Clint Tanner and Jeff Kailen had been friends since they were kids. When they had grown up, they'd gone into a partnership, working together to build a small horse ranch. Clint had managed the finances, while Jeff took on the main aspects of raising and training the horses. They'd been successful enough to live on, successful enough that Jeff had eventually taken a wife, Laura. The only problem was that Jeff Kailen was dead, and had been for over six months now, leaving Clint and Laura trying to make it on their own; Laura widowed and heavily pregnant with her first child, the only legacy Jeff Kailen would leave if Clint couldn't get the ranch righted on his own.

But he was woefully unprepared to deal with the horses, and couldn't afford any help. He felt a miserable failure watching the business go belly up despite all his efforts.

The very last thing he needed was trouble with the law, which was what seemed to be riding up to his door that cold December afternoon. The ranch was between two towns, closer to one than the other, but not attached to either. Clint didn't recognize the two deputies, not any more than to think maybe he'd seen them in Elodie a couple of times when he'd been there. But he didn't have much business in Elodie, it was too small to attract much in the way of customers, and there was little money in it.

"What can I do for you, gentlemen?" Clint asked, leaving the wood he'd been chopping up.

"We're looking for an escaped prisoner," one deputy said, "Real dangerous type."

"How dangerous?" Clint wanted to know.

Earnestly, the second deputy leaned forward, showing off a shiner near one of his eyes, "Dangerous enough for this, and to steal a deputy's horse all but out from under him."

"Probably twice as likely to hurt somebody now," said the first deputy, "seeing as he's been shot. Like an animal, he's liable to turn on anybody now he's hurt. He's a mean one, that one is."

"You seen any strangers around?" the second deputy asked, shooting an irritated look at his companion.

"Nope," Clint shook his head, "But I've been in the barn with the horses all mornin' up to now. Anybody could've ridden by and I wouldn't be likely to notice."

The first deputy offered Clint a description of the man he was after.

"Horse he stole came up lame, but somehow he kept it goin'. Only when we found it, he'd abandoned it. Now we're back tracking. He's likely holed up somewhere. Can we check your barn?" the deputy inquired.

"I've been out there all morning, I'd know if he were there. But you're welcome to look," Clint said, "So long as you don't rile up the yearlings. They're nervous with the snow."

The colts weren't actually quite yearlings yet, but close enough that Clint didn't figure there was any reason to call them anything else. The deputies dismounted and he led them to the barn.

It was small and overcrowded with the four yearling colts Clint couldn't figure out what to do with and five mares that had been the pride of Jeff's life. Three bays, a black and a gorgeous red dun were what there was of breeding stock. They owned no stallions and, though Clint had done the business deals, it had always been Jeff who'd selected the horses themselves, something Clint was no good at. Three colts took after their dams, making them bays, but the black mare had produced a startling red chestnut foal through some means Clint didn't understand.

The mares nickered curiously to one another as they regarded the aspect of the invaders with no measurable levels of concern. But the colts shied and moved away at the approach of the strangers. Clint knew he'd gone wrong in their rearing somewhere, but he didn't know quite where or how to fix what he'd done. All the foals this year had been shy of strangers and unwilling to be separated from their dams for even a short period without pitching a fit Clint didn't know how to control.

The deputies looked around the barn, peering into the stalls and shadowy corners. Then they left the barn, and Clint closed it up behind them to keep the cold out.

"Keep an eye out," one of the deputies said, "He may yet pass this way."

"He's extremely dangerous," put in the other, "Since he's unarmed, he may try to fool you into trusting him. Don't believe a word he says."

After that, the deputies said goodbye and rode off, leaving Clint staring after them.

He didn't want any trouble with them, he had troubles enough already without borrowing any more. The problem was that he'd been lying to them from the start. Clint had not been out in the barn all morning, and no rider could have come by without his knowing about it, not with a herd of alert and very friendly mares locked up and bored in the barn. He'd known the deputies were coming because of the stir among the mares long before he'd seen or heard them himself.

