Kid Calhoun

by Joan Johnston

  “What makes you think I can’t?” Anabeth retorted. “I’m fast on the draw, and I always hit what I aim at.”

  “I’m not saying you can’t. Just that maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, it makes you no better than they are. For another, you might be the one who ends up dead.” Which, Jake realized, was a possibility he found surprisingly unpleasant to contemplate.

  “Are you saying I should forgive the men who betrayed my uncle and shot him down in cold blood? I can’t.”

  “I suppose not,” Jake murmured.

  “You’ve probably killed lots of men,” Anabeth accused.

  Jake stared Anabeth straight in the eye. “When I wasn’t given any other choice, when it was necessary, yes.”

  Anabeth shivered at the coldness in Jake’s eyes, the granite set of his features. The lawman could be just as merciless, she realized, as any outlaw. She wondered what had made him so hard. “How do you know when it’s necessary?” she asked at last.

  “I made the mistake once of believing an outlaw, a young man, who told me he would go straight if I would just give him another chance. He had tears in his eyes when he begged me to let him go. Bobby Latham wasn’t much older than you. I put my gun away because I didn’t want to think of a kid his age spending the best years of his life in jail.”

  “What happened?”

  “A month later he murdered an entire family. Eviscerated the father. Raped and stabbed the mother and daughter. Slit the little boy’s throat. And threw the baby against the wall.”

  Anabeth swallowed the gorge that had risen in her throat. “Oh, my God.”

  When Jake turned to her this time, his eyes were fierce with anger and stark with pain. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

  Anabeth felt a shiver of foreboding. Jake Kearney was telling her that if she gave him a reason, he would kill her like any other outlaw. It was plain now, if it hadn’t been before, that the only reason she wasn’t already in jail waiting to hang was because he wanted her help finding Sam Chandler’s gold.

  Anabeth hadn’t realized until this moment just how serious her situation was. She was an outlaw in the custody of a lawman. Jake wasn’t going to let her go. If she didn’t want to find herself at the end of a hangman’s rope, she would have to find a way to escape.

  They were halfway to Window Rock when they bedded down for the night. Jake chose a spot at the top of a ridge, where he had a view of the surrounding country, but where he was protected by a cover of pine trees. There was no water, but they had enough if they were careful to get them to the next waterhole. If the outlaws came looking for the Kid, Jake wanted to see them before they saw him.

  When Jake laid out their bedding, he put Anabeth’s next to his own.

  Anabeth snatched up her ground sheet and blanket and stalked to the other side of the fire. “I’ll feel safer over here.”

  Jake opened his mouth to argue and snapped it shut again. It was going to be difficult enough getting any sleep when she was even that close. “I’m a light sleeper,” he warned. “Don’t get any ideas about trying to escape.”

  Anabeth turned her back on Jake and pulled the blanket up over her shoulder. Tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep. She sat up and pulled the makings for a cigarette from her vest. She lit up and took a deep drag, then blew it out.

  “I could use a good smoke,” Jake said from across the fire.

  Anabeth slid her cigarette to the corner of her mouth and said, “I’ll roll you one.” Her fingers moved swiftly and surely.

  Jake walked around the fire and sat down cross-legged beside her. She lit Jake’s cigarette from her own, then handed it to him.

  Jake took a drag and exhaled with a great sigh. “Now all I need is a whiskey to be a happy man.”

  Anabeth reached across her saddle to the bedroll and pulled out a flask. “Help yourself.”

  Jake’s brow furrowed. “Is there any bad habit you don’t have?”

  “I don’t cheat at cards.”

  Jake took a swig of whiskey and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He didn’t start a conversation. He didn’t feel like talking. Instead, he closed his eyes and listened. To the wind rustling in the pines. To the hooting of an owl. To the crickets. To the buzz of a mosquito. To the crackling of the fire.

  “It’s times like this I miss Booth most,” Anabeth said in a quiet voice. “Late at night, when my father was asleep, we used to sit by the fire and talk. Booth was a dreamer. He would spin tales about all the places we would go when he finally found that vein of gold in the Two Brothers mine.

