Jay triggered another shot into the dirt just behind his boot.
Ritter screamed as he tripped over his own feet and dropped to his knees.
Walking slowly toward the fleeing rancher, Jay fired again into the dirt just behind Ritter, who gave a frightened grunt, then scrambled to his feet once more and continued running toward the cabin, bellowing, “Crazy bitch—you’re on private land!”
Again, Jay fired into the dirt around his running feet.
Ritter leaped up onto the porch rail. He scrambled over it wildly, like a dog trying to climb a tree after a squirrel. As Jay drilled a round into the porch rail near his head, Ritter threw himself over the rail to the porch floor with a heavy thud and a groan. He stared in horror between the rails, saw Jay striding toward him, her upper lip curled, and he scrambled once more to his feet.
Ritter ran to the door, fumbled it open, and disappeared inside.
As Jay walked toward the porch steps, she glanced at the old man staring at her skeptically from the corral. He was holding a hammer in one hand, a board in the other hand.
“You stay out of this, old-timer,” Jay warned.
The old man gave a crooked, chip-toothed smile and chuckled. “Hell, I’m enjoyin’ the show!”
As Jay mounted the porch’s first step, shambling boot thuds sounded inside the cabin. Ritter appeared in the open doorway, cocking a carbine. “Get out! Get outta here, you crazy bitch, or I’ll—”
Jay raised the Colt and fired.
Ritter grimaced, eyes snapping wide in shock. He stumbled backward, cursing, dropping his rifle and looking at the ragged hole in his right shirtsleeve. Blood bubbled out of the hole.
“You shot me!” Ritter bellowed, stumbling farther backward into the cabin.
Jay calmly, resolutely climbed the porch steps.
“You shot me!” the rancher bellowed again, staring aghast as Jay crossed the porch and stepped through the cabin’s open doorway.
He stumbled over his boots and dropped to his butt about ten feet inside the cabin, between the living area and the kitchen area, to the right of a long eating table. Clutching his arm, he gritted teeth and glared up at Jay, who dropped her empty Colt into its holster. She pulled the second Colt from the other holster, clicked the hammer back, and narrowed one hazel eye as she aimed down the barrel at Ritter’s lightly freckled forehead.
“No!” the rancher cried, wincing and turning his head away, dreadfully awaiting the kill shot.
“You knew who I was,” Jay said. “You knew I was Pete Johnson’s woman. But you never let on.”
“Hell, everyone knows!”
Jay frowned, puzzled. “Everyone?”
“Hell, you been in these mountains years now! Don’t you think a few folks might’ve figured it out by now? You don’t have any cattle on your place. Only a few horses. Strange men come and go from the cabin once in a while . . . but mostly you’re alone. Hell, I recognized Pistol Pete when he was leavin’ your place a long time ago. I seen Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid, too!”
The rancher gave a caustic laugh. “Hell, I knew who you were. I knew what kinda woman you were—don’t think I didn’t!”
“Oh?” Jay arched a brow, trying to keep her emotion on a short leash. “You knew what kind of woman I was, eh? What kind of woman was that?”
She paused, awaiting an answer.
Breathing hard, keeping his right hand clutched to his bloody left arm, Ritter moved his lips but didn’t say anything. His dull gaze acquired a hesitant, uncertain cast as he looked around the cabin as though hoping for the right response to the question.
“What kind of a woman do you think I am?” Jay asked tightly.
“A, uh . . .” Ritter licked his lips, then shot Jay a fiery look once more. “You get the hell outta here! You’re trespassin’ on—!”
Jay drilled a bullet into the rug six inches left of Ritter.
The rancher jerked with a start and yelped, “Hey!”
“I asked you a question, Ed,” Jay said, taking one step forward, clicking back the hammer of her smoking Colt once more. “What kind of woman do you think I am? One low enough for you to spend the night with, to allow to cook for you. But one so low that you wouldn’t invite her over to your own cabin. One so low you didn’t want her around to soil your high and mighty reputation?”
Jay tried to hold the Colt steady in her right fist, but her fury made it shake.
She choked back an angry sob and said through gritted teeth, her voice rising bitterly, “A woman you can use for your pleasure and also one you could so easily betray to bounty hunters for money?”
