Once an Outlaw (26 page)

“Emily,” he began, but she interrupted him, her eyes glittering.

“I was caught in the middle—do you have any idea what I went through?”

“We never meant for it to be like this, you weren’t supposed to have any suspicions.” Clint’s color was ashen. “Listen to me, Emily, when you calm down you’ll see—”

“That night… that night when Uncle Jake rode out—you
knew
. You let me think the worst, even though you knew it had to be tearing me apart—”

“I was trying to protect you. We’d made a pact to keep you out of it. We knew it would be over soon. We didn’t want you mixed up with Ratlin—he’s a killer. And Jenks is—”

“I know all about Ratlin and Jenks. Or haven’t you noticed?”

She held up her bruised wrists, and saw him glance at them, then his gaze shifted to the mark Ratlin’s fist had made on her cheek.

He sucked in his breath.

The anger and hurt in her eyes battered at him, but not nearly as much as the sight of her injuries, the thought of what she’d suffered. His gut wrenched with pain. And with a raw tenderness that was so fierce and overwhelming he could barely see straight.

“Emily, I’m sorry.” Were any words ever more inadequate? he thought bitterly. He reached up, touching her face very gently.

“I swear to you, I never meant for any of this to happen—it was the last thing I wanted.” He threw a quick glance over at Pete, standing miserable and silent beside him. “The last thing any of us wanted. You have to believe me, you were supposed to be safe, and then we were going to tell you—”

“It’s the truth, Sis. All any of us wanted was to keep you clear of this—”

“Don’t you dare say another word, any of you.” She twisted free of Clint again, stepped backward, and almost
stumbled. As Pete reached instinctively for her arm, she knocked his hand aside.

“Don’t touch me. Get away from me.”

A sick exhausted dizziness was spinning through her head. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday, hadn’t slept, and the emotional turmoil of death and danger was taking its toll. She’d never felt so weak, so angry, so lost, or so alone.

Even more alone than when Aunt Ida died.

She needed to get away from them, from all of them. Except…
Joey
.

A new kind of alarm hummed through her. “Where’s Joey?”

Uncle Jake shook his head. “We don’t know. We haven’t been back to the cabin since yesterday. We left you a note.”

Emily couldn’t speak. Anxiety and confusion and heartbreak swirled through her. Her head swam. But she pushed the lightheadedness away as she turned back toward the horse.

Clint caught her arm, pulled her toward him. “You’re not in any shape to ride back to the ranch yet.”

“Don’t try to stop me. Or protect me. Or tell me that you care about me. Just let me go, damn you!”

She jerked free and took two steps toward her mount.

And then the air roared through her ears, a sickly gray darkness descended, and the ground rushed up to meet her as she fainted dead away.

M-LY, NOW HOW MANY MORE DAYS
till my mama comes for me?”

Joey was galloping around the kitchen table with Jumper clasped in his hand, pretending the horse was running alongside him as Emily removed golden biscuits from the stove and set the pan on the counter.

“Only four more days, Joey. Please stop running, you’re making me dizzy.”

The little boy drew up short and grinned at her. “You going to bake that big chocolate cake like you said you would?”

“I surely am,” she replied almost but not quite smiling for the first time in days as she blew a strand of hair back from her eyes. “One thing about me, Joey,” she added with a caustic irony, which, unfortunately, none of the members of her family were around to hear, “I always tell the truth.”

“Oh, boy!”

A week had passed since her capture by Ratlin and Jenks and the foiling of the stagecoach holdup. A long, lonely, empty week. Her physical scrapes and bruises
were fading, but the emotional hurts were still as raw and painful as if they’d just been inflicted today.

“They’ll be coming back from the range soon—it’s time to go wash up.” With a sigh she turned her attention to the fragrant pot of beef stew simmering on the stove, thick with meat and potatoes, carrots and green beans.

Joey skidded toward the door. “You going to talk to Uncle Jake and Pete and Lester tonight, Em-ly?”

“What?” She paused in her stirring of the stew and stared at the boy. “I always talk to them.”

“Well, you say please pass this… and thank you … and all that,” Joey acknowledged, as he stuffed Jumper into his shirt pocket. “But you don’t talk to them like you used to. You’re still mad at them, aren’t you, Em-ly?”

He rushed on before she could answer. “I didn’t mind staying at the Smiths all night that time—and the next day. Really I didn’t. Don’t be mad at them because of me.”