  “Of course I learned later it was all a lie. He was never working the mine. He was robbing stages. But even when I knew the truth, I didn’t stop loving him.”

  Jake opened his eyes, careful to look out into the darkness instead of at the fire, so the light wouldn’t blind him. “Then why do you sound so angry?”

  “Because he should have quit robbing stages a long time ago! Because I warned him that Wat Rankin was dangerous, but he wouldn’t listen to me!” Anabeth said fiercely. “Now he’s dead! And I’m all alone!”

  It didn’t do any good for Jake to remind himself that Anabeth was Kid Calhoun. All he saw was a young woman scrubbing tears from her eyes with a sleeve. Right now she was just a kid who had lost the last of her family. He flicked the butt of his cigarette into the fire. A second later he had her in his arms.

  Anabeth hadn’t realized how much she needed the comfort of Jake’s arms around her. Or how close her grief was to the surface. Because now she couldn’t seem to swallow the lump in her throat. Or stop the tears that streamed from her eyes.

  She hid her face against Jake’s shirt. “I don’t—I can’t—”

  “Go ahead and cry, Kid,” Jake said.

  Anabeth fought the sob that threatened until her chest ached. At last it escaped. She clutched at Jake as she let go of her anger and allowed herself to grieve for her uncle.

  Anabeth had no idea how long she cried. She became aware little by little of the feel of Jake’s damp shirt against her cheek. Of the feel of his silky hair threaded between her fingers. Of the way her breasts were pressed against his chest. And the fact that she was sitting in his lap.

  She lifted her head to look into his eyes. Her throat felt raw from crying and a raspy whisper was all she could manage. “Thank you.”

  He gently brushed the hair back from her forehead with callused fingertips. “Are you all right now?”

  “I guess so.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “My chest doesn’t ache like it did.”

  There was an uncomfortable moment when she didn’t know what to do. At last she said, “I guess I’d better be getting some shuteye.”

  But Jake made no move to release her. Instead, his fingers tightened on her shoulder. “Kid …”

  Anabeth saw the kiss coming. She could have avoided it. But she had wondered what his lips would feel like. Now she would know.

  They were soft and pliant.

  Their lips clung for a moment before Jake abruptly broke the kiss. Anabeth could feel the tension in his body.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “This. I can’t do this,” he said in a hard voice. He practically shoved Anabeth off his lap, and she landed in an undignified heap on the ground.

  He rose and stomped back around to the other side of the fire. He yanked his boots off, glared at her, and said, “Go to sleep, Kid.”

  Anabeth took one look at Jake’s face and decided not to argue. He was right. They were playing with fire. And she was the one who would most likely end up burned. Anabeth lay down and pulled the blanket up over her shoulder again, shutting Jake out. But sleep wouldn’t come.

  Her thoughts weren’t at all what she had expected them to be. And the questions that rose in her mind were the kind for which she could find no answers. Because she had no experience in this area at all. At last she whispered, “Jake?”

  There was no
answer.

  “Jake?”

  “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  There was a long silence. “What makes you ask?”

  “I just wondered if you ever thought about falling in love and getting married.”

  “Love is for fools! No woman’s ever gonna hogtie me.”

  “What woman would want to?” Anabeth snapped back.

  “Plenty have tried.”

  “So why haven’t you married one of them?”

  “You might as well ask why I haven’t stuck my hand in the fire and let it burn.”

  Anabeth turned over and leaned up on one elbow to stare at the lawman. Some woman must have hurt him once upon a time, she realized. She couldn’t let the subject drop. “Who was she?”

  “What?”

  “The woman who made you so cynical. Who was she?”

  “My mother.”

  “What did she do that was so horrible?”

  “She cheated on my pa so often that he couldn’t hold his head up in town. He stayed drunk to avoid facing the truth. Once, when he was sober, I asked him why he didn’t leave her. You know what he said?”

