Page 73 of Wyoming Tough

King Brannt stormed into the examination room with flashing black eyes, trailed by a hospital clerk and a resident.

“Oh, Dad!” Morie ran and hugged him close. “I’m okay. It’s all right!”

“Where is he?” They could hear Shelby’s voice in the hall.

“Just follow the trail of bodies,” Cort answered with a laugh.

“Mom! Cort! What are you doing here?” she exclaimed, hugging them, too.

“We were ten minutes behind you,” King said, “but we couldn’t get anybody to tell us anything, and they—” he pointed at Cane and Tank “—wouldn’t answer their damned phones. I had to yell at a detective and a sheriff to find out anything!”

“You shouldn’t yell at people. It’s undignified,” Shelby said gently.

He glared at her. “It’s justified when you’re scared to death that your daughter’s been killed!”

The resident and the hospital clerk belatedly understood King’s rampage. They smiled and left. The resident was back in a minute, however, to check out Mallory.

“Exposure, dehydration, some evidence of bruising on the ribs and a dislocated shoulder, but the tests don’t reveal any broken bones or internal injuries,” he told them. “You were very lucky, Mr. Kirk. Far luckier than your assailant. They’ve just taken him to the local hospital for an autopsy.”

“What?” King exclaimed.

“Killed himself,” the resident explained. He looked at Morie and shook his head. “If my wife had done what you did tonight, I’d have eaten her alive verbally before I hugged her to death. Does foolhardy behavior run in your family?”

“Yes, it does!” Shelby volunteered, pointing toward her husband and her son.

“Well, Mr. Kirk will be all right,” the resident said with a smile. “He just needs rest and something for pain and a little patching up. We’ll take care of that right now.”

“Patching up,” Mallory muttered. “It’s just some cuts. I get worse than this doing ranch work every day.”

“Me, too,” King agreed, approaching him with his hands in his pockets. “Got kicked by a bull two days ago and had to have stitches.”

“I got stepped on by one last week,” Mallory said. “Damned things do it deliberately.”

King stared at him. “You’d better be good to her.”

“I will,” Mallory replied quietly.

“You bet he will,” Tank seconded. “Or we’ll make him divorce her and I’ll marry her and be good to her.”

“She can marry me if she decides to get rid of him.” Cane jerked his thumb toward Mallory. “I still have most of my own teeth and I can do the tango,” he claimed with a straight face, because he’d heard from Mallory about Morie’s fascination with the dance.

“I’m learning,” Mallory protested. “It takes time. I need somebody to teach me.”

Morie pursed her lips. “I think I’m up to that.”

Mallory’s dark eyes twinkled. “I think I’ll learn even faster if you teach me. And there are a few things I can teach you, too.”

“There are?” she asked, with mock fascination.

“Yes. Like how not to go riding off into the dark looking for escaped convicts!” he burst out. “What if he’d killed you?”

“Then I guess you’d have to find somebody else to teach you how to tango,” she said simply.

Mallory let out an exasperated sigh.

“See?” King asked him. “Now you know how it’s going to be. I’ve put up with it since she was old enough to stamp her foot at me and say no. It’s your turn now.”

Morie just laughed.

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