A footstep sounded on the porch.

  Luke turned his head toward the door, and as he did so, his legs folded up underneath him. He tried to catch himself on the table, but wound up lying on the floor between the chair and the table.

  Emily came in and saw him there. “Damn it all to — ” She stopped herself. She had been trying to stop cursing so much lately.

  He thought maybe she had decided it wasn’t ladylike . . . as if acting more like a lady might have become more important to her.

  She rushed over to him and bent to take hold of him. “Lord have mercy, Luke, what happened? How did you manage to fall?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he snapped, furious at himself for letting her distract him. “Just help me up.” He saw the quick flash of hurt in her eyes and wished he could call back the sharp words, but they were already out there. He couldn’t do a thing about them except add in a softer tone, “Please, Emily.”

  As she lifted him, he reached up and grabbed hold of the table. With it to support him, she was able to get him back into the chair.

  “I’ll pick up your crutches.”

  He held out a hand to stop her. “I can get them. Thank you.”

  She looked at him with a slight frown. “Were you trying to walk, Luke? I’ve told you, I don’t care about that, not for me. I want it for you, but it’s not going to make any difference how I feel — ”

  “Of course it makes a difference. It’s bound to.” Luke frowned at her.

  “No,” she said as she leaned closer to him. “I swear to you, it doesn’t. Ill prove it to you.”

  Before he could stop her, she lowered herself onto hi s lap, her arms clasped around his neck, and her mouth pressed hungrily to his.

  Luke bit back a groan of mingled despair and desire. His arms went around her. She was such a little bit of a thing, yet the curves of her body were those of a woman. Her lips worked urgently against his, their taste sweet and hot.

  As he held her and kissed her, he felt something, no doubt about that.

  She did too. Pulling back slightly, her eyes widened. He was about to apologize, but a pleased glow sprang to life in her eyes. “See, Luke,” she whispered. “I told you it didn’t matter.”

  She kissed him again, then slid out of his arms and stood up.

  “Grampaw might be comin’ in any time, so we’ll save our sparkin’ for later.”

  Luke nodded. After everything Linus Peabody had done for him, he didn’t want to offend the old-timer.

  Peabody hurried in a short time later, all right, as

  Emily had predicted. He wore a worried expression on his face, and it quickly became obvious the last thing on his mind was who was sparking his granddaughter. “There’s a buggy and some riders comin’.” He reached for the rifle hanging on the wall near the door.

  “Yankee soldiers again?” Emily asked, her body tensing as she stood next to the stove where she had started supper.

  Peabody shook his head as he checked to make sure the rifle was loaded.

  “Nope. It’s that fella Wolford, and unless I miss my guess, the men he’s got with him are hired guns.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “Get my revolver,” Luke told Emily.

  “What’re you thinkin’ about doin’?” She looked at her grandfather. “What are the both of you thinkin’ about doin’?”

  “Nothin’ we don’t have to,” Peabody told her. “Could be Wolford just wants to talk. If he does, I’ll listen to him. Won’t do him any good, but I’ll listen.”

  “Is this about the folks who have been losin’ their farms to the carpetbaggers?”

  Peabody frowned. “You know about that?”

  “How the hell could I not know about it?” Emily blurted out. “It’s the only thing folks all over this part of the country are talkin’ about!”

  “I need my revolver,” Luke said again. He was trying to stay calm, but the same tense feelings he had experienced before every battle were going through him. He might soon be fighting for his life, and the lives of Emily and her grandfather as well.

  But that wasn’t exactly likely, he told himself, not just yet, anyway. From what Peabody had said about

  Wolford’s attempt to take over Bud Harkness’s farm, the carpetbagger was using quasi-legal means in his land grabs, relying on corrupt judges and what passed for the law under Yankee occupation.

  Wolford would have hired guns in reserve, though, and if he couldn’t get what he wanted peacefully, he would use force to take it. Luke had no doubt about that.

