Outlaw

by Lisa Plumley

  His arms burned with fatigue by the time Mason stopped beside the rear of the wagon. His time on the run—and everything that had gone before—had weakened him. If he hadn’t been sure of it before, he was now. When had everything started changing?

  “I found an apple in the wagon,” Amy went on, tilting her chin at a dog-determined angle, “and decided to help you lure the oxen up the hillside with it.” She panted, weary from her struggles. “I didn’t know the water would be like that—”

  “Stay out of the arroyos, full or not.”

  Mason raised her higher and shoved her toward the opening in the canvas. Wisely—for a change—she grabbed the slippery, water-darkened edges and levered herself inside. Her skirts slapped on the edge, sending a shower of droplets onto his head.

  Swearing, Mason climbed in after her. The sudden cessation of rain pouring on his head, the added comfort of a dry place to sit, and the fact that the wind had quit howling in his ears did little to improve his disposition.

  “Take off your clothes,” he barked. He grabbed a folded red and white patchwork quilt from an opened crate and threw it toward her with barely a glance. “Then put this on.”

  “But—”

  “Do it.”

  She pressed her lips tight together and started unbuttoning the front of her dress. The sound of her teeth clattering grew louder. Mason turned away and rummaged through the crate he’d taken the quilt from, looking for food or dry clothes for either of them. There wasn’t much room to ignore the woman undressing behind him in a four-foot wide wagon, but he did his best to give her some privacy.

  Amy’s small sound of frustration rose above the pattering of the rain. Frowning, mad enough to smash something—everything—Mason glared at her.

  “My—my hands are too shaky,” she whispered, futilely trying to slip one of her tiny pearl dress buttons through the buttonhole in her bodice.

  Her hands shook like mesquite leaves in the wind. She’d managed to get the first few buttons undone, but in the time it had taken her Twirly Curls should’ve been able to shuck every stitch she had on.

  “Hell,” Mason muttered, grabbing for her. He caught hold of the front of her dress, twisted the loosened fabric in his fist, and roughly dragged her to him. Dammit, having her with him was nothing but trouble. He should’ve already been to Tucson to get Ben from the Sharpes.

  Would have been if not for Amelia.

  Her face crumpled slowly, her lower lip wobbling. She clasped her hands together behind her like a little girl, trying to blink back the tears pooling in her eyes.

  “Don’t go getting weepy on me,” he warned her, rapidly unbuttoning her dress. It proved difficult work with his big workman’s hands. It had been a long time since he’d undressed a woman, even under circumstances as un-romantic as this.

  Amy swallowed hard and nodded. “I just…thank you for saving me, Mason. I knew you’d c—come for me.”

  She sniffed, looking at him with wide-eyed puppy dog gratitude that grated on Mason like nothing else could have. He ripped the two halves of her dress apart, scattering buttons willy nilly.

  “Don’t depend on me!” he roared, wrenching her dress down her arms to take it off. Fury made his hands shake. Hadn’t he already told her what he was? Hadn’t she heard what he’d been accused of? “Don’t wait for me to save you and don’t thank me for it either, goddamit!”

  Stepping back a pace, he bunched her dress into a ball and hurled it into the wagon’s corner. It slapped into a tin water bucket, knocked it from its hook, and slid down the canvas. Mason rounded on Amy, ready to tell her exactly how addle-headed her behavior had been. Ready to tell her how it had put both of them in danger.

  Ready to tell her how he’d risked forfeiting his son to drag her from a flooded arroyo.

  The horrified look on her face stopped him where he stood. Only half-dressed, Amy fell to her knees at his feet, her fingers tentatively stretched toward his knee.

  “What happened to you?” she whispered. She cupped her hands in the air around the cactus spines poking through his pants as though afraid to touch them. “What is this?”

  Her forehead creased with worry. She reached for a spine, about to pinch it between her fingers.

  “Don’t.”

  She looked up at him questioningly, still shivering with cold—although Mason doubted she was aware of it. He picked up the quilt she’d abandoned and draped it over her shoulders.

