***I apologize for not updating sooner. It is a short chapter, but I got out of the hospital last night. :( I will do my best to not make you wait between chapters. Thanks for your patience and the kind reviews.
Chapter 11
The moon had disappeared but the sun not yet risen when Matt Dillon kicked out the remnants of the fire, the ashes covering his worn boots.
His familiar movements woke Festus, who then got up to help him saddle the horses and prepare to break camp.
Kitty and Lena rolled up their blankets and performed morning ablutions at the small spring.
"I fer one am lookin' forward to a heap of biscuits and gravy when we git back to Dodge. I'm so hungry my stomach thinks my throat's been cut."
Lena grinned at him. He was just like her mother had described. He was wonderful.
"Me, too, Festus," she answered.
The young woman's eyes then turned to the tall lean man who was her father. She studied him, his movements, observed his limp. The way he kept looking around, even as he was busy with something else. She now realized where her height had come from, for she was taller than her mother and larger boned. That was explained now as well. He was a man who didn't say much. No, his words were more in his actions.
That line of thought brought up a rush of anger at what her mother had been through raising her alone and being alone because she couldn't get over this man. In Lena's mind, his actions, not marrying her mother, had said all that Matt Dillon needed to say to his daughter.
She watched him now, standing with her mother off to the side, talking low. Her mother lit up in a way that Lena had never seen her do before with a man. It made her sad, angry, and a little jealous all at once, though she probably wouldn't have recognized it or admitted it if she did.
Matt helped Kitty onto her horse, Lena mounted hers as well, followed by her father and Festus. They began a slow trek up the small rise, beyond the tenacious trees that lived off the paltry water there.
Matt rode out first, Kitty, Lena, and Festus followed. All of them on the lookout for anyone nearby.
No one spoke; each entertained his or her own thoughts. The sun was bright overhead and so far no one had spotted anyone, not even Newly, which surprised Matt. He thought that the former gunsmith should have met them by now.
The shots exploded in the early morning, sending birds nearby into the sky.
The old marshal turned his horse to shield Kitty, who was closest, from the direction he thought the shots had come.
"Festus! Get Lena and take cover!"
The old Arkansan had already started moving, pulling the girl off the saddle and practically tossing her out of the way. The ground slope was not steep, but might be enough to keep them protected for the moment.
Matt pulled Kitty off her horse and pushed her down to the ground, pulling his long rifle out of the scabbard when he dismounted, then slapping the horse on the rear to move it away from him.
Lena crawled to her mother. Both men were trying to spot the shooter.
"There! Matthew! That varmint is layin' flat down out yonder. He's got a few rocks as cover, and it'll be hard to take him out. He's got the high ground and can spot us any ways we come out."
"He must have circled around us last night," Matt said. "Then he laid up here to wait for us."
Lena's voice was shrill as she cried out.
Matt turned and found his daughter with blood on her hands.
At first he thought she'd been shot, but looking down, he saw Kitty. Her blouse on the right side was sticky with blood, and there was a hole which a bullet had torn.
"Kitty! "
She raised her face to his. "I didn't even feel it at first. Lena saw it before I did."
He pulled her shirt up to look at the wound.
It wasn't a gut shot, but it was not good. Not that there was a good way to get shot, as he'd found.
"Hang in there, Kitty."
"Lena, put your hands right here," he placed her hands on the wound, trying not to notice the deep red blood seeping between his daughter's fingers. "Try to slow the bleeding—"
More shots zinged above their heads.
"Use whatever you can to pack it," he stared at her. "Lena, look at me."
She looked shocked and shaken.
"Lena, you have to do this, or your mama could bleed to death."
Matt snatched up a neckerchief that Festus quickly pulled off and tossed over to him. "Move, "he said to her, as he folded it and put it over the wound.
She nodded and pressed again, tighter, making her mother moan.
"I'm sorry, mama. I'm so sorry."
"It's gonna be alright," Kitty murmured, but she was ashen and weak already.
"Festus," Matt said, "We have to get this sonofabitch and quick."
"I'm ready to move, Matthew. Give the word," his old deputy answered back.