by Lisa Plumley
It was just as she’d hoped—a red lacquered passenger stage, pulled by three teams of horses. Wooden boxes and luggage piled atop its metal-framed top and almost spilled from the boot. Inside, there were only a few wailing passengers, most of them hanging from the windows to see what was happening, just as Amelia’s fellow passengers had done. She almost sighed with relief at the sight of it. Civilization! Safety, only steps away.
And there, only steps away himself, stood Mason. His rifle, like the driver’s, rested with deceptive casualness over his shoulder. He spoke quietly with the driver, but Amelia couldn’t make out the words. Both looked intent on their conversation—too intent to notice her. For a moment longer she watched him, some sense of foreboding prickling down her spine.
Why should that be? Amelia wondered, rubbing her arms for warmth against a sudden chill. Mason was an outlaw engaged in dangerous work. He’d probably robbed a hundred stagecoaches, just like this one, and lived to tell about it. Surely there was no cause for her to worry about his safety.
Especially with her own safe rescue parked just a few steps away. Breathing deeply, Amelia hoisted her satchels and ran for the stage.
Chapter Six
“They were on your stage, then?” Mason asked the driver, hardly able to credit what the old man had told him only moments before. “You’re sure?”
“Yessiree.” Hooking both his thumbs into a cracked leather cavalryman’s belt small enough to fit Miss Curly Top’s waist, the driver squinted into the sun, deepening the creases in his leathery skin. “‘Bout two days ago, maybe three. Dunno for sure.” He spat into the gritty road between their feet and glanced at Mason. “Been lookin’ for ‘em long?”
Mason nodded. “Too long,” he said, yanking his black bandanna from his face. He didn’t need it now. The breeze swirled in cooling currents against his newly exposed skin as he shoved the square of cloth into his duster pocket. No point antagonizing the man who’d given him the first piece of useful information he’d had in seven days’ time.
The Sharpe brothers had passed this way. He’d begun to wonder if he’d misjudged them somehow, if he’d lost the trail—and his last chance for redemption along with it.
“The boy was with them?” he asked the driver. “Small, dark-haired boy about this high?” He raised his hand to hip height, and a shaft of longing seared through him at the memory of all he’d lost. First Ellen, and now—if he failed again—their son, too. Ben. For an instant, he closed his eyes, beating back the need to hold his child, his blood, his life—and see him safe.
“Yep,” the driver said. “Damned ruffian ‘bout sent my passengers screaming ‘cross the desert with his antics. Them three with him had their hands full, I’ll tell you.”
Mason smiled. “That’s my boy.”
“Your boy?” The driver looked startled for a second, then nodded, as though he’d known the right of it all along. “Such a hell-raiser I ain’t never seen.” Looking over Mason’s black outlaw clothes, full gun belt, and rifle, he added, “And no wonder, with a sire like you, sir.”
Mason tipped his hat. “I’ll leave you on your way,” he said, too relieved at what he’d learned to waste time wondering if the words had been an insult or not. He’d wager not—not if the old man’s gap-toothed grin was anything to judge by. “Thank you.”
He turned away amidst the driver’s goodbyes, his step lighter than any time since he’d left his homestead on the Gila with the sheriff on his trail. Mason only had a few day’s gain on the lawman following him. But lawman or no, barring disaster or capture, in a few days’ time he’d see his son returned to him.
And by the first sunrise after, he’d see the men who’d taken Ben repaid for their part in the thieving, else know no rest until he had.
The Sharpes had taken his boy to Tucson, only two or three days’ ride southeast. Even with Miss Twirly Curls along for the ride, Mason could reach the former territorial capital in that much time.
Behind him, the harnesses holding the stagecoach’s teams of horses jangled—stirred by the animals’ movements, Mason supposed, as the driver climbed into his high-set seat. Glancing backwards, he just glimpsed the hollow-cheeked old man as he took up the reins again. Mason raised his hand in a solemn farewell. He owed the man much—not least of which was thanks. He was one of the few drivers who hadn’t pulled iron to claim an outlaw’s head for bounty at his approach.
