‘‘All at once and right now! I’ve no time to waste being questioned or repeating myself. This is Maxwell Hardy we have here.’’

Wes almost laughed out loud. Blind and old, she was still quite a woman.

‘‘And you, Mr. McLain, pull the wagon carefully to the main door.’’ She grabbed Maxwell’s hand. ‘‘And don’t you worry, Sheriff, I’m not turning loose of you until I see you cared for.’’

The place turned into an ant bed of activity. Gideon was shouting orders and pushing everyone who got near him to hurry them along. Torches and lanterns were everywhere, lighting the courtyard and the steps bright as day. Only the wagon moved slowly to the door with Victoria Catlin walking beside it.

Wes lifted Maxwell from the wagon with Jason holding his leg straight out. The sheriff moaned in pain, but he was drowned out by Victoria’s rapid fire of endless orders.

They were halfway up the steps when Katherine appeared before them, blocking the doorway like an aging Amazon warrior.

‘‘These are the people who-’’

Victoria’s cane struck her, none too accidentally, midthigh. ‘‘Hush, Katherine and get out of the way. I know who these people are, but all that concerns me right now is that Maxwell is hurt. Now you can help or remove yourself from the area. I don’t care which.’’

Katherine took one look at the sheriff’s blood-covered leg and ran for the stairs.

Victoria walked into her house without using the cane. ‘‘Put him in the first room, Mr. McLain. And be careful when you pass through the door.’’

As Allie followed, Victoria grabbed her arm with strong, bone-thin fingers. ‘‘Did you bandage the sheriff and set the leg?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ Allie answered. ‘‘With Jason’s help. We did the best we could.’’

‘‘Good, then you’ll be my eyes.’’ She pulled Allie along the hall. ‘‘We’re going to take the bandages off and check the wound. I don’t want someone fainting on me while I do my doctoring. If you’ve seen it once, the wound will be nothing new to you.’’

‘‘You’ve doctored people?’’ Jason asked from just behind Victoria.

‘‘I have. I doctored all my husbands through gunfights, steer-gouging, and every other ailment you can think of.’’

‘‘Your husbands?’’ Jason asked. ‘‘They’re all dead, ain’t they?’’

Victoria held her chin a fraction higher. ‘‘That’s beside the point. They all had cleaned wounds when they passed on into the hereafter.’’

TWENTY

BY DAWN, VICTORIA HAD LEARNED EVERYONE’Sname and the sounds they made when they moved, so that she was never surprised with where they were in the room. She kept Allie by her side, making Allie tell what she saw and often asking to feel the stitches or Maxwell’s forehead.

The servants stood just outside the door, waiting to be called. And call them Victoria did. She constantly wanted clean water, or more bandages, or wood added to the fire. Once she even demanded a full meal of steak and eggs, then ordered Wes and Jason to eat.

Wes found himself of little help in the makeshift hospital. Instead, he walked the perimeter of the headquarters. Checking for perfect vantage points along the wall. Wes quickly fell back into his military thinking. For the length of the war, all he’d thought about was staying alive. Several times, his preparation had saved not only his life, but the lives of his men.

The headquarters had been built by a military mind, there was no doubt. Thick walls formed a square, with only two openings large enough for a horse and rider to pass. The front gate was barred with an oak log. The other opening could be easily seen and defended from any spot inside the compound.

Wes understood why Sheriff Hardy insisted on this place. A few men could hold off an army.

Gideon silently relinquished his command of security to Wes, seemingly glad to have the younger man’s advice. Keeping an eye on two old women was one thing, protecting a fort from attack with only a handful of servants was another. It didn’t take long for Wes to realize Gideon saw himself more as doorman than defender. His chain of command had been from Victoria to the kitchen help, no further.

By midmorning men started arriving, slowly filling the courtyard like migrant birds returning after a hard winter. Old men. Aging fighters who’d fought for the Republic and maybe served a few tours as Rangers during Indian trouble. None looked young enough to have fought for Texas in the War Between the States.

‘‘Who are they, Gideon?’’ Wes asked as the two men watched thirty visitors milling around below, setting up camp, apparently planning to stay a while.

‘‘Victoria’s army. They must have gotten word when we sent for the doctor,’’ Gideon answered calmly, as if his words made sense. ‘‘For years, Victoria’s ranch has been a place men knew they could come and, no matter how old or stove up, still be treated like a full man. Back in the ’30s and ’40s Texas was packed with Indian fighters and fortune hunters, outlaws and worn-out lawmen looking for that last time to stand tall.’’

