She knew by his eyes that he saw that need in her face. But he turned away from it.
“Nice shooting, pardner,” was all he said.
Chapter 13
“Lucky shooting, you mean.”
He chuckled.
“After you’ve shot a thousand rounds you’ll know just how lucky.”
“You’re the salty shooter.”
But she still couldn’t think enough to actually have a conversation. As if the whole experience with the rustlers and the disappointment about Skeeter wasn’t enough to overwhelm her, the devastating longing for Cole was hollowing her out inside. It was all she could do to turn her back and walk away. She made it to her horse and, after two tries, swung up into the saddle.
“Speaking of rounds,” Cole called to her, “always reload as soon as you can.”
Her hands were shaking, but she fumbled in her saddlebags for the box of bullets and broke open her gun.
“I hope I never have to shoot at anybody again.”
“So do I,” Cole said, sympathy in his voice, “but that’s not too likely.”
It was true and she knew it, but she couldn’t worry about it now. And she couldn’t bear to think about Cole. Or to look at him. If she saw the same understanding in his eyes that had been in his voice, she’d fall out of her saddle into his arms.
Painful as it was, the best she could do was concentrate on Skeeter to keep her mind off everything else. That thought brought back the sick feeling full force.
Skeeter was Slash A, he was one of her crew, and he had ridden for her father’s Flying B ever since she could remember.
She balanced the box of ammunition in front of her and forced her trembling hands to finish loading her rounds. This was life. This was the way things were, sometimes, for no credible reason, like her father killing himself over losing his money. She was a grown-up woman, and she had to accept some facts that made no sense to her.
But her heart and her memory weren’t that easily convinced.
“How could he steal from me, day after day? How could he put his buddies to so much trouble riding all those extra miles looking for the missing cows?”
Cole met her anguished look as he stepped up into his saddle.
“Some men ride for a brand with everything in them,” he said. “Some don’t. Some men tell the truth and some lie. Now you know which kind Skeeter is.”
“After twenty-some years? Cole, I would’ve sworn I knew him.”
“I’m telling you, one person never truly knows another.”
But I know you. You’re still trying to scare me away but I know you. You’re good, even if you think you’re bad. Even if you can kill your enemies without compunction. You’re a good man.
She replaced the gun in her holster and made sure it was seated safely, slipping the belt around so that the six-shooter was under her hand.
“Skeeter chopped wood for me all last winter. He made me a beautiful headstall and reins to match. He always saddled Shy Boy for me when he was around headquarters.”
“And he tried to get you killed,” Cole said as he turned his horse and headed back toward the herd, leading one outlaw’s horse as Aurora led the other.
“I want to talk to him,” she said. “I want to ask him why.”
“I want to be there when you do,” he said, “but even a woman of your persuasive powers will be wasting breath. I doubt he’ll say a word.”
She never had a chance to reply. A shot cracked, the bullet whizzed angrily past her ear, close enough to make a breeze against her cheek, near enough to make her scream, and she threw herself prone along Shy Boy’s neck. He began to run, the outlaw’s horse bumping against them because she’d jerked it up by instinct.
From the corner of her eye she glimpsed Cole pulling his rifle from the saddle scabbard and working the lever in one long, smooth motion. He fired so fast it didn’t seem possible. He fired again.
There were more of them! That was the only thought she could hold for more than an instant while she tried to bring her horse around. Gates hadn’t been as cheap on hiring help as she’d thought. There were more of them.
She wrapped the reins of the horse she was leading around her horn and reached for the gun in her holster. No telling how many of them Cole was fighting all by himself.
But when she got Shy Boy turning, she saw that Cole would have to fend for himself. There were even more of them.
Two men came on at a high lope, headed straight for her out of some trees, directly to her right, directly behind Cole. She couldn’t resist one more glance in his direction. Two. He was fighting two men, two more were coming, so Gates had paid six long riders to come after her cattle.
Gates. Rich as a new mother lode and still determined to take everything she had. She lifted her chin as she lifted her gun. She’d show him the meaning of “determined.”
Way too soon, she fired one shot, but then she got control. No time to reload, so she had to make the rest of her rounds count.
The one in the lead half-turned in the saddle and yelled, “Hold your fire. Take her alive, remember!”
So. What did dear Lloyd have in mind next? Torturing her until she signed a false bill of sale?
She saw the surprise on the grizzled face of the first outlaw when he realized she was keeping on coming, that she was riding toward instead of away from them. Then she leveled the gun, holding it against her thigh for balance, veered sideways, and fired, wishing she could stop still and use both hands the way Cole had taught her.
The shot missed. A shiver of fear ran through her, then the cry of pain shocked her. The second outlaw fell forward, reaching out with both hands as blood spread over the shoulder of his tan shirt. She had fired at one man and hit the other!
Immediately she cocked the gun and levelled it at the first rider again, because he was coming closer, faster. But before she could fire, in the very next instant, he was jerking his horse around, bumping into his partner’s horse, and the partner was coming headlong out of the saddle.