  “They’re prickly pear spines—”

  “Pear?” Her confusion showed in the way she stared at the cluster of needle-like spines embedded near his knee and thigh.

  “Cactus,” he explained. “They’re worked in pretty deep. You can’t just pluck one out like taking a needle from a pincushion.”

  “Dear God, Mason!” Her fingers fluttered around the spines. “Are they poisonous?” Rising, Curly Top touched his arm and tried to ease him back onto a nearby barrel. “You’d better sit down.”

  He threw off her hand, all-but snarling at her. What gave her the right to fuss over him like a…like a wife? He could take care of himself. He sure as hell didn’t need a woman to do it.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Amy stared at him, her teeth still clattering faintly. Although she clenched the blanket in front of her breasts with one hand, it had slipped part way from her shoulders, revealing bare skin and lacy chemise straps. Mason stared at them, thrown backward by the image to a time when feminine fripperies like fancy underclothes and hair combs and sweet-smelling woman had been his to savor. Ellen. Like Amy, she’d trusted him.

  And come to regret it.

  He frowned. “Take off the rest of those wet clothes,” he told her, unbuttoning his own shirt.

  “I—”

  “I won’t look at you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Mason stretched apart the sides of his shirt, sliding it from his shoulders. Her eyes grew wide. Then, apparently realizing she’d been staring at his bare chest—and embarrassed at being found out—Curly Top lifted her chin.

  “I think,” she said pointedly, “that if we hang these things up, they might dry by morning.”

  Her hands bumped and moved beneath the blanket as she removed her underclothes. Mason looked toward the front of the wagon, trying not to imagine what she looked like without them.

  “That’s all I was going to say.”

  Her gaze darted toward the cactus spines protruding from his leg, then moved to his face. “If you want to suffer, that’s up to you,” Amy added. “I guess I forgot how stupidly stubborn men can be when they’re hurt.”

  Moving with exaggerated dignity, she draped her lacy white underthings to dry from a long iron hook set in one of the wagon top’s curved braces. Pointedly ignoring him, she leaned over a barrel and searched through it. Quietly at first, and then more loudly, she began singing a hymn.

  Hell. He could ignore her, too—and would, Mason vowed. His eyes narrowed. He could even ignore her damned impertinent backside waving in the air at him, however fetching it looked curving beneath the quilt. Savagely, he started unbuttoning his pants.

  His body had begun warming within the shelter of the wagon and the spines buried in his thigh started burning anew. Irritatingly proving Miss Twirly Curls partly right, Mason felt like he’d be damned and hung to dry before admitting it. Stubborn men. How many men did she know, anyway?

  His fingers paused mid-button. “What the hell do you know about how men behave when they’re hurt?” he asked.

  Her backside wiggled over the barrel as she reached for something. Mason was in half a mind to believe she was doing it just to provoke him. Her singing stopped.

  “I do have a father and three brothers,” she told him, her voice muffled. She sounded aggravatingly reasonable. Part of him realized that Amelia O’Malley was easier to deal with when she wasn’t feeling plumb-certain about something.

  Perversely, the rest of him wondered where her concern for him had vanished to.


  She emerged with an apple in her fist. She took a bite of it, started chewing, and nearly choked when she saw his hands working at his pants buttons.

  The most instinctive part of him relished her reaction. Despite the rising blush on her cheeks—or hell, maybe even because of it—Mason kept right on unbuttoning. He started sliding his pants down, and both her apple-packed cheeks bulged with shock.

  “We’ll have to share the quilt, too,” he pointed out. “We can’t start a fire in the wagon bed, and everything outside’s drenched. All we’ve got is body heat.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Amy swallowed hastily. She whipped sideways, still clutching her partly eaten apple. The sweet, tangy scent of it made Mason’s mouth water.

  “Oh, no, we don’t!” she cried, digging around in the supplies filling every square inch of the wagon bed.

  Whoever they’d stolen it from hadn’t been very organized—but he’d been well-prepared.

  Amy pulled another quilt from someplace within the pile and threw it toward him. “I found this while I was looking for the apples for the oxen.”

