She hated them and prayed for their utter destruction.
Now, Sully was threatening Will, telling him to step forward and surrender himself or they would kill everyone else, too.
Maggie ran to the door.
“What are you doing?” Rose asked, her voice full of panic.
“I’m going out.”
“No,” Mama said. “Will said?—”
“Didn’t you hear Sully?” Maggie said. “You know Will. If I don’t go out there, he’ll sacrifice himself to save us. I can’t let him do that. I’d rather die fighting alongside my husband.”
Gripping the big Dragoon in one hand, Maggie opened the bunkhouse door and slipped into the shadows outside.
The cattle were going crazy now, banging into the fence and making a racket.
Where was Will?
Her eyes searched the darkness behind the barn.
There!
She saw him sitting on Clyde, peering out at the raiders, a glint of moonlight on his rifle barrel.
How she loved him. She had to get to him before he fell for Sully’s lies.
But then Sully counted to three and shouted, “All right, Bentley, if you’re too much of a coward to save your family?—”
And Will called from the darkness, “I’m here.”
No! Maggie couldn’t let Will sacrifice himself.
“You win, Sully,” Will said, starting to come forward. “I’ll do it. I?—”
Whatever Will had been going to say vanished when Maggie pointed the big Dragoon in the direction of Teal’s raiders, hauled back on the hammer, and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 45
Will had just been coming out from behind the barn when someone near the bunkhouse fired a shot.
Instinctively, he jerked back behind cover, but by the big bellow of the gun, Will knew it was the Dragoon.
Maggie was out here!
Then everything exploded, two dozen guns firing at once.
Bullets slammed into the corner of the barn, showering him in splinters.
“Maggie!” he shouted. “Take cover!”
He slid off Clyde, walked the horse back, and tethered him to the rail away from the shooting. Then he got onto his belly and crawled back over to the corner, where he opened fire on the enemy, who seemed to be firing in all directions now as Will’s friends hidden in the darkness also opened fire.
Sully and Teal had expected to find Bentley asleep in a farmhouse with three women. Easy pickings in their minds.
But now, they found themselves pinned between five snipers and one of the very women they had discounted, who fired again and again from somewhere beyond the bunkhouse, hopefully behind cover.
Will unseated one raider, fired into the mass, hit another… then had scooted back around the barn when bullets started chewing up the ground where he’d been lying.
