He hadn’t sat down yet. “Take your boots off.”
“Again?!”
“You were right, it was a mistake letting you go to your friend’s room alone.”
“I swear—!”
“It’s already been established that you lie. You just did so again when you said you’re broke. I saw the money in your saddlebag.”
“That’s not mine. I could be starving to death and I wouldn’t spend that money.”
“A bit extreme,” he replied drily, then nodded at her feet. “Just remove the boots, shake them out, then put them back on. You don’t eat until you do.”
She mumbled a few things under her breath but shoved her chair back and did as ordered. She was amazed he was going to feed her before turning her over to the sheriff. She supposed she should be grateful, but she couldn’t quite manage to see him as anything but her worst nightmare, and you didn’t thank nightmares for tormenting you.
When she slid up to the table again, he walked around behind her and took her hat off. She started to protest but saw him remove his black hat, too, and hook both of them to the coatrack in their corner. The “gentleman” in him was showing again. Her grandmother had always swatted her younger brother’s hat off, before letting Johnny sit down to dinner. Max knew her brother only kept it on to get a rise out of Gran. God, she missed those two. They were all she had left in the way of family.
She reached for the letter in her pocket. But as much as she was dying to find out what Gran had written, it was too personal to read in front of this coldhearted gunfighter. It might make her cry, real tears. She was not going to let this man know that sometimes she could be—soft.
Degan ran a hand through his dark hair before he returned to the table. Max didn’t bother to do the same. She knew her hair was beyond salvation. She didn’t even own a comb anymore. Hers had broken long ago and she’d never gotten around to replacing it.
He still hadn’t sat down. “I’ll take your coat, too.”
“Now that ain’t hap—”
“It’s warm in here. And you no longer need to hide what you are, or hasn’t that occurred to you yet?”
Considering what he’d just made her feel as she’d slid down his body, she snapped, “Yeah, I do, and don’t you be thinking of me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a girl.”
He said nothing, but he did roll his eyes. At least she was sure he would have if he could unbend enough to show what he was feeling. But he didn’t press the issue and sat down to her right in the chair that faced both doors to the room. Cautious no matter where he was? Or just always expecting trouble? Probably the latter, considering that every inch of him screamed that he was a gunfighter.
He summoned a waiter and ordered for both of them without asking her what she wanted. She didn’t care. It had been so long since she had sat down in a restaurant, she’d be happy with whatever was served.
“Tell me why you think you’re innocent.”
Max went still and stared at him. He’d already implied it wouldn’t matter if she was innocent or not, that his job was only to bring her in, not to decide her fate. So why would he even ask that when he didn’t believe anything she said?
Chapter Eleven
“YOU TOYING WITH ME, fancy man? We both know you don’t give a hoot what set me on this road.” Max clamped her mouth shut after saying that. If Degan’s upbringing required him to engage in polite conversation at a dining table, he could find some other subject to bedevil her with.
“Is that what you’re going to tell the jury at your trial, Miss Dawson?”
“Don’t call me that,” she hissed at him. “And I told you, there won’t be a trial. The people in that town just want me back so they can hang me.”
“Why?”
“Because Carl Bingham, the man I’m accused of murdering, was the founder of Bingham Hills, the owner of it, the mayor of it, and everyone’s best friend—’cept mine. But with him being the landlord of all or most of the people in town, and a benevolent one to boot, everyone loved him. Actually, even I used to admire him. It took guts to build a town so far from any others and with the closest fort over a day’s ride away, then just hope he could fill it up with people. Course Carl advertised back East and didn’t go broke waiting for folks to show up. He was already rich when he came to Texas, so he wasn’t looking to get richer—maybe he was since he kept building the town bigger. He was looking to leave a legacy behind, a peaceful, self-sufficient town in what used to be a not-so-peaceful place. Most folks think he succeeded.”
“So why did you kill him?”