  Her aim wasn’t very good, but Mason figured her imitation of his earlier hot-headed blanket toss was dead on. Another half-foot to the left and the heavy quilt would’ve walloped him in the head. She stared at him, looking aggrieved at her poor aim, then crunched into her apple again.

  His belly rumbled. “Are there more of those?”

  Amy looked at the apple as though it had magically appeared in her hand. “These?” she asked innocently.

  Scowling back at her, Mason wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. Blessed warmth started gathering beneath it, except for below his waist. Until he wrenched loose the cactus spines, he couldn’t take off his wet pants, either.

  “Yes, those.”

  “There’s a whole barrel full.” She gave an offhand wave toward the front of the wagon. “Plus cornmeal, clothes, water, whiskey, and a whole lot of bullets. Help yourself.”

  “We picked a well-equipped wagon to steal.”

  Teetering a bit, Amy kicked aside some pots and sat down on the floor, then pulled the quilt closer around her.

  “You stole the wagon. I just drove it.” She started laughing, choking on her apple again, then tossed the apple core out the rear of the wagon. She slapped her knees with laughter. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

  She’d gone hysterical on him.

  Mason felt like bolting from the wagon and taking his chances with the storm. Anything but stay here with this woman—this woman who couldn’t take a walk without getting stuck in a pile of boulders, who couldn’t take a stagecoach ride without stirring up trouble, who couldn’t get by in the Territory without help.

  Without his help.

  Away from the eastern life she was used to, Amelia O’Malley was in so far over her head she was a danger to everybody around her. Now, Mason feared, she was finally beginning to understand that.

  She coughed, finally bringing her laughter under control. “I’m sorry, Mason. I’m just not used to all this, that’s all. I’ll do better in the future, I promise.”

  He shook his head. “You’ve got no future,” he said. “When we get to Tucson, I’m putting you on the first stage to Yuma. You can catch a train back east to Big Trout Pond from there.”

  “Big Pike Lake,” she replied automatically, the ghost of a smile on her face at his misuse of her hometown’s name. She hugged the quilt closer, like she’d finally begun to get warm and wanted to savor it.

  Slowly, her eyes widened. “No! I can’t go back!” she cried, her head wrenching toward him as she realized what he’d said. “I have satchels to find, books to deliver, work to be done. I can’t—”

  “You don’t belong here,” Mason said bluntly, “and I have people to meet. Important business to take care of.” A child to recover, but he couldn’t tell her that.

  “I’ll do better! I won’t get into any more trouble, I won’t!” Amy swore.

  Her eyes brightened hopefully. Mason felt like groaning at whatever harebrained scheme she was likely hatching in that curly blond head.

  “In fact,” she said quickly, “I’ll help you. It’s the least I can do. I’ll help you find whatever you’re looking for. You’re a wanted man, and it’ll be hard for you to get around in Tucson. I can—”

  “You’re wanted, too.”

  Mason turned, heading for the driver’s seat. The tools were bound to be stored there. Between a good set of pliers and a good horn of the whiskey Curly Top had mentioned, he’d have the prickly pear spines out in no time.

  He’d regained some measure of control, and it felt good. Amy could complain all she wanted to—they had to go their separate ways in Tucson. It was the only right thing to do.

  “Oh, drat—that’s right. We’re both wanted,” she said, starting in humming her hymn again.

  Evidently, church music got Curly Top’s brain working, Mason thought sourly. She paused.

  “Then we’ll just have to stick together, I guess,” she announced, sounding pleased with herself. “You’ll be helping me just by getting me to Tucson safely, and I’ll help you after we get there. I know about cities.”

  Mason doubted it. If she knew about cities like she knew about Arizona Territory—from dime novels, if her conversations aboard the Maricopa Wells stagecoach could be believed—they were both in trouble.

  He unearthed a pair of long-handled pliers from the box of tools near the driver’s bench, pulled them out, then tested their grip by opening and closing them. Satisfied, Mason headed back toward the barrel he’d been seated on earlier.

