The Devil's Own Desperado

by Lynda J. Cox

  Taylor’s frame grew rigid. “Yes, I was. He’s dead because he kidnapped my wife.”

  Amelia had no idea exactly what it was in Taylor’s words, but some of the chill melted from Colt’s expression. He dipped his head. “Good to know where I stand, then.” Colt turned on a heel and walked into the house.

  Taylor hesitated a moment, and then touched the brim of his hat. “You have any trouble, any at all, Amy, and you send Saul or Jenny into town or out to the ranch for me. I’ll be here as fast as I can.”

  Amelia forced a smile. “We’ll be fine, Marshal. Mr. Evans is not a danger to me, or to Saul and Jenny.”

  Taylor’s brow arched into his hairline. “He’s more dangerous than you can possibly imagine. Take my advice, Amy. Move him along as quickly as you can. He’s trouble for you and the kids, the likes of which you’ve never seen.”

  Colt was sitting at the table when Amelia came into the cabin. The white lines at the corners of his mouth matched the white of the sling around his neck. Cold, controlled fury shimmered in his eyes.

  Before she could say anything, Colt said, “Let me guess, he told you if you have any trouble with me, he’ll take care of it.”

  Amelia took a step back from the bitterness in his voice. “He said something to that effect, yes.”

  His laugh was harsh. “I can probably make a better guess than that, Amelia. According to him I’m nothing but trouble to you and he said he’d be here as fast as possible if you needed him, didn’t he?” Colt slammed his fist onto the table. “Damn it, does he really think I picked up a gun because it was how I wanted to spend my life?”

  “Doesn’t what you do ever keep you awake at night?” Amelia asked, needing to understand what the fascination with the power of life and death over another was.

  “What the hell do you think whiskey is for?”

  Amelia recoiled from the vehemence in his voice.

  “For nights after I’ve killed a man, I drink myself into oblivion. I learned real quick a conscience was a commodity I couldn’t afford.” Colt shook his head. “No, I sure as hell can’t afford a conscience,” he added, almost to himself.

  “Why did you pick up a gun, Colt?”

  His shoulders slumped. “Because I didn’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice. Even if your stepfather made you leave, surely your mother—”

  “Leave my mother out of this.” There was a different pain in his voice at the mention of his mother. “When my stepfather threw me out, I got caught up with the wrong kind. Pretty soon, people were talking about how fast I was on the draw and how accurate. The next thing I knew, I got called out in some little one-horse town down on the Rio Grande.” He clenched his fists. “I was so damn scared I about wet my britches. After that, there was no turning back. I was fourteen the first time I got called out.”

  “Colt…” His posture, the tone of his voice and the ravaged expression lining his face allowed her to imagine that terrified fourteen-year-old boy, trying to face down a grown man and knowing the only thing that would keep him alive would be his ability to draw a gun faster and shoot more accurately. And where was his mother when he had been cast into the world, little more than a child? Why that undercurrent of pain at the mention of her?

  “I couldn’t stop shaking after I’d killed him. I was shaking so badly I couldn’t even put my revolver back into the holster. And then I started puking, right there in the street. I puked until I thought I would turn inside out.” Colt lifted his head. His lean features were twisted and his mouth was a bitter gash. “I still get the shakes, but at least I don’t puke.”

  He came to his feet. “Trust me, Amelia, I will not do anything to encourage Saul to ever pick up a gun. It’s not living. It’s surviving.” He bowed his head. “Taylor’s right. I’m nothing but trouble for you and those two kids you’re raising.”

  “I don’t see it that way.”

  Colt’s head snapped up, his mouth open.

  “I don’t think you’ve lost your conscience either. If you had, you would have told Saul the truth about who you really are, because you wouldn’t have cared that he’s enamored with being a shootist and you know that’s a sure way to shorten a young man’s life.”

  Colt staggered back and sagged against the wall, his face drained of color. Amelia leaped across the room and caught him as he slid down the wall. “Colt?”

  “I think I’ve been on my feet too long.” A lopsided grin flashed across his pale face. “You tried to tell me I’m not strong enough yet to be up and walking around. I admit it, you were right.”