  He looked intently at Emily until she sighed and went to the cabinet where the Griswold and Gunnison revolver was kept. She took it out and brought it over to Luke. “I can use this gun.”

  He held out his hand. “You need to stay inside.”

  A quick flash of anger lit up her eyes. “Luke — -“

  “Luke’s right,” Peabody said. “You stay in the house, girl, like you did when the Yankees came,”

  “Men!” she said in exasperation. “You’re the most stubborn critters on God’s green earth!”

  Luke stuck the revolver in the pocket of his overalls and grasped his crutches. “That’s because we’re raised by women to be that way.” With a smile, he lifted himself to his feet.

  She still looked mad, but rested a hand on his arm for a second. “Don’t start trouble with them.”

  “I don’t intend to start trouble with anybody,” Luke assured her. He didn’t say anything about finishing it, if things came down to that. He looked out through the door Peabody had left open. “Here they come.”

  “Be careful,” Emily whispered to Luke. “We just . . .” She didn’t finish, but he knew what she meant. They had just admitted how they felt about each other. She didn’t want him going and getting himself killed.

  Luke didn’t want that, either. He nodded to show her he understood as much.

  Peabody went out onto the porch. Luke followed him, moving fairly easily on the crutches. He wished he could have walked out there bold as brass, but that was something for the future if his legs continued to improve.

  With a clatter of hoofbeats and wheels, Vincent Wolford drove his buggy up to the cabin and brought the vehicle to a halt, reining in the two fine black horses pulling it. Luke found himself wondering who those horses used to belong to, and how Wolford had gotten his hands on them. He was willing to bet the carpetbagger hadn’t bought them fair and square.

  Three men on horseback accompanied Wolford. As they reined in, Luke studied them. Back home he had seen Jayhawkers from Kansas on several occasions, and these men reminded him of those ruthless guerrillas.

  One wore a derby and a flashy eastern suit. He was big, with broad shoulders and a rough-hewn face dominated by a rusty handlebar mustache. His hands were huge, with knobby knuckles broken more than once in various brawls. He wasn’t carrying a gun that was visible, but Luke figured there was probably a revolver in a shoulder holster under that tweed coat.

  The other two riders were dressed more like frontiersmen in boots, work clothes, and broad-brimmed hats. They wore their guns out in the open, carrying holstered pistols on their hips. They had rugged, hard-planed faces and cold eyes.

  Luke knew all three men were probably killers, paid by Vincent Wolford to enforce his will and help him take what he wanted. They would be fast on the draw. If Linus Peabody raised his rifle, one or more of the gunmen would drill him before he got a shot off.

  Luke was pretty handy with a gun, but knew he wasn’t a match for those three. Not with the Griswold and Gunnison stuck in his pocket. If he had a regular gun rig and a pair of revolvers, he might manage to down a couple, maybe all three, but they would get lead in him, too.

  It wasn’t going to come to that. He couldn’t allow the carpetbaggers to kill him and Peabody, leaving Emily at their mercy.

  “Take it easy,” he said under his breath to Peabody. “Stay calm ”

  The old man nodded, but the tense way he stood and the urgency with which he gripped the rifle told a different story. He was ready to fight. He wanted to fight.

  Luke levered himself forward on his crutches, putting himself between Peabody and the buggy. He nodded to Wolford. “Howdy. What brings you out here from town?”

  “Mr. Smith, isn’t it?” Wolford asked with that phony smile of his, without getting down from the buggy. “I came to speak with Mr. Peabody there. I have a business proposition for him.”

  Peabody moved up even with Luke. “I ain’t interested in doin’ business with the likes of you.”

  “You should hear me out,” Wolford said. “That’s just a smart rule of thumb. Always listen to the other fellow’s proposal. You never know when he might offer something you want.”

  Peabody glared darkly at the visitors, but after a moment he nodded. “I’ll listen. I don’t reckon it’s very likely you got anything I want, though.”

