by Robin Gideon
She wanted Phantom’s body against her, his hands upon her, his kisses taking her breath away. He wasn’t her husband. She didn’t even know his real name…and none of it mattered.
Pamela trembled deep inside, as though she were reacting to invisible caresses from Phantom’s skillful hands. He’d begun to teach her something about herself, but he hadn’t shown her all the mysteries of sensuality. He had pleasured her beyond measure and made her feel sensations she’d never known, but he hadn’t taken her virginity. And for that, Pamela did not know whether she should be grateful or sad.
He’ll come for me, she thought as she began pulling the tattered old dress over her head. He’ll come for me because I did not touch him, and he’s a man, and men are selfish about their own pleasures.
The pure white nightgown slid down over the womanly curves of her body, touching her like a caress. Pamela smiled. The gown wasn’t caressing her, but thoughts of Phantom had so heightened her to the possibilities of sensuality that everything, every touch against her flesh was pleasing somehow, infinitely sensual and exciting.
Barefooted, she walked out of her bedroom, taking the candle with her. She placed it near the front window. It was a beacon for Phantom. If he was coming to her, he’d see the candle, and not even a moonless night would prevent him from finding her cabin in the dark.
* * * *
Garrett lifted the small flask from his hip pocket and took a sip of brandy. The liquor tasted good. He was particularly happy that on this evening he did not wear his mask and cape or the black Stetson pulled low over his eyes. At this particular time he was just Garrett Randolph, out late at night, ostensibly checking to see that the sentries hired to watch over the cattle on the west range were doing their jobs. That, anyway, was the story he intended to tell Paul in the morning, and the story he would tell anyone he ran into this evening.
In the distance, he watched the candle burning in the window then looked away. In his attorney’s heart, he knew he shouldn’t be disappointed. After all, hadn’t he talked to a hundred criminals, all of whom had promised never again to steal?
But it was different with Pamela Bragg. She had seemed so sincere when she’d said the money she was stealing was for other people who’d been damaged in one way or another by Jonathon Darwell. Had she really been sincere, or had Garrett simply wanted to believe her?
It didn’t matter now. He had been at his post, hidden behind a copse of trees a hundred yards from the small cabin that Pamela shared with her brother. He had been there since before sundown, watching the cabin with his field glasses, wanting to believe that soon she would be riding out to give away the money, as she had promised.
But she was still at home. For reasons that were baffling to him, she had placed a candle in the window. Perhaps Jedediah was scheduled to return that night, though he wouldn’t need a light to find his way. Garrett knew the bounty hunter was an accomplished tracker who could follow any criminal over any terrain, which meant he certainly could find his own cabin, even in the dead of night.
The candle either burned itself out or was extinguished. For a few tense minutes, Garrett watched the cabin carefully through his binoculars, the moonlight illuminating the shack just enough for him to see anyone coming or going. Finally, deeply saddened, he put the binoculars down then pulled the heavy gold watch from his pocket. He touched the stem with his thumb and the protective case flipped open, revealing the dial. He angled the watch against the moonlight until he read the time. Two thirty.
She wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight.
Damn her.
He’d handed her nearly two thousand dollars, believing that she’d give the money to those people who would need it most. In his mind, he could picture Pamela laughing about the Midnight Phantom’s gullibility.
* * * *
Pamela ran the brush through her hair once more then tied her tresses back with a ribbon. She’d learned from Phantom that her hair was too visible at night, and she was determined to learn from her mistakes. She put on an old felt hat to help hide her hair.
Next she wrapped the old leather holster around her hips, tying it down snugly to her right thigh. She tested to see that the Colt could be drawn easily from the leather and hoped she wouldn’t need to draw the weapon.
Lastly, she picked up the three small leather pouches she’d made from antelope hide. They contained the money stolen from Jonathon Darwell, along with rocks to add weight, so she could throw a pouch if she couldn’t get close enough to a house to actually set it down carefully. Within each pouch was a single sheet of paper with the statement, TELL NO ONE written in ink.
Tonight, she would begin again her campaign to attack Jonathon Darwell and help those people he’d victimized.
Chapter Seven
Her plan had gone exactly as Pamela had hoped. Neither the Sanderses nor the Beaumonts had a dog, so she’d been able to hitch her horse a safe distance from their homes then walk silently to the house and drop the money-stuffed pouch near the front door, where it would be found at sunrise.
The Pellmans, the last family Pamela intended to help that evening, had a small dwelling just a stone’s throw from the Darwell Cattle #3 office.
Pamela found it strange to be so close to one of Jonathon Darwell’s offices so late at night, especially when it contained the payroll money to be distributed on the following morning.
Everybody in and around Whitetail Creek knew what Darwell’s cowboys did once they got their pay for the month. Lulu’s bordello was busy for three or four days before the men had spent all they could, and half the saloons in town had to hire men to keep the drunks from tearing the walls down.
Pamela set a hard pace for her mare, Daisy, who kept to it, even though it was difficult. Short-legged but deep-chested, the mare had astonishing stamina, though she was not fast at a dead run. For Pamela’s needs, Daisy was perfect.
