Once an Outlaw (3 page)

Yet she wouldn’t weep in front of any lawman. Certainly not this one.

“It’s time for you to leave now,” she informed him stiffly.

He studied her a moment longer, his expression unreadable, and then touched his hand to his hat.

“Good night, Miss Spoon. If you know what’s good for him, you’ll see that your uncle brings that deed to town.”

Emily stood rigidly, refusing to answer, refusing to budge even as he strode off toward the trees near the little knoll.

So
, she thought, her knees trembling beneath her skirt.
He hid his horse far enough away so that no one in the cabin would hear his approach. Then he crept forward on foot, no doubt to scout out how many of the “Spoon gang” were on hand—and where
.

A cautious man. And a smart one.

The worst kind of lawman
, Emily thought uneasily. Her stomach was churning. Even now, she could remember the strength with which he’d snatched the gun from her, held her. Standing alone beneath the moon, she felt again the power in those muscled arms.

And heard the deep flat politeness of his voice.

Still she didn’t turn away, not until she saw him mount, glance back once more at her and at the cabin—and ride off, a shadowy figure in the moonlight, a man who sat tall and easy in the saddle, riding a dark horse, riding him hard.

It wasn’t until she slipped back inside the cabin and bolted the door with shaking fingers that she realized Joey
had
awakened while she was outside.

To her horror, she found him with his face pressed against the window, the shutters drawn back. He was barefoot and trembling, his skin so pale she caught her breath. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Don’t let him hurt me!” he sobbed. “Don’t let him, Em-ly, please!”

“Oh, Joey, no! No one is going to hurt you ever again—it’s all right!” Emily set the rifle down and enfolded him in her arms, drawing him away from the window. “There’s no danger—nothing to be frightened of. That wasn’t the bad man—it was only the sheriff, paying us a visit. And he’s gone now. He rode back to town. Didn’t you see?”

“Yes, but… but I thought—” He took a deep breath, still clinging to her neck with all his strength. “Are you sure he wasn’t c-coming for me?”

“I’m very sure. I promise you. You’re safe here, Joey. Very, very safe.”

Emily spent the next half hour silently cursing the lawman, even as she reassured Joey again and again that there was no danger. It wasn’t until she had fixed the little boy a glass of warm milk, tucked him back into bed, and sat with him until he fell asleep again that she realized Lonesome’s sheriff had come and gone, scared both her and Joey half to death, left her with a warning … and never even told her his name.

LINT
B
ARCLAY TOSSED THE DOG-
eared pile of wanted posters onto his desk and rubbed a hand across his eyes. He leaned back in his chair, trying to block out the loud snoring of the drunken old miner sleeping it off in the jail cell a dozen yards away. Shrieks and shouts of raucous merriment drifted in through the open window of the office, along with loud singing and the banging of piano keys. Sounded like things were getting pretty wild down at Coyote Jack’s Saloon. And it was only a little past suppertime, Clint noted.

He figured he’d probably have to head over there and calm things down before too long.

But it wasn’t only the miner’s snoring or the saloon’s rowdiness that kept him from concentrating on the wanted posters, memorizing the faces drawn on each one so that he could recognize any of the outlaws at a moment’s notice, if he happened to spot one.

Another face kept appearing in his mind.

A far more appealing one.

The delicately sculpted prettily oval face of Emily Spoon.

Clint shook his head in bafflement. How come with
nearly every female in this town devoting her spare time to trying to run his life and find him an eligible bride, foisting every daughter, cousin, niece, and acquaintance upon him in an attempt to corral him into marriage, the only woman whose face seemed stuck in his mind was a rifle-toting, icy-tongued beauty from a family of low-down outlaws?

It made no sense at all.

You don’t want
that
little handful for a bride, that’s for damn sure
, he told himself with a grin. He’d be better off with Mrs. Dune’s whiny-voiced niece, or Mary Kellogg’s sister—or even Carla Mangley, he reflected with a shudder as he thought of the latter young woman’s overbearing mother—than anyone related to Jake Spoon.

Still, it dumbfounded him that a family as low and common and crooked as the Spoons could produce such a gorgeous woman. Especially since there was nothing the least bit low or common about her—not as far as he could see. The raven-haired Miss Spoon spoke as finely as his own elegant sister-in-law, his brother Wade’s new wife, Caitlin Barclay herself. Clint had just returned from Wade and Caitlin’s wedding in Silver Valley, Wyoming, when he’d found out the bad news about the Spoon family moving into town.