“Oh, Jesus!” Ritter still had his head turned to one side, and he was shielding his face with his right hand, nearly sobbing. “Don’t do it! Don’t kill me!”
“Prepare to meet your maker, you gutless son of a bitch!”
“No!” The rancher scuttled backward across the floor, leaving a long, slender wet stain on the rug before him. “Don’t kill me!”
Jay looked down at the urine dribbling down out of his right pants leg, splashing onto his boot and then staining the floor.
“No! Stop!”
Jay smiled as she lifted the Colt barrel up and depressed the hammer.
Ritter looked up at her, wrinkling his brows curiously, hopefully.
“I don’t need to kill you,” Jay said tightly, glancing at the wet stain on the rug. “I’ve revealed you for the gutless cur you are.”
Ritter looked down at the rug. His face mottled ashen in shame.
Jay chuckled, swung around, and strode back outside. She stopped on the porch and stared out into the yard.
Evidently, Slash and Pecos had ridden into the yard when she’d been preoccupied with Ritter. They sat their horses—an Appaloosa and a big buckskin strong enough to hold Pecos’s considerable bulk—where she’d left Good South. Pecos was holding the steeldust’s reins as he and Slash sat slouched in their saddles, regarding Jay skeptically.
Jay moved down off the porch steps and turned to where the old man sat atop the corral, near where the broken gate leaned against it. He had a small flask in his hand, resting on his skinny right thigh clad in badly worn denim.
“You leave him alive?” he asked.
“He’s alive,” Jay said. “For what it’s worth.”
The old man smiled and lifted the flask in salute. “I got the afternoon off, I reckon!” He winked at Jay and drank.
Jay walked over to Slash and Pecos.
“You all right?” Slash asked her.
“Never better.” She held out her hand, and Pecos tossed her the steeldust’s reins. When she’d gotten seated in her saddle, she glanced at where the smoke from her cabin was thinning out against the southeastern sky, barely discernible now.
Turning to Slash and Pecos, she drew her mouth corners down and said, “Where to?”
Slash nodded toward purple-gray storm clouds building in the north. “I don’t know. But somewhere out of the weather.”
He reined the Appaloosa around and touched spurs to its flanks. Pecos and Jay followed suit, and the three outlaws filed out under the ranch portal and galloped toward a notch in the next ridge to the east.
CHAPTER 9
“Make it hurt, Jay,” Pecos said. “Make it hurt real bad. I wanna see ole Slash cry for once in his life!”
“Shut up, you corkheaded lummox!” Slash said through gritted teeth. “I don’t cry over a pain. Only women.” He grinned at Jay, who returned the smile in kind.
“You never cried over no woman in your whole life, Slash, you lyin’ old coot! A poor poker hand, maybe. A woman—never!” Pecos laughed where he lay back against a wall of the cave in which they’d sought shelter, in a deep canyon several miles from their burned hideout. “Make it hurt real bad, Jay!”
Out in the well-dark night, thunder rumbled.
A slowly churning storm had been threatening rain for a couple of hours, but so far all it had managed was some kettledrum thunder and witches�
�� fingers of blue-white lightning flashing over a near ridge.
Inside the cave, a smoky fire crackled and popped, shifting shadows along the cave’s walls.
Slash, who had taken off his shirt and peeled his longhandle top down to his waist, laying his chest bare, sat back against his own saddle while Jaycee Breckenridge hunkered close against him, pinched up the skin around the bullet burn in his upper right arm, and poked her sewing needle through each side of the wound.
Slash gritted his teeth and took a pull from the bottle they’d found in the bounty hunters’ saddlebags, after they’d unsaddled all the horses and turned them loose to forage on their own before some rancher from the area picked them up and accepted them into his own remuda.
“Does it hurt, Slash?” Pecos asked, grinning hopefully from the other side of the fire.
Slash took another pull from the bottle, shook his head, and swallowed. “Nope,” he raked out, gritting his teeth again as Jay drew the thread through the skin, drawing the two flaps up snug against each other.
Pecos gazed on in shock as Jay pulled the thread taut. “You telling me that didn’t hurt?”