From a ridge, Pamela saw the Pellmans’s ranch in the Tula Valley. The barn had remained half-finished for nearly two years. There simply hadn’t been the resources to buy the lumber to complete it. Pamela smiled. Very soon there would be enough money for that—and for a couple of breeding heifers to get the Pellmans’s ranch up and running once again, if that was what they wanted.
She tied Daisy’s reins to a dead cactus, patted her mare’s neck, and then headed out on foot to the Pellmans’s ranch. The moon, a sliver in the night sky, cast little light. For this, Pamela was thankful since it concealed her presence, but it made travel difficult, particularly when she was walking rather than riding on her sure-footed mare.
Pamela approached slowly, pausing to listen for sounds inside the house. A lamp burned in the living area and in one of the bedrooms. It wasn’t the ideal situation for Pamela, and she briefly considered coming back another time.
Suddenly, she heard a woman weeping. Were the Pellmans fighting? It wouldn’t surprise her if they were, considering all the troubles they’d been through recently. Still, Mr. and Mrs. Pellman had always seemed like a loving couple to Pamela. Though she didn’t know them well, she saw them as a husband and wife who would draw closer together in times of strife and conflict.
Curious, Pamela crept closer to the house than necessary, approaching it from the south, where there was only one dark window. She flattened herself against the outside wall and stopped breathing for a moment so that she could hear better the words softly spoken within.
“Now, Mother, don’t you worry about a thing,” Mr. Pellman was saying to his wife. “I’m a strong man with good hands and a good back. I can find a job in town, or maybe I can even hire on with Darwell. He’s always needing men to watch his herds.”
“That monster! I’d rather we lose everything than have you riding with his shootists. They’re murderers, every one, and you know it, too. I won’t have it. I won’t have my husband riding with those men. It’s Jonathon Darwell that’s put us in this mess, and we won’t look to him to get us out.”
Fresh tears cut off Mrs. Pel
lman’s words. Pamela was struck by her contempt for Jonathon Darwell. She wanted to alert the Pellmans to the money, but she knew that would not be wise. Best to leave the antelope pouch on the porch near the front door, where Mr. Pellman would find it first thing in the morning. The distressed husband and wife had a troubling evening ahead of them, but Pamela knew that in the morning, with the money she’d provided, their lives would be much, much better.
She tossed the pouch onto the porch. It landed with a dull thud. Then she made her way quickly from the house, heading back to Daisy.
* * * *
It seemed too good to be true. The line shack for Darwell Cattle #3 appeared unguarded and deserted. Pamela, down on one knee in the darkness, peered into the shadows surrounding the shack. After ten full minutes, she was quite certain she was alone.
She rose to her feet and began closing the distance to the shack.
“Jack, is that you?” a guard asked, hidden in shadows not far ahead of her.
Pamela heard the man behind her a split second before he reached her. She reached for her Colt, but a powerful hand caught her by the wrist while another hand simultaneously clamped down hard over her mouth.
“Jack, damn it, is that you out there?” the guard asked, louder than before.
Garrett tossed his cape over Pamela, his face close to hers. He had holstered his pistol, needing both hands free to silence her and keep from getting shot by her. Now he wasn’t so sure he’d done the right thing by leaving himself temporarily unarmed.
From his right, the sentry, Jack, said, “What are you jabbering about? I ain’t moved.”
“I heard something,” the first guard snapped back, clearly angry at Jack’s lack of concern.
“If you heard it, then you find it,” Jack shot back. “I didn’t hear nothin’. Probably just a coyote out and about at this time of night.”
Pamela closed her eyes for no more than a second and silently issued a prayer of thanks for Phantom. Once again, he had arrived just in time to save her. She had spent nearly an hour looking into the shadows, searching for the guards, and she hadn’t seen them. Now she was between two of them, and only Phantom, with his cape that absorbed them into the night, prevented her from being seen. If she’d walked another fifteen or twenty yards in the direction she’d chosen, her presence would have undoubtedly been discovered.
The seconds ticked by slowly, Phantom and Pamela remaining on their knees, huddled together, motionless, fearful. The guard whose suspicions had been aroused moved on several yards in a rambling fashion, scanning the shadowed sage brush, muttering under his breath at Jack’s laziness.
After what seemed to Pamela to be an eternity, one in which she was quite certain she had aged considerably, and badly, both guards returned, appearing bored.
“Follow me,” Phantom whispered, moving so that he could look into Pamela’s eyes.
Though grateful he had once again saved her from certain discovery, she was not yet ready to abandon the money inside Darwell Cattle #3. Fortunately, Jack and his more-alert colleague would now, as likely as not, dismiss any sound made as coming from coyotes.
She tugged at Phantom’s hand. Even in the darkness of the night and with the black mask across his nose and eyes, the look he shot at her was chilling. For one of the very few times in her life, Pamela simply, quietly followed the orders of a man without complaint or open confrontation.
She didn’t say a word until they had scrambled to Phantom’s horse. When he looked at her, she was smiling as though she’d just been through another grand adventure. Phantom wasn’t sure whether he should slap the smile from her lips or kiss it away.