  “It’s best if we’re not together any longer than we have to be,” he told her, settling onto the barrel.

  Amy snuggled deeper into her quilt. “I owe you my life, Mason. You saved me! I can’t just get on a stage and forget all that.”

  “Yes, you can.” Grimacing, he examined the spines in his leg. Holding his pants taut with one hand, he set the pliers around one of the spines embedded just below his knee and pulled.

  A pinpoint of fire slid through his skin, making sweat break out on his forehead. He raised the pliers, peering at the long, needle-like spine. It was tipped with blood on one end. Taking it from the pliers’ grip, he set to work on the rest of the spines. Pulling out each of those one by one was going to be a sonofabitch.

  Four spines later, his vision swam and his leg felt like a pincushion for six-inch ladies’ hat pins. “Where did you say the whiskey was?” he asked.

  Amy stared, transfixed, at the spine he’d just pulled out. Her mouth opened slightly, but no sound emerged.

  He frowned. “Maybe you ought to have a plug, too, Curly Top.”

  She found her voice, but her gaze remained fixed on the quivering spines still stick in his leg. “I never imbibe anything stronger than wine,” she told him. Her eyes met his. “Are you sure that’s all right to do? What if your leg turns septic or something?”

  “Never mind. I’ll get it myself.” Mason set the pliers on a crate beside him, then rose. He remembered seeing the whiskey bottle someplace near the tool box….

  “I’m sorry you hurt yourself,” Amy said in a small voice behind him. “You did it coming to get me, didn’t you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  He found the bottle and raised it to the meager daylight that still forced its way through the rainstorm. The liquor inside sloshed faintly. Still more than half-full.

  “It does matter!” Amy insisted. “Not every man would jump into a flooded river like that, just to save a woman they barely knew. You risked yourself for me.”

  Her voice sounded faraway, as though it came from underwater. Only half-listening, Mason rubbed his thumbs over the smooth glass bottle in his hands. How long since he’d tasted whiskey? A week after Ellen’s death? Two? It had made him numb enough not to fight when the Sharpes had arrived from the east. Numb enough not to argue when they made their damned accusations.

  It had made h
im too numb to stop them from taking Ben away.

  Damn. He rolled the bottle between his palms, trying not to remember. After a long while, he realized he was staring at it. With unsteady fingers Mason uncorked the whiskey, then rolled the cork between his thumb and forefinger.

  He raised the bottle and inhaled the tangy smell of the liquor. The crooked finger of a soiled dove inviting him upstairs couldn’t have beckoned him more. Just one drink, he told himself, studying the bottle. Just a slug or two to dull the pain, and then he’d get the rest of those prickly pear spines out.

  It wouldn’t be like it was before. He wouldn’t let it numb him again.

  Amelia was still talking, but he couldn’t listen. Staring into the distance, his back to her, Mason raised the whiskey. One pull of liquor couldn’t hurt. A man was entitled to that much—even a man who’d done the things Mason had. The warm glass neck of the bottle fit his lips like a forgotten lover, promising relief…promising he’d forget. He only had to tilt his head back, let the whiskey burn down his throat….

  And prove that Ellen meant nothing. That Ben meant nothing.

  Swearing, Mason wrenched the bottle downward. His damned fingers shook as he corked it again with a final, savage twist, then raised his arm to hurl the whiskey into the deepening shadows beyond the covered wagon. Better to be rid of the temptation once and for all.

  He stretched his arm back, preparing to throw, his mind filled with images of his life before.

  “Mason?”

  Amy’s arms wrapped around him from behind, bringing the warmth of the quilt with her. The red and white pattern flowed over both of them, enfolding them together. Slowly, he lowered the whiskey bottle.

  “You’re a good man,” she said, hugging him tightly. “I don’t need to know your name to know that. I can see it. I can feel it.” She wrapped her arms around his middle and hugged him closer. “I don’t care what you’ve done, what they say you’ve done.”

  He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move for the sense of gratitude her words aroused. He couldn’t remember the last time kindness like that had touched him. The last time anyone had believed in him.