it,” Chris told him. “These horses have been through a good deal. Lost one a few days north of here when renegades shot it down.” He and Callie both dismounted gingerly, and limped slightly as they came up the steps.

  “Renegades!” Bailey said. “You two are lucky to be alive.”

  “And they’re limping. Were you wounded?” the woman asked as she took hold of Callie’s arm.

  “I was snakebit a couple of days before that,” Callie told her. “And my friend here, he took a bullet in the side when the renegades attacked us. I’m afraid we’re both still a little down under, ma’am.”

  “Oh, you poor thing! Come on in. Coffee’s on, and I just baked a couple of pies.”

  “Lordy, that sounds good,” Callie told her, following her into the house.

  The Baileys, who were refreshingly friendly and hospitable, brought them into the kitchen and set them down to the table. The gray-haired woman, Mrs. Bailey, brought out coffee, then cut each of them a piece of apple pie.

  “Ma’am, this is the best coffee I’ve had since we left Rawlins,” Callie told her. “I don’t even know how long ago that was. I’ve lost track of time.”

  “Rawlins! Well, you are a long way from home,” Mrs. Bailey answered. “Are you two married? Brother and sister?”

  Callie glanced at Chris, realizing she wouldn’t mind at all if she could call him her husband…except for the intimacy that involved. He’d sure be one fine man to have around—handsome, strong, protective, able, smart, good inside, gentle.

  You’ve got to stop having these thoughts, she told herself.

  “Actually, we’re just acquaintances,” Chris told Bailey. “You’re nice people, so I’ll be honest about why we’re here. My name is Christian Mercy, and before you go out of your way any more than you already have, you should know I’m a bounty hunter.”

  Bailey frowned, and his wife lost her smile. “Goodness me!” she said, putting a hand to her chest. “You sure don’t look like a bounty hunter.”

  Chris couldn’t help a slight grin. “Well, ma’am, I don’t know what you think a bounty hunter is supposed to look like, but I assure you, I have good reason to do what I do. And it isn’t always for the money. For personal reasons, I’m just out to get rid of the kind of men who keep the West lawless…the worst kind…the kind who—”

  He hesitated, and Callie figured he was weighing his words, not wanting to offend Mrs. Bailey.

  “—abuse women in the worst way,” he said, “and who murder innocent people for no good reason.”

  “Oh, my!” Mrs. Bailey sank into a chair.

  “So what brought you to the Double B?” Bailey asked.

  Chris glanced at Callie before answering. He still hadn’t eaten any of his pie. “I’ll let Miss Hobbs here explain,” he answered. He drank more coffee.

  Callie turned her attention to the Baileys. “I’m Callie Hobbs,” she told them. “I hired Mr. Mercy here to find five men who abused my mother something awful. It was about a year ago. Then they killed her and made off with most of our cattle and horses. My mother and I were running a small ranch and farm alone, after my pa died a year earlier. The law never found the men who did it, but I can identify every one of them; so I decided to go find them myself. We found one of them up by Hole-in-the-Wall, and he told us another one is working here on your ranch.”

  Chris swallowed a piece of pie. “I don’t think you want the man around, Mr. Bailey,” he added. “Especially not around this house when you aren’t here.”

  “Oh, my!” Mrs. Bailey repeated, putting a hand to her mouth. “Who is it?”

  “The man who told us he was here said his name is Jim Fallon,” Chris answered. “He has a big mole on his left cheek.”

  Bailey closed his eyes and sighed. “Fallon.” He nodded. “Yes, he does work here. He’s a pretty good hand.” He looked at Chris. “If what you’re saying is true, I sure don’t want him around, but I won’t hand him over unless Miss Hobbs here makes sure he’s the man you’re after.” He looked at Callie. “How can you be so sure? If you can identify them, you must have been right there. Why didn’t they kill you too?”

  Callie looked down at her coffee cup. “I was hiding…in the wood box. There was a space between the slats, and I…saw. When they attacked us, my ma told me to get into the box and not come out, no matter what.” Her eyes teared. “When I saw…what they were doing…I was too terrified to come out…and now I feel so guilty, I can’t hardly stand it. The only way I can make up for it is to find those men and make sure they can’t ever do that to anybody else.”

  A tear slipped down her cheek, and Mrs. Bailey reached over and took hold of her hand. “You did the right thing, Callie,” she told her. “Your mother wanted to protect you. She’d never blame you for not coming out of that wood box to help her, because it wouldn’t have done any good. She would just have had to watch them do the same thing to you, and she’d have gone to her death with that horror. She wanted you to live, honey, that’s all. You satisfied her wishes. I would have wanted the same for my daughter. She’s gone right now, going to a special school in Denver. Susan is a beautiful young lady, and I would gladly die for her. That’s what your mother did, you know. She died for you, and there is no responsibility for that on your part.”