The driver returned the gesture, then pulled his teams into line. At the same instant, a blurry flash of pink caught Mason’s eye. Something darted from behind a gnarled saguaro, then crashed through the rocks toward the stagecoach. For one confused moment, he thought it was a bizarrely dressed Indian laying siege to the stagecoach—until he saw the blond hair.
Amelia.
Escaping.
He’d barely registered that fact before a high-pitched whinny called his gaze toward the sheltering stand of creosote bushes where he’d tethered his horse. A rustle of leaves, a scrape of iron across stone—and then his horse shot across the desert at a dead run. The iron picket post, dug from the ground somehow and useless to hold the animal, banged loudly along in the mare’s wake, doing a fine job of scaring the hell out of his horse.
Mason didn’t know how, but he’d lay odds Amelia Josephine O’Malley was involved.
Damn.
He wavered an instant, trying to decide if he should go after his horse or follow Curly Top and find out what she was up to. A glance backward showed him Amelia’s long, stocking-clad legs as she scrambled onto the stagecoach, her gaudy pink dress swinging wildly in the breeze. She barely made it aboard the metal steps before the stage began rolling forward.
A woman he could do without right now, Mason decided—a horse, he couldn’t. An unmounted man in the desert this far from water was as good as dead. His decision made, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and ran toward the panicked mare.
Something blasted behind him, then heat whizzed past his rifle arm. Shotgun fire. One of the passengers must have found his courage renewed by the outlaw’s retreat. Another shot came, too wild to strike anything, but too close to ignore. Mason dropped to the dirt, landing hard on his shoulder. Rolling onto his belly, he grabbed for his rifle strap and swung the weapon around.
A woman’s scream pierced the air, shrill enough to cut through the dust clouds billowing behind the stagecoach.
Amelia.
“Stop!” she yelled, her voice garbled but undeniably snooty enough to belong to no one else. “Stop shooting!”
Mason squinted past the scrub brush littering the ground and over a pile of broken rock, looking in the direction his horse had gone. He could just make out the animal as it rounded a low mesa and trotted in a wide arc toward the road. Its tail streamed behind it in the breeze, a beautiful display of animal grace—except for the iron picket still clunking along behind it.
If the shooter on the stage would pack up his weapon for a minute, Mason knew he’d be able to catch his horse and get the hell out of there.
Instead, another shot came. His hat blew backwards and his heart whipped into double-time rhythm as he realized how close the bullet had come to making his son an orphan in every sense.
Mason flattened himself into the prickly soil and leveled his rifle again. He didn’t want to open fire on a stage full of innocent passengers, but if this went on much longer he’d be left with no choice.
“What are you doing?” screamed Amelia. The sound of her voice could’ve split logs in winter. Mason lifted his head just high enough to see the whole carriage sway as the driver yanked his teams to a stop. In the middle of the vehicle, Mason spotted little Miss Twirly Curls…wrestling with an armed man nearly twice her size.
“You’ve probably killed him!” she cried, both hands clamped onto the man’s shotgun. They tugged it back and forth between them, like children playing a particularly vicious game of tug-of-war. Cursing, the shooter suddenly heaved his weapon, slinging Amelia hard onto another passenger’s lap.
“Thieving desperado deserved it!” came the snarled reply.
Mason had to agree. From their point of view, he was a known outlaw—the infamous poet bandit. Taking advantage of the opportunity their argument afforded him, Mason shouldered his rifle again and began creeping away from the road. If he could only get to his horse, he could…
“There he is!” yelled another passenger. “He’s gettin’ away!”
Mason moved faster, only inches away from a sheltering mesquite. In the distance, his horse still ran like a creature of the wild, despite its heavy pack saddle. He had a feeling he’d never catch it now.
“Don’t shoot!” came Curly Top’s imperious, high-pitched command. Footsteps plunked down the Concord’s steps and across the rocky soil, and then were drowned out by the passengers’ shouted arguments inside the stage. Hell. Mason halted mid-stride, a sense of foreboding overtaking him. He wasn’t clear of this yet.
