Rescuing the Cowboy Read online

  Rescuing the Cowboy

  P. Creeden

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Love Western Romance?

  A Marshal for Christmas

  An Agent for Josie

  An Agent for Opal

  A Bride for James

  A Bride for Henry

  Rescuing the Cowboy © 2019 P. Creeden

  Cover by Virginia McKevitt

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

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  Chapter 1

  November 1882

  Bethany Campbell rubbed her hands together and breathed in them trying to warm them up so that they wouldn’t feel so stiff from the cold in the small room where she worked. The fireplace dwindled to almost nothing during the last hour the sweatshop was open. Mr. Flint, the boss of the shop didn’t want to let good wood go to waste so he stood by the wood stove himself as if guarding it from the eleven women in the small room who might rush the heating element and put in another log without his permission. He stood there in hat and coat and gloves while the ladies in the sweatshop needed to go without too much bulk or they would be unable to work the machines and their hands remained bare so that they could use the dexterity of their fingertips to guide the thread.

  Outside the sun had begun to set, cutting the natural light that came from the thin set of windows along the top of the wall of the shanty. A draft came in each window glass as they frosted over in the shade. Mr. Flint lit a lantern and announced, “Wrap it up ladies, we’re almost out of light.”

  With stiff fingers and straining eyes, Bethany worked on the last few stitches of the blanket she’d been sewing, but then frowned when she saw the line was slightly off. She went back over the area again to straighten the stitch, her foot working the petal of the machine. The room was filled with the sounds of women grunting and pumping the machines. All of them lined up in rows with barely enough space between them for the women to have the full blankets feed through the mechanism. It grew darker, and Bethany frowned as women around her finished, their machines going silent, their feet shuffling along the floor as they made their way to put the last of their blankets on the pile for the next factory worker to prepare for delivery to a hotel or other large establishment that bought the Flint Company’s fine blankets.

  Her hands were almost in darkness by the time she’d finished. She’d had to turn around and use the little bit of light from the lantern that Mr. Flint held in order to see if the stitch was straight this time.

  “Mrs. Campbell, it’s time,” his gruff voice ordered, making it clear that the last thing Mr. Flint wanted to do was spend his evening staying late in the sweatshop.

  “Just a minute,” she said as she checked it. Satisfied, she folded the blanket neatly and started for the door. In the darkness, she stubbed her toe against the leg of one of the tables and hissed. Then she limped the rest of the way.

  “That wouldn’t happen if you finished your stitching in a timely manner and left when the other ladies did,” Mr. Flint said with a frown and his arms crossed over his chest. “Somehow your one more minute turns into fifteen, and you’re making me have to walk home in the utter darkness. New York City isn’t necessarily the safest place for even a gent like me to walk in the night.”

  Bethany frowned at the shadowed room. She’d not noticed she was the only one left, again. The two of them stepped outside in the darkness of the alleyway. Focusing on the gas lamp that lit the street ahead, Bethany started forward. Behind her she heard a match being lit and peered back just long enough to see Mr. Flint light up a cigarette. The flame lit his face for a split second before he shook the match out and stomped it under the sole of his shoe. Then he stood there a long moment, pulling a drag in. That was the reason he was always so irritable at the end of the day. He wasn’t permitted to smoke in the sweatshop, because they didn’t want the merchandise to smell of tobacco. She couldn’t help but shake her head. The newfangled cigarettes were all the fashion, but they smelled much worse than the tobacco found in pipes. She’d disliked the smell when her husband had tried to switch over, too. She’d convinced him not to, even though they were less expensive. He let her budget for them as well as all their other needs.

  After letting out a slow breath, she shook her head, wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck and ducked out into the light of the street ahead. Carts and horses still moved about even though the sun had set. When she was a child, the city was much quieter at night, but since they lit the city with gas lamps every direction, it was slowly becoming commonplace for people to be out and about in the night. High society held their balls and banquets in the evenings. Miscreants hid in alleys looking for their next victim. And common folk, like her, just tried to make it from one place to the next as quickly as possible.

  When the sound of feet shuffled behind her, Bethany tried to not to look back. If it was a villain and she acknowledged his presence, it would make him leap into action. Instead, she picked up her pace a bit, hoping that she would prove too hard a mark for him to bother with. All the while, she kept her eyes open for a police officer or a shop that was still open that she might duck into. She still had nearly a mile before she’d make it home to the boarding house.

  Ahead, a police officer stood on a corner. With relief, she doubled her speed. But so did the footsteps behind her. Panic made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. What did the roughneck behind her want from her? Her clothing made it obvious she was poor. She was close enough now that if she screamed, she’d get the police officer’s attention. Why would the scoundrel continue his pursuit?