“Nope,” Slash said, taking another deep pull from the bottle. “Not a bit.”
“Oh, come on!” Pecos lamented. “You could at least groan a little. You always try to act so tough. Like you’re too good to show pain like everyone else.”
“I think it’s unseemly for grown men to caterwaul an’ carry on an’ such, the way you do over stubbing your toe.” Slash chuckled.
Jay glanced from Slash to Pecos and asked, “Oh, come on, Pecos—you didn’t really cry over a stubbed toe, did you?”
Pecos turned a little red and glanced away, embarrassed. “Well . . . dammit . . . it hurt.”
“He’s always cloudin’ up and rainin’,” Slash said, as thunder rumbled outside the cave and the air turned colder. “His horse steps on his foot and he tears up. You know how he’s always fallin’ in love? I mean, fallin’ hard?”
“Yes, I know,” Jay said, again poking the needle through Slash’s pinched up skin. “I’ve heard both you an’ Pete tell all about Pecos’s romantic entanglements. Most of which,” she added, pulling the thread through the wound and glancing again at the bigger of the two outlaws, “ended rather badly.”
“Usually ended with him cryin’,” Slash said, chuckling and tipping back the bottle once more.
“Well, I get attached, dammit,” Pecos said, his big, broad face coloring with anger. “Some men actually fall in love, Slash. I’m one o’ them. I got a big heart, and when I tumble for a girl, I tumble all the way down the stairs, across the parlor floor, and out onto the porch. Why, you’ve never tumbled in your life, have you?”
It was Slash’s turn to flush with embarrassment.
Jay canted her head toward him, gazing into his face, plumbing his eyes as though to his soul. “How ’bout it, Slash? You know—I don’t ever remember you talking about a woman.”
He felt even more warmth under the pretty woman’s gaze. It was as though her large, hazel eyes were glowing coals.
“Christ Almighty,” Pecos said. “You turn any redder, I’m gonna start to think . . .” He stopped there, glancing from Slash’s flushed face to Jay’s, then back again. He sagged back in his saddle, chuckled as though to himself, then picked up his bottle again. He stared at Slash across the fire, shaping a knowing smile. “Never mind.”
He chuckled again.
Slash quickly glanced at Jay, who continued to stare at him curiously.
“Do you mind if we get on with it?” he said with a grunt. “I’m gettin’ right sleepy.” He feigned a yawn. “Been a long day.”
Jay’s mouth corners rose faintly and then she nodded and continued sewing. “Right.” She smiled, flushing a little now herself, and said, with too much cheer as though to conceal her own discomfort, “I’ll have you all sewn up in three jangles of a doxie’s bell. That was one of Pete’s favorite expressions, if you remember.”
“Oh, we remember,” Slash said, snorting, but still feeling as though two hot irons were being held to his face. Wanting to change the subject, he turned to Jay once more and said gently, “Awful sorry about . . . well, about that fella. The rancher you took a shine to.”
Pecos snickered. “But you sure handled him!”
“Yeah,” Jay said, “I doubt very much that Mr. Ritter will be so quick to take for granted . . . or take advantage of . . . the next woman he meets.”
“Don’t doubt it a bit,” Slash said, laughing. “I don’t doubt he won’t be so quick to take the next woman he meets for anything!”
They all chuckled.
As Jay drew the catgut through his wound once more, Slash said, “I just want you to know that me an’ Pecos are going to stay here and help you rebuild. We’re gonna stay for as long as it takes.”
Jay poked the needle through Slash’s skin once more, drew the thread taut, and cut it with a small folding knife. “That won’t be necessary.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Slash said after a quick, conferring look at Pecos. “Why won’t it be necessary?”
“I don’t intend to rebuild. It’s high time I leave these mountains. It occurred to me while we were riding out here this afternoon that I’ve been holed up in that hideout, waiting for Pete to return these five long years that he’s been buried in that grave, beneath all that dirt and rock.”
Jay held Slash’s arm out and poured whiskey from his bottle over the freshly sutured wound. Slash ground his teeth against the burn as he stared at the woman skeptically.
