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Tossing her gun aside, she faced him. Her leg was on fire. Putting weight on it only increased the pain.
He came close and said, “Women like you is only good on her knees, so kneel, bitch.”
“And men like you are only good for shooting people in the back, fucking coward!”
Red with fury, he backhanded her. The force knocked her to the ground. Standing over her, he sneered. “I’ve hated you for a long time, and do you know why?”
She didn’t and didn’t care. She dragged the back of her hand across her bleeding lip.
“I hated you because my father called you a better man than me. Said your rode better, roped better. Wished his son had half your balls.”
Smiling, she asked, “Do you know who else is a better man than you? Him.” And she pointed at her grandfather approaching Matt like a stalking grizzly.
Eyes wide, Matt emptied his Colt’s last few bullets into Ben’s buffalo coat-covered chest, but the old mountain man didn’t slow. Matt turned to run. Ben’s hunting knife flew from his hand and the gleaming blade hit the back of Matt’s thigh like a lightning bolt from the heavens. Matt screamed and fell. Ben reached down, raised him to his feet, and said, “See you in hell.”
He snapped Matt’s neck and tossed him aside. It happened so quickly, it took her a moment to process what she’d seen. She looked up into Ben’s feral eyes only to watch him slowly drop to his knees. Alarmed and recalling the bullets he’d taken, she crawled to his side. “Are you hurt?”
He was by then stretched out on the ground. She opened his coat and all the blood covering his chest scared her. “We have to get you to Colt.”
He pushed her hands away. “I’m going to die, so let me do it here. I’d rather go out this way than by a disease that’ll leave me good for nothing but shitting on myself.”
“You are not going to die.”
“Sure I am. Tell Odell to burn me. You take my ashes up to Eagle Point and put me in the wind. That way I can sleep with the mountains.”
Frantic, she looked around for a way to save him. “Don’t you dare die on me, old man! We have things to settle.”
“Too late, Little Rain. I did you wrong but look how strong and brave it made you. Tell Colt I said goodbye.”
And he slipped away.
“No!” she screamed, and the pain in it echoed across the stillness. Holding and rocking his body against hers, she wept.
It’s said that in times of great stress the human body is capable of amazing feats. Spring was unable to recall how she got her grandfather’s body into the bed of the wagon, but somehow she did.
Driving slowly into town, dirty, bleeding, and shot, she pulled back on the reins in front of Colt’s office and a crowd of people ran to her aid.
Later in Colt’s office, as he removed the bullet from her leg, she distracted herself from the painful process by telling the story of what happened.
“Where’s Matt’s body?” Whit asked when she was done. Odell was there, too.
“On the ground where Ben tossed him.”
He sighed. “I’ll get Lyman Beck and bring his remains back to town.”
Spring hoped scavenging predators had dragged him into the brush to feast, but she kept that to herself. “I should’ve been able to do something to keep Ben alive until I got him here.”
Colt shook his head. “There was no way he could’ve survived those wounds. You did your best, Spring. Don’t beat yourself up, please. I’m just glad Matt didn’t hurt you any more than he did.”
She was, too. Had Ben not shown up . . . She forced her mind away from what might have been. She glanced down at the bandage around her leg. Colt had cut off one side of her denims from the knee down in order to get at the bullet. “Can I go home?”
“Only if you promise to rest and stay off that leg for the next few days.”
She looked at him as if that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard him say, but she said, “Okay.”
Odell said, “I’ll bring you food from Dovie so you’ll eat and not have to worry about cooking for yourself.”
“Thanks.”
