Page 74 of More Than Meets the Eye

Hamilton followed, both men silent.

One minute passed. Then another.

Insects buzzed. A breeze rustled the tree leaves. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Then it came—three shots in quick succession. Muffled, but definitely from the west.

Eva!

Hamilton bolted past him, making a run on foot. Logan sprinted for Shamgar, thanking God his horse was still saddled and ready.

Please let her be all right. If anything happened to Eva . . . Logan clenched his jaw and mounted.

“Yah!” He swiped his heels across Shamgar’s flanks and leaned forward in the stirrups. Focus on getting to her, he ordered himself. He’d deal with whatever he found when he got there.

Shamgar slowed slightly as they neared the junction to the main road, and Logan leaned left into the turn. As he did, another shot rang out, this one much closer. So close, in fact, that a telltale whistle tickled Logan’s ear as a bullet whizzed by his head.

He lunged more deeply to the side, using Shamgar as a shield even as he urged the gelding to a greater pace. The ex-cavalry horse responded, surging forward as a second shot cracked the air.

Logan twisted his neck, trying to peer behind him for any clue to his assailant’s identity, but he saw nothing. Just brush and dirt and Shamgar’s rump. He dared not rise up any higher, even to spy the culprit. He needed the cover. If he could get to the bend in the road a few yards ahead, he’d be out of the gun’s sights.

A third shot exploded, and a slight sting arced along Logan’s right side. He hissed at the pain, even as he thanked God it had just been a crease. The shooter might not be terribly proficient at hitting a moving target, but even Shamgar couldn’t protect Logan’s back if the shooter found the right angle.

Deciding speed was more important than the shrinking cover his current position afforded, Logan pushed against the left stirrup and returned to a more natural riding position.

“Come on, old boy,” he urged, focused on the quickly approaching bend. Hunching down to make himself as small a target as possible, he raced for safety.

A fourth shot rang out. Logan flinched, but no pain slammed into him, and Shamgar didn’t stumble. In the next moment, he was around the bend, safe as long as the shooter didn’t give chase—an unlikely development, since his attacker had been shooting from the cover of scrub brush, which was too short to conceal a man on horseback.

As Logan relaxed his posture, his mind ran the odds of this incident being a coincidence. Odds that long didn’t warrant consideration. There was only one explanation for shots being fired both at the Hamilton homestead and at him.

Benson had recognized him. Or, more accurately, his horse. He had been unusually interested in Shamgar this afternoon. The pieces clicked into place. Benson had spied Logan galloping on the road, just as he must have seen him and Eva racing down to the river on Shamgar’s back the day they rescued Christie.

If Benson had beaten a straight path at a quick pace from the livery in Ben Franklin to Pecan Gap, he could have asked about Logan in town. Ascertained where he lived. What girl he’d been courting. Where she lived.

A rescued female would be much more likely to take sanctuary with the family of another female, after all, than with a bachelor in an unfinished cabin. With the slow pace Logan and Shamgar had set on the way home, Benson would have had ample time to set up an attack.

Unfortunately, while they could show he had opportunity and motive, they had no actual proof unless Seth or one of the girls had spotted him. And now that Benson knew where the women resided, their plan to wait on the ledger had to be retooled. They no longer had the luxury of time. Or anonymity.

As he steered Shamgar off the main road and down the lane that led to Eva’s house, a scrap of red fabric above the roof caught his eye as it flapped in the wind. The signal for an emergency.

A vise tightened around Logan’s gut. Not that he hadn’t already concluded the first shot he and Zacharias heard had originated here, but the removal of all doubt churned his stomach.

Logan galloped Shamgar straight into the Hamiltons’ yard without slowing. Seth would probably have a gun trained on anyone approaching, but Logan trusted him not to shoot.

“Eva!”

Was she all right? Please let her be all right.

He cut hard to the right to slow Shamgar, then dismounted from the left before his trusty mount could fully halt. His boots slammed into the ground. Reverberations shot up his legs as he quick-stepped to keep his balance.

“Eva!”

The door cracked open, and the face he loved peered out. “Logan. Hurry!” Her arm emerged, frantically waving him closer. “Get inside. There’s a crazed gunman out there somewhere.”

He pounded up the steps. “I know,” he said as she flung the door wide to grant him entrance. “He took a few shots at me on the road.”

She gasped. “Are you hurt?”