Once an Outlaw

by Jill Gregory

  “What in hell is going on?” Ham Smith muttered as the driver clambered down.

  A moment later, Clint swung the door open.

  “Sorry to interrupt your journey, folks, but we need everyone to step outside right now.”

  “Clint, what in damnation is going on?” Ham demanded. “Who are these men? What are you doing?”

  “I can scarcely believe it—our own sheriff is waylaying our stage!” Agnes cried.

  Clint tipped his hat to her. “Sorry, ma’am, but there’s no time to explain. We’ve got a buggy hidden behind the rocks for the ladies and some extra horses for the men. Deputy Stills will accompany you back to Denver. Do what he says and wait for us there.”

  “Us?” The salesman for the theater troupe stared at him, bug-eyed. “Who’s us?”

  “Federal Marshal Hoot McClain—and me. We need this stagecoach.” Clint’s eyes grew hard and flat as he held out an arm to help Bessie Smith as she descended the steps. The driver had already jumped down and was speaking to the marshal and the lanky pale-haired deputy on horseback.

  “Come on, folks, there’s no time to waste,” Clint said as first the hardware salesman clambered out and then Ham followed, staring at him in amazement. “Everybody out—now.”

  “Well! I never!” Agnes declared as she teetered out of her seat.

  “I’m sure Sheriff Barclay knows what he’s doing, Mama,” Carla said softly.

  “Thanks, Carla.” Clint nodded at her as he helped her out of the stage.

  One by one the passengers found their way to the buggy and the horses the lawmen had provided for their use.

  The driver clambered back up onto the seat and Hoot McClain and Clint Barclay turned over their mounts to the deputy, then entered the stagecoach.

  “Go ahead,” Marshal McClain called to the driver, settling back into the seat vacated by the previous passengers. “Just follow your regular route. Don’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

  “And hold your fire,” Clint ordered him. “Leave whatever shooting is necessary to us.”

  “Anything you say, Sheriff,” the driver called down.

  He flicked his whip over the horses’ backs and the stagecoach rolled forward.

  “So far, so good,” the silver-haired McClain muttered, stretching out his bowed legs.

  Clint stared out the window, every muscle in his body tense as the stagecoach headed on toward Lonesome—and straight toward Boulder Point.

  IGH ON THE HILL CALLED BOULDER Point, four men waited on horseback. From their vantage point they could see the trail from Denver for miles and they saw the dust cloud that told them the morning stage was on its way.

  “Everyone ready?” Jake Spoon asked grimly.

  Slim Jenks gave a curt nod as he continued squinting down the road. “We’d best wait till they’re about two hundred feet back—right when they round those rocks,” he said.

  “We know what we’re doing, Jenks.” Pete Spoon’s eyes gleamed beneath his slouch hat. “We’ve had a lot more practice at holding up stages than you.”

  “Yeah, well, me and Ratlin have had a lot more practice killing folks than you,” the other man retorted. “And today, I’m in charge of that. Once everyone gets out of the stage, I’ll shoot the Mangley women first—then you plug the driver. After that, everyone else is fair game.”

  “Happy hunting,” Lester muttered checking his gun and sliding it back into the holster.

  Jenks chuckled a harsh sound in the clear, dry air. “It always is, boy.”

  “I still don’t like Ratlin not showing up.” Jake’s fierce brows drew together and he fixed Jenks with a penetrating stare. “It was supposed to be all five of us.”

  “I told you—something came up.” Jenks didn’t add that what had come up was Jake’s own niece, sticking her pretty little nose where it didn’t belong. The damned girl had sawed her bonds free in the middle of the night and tried to run off with Ratlin’s own horse. Ratlin hadn’t wanted to take any chances leaving her alone after that. They were too close to finishing the job, to getting that nice big pile of money. They couldn’t risk her getting in the way.

  “Ratlin’ll meet us at the hideout later to turn over the cash,” he told Jake. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  “You sure he and Sleech and Frank Mangley aren’t double-crossing us?” Pete’s voice was hard, edged with suspicion. “If it turns out I’m risking a noose around my neck for no more’n a sack of dirt, I’m going to be mighty riled.”