But while the eastern-bred and -schooled Caitlin was blonde, cool, and sunny, Emily Spoon with her dark hair and smoldering gray eyes was all fire, earth, and ice.

Clint raked a hand through his hair, thinking of how determined she’d been to wrest that Winchester back from him. No doubt she’d have used it too, if he hadn’t taken it away from her so quickly in the first place.

Two days had passed and Jake Spoon still hadn’t shown up with his supposed deed to the Sutter place. No one had spotted him in town either. Must be away still, Clint reflected.

But doing what?
he wondered suspiciously. If old Jake thought he was going to start holding up trains or banks or stagecoaches in other parts of the state, then hightail it to the fringes of Lonesome and hide out in the Sutter cabin, claiming he’d been ranching all the while, he’d sure as hell have another thing coming.

If he doesn’t show up by tomorrow
, Clint thought,
maybe I’ll just pay Miss Spoon another visit and see if she’s still all alone at that cabin
.

Not that she’d ever been exactly all alone to start with. There was the boy—that pale little kid he’d glimpsed at the cabin window just as he was riding off.

Clint wondered suddenly if the kid was Emily Spoon’s son. Maybe she was married …

And maybe not
, he reflected, his mouth tightening.
Maybe she’s raising him alone—in the midst of an outlaw gang…

Clint frowned. With her fine-boned features and those unusual silvery-gray eyes, Emily Spoon didn’t even look old enough to have borne a child already five or six years old. Not unless she’d borne him when she was sixteen, seventeen … but…

Either way, it was none of his business, Clint told himself, pushing back his chair. He paced across the small office, his boots scraping upon the floor, and gulped a swig of nasty-tasting coffee that had gone bitter and cold in his cup.

Emily Spoon didn’t concern him. It was Jake Spoon and his gang he needed to think about.

But that was part of the trouble. If Jake’s niece was living in the cabin, she could well be involved in whatever the rest of the Spoons were up to. He remembered how insistent she’d been that he stay away from the cabin—and wondered if that boy was the only reason she’d wanted to
keep him from going inside. It didn’t make sense that she’d go to such lengths to hide a child. She could actually have been protecting someone else.

A lover?
Clint set the cup down on his desk and frowned. A member of the gang? Maybe the kid’s father, maybe he was an outlaw too …

Or maybe Jake Spoon himself had really been inside the cabin all along. Playing possum …

But he quickly dismissed this last idea. From what he knew about the outlaw, Jake wasn’t the type of man to let his niece face down the law on her own. He might be crooked, but he was no coward who would hide behind a woman’s skirts. He was hot-tempered and tough as buckskin. He’d have come out with guns blazing before he’d let a lawman get within an inch of his front door—or one of his womenfolk.

Clint sighed and picked up the stack of wanted posters again, but at that moment the door burst open and Hamilton Smith, Lonesome’s paunchy, mustachioed banker, tumbled into the office.

“Clint—trouble!”

Clint took one look at his face and panic washed over him. “Don’t tell me. Is it Agnes Mangley?” He sat up straighter in the chair. “Did Bessie tell her I’m back in town? Damn it, she’s already picking out a wedding gown for Carla, isn’t she—”

“No, no, nothing to do with Agnes or her daughter. I mean real trouble,” Ham gasped breathlessly. “You’d best get down to Coyote Jack’s—
now
. That whole place will be smashed to bits if you don’t put a stop to things pronto.”

Only a fight then
. Clint relaxed. “Hell, why didn’t you just say so, Ham?” He sprang out of his chair and headed toward the door.

“It’s a helluva fight.” The banker hurried after him, struggling to keep up with the sheriff’s long strides. “The whole place has gone wild!”

Better that than to have Agnes Mangley on the wedding warpath again
, Clint thought, loping toward the saloon. Still, he hoped he wouldn’t need the two Colt .45s strapped to his gun belt. Things didn’t get out of hand in Lonesome too often—most of the town was law-abiding, and even the miners and drifters passing through had heard of Clint and knew his reputation, so they toed the line as well. But tonight, things were definitely out of the ordinary. Even from the street he could hear mirrors splintering, bangs and thumps, men yelling.

The piano music had stopped.

As he pushed through the swinging doors and surveyed the riotous scene before him through a cloud of tobacco smoke, he saw that chaos reigned. Men were hurling punches right and left, someone threw a chair at a young cowboy in a green shirt and neckerchief, someone else threw a whiskey bottle that smashed into an already-shattered mirror over the bar.

Saloon girls were crammed onto the stairs or tucked into corners, and everywhere fists and oaths flew, while the owner and bartender, Big Roy, haplessly fired shots into the air, shouting futilely for the fighting to stop.