“Oh, Mason!”
He straightened warily, reluctantly. An instant later, Amelia O’Malley barreled into him, all arms and legs and messy perfumed hair. The impact of her soft, small body sent him swaying as he absorbed the force of her lunge into his arms. Her forehead bashed into his chin.
“I thought you were dead!” she gasped, her voice muffled against his chest. Her nose pushed into his collarbone, making a warm spot just above his shirt.
Mason’s eyes watered, set off by the stinging impact of her forehead against his chin. The woman’s skull must be made of solid rock. He wanted to rub away the hurt, but her head was in the way. At least the damned shooting had stopped. He blew a strand of curly blond hair from his lips.
“You should’ve stayed on the stage,” he said.
“I couldn’t! You were hurt.”
He set her away from him, trying to look severe. “I’m not hurt.”
Undaunted, she latched onto his upper arms the moment he released her. Her fingernails dug through his coat and shirtsleeves as she leaned back to examine him. Her gaze, openly and irritatingly skeptical, roved clear over his body.
“But I saw you fall down! Oh, Mason…I—”
He winced. “I was ducking gunfire,” he said, glancing behind her at the still-halted stagecoach. A group of male passengers had disembarked, and they were headed straight for him and Amelia.
“—I thought you were shot or wounded or in trouble,” she went on, oblivious to the trouble gathering right behind him as she probed his shoulder, his chest, and then his arm for injuries. Apparently unsatisfied, she rose on tiptoes to press her hand against his jaw, turning his head for a closer inspection. “I had to save you.”
Mason scowled and captured her wrist, stopping her. “Trouble?” he interrupted. “You’re worried that I’m in trouble?” Hell, she was responsible for a good portion of his troubles herself.
Her hand began to tremble within his grasp. Amelia’s blue eyes darkened with concern beneath her tangle of curly bangs. “Well, well, yes, I—”
Of course I was worried, her expression said.
“You should’ve stayed on the stage,” he said again. “You’ve got no idea the kind of trouble I’m in.” He looked past Amelia’s shoulder into the faces of the advancing stagecoach passengers. A hanging crowd if ever he’d seen one.
His gaze shifted back to her. She looked perplexed; beneath their dusting of smudged black dirt, her eyebrows dipped lower and her mouth pulled into an oval of confusion.
Mason gave her a nasty, mean-tempered smile. If not for Miss Fancy Pants, he’d already be on his way to Tucson by now to reclaim his son. Instead, he was about to face a roadside lynch mob.
Worse, he could’ve been rid of her, too—and gotten to Ben twice as quickly. If only she’d stayed on the stagecoach. Why in the hell had she run to a man she believed was an outlaw?
His original estimation had been correct, Mason decided. She was addled somehow. Any woman with a lick of sense would’ve abandoned him the first chance she got.
Frowning, he shoved Amelia behind him, shielding her with his body as the crowd came nearer. “Curly Top,” he said, “welcome to my necktie party.”
“Goodness, I thought they’d kill him for certain,” said the plump little woman seated to the left of Amelia on the stagecoach. She fussed with the dainty wrist strap of her beaded reticule and eyed Amelia again. “Honestly, we couldn’t very well let the menfolk do that, now could we?”
“Oh, no!” cried the woman on Amelia’s right, a dowager with piled-high, fancy hair and a righteous expression. The three of them jounced together as the stagecoach passed over a particularly bumpy spot in the road, then righted themselves again. On the vehicle’s opposite bench, all four men in their party sat crammed like sardines with their arms crossed tight over their chests. All, that is, save one man.
The opposing camps glared at each other across the space dividing them.
“A nasty, distasteful business,” opined the plump lady, dabbing delicately at her nose with an embroidered handkerchief. The linen square appeared to have seen much hard use.
“Deserved to hang,” muttered the man who’d been shooting at Mason. He was, Amelia had learned, the dowager’s husband.
“Yeah,” agreed another man with a hard look at the outlaw.
“Why, that would have been cold-blooded murder!” cried the dowager, her nostrils flaring slightly. “Isn’t that right, Miss O’Malley?”
