by Multiple
Her words spurred Sam into action. They were taking the gold. He wasn’t sure how they’d gotten in the bank or how they were getting out of it, but he was of a mind to keep them from taking any more.
Clearing the corner, he cocked the hammer on the colt and drew a bead on the slim figure. “Hands up.”
“Go!” The feminine figure shoved the other man, the flash of light drew sparks across his vision, but he kept the gun steady.
“I said hands up.” He yelled the order this time, but as the shadows sharpened and redefined, he saw the woman, alone, was standing there, hands up, facing him.
Her male companion was gone.
“Marshal.”
"Stop." He held up a finger, gaze sweeping the walls. Men didn't walk through walls. Gun trained on the woman, he rapped his knuckles on the wall.
Solid.
He kicked a foot against the metal vault. It just wasn't possible.
Solid.
Where the hell was the man?
Gunshots echoed from outside. Sam rushed forward, seized her arm and hauled her with him out of the bank. His brother met him on the boardwalk, Stetson pushed back from his forehead, revealing a younger, more eager version of himself.
The smell of gunpowder hung thick in the air. Up and down the street, kerosene lights flared as shopkeepers in long johns stepped out, armed with rifles.
“There were six of them, Sam. I chased them off, but I saw seven hor—” His brother cut off when he spotted the woman in Sam’s grasp. Under the faint light of his brother’s lantern, Sam saw a cascade of red hair, an up tilted chin and a sprinkle of cinnamon colored freckles across a pert nose. Between the alabaster skin and the red hair, she was a picture.
He barely took notice of the gingham shirt with its rolled up sleeves and haphazard buttons which opened at the throat and dipped invitingly down to flesh a lady should never be revealing or the tight breeches that hugged her slender shape. Boy's clothes should not look so fine on a woman.
But her curves made them more attractive than Miss Pontfour’s dancing girls in their silks and feathers.
“Ma’am.” Kid doffed his Stetson and tucked it against his buckskin shirt.
“She’s not a ma’am.” Sam growled, irritated at the lascivious direction of his brother’s gaze and the fact that he shared the sentiment. “Roust some of the boys together and follow the horses. Wake Mr. Reynolds up. We’ll need to know how much is missing.”
Sam turned to the shopkeepers who lingered in the night air, taking it all in. “Check your shops. I need to know if anything else is missing.” He firmed his grip on the woman’s arm, giving it a warning squeeze as she backed up a pace. He pulled her firmly up to his side.
“What about her?”
Kid still stood there, mouth agape at the woman. Even the lantern seemed to flicker eagerly in her direction.
“Never you mind. Get a move on.” He resisted the urge to cuff his brother. A few months shy of his nineteenth birthday, Kid hadn’t shaken his fascination with the feminine sex.
Grinning sheepishly, the boy doffed his Stetson again before capping it on his head and jogging down the boardwalk to the cabins where the hands could catch shuteye if they were in town too late. The Kanes didn’t approve of overindulging, but they recognized the need and saw to it their men had a safe place to lay their heads when they needed to sleep it off.
Even in town.
Ignoring the curiosity of the shopkeepers not rushing to check their wares, Sam dragged his charge across the rutted street to the Marshal’s Office. He’d lock her up first, and then check the vault with Mr. Reynolds. Unlike most women, she didn’t seem to have much to say and he tried not to notice the way her britches clung to her round bottom as they entered the office and he got his first look at her in the light.
Shouts rallied from the western end of town. Horses snorted as they were pulled from their stalls. He had some good trackers in his team, they would have fresh hoof prints to work with, but the moonless night would be against them.
Sam had to holster the colt to grab the keys off the hook next to his desk. He unlocked the only cell his office sported and tugged her inside.
“Are you armed?” He demanded, ignoring the way her lush lips parted over white teeth. Most of the ladies at Miss Pontfour's were yellowed by this age and even sported a gold tooth or two of their own. Not this red haired filly with her sassy nose and pert ass.
He scowled at the direction of his thoughts.