  Anabeth shook her head.

  “He said he loved her!” Jake spat. “He finally caught her with one too many men. He shot and killed both my mother and her lover. Only her lover turned out to be the son of somebody important. I was fifteen when my father was hanged for murder. Claire was just eight.

  “I won’t ever give a woman the chance to do to me what my ma did to my pa.”

  “All women aren’t like your mother.”

  “My experience says differently.”

  “I’m not like that,” Anabeth said in a quiet voice.

  “No, you just carry a gun and rob stages,” Jake shot back.

  Anabeth dropped back down on the blanket and stared up at the star-strewn sky. At least she had a reason now why Jake had stopped kissing her. Actually, she found his revelation something of a comfort. It wasn’t her particularly that Jake didn’t trust, it was women—and outlaws—in general. If they spent enough time together, he would see that she was different from those others who had left him feeling betrayed and disillusioned. Although why that was important to her, Anabeth refused to contemplate.

  Anabeth wasn’t aware she had fallen asleep until she woke with a start. Wolf had taught her that she had no need of eyes to see in the dark. The desert animals would tell her when there was another human being present. Their silence was a warning that should be heeded. In fact, it was the complete absence of natural sounds that had awakened Anabeth. She focused all her senses outward, trying to locate the source of danger.

  Her hand slipped to where Booth’s guns ought to be, and she remembered that Jake had put them away in his saddlebags. She turned her head slightly and froze. Reed stood at the edge of the light from the fire. His Colt was aimed at her heart. He put a finger to his lips for silence and motioned her to follow him.

  Anabeth looked over to where Jake lay sleeping. She debated whether to cry an alarm and realized Reed could shoot her or Jake, or both, before Jake even awoke. She had no choice except to do as Reed bid her. She moved as silently as an Apache to avoid waking the lawman.

  Anabeth saw the exact moment when Reed realized she was wearing a skirt, and that her braided hair fell all the way to her waist.

  His smile was feral and frightening.

  She followed Reed some distance from the camp and down into an arroyo where the sound of their voices wouldn’t carry back to the campfire.

  “Well, well,” Reed said. “Who’d have thought it. Kid Calhoun is a female!”

  “How did you find me?” Anabeth asked.

  “Pure chance, actually. I never did cotton too much to Rankin. Lately he’s been gettin’ a little too big and bossy for his britches. I figured I’d head out on my own.

  “I was just lookin’ for a cup of coffee when I came up to your campfire.” His grin widened. “Imagine my surprise when I found you and that other fella. Who is he, by the way?”

  “Nobody you’d know. What do you want from me?”

  “The gold, of course. And maybe something more. You don’t make a bad-looking woman, Kid.”

  “I don’t know where the gold is,” Anabeth said flatly. “And I would roast in hell before I let you touch me.” It was difficult to see Reed’s features in the shadow of his hat, but his broadening smile reflected in the moonlight.

  “Now, Kid, you don’t expect me to accept that, do you?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Reed cocked his gun. The metal click sounded thunderous in the nighttime silence. “I don’t want to put a bullet in you, Kid. But I’ll do what’s necessary to persuade you I mean business.”

  “You’re getting pretty good at shooting unarmed men,” Anabeth taunted. “How does it feel to know you have a yellow streak?” She watched Reed’s smile disappear. For a moment, she was certain he would shoot.

  “I never did feel right about shooting Booth,” he said in a tight voice. “I’m sorry for my part in it, for whatever good that does.”

  “I can’t forgive you, Reed, if that’s what you want. I can never forgive what you did.”

  “I made a mistake, Kid.”

  “So how do you explain what you’re doing now?” Anabeth demanded. “Another mistake?”

  She could almost hear Reed’s teeth grinding. They were still clenched when he said, “I’ve never been a patient man, Kid. If you want to live through the night, you’d better start talking, and tell me where that gold is.”

  “Touch her, and you’re a dead man.”

