by Lough, Loree
Publisher’s Note:
This novel is a work of fiction. References to real events, organizations, or places are used in a fictional context. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Beautiful Bandit
Book One in the Lone Star Legends Series
Loree Lough
www.loreelough.com
ISBN: 978-1-60374-225-2
Printed in the United States of America
© 2010 by Loree Lough
Whitaker House
1030 Hunt Valley Circle
New Kensington, PA 15068
www.whitakerhouse.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lough, Loree.
Beautiful bandit / by Loree Lough.
p. cm. — (Lone Star legends ; bk. 1)
Summary: “Texas rancher Joshua Neville rescues a hapless runaway who calls herself Dinah Theodore and finds himself falling in love with her, but when he learns that she is wanted for robbery and murder under the name Kate Wellington, he must discover the truth about her past, help her to accept God’s forgiveness, and decide whether their love is meant to be”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-60374-225-2 (trade pbk.)
1. Ranchers—Texas—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.O8147B43 2010
813’.54—dc22
2010013100
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical—including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system—without permission in writing from the publisher. Please direct your inquiries to [email protected].
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Dedication
To my dear readers (many of whom have become cherished friends over the years), whose lovely letters inspire me to keep writing.
To my steady-as-a-rock husband, who feeds my confidence.
To my daughters and grandchildren, whose belief in my talents never falters.
To every one of the wonderful people at Whitaker House, whose hard work and faith in my abilities made the Lone Star Legends series possible.
A special, heartfelt thank-you to Courtney and Lois, my wonderful editors, whose insights and guidance helped make Beautiful Bandit an even better story.
Above all, to my Lord and Father, who blessed me with a talent for storytelling and provides the ideas and the energy to share His Word at every opportunity.
1
May 1888 • San Antonio, Texas
The hot, sticky air in the banker’s cluttered office made it hard to breathe. Josh ran a fingertip under his stiff collar as the image of cows, dropping by the thousand, reminded him of why he’d come to San Antonio. Selling a couple thousand uncontaminated acres from his family’s ranch, the Lazy N, was the only way to protect the land that remained until they were able to get the anthrax infection under control.
He did his best not to glare at the decorous Bostonian, Griffen, sitting beside him. It wasn’t the Swede’s fault, after all, that the disease had killed so many of the Nevilles’ cattle. In his shoes, Josh would have snapped up the land just as quickly. Trouble was, now this la-di-da Easterner would move to Eagle Pass, bringing his never-been-out-of-the-city wife and children with him. Worse yet, Josh had a sneaking suspicion that the former printing press operator would make a regular pest of himself by asking about the Texas climate, irrigation methods, when to plant, and only the good Lord knew what else. If that didn’t earn Josh a seat closer to the Throne, he didn’t know what would.
Few things agitated him more than sitting in one spot. Especially indoors. Confusion at how these fancy gents managed to look so calm and cool only added to his restlessness. He hung his Stetson on his left knee, mostly to occupy his hands in some way. Now, as the banker explained the terms of the agreement, Josh stared hard at the bloodred Persian rug under his boots and searched his mind for something else to focus on, anything other than the wretched document that would transfer ownership of Neville land to this foreigner. Moving his Stetson to his right knee, he remembered the day he’d bought the hat, and how he’d purchased another just like it one year later, when business at the Lazy N had put him back in Garland. One for riding the range, one for his wedding.
Strange, he thought, how Sadie could appear in his mind’s eye from out of nowhere, even after three long years without her. He forced her from his mind. This get-together was more than painful enough without his dwelling on the most agonizing period of his life. Josh exhaled a harsh sigh, hoping the banker and the Swede hadn’t heard the tremor in it. For his agitation, he blamed the oppressive heat. His empty stomach. The ten-day ride from Eagle Pass that had left him so bone-tired, he couldn’t sleep, even on the hotel’s pillow-soft mattress. A body would think that an establishment with Persian rugs and velvet curtains could afford to provide some cold water for its clients, he thought, loosening his string tie as Griffen asked yet another inane question. Father, give me the strength to keep from grabbing those papers and hotfooting it out of here without making the deal! he prayed silently.
Sadly, his thoughts were doing little to distract him from the grim truth.
He had cast the single dissenting vote at the family meeting, and the decision to sell the land had become even more odious to him when it had been decided that, as the only Neville with a law degree, Josh would be responsible for transacting the sale. He groaned inwardly at the sorry state of affairs, leaning forward to hide the tears that burned in his eyes. He loved every blessed acre—especially those acres—that made up the Lazy N. He’d built a small but solid home for Sadie and himself on that section of the ranch, and having to hand it over to someone else hurt almost as much as burying Sadie had.
Griffen, God bless him, had been the one to suggest that Josh hold on to the precious acre where she had been buried, along with their twins, who had died at birth. When Josh had asked permission to visit their graves from time to time, Griffen’s pale eyes had darkened a shade, and he had said, “I’d be a wreck in your position. We will build a fence around the land to make sure your little family is never disturbed.” But Josh had known, even as he’d nodded in agreement, that having to cross Griffen property to reach his family would only heap one misery atop another.