“I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to try any more of this nonsense,” he said through clenched teeth.
Up close, Pamela looked even more attractive than he remembered, and her beauty was playing havoc with the anger he was struggling to maintain.
Pamela knew he was furious. But having escaped twice from Jonathon Darwell’s vicious minions, she was feeling charmed, as though the fates were surely looking out for her.
“We didn’t have any agreement at all,” she said, not in the least bit intimidated by Phantom’s anger. “That was a conclusion you came to all on your own. It was erroneous, I might add.”
“I should have let you get caught. I nearly got caught myself just trying to save you.” Phantom turned away from Pamela, finding it infinitely easier to maintain his anger at the beautiful young woman still smiling at him when he didn’t have to look at her. “Next time, I’ll just let you fend for yourself.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will.”
“You won’t.”
“What makes you so damn sure?” he demanded.
“The knowledge that you want me,” Pamela explained, shocking herself, not only for having the thought but for voicing it.
The smile left Pamela’s face the moment Phantom reached out and placed large hands upon her shoulders. Very slowly, he brought his hands together until, for just a moment, his fingers curled around her throat. Then one of his hands moved upward to knock her hat off so that it hung by the neck strap. His fingers slipped beneath the heavy fall of her hair, moving slowly in a circular pattern at the base of her neck, massaging her scalp.
“Yes, I want you,” he whispered. “I want you because you’re probably the only person besides myself in the whole territory who is crazy enough to think Jonathon Darwell can be hurt, can be taken down a notch, can even be destroyed.”
Pamela closed her eyes and rolled her head back a little on her shoulders. She loved Phantom’s firm touch upon the nape of her neck and her scalp. She closed her eyes so that all she had to think about was how it felt to be touched by him. The liquid gold of desire heated her body, seeping into her pores.
She felt Phantom’s gaze upon her body, could almost feel him mentally taking off her clothes. This thought was exciting, though she was not at all certain she should entertain it, much less actively pursue it. Still, with Phantom touching her this way, his caresses skilled as a practiced thief’s…
Phantom inhaled deeply, forcing himself to remain calm. He was still furious with Pamela for being foolish enough to think she could break into Darwell Cattle #3. But anger was not uppermost in his heart. Not when he watched her close her eyes and roll her head back on her shoulders, like a cat being scratched and loving it. Not when he could watch the rise and fall of exquisite breasts, large and firm and round, pressing against the soft cotton of her shirt and chemise. Not when the memories of how her body had come to life beneath his touch were still vividly exciting.
He wanted to kiss her, but this was not the place for it. Once before he had tasted Pamela’s kisses while danger lurked about them in the darkness. Though it had been exciting, on this evening he wanted to slowly peruse all her charms without having to look over his shoulder for armed guards who would love nothing more than to be known as the men who shot the Midnight Phantom. Garrett had already learned that one kiss from Pamela’s full mouth was not nearly enough to satisfy his thirst.
“What did you think you were going to do?” he asked then, more than a trace of condescension in his tone.
Both his tone and words irked Pamela. She opened her eyes, coming back to reality instantly, leaving her fantasy world where nothing existed but her body and Phantom’s hands.
“Tomorrow, Darwell starts paying his men for the month. I thought I’d take his money.”
Phantom’s lips curled below the mask. “Just like that? You thought you’d take the gold, eh? Well, Jonathon Darwell thought the same thing. That’s why he hired those two men out there, the ones who very nearly caught you.”
This was not the conversation she wanted to have with him. She felt invincible, daring, and terribly sexy. She did not want to be made to feel like a fool.
“It was you they heard, not me.”
“You would have walked right into them if it weren’t for me.”
Pamela turn
ed her back to Phantom. “I’m not going to argue with you,” she said over her shoulder, continuing to keep her voice down. She knew full well that voices carried across the country at night. How far was she from where she’d tethered her horse?
“No, you’re not going to argue with me. You’re going to go home and wait for me there.”
The words kept Pamela in place. So he wasn’t as immune to her as he tried to make her think! She was proud that she could affect him so strongly, though she wasn’t at all certain it was something she should take pride in. She sensed that Phantom had no difficulty getting women to go to bed with him and that he wasn’t terribly pleased with himself for wanting her as much as he did.
She turned very slowly to face him. “Are you telling me what to do?”
“Yes.”
As much as she wanted to be in Phantom’s arms again, she didn’t want to simply comply with orders. Not even if the man issuing those orders was dangerous and terribly attractive and also just happened to be the best kisser she could imagine.
“You’ve got me confused with some other woman,” Pamela said flatly, the passion he had sparked moments earlier extinguished in an instant. “I don’t take orders. Not from you. Not from any man.”
She turned and began walking.
“Where are you going?” Phantom asked.
“To get my horse. If this isn’t the right way to approach the payroll office, there must be some better way.”
“Wait, we’ll take my horse.”
Phantom got in the saddle, and Pamela, watching the way he moved, admired his grace and power. Clearly, he was a man who’d spent much time on horseback. Suddenly, she remembered that he had told her to go home and wait for him there.