To Wed in Texas by Jodi Thomas Page B

crop scarecrow. Now that he was limp as a rag doll, he didn’t seem nearly so frightening.
    When she reached the wagon, she dropped his arm and tried to think how to get him in the flat bed. It didn’t seem right to put her arms around his bare body. He wasn’t a child she could just pick up. But there was nohelp. Unless she planned to be on this road all night, she had to do something.
    Reaching for him, Karlee encircled his chest with her arms. He smelled of rancid bacon grease and mud and the sad end of a cow.
    She let go, dropping him back into the dirt with a thud.
    The twins laughed. They thought she was playing a trick on the near-dead blood-thirsty savage.
    Karlee grabbed the blanket Wolf brought him in and repackaged the strange man inside. Then she tied a rope around and around the middle. If the stranger got loose again, he’d be taking the saddle blanket with him.
    Slowly, she lifted him once more, trying not to breathe as she rolled him into the wagon bed.
    “I said, sit down!” she repeated. “A man should really listen to a woman.”
    He fell into the wagon with a thump.
    “Now stay there,” she ordered. “I’ll have no more trouble out of you.”
    Karlee circled the wagon and climbed back on the bench. “Sit down, girls,” she ordered, slapping the horses with the reins.
    Both girls plopped down in their box.
    No one said a word until they reached the Buchanan farm. By the time Karlee stopped the wagon and climbed down, lamps were being lit inside the main house and one of the younger men came running from the barn.
    Deut was the first on the porch. He seemed lost in trying to straighten his suspenders for a moment before he spoke. “Is that you, Miss Karlee?”
    “It’s me,” Karlee answered, thinking she’d had enough excitement for one day. She lifted one twin to the porch. “The town is on fire. Daniel sent me here. Can we stay the night?” She was too tired to say more than was necessary.
    Deut just stood there fiddling with his suspenders as though his brain hadn’t awakened yet. He needed time to understand her words.
    “Of course you can,” Granny answered from just behind her aging son. She slapped Deut on the back with her cane, priming him to act.
    Karlee handed Granny the other twin.
    The woman added, “I’ll take the girls to Willow’s room. Sammy’s away on the drive, and she’ll enjoy you all as company. We’ll put a cot in with her for you to sleep on.”
    “Thanks.” Karlee let out a long breath and started to follow, then remembered her captive.
    “Before I go in,” she backed toward the wagon with Deut finally awake enough to join her. “I think you better have a look at who else I brought, Mr. Buchanan.”
    Deut picked up the lantern and peered over the wagon’s side, as did three of his sons who’d joined them on the porch. One of the men scooted the roll of blanket to the edge and untied it carefully.
    The blanket slipped away from the Indian’s face as Karlee repeated Wolf’s instructions.
    To her surprise, none of the Buchanan men looked shocked at the near-dead, near-naked, blood-thirsty savage she’d brought.
    “I almost killed him,” Karlee whispered. “He fell out of the wagon.”
    She watched as Deut tenderly brushed the black hair away from the sleeping man’s face then ran a hand over his scalp checking for cuts or bumps.
    She saw the prisoner’s features for the first time in the lantern light. He was little more than a boy. Out cold, he wasn’t near as frightening. Several days growth of beard outlined his deeply tanned and dirty face.
    “I didn’t mean to,” she added, trying to remember if she’d ever seen a picture of a Plains Indian with a beard.
    Deut pushed the dirt from the savage’s face. “Lift him up carefully, boys, and take him to the cellar. Tie him three times what you would a normal man before you doctor him. Then bolt the door. One of you stand watch all night. No one opens the door unless we’re all standing