Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,40

be new out here, mister, but I'm no fool. Now get going, and I won't say anything about you having been here."

Now the apparent spokesman for the rest of them laughed. "Who would you tell, anyway? Ain't no law out here, mister, which means we can blow you to hell and nobody would ever know the difference. If I was you, I'd be a bit more friendly to your hosts. Hell, you been usin' our cabin all this time, squattin' on our land."

"I told you, it's not your land anymore; never was."

Two more riders came up behind the first two men. Lettie hoped she wouldn't faint from terror. They were just as unkempt and dangerous looking as the others. She tried to remember how many she had seen coming. Six? Eight? How would they ever get out of this?

"I mean business," Luke told the outlaw. "I'm giving you ten seconds to get off my property!"

The man just shook his head, glancing over at the clothesline. He rubbed at his stubby chin, turned to look back at the other three men. "We got us an irate homesteader here, boys." They all laughed then, as though none believed Luke was brave enough to shoot at them.

"I'm real scared, Cade," one of the others answered.

The one called Cade looked back at Luke as he spoke. "I think he's got a woman in there, boys. Could be we could have us a real good time at the end of our journey here once we get rid of this bothersome varmint."

Lettie felt sick at the remark. It was the first time in months that the memory of her rape was suddenly vivid. Never! She would never let that happen again, if she had to kill some of these men herself! Yes, she could do it, if it meant saving Luke and Nathan, and keeping these sorry examples of men from touching her!

Luke in turn felt rage at the remark. Lettie was not going to suffer more horror at the hands of these men, even if he had to die to keep it from happening. "Your ten seconds are up," he told them, his voice cold. He knew instinctively there was no room here for compassion, nor for hesitation. It was just as Will and others had told him. Up here a man set his own laws, and his own punishment. He pulled the trigger of his repeater, and a hole opened up in Cade's chest. Before the other three could react, he fired again. A second man went down. At almost the same time he heard a gunshot from the window of the cabin. Lettie! A third man cried out and fell from his horse, wounded in the leg.

The fourth man stared at Luke with eyes wide in surprise. "What the hell—" He went for his handgun, and Luke fired again. A bloody hole appeared in the man's shoulder, and he screamed with pain and dropped his gun. As he turned his horse and rode off, the man Lettie had wounded fired at Luke then, but missed. Luke turned on him and shot him in the face. He charged inside the cabin then, closing and bolting the door. "You all right?" he asked Lettie, a frantic tone to his voice.

Their eyes held in mutual horror. "Yes," she said, the word coming out in a squeak.

"I think there are three or four more. They'll probably come up here. We've got to be ready." He looked at her pregnant condition, aching at having to put her through this. "Try to stay calm. Let's not lose that baby over this."

Lettie nodded, forcing herself not to collapse from fear, and from the knowledge that she had shot a man. She could hardly believe she had done it, but she'd had no choice. She heard the thundering hooves of several more horses then. "The rest are coming!" There was no time to wonder about the right and wrong of it now. There were loved ones to defend, and that was all there was to it.

"Mommy," Nathan whimpered from the corner, shaking from the loud gunfire. He clung to his little horse, tears running down his cheeks.

"It's okay, Nathan," Luke assured him. "You stay right there." He leveled his rifle at the window as five more men appeared at the front of the house, one of them the one with the wounded shoulder. All of them had guns drawn. "I think this is all of them," Luke said quietly to Lettie.