Jay looked at him and then at Pecos. “But he’s never coming back. I think I finally realize that. And, with you two getting out of the bank-robbing business, you won’t need the cabin anymore.” She shrugged as she dabbed at Slash’s wound with a soft cloth. “So I’m gonna pull my picket pin, boys. Pete left me with a stake. Almost a thousand dollars. I have it buried near the cabin. It’s time I dug it up and used it just the way Pete wanted me to—to start a new life for myself in the event of his never coming back.”
Slash whistled softly.
Pecos was sitting up now, arms locked around his upraised knee, his bottle in his hand. “What’re you gonna do, Jay? Where you gonna go?”
Jay sighed as she wrapped a long strip of flannel around Slash’s sutured arm. “That remains to be seen. Who knows? I might move to a little town and buy a saloon.” She smiled as she finished wrapping Slash’s arm, knotting the flannel gently over the wound. “Or maybe I’ll open my own freighting business and give you boys some competition.”
“Or you could throw in with us . . .” Slash suggested, leaning back against his saddle, raising one knee and resting his wounded arm across it.
As she stuffed her sewing kit back into her saddlebags, Jay turned to the dark-haired outlaw. “Is that a real invitation, Slash?”
Slash flushed a little again, averting his gaze and hiking a shoulder.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Pecos said, tipping back his bottle. He pulled the whiskey down and brushed a sleeve of his long, black suit coat across his mouth. “We’re gonna need us a stake of our own. An’ we best do it quick before Becker sells his business out from under us.”
“Pecos is right,” Slash said as Jay stirred the pot of pinto beans and bacon she’d been cooking slowly on an iron spider mounted over the fire. “We’re gonna need a job. One last takedown. A sizable one, too.”
“Don’t get your neck in a hump again, Pecos,” Jay said with a wry smile, “but you two old cutthroats really could get jobs, build up your stake honestly.”
“Ah, Jesus,” lamented Pecos, rolling his head on his shoulders.
Slash chuckled and sipped his own whiskey.
Setting the bottle down beside him and pulling up his longhandle top against the growing chill of the mountain night, he said, “That ain’t our way. We been cutthroats for too damn long. We’re impatient, me an’ that big blond-headed lummox over there. Besides, we�
��re old. By the time we built a stake big enough to buy that freight company, Becker would have sold it to someone else, and we’d be too old to run it.”
Shrugging into his blue chambray shirt around the collar of which hung his black ribbon tie, Slash winced as he glanced out into the stormy night where another fork of lightning flashed, silhouetting a jagged, black ridge against it. “We’re gonna have to come up with a job. One more job. An easy one, since there’s only the two of us. But a good-sized one for that . . .”
“I might know of one,” Jay said, spooning beans onto a tin plate she’d found in Slash and Pecos’s war bags, which they always kept well stocked with trail supplies.
“What’s that?” Slash said.
Jay handed the plate of smoking beans and bacon over to Pecos with a three-tined, wooden-handled fork. “I might just know of a job. Possibly an easy one. Definitely a sizable one.”
“Really, Jay?” Pecos said, taking the plate and exchanging a quick look with his partner.
Jay spooned beans and bacon onto another plate and handed it over to Slash, who stared at her expectantly.
“There’s a ranch near here,” Jay said. “A large one. Foreign owned. It’s called the Crosshatch. Ritter told me about it. The owners brought in a bunch of white-faced cattle, and they mixed in some seed bulls that came all the way from England. Gold was discovered on the place, so they have a small mine, as well.”
Jay spooned up a plate of beans and bacon for herself and sat back against her saddle, between Slash and Pecos. She grabbed Slash’s bottle, took a pull of the whiskey, and ran the back of her hand across her mouth.
Handing the bottle back to Slash, she said, “As you can imagine, with a large spread like that as well as a mine, they have a good-sized payroll. I’ve stumbled across that payroll being transported through the mountains from the railroad in Saguache. They pass through a canyon maybe five miles from here.”
“How’d you know it was payroll they were hauling?” Slash asked.
“Well, the combination had a Wells Fargo express car attached to it.” Jay spooned beans into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I’ve run with outlaws long enough to know what a train carrying payroll looks like.”
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