  When the footsteps caught up with her, she braced herself for the worst, preparing to scream, waiting for the hand of someone to catch her and pull her back. But it didn’t happen. She stopped dead in her tracks. The person behind her, a man with his coat collar pulled up so that she couldn’t see who he was began to pass her. She let out a breath of relief before the man turned toward her with a sinister smile on his lips and then pushed her hard toward the street.

  The scream that she’d prepared before tore through her throat as she fell backward. A horse whinnied in surprise, its feet dancing harder, but couldn’t get away. As she hit the ground, the last thing she could see were hooves and the wheel of the cart before blackness enveloped her.

  Chapter 2

  Marcus Young whistled hard and swung his rope to slap the rump of a steer who’d lagged behind the rest of the herd that he and the cowboys
were moving to another part of the ranch for the winter. They’d spend the rest of the winter in the valley in the hopes that the hills on both sides would provide some wind blockage and the trees to the north would do the same. The herd would winter there and then, come spring, Marcus and the cowboys would return to bring them back closer to the homestead part of the ranch. The lightest of flurries began. It was a bit early in the year for that. Usually they didn’t expect any snow until the first week of December. But it was barely past the twentieth of November, and the drizzle they’d had this morning had slowly switched to sleet, and then flurries.

  Flakes of snow stuck to his bay gelding’s mane, spotting his black and brown coat with flecks of white. The horse’s nose was down and tucked in to keep the flakes out of its nose. Marcus reached down and pat the gelding’s neck. “Only a little longer, Lucky.”

  He knew the horse couldn’t wait to start the lope home. Honestly, neither could Marcus. A warm fire and a cup of soup from the kitchen sounded mighty nice. His stomach growled in response to the thought. Then he couldn’t help but think of and practically smell the fresh bread the cook had likely made. And that only made his stomach protest worse. Ugh. Marcus looked back, reining his horse to turn about. How many more cattle did they have left, anyway?

  Just as he turned, he saw one of the cowboys slumped over his saddle and then the man fell. “Freddy!” Marcus called.

  He whistled again to get one of the other cowboy’s attention. Wilbur looked up and saw the trouble immediately and began galloping over. Marcus reached the man first. Freddy lay unconscious on the ground, his teeth chattering. Wilbur had dismounted and rushed over. “What’s happened?”

  Marcus shook his head. “Go get that horse. We’re going to need it.” Then he pulled the blanket off from under Lucky’s saddle, patting his horse on the loin. “Sorry, old boy, Freddy needs it more.”

  He took the short, wool blanket and rested it over the man on the ground’s body. Then Marcus pulled off his duster and placed it over the blanket. The body heat from the horse still steamed off the wool from the blanket, and he wanted to hold it in as best he could with his canvas duster. When Wilbur returned with Freddy’s horse, Marcus pulled the blanket from under its saddle as well and stuffed it under the duster. “We need to get Freddy inside and warm quick. The tips of his fingers are already turning blue.”

  Wilbur clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Why wasn’t he wearing his gloves? He’s not even got a wool shirt on under his duster.”

  “No one expected it to get this cold. How many more steers do we have left to run up the hill?”

  “Thirty or forty... maybe fifty.”

  Marcus frowned. “Go run up there and tell Mike, Jeb, and Donny to handle it. The three of them should be able to get the last fifty. You and me are going to take Freddy in.” Marcus peeled off his gloves and his wool shirt and tossed them up to Wilbur. “If any of them aren’t wearing enough, give them these.”

  “What about you?” Wilbur said, his eyes going wide. “You’ll freeze.”

  “It’s only a forty minute or so ride from here back to the ranch—an hour, since we’ll be going slow. I’ll be fine.”

  Wilbur’s lips drew thin as he shook his head, but he turned about and headed back toward the other cowboys again. He leaned down and patted Freddy’s cheeks. “Hey! Can you get up on your own? Are you going to make me carry you back to your horse? Come one. Wakey-wakey.”

  Freddy groaned, but opened his eyes. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  “You fell. It’s freezing out here. Let’s get you back to the ranch. You think you can mount your horse for me?”

  He blinked and shook his head as though trying to clear it. “Yeah. Yeah.”

  Marcus helped the man back onto his horse, and then put the horse blankets and duster back on him. “Just hold the horn, Freddy, all right? I’m going to pony you back to the ranch.”

  “I can handle it,” the man said, reaching for the reins.

  “Nothing doing.” Marcus pulled the reins away and mounted his own horse quickly. “Keep those fingers warm in the duster, all right. They’re going to hurt a bit while they thaw.”

  Wilbur galloped back up on the other side of Freddy. “Hey, cowboy. How you doing?”

