Free Shotgun Bride by Linda Lael Miller Page B

Put that thing away.”
    In the thin moonlight, Kade saw the lawman release the hammer with his thumb and slip the gun back into its holster. Maybe the old fellow was still capable of taking care of himself after all.
    “Angus decided I ought to have a nursemaid,” Lewis surmised with a chuckle.
    “Just some company,” Kade replied, drawing up alongside.
    “I reckon I wouldn’t mind that.”
    They were within half an hour of Indian Rock, riding at a steady gallop, and in companionable silence, when all of the sudden John Lewis put a hand to his chest and pitched right off his horse, landing headfirst in the road.

Chapter 14
     
     
    “W hat the hell?” Doc Boylen demanded when Kade rousted him from his bed. Back there on the road, he’d gathered John up, thinking at first he’d been shot, though there’d been no report of a bullet and no blood, loaded him into the saddle he’d just pitched off of, belly-down this time, and brought him to town, traveling as fast as he dared. At the moment, Lewis was lying unconscious in the small surgery downstairs, where the doc kept his irregular office hours.
    Kade prodded Boylen with the barrel of his rifle to get him rolling. “It’s John Lewis. He bit the dirt a mile or so outside of town.”
    Doc finally got everything headed in the same direction and hoisted himself to his feet. He was dressed in a flannel nightshirt with garters on the sleeves, his wild hair was rumpled, and he fumbled for his spectacles. “Somebody take a potshot at him?”
    Kade shook his head, impatient, gesturing toward the inside door with the rifle. “I think it might be heart trouble or something like that. No warning—he just went down.”
    Boylen sighed, taking his ancient sawbones’s bag from the bureau top as he passed. “He’s plum worn himself out, John has. Too old for that job. Too old for that fiery woman of his.”
    “I’d appreciate it,” Kade said, falling into step behind the doc and doing his best to herd him along at a faster clip, “if you’d stop running off at the mouth and do something constructive.”
    Doc chuckled at that, feeling his way down the dark stairway by long practice. Kade had already lit a lamp in the surgery, after laying John out on the examining table and covering him hastily with the first thing that came to hand, which was his own muddy coat.
    “Go on over and fetch Becky,” Doc said, lifting one of John’s eyelids and peering in as he opened his bag with his other hand and rummaged for the stethoscope. “She’ll have all our hides if you don’t.”
    Kade started to protest, saw the sense in Boylen’s words, and banged out of the office, his strides long. The Arizona Hotel was just a block down the street, and the lights were out, except for a dim glow in the lobby.
    Becky Fairmont appeared on the landing almost as soon as Kade stepped up to the base of the stairs and yelled for her. Her dark hair trailed down her back, and she clutched a lace-trimmed wrapper around her slender form. From that distance, she looked like a much younger woman than she was, and her eyes were round with alarm.
    “Is Emmeline all right?” she asked, and even from that distance, he could tell that she was holding her breath as she awaited the answer.
    “It’s John,” Kade said. “He took a spill from his horse on the way back to town from our place. He’s over at Doc Boylen’s.”
    Becky uttered a little cry and put a hand to her mouth as an afterthought, but she recovered quickly, whirling to vanish back into her room and reappearing only a few moments later, clad in a misbuttoned green dress and with her hair still down. She blew by Kade like a gust of wind, headed for the door.
    “Heart attack,” Doc Boylen said by way of a greeting when Kade and Becky burst into the surgery. John lay gray and motionless on the exam table, and for one terrible moment, Kade thought his friend was gone, and without Kade’s ever telling him he was admired.
    Becky rushed