Clint’s gaze zeroed in on the man in the center of the fray—the dark-haired cowboy in the green shirt and neckerchief, who had adroitly ducked as the flying chair sailed by. He seemed to be fighting three men at once, and though his lip was bloodied and there was already a bruise over one eye, he was holding his own. At six feet, nearly as tall as Clint, he clearly knew how to throw a punch—and how to take one.

Clint waded in among the brawlers, headed straight at
the young fire-eater. Along the way he pulled Mule Rob-bins and Squinty Brown apart, warning them that they’d land in jail if they didn’t stop right then. Both men stared into the eyes of the sheriff and quickly returned to their senses.

“Hold on, Ed! Break it up!” Clint grabbed ahold of Ed Perkins’s massive arm just as the blacksmith was about to hit a bewhiskered miner who’d been losing one poker hand after another every night for a week.

“Settle down, both of you, or you’ll find yourself sharing a jail cell for the next week.” The steel in his tone froze both men in their tracks. They lowered their fists and backed away from each other as Clint shouldered past.

Thus the room began to quiet and to clear as the sheriff finally reached the green-shirted man who had just doubled over after being punched in the stomach by Slim Jenks, one of the new hands at the WW Ranch.

“That’s enough, Jenks,” Clint ordered. “You too, Riley—and Frank. Back off.”

The WW wranglers stopped, their fists still clenched.

“He started it, Sheriff.” Jenks glared at the doubled-over cowboy slumped against a table. “He started the whole damned thing. And just guess who he is!”

“I don’t give a damn who he is.” Clint’s steely gaze shifted from Jenks to the other two wranglers, who seemed determined to get in a few more licks. “The next man to throw a punch gets thrown into a cell. You got that?”

None of the three answered, but neither did they make a move.

“Roy,” Clint called to the bartender. “Is what Jenks said true? Did this fellow start it?”

The bartender’s gaze met the piercing stares of the
three WW wranglers, then slid to the dark-haired cowboy who groaned, trying to straighten up. “Yep, that’s right. He started the whole thing, Sheriff. Didn’t cotton to something Slim said to Florry, and he lit into him.”

“Then what?”

“Then these two yellow-bellied cowards decided that bastard Jenks needed help and they jumped me,” the green-shirted cowboy snarled, and before Clint could stop him he landed a blistering right cross to Slim Jenks’s jaw. Jenks toppled backward and went sprawling across the floor. Riley and Frank surged forward—but halted at the sight of the black-handled Colt .45 in the sheriff’s steady hand.

“I already warned you that the next man to throw a punch was going to jail and I meant it.” Clint fixed the cowboy with a hard look, the type that had made more than one cold-blooded murderer start to sweat, but the cowboy in the green shirt only glared right back at him. Blood dripped from his cut lip, staining the front of his shirt. The bruise over his eye was already swelling.

“Let’s go,” Clint told him. “We’ve got laws against disturbing the peace and fighting in a public place. Anyone else want to come along and join him in a cell?” The sheriff’s cold gaze raked the three men from the WW Ranch.

Slim Jenks came slowly to his feet and shook his head. “You’re right to lock him up! You know who this is? He’s Pete Spoon!”

That got Clint’s full attention. He eyed the other man intently, then seized his arm. “That true? Are you Pete Spoon?”

“What if I am?” The cowboy wrenched away. “I didn’t do a damn thing wrong—and you can’t prove that I did.”

Clint’s gut clenched. Emily Spoon had assured him
that her family meant no trouble. And right off the bat, here was one of the Spoon boys tearing up the saloon.

“You started this fight, Spoon,” he said evenly. “And I’m finishing it. Get moving.”

He half expected the outlaw to resist, but to his surprise, Spoon merely eyed him resentfully from beneath a shock of dark hair and swaggered his way to the door.

“I might have thrown the first punch, all right,” he muttered, “but then they jumped me—three against one.” He swung toward the bartender. “You tell him, damn you. Tell him that’s how it happened.”

Clint saw Jenks, Riley, and Frank all turn to look at Big Roy once more. The bartender’s eyes slid away from Clint’s as he answered.

“Young Spoon started the fight. That’s all I know. He was the one who threw the first chair that smashed into my mirror.”

Pete Spoon snorted in contempt. “You sniveling, low-down coward, you’re as worthless as they are!”

Clint gave him a push toward the door. “That’s enough. Let’s go. And the rest of you—clear out of here.
Now
. Unless you’re planning to help Roy with the cleanup.”