Free Without Words by Ellen O'Connell Page B

was going to be one long repeat of today. From a distance she might pass for a boy or young man if she stayed on the horse. Hair under hat, hands in gloves. Dirt on face, purple eyes closed.
    Bluish gray, damn it. The way they looked tonight was just the setting sun and the fire.
    Seeing her naked breasts exposed in the gap between her chest and the front of the too large whore’s dress hadn’t aroused lust in any way. The small, firm breasts had moved with her heaving chest. Her nipples had been flushed almost red after her frantic run and peaked not from arousal but from cold.
    The sight had been sad somehow and only made him angrier. Only made him more aware how vulnerable women were. No one should be able to do that to a woman who smiled and hummed, happy to be doing menial labor, thinking she was safe.
    Today wasn’t the first time someone had done something very ugly to Mrs. Petty. The scar on her slender neck was a shiny gray rope. If the wound had gone deep enough to ruin her voice, the wonder was she lived. Bret had seen slashed throats, knew how fast blood fountained out.
    And it bothered her. She hid the scar under high collars that reached to the bottom of her chin, and she didn’t make a sound unless really provoked.
    He’d spent the war worrying over his own women, his mother, sisters, and Mary, because of that vulnerability. And his worry had been wasted. They all survived the war just fine, but hardships that Mrs. Petty wouldn’t recognize as hard had left them bitter, and Albert, strong, laughing, opinionated Albert, had been the one to die.
    No, the naked breasts weren’t responsible for heat of a kind he barely remembered from before the war spreading through his belly, leaving him hard and throbbing. Her laugh had done that. A woman with a ruined voice shouldn’t have a whispery, silvery laugh that crawled up a man’s spine with delicate little female claws and roused things long dead and better left that way.
    Not that he’d hadn’t had a few women since the war. But that was like a trip to the bushes, relief not pleasure. Or maybe it was like picking a scab.
    What would she do if he got up and joined her in her blankets? Not that he would, but toying with the notion was an entertaining way to wait for sleep. He imagined her hoarse, almost soundless gasp of horror, pictured her running across the prairie by the light of the stars, boots in hand maybe, the dog circling and barking, the hobbled horses spooking and hopping into the next county.
    By the time his unfettered imagination had added one last herd of buffalo east of the Missouri stampeding through the town of Werver and flattening both the hotel and brothel, the last of the anger and impatience of the day dissolved along with the unexpected lust.
    Resentment still prickled over having walked into the responsibility of keeping Mrs. Petty safe until he could offload the problem on Gabe and Belle, but even that dulled. The sounds of the night soothed. He fell asleep.
    The nightmare came as it always did, starting with scenes from the war as he had lived them. Men and horses screamed, Bret slipped in greasy mud, fell across bodies. The roar of cannon bludgeoned his ears. Scents of blood and death roiled his stomach. A man in Confederate gray rose from behind a stone wall. Bret centered his sights, started to squeeze the trigger....
    Something cold and wet pressed in his ear, something warm and wet slid across his cheek. Bret jolted awake panting and flailing, scrambled to his feet in time to see a four-legged shadow disappear in the trees. He sank back down, shaking, used his sleeve to dry his ear and wipe dog saliva from his cheek.
    The dog had awakened him before he pulled the trigger on a man whose face he knew as well as his own. Even knowing how the nightmare would end, because he’d dreamed it countless times before, waking before killing Albert in the dream was better than waking after.
    More of a gift was waking before another figure