“No, sir. I don’t believe in guns.” The warm honeyed voice laughed at him and Sam’s mouth thinned.
“What about knives, Miss…?”
“Knives are useful.” She bobbed her head, but the hint of humor perfuming her words set his shoulder blades to itching again.
“Hand it over.”
“I didn’t say I had one Marshal.” Now she was playing coy, her eyelashes dipping over her summer green eyes. The shade was a miracle of spring, a color not favored in their high summers when grass yellowed and drooped in the Texas heat.
He released her, taking a step back and bringing his gun out of his holster again. His father would give him the back of his hand for pointing a gun at a lady, but this lady had been in the bank vault somehow, robbing it. Sam tried not to focus on the hows and the whys. That meant she was a thief, pure and simple. The law had one solution for her ilk and it delivered that promise at the end of a rope.
“Hand it over.”
She sighed, smoothing a hand over her sleeve as though he’d bruised her, but Sam ignored the purely feminine invitation to feel bad for his manners. Thieves didn’t deserve manners. But when she rolled up the sleeve, he frowned. Strapped to her forearm was a four-inch piece of metal dovetailed into a white boned handle.
Two thin leather ties fastened it in place against the pale skin. She stretched out her arm expectantly, a glint of amusement in those green eyes daring him to take it himself.
He obliged, pulling the ties loose and pocketing the knife.
“Anymore?”
“No, sir.”
He was mighty suspicious of her cooperation and gestured for her to move over to the single cot sitting in the corner. She lifted her eyebrows, challenging his authority, before deigning to stroll over and sit down. He’d seen that look on his father’s horses, the strong-willed ones who didn’t cotton to breaking. Those horses had to be gentled, persuaded that they wanted to do what was asked of them, but even the most successful behaved as the woman did.
As though she were allowing him to be in control and if he turned his back, even for an instant, he might find himself on the sharp end of a hoof slash.
“Much obliged.” He bobbed his head and backed out of the cell, closing it with his foot and holstering the gun to lock it again.
In the cell, the fiery haired vixen sat down and leaned back against the wall, her arms crossed under the full, firm curves of her breasts that seemed to be straining at their confinement.
Sam forced his attention away and dropped the knife in the top drawer of his desk. He stuck his head out the door and whistled, Cobb was making his way up the boardwalk and double-timed it at the whistle. The older man had served as his father’s right hand during the initial settling in Dorado. They’d built the ranch and town together.
At fifty, Cobb preferred the town to the ranch. He acted as overseer to the shipments when the horses and cattle were pushed through the town and though he refused to be deputized, he enjoyed helping Sam.
He would keep an eye on the prisoner while Sam dealt with the bank. Sam refused to glance back at the woman in the cell, or think about how pretty the freckles were on her nose or how her curves all but begged for a man’s hands to test their shape. He didn’t think about the urgency to his steps as he filled Cobb in and damn near ran across the street.
The woman was a thief. She’d likely be hung as soon as the territorial judge made his rounds.
Sam fixed his
Stetson on his head and re-entered the bank. The manager was already there, the vault door wide open and a look of abject horror etched into his face.
Unsurprisingly, the gold was gone.
All of it.
Sam gritted his teeth.
How the hell had the gang pulled this off?
Chapter Two
Scarlett Morning Star exhaled a long, slow breath as the marshal abandoned her to the cell. The man’s tough as boot leather exterior was softened only by the kindness in his brown eyes. She’d resented watching the town all day long from the hills to the north, allowed no more than a passing glimpse of the ladies in their tailored dresses, the cowpokes kicking up the dust and even the shopkeepers in their odd little vest and trouser outfits, far too soft for working the ranges with ropes, rocks and rattlesnakes.
After two weeks of hard riding, skirting towns and seeing no one other than her brothers, Scarlett wondered why she’d bothered. The marshal catching her was unfortunate, but also thrilling. His voice was warm, the hot sun baking the rocks in Hawk’s Canyon. His skin was warmer, kissed by the sun, but not baked to leather. He handled his colt with comfort and his hand on her arm promised wild strength, but not once had his fingers bitten into her flesh.
