The Devil's Own Desperado (22 page)

“I’m not the marrying kind, Amy. You don’t love me. You just think you do.”

She shook her head. “Then don’t marry me, but don’t leave either. I won’t stop loving you, Colt Evans. I love you.”

“No, you don’t. You’re infatuated with me and with the dream of being able to change who I am and what I am.” He caught her chin in his hand. “You can’t change those things. Yeah, I carry a Bible in my saddlebags, because it’s the only thing my mother ever gave me that Jackson Hayward didn’t steal from me. Just because I carry it, sure as hell doesn’t mean I live by anything in there. I’m a gunman, Amy, a shootist, and nothing will ever change that fact.”

“I told Amy you were just pretending not to be a shootist. You really are a gunfighter,” Saul’s awed voice announced from the doorway.

Amelia whirled around. For the space of a heartbeat, she kept her back to Colt. Then her shoulders rounded and her head bowed. She turned back to him, her face pale. Her eyes had a bruised quality to them.

Colt forced himself to look at Saul. “Saul, go outside for a few minutes, please.”

Saul’s eyes were wide, and the admiration on his face twisted like a dull, rusty blade in Colt’s stomach. “Will you teach me to shoot your gun?”

“Go outside, Saul,” Colt repeated through clenched teeth.

“Wait until I tell Kyla I was right. She thinks she knows everything, just because her dad’s the marshal.” Saul ran away from the doorway.

Amelia took a step away from Colt. “You knew he was there, didn’t you? You know how infatuated he is with men like Earp and Masterson and you made sure he knew you’re just like them. How am I ever going to tell him that isn’t a life for him?”

“Amy, I didn’t know he was there.” Colt held his hand out to her, but she slapped it away. “I didn’t know he was there,” he repeated. “Do you really think I want any kid, especially that boy, ever to pick up a gun?”

“I don’t know what I think, right now.” Welling tears thickened her voice. She pivoted from him, her back ramrod straight, her shoulders squared and unyielding.

Colt raised his hand to her stiff back, and then dropped it to his side without touching her. He clenched his fist. “Tomorrow, I’ll take Saul out hunting, make sure he knows how to properly fire the rifle. Then I’ll leave. Marry Donnie Morris. He’s a better man to be a father to Saul than I could ever be.”

She was as silent as the woods on a bitter winter’s day.

He paused in the doorway, trying one more time. “Amy, I didn’t know he was there.”

If his words had any effect, she didn’t reveal it.

****

Amelia jerked a weed from the herb bed, pulling up a mint plant along with it. Colt had to have known Saul was in the doorway. Why had he done that? Why had he deliberately played into Saul’s infatuation with killers like Holliday, Earp and Masterson?

She shook her head, seizing another weed poking through the muddy yellow ground. With a hard tug, she separated weed from soil. She had said she would find a way to tell Saul the truth. Instead, Colt had deliberately let it be known. Now, Saul could hold Colt up as an example.

No matter how many times Colt told Saul that carrying a gun was no way to live, there would be no stopping the boy. He wanted to pick up a gun, and she knew why. More than once, Saul had told her he wanted to find the people responsible for killing their parents and make them pay.

From the corner of her eye, she spied Colt walking to the barn. Her heart twisted. For the past few hours, he had been as silent and resolute as the granite slopes rising around the small valley. Yet there was something in his stiff back and frozen expression that said her angry accusations had wounded him.

Maybe he hadn’t known Saul was there. Maybe his only reason for telling her to marry Donnie and his refusal to admit a man could change who and what he was lay in his belief that it wasn’t possible. Somehow, she just could not envision Colt encouraging Saul to pick up a gun. But how could anyone other than Colt encourage Saul not to choose that life?

Amelia rose. She tried to brush the clinging mud from her knees, but surrendered to the notion the mud wasn’t going to be removed until she washed the garment. More laundry. She straightened, thrusting the thought from her mind, and walked to the barn.

The wisp of a curry brush over Angel’s coat filled the air. Colt’s quiet murmuring to the horse snaked into Amelia’s heart.

Amelia stopped a few feet from the horse’s stall. “Have you seen Saul?”

Colt shook his head, keeping his back to her. “Not for about an hour. I thought he said he was going to go down to the creek to try and catch a few fish. He said the fish bite pretty well after a rainstorm. Wouldn’t listen to me that they bite better before, not after.”

“Have you talked to him?”

Colt set the curry on the edge of the stall door. “I tried.” He shrugged. “I don’t think I got through to him. Amy, I can’t say this enough. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was there. The kind of life I lead isn’t a life I would want for anyone, but especially not for Saul.”

“I know that. I know you would never want him to pick up a gun.” Amelia took a step closer.

“Amy, I have to leave. I have a past. We’ve both been denying that truth ever since I got here. I’m not a good example of clean living, and I’m not the marrying kind.”

For a moment, Amelia chewed the inside of her lower lip and studied the floor at her feet. She forced herself to look up. “I thought…I thought maybe you found a place to make those dreams you told Jenny about reality,” she finally whispered, and turned away.

The stall door banged against the wall a second later. Colt grasped her elbow and spun her around. He caught her chin in his hand and pressed his open mouth to her lips. His hand slipped around the back of her neck, his fingers cradling the base of her skull, and his tongue probed her closed lips.

Fire raced through her and a sudden sob of hurt and need caught in her throat. She wrapped her arms around his waist, clinging to him and drinking in the heady, intoxicating taste of him.

His tongue invaded her mouth, stroking hers. Amelia’s womb clenched with the feel of him, the taste of him, the scent of him.

