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“I wish he would speak in English,” muttered the preacher.
“Filthy Mexicans,” the one-armed soldier mumbled.
Anna flinched. It was too close to the “dirty Irish” or “white Negro” epithets hurled at poor immigrant families like hers. Were those of Spanish descent looked down upon, too? Did they have to deal with the equivalent of NINA attitudes?
“We should just get out and get this over with,” blustered the oldest farm boy. He put his hand under his coat and swung out the door. Gunmetal glinted under the edge of his jacket.
Her throat tightened.
“Hands up!” came the shout. This time in perfect English.
“Well, if he knows English, why isn’t he using it?” the preacher asked.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” hissed the miner. “No one’s been hurt yet.”
The farm boy slowly raised his hands. His two brothers followed him outside, then the preacher with his Bible. The artist clinked his way out the door.
The miner and the soldier exchanged looks, then checked their revolvers. With their weapons tucked in the back of their pants, they climbed out. Unable to stand not seeing what was going on, Anna followed. Selina was half dragged, since she’d never let go of Anna’s skirts. The preacher reached to hand them down.
There was a low call from above. “Ladies, get behind the stage and get down.”
Anna looked up the road where the robber’s voice had come from. A large boulder shielded him, but the bandit focused on her.
A cold chill ran down her spine, and her hands tingled.
Perhaps he wasn’t looking for a man who’d cheated him, after all.
A shot blasted from the roof. A mule kick to the center of her chest wouldn’t have jolted her more. She’d heard guns fired plenty of times, even fired them herself, but never at a man.
The robber raised his rifle and aimed. Passengers dived for the dirt. Pistols came out. The preacher knocked off her picture hat as he pushed her toward the rear of the stage.
The artist covered his head and hit the ground as the miner, the one-armed soldier and the two oldest farm boys fired.
The robber wheeled his horse all the way behind the massive boulder. Bullets pelted the stone and dirt where he’d been. Selina jerked Anna down to her knees.
A pfft overhead made Anna duck; then she twisted to look up.
A lasso swung through the air. The loop swirled around the outrider’s shoulders. The rope tightened, and the rifle flipped out of his hands. The line snapped taut, toppling the man backward off the stagecoach.
The outrider hung in the air for the longest time. His hands wagged like flippers, the rope restraining his flails.
His gun thudded in the dirt, and the lassoed guard thumped down with a grunt. The panicked horses dragged the stagecoach forward, the locked wheels scoring the earth.
The rope from the fallen outrider led behind the stage to a man on a horse. A multicolored cape hid his lower face, and he was working swiftly to uncoil the line from his saddle horn.
“Anna.” Selina tugged her.
The man looked directly at Anna.
It felt as if time had slowed to a trickle as she met his dark eyes. He stared back at her, and his hands stopped moving. Anna’s heart turned over, and she couldn’t look away. He briefly closed his eyes as if he needed a physical action to sever their locked gazes.
The rope dropped, and he spurred his mount away. Horse and rider raced up the incline beside the road. Leaning close to the horse, he moved with the animal’s sleek muscular lines almost as if they were one melded beast. Then he was out of sight behind the grassy hill.
The breath whooshed from her lungs.
“The gun. Under my skirt,” Selina hissed.
The spell broke. Anna sprawled in the dirt and grabbed the wooden stock. With Selina between her and the first bandit, she pulled out the rifle and positioned it against her shoulder. Anna checked her aim over Selina’s shoulder. A thousand thoughts rolled through her head. That she hadn’t fired this gun and didn’t know if it would pull left or right. No wind to speak of. Roughly thirty yards’ distance.
The mad firing around her stopped as the men’s guns emptied. Her fellow passengers scrambled to reload. The bandit came out from behind his cover and took deliberate aim with his rifle. Methodically he shot. A crack. The hiss of a bullet. The miner spun. Another crack. The oldest of the farm boys yelped.
“On three, roll away,” Anna said.
Selina’s eyes met hers, and she gave a grim nod.
“One, two, three.”