A curious twist had knotted up her insides. Her brothers would be back to fetch her at any moment, but she wanted to stay. She wanted to get to know the marshal. To spend time with him, talk to him and maybe, just maybe, earn a smile.
The door to the Marshal’s Office opened, admitting a dark-skinned man sporting the gray kiss of the elders at his temples. Scarlett straightened her posture, dropping her hands down to rest on her thighs. It was one thing to taunt the marshal.
A frown rolled the wrinkles of the black man’s forehead together. Like the marshal, he was dressed in a button down muslin shirt with the tails tucked into a pair of denim britches. Instead of a leather vest though, he sported a pair of dark suspenders and a scattergun rather than a gun belt and pistol.
“Ma’am.” The black man nodded. “Folks around these parts call me, Cobb. The marshal asked me to look in on you.” He said the last with a half-grin that spoke of adult humor where the youths were concerned. Quanto wore the same expression when the boys started knocking each other around.
“Mr. Cobb.” Scarlett sat forward, clasping her hands together. The man’s accent was populated by long, Yankee vowels. She’d heard them before from a Union Colonel visiting Quanto. He drew out ma’am the same way, his speech slowing with just a hint of awkwardness.
“Just Cobb. No mister about it.” The man shuttered the office door and glanced out the smoky glass to the dark street beyond.
“Yes, sir.” She bobbed her head. If the elder wanted to be called Cobb, she’d oblige.
“And what do folks call you, ma’am?” There was ease to the question. He roamed the room, his knees turned out just slightly, from too many years in a saddle. Despite the comfort of the rifle at his shoulder, his fingers hooked faintly, the knuckles thickened and bulbous.
She opened her mouth to answer, but paused to consider the implications. They could hardly track her by her given name, but Cody and the boys were adamant that she not speak to strangers, much less tell them anything about herself.
But Cody and the boys weren’t here and it would be disrespectful to refuse the elder’s question.
“Scarlett, sir.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Scarlett.” Wrinkles rippled across his face as he smiled. “And it’s just Cobb, not sir, not Mister.”
“Yes, si—” She paused at his admonishing look. “Yes, Cobb.” It seemed disrespectful to not put some salutation before his name, but he was insisting.
“Good girl.” He dropped the brace across the back door that Scarlett hadn’t noticed. He checked the latch for sturdiness, then pulled the marshal’s chair out from behind the desk and dragged it over to the wall that tucked into a curve near her cell. He settled himself in it, the scattergun pointed at the door over his lap.
It was an ideal position. He could see both doors and her. At that range, the scattergun would make short work of anyone bursting in. Fortunately, her brothers wouldn’t come through the front, but his position gave him a good angle on the cell.
“Now, you want to tell ol’Cobb what you were doing in the bank tonight, Miss Scarlett?”
“If I can’t call you sir, I think just Scarlett would be fine, s—Cobb.”
His lined face wrinkled in good humor. “Fair enough.” He drew a thin waxy piece of paper from his pocket and a well-oiled tobacco pouch. Scarlett scooted back on the cot, not quite leaning away while he rolled up the tobacco and used a wooden match to strike against the bars.
The flame flickered, threatening to go out in a breeze only it seemed to feel, but then flared as Scarlett watched it carefully. Cobb lit his cigarette and shook the match out, tossing the smoking wood onto a metal plate on the desk’s edge.
Cobb cocked an eyebrow in her direction, a haze of blue smoke shimmering in the light of the kerosene lamps. The noise of horses stamping and the angry voices of the townsfolk rose in volume outside. Cobb divided his attention, one eye firm on the door.
Her brothers would have a bit of a ride to give slip to the posse after them and even if they managed to circle back around, the commotion would have them hunkering down. She might have time to chat with the marshal after all. A curiously hopeful sensation bubbled up inside of her.
Cobb squinted his left eye closed as he sucked in a lungful of smoke. “You looking mighty pleased for someone who could be hanging at dawn.”
