Outlaw Country

by A. T. Butler

  “Get Lowry,” he instructed to Holly as he darted away.

  With more people out at this time of day, visiting neighbors or just taking the air, Jacob had to weave around a small crowd in his pursuit of Randall. The man had gotten enough of a head start that Jacob almost missed him turn the corner to a side street.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  Couples he passed looked at him in surprise. Not one person stepped in to try to detain Randall in his escape. The owner of the Golden Saddle Saloon was beloved and well-known in Tucson; Jacob was merely a bounty hunter, here one day and gone the next. Whose side would they choose?

  But Jacob wasn’t experienced with chasing outlaws for nothing. He was in far better shape than the saloon owner and lessened the distance between them with each stride. Around another corner, between two buildings, jumping over refuse and horse excrement in his chase.

  “Stop, Randall! You’re only making this worse.”

  Randall peeked behind him, then grabbed a nearby woman and shoved her toward his pursuer. Jacob caught her abruptly, before she could fall to the ground, helped her regain her balance and then continued the hunt.

  “I’m so sorry,” he called over his shoulder.

  Jacob still held his revolver while he ran. He was doing all he could to catch up to the probable murder without having to shoot at him. Innocent bystanders were in every direction.

  Randall turned another corner onto the main street. As soon as Jacob realized where they were he knew he’d be headed toward the Golden Saddle. The man might have more weapons there, or barricade himself in his office, or even use his customers as human shields.

  Jacob couldn’t let him get that far.

  He dug deep, reached into his reserves for a final burst of energy and increased his sprinting speed. He was gaining. Little by little, Randall Hall was getting closer.

  With only thirty paces before the saloon door, Jacob felt himself within range of his target. He took final near-leaping step, left his feet and tackled Randall Hall around the waist.

  The two men, tangled in a hostile embrace, crashed to the ground. A nearby woman screamed in surprise. Randall began cursing and growling at Jacob, wriggling any direction he could to get free of the bounty hunter. But Jacob held on. He rolled them over, pinning Randall’s body beneath him and holding his face into the dirt.

  “You are under arrest, Randall Hall,” he said finally.

  The man didn’t stop struggling. He didn’t seem to realize it was over, that he had been caught.

  “You can’t do this. You can’t prove anything. Let me go!”

  “Randall, stop. It’s over. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

  The suspected murderer underneath Jacob bucked, like a bronco, trying to throw the larger man off of him, but he held firm. Though he didn’t have any rope or handcuffs on him—Jacob cursed himself for neglecting to be prepared—he could be creative. Still keeping his weight pressed into Randall, Jacob grabbed hold of the man’s shirttail with both hands, and ripped a long strip of fabric off of the bottom of it.

  “What the hell?” Randall exclaimed. “You’re going to buy me a new shirt.”

  Jacob just shook his head, took hold of the man’s left wrist, and bent his arm behind his back. With the fabric held tightly in his teeth, he did the same with the right wrist, until both arms were held together and he could tie them tightly using the strip of fabric as rope.

  “You let me go!” Randall screamed. He sounded more frantic, more out of control. In his desperation, Jacob saw a glimpse of the violent man that had struck Holly earlier that morning.

  With the man lying on his stomach on the ground, and hands bound behind his back, Jacob had to help him to his feet. In spite of his very clear disadvantage, Randall didn’t stop his protests or trying to break free of Jacob’s hold. The bounty hunter had half a mind to knock him out, just to save himself the trouble of keeping him still.

  A crowd had gathered; murmured questions sounded around them, and Jacob bowed his head politely to his audience. As he began to lead the still protesting Randall back toward the sheriff’s office, the whispers and grumbles sounded angrier. One large man with a red beard that Jacob didn’t recognize didn’t move to the side when Jacob reached him. He had to pull Randall around the stranger with him, pushing farther through the crowd.

  “You got him!”

  Jacob peered around several more people to spot Deputy Lowry striding toward him. The crowd started to thin, moving out of the way for the deputy and authority.

  “This is an outrage,” Randall said.

  “Oh, shut it,” Lowry said. “Holly told me what you dropped.”

  “Wait— but, I—”

  “I said quiet. Now, Payne, let’s get this man in a jail cell where he belongs.”

  With Randall finally under control, the finalization of their murder investigation went smoothly. By the next morning, Randall was booked and being held for the murder of Bob Timson, he had confessed the entire story, and the case was on the circuit judge’s docket for the following week.

  Jacob took lunch at the San Xavier Cafe, eager for some peace from the three complaining inmates at the jail, as well as a possible chance at another of those sandwiches with fresh sliced peppers. With the murder solved, he’d need to be hitting the road soon, on the hunt for another outlaw, and he wasn’t sure when he’d again get such a good meal.

  “Hey there, Jacob,” Bonnie said as he found a table. “I’m glad you came in today. I heard you had quite the Sunday afternoon. You’re okay?”

  “Yeah, everything worked out,” Jacob said. “Just like it always does eventually.” He smiled at her, appreciating the way her smile lit up the whole room.

  “I know you probably shouldn’t tell me,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “but did Randall Hall really kill that man? I can’t hardly believe it. He always seemed like such a decent guy. And there were so many others that seemed much more likely to be murderers.”

  He looked around, but it was still early enough in the day that no one was near enough to overhear them.

