The back door crashed open, and she raised the heavy rifle to her chest and aimed it at the door. It took all her strength. The momentum of the heavy thing carried her around in a circle, and by the time she got it aimed at the door again, there were seven Apaches crowding the room, their baleful expressions freezing her.
Panic overwhelmed her, and her finger squeezed the trigger. If she could wound one of them, the others might back off. But nothing happened. She squeezed harder. Still nothing happened. Worse, they could see what she was trying to do and they began laughing at her.
“It might help if you squeezed the trigger instead of the guard.”
Sharisse whirled around to face the front door. It had quietly opened, and there he was. “Lucas! Thank God!”
But as she saw how he was dressed, she realized it wasn’t Lucas. Still, she’d never been so relieved to see anyone in her life—even Slade.
He strode across the room and took the rifle.
“Damn fool woman,” he growled so low that only she could hear him. “Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
Her back stiffened. “I was protecting myself.”
He swore under his breath as he put the rifle back in its place. Then he said something to the Indians in their own tongue, and they began to leave. When the last one was out the door, she sank back against the wall, color slowly coming back into her face.
“You knew them?” she asked Slade.
“Yes. I brought them here. A couple of their horses won’t make it all the way to Mexico, where they’re headed. They wanted replacements.”
As his words sank in, her temper exploded. “So you were here all along! You could have showed yourself sooner! Why didn’t you?”
His brows drew together. “I don’t think I like your tone, woman.”
“You don’t like it!” she shouted, coming away from the wall and facing him squarely. “I don’t give a fig what you like!Idon’t like being scared to death. I think you get some kind of perverted pleasure out of frightening women.”
“You’re not making sense, you know.”
“I am making perfect sense!” she blazed. “You scared me intentionally!”
“You’re hysterical. If you’d settle down, you’d realize you got scared over nothing. You weren’t in any danger.”
“Was I supposed to know that?”
“I might ask you how I was supposed to know you’d take one look at my friends and go crazy? And as for your wanting to know where I was, Billy’s wife heard us coming in and called out to me to say that Luke wasn’t here. Not even a minute passed before I heard you cry out and I ran to investigate. I couldn’t have told you I was here. No time.”
“A minute?” she gasped.
Was that all the time that had passed? It probably was. So he hadn’t meant for her to get frightened. It had just turned out that way. Oh, what an utter fool she had made of herself, accusing him.
“I…perhaps I owe you an apology,” she said lamely.
“Forget it.” He walked past her to the backdoor. After a moment staring at the corral, he informed her, “They’ve picked out the horses they want.”
“Shouldn’t Lucas be asked first?” Sharisse ventured.
“Wouldn’t make no difference,” Slade replied. “That’s a raiding party out there. You either give them what they want and let them go on their way, or they take what they want and someone gets hurt.”
No danger, he had said. “Nice friends you have there,” she said hotly.
He glanced back at her. “Better my friends than my enemies.”
“Will they leave now?”
He shouted something out the door and raised a hand in salute, then closed the door. “They’ve gone.”
“But aren’t you going with them?”