  “You might be surprised. What I’m proposing, Mr. Peabody, is that I take this farm off your hands for a very reasonable price.”

  “Why in blazes would I want to sell?” Peabody snapped.

  “Well, the market for cotton, tobacco, and other crops is very depressed right now. You can’t hope to make very much for them.”

  “We’ll get by,” the old man said.

  “Yes, perhaps, but you can do even better somewhere else. I hear people are having phenomenal success migrating to the frontier. There are millions of acres out there just ripe for the taking.”

  “This is my home. I’ve lived on this land all my life, and my pa lived here before me. I intend to stay until the Good Lord calls me home.”

  Wolford’s smile didn’t budge, but Luke thought he saw impatience growing in the man’s eyes.

  “You can do that,” Wolford said, “but you’d still be wise to sell out to me. If you don’t want to leave, you can always stay and work the land on shares.”

  “Why in the Sam Hill would I want to do that?”

  “You wouldn’t have all the worries of dealing with the new government. I’d handle all that. You could just work the land the way you always have.”

  “While you rake in all the profits?” Peabody asked.

  “Not all of it. You’d still get by, as you put it.” Wolford’s voice finally hardened as he went on. “You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Peabody, that things have changed around here. It’s not the same as it was before the war, and it never will be again. Different people are running things now. I happen to be well acquainted with Colonel Morrison and Judge Blevins, and although I may be speaking out of turn here, I know they’re going through all the records and uncovering a number of cases where insufficient taxes were paid on properties in this area.”

  “You mean you’re gonna grab folks’ land by claimin’ they owe taxes they really don’t,” Peabody said.

  The big eastern tough in the derby glared and edged his horse forward. “Don’t you talk to Mr. Wolford like that, you old Rebel,” he warned.

  Wolford lifted a hand. “Take it easy, Joe. I’m sure Mr. Peabody didn’t mean to cast any aspersions.”

  “What I’ll cast is you offa my land,” Peabody said. “I paid my taxes, and can’t nobody say otherwise!”

  “Yes, but you paid them to the Confederates who were in charge here at the time.” Wolford shook his head as if he were genuinely regretful. “There’s no way of knowing where all that money went, but it isn’t in the county’s coffers like it’s supposed to be. Unfortunately, in order to fund the new government, a new taxation schedule will have to be put in place — ”

  “Why don’t you call it what it is?” Peabody broke in. “Stealin’, plain and simple!”

  “I’m just trying to help.” Wolford leaned over slightly on the buggy seat to look past Luke and Peabody. “Isn’t that your granddaughter I see just inside the door?” He raised a hand to his hat. “Good day to you, Miss Peabody. You’re looking as lovely as ever.”

  “You leave Emily outta this — ” Peabody began, but she stepped onto the porch and confronted Wolford and his gunmen, too.

  “We don’t want your so-called help, mister.” Her eyes blazed with fury.

  She counseled restraint, Luke thought, but her emotions got the better of her and she couldn’t practice what she preached.

  “You’d better turn that buggy around and get off our land, right now!”

  “Or what? An old man and a cripple will run us off?” The gunman leaned over in his saddle and spat. “I don’t think so.”

  “Please, Howell, there’s no need for unpleasantness.” Wolford smiled at Emily again. “I think if you’d just give me a chance, Miss Peabody, you and I could be good friends. If you were to help persuade your grandfather to be reasonable, why, I can see all sorts of benefits in it for you. A girl as beautiful as you should have some of the finer things in life, the sort of things a man like me could give you — ”

  “So I could be some sort of backwoods harlot for you?” Emily turned toward her grandfather and reached for the rifle. “Gimme that gun.”

  Luke saw the three hired killers grow tense in their saddles and knew the situation was teetering perilously close to violence. Under the circumstances, the outcome of that wouldn’t be good for him and his friends.

  He moved between the Peabodys and the unwelcome visitors and said in a loud, hard voice, “That’s enough.”