  “No need for anyone to get riled, Spoon.” Jenks spat out a plug of tobacco, then leaned casually back in the saddle. “Me and Sleech and Ratlin go way back. No one’s double-crossing anyone. Ratlin just had something he had to take care of this morning.” He gave a small half-smile, as if he’d said something amusing. “But you can damn well believe he’s taking care of business.”

  “And our alibis—they’re all set?” Lester asked.

  “Sleech and Mangley took care of that part. There’ll be at least five men in the Oakey Saloon in Denver who’ll swear you three were there during the time of the holdup. And Florry Brown’s going to swear I got hung over and was up in her room sleeping it off all through the night and halfway through today. The WW will fire me for sure, but the law won’t be able to pin a damn thing on any of us.”

  “Especially with no witnesses—not live ones, anyway,” Jake said.

  “Ain’t it the truth?” A wide grin split Jenks’s face.

  “Here they come.” Pete pointed down to the trail, and they all stared at the stage, a tiny box in the distance as it rattled around a curve far below. Moving as one, all four men lifted the reins of their horses and started down the hill.

  They waited until the stagecoach came thundering around the last curve before Boulder Point to spur their horses to a gallop, then they dug in their heels and headed straight toward the rumbling coach.

  Jenks, Pete, and Lester fired into the air. “Throw down your guns!” Jenks shouted to the driver. As the stagecoach came to a shuddering halt, the four riders surrounded it, their guns drawn.

  “Everyone out!” Slim Jenks bellowed, and the next moment the doors to the stagecoach opened.

  But instead of a parcel of terrified passengers clambering out, two men leaped out with guns in each hand and spun toward the outlaws.

  “Drop your gun, Jenks.” Both of Clint Barclay’s Colts were aimed directly at the cowboy’s chest.

  “What the hell! Barclay!”

  For a moment Jenks just stared at the sheriff, dumbfounded—then he noticed the other lawman, a slim silver-haired man pointing a Navy revolver.

  The blood drained from Jenks’s face as he realized the lawmen were only pointing their guns at him. He glanced over at the Spoons and his eyes bulged.

  All three of the Spoons were pointing their guns at him too.

  Disbelief and then cold fury swept over him. “A damned setup!” he croaked.

  “We don’t murder women, you bastard.” Jake Spoon’s voice was as hard and cold as mountain ice. “Throw down your gun, it’s all over—”

  Rage and panic took over, blocking out all rational thought, and Jenks swung his gun toward the old outlaw, his eyes glittering with hate. “You damned double-crossing son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled, and fired.

  He shot first at Jake, only narrowly missing, then swerved the gun toward Pete, but that was as far as he got before Clint Barclay fired his Colt, hitting Jenks in the shoulder. Jenks cried out, but stayed upright in the saddle and, with one swift yank, wheeled his horse around and tried to run.

  Pete and Lester turned their mounts in pursuit, but suddenly Jenks fired back, hitting Lester in the chest.

  Clint and Hoot McClain both fired simultaneously, and this time the outlaw toppled off his horse.

  As he hit the ground, Pete was already leaping from his saddle and he reached Jenks a moment later. He kicked the gun from Jenks’s hand as Clint and Hoot McClain reached the fallen man.

  “Where’s R
atlin?” Clint demanded.

  Bleeding, clutching his wounded shoulder, Jenks glared up at him. “Go … to hell!”

  “Why isn’t Ratlin here with you?” Clint asked Pete as McClain yanked Jenks to his feet. “The plan was to catch them both in the act.”

  “We’re damned if we know where Ratlin is.” Pete’s brows were knit in a frown. “He was supposed to be here—Jenks said something came up.”

  “Ha-ha!” His face contorted with pain, Jenks managed to let out a cruel laugh. “Something came up, all right. And you’re going to be real sorry when you find out what!”

  Clint’s gaze narrowed on him. Something ugly and knowing in Jenks’s tone filled him with foreboding.

  “If Lester’s dead, you’re the one who’s going to be sorry!” Pete warned, his fists clenched.

  “How is he?” Clint called out, glancing back to where Jake Spoon was kneeling in the dirt, tending to his son, while the stagecoach driver looked on.

  “Just a flesh wound,” the old outlaw replied as he folded his neckerchief and pressed it against the bloody gash in Lester’s arm. “But I reckon he needs a doctor.”