  “Put your arm around my shoulder.” She wasn’t entirely sure that was the reason for his slide down the wall, but she was willing to let it go at that. She slipped her arm around his waist. “You need to rest for a while. I’ll help you get into bed.”

  “What an offer,” he drawled. “Be thankful I’m not myself, or I might even take you up on that.”

  “It is not an offer of anything other than assistance,” Amelia said, heat filling her face and coiling around her insides.

  As Amelia eased him down onto the mattress, Colt caught her wrist. “Look, Amelia, as soon as the sawbones takes this bandage off my shoulder, I’ll be gone from your life. In the meantime, I’ll try not to be too much trouble to you and those kids.”

  He rolled onto his uninjured shoulder, presenting his back to her. He curled his arm under the pillow, and drew a deep breath. Once more she knew she had been dismissed, that he needed to be left alone with the memories that obviously haunted him.

  Uncertain why the prospect of watching him ride away left her feeling so empty, Amelia left the room. She also realized that her questions of why anyone would choose to continue in such a way of life had gone unanswered.

  ****

  “Good morning.”

  Amelia spun around, a shock of hay dribbling off the end of the fork. “Hello, Colt.” She tossed the hay to Colt’s horse, and then propped the hay-fork against a wall. She wiped her hands down the front of her apron. “You were sleeping when I fixed breakfast, so I let you sleep.”

  He pulled his hand through his hair. “Thanks. Where are the kids?”

  “Saul took Jenny into town to go to church.” Amelia stroked the gelding’s warm neck. He was so soft and sleek. The horse pressed his head against her shoulder. She pushed him away and scratched his poll.

  “You don’t go to church?” Colt leaned against the doorjamb. “What do folks in this little town think of that, the preacher’s daughter not going to church?”

  “I haven’t been to church since my parents were ki—since they died.”

  “They were killed?” His brow arched. “Who killed your parents, Amelia?”

  The gentleness in his voice belied his glacial expression. Amelia shook her head. “No one knows. They were on their way home from town on a Saturday afternoon. Jenny was with them. When they still weren’t home by dawn on Sunday, Saul and I went looking for them. Marshal Taylor was with them by then and tried to keep me and Saul away.”

  Colt took a step closer. The chill melted and an unexpected gentleness softened his expression. She held her hand up, halting his slow progress. “They were dead, and Jenny was hiding under the seat of the buckboard, under a buffalo rug. They had been robbed and Momma…”

  Amelia couldn’t force the last words out. She dropped her gaze to the floor. Her stomach twisted again with the memory of her parents’ frozen, bloodied bodies, partially drifted over with snow. Since that day, she had been forced to be strong for Saul, stronger for Jenny. What she wanted to do was exactly what Jenny had done. She wanted to retreat into her own shell and go back to a world that included her mother and father. Nightmares still tormented her.

  “It’s okay, Amelia.” He caught her hand and squeezed it once before releasing her. “I don’t need to know what they did to your mother. Unfortunately, I can guess.”

  Amelia lifted her eyes to him, grateful for his understanding. “We almo
st lost Jenny. She must have seen it all, and she got so sick afterward. She doesn’t like to look anywhere but at the ground, sometimes she won’t eat for days, and she hasn’t made a sound since that day. Dr. Archer thinks someday, she’ll be able to talk again, but he’s also afraid it may take something just as terrible to break through”—she struggled to recall the exact words the doctor had used—“to break through the walls her mind put up.”

  “How old was Jenny when this happened?” Colt pushed the white gelding’s head away from his injured shoulder.

  “It happened in January. She was six, almost seven.” Disoriented with the gentle sympathy in Colt’s expression and needing to change the subject, Amelia tilted her head to the horse. “He’s a beautiful animal. What’s his name?”

  “He doesn’t have one.” His cold mask slipped into place faster than an avalanche roaring down a mountainside. “I don’t name animals. Not anymore.”

  Not anymore. What had happened to him after his stepfather had thrown him out at the tender age of thirteen? “May I name him?”