She gave him a pointed stare. “You want to hear this or not?” He didn’t answer and his gaze was a lot more pointed than hers was, so she grudgingly continued, “Life was good in Bingham Hills while I was growing up. I had lots of friends, the boys and girls I went to school with, and we had fun hunting, fishing, and riding. I even enjoyed our sewing circle though I was terrible with a needle, but we did more gossiping than sewing and laughed a lot. But it all changed when I turned sixteen because the boys in town wouldn’t leave me alone. I’d filled out by then and had long blond hair. I told you why I cut it, but I couldn’t do much to disguise my other attributes”—his gaze moved down to her vest, bringing a slight blush to her cheeks—“because Gran insisted I dress properly in skirts and blouses except when I was hunting. The boys were paying me so much attention that my girlfriends got jealous and stopped talking to me. Gran took a broom to the boys more’n once, and my brother, Johnny, would hide in the bushes and shoot rocks at them with his slingshot. Even that didn’t stop them from coming around.”
“So you didn’t always wear a gun?”
“Goodness, no. I never would have dreamed of wearing a Colt over my skirts—then.” She chuckled for a moment. “I was the hunter in the family after my pa took off and never came back. I never carried my rifle in town, but I started carrying a small gun in my skirt pocket when Bingham junior became more aggressive than the other boys and began making inappropriate remarks and advances to me after I turned sixteen.”
“The mayor?”
“No, his son, Evan. I used to go fishing with him and his best friend, Tom, when we were kids, until the day Evan bragged that I’d be marrying him someday because his pa told him I would. I didn’t believe the mayor had said any such thing, but I avoided Evan and his friends after that. Then he started asking me to marry him. That year, he must’ve asked about eight times. I wouldn’t have said yes even if I wasn’t courting the new young man in town at the time.”
“Doing what?”
She stared at him. “Do I really need to explain courting to you?”
“I think maybe you do.”
“I don’t mean I would’ve asked Billy Johnston to marry me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m bold but not that kind of bold. I just let him know I was interested, saved my smiles just for him, that sort of thing. But Billy left Bingham Hills before I was seventeen, and then the mayor himself asked me to marry him. I probably shouldn’t have laughed at the old coot’s proposal.”
Degan raised a brow. “Just how old was this man?”
“Heck, he’s older than my grandmother by some ten years. Even she laughed when I told her about it. Carl had Evan real late in life. Rumor is he went through four wives trying for a kid till he finally got one. But after I refused him, he must’ve figured that compromising me would get Gran to insist on a wedding.”
“Did it?”
“I said he figured it would, not that he actually succeeded. But he sure did try, the bastard. He had his puppet of a sheriff take me to his house late one morning. He even got rid of most of his servants for the day ’cept for his half-deaf cook, who wouldn’t hear me yelling. I wouldn’t have known the cook was in the house if Carl didn’t tell me I could stay for lunch after we were done and that the meal would be ready soon. I think he really expected me to be civil afterward, as if his compromising me were just ordi
nary business for him. But after some tussling on his sofa, I managed to get my little gun out of my pocket so he’d back off. I even shoved it in his gut so he’d know just how serious I was.”
“Then you did shoot him?”
“No, but I sure as hell would have. It turned out my brother, Johnny, saw the sheriff dragging me to Bingham’s house and followed us. Johnny waited until the sheriff left, then started looking through the windows. What he saw through one of them was Carl trying to force himself on me. But no one died that day. At least Carl was still alive when I left him. And I didn’t even shoot him—my brother did through the open window, trying to protect me. But Carl looked down and saw the blood and fainted like a girl. So he probably thought I did fire at him. I was hoping he would think it. I wasn’t going to let him have my brother arrested for his good deed. I took off so I’d get blamed for it.”
“Which obviously worked.”
“Yeah, blamed for a flesh wound on his shoulder, which is all it was and barely bleeding at that. I checked, just to make sure he wouldn’t bleed out before someone found him. I was just going to give Carl some time to cool off about the whole incident and come to his senses, maybe marry another young woman, and not blame me for trying to defend myself. But he or his son sent a posse after me. It took me months to lose them. Carl paid well when he wanted something bad. His son, Evan, is just like him. But before the year was out a bounty hunter found me and showed me the wanted-for-murder poster.”