  Anabeth stood between Reed and the chilling voice. Jake took another step, and it became clear to Reed that the man who had been asleep by the fire had a Colt aimed at his heart.

  “Get out of the way, Kid,” Jake said.

  “Stay where you are, Kid,” Reed countered. “You stay right there while I back up out of here. You owe me that for all the years we rode together.”

  “I don’t owe you anything, Reed. You helped kill my uncle.”

  “You can’t blame me for Booth’s death, Kid. My bullet didn’t kill him.”

  “You didn’t do anything to stop it, either. I’m just going to do what you did, Reed. I’m going to step back and let whatever happens, happen.”

  “Don’t do it, Kid!” Reed shouted.

  Anabeth knew there was little Reed could do to stop her. If he shot at her, he wouldn’t have time to bring his gun to bear on Jake before the Ranger shot him. She hardened her heart to Reed’s plight. An eye for an eye. A death for a death.

  She moved suddenly, diving headlong out of the line of fire. She heard two quick, loud shots, and the sound of a body falling. But Anabeth was unprepared for the violent way Jake yanked her to her feet.

  “Tell me again how women aren’t all the same,” he snarled. “What the hell were you doing sneaking around out here with that outlaw?”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, I wasn’t here by choice,” Anabeth yelled back. “He was holding a gun on me. All he wanted was the gold.”

  “Which you didn’t want to share, is that it?”

  “You’re a fool, Jake Kearney.” Anabeth stomped past him and headed back to camp.

  Jake figured the less time they spent in the area, the better, since the gunshots would attract attention they didn’t want. Anabeth remained stubbornly silent the whole time they were breaking camp and saddling their horses.

  Meanwhile, Jake was angry enough to bend horseshoes. It took him a while to figure out why. He had woken at the snick of a gun being cocked. His first reaction at finding Anabeth gone hadn’t been anger. It had been fear. Which meant he cared what happened to the woman. Which was something he had sworn he would never do.

  When a man started letting his heart control his head, he was in trouble. Look what had happened when he had let that youthful, innocent-looking outlaw Bobby Latham go free. Look what had happened to his
father when he had cared enough for a woman to let her break his heart.

  Jake could give a dozen other examples where men had been brought low by letting emotions, instead of logic, govern their actions. So, sure he was angry. It was a way of exorcising those other feelings for Anabeth Calhoun that he had no intention of acknowledging now, or ever.

  “You only see what you look for,” Anabeth said to Jake as she mounted her dun.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You figure it out.”

  Anabeth was fighting the remorse she felt for Reed’s death. She hated herself for feeling sorry that he was dead. Reed had been smiling when he shot her uncle. He had deserved what happened to him. And she was glad he was dead. Glad.

  Only they hadn’t ridden far before Anabeth abruptly stopped her horse and scrambled off a short ways into the darkness to wretch.

  Jake came up behind her and handed her his bandanna. “Killing is never easy.”

  “I didn’t kill Reed,” Anabeth retorted. She wiped away the vomit and stuffed Jake’s bandanna in her trouser pocket.

  “Close enough,” Jake said. “You let him die.”

  “He deserved to die.”

  Jake shrugged. “Probably so.”

  “He was only twenty-two,” Anabeth said in a ragged voice.

  Jake wanted more than anything to take a step toward her, to hold her in his arms, to comfort her. He reminded himself who she was. And what she had done. And why he had brought her along on this journey.

  “Better get mounted up,” he said in a hard voice. “We have a lot of riding to do tonight.”

  He waited while Anabeth marched past, her head held high, her lips flattened in defiance of him. It took every bit of willpower he had to keep from reaching out for her.

  His head knew he was doing the right thing.

  His heart sent a message to his body, a pounding, furious pulse, a rush of blood to his groin that left him hard and aching.

  Jake’s lip curled in a grim smile that twisted the scar at the corner of his mouth. Kid Calhoun was a force to be reckoned with. And damned if he didn’t relish the few days he had left in her company. But he would send her to jail. It was where she belonged. He would never compromise on that.