The thought was enough to evaporate her good cheer. Oh, she wouldn’t hang. Her brothers wouldn’t allow it. Least of all Wyatt. But Wyatt was a fair ride away and it would be days before he found out she was here.
“I didn’t think people liked to hang women.” She wasn’t sure where she’d heard that, but it seemed a reasonable thought. Most of the hangings she’d ever heard of were men, some Anglo, some Tejanos, and a Negro or two, more than a few Comanche and Apache and the Spaniards. They definitely liked hanging them when their raiders came over the borders.
“I can’t say that a few folks don’t enjoy any kind of hanging, but stealing’s a hanging offense, little lady. The marshal pulled you out of the bank, so I reckon he might insist on waiting for the territorial judge, but dead at the end of the noose at dawn or in a few weeks is still dead.”
Her throat closed convulsively. She’d only ever seen one hanging. A horse thief in Eucher Butte who’d killed a widow and her three littles had been strung up on the spot. The man had kicked, screamed, spit and yelled as they dragged him up on a horse, thrown a rope around his neck and tossed the other end around a tree branch. Quanto told her to look away, but she’d never forget the harsh snap of the man’s neck breaking.
A mercy, Quanto told her, but the sound haunted her dreams for weeks.
The office door slammed open, bringing Cobb upright, the gun centering square on the torso of a spindly man dressed hastily in loose britches pulled over long underwear. His too narrow face looked pinched, sun burnt skin dragging over his cheekbones and sinking his eyes into his skull.
“Where is my gold?” His voice was a high-pitched nasal whine that shattered like glass on her eardrums.
Cobb didn’t lower the rifle, standing, talking around the smoke tucked between his lips. “Ease up, Carlyle. The marshal will be handling the questioning here.”
“She stole my gold. My gold! I’m responsible for that gold.” Spittle flew from Carlyle's lips; his arms wind milling as he gesticulated wildly. Three additional men stomped in the office, shrinking the six by ten room. Scarlett was grateful for the bars separating her from the hate-filled eyes.
“Give us a few minutes with her Cobb. We’ll get her talking.” Something dark and cold slithered behind the new arrival's eyes, even Carlyle the banker took a step back.
“You’ll take a step back, Ryker.” The marshal
’s voice cut through the chaos. The banker jerked, a marionette whose strings had been pulled. Ryker appeared unperturbed, a thin scar drawing the corner of his mouth up into a permanent sneer.
Cobb’s hand didn’t relax on the scattergun even as the forgotten cigarette in his lips continued to burn. He shuffle stepped to the side, putting himself between the mob of four and the bars of Scarlett’s cell.
Heart throbbing in her chest, Scarlett rose from the cot and backed against the wall. Her hands clenched at her sides and she watched. She didn’t have her knife, but she had other talents. Talents dangerous to every man in the room, so she trapped her fear, shoving it down deep before she did anything she could regret. She had to trust the marshal to keep her safe for now.
“You know the law, Marshal.” Ryker stepped forward, challenge vibrating through his posture. Scarlett couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the contempt in his words. “We hang thieves.”
“Oh, I know the law.” Leaning on the door jam, his hand resting casually on his sidearm, the marshal met the man’s hostility with evenness. “I also know we hand thieves over to territorial judges for trial.”
Obviously uncaring of his location, Ryker spit. “Judges. They ride territories. It could be weeks before we get one. We never needed them before.”
“We weren’t part of the Federal system before.” Sam’s tone was mild, but it was his eyes that Scarlett watched. Wyatt had the same look. Tempered patience sleeved boiled resolve. Ryker may not see the mistake in pushing the marshal, but the hair on Scarlett’s arms began to stand on end, the room warming uncomfortably. A trickle of sweat skated down her spine.
“Yeah well, you caught her red-handed and the gold is gone. Just because the gang left their whore behind doesn’t mean she should get special consideration.”
“Mind your mouth, Ryker.” Cobb censured the younger man.
“Or what?” Ryker whirled on the old man. A mistake. Sam sprang from his position at the door, seizing the shopkeeper by his collar and his britches and hauling him backwards, he all but threw the man into the street.