“I’m not mad because of you, Joey.” She gritted her teeth. “I’m just upset—because they didn’t tell me the truth. They didn’t tell me about their plan to help Sheriff Barclay catch those bad men—and he didn’t tell me either.”

“So … you’re mad at Sheriff Clint too?”

“I didn’t say I was mad at anyone,” she said sharply.

“I can tell you are.” Joey peeped up at her. “Sheriff Clint came here to see you three times and you wouldn’t come out of your room. And Pete and Lester told you how much they liked your pumpkin tarts last night and you didn’t even look at them or smile or anything. You’ve hardly smiled at all lately,” he finished. “You always look sad.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m fine. So shoo. Out you go.”

But as the door banged shut behind him and Emily
plunked the biscuits onto a plate and brought them to the table, her shoulders slumped. She’d tried to behave as normally as she could in the aftermath of her kidnapping, but she was finding it more and more difficult. If not for Joey she’d have left the cabin days ago and gone to live in Nettie Phillips’s boardinghouse.

She couldn’t bear it here—not anymore. But she couldn’t leave, not while Joey still needed her.

Once the cabin had been home, a cherished home, a place she would have protected with her life, filled with those she loved and counted on and trusted. But now it was awful living in these close quarters with Uncle Jake and Pete and Lester. It wasn’t that she didn’t still love them—it was only that nothing felt the same. They’d lived under the same roof with her the entire time they were planning to trap Ratlin and Jenks and stop the stagecoach murders, but never once had they confided in her or told her what was happening right under her nose.

They had wanted her to believe in
them
, wanted her to trust
them
, but they hadn’t trusted
her
.

And Clint Barclay—she couldn’t even begin to think about Clint Barclay. He must have known she suspected her uncle of plotting once more to break the law, and he must have known she was frantic with worry, but he’d kept quiet too. All supposedly to protect her.

Tears filled her eyes. The pain inside her sliced deep and hard. It seemed to grow worse every day. She suspected it was never going away.

Love means trust and honesty and faith, she told herself, stomping around the kitchen, setting plates and mugs and flatware on the table. But she had none of that, apparently had never really had it—not with her family, not with the man who had made love to her in the dark, hay-scented barn and mercilessly lassoed her heart. They
hadn’t trusted her, been honest with her, or had enough faith in her to tell her the truth.

Well, that was just fine.
I don’t need them anyway
, she told herself.
I don’t need anyone
.

Oh, they’d all tried to explain. Tried to make her understand. She’d heard the whole story, more than once. How Uncle Jake had met Ben Ratlin in prison, and when Ratlin learned that Jake was headed to Forlorn Valley, Colorado, when he got out, to take over a ranch he’d won in a poker game, Ratlin had befriended him.

It turned out Ratlin was getting out nearly the same time—and was headed for Denver. He was looking for some men to help him and some old pards with a job. A job that involved some citizens of a town named Lonesome—and murder.

Uncle Jake had told her how he’d tried to steer clear of Ratlin—the man was dangerous, he’d killed a guard and let another prisoner take the blame—but just before they were both released, Ratlin had cornered him and pressed him to join him and his pards. He’d said they needed some hard, experienced men, who knew how to hold up a stage and get clean away.

Men like the Spoon gang.

He’d promised Jake big money—and he hadn’t been willing to take no for an answer. Jake didn’t want anything to do with Ratlin or his scheme—he’d never been involved in any killing and, besides, he’d sworn to go straight for good after Aunt Ida died—but he knew that even if he forced Ratlin to back off and leave him out of it, the plan would go forward. People were going to die.

Unless he found a way to stop it.

Going to the law had been hard for Jake—but in this situation, with lives at stake, he’d had no choice. Reluctantly, disgustedly, he’d sought out a federal marshal after
his release from prison and told him what he knew, which wasn’t much. There was nothing the marshal could do without proof or specific facts regarding the crime, things Jake didn’t know.

He’d thought that was the end of it, but the marshal had come up with a plan. A daring plan Jake reluctantly accepted. He’d stalled on giving Ratlin an answer in prison, but now he’d let him know the answer was yes. He and Lester and Pete would pretend to go along with Ratlin and his cohorts—and all the while, they’d be working with the law, with Marshal Hoot McClain in Denver, setting a trap.

Listening to the explanations, Emily learned that only slowly, gradually did the Spoons find out who was going to be killed, when, and why. Frank Mangley, the man behind it, wanted absolute secrecy, and they hadn’t known the exact details until only a few days before the actual holdup. At first they’d had no idea that Jenks was one of Ratlin’s old pards. They’d guessed, but hadn’t known for sure, that the Mangley women were the targets.