  Bailey leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “I’ll tell the boys outside to ride out and bring Fallon in. Trouble is, what the heck are you going to do with him? You’re a long way from the law, Mr. Mercy, and you’ve got this young lady with you. You intend to drag Fallon along to the closest jail and risk him somehow getting loose and doing you in? That would leave Miss Hobbs here alone with him, in the middle of nowhere.”

  Chris nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. I’m not the kind of bounty hunter who shoots a man in the back just for the money. And by the way, Miss Hobbs isn’t paying me cash for this. She’s offered her ranch. I’m not sure I’ll accept. I may end up doing this for nothing, the crime is so heinous. And I’ve come to like and respect Miss Hobbs a great deal. Doesn’t seem right taking anything for this.”

  Callie, surprised, glanced at him, her heart warmed at the words. He’d not mentioned any such thing to her. This was the first she’d heard of him possibly taking nothing. “You deserv
e whatever I’ve offered,” she insisted. “I won’t let you do this for nothing.”

  Chris met her eyes. “We’ll talk about that when the job is done. Right now we have to decide what to do about Fallon.” He turned to Ben Bailey. “I’ll drag Fallon along with us by the heels if that’s what I have to do. I don’t much care how he comes with us or if he lives through it, if you know what I mean.”

  The two men shared a look of understanding. “I do know what you mean. Could be something my men can take care of, if you know what I mean. Out here we live by a code of our own. A man can cuss and smoke and gamble and drink and fight and tell dirty jokes. He can even shoot another man if need be, but he can’t abuse a good woman and he can’t steal what belongs to another man. And he sure as heck can’t murder innocent people. There’s no judge or jury out here but each other.” The man rose. “Tell you what I’ll do, Mercy. I’m sure you two could use a couple good nights’ sleep in real beds. You both look to me like you’d better rest a few more days before you go on to wherever you’re headed.”

  “On down the Outlaw Trail,” Chris told him. “I have a pretty good guess that’s where we’ll find most or all of them. The law won’t touch this area, so this is where they’re safest.”

  Bailey nodded, then turned to his wife. “Mother, do you mind if these two spend a couple of days here, take honest-to-God baths in honest-to-God hot water, sleep in honest-to-God beds instead of on the ground? Eat some honest-to-God home-cooked foods?”

  “I don’t mind at all,” the woman answered, still holding Callie’s hand. “It will be nice having another woman around for a couple of days. I miss our Susan so much.” She squeezed Callie’s hand again and gave her a reassuring look. The woman made Callie realize how much she missed her mother.

  “Well, then, Mr. Mercy,” Bailey said, turning back to Chris, “I’ll have my men go get Jim Fallon and bring him back here. I won’t tell them why. No sense setting them against Fallon until we know for sure. We’ll let Callie here have a look at him, and then we’ll let my men decide what to do about it. Might end up saving you some trouble.”

  Chris rose, wincing with pain as he did so. “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Bailey. We have a lot of riding ahead of us, a lot of searching yet. One thing I would like to do is see if we can get anything out of Fallon as to where we might find the rest of them.”

  Bailey shrugged. “We can try. By the way, what happened to the first man you found up at Hole-in-the-Wall?”

  Chris glanced at Callie again. “Let’s just say he resisted arrest.” He looked back at Bailey. “And now he’s dead.”

  Bailey nodded. “You and Miss Hobbs finish that pie. It’s too good to waste. I’ll have my men unload your gear, and the wife here will show you up to a couple of bedrooms where you can get some deserved sleep. You’d better let her have a look at your wound while you’re at it. The wife here is pretty good at patching up cuts and bruises, broken bones and bullet wounds. No doctors out in places like this.”

  Both men grinned, and Chris put out his hand. “You’re an oasis in the desert,” he told Bailey, shaking his hand.

  Bailey chuckled. “Only people who live out here understand the needs in these parts,” he said. “My wife and I have been through a lot ourselves, settling here. But at least out here a man can claim as much land as he wants, most of it damn good grazing land. You mark my words, this place will be worth thousands someday, maybe even millions. Who knows? I’ve got two sons, one working here and one off East at college. They stand to inherit a lot someday, and they all make me damn proud. They are a chip off the old block and intend to keep running the Double B after I’m gone. Wish you could meet the one here, but he’s off riding fences, probably a day or two away.”

  Chris smiled. “You’re a lucky man to have such a nice family,” he answered.

  Callie knew he was aching for his own lost family.

  “How about a smoke?” Bailey asked Chris. “Come out on the porch with me. I just want to get a few more facts straight before I send my men after Fallon.”

  Chris turned to Mrs. Bailey. “Save that pie,” he said. “I’ll be back to finish it.”

  He walked out with Mr. Bailey, and Callie turned to Mrs. Bailey. “We sure do appreciate your hospitality,” she told the woman. “Things have been real hard for us so far. I thought sure Chris was going to die when he took that bullet. He came close to bleeding to death. We’ve been kind of a sorry pair the last few days, me still sore from the snakebite and him weak from losing so much blood. A rest here in a real bed will really help.”