Josh grabbed his Stetson and, with his elbows propped on his knees, spun it round and round as he watched, through the window, two men dismount sweaty horses and tether them beside two others with empty saddles. They looked as tense and restless as he felt, and he wondered what unfortunate family business had brought them to the bank today.
“If you’ll just sign here, Mr. Neville,” Thomas Schaeffer said, redirecting Josh’s attention to his own, unfortunate family business.
He accepted the banker’s fountain pen. As its freshly inked nib hovered over the document, a bead of sweat trickled down his spine, and he felt a disturbing kinship with the fat hen his ma had roasted for dinner last Sunday.
Outside, the wind blew steadily, swirling street grit into tiny twisters that skittered up the parched road before bouncing under buggies and scurrying into alleyways. Even the burning breeze would feel better than this choking heat. “Mind if I open the window? I’m sweatin’ like a—”
“I’d much rather you didn’t,” he said, peering over the rims of his gold-trimmed spectacles. “The wind is likely to scatter our paperwork hither and yon.”
Hither and yon, indeed. Josh had read sayings like that in literature, but what kind of person actually used that sort of la
nguage in everyday speech? His musings over the annoying situation were interrupted by the sounds of shuffling footsteps and coarse whispers from the other side of the banker’s office door.
The commotion put a stern frown on Schaeffer’s heat-reddened face. “I declare,” he said through clenched teeth, “I can’t take my eyes off that fool assistant of mine for fifteen minutes without some sort of mayhem erupting.” Blotting his forehead with a starched white hanky, he continued grumbling, “Looks like I’ll have no choice but to replace him.” Shoving the eyeglasses higher, he lifted his chin and one bushy gray eyebrow—a not-so-subtle cue for Josh to sign the paper.
So, gritting his teeth, Josh inhaled a sharp breath, scratched his name on the thin, black line, and traded the pen for the banknote Schaeffer handed him.
On his feet now, Griffen grabbed Josh’s hand. “T’ank you,” he said, shaking it, “been a pleasure doing business wit’ you, Neville.”
Unable to make himself say, “Likewise,” Josh forced a stiff smile and pocketed the check. “You bet.” God willing, the worst was behind his family now.
The burnished, brass pendulum of the big clock behind the banker’s desk swayed left with an audible tick as the men prepared to go their separate ways.
It swung right as gunshots rang out in the lobby.
Schaeffer and Griffen ran for the door, but a flurry of activity outside drew Josh’s attention back to the window.
Tick….
It was the twosome he’d seen earlier, now joined by another man and a woman, scrambling up into their saddles. A lumpy burlap sack rested on the meaty rump of the biggest man’s mount, and sunlight glinted from his pistol.
Tick….
Now Josh knew why the bunch had looked so nervous before. They’d been just about to rob the bank! He yanked out his sidearm, pulled back the hammer with one hand, and threw open the window with the other, hoping to get off a shot or two before the robbers were swallowed up by the cyclone of grit kicked up by their horses’ hooves.
Tick….
Perched on the sill, Josh took aim at the shoulder of the fattest bandit, just as the woman’s pony veered right, putting her square in the center of his gun sight.
Tick….
She looked back as Josh released the pressure on the sweat-slicked trigger.
Tick….
Quick as you please, she faced front again, her cornflower blue skirt flapping like a tattered sail as she was swallowed up in a thick cloud of dust.
2
Mark my words, girlie, that one’s trouble. Big trouble. The purty ones always are.”
Nobody was better at taking a man’s measure than Etta Mae Samuels, proprietress of Silky’s, the saloon where Kate Wellington sang for her supper. If she’d heeded her boss’s advice, Kate would be crooning “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” and plinking the keys of Etta’s battered Chickering & Sons piano right now, instead of walking the soles off her boots by night and resting, hidden behind boulders and trees, during the daylight hours. If only she could make it to Mexico before the Texas Rangers or the Frank Michaels Gang caught up with her.
Kate Wellington, she thought ruefully, your life is way out of tune. She might have felt even sorrier for herself, if not for the fact that she had no one to blame but herself for her predicament.
All last month, Frank Michaels had sat front and center at Silky’s, asking to hear “Sweet Betsey from Pike,” “Yellow Rose of Texas,” and “Get Along, Little Dogies” and tossing coins onto the stage each time she filled a request. He’d treated her to dinner, bought her posies, and plied her with compliments that set her heart to fluttering and her cheeks to flushing. Then, a week ago, he’d invited her to join him for an ice cream, and when he’d asked if she minded waiting while he made a quick withdrawal at the bank on the way there, well, how would she have been able to refuse such a gentlemanly request?
At the door, he’d jerked her close and whispered, “Do as you’re told, and no one will get hurt.” When she’d opened her mouth to protest, he’d rammed a gun barrel into her ribs. “One word,” he’d hissed, “and it’ll be your last.”
Nodding like a marionette, she let him lead her inside. “Tell that pasty-faced old hen to fill this up,” he rasped, handing her a burlap sack. “Remember—do as I say, and nobody gets hurt.” Using his chin as a pointer, he made sure she was aware of the teller, assistant manager, and two customers he’d shoot if she didn’t comply.
