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When he swung toward the front door, Dallas took a chance and stepped into the kitchen doorway, pulling at his grip. “My purse—”
The words were barely out of her mouth before she was forcibly slammed against the framework and a big hand grabbed her by the throat.
“I told you to forget about that damned purse!” Boone thundered, his fingers tightening, choking off her air and silencing her vocal cords.
He hurled more abuse and obscenities at her, but Dallas was beyond hearing them. She opened her mouth for air, but none came in and no sound came out. She pushed frantically at his hand, trying to weaken its stranglehold on her throat with no success.
With her lungs screaming for air, panic set in. Kicking and clawing, she tried to fight him off even as a redness pressed against the edges of her vision. But she could feel her strength ebbing away, fading even as the pain grew to an intense level—her ears, her head, her whole body roaring with it.
Blackness swirled, a relief offered somewhere in its dark void. Even as it closed around her consciousness, the pressure abruptly lifted. But there was no strength in her legs to hold her upright, and Dallas slumped to the floor, sucking in air in great, life-renewing gulps, a hand lifting to her painfully throbbing throat.
A loud crash finally penetrated her dazed senses. With an almost drunken swing of her head, Dallas looked around for Boone, fear surfacing anew.
Then she saw him—there in the kitchen. But he wasn’t alone. He was grappling with Quint. She had no idea where Quint had come from—or when or how.
A kind of joyous relief quivered through her, but it didn’t last as Quint blocked one blow from Boone, but missed the second. It clipped him on the chin, sending him reeling backward into the kitchen counter. Boone plunged after him, fists swinging.
Her own eyes warned her that Boone was bigger, stronger, and a good forty pounds heavier than Quint. This time Quint managed to duck under an arcing swing and dance out of Boone’s trap. But Dallas didn’t know how long he could hold him off without help.
Forcing her limbs to work, she struggled to her feet and half staggered to the telephone on the corner desk. Behind her she could hear the gruntings of breath, the shuffle of feet, and the smash of fist against flesh, all of it coming above the radio’s tender ballad.
With clumsy fingers, she clutched the receiver to her ear and dialed the emergency number. An operator was quick to answer, the voice coming clearly across the line.
“What’s your emergency please?”
But Dallas had trouble making her bruised vocal cords work. “Send the police.” It was raspy and weak. She swallowed and tried again. “It’s Boone Rutledge. He’s gone crazy.”
As if in emphasis of her words, a kitchen chair went flying across the floor and crashed into the wall, the racket of it loud enough for the operator to hear.
“Where are you?”
“The Cee Bar Ranch.” Dallas threw a worried glance over her shoulder and saw Quint on the floor, looking dazed and giving his head a shake as if to clear it. But it was the sight of Boone diving for him that made her call a loud and raspy warning. “Look out!”
Quint rolled clear, but Boone grabbed him before he could scramble to his feet. The two men rolled around on the floor, each struggling to gain an advantage.
The voice in Dallas’s ear kept demanding answers, but she couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the fight.
“Tell them to hurry,” she pleaded, fear striking deep when Boone pinned Quint to the floor and closed both hands around his throat, teeth bared, a killing look in his eyes. “My God, Boone’s going to kill him.”
She dropped the phone and automatically moved to help Quint. Then it all changed in the blink of an eye. One moment Boone’s hands were around Quint’s throat; in the next his arms were flying outward and Quint bucked him aside.
Gathering himself, Quint lurched to his feet and swayed a little, fists up in readiness, his chest heaving, one side of his face bloodied from a cut above his eye and more blood trickling from a corner of his mouth. Then Boone was up as well, his gaze fastening itself on Quint with a kind of crazed fury and frustration.
The two men circled warily, fists rotating, each searching for an opening in the other’s defenses. Boone banged a hip into the corner of the kitchen table. With a sweep of his paw, he hurled the table aside, overturning it.
Quint stepped in and landed two hard blows that temporarily staggered Boone. But he came roaring back with a growl of rage, swinging wildly, more blows missing than landing, but the ones that did inflicted damage.
Unable to stand and watch a second longer, Dallas ran into the living room and fumbled frantically to undo the lock on the gun cabinet’s door. At last, she flung it open and grabbed the shotgun from the rack.
She snatched up a box of shells and fed two into the chambers. Heart pounding, she raced back to the kitchen.
Boone was on the floor, a hand pressed to his jaw. Quint stood in front of him, directly between Dallas and Boone. Cursing under his breath, Boone grabb
ed for the counter edge to haul himself up and missed, catching hold of a drawer handle instead. The drawer came flying out off its track, the utensils tumbling from it and clattering to the floor.
When Boone rolled to his feet, he scooped up something, but not until she saw the glint of a steel blade did Dallas recognize the carving knife.
“Look out, Quint!” Dallas shouted, and this time her voice had some force to it. “He has a knife!”