When she got there, holding the gun on them with both hands, they seemed to have forgotten her. The man she’d shot had dived off his mount and grabbed onto the tail of his friend’s horse, maybe to keep him from riding off and leaving him, and the horse was turning in a frantic circle to get rid of him, his rider trying to help.
“Hands up!” Aurora shouted. “Get your hands up!”
The uninjured man complied. The horse kicked the other man, who let go and dropped, unmoving, into a heap at his partner’s feet. The horse ran away a short distance to join the other one, taking their long guns out of reach.
Aurora sat her horse, stunned, trying to take it all in while holding her six-shooter as steady as she could. Guns fired and men shouted behind her, but she didn’t dare take her eyes from her captives.
“Take off your gunbelt and toss it away,” she said, “or I’ll shoot.”
The unshaven man did as he was told, and not a moment too soon, because in the next instant she had to risk a glance away from him. A horse was pounding toward her, fast.
“Aurora!”
Cole. A great terror she had barely recognized gave way to pure relief.
“Still lucky, I see,” he said dryly, but that same intense relief was in his voice, underlying the cool nonchalance.
That unfathomable connection between them grew stronger in one leap.
“I shot at this one,” she whispered, as he rode up beside her, still leading the horse carrying the first trussed-up rustler, “and hit the other.”
He chuckled as he tied the reins he was holding to the saddle horn of the horse Aurora was leading.
“Keep that between us,” he said, “at least until I get him tied up.”
She held the new rustler in her sights while he went through the process of tying the man’s hands behind him.
“Pretty soon you’ll be trying to borrow my Chickasaw name,” Cole said, and from his tone she realized that he was intending to calm h
er, to soothe the wild beating of her heart.
“Which is?”
“Shoots-Like-Striking-Lightning.”
“It is not! You tell me a different story every time.”
“But not about the scalping,” he said loudly, and threw a fierce look at his captive before he turned him toward his horse. “That story’s always the same, right?”
“Right,” she said, perversely enjoying the terrified look that flashed across the thief’s face. “I think I know how to do it now that you’ve explained it all.”
“Hey!” the man shouted. “You can’t do that! This here’s not Indian country!”
“It is if I say it is,” Cole said, dragging him to his horse. “Do exactly what I tell you if you want to hang with your hair on.”
“Hang! What’re you talking about? All my partner and I are doing is riding through.”
“We’ll see about that. We’ve got one of your buddies, who’s just itching to tell the sheriff all about it.”
“I don’t know why you’d believe him instead of me! Ol’ Carlile’s so windy he’ll blow you away.”
“You know his name, you know what he’ll say, sounds to me like you all are in cahoots.”
“Who? Know whose name?”
Cole and Aurora laughed.
“Must shore have been a funny fight,” someone shouted. “Sorry we missed it.”
Monte and Frank came riding up and swung down to help Cole with the captives. Again, Cole was bandaging the wound with the speed and dispatch of long practice.
“It was a mite serious fight right there at the beginning,” Cole said, “seeing as how my partner ran off and left me.”
“I did not! Shy Boy got spooked having another horse slapping his side at every step, that’s all.”
Cole turned and grinned at her as he helped tie the man onto his horse, since the rustler obviously couldn’t ride, although he was coming around.
“Best to get your horse good broke, then, before you go out gunning for trouble, ma’am.”
Monte and Frank laughed with them, everyone needing the relief.
“You can put that hogshooter up now,” Cole said to Aurora. “Reckon it’d be safer for us if you’d holster it.”
He told Monte and Frank about her missing her target, and they immediately started the inevitable teasing.
She had shot a man and she had meant to do it, although she’d hit the wrong one. It was a strange feeling. But they would’ve shot her if they hadn’t been ordered to take her alive. They had been stealing her cattle with no compunction at all.
Yet the groans of the man she had wounded made her feel terrible.
Gathering the rustlers and their horses, they all started back toward the scene of Cole’s battle. Abruptly, he changed directions.
“Let’s head for the herd,” he said. “Those two aren’t going anywhere, and we need to let the trail boss here give out the orders about getting her stolen cows back.”
Aurora shot him a grateful look. He was reading her mind again.
“I wanta see that low-down Skeeter with his hands tied, too,” one of the rustlers said. “That skunk is guiltier than we are, since we don’t even know you, ma’am.”
Monte jerked around in the saddle and sent a questioning look at Cole, who answered with a quick nod.
“They mentioned him first thing,” he said. “Reckon he’s in on it.”
Monte and Frank both looked quickly away, embarrassed to hear such a thing about a member of their crew.
“Surely not,” Frank drawled in protest.
“Looks bad for him,” Cole said.
“I never done such a thing as hanging a compadre of mine,” Frank said.
Aurora’s heart stopped and then sank. She couldn’t imagine hanging anyone, especially not Skeeter.
“We won’t hang them,” she blurted. “I … I want them to stand trial.”
Cole looked at her with disbelief.
“You can’t spare men from the herd to take them to the nearest law, wherever that is …”
“I have to,” she said, shocked to think that the fate of these outlaws, their very lives, in fact, rested completely in her hands.
She tried to think.
