September Rain Read Online Free Page B

ached anew. He was battered, beaten, but he still strove to protect himself. Hallie stared at him. Her first thought was his skin looked like fine tanned leather in the shadows. Her second was he certainly didn’t have on many clothes.
    Standing perfectly still, hardly breathing herself, she stared at his bare chest until she saw its faint rise and fall.
    “Thank God!” she muttered. He was alive.
    Jacob Chandler jerked and stiffened, then lay still again.
    “Oh Mr. Chandler. I’m so glad--” Hallie stopped. “Mr. Chandler? Jacob?” She peered closely at him, then reached out and pushed long strands of brown hair out of his face. “Why, you’re burning up.”
    She looked around. “I can’t see anything in here.” She pulled down the blanket that was draped over the single window and squinted in the sudden brightness. “That’s better,” she said, turning back to the bed.
    The sight that greeted her almost buckled her knees. In the shadows she hadn’t seen how badly beaten he was. “Oh, look what they did to you.”
    His nose and mouth were crusted with blood. One eye was swollen, and ugly purple splotches marred his shoulders and what she could see of his chest and belly. There was blood matted in his hair.
    “How could they?” She gingerly felt his forehead. “You have a fever. I’ve got to get some water into you. You must not have drunk any since yesterday.” She put her hands on her hips and looked around. “But I’ll have to wake you up enough to drink. And where is your water, anyway?”
    Then her wandering gaze fell upon a bucket sitting on a bench with a dipper in it.
    “Now, I just need some cloths and a bowl.” A wooden bowl sat on the table, but the only cloth she found was stiff with dirt. She used his butcher knife to cut her underskirt for a cloth. “You will pay me back for this,” she said to the unconscious man, gesturing with the knife. “It was brand new.”
    She picked up a tin cup and, sitting carefully on the edge of the narrow bed, she dipped the fine cotton material into the water and touched it to his mouth.
    His head jerked. He gasped and opened his eyes. His fingers tightened convulsively around his gun, but his eyes didn’t quite focus on her face. Hallie smiled at him tentatively. “Are you thirsty, Mr. Chandler?”
    Jacob Chandler’s first thought was he hurt more than he ever had in his life. His second thought was his first thought underestimated the amount of pain. The effort required to clutch at his gun started muscles cramping throughout his body. He lay still, breathing shallowly through his teeth, hoping to stop the convulsive tightening of his bruised and battered muscles. It didn’t work.
    “Mr. Chandler,” A soft, hoarse voice penetrated the haze of pain. At the same time a gentle hand touched his. The hand trembled. The only reason Jacob noticed was because his hand was about the only place on his body that wasn’t knotted in pain.
    “It’s me,” the voice continued. “The lady you saved yesterday? It’s just me. I’m Hallie Greer.”
    Jacob remembered, and remembering knotted his muscles even more. He pushed air out between his teeth, trying his best not to move until the agony lessened. He recalled making it back to his cabin sometime around dawn after a hellish night during which the best he could manage was to stay on his horse. One time he’d passed out and fallen off. Hell was probably a Sunday picnic compared to the agony he’d endured climbing back up onto the horse.
    Concentrate, he thought. Concentrate on Hallie Greer’s voice, on the soft touch of her hand, on anything but the pain.
    He tried to focus on her face, on her kind brown eyes, her delicate features, the cloud of chestnut hair, but another cramp gripped him like huge hands twisting his limbs into knots. He frowned and put all his energy into bearing the pain. His eyes drifted shut.
    “I know we haven’t been formally introduced--” she said softly.
    Jacob struggled