Mary Connealy Read Online Free PDF Page A

struggled more wildly, kicking at Mort’s leg and making his horse prance sideways. She looked around at the men. They had all fallen back and seemed content now to watch the show.
    She heard the parson say, “I’ll not marry a woman to someone against her will, Sawyer. I won’t stand before God and conduct such a travesty. This isn’t something you can dictate. You let her go right this—”
    Mort’s horse charged forward under his master’s skillful hand. Mort reached down and grabbed the parson by the front of his black suit. He lifted the man onto his tiptoes with one hand while he controlled Cassie with his other. “You’ll marry us, Parson, or I’ll take her home, and when she’s broken in, maybe after she’s given me a son or two, she’ll agree nice enough.”
    Wade laughed, but it was a sickening, hollow sound. “I’m gonna have a baby brother.”
    Mort shoved the parson back and he fell to the ground. A man who would do that to a preacher would do unspeakable things to his wife.
    Darkness spun in front of her.
    A quiet voice behind her cut through the noise. “I’ll marry Mrs. Griffin, if she’ll have me.”
    Cassie’s head cleared, and as she twisted around to locate the owner of that kind voice, her eyes focused on Red Dawson. The man she’d hated more than any other on this earth ten minutes ago.
    “Beat it, Dawson. She’s mine,” Mort Sawyer said.
    Cassie remembered Wade’s eyes. Even though she had always been sheltered, she knew terrible things were in store for her if she was taken to the Sawyer ranch.
    Mort marched the horse straight at Red.
    Red stopped the horse by patting its nose. “Whoa, boy, easy there.”
    Then he looked at Cassie. With a voice as out of place as a breeze in the midst of a tornado, he asked, “Whattaya say, Cassie, will you marry me?”
    “Parson, it’s settled. We get it done now!” Mort roared.
    Cassie heard the violence in Mort and recalled the foulness in Wade and smelled the filth in her nearest other suitors…and saw the decency in Red’s eyes. She still hated Red Dawson, although less than she had a few minutes ago. Or more correctly, she now hated other people more.
    Unless Griff’s grave opened this minute and let her jump in, Cassie didn’t see as she had much choice. A minute passed as the chaos went on around her and the trampled grave stayed closed, and as if someone else spoke out of her lips, she said, “Yes …”
    She almost said,
Red,
before it occurred to her that Red must be a nickname. She didn’t know the name of the man who proposed to her. It was humiliating to ask him.
    Somehow it seemed less humiliating to just say, “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

C HAPTER 3
    C assie was a widow one day and a newlywed the next.
    The wedding was held at the cemetery with a good share of the wedding guests standing on her dead husband’s grave.
    She didn’t so much have wedding guests as she had a lynch mob. Twenty-five armed men wanted Red Dawson dead. Cassie thought that no doubt one of Red’s murderers would then insist on marrying her. If the pattern continued, she’d be forty or fifty times a widow within the next few hours. At that rate, Divide would be a ghost town by the weekend.
    Cassie Griffin’s contribution to Montana.
    Red had reached up to take Cassie off Mort’s horse. Mort had spurred his horse away, but Red had caught the reins and soothed the animal while glaring at Mort.
    “You will do the right thing, Mort Sawyer. Before God and all these witnesses, Cassie has refused your offer of marriage and accepted mine. Now let her down.”
    Cassie felt the hands on her body, not sure who all was touching her. But Red lowered her to the ground. She suspected that “all these witnesses” was a better incentive than “before God.” Considering his treatment of the parson, Mort didn’t seem to be much interested in what God saw when He looked into Mort’s black heart.
    Red pulled Cassie to his side, looked down as if to check