  The man shook his head, seeming barely able to keep his eyes open. He listed Wilbur’s direction. Wilbur caught him and straightened him up in the saddle.

  “Good,” Marcus said. “You stay on that side and I’ll stay on this one. We’ll walk our way back to the ranch. The horses already know that we’re heading home and are walking with purpose. It will feel like forever, but we’ll get home in an hour.”

  Wilbur nodded and they started on their way back down the hill. Snowflakes tried to stick to Marcus’s eyelashes as he blinked them away and used the back of his forearm to try to clear his sight. The wind tore through his undershirt. He bit down hard on his back teeth to keep everything from shivering and chattering.

  “Here,” Wilbur said as a duster flew over Freddie’s mare’s neck and landed on Marcus’s gelding’s “Put that on. You’ll catch your death out here. An hour might not seem like much, but a man could die in that little bit of time.”

  Marcus frowned, watching Wilbur pull his wool shirt tighter around the collar. He wanted to hand the duster back over to his worker, but knew that would only end up in a fight. Instead, he put his arms in the canvas and nodded toward the man. “Thanks.”

  An hour had never felt like such a long time. By the time the ranch came into sight, Marcus couldn’t fight the clattering of his own teeth from happening and he was beginning to lose the feeling in his fingertips as well. At least it had stopped snowing. Exhaustion was coming over him and all he wanted to do was sleep.

  “Hey!” Wilbur called from the other side of Freddie. “Don’t you go passing out on me now. We’re almost there. Hold out a little longer!”

  Marcus nodded and they continued. He was so glad to see the yardman coming running up and taking the reins of his gelding. “Take good care of him. Will you, Johnson?”

  The yardman nodded as Marcus dismounted. But the moment his feet hit the ground, his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the muddy yard. His muscles seized as his shoulder came in contact with the chilly ground. “So cold,” was all he could say before he passed out.

  Chapter 3

  Bethany woke with pain radiating in her head and barely being able to crack her eyes open. The dim room around her smelled of cleaning products and sickness. She could hear several people moving about, but when they passed by her eyes, she could only see their outlines. She blinked several times, trying to clear her eyes and see better, but it barely seemed to help and made her headache worse. She groaned in frustration.

  “Bethany!” Milly’s voice cried out as she took hold of Bethany’s cold fingers with her warm ones.

  She almost moaned again, and attempted to say Milly’s name, but she didn’t seem to have control of her lips.

  “Shh... It’s okay. Just sit still and stay quiet. It’s enough that you’re awake.” Milly sniffed. Was she crying? Milly was one of the girls who lived in the boarding house with Bethany a few blocks from the sweatshop. “You’ve had an accident and were trampled by a horse. You’ve been out cold for three days. The doctor said he didn’t know when you’d wake up... if you’d wake up.”

  Bethany tried blinking again. No. That couldn’t be right. She couldn’t have been asleep for that long. “Are you sure?” she asked, but she could barely understand the words she’d said with her own ears.

  “Yes, it’s true.” Milly sniffed again. “I’ve been filling in for you at the sweatshop and helping out when I could. I’m so happy that you’re awake. I’ve been visiting you in the evening after work to see if there was anything I could do or if you’d made any progress.”

  “What day is it?” Slowly more of Bethany’s words were starting to make sense. At the same time, her vision was becoming clearer. It was true. She
looked about the room and recognized the common area of the Bellevue Hospital. Outside, the sun had already set and the nurses in the room worked by lantern light.

  “It’s Saturday,” Milly said, but her eyes darted to the room like she was looking to see if anyone was listening. She leaned in closer to Bethany and whispered, “Do you have any savings? The hospital bill is getting bigger and bigger, and you need to pay it as soon as you can. If you want, I could get the money for you and pay the bill with what you have.”

  Bethany’s heart sank. The only thing she had in all the world was her small savings. She was always good with budgeting and it had taken over a year to scrape that money together. She’d been hoping to save up enough to go out west and visit her aunt in Nebraska Territory. But then her aunt had died that summer and the savings had become useless. Bethany honestly wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it. She’d kicked around the idea of going out west anyway and trying her hand at becoming something than a seamstress in a sweatshop. Maybe a school teacher? She wasn’t sure if she could do that with her education. Regardless, she’d gotten in the habit of saving her money and had continued to do so. It seemed that now she’d be giving it up. She nodded to Milly. “It’s in my drawer. The bottom of the chest.”

  Milly’s brow furrowed. “I looked there already. I just saw your socks and a book of poetry.”

  Bethany nodded. “It’s behind the binding of the poetry book. Should be about eighty dollars.”

  This time, Milly’s eyes went wide as she said in a harsh whisper, “Eighty dollars!” Then she looked about the room again as if checking for an eavesdropper. “What were you going to do with all that money?”