  “Suit yourself.” Colt poured a scoopful of cracked corn and oats into the horse’s trough. “Amelia, I feel undressed without my gun. Where did you hide it?”

  “I think I’ll call him Angel. He’s as white as a Christmas angel.” She hoped if she ignored his question, he wouldn’t ask again. She wondered for a moment if her parents had ever had a conversation like this one when her father decided to walk away from his previous life and put on the vestments of a clergyman.

  “My gun, Amelia.” He spoke each word clearly, adding a little more force to each syllable. “Where did you hide it?”

  She shot a glance at him. Again, she was struck with the contrast of the pristine white sling against the black shirt. Black gave him an intimidating air, but also lent a new depth to his silver-shot, jet-black hair and added a startling deep cast to his eyes. “Are you leaving?”

  “Not yet. I’d just like to know where it is.”

  She nodded to his saddle on a rack across the barn. “The gun and your holster are in your saddlebags.”

  He strode across the barn. Amelia turned her back to him and stroked Angel’s face. A harsh, metallic click broke the peaceful quiet of the warm barn, followed by the unmistakable sound of the barrel spinning. She winced, but continued to stroke the gelding’s broad face.

  Another sharp click traced a chill up her spine.

  A quieter, but no less harsh double click lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.

  “Amelia, look at me.”

  With a sigh, she faced him.

  “We both know you can’t leave my gun in my saddlebags. If Saul gets really curious, this is going to be the first place he goes looking for it.” Colt lowered the hammer against the chamber, slipped the revolver into the holster and wrapped the belt around the gun. “I know he’s already been in my saddlebags, because you said he found my Bible. I suggest you hide this wherever you had it hidden when he found my Bible. Obviously my gun wasn’t in there then.”

  Amelia recoiled from the gun. “I don’t ever want to touch that thing again.”

  “Then tell me where to put it and I’ll go hide it.”

  “You said you feel undressed without it, Colt.”

  His grin made her heart skip. “Yeah, I do.”

  She searched his face. He could have been one of the serene marble angels she had seen towering over the sanctuary of a Roman Catholic Church once. Those beautiful and majestic creatures had left her awestruck, transfixed, her original mission of stealing in to see the stained glass windows forgotten. She had spent an afternoon in the quiet, incense-scented sanctuary of the church, befriended by a priest with an Irish brogue who had told her who each angel was, and his role in the Roman Catholic view of heaven. Even her father never knew of her infatuation at the age of five with angels, or that the priest had said anytime she wished to view the angels she was more than welcome to come back. She never had though. Shortly after her discovery of those beautiful marble beings, her father had moved them to Missouri.

  “But,” Colt’s voice brought her back to the barn, with its dust motes dancing in the sunlight and the chattering of sparrows and swallows, “you’re also jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs because of my revolver. As long as I’m here, I won’t wear it. So, we need to agree on someplace to hide it. The only non-negotiable part of this agreement is I have to be able to get to it at a moment’s notice.”

  “Why?” Amelia envisioned him again carved of gleaming white marble. She tingled with the nearness of him, the way his voice caressed her like velvet.

  “Because I may need it. When I was shot, I also killed the boy—the man who shot me. He has other brothers who will come looking for me sooner or later.”

  “You shot a boy?” Amelia’s stomach twisted and then sank through the floor. Nausea left her head spinning.

  If Colt was an angel, he was a fallen, damned one.

  “He was nineteen. He just looked a lot younger.”

  Amelia’s heart leaped into her throat. The last person he had killed had been the same age as she was. She couldn’t imagine her life ending at nineteen. Most likely, neither could that boy when he pulled a gun on Colt.

  “He wasn’t a boy any longer. He stopped being a boy when he picked up a gun and tried to kill me.” Colt held the revolver out to Amelia. “Anytime anyone picks up a gun with the intent to kill someone else, they stop being a child. That’s a simple fact of life out here, and you damn well know it.”