  “Well, I’m glad for the company,” the woman answered. “Out here you go long between visits from outsiders, even longer when it comes to seeing another female. A woman gets real lonely.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Mrs. Bailey sighed. “Christian Mercy. That certainly is an unusual name for a bounty hunter.”

  “Yes, ma’am. And he’s a real unusual man, real educated, had money and social standing back East. He even taught school and was getting his master’s degree. He left it all when his wife and little girl were murdered and they never found the killers. That’s what drives him.” She gasped. “Oh! Please don’t tell him I told you that. He doesn’t like talking about it. He told me about it in a rare moment of weakness. He wouldn’t like me telling it to others.”

  Mrs. Bailey nodded. “I won’t say a word.” The woman rose and walked to her wood-burning stove, picking up the coffeepot. She brought it over to pour some more. “It won’t take our men long to go and get Mr. Fallon. He’s out helping build a new fence not that far away. You’d better beef up your stamina with a little more strong coffee before you have to look at that man again. Such a thing can’t be easy, you poor child.”

  Callie swallowed. “No, ma’am, it sure won’t be.” She took a deep breath and drank more of the hot coffee, definitely not looking forward to setting eyes on Jim Fallon again.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Callie sat in a rocker on the porch, waiting to get a look at Jim Fallon. Mrs. Bailey sat beside her, and Chris stood leaning against a porch post, smoking quietly…waiting. She knew how tense he became in moments like this. She could feel it. Bailey had given him back his guns, and Chris took one of them out of its holster to check the cartridge.

  What went through his mind at times like this? Probably the horrible visions of finding his beautiful young wife, his precious little girl…How did a man ever get over something like that? Maybe he never did, and maybe he could never love again because of it.

  Lordy, what was happening to her? Lately she saw him in a whole different way, the manliness of him; the fine, muscled build; the cut of his firm jawline; those blue eyes that had a way of disturbing a woman; those full lips; that straight, handsome nose; that thick, wavy hair. She’d begun watching the way he moved, with the sureness of a man who knew what he was about. She admired his strength, his courage, the way he handled his weapons, the way he sat a horse, the way he cared about being clean and shaved, the way he seemed to know what to do no matter what the situation.

  Damned if she didn’t like everything about him. All of a sudden she couldn’t imagine him not being a part of her life now. What the heck was she going to do when this was over and they had no more reason to be together? She felt safe with him. He had a way of making her feel like everything would always be okay. When he was around she felt…complete? She couldn’t think of another word to describe it. He was the only man she would even begin to trust to do what it was men did to women they loved. The thought still scared the hell out of her, but something about Chris…she knew he’d understand. He wouldn’t hurt a woman if his life depended on it. He’d be so sweet and gentle.

  What a stupid thought! He’d never think about her that way. And she’d hardly known him long enough to be having such thoughts and feelings. It was just that now that she knew the truth about his past, watching him, knowing the torture he suffered in his mind and heart, it made her ache for him
. It made her want to hold him and tell him everything would be all right…that she could love him the way Valerie had loved him…she could give him more children, a reason to live and love again. He was too fine a man to be wasting his life and his talents like this…wasting the ability to love and be loved.

  Men were coming now, and she shook away the thoughts she knew were nonsense. Her heart pounded harder as the riders came closer. Ben Bailey walked toward them from the stables where he’d gone to check on a pregnant mare. The original two men who’d greeted them approached with two other ranch hands. When they reached the house, the sight of one of them brought a sudden lurch to the pit of Callie’s stomach. He took off his hat and nodded to her, grinning at her with that same ugly grin she’d seen on his face when he was raping her mother. It took only one look at that ugly mole to know he was the man she was after.

  Chris glanced at her then, and she nodded, then got up and ran into the house, unable to look at the man again.

  “You ugly bastard, you scared that pretty little girl right off!” one of the ranch hands said.

  Callie stood against the wall just inside the front door. She could hear all of them laugh at the remark.

  “What is it you want, boss?” a man asked when the laughter calmed.

  Callie recognized the gruff voice. It sent shivers down her spine.

  “Your name Jim Fallon?” Chris asked.

  “Sure is. Who wants to know?”

  There came a pause. “I do. So does the young girl who just went inside. Her name is Callie Hobbs. You know the name?”

  “Nope.”

  Another pause. “Well, maybe you didn’t bother to stop and ask her mother what her name was before you raped and murdered her.”

  Callie turned then and peeked through the lace curtain at a window beside the door.

  “Go on inside, Clara,” Ben Bailey told his wife.

  Mrs. Bailey got up and went in, and Callie could see Jim Fallon staring at Chris. “What are you talkin’ about?” Fallon asked Chris. “And who the hell are you?”