  “Your niece is going to need more than a doctor, Spoon!” Jenks yelled, and suddenly there was a horrible deathly silence.

  Clint felt fear grab him by the throat and choke him—for a moment he could only stare in dawning rage at the wounded man before him.

  “What does that mean?” Each word was like a pellet of ice.

  “You heard me. The Spoon girl. She’s with Ratlin. If you don’t let me go, Barclay, he’s going to kill her and you’ll never find him—or what’s left of Miz Emily Spoon neither!”

  Pete dove at him then, driven by a wild boundless fury, knocking him to the ground. It took the strength of both Clint and McClain to pull him off the wounded man, but finally they shoved him back.

  “Hold on!” Clint yelled at him as Pete tried to jump at Jenks again. McClain dragged the outlaw once more to his feet and planted himself in front of him.

  “Listen, Spoon,” Clint said desperately, “if you kill him, we won’t find out what we need to know.”

  “He’s right—the only way you’ll find out is if you let me go.” Breathing hard, Jenks gasped out the words. His shoulder was bleeding, his face was twisted with pain, but there was a taunting triumph in his eyes. “If you let me go, I’ll make sure Ratlin sets her free, but if I’m not back there—”

  “Where?” Clint grabbed his bloody shirt collar.

  Jenks shook his head. “If I’m not back there in due time, Ratlin will kill her and that’ll be the end. Nothing you can do—’cept let me go and—”

  “I’ll beat it out of him,” Pete exploded. His face was ashen and rigid with anger and fear—all of the same emotions that were roiling through Clint as well. “Give me two minutes with him, Barclay,” he urged, “and I’ll find out where my sister is.”

  Clint’s chest was so tight he could scarcely breathe. Emily—with Ratlin. If Ratlin’s touched a hair on her head, there’ll be no place in this world he can hide.

  There’s still time, he told himself. Ratlin doesn’t know yet that the Spoons set him up. There’s time.

  But not much, he thought, icy fear pumping through him.

  “There’s not going to be any beating,” Hoot McClain said sternly, in his gravelly voice. “We’ll take him back to Denver and question him and—”

  “By then it’ll be too damned late!” Jake Spoon grabbed the marshal by the shoulder and spun him around. “I’ve cooperated with you every step of the way, McClain—hell, I’m the one who called in the law to keep those women from getting murdered—but I’m not going to stand by and let that bastard kill my niece! You can lock me up for another twenty years if you want, but no one’s leaving here unless it’s to go after Emily!”

  “He’s right, Marshal,” Lester called, dragging himself up from the ground. “We started this—and now we’re going to finish it—our way!”

  “The hell you are,” McClain flared. “You’re not in charge here, Spoon. I’ll throw you back in prison, right along with your son and your nephew, if you don’t stand back and let us—”

  “Forget it, Hoot.”

  Clint didn’t even glance at the marshal. His gaze was nailed upon Slim Jenks’s smirking, pain-twisted face. His voice was quiet, cold, deadly. “Jenks is mine.”

  “Clint—what the hell are you saying?” McClain protested. “He’s probably lying about the girl anyway and—”

  “He’s not lying.”

  “You’re right, Barclay.” Jenks nodded, licking his lips. “I’m telling you the truth. I’m the only one who can save her. And there’s not much time. So let me go and—”

  “You’re not going anywhere.” Clint’s gun was suddenly pointed at the outlaw’s head. He stepped forward as the other men went still, and pushed the barrel against the wounded outlaw’s temple.

  “What’re you doing? You can’t—”

  “You already admitted that she’ll be dead if you don’t get back there quick. So there isn’t much time. If you want to live, stand trial, take your chances with a judge or prison, then you’ll tell me now. But if you don’t, well then, we’ll just settle this once and for all. You’re going to be just as dead as she is.”

  He jabbed the gun harder against Jenks’s temple, his eyes hard as steel when the outlaw winced. “Where is she?” he asked, his voice low.

  “You … you can’t do this. McClain! Stop him!”

  The marshal said nothing, only stood tight-lipped, a film of sweat sheening on his brow.

  “I’m going to count to three,” Clint said.

  The Spoons were all silent, their eyes fixed on Jenks, as a hawk circled overhead and only the whinny of one of the horses broke the stillness.