Selina rolled. Anna sighted down the barrel.
The terrified horses reared and stomped, neighing wildly. The driver fought for control. She was in the open, but so was the robber. She squeezed the trigger.
* * *
Daniel galloped his horse behind the large boulder where Rafael half sheltered. He reined in. “Vamonos, you loco idiot!”
“She shot me,” said Rafael with such a mixture of shock and horror that something broke loose in Daniel.
He laughed. “Good for her.”
“It’s not funny. That puta shot me.”
“You deserved it. What were you thinking?” Daniel grabbed the bridle of his brother’s horse and spurred his own mount. If they decided to give chase, he wanted to be well away. But Rafael was right; it wasn’t the least bit funny. “You shouldn’t call her that. She was just defending herself.”
“I wanted to see—” Rafael took his reins, yanked his poncho down to his shoulders and spurred his horse alongside Daniel’s “—what my bride looked like.”
“La Madre de Dios, you have a photograph,” hissed Daniel. A photograph that showed her trim figure and her hair as light in color, but it failed to do justice to her.
“I’ve never seen a photo...graph...of her.” Rafael pressed the heel of his hand against his chest.
Ah, hell. He’d never seen the photograph because Daniel had tucked it in his saddlebag for safekeeping and never turned it over to his brother. He’d handed over the rest that had come, but that one he’d held on to for just one more good look at the girl.
Heaviness pushed at Daniel as he tried to assess his brother’s injury. Not that he’d ever expected Rafe to hold up a stage, but if handing over the picture might have prevented his brother from his foolhardy attempt to see what his bride looked like...
“We’re going the wrong way,” said Rafael.
“Because leading a tracker straight to the ranch is such a good idea.” Daniel risked a look back. No signs of pursuit yet. The enormity of what they’d done slammed into Daniel like a bull at full charge. He’d just participated in a stagecoach—well, not a robbery, because Rafael hadn’t planned to take anything—not that the law would be inclined to see it as anything less. A stagecoach holdup, then.
“Right,” answered Rafael.
Why had his brother thought stopping the stage to get a look at his bride was a good idea? Daniel’s stomach burned, and his head buzzed. “I can’t believe you did that. Why would you shoot at them?”
“They shot at me first. I was only defending myself,” Rafael said. Grimacing, he pressed his palm against his upper chest.
“If you weren’t shot, I’d shoot you myself,” muttered Daniel. He jerked down the poncho he’d pulled over his face.
When Rafael had taken his new rifle, Daniel had followed him to get it back. Only he’d had to saddle a horse and then chase after Rafe for miles. He’d nearly caught up to his brother when they’d both seen the stagecoach rolling toward Stockton. Rafe had shouted back he was going to stop it, then spurred his horse toward a ravine the road ran through. Daniel hadn’t wanted any part of stopping the stage, but his protests had been ignored.
“I knew you’d help.” Rafael managed a smile despite the blood dripping down his poncho.
“I was just trying to keep you from being killed.” Daniel jerked back on his horse’s reins and caught the other horse’s bridle, pulling it to a walk.
Daniel’s head spun. He had to get Rafael away from the scene and back home before a posse was sent after them. “They could have recognized us or our horses, or, damn it, you could have killed someone.”
A vee appeared between Rafael’s eyebrows, and his eyes narrowed. The look of pain cut short the berating Daniel wanted to give him.
The enormity of what he’d done—they’d done—poured over him in a cold wave, worse than the time they’d gone to the ocean and Rafael had pushed him into the frigid surf and left him gasping for air. Not for the first time he felt old, much older than his twenty-two years. Older than the hills, older than his reckless brother.
There were times Rafael didn’t make sense. Over the past year, he’d been almost totally disengaged from the process of getting an Anglo bride, but he’d said he needed one to help their land case in the district court. Now he was acting ridiculously anxious. Daniel hoped a wife would temper Rafael’s drinking, disappearing for weeks on end and gambling in the raucous San Francisco farther west. Holding up a stagecoach was far worse than anything Rafael had done before.