  “Sit down,” he said. He pulled out a chair for her and once she was seated, pulled his own chair close to her.

  “You’re sure he did it?” she asked, leaning close to him.

  Jacob was usually reticent to reveal details of his cases. But of all the people in the entire Arizona Territory who he wanted to protect, to comfort, to trust and to shield, it was Bonnie Loft. He trusted her to keep the information to herself. He knew she would be strong, and would not want to be thought of as too delicate to handle these details.

  “Well, I’m sure you understand we need to consider him innocent until his trial, but seeing as the man has confessed to all of this, I think we can presume this to be what happened.

  “It seems that Randall Hall had over mortgaged the Golden Saddle Saloon and was hurting for cash. He claims he saw the kinds of funds Timson was throwing around and decided to see how he could get himself some of it. Saturday night, he saw his opportunity and he took it.”

  Bonnie gasped. “Just like that? He just … He just killed him?”

  “He did,” Jacob said. “But what’s worse is he tried to frame Holly Merritt for it.”

  “No!” She realized her exclamation had been too loud and leaned closer to Jacob. “How?”

  “Clumsily,” he admitted. “He told us she had handled the murder weapon. He told us she was poison and to watch out for her. He must have known she had a hefty savings and that would help point to her as well. But he didn’t cover his tracks very well, and hung on to the one piece of evidence we were certain had been stolen from the dead man.”

  “Why would he do such a thing?”

  Jacob shook his head. “Pride, maybe. Or some misplaced feeling of victimhood. Seems Holly had told him she’d be leaving town. Maybe he wanted to punish her for leaving the saloon. Maybe he somehow thought if she was convicted of this crime she’d have to stay. Maybe it was just th
e only thing he could think of to divert attention from himself. I don’t know.”

  “Poor Holly,” Bonnie murmured, looking away. “She was always so kind to me.”

  “She has a good heart. She doesn’t deserve this.”

  “But she’s leaving?”

  “I talked to her last night. We had to interview her again, once all of Randall’s machinations came to light. She is more than ready to get out of Tucson and start a new life in a bigger city. I think she’s on the earliest stagecoach she could get on today.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever see her again?”

  Jacob shook his head. “I hope not. This has been her dream for a long time, and she’s a good woman. I think this is exactly the right step for her. She deserves to be happy just as much as you and I do.”

  Bonnie’s returning smile made Jacob think about all the ways he could make her happy, too.

  Many Thanks

  Thank you so much for reading Outlaw Country!

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  Also by A.T. Butler

  Next in the series! Grab Death By Grit on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited HERE!

  from Chapter One:

  Jacob Payne peered at himself in the warped mirror and reached up to smooth down the back of his dark hair. That cowlick was the most unmanageable thing. He frowned, licking his hand and reaching up again.

  He was supposed to be meeting Bonnie Loft in less than ten minutes to escort her to church and he wanted to look his best. This would be their first time attending church together; in fact, it would be their first actual outing together since he had met her nearly a year ago. He was afraid she might think he was dragging his feet with his courting, but his jobs and bounties had taken him all over the territory. This Sunday he had finally managed to catch a break.

  He tilted his head first to one side, and then the other, trying to see what she might see when she saw him. He had washed his face, his neck and behind his ears. His collar and tie seemed straight. His coat was free of dust. It was just the back of his hair that refused to cooperate.

  Jacob had done his best, and if he fussed at it any longer he was going to be late picking her up. The small, pocket-sized copy of the Bible he had brought with him from Virginia sat on the edge of his washstand. He scooped it up, tucked it away, and headed out the door toward his date.

  When Jacob had left Virginia nearly nine months ago to come west, he had left most of his life behind. With his wife and infant son dead, and his brothers doing everything they could to drive him away from the family estate, there wasn’t much he wanted to remember about his old life. His Bible was an exception. This was the book that he had carried with him into battle, at Manassas and Antietam. It had somehow, miraculously, avoided blood, gun shot, or any other damage. When Jacob filled his saddle bags for the trip west, this good book was one of the first things he had packed.

  But now that he was more or less settled in the Arizona Territory, he had found opportunities to make time for his Bible few and far between. Instead, in his work as a bounty hunter, Jacob found himself on the road most Sundays, away from a church or place of worship. He prayed, of course, on his own no matter where he was, but it wasn’t the same as the community of a church body. He had taken to leaving his Bible in his boarding house in Tucson. He told himself he was keeping it safe, rather that carting it around the desert.

  It wasn’t until he had made plans to attend a service with Bonnie Loft that Jacob realized how much he had missed it.

  Jacob Payne Series:

  Trouble By Any Name

  Danger in the Canyon

  Justice for Jasper

  Blood on the Mountain

  Outlaw Country

  Death By Grit

  Desert Rage

  Jacob Payne Box Set: Books 1-3

  About the Author

  I grew up in the southwest—California Missions, snakes and constant threat of drought weaving the backdrop of my childhood.

  But it wasn’t until I moved to Texas a few years ago that the magic and mythology of the American West began to seep into my soul.

  I’d love to write about Jacob Payne for a long time. …

  If you enjoyed this book, a review on your favorite retailer would be greatly appreciated.

  - A

  Outlaw Country is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2018 by A.T. Butler

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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