Free Judith E French by Morgan's Woman

trout. They drank the black, acrid coffee and devoured the hot fish with a minimum of chatter.
    It was when he turned away to saddle his gelding, Shiloh, that she hit him in the back of the head. He saw stars and sagged to one knee, half turning to face her just as she brought the chunk of firewood down across his skull again.

Chapter 6
    Ash knew he’d been hit a second time. He tried to react, but his muscles wouldn’t obey. “Son of a—” The remainder of his oath was muffled in the spruce needles as he slid face first onto the ground. Bright lights were exploding in his brain, and his vision was fading.
    “I’m sorry,” Tamsin said. “But you wouldn’t listen to reason.”
    Rage boiled in Ash’s chest as he tried to get up. His head seemed made of lead; his arms, quicksand. “Don’t …” he managed. Even his tongue felt odd, too thick for his mouth. The stars were fading, and in their place sprouted two distinct centers of pulsing pain. He tried to speak, but his words slurred. “Can’t … take horse … my horse.”
    “I have to,” Tamsin replied.
    Through the slits where his eyes had been he saw two blurry, red-haired women lift two rifles.
    “Not my gun …” he rasped, and spat sand from his mouth. “No … not take …”
    “I’m not stealing your weapons.”
    He thought that’s what the witch was saying, but he also felt a tugging at his holster. Then his pistol passed before his eyes.
    “I’ll leave them on the far side of the campfire,” shesaid. “That way, you won’t be tempted to shoot me while I’m riding away.”
    “Shoot you … in the back …” Ash forced himself up on his hands and knees and reached for her. She stepped aside and the effort sent him plunging to earth again. “You’re the bushwhacker.” He gasped, trying to clear the confusion from his mind.
    Shot in the back. Someone was murdered. Who? Ash knew that he should remember, but it seemed so long ago. There was a man lying on the ground beside him … a big man
.
    Moisture clouded Ash’s vision.
    “I’m sorry,” Tamsin repeated. “You’ll be all right. I didn’t hit you hard enough to kill you.”
    Ash heard the creak of saddle leather. His horse nickered. Hooves scraped on rock, then faded in the distance. “Tamsin!”
    The only answer was the loud chatter of a hairy woodpecker from a bough overhead.
    Ash’s fiery oath startled the bird, and he caught a glimpse of black-and-white feathers as it took flight through the aspen grove.
    Ash closed his eyes and sank against the earth. Something warm trickled down the back of his neck, and he smelled the sweet scent of blood. The scent of blood had filled his head that day his father was murdered.
    This blood wasn’t his daddy’s. It was his.
    The MacGreggor woman’s killed me, he thought. I hope she’s killed me. If she hasn’t, she’ll soon wish she had.
    There was nothing worse than a common back shooter. A renegade Comanchero had killed his daddy from ambush. If Ash closed his eyes, he could see his father sprawled in the red dirt.
    “Daddy, get up. Get up, Daddy
.”
    Ash didn’t know if he was hearing an echo from the distant past or if the words were coming out of his mouth now. His father had taken him fishing. It was his tenth birthday and his daddy had given him a man-sized pocketknife.
    Ash couldn’t recollect too much … didn’t want to. But it was impossible to forget the sickly sweet smell of blood or the puzzled look on his father’s face when he fell.
    All night, he’d sat there beside the body, holding Daddy’s tin star. He hadn’t wept. His loss was too deep for tears. One minute he’d been Big Jim Morgan’s boy, and the next …
    He was alone.
    Until the Comancheros returned in the first gray light of dawn to steal the horses and weapons and scalp his father.
    And the bad times started.
    Ash cradled his head in his hands as dusty images of pain and fear washed over him. Vaguely, he knew what he was