Keegan's Lady Read Free Page A

his back along with him.
    When Joseph reached the end of the rope, he was jerked from Patch's back. As the noose cut cruelly into his windpipe, he arched spasmodically. Then, as though in time to his wife's horrible sobbing, he kicked and twitched, the macabre cast of his shadow dancing across the ground. His gasping mouth seemed to grin around the wad of handkerchief between his teeth.
    When at last Joseph hung lifeless, O'Shannessy staggered to his horse. Hollering for his friends to do the same, he climbed into the saddle.
    "Leave the torches," he yelled, still laughing. "The boy'll be needin' light to bury the bastard by." With that, they rode away into the darkness.
    ----
    CHAPTER ONE

     
    No Name,
Colorado
    June 1885
     
    Startled awake by a thunderous noise, Caitlin O'Shannessy sat bolt upright. Disoriented from sleep, her first thought was that her father had come home drunk again and was storming through the house toward her room. She had already leaped from bed and was throwing on her wrapper when it occurred to her that Conor O'Shannessy had been dead for nearly a year.
    Heart still pounding, Caitlin went utterly motionless in the inky darkness and cocked her head to listen. The noise, she realized now, was coming from outside. Horses? Judging by the din, there were six or seven, and all of them seemed to be heading toward the barn.
    Pushing a shank of long, curly hair back from her eyes and quickly tying the sash of her wrapper, she padded across the bare wood floor to the window where light from a waning moon shone faintly through Irish lace. As she swept aside the curtains to peer out, several months' accumulation of dust stung her nostrils. Disgusted, she waved a hand to clear the air.
    The barn, which sat facing the house about a hundred feet away, looked dark and quiet, just as it should. Above its hip roof, the pale half-moon resembled a broken ivory button dangling by an invisible thread from sequined blue velvet. Though she stared until her eyes started to burn, Caitlin could detect no sign of movement in the patches of darkness under the billowy oak trees scattered about the yard.
    Strange, that. She felt certain she'd heard horses. So where were they?
    The question no sooner presented itself than she saw lantern light flicker faintly inside the barn. As the glow gained brightness, elongated shadows leaped to life upon the interior plank walls. Having spent more than one night in the barn tending sick animals by lantern light, she recognized the distorted shadow shapes as those of men and horses. Several of each, judging by the jumble.
    Though it was too dark to see the clock beside her bed, she guessed it to be well after
midnight
, a late hour for company to come calling. But since her brother Patrick had taken up drinking as his favorite pastime three months ago, very little surprised her.
    Thoroughly awake now, she sighed and leaned a shoulder against the window frame. Here she was, in the middle of cutting and baling the season's first stand of grass hay, and Patrick had come home with a passel of friends in tow? He was twenty years old, for Pete's sake only two years younger than she was. When in heaven's name was he going to stop this infernal carousing and get back to the business of running the ranch?
    Since he'd started drinking, Patrick rarely spent much time at home anymore, which left her to do all his work as well as her own. With the additional load, she seldom found opportunity to clean the house. And now he'd brought friends home with him? They would undoubtedly make a big mess in the kitchen, and if any of them spent the night, she'd have linen off all the beds to wash next week as well. As if she had time for things like that? While Patrick was trying to drown his demons in a whiskey bottle, someone had to keep food on the table. It seemed little enough to ask that he at least show her some consideration.
    Time, Caitlin. He just needs time.
    Even as Caitlin thought those words, she