Gideon looked over the gathering. ‘‘As time passed, they either lost what family they had or never married. What’s a man to do who’s no longer strong in a land where only the strong survive?’’

Wes studied the men more closely. A few wore tattered parts of uniforms with pride. Most still carried single-shot rifles and handguns made generations before the Colt. But they stood proud. A waiting army a day away from the grave.

Gideon continued, ‘‘A few were Catlin’s men from his Army days, others Victoria met over the years. One by one they showed up at the gate, and she insisted on treating them like returning heroes. A few were so down on their luck, they walked through the gate without a horse. Victoria would have a great dinner for them and, in her way, beg them to stay on to protect the ranch. She’d offer a house on the land and a full hand’s pay in exchange for their watchful vigilance over the place.’’

Wes raised an eyebrow. ‘‘You mean this is the Catlin ranch’s security?’’

Gideon nodded. ‘‘I call them the Old Guard. They may be crippled and all used up, but one thing you got to know. To the man, they’d die for Victoria… or kill for her.’’

Wes pushed back from the railing. ‘‘Take me to meet these heroes.’’

As he walked down the stairs, he thought of what happened to a man who had no family when he aged. These men weren’t farmers. Their skills had kept them alive long enough to leave them starving when their fists no longer struck hard and their aims wavered. No one else would have hired them. There weren’t enough homes to take in orphans, much less the aging loners and warriors. Old women were valued for all they could do to help, but who would value an old buffalo hunter or frontier fighter?

Wes met them one at a time. Listening to their stories, remembering their names. He could see it in their eyes, in the strained hardness of their handshakes. These men were an army. They didn’t need a commander. They only needed direction. Each would man his post until the end of his watch.

Wes stepped up on the edge of the fountain and raised his hands. ‘‘Thank you for coming so quickly to my aid.’’

‘‘We didn’t come for you!’’ yelled a barreled-shaped man with gun belts crossing his chest. ‘‘We come to protect Miss Victoria.’’

Several others nodded.

Wes took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy. ‘‘I’ve outlined a plan of defense.’’

‘‘Don’t need no plan!’’ A bald warrior who looked like he ate men for breakfast grunted. ‘‘We know what to do, sonny.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ another complained. ‘‘We don’t need no pup of a Yank telling us nothin’.’’

‘‘But I was a captain in-’’ Wes began.

‘‘And I was a colonel when you was still having your mama hold you out the window to drip.’’

The crowd laughed. These men were loners who balked at suggestions. Who knows, Wes thought, they might shoot at a direct order. He didn’t feel like being used in target practice.

Anger boiled in Wes. He needed their help, but his pride wouldn’t let him beg, and he’d be a fool to bully. None of them looked like they had a heart anyway. He’d been wasting his time. ‘‘Look!’’ he yelled. ‘‘Trouble’s coming.’’

If he’d expected to alarm them, he was greatly disappointed.

‘‘Trouble’s always coming!’’ hollered a one-eyed man who called himself Dillon.

Wes glanced at the man to argue, but found himself trying to decide which side of Dillon’s face was uglier-the side with an evil eye staring him down, or the one with a sunken socket.

‘‘Trouble’s my middle name,’’ Slone, the one whose bullets hung in anXacross his chest, answered. ‘‘I’m already here.’’

‘‘I’ve been itching for a fight so bad I done scratched to the bone,’’ another shouted. ‘‘If there’s gonna be fighting, ain’t nobody better kill them all before I get my shot.’’

Several agreed that, if they were attacked, each man only got to kill one until every man had had a turn. Each suddenly seemed to feel the need to describe a killing he’d participated in.

‘‘Young fellow, you go on in with the women,’’ ordered the one who called himself a colonel. ‘‘We’ll take this watch.’’

Wes fought the urge to slug a man old enough to be his grandfather. In the army, the bars on Wes’s shoulders had always won him respect. But now, he didn’t have the time to figure out how to unite them. They began moving away, talking in small groups, paying no more attention to him.

Wes felt a small hand slip into his. He looked down into Allie’s tired blue eyes. He’d left her asleep in a chair. Sleep still drifted across her face, along with worry.

‘‘What’s wrong?’’ He guided her onto the step.

‘‘The sheriff is asking for you.’’ She didn’t turn loose of his hand. When she moved beside him, her body brushed his.