“How’d you get out of that?”
The waiter arrived with their breakfast so she didn’t answer. She couldn’t take her eyes off those plates piled high with flapjacks and sausage and the basket filled with toasted sourdough slices and flaky pastries. She was too hungry not to start eating right away and have her plate half-cleaned before she got around to saying, “I was wearing a six-shooter by then, but the bounty hunter got me to drop my gun. So I convinced him he’d made a mistake by showing him that I was a girl.”
“The same way you showed me?”
Her cheeks reddened. She knew he’d felt her breast when he’d been about to punch her last night. He hadn’t needed her to show him. She flushed with heat every time she thought of it, and the instinctive, seductive way she’d shown off her breasts to him. It was so embarrassing. Which was why she was glaring at Degan when she said, “No, I just had to flirt with the man a little and take off my vest so he could see I wasn’t trying to bluff him. My vest, not my shirt. Then I asked him nicely to get the hell out of my camp. I made sure he wasn’t following me when I took off.”
“You’re lying again.”
She sat back with a huff. “Why would I lie about something I didn’t have to volunteer?”
“Showing him you were a girl wouldn’t have changed a bounty hunter’s mind when your likeness on that poster is so good.”
She grinned cheekily. “It is, ain’t it? On this new poster anyway. This whole episode with the bounty hunter took place over a year ago, and the poster he had wasn’t nearly as detailed. The sketch looked like every other immature eighteen-year-old boy. But even after I saw the bounty hunter’s reward poster, I still couldn’t believe Carl had died from that flesh wound Johnny gave him.”
“Wounds can fester.”
“Yeah, I know, but Carl would have had the town’s best doctors taking care of him. Whether he’s dead or alive, I can’t go back home now because they’ll hang me for sure.”
“And in the meantime you took up bank robbery to get by?”
“Now that was a joke,” she grumbled with a snort. “I was packed up, ready to ride out that day. I stopped at the bank to take my own money out of it, all sixty-four dollars I’d earned from selling meat in town to whoever wanted it. Bingham Hills only had one bank. Carl owned that, too, of course. Wilson Cox ran it for him. It was too small for more’n one employee, so when Wilson took a break to eat lunch, there was no one to help the customers. He didn’t bother to close shop though. He likely assumed everyone in town knew better than to try to do any banking at noon. But how was I to know that? I didn’t go to the bank often. I walked in and asked for my money. Wilson refused to help me. We argued. He wouldn’t budge. He was going to make me stand there and wait for a half hour when he was sitting right there in front of the cash drawer!”
“So you robbed the bank.”
“No, I did not! But I took out my little gun and told Wilson he could stop eating for two minutes and hand me my money. He stuffed it in a sack and threw it at me, he was so annoyed. Like I wasn’t furious at his orneriness? It wasn’t until a week later when I emptied the sack that I found an extra hundred and three dollars in it. He couldn’t just give me what I asked for, no. In his haste he put my money in a sack that contained someone else’s money. The mistake was on his part, probably because he just wanted me gone so he could get back to his lunch.”
“Is this the money in your saddlebag that you refuse to spend?”
“Yeah, and I’ll be giving it back, every damn dollar—someday.”
“You were right. It’s laughable—if it actually happened that way.”
“It did, so why aren’t you laughing?”
He didn’t answer. Obviously, he didn’t believe anything she’d just told him. Not that it would have made a difference if he did. He’d already made it clear that it wasn’t his job to decide her fate, merely to turn her over to the law so others could.
He stood and grabbed their hats. “Time to go.”
She didn’t budge. This was it. The sheriff couldn’t be more’n a block or two away. Would Degan shoot her right there in front of witnesses if she tried one more time to run?