Her tone dared Amelia to disagree. Even knowing it would likely ease the dissension that made the air feel heavy and hard to breathe if she did speak out, Amelia nodded instead. With these women’s help—and the stagecoach driver’s inexplicable assistance—she’d persuaded the male passengers not to strike down the outlaw where he stood. No amount of peaceful coexistence was worth a man’s life.
With Amelia’s allegiance duly confirmed on the side of womankind, the other ladies carried on their discussion in lively, gossiping tones. Amelia felt too sick at heart to join in. Her concern for Mason had gotten the better of her, had compelled her to run off the stagecoach to help him—and now look at the fix they were in.
Alive but madder than she’d ever seen him, the outlaw emanated hostility from the seat directly opposite her. He was the only man with his arms uncrossed, but that wasn’t his posture by choice.
He was bound hand-to-foot in anything the male passengers had been able to dredge up. A hank of rope secured his wrists in front of him, and a leather bridle twined securely around his booted ankles. More rope, combined with two pairs of red suspenders and a length of chain, strapped his arms to his sides with a series of horizontal bindings. Even for a man with Mason’s strength, it would be impossible to break free of so many restraints.
If not for the gentleman’s necktie stuffed part way in his mouth and tied at the back of his head, she felt sure Mason would’ve given her a piece of his mind long before now.
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed silently to him. She’d really only meant to help. When she’d seen him fall into the cactus-strewn dirt, every bit of common sense she possessed had fled.
He glared at her over the paisley-printed necktie that kept him from speaking. Then he…growled.
“Goodness!” shrieked the lady beside Amelia. “He is barbaric, isn’t he?”
Barbaric. Amelia recalled accusing him of the same thing—and the memory of his answering kiss made her cheeks flush hotly.
“I—I’m just glad we were able to persuade the gentlemen here to let justice take its course,” she said, choked with the mixture of remembered excitement and embarrassment that flooded her.
Trying her best to ignore the predatory gleam in Mason’s eye—obviously he remembered the private moment they’d shared, too—Amelia added, “I’m certain everything will be set right once we reach Tucson.”
And once they did reach Tucson, Amelia thought, turning her mind toward a safer topic, she had a wealth of work to do. She’d already reserved a room at one of the town’s finest hotels. From there she planned to tour the city
, delivering J.G. O’Malley and Sons book orders and taking as many new ones as she could secure before it was time to return to the States. After she and Mason went their separate ways, she’d have to put this whole unfortunate incident straight out of her mind and get started.
It’s not a woman’s place to conduct business. Mason had said that to her only this morning, his words an uncanny echo of her father’s business philosophy. Perhaps they believed that, Amelia mused, gazing unseeing out the stagecoach window. Or perhaps it was her abilities they doubted.
After all, her father and brothers routinely did business with women—widows, mostly, running their husbands’ shops. Amelia refused to believe the only females possessed of ambition and business acumen were those whose husbands had gone on to their heavenly rewards. What possible advantage could widowhood confer? And yet they were allowed to engage in trade unmolested.
Only one explanation seemed possible. Her father believed her incompetent, untrustworthy…lacking, somehow.
She’d prove him wrong, Amelia vowed. She stared at the satchels beneath her feet, but in her mind’s eye it was her father’s face she saw. To see his face alight with fatherly pride had been her goal for as long as she could remember. Finally, finally, she had the means to make her hopes a reality.
Determined despite the troubles she found herself in now, Amelia grabbed the handle of the heaviest satchel and hefted it onto her lap. She’d refresh her knowledge of the book orders to be delivered, and be that much more prepared when she reached Tucson.
The satchel locks appeared intact, even after the harsh treatment they’d received over the past few days. One was a bit scraped from the miner’s attempts to pry it open, but otherwise secure. Trying to cheer herself with a quiet, hummed tune, Amelia slipped her finger inside the neckline of her dress, feeling for the thin gold chain on which she’d strung the key to the locked satchels for safekeeping.
It wasn’t there.