Shaking his head worriedly, Clint entered the house and found Laura in the living room, seated on the edge of the coffee table near the couch, where she'd had Clint put the stranger he'd found lying in the snow near the barn. Clint had every reason to believe the stranger had intended to steal one of the horses, more reason now than before the deputies came.

"Now," Clint said to Laura, "Care to tell me why I just did that?"

Finding the stranger was badly hurt, Clint had been willing enough to help him, but it had been on Laura's insistence that he'd kept the truth from the deputies.

Laura leaned forward, applying a warm, damp wash cloth to the forehead of her patient. A strand of blond hair had fallen into her face, her fine porcelain features were still, and in her blue eyes there was the steady calm of a lake in summer. She was not bothered by Clint's uneasy tone, nor did she seem unduly shocked or upset by the fact that this stranger was in her house, bleeding all over her lovely couch. And she also did not appear to care that Clint had just lied to deputies, men of the law.

"Do you have any intention of answering me?" Clint inquired.

Laura's gaze flicked up to look at him, and he saw a hint of mischief playing at the corners of her delicate mouth. It wasn't a smile, because she never smiled anymore, but it was a look of quiet amusement. It was the same look she bore whenever he detailed his troubles with the yearlings, as if somehow he was delivering the punchline to a joke without knowing it.

Clint sighed unhappily, "He's a criminal, you know. Escaped from prison."

"Wearing a gun belt?" Laura inquired in her soft, musical voice.

Clint shrugged his broad shoulders, but began to stroke his dark mustache thoughtfully.

"Perhaps he stole it," Clint suggested.

"And the clothes too?" Laura asked.

"Why not?"

"I heard what those men said," Laura told him, "They did not mention him stealing any clothing or belt, only the horse."

"So?" Clint wanted to know, "There was no reason for them to give me every detail."

"A man running from the law stops to change clothes, and then -instead of trying to disappear- steals a deputy's horse and rides out in broad daylight. Somehow he gets away with a gun belt and horse, but doesn't have either a pistol or a rifle. Come now, Mr. Tanner."

When Jeff had first started falling for Laura, he had referred to her as being like a wild-caught mare, full of spirit and with her own ideas about things, stubborn and fierce and wily as any man but with a grace and refinement to the way she bowled over anyone who stood in her way that you couldn't help but love. For instance, her insistence on calling Clint 'Mr. Tanner'. Almost no one else called him that if they spent more than a few days around him. By his own disposition, he just sort of naturally invited people to call him by his first name.

"Now, Miss Laura, that's hardly proof of anything," Clint had taken to calling her 'Miss Laura' before she'd ever become Mrs. Jeff Kailen, and the habit had proven impossible to break, "There's a lot we don't know, and you can't very well judge a man by his clothes."

"Nor can you judge one based on what other people say of him," Laura retorted.

The people in her hometown had not been at all fond of Jeff. They'd said the Kailen and Tanner boys were a couple of good for nothings who would never amount to anything, and who couldn't be trusted. When Jeff had first bought the red dun mare as a yearling, people had said the same of her. She was too temperamental to make a good dam, and had too much fire to make a riding horse. She would never listen to anything less than whip and spur, and even those would probably only make her vicious. But Jeff had turned that mare around, and everyone seemed to have forgotten what a bad tempered youngster she'd been, and also the awful things they'd said about Jeff.

Everyone, it seemed, except for Laura. She remembered everything, even though she hadn't believed for a minute what the people in her town had to say. She'd done her own judging, and had decided she liked Jeff even in spite of the fact that he loved horses more than he ever cared for people.

"They're not just other people, Miss Laura," Clint protested, "Those were two legally appointed deputies from Elodie."

"That only means they're men from Elodie," Laura replied calmly, "Every man in Elodie has been deputy at one time or another, and we both know how strange that is."

"Strange doesn't mean wrong," Clint pointed out.

"No," Laura agreed, "But this man did some talking when I sent you into the kitchen to boil water. Because he wasn't properly conscious at the time, I'm inclined to believe him."

