“I wish you hadn’t.” There was no break in his voice, all feeling repressed. She faced him, staring at a stranger, not at a man in whose arms she had lain so many times. Inside, she was coiling like a rattlesnake preparing to strike. His eyes grew narrower, probing in their intensity. “You heard your father admit that he was the one who had been stealing our cattle.”
“He didn’t do it alone!” Maggie flared. “What about the others? Are you going to hang them, too? I’m part of it. I knew about their raids. I even covered for them. Are you going to hang me, too?”
The admission caught Chase unaware. Until that moment he had believed she knew nothing of her father’s involvement in rustling Calder beef. A cold sense of betrayal ran through him.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he demanded.
“What would you have done? Turned me over to your father?” She was trembling with the rage that boiled inside. It hammered against her control, seeking an outlet, an escape. “What do you suppose he would have done to me? Strung me up beside my pa?”
Chase bristled. “My father wouldn’t have lifted a hand against you. He wouldn’t intentionally harm a woman.”
“That’s where he made his mistake!” She shook with fury, her hand tightening on the scissors. “You should have gotten rid of all of us! All of us! Do you hear?!!”
Something warned him at the last second. Perhaps it was the steel blades of the scissors flashing in the sunlight or the slight movement of her head that signaled her strike. But as her hand arced toward his stomach, Chase hunched away from it and flung up his arm to knock the scissors off target. The blade points ripped into his shirtsleeve and raked a diagonal slash the length of his forearm. It felt as if a hot iron had been laid across his skin, but there was no time to consider his wound.
He grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the scissors and wrenched it backward until he heard her gasp of pain mixed with the animal sounds of corne
red rage, and then her fingers unwillingly loosened their grip. A wide band of blood was already staining his shirt red and running onto the back of his hand when he took the scissors from her and pushed her backward, away from him.
A violent swing of his arm threw the scissors to the far side of the room. The action sent a raft of pain shooting up his arm. It produced an involuntary grimace as he clamped a hand over the throbbing wound and felt the blood pulsing from it to seep between his fingers, warm and sticky.
“You crazy little fool!” He glared at Maggie, holding his bloodied arm. In the state she was in, there was no hope of reasoning with her, but he couldn’t blame her for the bitter hatred she felt over what they’d done. He scooped his hat off the floor and jammed it onto his head as he turned and walked out, blood dripping from the ends of his fingers.
In the cab of the truck, Chase pulled the handkerchief from his back pocket and wrapped it around his arm just below the elbow. Holding one end in his teeth, he pulled the knot tight in an effort to apply pressure to the wound and stem the flow of blood. His whole arm felt like it was on fire.
When he finally arrived at the Triple C, he was gritting his teeth against the pain. He drove directly to the first-aid dispensary and parked in front of it. The bleeding had practically stopped, but the bottom half of his sleeve was saturated with blood and it had started to cake on his hand and fingers. He climbed out of the truck, gingerly holding his forearm.
“Hey, Chase!” Buck came trotting toward him. “Webb’s been looking for you. Where have you been?” Then he noticed Chase’s arm and the questioning smile was wiped from his face. “Holy shit! What did you do to your arm?”
Chase ignored the questions and continued on his way to the first-aid office. “Come on inside and help me get it fixed up.” Buck hurried forward to open the door and Chase walked directly to the sink, tugging at the knotted handkerchief. When it was loose, he turned to Buck. “Rip the sleeve off at the elbow. The shirt’s ruined, anyway.” The front of it was all smeared with blood.
The material tore easily at Buck’s pull and fell around his wrist. Chase unbuttoned the cuff and tossed the blood-wet sleeve into the wastebasket. Turning on the faucet, he held his arm under the water to wash off the worst of the blood. The force of the water beating against the ragged wound rekindled the fiery pain. Chase was white around the mouth before he was through, and a little shaky in the knees.
Grabbing a chair, he pulled it up to the sink and sat down, resting his arm on the counter. “You can finish it,” he told Buck and took off his hat to hook it on the spindled top of another chair. Blood had started to ooze slowly from the jagged slash.
Buck looked at it and shook his head. “What did you do? Get in a knife fight with somebody?” He dabbed at the ugly wound.
“Will you just shut up and take care of it?” He ground out the demand, fighting the waves of weakness that washed through him.
“This looks deep, Chase.” There was a worried look of concentration on his friend’s face. “Maybe I should take you into the doc and have it stitched.”
Chase flexed the fingers in his hand and made a fist. It hurt like hell, but he couldn’t feel any damage to the muscles or nerves. “If it has to be sewed, you can do it. You’ve stitched up enough animals; you should know how it’s done.”
Buck hesitated, uncertain. “You might need a shot for tetanus.”
“No, the scissors were clean.” Besides, he’d bled enough to eliminate any risk of infection.
“Scissors?” Buck looked at him with raised eyebrows. “A woman did this?”
“Would you get the damned sutures out of the drawer and sew this up! And stop asking questions!” Chase snapped.
“All right. You don’t have to bite my head off.” Buck recoiled with mock exaggeration and walked over to a cupboard where the sterilized needles and suture thread were kept. Before he started to sew up the wound, he glanced at Chase. “This is going to hurt. You know that?” At the glaring answer he received from Chase, Buck shrugged to indicate he’d been warned and inserted the needle into the flesh to make the first stitch.
Sweat broke out on his forehead as Chase clamped his teeth shut against the waves of pain. His arm quivered with the effort of trying to remain motionless, aided by the iron grip Buck kept on it. Each breath bordered on a groan.
“Did you hear Angus O’Rourke hanged himself yesterday?” Buck inquired to make conversation.
“Yeah, I heard.” Chase wished he’d chosen a different subject. “Damn it, I could use a drink.”