Free Only Mine by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

those folds for the stage to approach.
    “Dear God,” Jessica breathed as she heard rifle fire booming from the low hills.
    Wolfe was on top of the stagecoach, exposed to every shot. He could use the driver’s shotgun, but there was no accuracy with such a weapon. It was intended to deter hold-ups, not an Indian attack.
    The driver’s whip cracked repeatedly as he yelled at the team, demanding every bit of speed from the big horses. The coach bucked and swayed wildly each time it hit a rough spot on the road, and there were many spots. Jessica braced herself as best she could and stared out the window.
    The Indians were a bit ahead and considerably to the left of the coach. They were too far away for accurate shooting. Granted, they were racing closer with every moment, and firing as they came. Even so, Jessica had hunted enough game to realize that the trap—if indeed it was a trap—had been sprung too soon.
    Mrs. O’Conner’s screams rose to the point of pain as she began to claw frantically at the door, as though she believed safety lay outside the coach rather than within. When Jessica grabbed the girl’s hands and dragged them away from the door, Mrs. O’Conner turned on her like a wildcat. Jessica’s palm smacked against the girl’s cheek with a force that cut through her hysteria. Abruptly her screamsgave way to sobbing. She sank to the floor and hid her face in her hands.
    In the silence, Jessica suddenly heard Wolfe’s rough voice and his fist pounding on the outside of the stage. Apparently, he had been trying to make himself heard over the screaming for long enough to lose his temper.
    “Jessica, stop that damned screaming and hand me the rifle case!”
    The frightened Mrs. O’Conner heard only a harsh male voice demanding something unknown.
    “What?” she screamed, her voice so shrill it was almost unrecognizable.
    “The case on the floor!” Wolfe yelled fiercely. “Pass it up to me!”
    Jessica had already grabbed the presentation case and was shoving it through the window opening. Before she finished, the case was yanked from her hands. It leaped upward as though it had wings and vanished from sight. Bracing herself against the wild swaying of the coach, Jessica looked out the window. The Indians had disappeared behind a fold in the land.
    Suddenly a horse burst up over a nearby rise, running flat out. A rider was bent low over the horse’s neck, urging the lathered animal on. The rider was white, not Indian.
    A ragged line of pursuing Indians thundered up over the rise several hundred yards behind the man. They fired sporadically, trying to bring down the fleeing rider.
    On top of the stage, Wolfe braced himself and sighted down the gleaming barrel. The Indians were more than a thousand feet away and the stage swayed unpredictably. Real accuracy shouldn’t have been possible under those conditions, evenfor someone with Wolfe’s uncanny rifle skills.
    Wolfe began shooting methodically, picking targets, squeezing the trigger, levering in another cartridge, shifting the barrel to a new target, squeezing the trigger again, ignoring the return fire despite his vulnerable position atop the stage. The man fleeing the Indians was in much more immediate trouble than Wolfe was.
    The horse’s pace fell off a few hundred yards from the stage. All that prevented the Indians from closing in for the kill was the withering fire Wolfe poured down on them from his swaying perch.
    Praying through clenched teeth, her hands curled into fists, Jessica watched the man rein his horse into a long, shallow curve that brought him up to the stage. When the man was alongside, she kicked the door open and dragged Mrs. O’Conner out of the way.
    The rider stood in the stirrups, grabbed the luggage railing with his right hand, and swung himself into the stage through the open door. She realized suddenly that he was a big man, bigger even than Wolfe.
    Jessica yanked the door shut behind the man. A bullet ricocheted off