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wasn’t the reason she wanted him to live. She sensed the whirling emotions lying close to her breast—felt the pounding of her heart deep in her chest.
    At least it wasn’t the only reason.
     
    Chapter Four
    M andy slid down into her seat in the tiny waiting room. She looked down at the blood splattered on her bodice. Damp tendrils of hair escaped their confines and now clung to her neck and forehead. She leaned back in the cane chair.
    Four chairs sat against one wall, next to a desk that sat by the front door. Four more chairs sat across from her. The room where the doctor did surgery was off to her right. Next to the surgery room, a staircase led to rooms upstairs, where patients who were recovering were kept.
    Mandy glanced up as the sheriff entered. She’d heard he’d just ridden in from the trail, where he’d been following some cattle rustlers for the last two days.
    Sheriff Tucker was a man who was once bigger than life. Now he was gray years ahead of his time. Losing his wife seemed to take all the life out of him. Her heart clenched at the thought of all the pain he’d suffered. There was something odd about his wife’s death—she wouldn’t rest if McCandle had his hands in this, too.
    Lines of exhaustion etched deep tracks into his face. Dust lay in the crevices of his buckskin jacket. He moved with the precision of a man impatient to know why someone had shot up his town while he’d been absent.
    He wasn’t going to like this.
    He stared down at her face for a long moment before raking a hand through his hair. “Hate to put you through anymore, Miss Kane. Need to hear your version of what happened.” He nodded towards the sleeping man in the next room.
    Mandy wanted to laugh. Sheriff Tucker, for the kind way he’d asked that, looked as though he wanted to throttle her.
    Tucker had come to know her pretty well in the past two years, since McCandle had first started coming after her father’s ranch. She knew he considered her to be trouble. Folks around town made innuendos about her being a witch. She knew this infuriated the sheriff. She bit her lip. She wasn’t about to go down without a fight, and she couldn’t change. Poor Tucker. She’d made things hard on him. She hadn’t meant to. But to get to McCandle—she’d had no choice but to side-step the sheriff.
    Mandy had been thinking about Cord’s warning throughout the surgery. She wasn’t about to let the sheriff chase Hawk out of town. Not now. The Grandmothers’ words kept ringing in her ears. Whatever happened, no matter her reservations about the marriage to take place, she knew that she would follow the path set before her. So she’d tell the truth—but only in part.
    She slipped on the familiar mask of the young, white woman in a town out west. “I came into Cord’s Mercantile to get a few things I had forgotten. That awful man Hawk shot . . . .”
    “Hawk?” he interrupted with raised eyebrows. His gaze quickly swung to the sleeping form in the next room and back to her. “Heard it was him, just didn’t believe it. Do you realize who Hawk is? He’s the white Indian who grew up with the Lakota!”
    “Yes, of course I know who he is. Who from around here wouldn’t?” she snapped. She rubbed her damp palms through the folds of her dress, centering herself, restoring calm to the rapid tempo of her heartbeat.
    Not even paying attention to her temper, the sheriff sat down heavily on a cane-back chair across from her, setting his Stetson on his knee. Wearily, he shook his head and muttered, more to himself, “I thought he was dead, or at least long gone from these parts.”
    Mandy swallowed again through the lump in her throat that wouldn’t go down. “Is he wanted for something, Sheriff?”
    “No.” He gave her a hard look. “No, I wish that were so.” His eyes narrowed on her.
    “Well.” Mandy smiled, relief flooding her body, then she sobered. “That man he shot, he—grabbed me. He told Cord he was going