  “Do you speak for these people, Mr. Smith?” Wolford asked with a sneer.

  “I speak for myself, and this is what I’ve got to say, Wolford.” Luke looked right into the man’s eyes. He didn’t like taking his attention off the others, but knew they wouldn’t act unless Wolford ordered them to. “If there’s trouble here today, you’ll be sorry. I’ll see to that personally.”

  “That’s mighty big talk for a man on crutches.” The eastern tough called Joe sneered.

  Luke let go of the right-hand crutch, letting it fall behind him, and moved his hand so it wasn’t far from the butt of the revolver sticking out of his pocket. “I only need one to balance on,” he told Wolford, making it clear as he could. If any gunplay broke out, Luke was going to draw that revolver and kill Wolford, no matter what else happened. He might die, and Emily and her grandfather probably would, too, but Wolford would die first.

  Luke was going to see to that.

  Reading the deadly message in Luke’s steady gaze, fear flared in the carpetbagger’s eyes. An instant later, it was replaced by smoldering anger.

  But the fear was still there, underneath, and Luke knew it.

  “All right,” Wolford snapped. “I was just trying to be generous. I thought perhaps we could consider ourselves friends and neighbors, Mr. Peabody. But if you’d rather this . . . this unreconstructed Rebel speak for you — ”

  “Smith’s right,” Peabody said. “We’ve heard enough. You and your boys need to git.”

  Wolford lifted the reins. “We’ll be going, then. Perhaps I was wrong, Mr. Peabody. Perhaps you won’t lose your farm” — he paused — “but don’t count on it”

  With that, he turned the team and sent the buggy rolling away from the cabin. The three gunmen lingered a moment, giving Luke hard, murderous stares before they wheeled their horses and followed Wolford,

  “I ain’t countin’ on nothin’,” Peabody said, “except that this trouble ain’t over.”

  Luke knew the old-timer was right about that.

  CHAPTER 21

  Wolford had been so angry when he drove away Luke wouldn’t have been surprised if problems started cropping up right away. But several days passed with no sign of the carpetbagger or his hired guns.

  Linus Peabody reported the Harkness family on the neighboring farm had packed up and moved away, abandoning the place because they couldn’t pay the exorbitant taxes being demanded by the Reconstruction government. Another worried neighbor had come by the farm and told Peabody about it, adding that the sheriff was going to auction off the Harkness farm in Dobieville on Saturday.

  Luke knew Vincent Wolford would win that auction at a rock-bottom price. And he would probably get some of the money back from the sheriff and the judge in the form of a kickback.

  The idea of Emily going out to work in the fields with her grandfather worried Luke. If Wolford’s gunnies showed up, intent on causing trouble, Peabody wouldn’t be able to protect her. In his current condition,

  Luke couldn’t watch over them, so he made up his mind the best thing for him to do was improve as much and as quickly as he could.

  With that determination goading him on, he worked with his legs for long hours each day while Emily and her grandfather were gone. He put more and more weight on his own muscles, forcing them to move and carry him, not just support him.

  Back and forth across the cabin’s main room he shuffled endlessly, using the crutches. Eventually he was able to take a step, then several steps, without touching the floor with the crutches, although he held them ready to catch himself if he fell.

  Those efforts made his legs ache almost intolerably, but he welcomed the pain, even embraced it. To have his legs hurt was so much better than to have them feel nothing at all.

  By the time a week had passed since Wolford and his gunmen had shown up at the farm, Luke was able to take actual steps as he walked across the room, no longer sliding his feet in a shuffling manner. He left the crutches behind and walked on his own, something that had seemed utterly impossible a few months ago. His gait was slow and halting, to be sure, and he told himself with a wry smile that he was a long way from being able to dance a jig, but he was getting there.

  He was getting there, all right, and it was the best pain he had ever felt, although he sometimes had to bite his lip to keep from crying out when Emily massaged his legs.

 

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