  Amelia shuddered. Colt was right. Saul would go looking for the revolver again. She cautiously took the gun from his extended hand. Colt had stopped being a boy when he was fourteen, whether or not he had wanted to. And now he stood in her barn asking her to hide his gun, a weapon he had used to take the life of another human, from Saul. Not hide it from this man, this killer, but hide it from Saul. Even as part of her argued that it was wrong to continue to give this man refuge, another part of her knew that this was not the life he wanted for himself and certainly not the life he would want for Saul.

  “All right, Colt, I’ll hide it. And if you need to get it immediately, that will be possible, as well.”

  Chapter Seven

  Amelia paced the cabin, pausing regularly to peer out the windows. Saul and Jenny should have been back from church almost an hour ago. Where were they? Why were they so late? Had something happened to them on the way home? Even though their homestead was less than a mile from Federal and she didn’t want to believe anything could happen to Jenny and Saul, the death of her parents had brought home just how dangerous that short mile could be. Sometimes she regretted giving away her father’s revolvers and his shotgun in a thoughtless rage after her parent’s death.

  A wagon rattled into the yard and she flung open the door. Relief weakened her knees, and she clutched the doorframe to support her trembling legs.

  Jenny sat between Saul and Donnie Morris. Donnie’s dark bay mare was tied to the back of the wagon. Amelia’s relief was short-lived and she bit back a groan, too conscious by far of Colt’s presence. Donnie Morris…of the stolen kiss and the hand like a cold, dead trout. Donnie Morris, who was not much more than a boy himself.

  Colt was sitting in the cane-bottomed rocking chair on the small porch, whittling a large piece of pine into shavings. He tilted his head toward Donnie. “You don’t seem to be really pleased to see that gentleman there. Friend of yours?”

  “Donnie Morris, the livery owner’s son.” How had he realized her discomfort with Donnie’s presence? Her spine stiffened under Colt’s continued scrutiny. “And, yes, he’s a friend of mine.”

  Colt shifted his gaze back to the young man assisting Jenny from the wagon. “Real dandified gentleman there, Amelia.”

  “He’s going away to college in a month.” Colt’s sarcasm forced Amelia to defend Donnie Morris. “He’s been accepted at the Indiana State Normal School in Terre Haute. He’s going to be a teacher.” Amelia wave
d to Donnie, but instantly regretted the welcoming gesture for the message it sent to both Donnie and Colt.

  “Teacher-type, huh?” Colt rocked back and propped his feet on the railing. Amusement added a bright glint to his eyes. “He looks like a bookworm.”

  “My Daddy always said that education is the only thing that truly separates us from the savages. Being able to read and write and teach others to do the same isn’t something to be scoffed at,” Amelia said.

  “I didn’t say it was.” A tormenting grin lifted one corner of his mouth. “I said he seems to be a dandified gentleman and a bookworm. You’re putting more into what I said. Way you’re acting, I’d be inclined to think he’s more than just your friend. I’d almost say you’re sweet on him.”

  Donnie trotted toward them in a gait that had earned him the nickname Duck as a child. Amelia bit the inside of her lip. He did run like a waddling duck—a waddling duck dressed in a gray pinstriped suit and high-collared shirt. Amelia would bet his collar was even celluloid. His dark bowler did nothing for him, only emphasized the roundness of his face.

  “Amy, I’m sorry Saul and Jenny are late,” Donnie said. “It’s my fault, so don’t yell at them. The church had an ice-cream social as a goodbye for me. I told the children if they wanted to stay, I would bring them home. Everyone said to say hello to you and to ask when you’re going to come back to church.” He glanced back at the wagon, shouting, “Saul, just tie my horse up by the barn. She’ll be fine there until I leave.”

  Amelia ground her teeth. She wanted to tell Donnie she wasn’t ever coming back to church until someone could explain to her why God would allow her parents to be so brutally murdered, especially when they had worked so hard to put their past behind them. Instead, she nodded and ignored the unspoken censure. “I’m grateful for everyone’s concern and their greetings.”

  Jenny smiled shyly at Colt as she walked by. Colt chuckled. “You had chocolate ice cream, didn’t you, Miss Jenny?”