“Gates isn’t here. Are you going to let him off scot-free?”
“No. I’ll kill him the next time he crosses my path.”
“But what if he doesn’t? I can’t hold the herd here while you ride back to Pueblo City to find him, and I can’t go on without you.”
She couldn’t break down, not now, not here, but her voice trembled with emotion. Cole heard it, too.
“Sure you can,” he said, teasing her with his irresistible grin.
The message in his dark eyes was plain: Buck up. You’re doing fine so far. You can get through this.
It made her feel stronger, strong enough to steady her voice and explain herself.
“If there’s a trial, the truth will come out about Gates, and maybe he’ll be arrested, too.”
“Nobody’ll believe these waddies against upstanding citizen Gates,” Cole said with a gesture of disgust.
“I’m thinkin’ they will,” said one of the rustlers, the one whose horse Cole was now leading. “I know plenty on Gates, and I aim to tell it all t’ try t’ save my own skin.”
“I’m with you, Petey,” said the other fully conscious one. “I’ve worked for the son of a buck for a lot of years.”
“Always as a brand artist?” Cole said.
“No. Everything from salting gold mines to stolen horses sold under a false bill of sale.”
“There might be some proof on paper of some of that,” Cole said, “but Gates is smart, and he’s had a lot of practice at rubbing out his backtrail.”
They fell into their own thoughts as they picked up the pace. Aurora’s heart grew heavier still with dread as soon as the wagons came in sight. She hated so much to confront Skeeter, yet she had to know why he would betray her after all their years of friendship. The very thought made her want to cry.
Cookie had built a fire and had coffee ready.
“Sounded like a war out there,” he said, looking Aurora over with sharp concern in his eyes. “You ain’t hurt?”
“Only my feelings,” she said. “Where’s Skeeter?”
The same embarrassment as Frank’s and Monte’s passed over the old man’s face. He turned away.
“I reckoned we’d need stout coffee and boilin’ water, both,” he said.
“You were right,” she said. “Where’s Skeeter?”
“Skeeter’s gone. Skedaddled.”
“Did he say where he was headed?”
“Said the owl hoot trail.”
He turned to face her again.
“He said t’ tell you he’d give his right arm to change things if it would. Said Gates had him plumb trapped into followin’ his orders or gettin’ hanged fer somethin’ Skeeter done a long time ago. He heerd them shots you all was throwin’ around and he lit outta here like a scalded hound.”
“For all Skeeter knew, these men could’ve died in the fight and he could’ve gone on like before with none of us the wiser.”
“Nope. Said he’d druther ride the coulees than live another day all wire-edged and walkin’ the fence.”
The hollow feeling inside her grew larger and larger. Skeeter was gone. Skeeter was guilty. There was nothing she could do about him.
“Want us to carry this bunch back to the trees and have a little necktie party, Miss Aurora?” Monte said. “Now that Skeeter ain’t amongst ‘em?”
“No!” she said, more fiercely than she’d intended. “We’ll take them to the law.”
She turned and rode away from them all, around behind her wagon, and stopped in its shade. After a moment, she stepped down and then just stood there, leaning her forehead against Shy Boy’s sweaty shoulder.
“So Skeeter’s gone,” Cole said.
She whirled to look at him, tears welling up at the sympathy in his voice.
/> “At least he had a reason,” she said. “At least he was trying to save himself and not stealing from me out of greed.”
“I reckon that’s right,” he said softly and looked at her closely before he swung down off his horse.
Oh, dear God, if only he would hold her! She needed the comfort of his iron arms around her and his hard chest beneath her cheek like she had never needed anything else in all her life. He walked straight toward her.
“But you have to see it plain, what he did to you, and not cut him too much slack,” he said. “Remember how tough you have to be if you’re going to carve a ranch out of nothing.”
She managed a shaky smile.
“I know. It’s just that Skeeter always …”
He opened his arms and she went into them, into the hard circle of comfort that his body closed around her. She laid her cheek on his chest and wanted, with all her being, to melt against him, into him.
But he wasn’t holding her that way.
“You can’t be sentimental,” he said. “In the future you’ll have to hire men you don’t know, so you must judge them with clear eyes.”
The trembling she’d felt earlier came back through her, and she nearly froze. How could she do it alone?
Suddenly it sounded entirely overwhelming, the thought of hiring strange men, riding herd on the cattle, building some kind of shelter for her and her men, and shooting outlaws and rustlers on top of it all. She didn’t even know a decent location for her new ranch—what if it had to be in a place that was hard to defend?
“Oh, Cole,” she said, “I don’t know if I can handle it all.”
“Yes, you can. You’ve come too far to back out now if you wanted to. And you don’t want to. Building a ranch of your own is entirely possible.”
“But how can you say that? You had to do most of the shooting today, although I did do a little. The crew is taking care of the cattle—I’m scouting, yes, but I’m not herding or branding or cooking …”
She was on the verge of bursting into sobs, but he wouldn’t let her. He took her chin in his hand, turned her face up to his, and fixed her with a straight, stern look.
The Renegades: Cole Page 20