"Believe him about what?" Clint asked, thoroughly exasperated with the game of prying information out of Laura and desperately trying not to show it.

"Think about it, Mr. Tanner," Laura said, "This man was shot in the back. What does that tell you?"

"Miss Laura," Clint spoke her name warningly, letting her know he was about to walk out of the house in a fury of frustration and go out to chop an unnecessary amount of wood if she didn't stop.

"He said they were going to kill a man's sons," Laura explained, "He was very insistent that this man had to be warned, that the boys were in danger, and that he had to get to the Ponderosa."

"The Ponderosa?" Clint repeated quizzically, "That's the Cartwright ranch. We bred our mares to a couple of their stallions a few years back. Jeff arranged it himself. He said he didn't need any help, that Ben Cartwright was a fair man and wouldn't try to cheat him."

"I remember," Laura said, "I also remember that Jeff said those were the finest colts and fillies we'd ever had, and the price of breeding had been more than worth it."

"Is he one of the Cartwright boys?" Cliff wondered aloud.

"I don't think so," Laura replied, "I don't imagine he'd refer to the owner of the Ponderosa as Mr. Cartwright if he were."

"Then who is he? And what does he care what happens to the Cartwright boys?"

"I don't know," Laura said, "But I don't believe he's any more criminal than you or I. I also heard fear in his voice, and I believe those men intended to kill him if they found him."

"Now really, Miss Laura," Clint said, "Don't you think you might be jumping to conclusions?"

"Check the bullet wound in his back," Laura told him, "And then ask that again."

Clint sighed, his own gentle nature getting the better of him, "How bad is it?"

"Bad enough," Laura answered, "The bullet's still inside, and I don't dare try to reach it myself. He'll have a fever by nightfall for sure."

Laura's father was the doctor in the town she came from, and more than once she'd helped Jeff out with a sick or injured horse by using her medical knowledge and experience. Turned out that, in some ways, horses weren't that different from people, and between the horseman and the doctor's daughter, many horses had been pulled through that might otherwise have died. But a horse with an infection in his leg was a long way from a man who'd been shot.

"He'll be needing a doctor," Laura said patiently, when Clint didn't respond.

"I won't leave you," Clint replied, "You could have that baby any time. And I seem to recall you saying that you don't need a doctor, so why should he get one?"

"I don't," Laura explained for the hundredth time or so, "The pregnancy is entirely normal, and if a mare can give birth to a foal in a pasture with no one save God at her side, there's no reason I can't do just as well. A doctor would be a waste for me, but I haven't got a bullet and whatever debris it dragged in with it infecting me, now do I?"

"Does he have an infection?" Clint asked.

"Not yet," Laura admitted, "But soon, if that bullet isn't removed. Maybe even if it is. I can only do so much with what knowledge and equipment I have."

"Well I'm not leaving you," Clint repeated, "And certainly not alone with him."

"Then you sentence him to death," Laura said flatly.

"We'll do the best we can for him, and it'll have to be enough," Clint told her.

One might think it odd that he could disagree with her so strongly about whether or not the stranger should be handed over to the law, yet stood resolute in his insistence on not leaving her. But the simple fact of the matter was that Clint loved Laura, and always had, and would do whatever she asked so long as it did not suggest to him that there was any danger to herself. So long as she'd had Jeff, Clint had been content because he knew she had married a good man who loved her every bit as much as Clint himself did. Now Jeff was dead and -even had the man not been his friend- Clint felt obligated to take care of Laura, inasmuch as she would allow it.

If only he could find the courage to say that he loved her. He loved her foolishly, without reservation or shame or restriction or uncertainty. But, even if he did find the courage to say all that, what could he offer her? A failing ranch and almost a half dozen mares he didn't know what to do with.

As she could not ride in her condition, not even in the small buckboard, there was no question but that Clint would have to leave her behind if he rode to town for a doctor. And that was something he could not do. Not even if she begged. Not even if it meant this man had to die.

That was how much Clint loved Laura. More than life itself.