Trembling, Kate plopped the bag onto the counter. “Put all the money into this sack, Claribel, and be quick about it. He isn’t afraid to—”
Frank jabbed the gun deeper into her side.
“We aren’t afraid to shoot,” she said instead.
The woman’s face went sickly white as her fingers fumbled with the bills. Then, the lead started flying, and in less time than it would have taken to say, “You promised no one would get hurt!” two more men stormed through the doors, guns blazing. The bank patrons and employees started toppling like dominoes, and Kate knew, as Frank dragged her outside, that she’d see that grisly image every time she closed her eyes.
For a moment, as they were mounting up, Kate locked gazes with a man staring out through a window of the bank. She almost shouted, “I’m not one of them! I’m a hostage!” But her spinelessness had already cost four lives, and the fear that he might become the fifth made her clamp her teeth together. She watched the stranger draw his gun and take aim in her direction, and she held her breath, hoping that he was a good shot. She deserved to die the same, awful death as those poor, innocent people in the bank.
“Get moving!” Frank bellowed as the man in the window slowly lowered his gun.
The same question was still echoing in her head as she limped along the hardscrabble path: Surely, he’d believed she’d been involved in the robbery. So, why hadn’t he killed her when he’d had the chance?
If he had, her aching feet wouldn’t be competing with the twinge in her back, and she wouldn’t be cold and tired and hungry. Had she pulled a muscle, falling from the window in the Loma Vista Beer Saloon’s storage room? Or was the pain a result of walking miles and miles in dressy boots not made to withstand rugged terrain?
Kate knew she was living on borrowed time. As she was the only witness to the robbery and murders, what choice did Frank and his gang have but to hunt her down and silence her?
And to think she’d believed he intended to propose marriage! Why, he’d bamboozled her, just as surely as Axel Ayers bilked city slickers with his “pea under the walnut shell” game. Axel’s victims had lived to refill their purses and pockets, but her foolish infatuation had cost four good people their lives, and not even the fact that the nose of a revolver had been digging into her back seemed a good enough excuse for her cowardice.
If she’d refused to participate, if she’d warned Claribel, if she’d tried to grab the gun barrel, or something, Frank probably would have killed her where she stood. But Kate had no family to mourn her, whereas Claribel had a husband and grandchildren, and those poor men had wives and children.
Immediately following the holdup, she’d thought of little else as the Frank Michaels Gang had zigzagged across the countryside to confound the Texas Rangers. The only times she’d been distracted had been at night, when Frank would boast about how quickly he’d taught his little “Katie toy” the price of resisting. Oh, she’d learned to silently endure his torture, but nothing—not threats to slit her throat or promises of fancy clothes—could keep her eyes from exposing her unadulterated revulsion. And so, Frank had taken to blindfolding her each time he violated her, using the same, grubby rag with which he had tied her hands to the saddle horn.
With no family and little hope of ever having one, thanks to what Frank Michaels had done to her, Kate felt like she didn’t have much to live for. But if she really believed that, why had she fought so hard to survive his brutality? And why had she escaped the first chance she got “You’ll have plenty of time to puzzle that one out,”
she said to herself, her breath puffing white into the inky air as she slumped, exhausted, to the cold ground, “once you get to Mexico.” She could almost hear the rowdy voices and clinking glasses of the Mexican cantinas Etta Mae’s customers so often talked about. Surely, she could find work in one of them, tickling the keys of an out-of-tune piano and crooning popular melodies for the patrons.
And then, an idea flitted into her head, one so good and so bright that it inspired a tiny smile. “You can learn to live on just a few pesos,” Kate whispered to herself, “and send money to Claribel’s husband, and the wives and children of—”
She couldn’t bring herself to say, “The men who died because of your cowardice.” Instead, she made a solemn oath to do everything she could to make up for what she’d done—or, more accurately, what she hadn’t done—at the bank.
Kate pushed herself back to her feet and pressed on, trying to ignore the cold night air, her parched throat, and her growling stomach, hoping with every agonizing step that Frank wouldn’t be waiting on the other side of the next rise, that the Rangers were too busy looking for Frank to worry about following her.
Because, for the first time since Frank had taken her captive, Kate Wellington had a good reason to live.
3
Josh yawned and stretched the kinks from his neck, wondering when he’d last felt as dog-tired as he did now. “Sure will be good to pull up for the night, won’t it, girl?” he asked his horse.
Callie responded by quickening her pace, as if she understood that several pans of oats and water would be hers when they stopped for the day. She wouldn’t have had to make the trip at all if Josh had taken Pa’s advice. But few things annoyed him more than wasting money, and that’s just what he would have done by purchasing a two-way train ticket to San Antonio.
Josh could have shaved two days off the ride if he’d been willing to push Callie harder. But as much as he wanted to ride under the familiar, wrought-iron gate that spelled out “Lazy N Ranch,” he saw no point in making his loyal mare pay the price for his family’s decision to make a land-for-money deal with Griffen.