  Jenks stared at the sheriff in disbelief.

  “You’re lying, Barclay. You … won’t!”

  “One. Two …”

  “You can’t—”

  “Thr—”

  “Bitter Rock! She’s five miles west—at the top of Bitter Rock.”

  Clint lowered the gun. Jenks stepped back a pace, his eyes still bulging, then Pete Spoon shoved him hard to the ground.

  “McClain, do whatever the hell you want with this scum. And get Lester Spoon to a doctor.” Clint was already sprinting for Jenks’s horse.

  Jake and Pete were right behind him. “Bring her back!” Lester called.

  “Don’t you worry, Lester, we will,” Jake bit out.

  I’ll bring her back, all right—no matter what it takes, Clint vowed. But terror pounded through him, a kind of terror he’d never known. The thought of Emily hurt, or frightened, at Ratlin’s mercy, filled him with an agony fiercer than fire, and nothing else mattered.

  Nothing other than the fact that he loved her and he’d never told her. There were a lot of things he’d never told her…

  There’ll be time, he told himself frantically as he turned the horse west. He paid no heed to Pete or Jake Spoon, riding hard behind him as they galloped away from the men and the blood and the abandoned stagecoach. He thought only of the woman with the midnight hair that felt soft as velvet in his hands, of her delicate beautiful features and those vivid silver-gray eyes. He thought of how lovingly she cared for Joey, of her loyalty to both family and friends. He thought of how she’d looked at him in the gully when he told her he didn’t want any other man to buy her box lunch.

  And he thought of the night he’d spent with her, of her passion, her sweetness, and her fire. But he couldn’t think of that one wild beautiful night without thinking of all the other nights to come …

  And he spurred the horse until it flew along the rocky trail toward the crest of Bitter Rock.

  There’ll be time—time to tell her, to hold her—to make all of this up to her, he told himself, as the horse’s hooves flew and he leaned low in the saddle.

  He prayed he was right.

  ELL, HONEY, BY NOW IT SHOULD ALL be over and done with.”
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  Ben Ratlin stood at the cliff’s edge, surveying the gorge filled with brush and rocks, while the stream made a clattering sound as it cascaded down the steep sides. “Jenks should be back here anytime.”

  A leaden weight filled Emily’s chest. Over and done with. He meant that Agnes and Carla Mangley were dead. So were the rest of the stagecoach passengers. Bessie and Ham. Though the morning sun glowed hot, she shivered and leaned back against the tree trunk, chilled and sick.

  If only I’d gone to Clint in the first place, as soon as I began to have suspicions, she thought. Those people would still be alive. They needn’t have died…

  But how could she have known that Pete and Lester and Uncle Jake were all involved in something so horrible? She’d wanted to believe in them, wanted to trust them when they said they were going straight, starting over, that all they wanted was to be a family again. And even when her suspicions had sharpened—that night she’d seen Uncle Jake riding out in the dark—she’d only feared he might be planning a holdup again, a simple holdup.

  That would have been bad enough. But never in her worst nightmares could she have guessed he or Pete or Lester would be mixed up in murder.

  The same kind of murder that had claimed Clint Barclay’s own parents, she realized, and it seemed like a knife speared straight through her heart.

  “Why?” she asked dully as Ratlin turned back toward where she sat a few feet from the campfire. She watched him gulp the last of his coffee across the flames. He’d already shot and skinned a rabbit, eaten it for breakfast, and licked his fingers. Calm as you please. All while waiting for Jenks to return.

  “I just don’t understand why all those people had to die,” she whispered.

  “Money, Miz Spoon.” Ratlin gave a low, rumbling laugh. “Being old Jake’s niece, I’d think you’d know—money’s at the core of everything. Me and Jenks and Sleech used to ride together. Different names, different times. Held up banks. A few trains. Did some gunslinging. Took in some nice bundles of money. Easy money. Till I got careless one time and ended up getting caught red-handed.” His great shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Ended up in prison—that’s where I met your uncle. But Jenks, he didn’t get caught—and he went straight, more or less, ’cept for a little rustling on the side. He drifted, working here and there as a ranch hand.” His eyes took on a sly glint. “Sleech got a job in a Leadville silver mine—ended up foreman. That mine belonged to two brothers, Richard and Frank Mangley.”