Chapter Twelve
“WHATEVER YOU’RE THINKING, KID, stop thinking it. Yes, I will donate a bullet to your leg, and, yes, I will do it right here—in case you were wondering.”
“So now you’re a mind reader, too?” Max growled up at Degan.
He tossed some money on the table and nodded toward the front door. “We’re stopping by my hotel first, so how about you behave and I won’t have to put you over my shoulder again to get there.”
Another reprieve? Max got up, started to walk to the door, but didn’t feel like getting yanked around anymore today, so she stopped to wait for Degan, only to have him bump into her back because he’d already been right on her heels. She heard an aggravated sigh. Oh my God, she’d annoyed him? His emotions could get ruffled? She would have grinned if he weren’t throwing her in jail today. Fat lot of good it did her to know he was susceptible to some needling when they would be parting ways shortly.
He didn’t have them mount up, he just picked up the reins before leading her down the street. It was more crowded in the late morning, mostly with miners, but there were businessmen, too, and cowboys riding by. Delivery wagons were being unloaded in front of stores, and women with baskets on their arms were doing their morning shopping. Glancing around, Max noticed that she was drawing no attention, but Degan sure was. People were eyeing him covertly. She chalked it up to human nature that people were so curious about someone as menacing as him.
He stopped at a stable in the next block and paid to have both horses brushed and fed. While that might not take long, Max still viewed it as another delay for her. She was pleased until she realized the jail could be really close now. In fact, she might not be seeing her horse again. Ever. She hugged Noble’s neck one last time and whispered her apologies in case that proved true. They’d been through a lot together. He’d gotten her out of a lot of close calls. . . . Damnit, she didn’t want to say good-bye to him!
“You think they’ll let Noble tag along even—?”
“Who?”
“My horse.”
“Nice name.”
“I gave it to him for encouragement.” Then she added in a whisper so Noble wouldn’t hear, “He was a mite clumsy when he was younger. But will they let him tag along even if they stick me in a backbreaking cage for that trip to Texas?”
He handed her sadd
lebags to her, but paused to stare at her, probably because she’d just sounded hopeful and chagrined at the same time. While she never tried to hide her emotions and was pretty darn clear about what she was feeling, Degan’s gaze was as inscrutable as ever. “I believe you’re talking about prison transports. You haven’t been convicted yet.”
“Then how will they take me to Texas?”
He shrugged and tossed his own saddlebags over his shoulder. “By train, stage, or horse would be my guess. You can be shackled while using two of those means of transportation. Worried?”
“I was worried about my back, yeah. It’ll be broken by the end of that long trip. You can’t stand up in those cages, you know.”
He didn’t reply because he simply didn’t care. Why would he? She was nothing to him but money in his pocket, and a damn lot of it, too. She was going to make him rich today if he wasn’t already.
His hotel was across the street from the stable. Stepping into it was like stepping into another world. Suddenly, she was surrounded by plush velvet sofas and chairs, carved tables with fancy flower vases on them, huge paintings, shiny marble floors, lit chandeliers! Max looked around with wide eyes as Degan pulled her toward the lobby desk. She’d thought that she would be making him rich with her reward, but he had to be rich already to stay in an elegant hotel such as this.
“Mr. Grant,” the hotel clerk said politely, “a telegram was delivered for you.”
The man eyed Max a little too curiously after he handed Degan the piece of paper. She wondered if he’d seen her wanted posters around town, or if he was just too formal and polite to question Degan about his scruffy cowboy companion. She was standing close enough to Degan to be able to read the telegram as he read it. A Pinkerton detective was requesting a meeting tomorrow afternoon about a confidential matter.
“Friend of yours?” she asked, tapping the paper.
“No, it’s probably related to the work I’m doing for Marshal Hayes. He mentioned the Pinkertons were investigating train robberies.” Degan almost sounded annoyed when he added, “He wasn’t supposed to tell his superiors that I was temporarily taking over for him while he’s away. It appears that he did anyway.”
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