When Lightning Strikes

"Wh-What rifle?"

Killian almost smiled. His finger twitched against the cool steel of the trigger. "You better be fast."

The old man swallowed hard, made a jerking, gulping sound of fear. "I'm too old to be fast."

Killian let his breath out slowly, his bent arm relaxed a little. He knew then that it was over. "Yeah, I thought you might be."

"I'm a poor man, mister. Them horses is all I got."

Killian eyed the old man, noticing the ragged cuffs of his shirtsleeves and the gaping holes in his jeans. Fleet-ingly he wondered what the man's life had been like, where it had gone so desperately wrong. No one tried to end up like this, alone and defenseless and poor, eking a living from the harshness of the Arizona desert.

Except maybe an old gunfighter who wasn 't so quick on the draw anymore ...

Killian shuddered at the thought and looked away. He

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reached into his pocket and pulled out a tattered ten-dollar bill, shoving it toward the man. "I don't have any more right now. But I'll bring you another twenty the next time I come through."

"You askin' me to trust you?"

"I wouldn't say asking."

The man ran his tongue along his teeth. At the movement, his mustached upper lip bulged. "I don't have no choice, do I?"

"None."

He thought for a minute, then a slow smile pushed through the leathery wrinkles of his face. He looked up at Killian. "Funny thing is, I'd trust you anyway. You got that kind o' face."

The words came at him from out of the blue, catching Killian off guard. He stiffened, felt suddenly cold inside. "That wouldn't be smart, old man."

The man grinned. "Never said I was a bank teller. You wanna come in for a cup o' coffee?"

"No."

"Oh." Disappointment etched deeper furrows in the man's weather-beaten face. Killian felt a stab of sorrow for the man?no doubt he was lonely as hell. "Well, come on, then. I got a couple of real good horses. Captain and The Bitch."

Killian almost smiled in spite of himself. "Captain and The Bitch, huh?"

He had no doubt which horse he'd give to the woman.

He found her curled up in a little ball where he'd left her. The vast desert fanned away from her in all directions, melting in the distance into a bumpy ridge of blue-gray hills. A quivering, threadbare pine tree stood

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guard beside her, its drooping green limbs a slash of color against the endless golden earth.

Killian frowned. Even from this distance, he could see that something was wrong. She was motionless; it looked from here as if she wasn't even breathing. She lay huddled at the base of the ponderosa pine, her chin tucked against her chest, her eyes squeezed shut. The two horses stood pressed together against the wind that whistled down from the hills, their heads drooped low. Leaves danced and writhed above the dirt, tumbling across the sandy ground.

He kicked the big Appaloosa gelding into a trot. "Lady?" he called out.

She didn't move. Didn't even swear at him.

He reined Captain to a halt and dismounted. Tossing the reins around a sagging pine branch, he squatted down beside the woman.

She lay as still as death, but at the base of her throat a pulse beat, a bluish red throbbing against the creamy hollow of her skin. Her hands were clasped together, the fingers pale and limp. The colorless oval of her cheek was damp and streaked with dust and sand. Strands of dark hair clung to the moist skin at her temples. The dirty scrap of bandanna was like a bloody slash against her skin.

He looked away for a long moment, then slowly closed his eyes. A sour feeling, dangerously close to shame, stung his gut. When had he learned to do this to a woman, simply to keep her quiet?