The night of the fight in the saloon, Jenks had been trying to intimidate Florry Brown, after he’d let something slip to her about Carla Mangley never getting a chance to marry Sheriff Barclay, even if she caught him, because she’d be dead. Horrified, Florry had demanded to know what he meant, and Jenks had realized he had to scare her into keeping quiet. That was when Pete had stepped in and earned Jenks’s enmity—and Florry’s gratitude.

But it had taken time and a lot of reassuring coaxing to get her to tell him what she’d heard—and it hadn’t been enough. According to the law, in order to make sure Ratlin and his pards were locked up for what they planned to do, they had to be allowed to do it, to get caught in the act.

So the Spoons had continued to meet with Ratlin and go along with the plan. And in the end they’d learned all about how Frank Mangley had grown tired of sharing the profits of his Leadville mine with his brother’s widow and daughter. How he’d found a rich new vein, one worth five times the value of the original one—and he didn’t care to share it with his sister-in-law. He’d known that if something happened to Carla and Agnes, he’d inherit their shares of the mine. It would all be his.

So he’d decided to kill them both in a stage holdup, making their deaths look like a random act of violence visited upon an entire stagecoach full of people—just a holdup gone bad. No one would suspect that the two women were the targets—no one would possibly suspect that the wealthy and respectable businessman who owned and operated one of Colorado’s most lucrative silver mines was involved in any way.

Oh, yes, she’d heard all the explanations, the details. It turned out even Lester buying Carla Mangley’s box lunch had been part of their effort to set the trap. No one knew exactly when the women were going to return from Denver—and Marshal McClain needed to prepare. It was a long shot, but Jake and the boys had decided that Pete would buy Florry’s box and concentrate on getting as much information as he could from the saloon girl on the day of the social, and Lester would bid on Carla Mangley’s box and get a chance to draw her off alone. In the course of general conversation, Lester would try to get some hint from Carla as to when she and her mother were planning to return, information he could pass along to the marshal in order to get a jump on Ratlin.

Emily remembered how Carla had made a point of asking her to tell Lester she’d be returning on Tuesday. Apparently her cousin had done his job all too well—
somehow or other the girl who had everything money could buy had become infatuated with a shy, awkward outlaw who couldn’t remember his own name around a pretty woman.

Well, I hope they’ll be very happy together
, she thought grimly, as she stared into the pot of bubbling stew.
And the same for Pete with his Florry
.

She, on the other hand, was determined never to trust any man again. Particularly drop-dead handsome sheriffs who wooed a girl with kisses and lovemaking in the dark, all the while hatching any number of plots behind her back, plots that involved her very own family—but no one seemed to think that should matter to her…

The one thing she’d asked Uncle Jake to explain had been the paper she’d seen him slip into his pocket the day she’d seen him come out of the telegraph office. It turned out that had been a message from Marshal McClain—insisting that Lonesome’s sheriff, Clint Barclay, be informed of what was going on and that his help be enlisted. But Uncle Jake admitted he’d put off telling Barclay anything until the day of the box lunch social—at that point, the planned holdup was imminent and he couldn’t wait any longer.

So Clint had known since the picnic. He’d known when he came to the ranch and dragged her into the barn and tackled her in the hayloft. He’d known when they’d made love.

He’d been intent on distracting her that night, on preventing her from trying to follow Uncle Jake and messing up all their plans.

Oh, how she wished she could take back that night. She wished she had fought Clint Barclay off, insisted he keep his hands to himself, shown him that she was invulnerable to his touch, his voice, his kisses…

Instead she acted like an idiotic lovestruck fool who’d melted into him like a candle lit from both ends—given herself, heart and soul, to a man who didn’t trust her or respect her—much less love her—enough to let her in on the truth.

Love her enough? He didn’t love her at all. He hadn’t said it, not once. He’d told her plain as day in the line shack that he had no intentions of settling down, no desire for marriage.

Which was fine with her, because neither did she. Ever.
With anyone
, Emily vowed, giving the beef and vegetables and potatoes in the simmering pot one last vicious poke with the spoon.

Her spine stiffened as she heard Uncle Jake, Pete, and Lester ride up, heard them talking to Joey out at the pump. When they stomped in, she was composed and calm, her chin notched high as she set bowls of stew around the table.