Early Dawn Read Free

knife before they slit her throat! You can’t keep that from him. He’s bound to find out sooner or later, and it’d be easier for him to hear it from you.”
    “Maybe,” his father agreed, “but not this minute. That boy needs to heal some first.”
    Matthew squeezed his eyes tightly closed. Oh, God . The memories of that afternoon were coming back to him now, fast and hard. The unthinkable darkness at the back of his mind had slipped into the light of day. He tried to block the pictures that swirled through his mind, but they just kept coming. Livvy . He could see the sunlight slanting down through the tree limbs to dapple her sweet face, hear the sound of her laughter. During the picnic, she’d told him that she was finally in the family way, and they’d been so happy, anxious to get home so they could share their joy with his parents and hers. Then six men on horseback had spilled from the nearby woods and encircled their wagon. Oh, God.
    The thugs had been armed. They had demanded valuables, and neither Matthew nor Olivia had had anything to offer them. Matthew’s gold pocket watch had been at the jeweler’s for repairs, and Livvy’s wedding band hadn’t been worth much. Those bastards had retaliated by dragging Olivia from the wagon. When Matthew jumped in to defend her, two of the no-account polecats had held his arms while a third man beat him senseless with the butt of his revolver.
    Afterward Matthew had lain by the wagon with his face in the dirt while they kicked his torso, burying the toes of their boots as deeply as they could into his flesh to do as much damage as possible. When they’d grown weary of that sport and turned their vile intentions on Olivia, Matthew had tried desperately to move, but his body refused to cooperate. He hadn’t been able to lift his head. As if from a great distance, he’d heard Livvy screaming his name, over and over, until finally there was an awful silence. Seconds later, one of the ruffians had returned to Matthew, rolled him over onto his back with the toe of one boot, and shot him in the chest.
    It was all Matthew could remember. After that was only blackness.
    Matthew stared through a blur of tears at the ceiling rafters, wishing with every fiber of his being that he had died, too. He’d lain there in the dirt while his wife was raped and murdered. What kind of man was he?
    No kind of man, he decided. No kind of man at all.

    It took Matthew three more weeks to recover enough to get out of bed, and even then, he wasn’t anywhere close to being healed. His broken ribs hadn’t mended quite right, so it still hurt to breathe deeply. The bullet wound, which had done more damage to his shoulder than his chest, had left him barely able to use his left arm. He also had a hitch in his gait caused by an injury to his right hip.
    When Matthew first gained his feet, he staggered around like a drunk, his head spinning, his stomach lurching with nausea. At the mirror by the wardrobe, he saw why. The gash at his temple had been deep and nearly six inches long. Though his hair was growing back to cover the scar, it was still a vivid red and visible through the half-inch stubble. Yet another scar slashed from above his left eyebrow to the upper part of his eyelid, the line puckered from Doc’s lack of finesse with a needle and thread. Another jagged, crimson line angled along his cheekbone.
    With trembling fingers, Matthew traced the marks. His ma had shaved him yesterday, but she may as well not have bothered. His face had never been pretty-boy perfect, and now it bordered on the grotesque. The man who’d worked him over with the pistol butt must have been right-handed, Matthew decided, a fact that he filed away for later. Little wonder he felt dizzy on his feet. Head injuries like these could have killed him. The temple wound had been severe enough to affect some of his gray matter. It might take a while for his brain to right itself completely, and until then, he would