When he withdrew from her, his eyes were nearly black and his chest heaved. “Don’t you think I’d stay if I could? The thought of you in another man’s arms, of any other man touching you, kissing you, and loving you is agony, Amy. But the thought of you or Saul or Jenny getting hurt when—not if—
when
my past shows up is tearing me apart.”

She drew a steadying breath and backed away on trembling knees. “Don’t I have a say in this decision?”

Colt threw his head back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then he dragged his hand through his hair. “Oh, God,” he murmured, anguish thickening his voice. He lowered his gaze to her.

His agony found an echoing emotion in her. She had never felt this kind of pain in her life, not even when she found her parents’ bodies on the road to Federal.

He shook his head, while trailing the back of his fingers along her cheek. “I’m not going to take that chance with you. I can’t. And if you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll admit you don’t want to take that chance either, not with Saul and Jenny’s lives at stake.”

Colt lowered his hand and walked away from her. Amelia watched him leave the barn through a haze of tears. She wanted to call his name, beg him to stay, tell him it didn’t matter that what was in his past could come back to haunt him. But she knew it did matter. She wasn’t the only one affected by her decision. She had to think about Saul and Jenny.

Colt paused on the small porch of the cabin and leaned his head against the roof support. The pain in his soul hurt worse than the bullet hole in his shoulder ever had. Yeah, he could stay and see Amy or the kids or all of them get hurt when someone from his past came gunning for him. Or he could ride away, not look back, and be secure in the knowledge it would only take a matter of hours for the town’s gossip mill to circulate the information he’d ridden off. Hell, he could make sure the town gossips knew he had ridden away from the McCollister place, that wouldn’t be all that difficult to do. Riding off would assure safety for Amy, Saul, and Jenny.

Even though his head said it was what he needed to do, his heart argued this was where he was supposed to be. Colt ruthlessly quelled that voice and muttered, “A gunfighter with a conscience. Thought that was a commodity you couldn’t afford, Evans.”

Angry, he shoved the back door open.

A telltale double click made him whirl to the side and drop into a crouch. His hand instinctively went to his thigh. Only his revolver wasn’t there.

It was in Saul’s hand. Colt stared at him over the barrel of blued metal.

He was standing in the middle of the kitchen, Colt’s gun belt hanging loosely around his hips.

“Saul. Put the revolver down, now.” Colt’s heart hammered painfully against his breastbone. He never liked being on the receiving end of a revolver, especially in the hands of a novice. Knowing how smooth the trigger on his weapon was only heightened that discomfort. Colt swallowed, trying to force his heart from his throat.

Saul jerked the gun belt up as it slid down his legs. “You’re going to teach me how to be a fast gun like you, right, Colt?”

Colt didn’t move, but his heart sank with the boy’s nearly monotone demand. “Saul, aim that gun at the floor. It’s loaded.”

“Not until you promise to teach me how to be a fast gun. I’m old enough to handle a gun.” Saul brought his other hand up to the butt to steady the revolver. “It’s a single-action Peacemaker, isn’t it? Not like those double-action ones that Smith and Wesson make.”

Colt straightened slowly. “Yeah, it’s single-action. Now, do what I said and aim it at the floor, Saul.”

Jenny walked into the kitchen and froze as still as a marble statue. Her dark-eyed gaze darted from Saul and the gun in his hand to Colt’s face.

Saul raised the muzzle and pointed it at Colt’s chest. “Not until you promise to teach me how to be a fast gun—”

Colt stiffened when the barrel came level with his heart.

“—then, I promise, I’ll put it down. I want to be a gunfighter, Colt. I want to find the people who killed Momma and Daddy and make them pay.”

Colt’s heart wrenched. “Saul, only Jenny knows who killed your parents and she isn’t talking about it. I’m not going to teach you how to be a gunfighter. I will not let you be like me. Making other people pay isn’t your job or mine. That’s Marshal Taylor’s job.” He took a step closer to the boy. “Hand me the gun, son.”

Saul shook his head. Something hardened in the depths of the boy’s eyes, sending a corresponding chill through Colt. “Someone killed Momma and Daddy and they’ve got to pay.”

“I’m not arguing that, Saul. I agree with you. Someone needs to hang for what they did to your parents.” He took another step forward. “But when you start trying to mete out justice through the barrel of a gun, it isn’t justice.” Colt closed the distance by another step. “It’s revenge and it means someone else is going to come looking for you for the same reason.”

“Marshal Taylor can’t find them.”

“I know that, son.” Colt froze when Saul pulled the hammer back another click. “But that also means you don’t know who killed your parents. Give me the gun, Saul.”

Jenny was still immobile in the doorway, her face whiter than the first snows of winter.

Saul shook his head, his eyes narrowing, and backed a step away. “If you won’t teach me, I’ll find someone who will.”

Jenny shook her head, tears rolling down her slender face.

“Oh, my God,” Amelia croaked from the doorway.

Colt didn’t risk a glance at her. He never took his gaze from Saul’s pale, sweating face. Was that how he had looked, the first time he held a gun on another man? “Saul, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, wondering when the bullet with your name on it is going to find you.”

“They have to pay,” Saul said, but the hardness was ebbing from his expression. He dropped one hand to hitch up the sliding gun belt, and then steadied the wavering revolver with both hands.

“Yes, they do have to pay for what they did. But you can’t be the one to demand that payment. That’s what a judge and jury are for, when Marshal Taylor finds them.” Colt held his hand out to Saul. “And killing the people who took your mother and father from you will not bring your parents back to you. If you kill the people responsible it’s only going to kill something deep inside of you. Believe me on that.”

Saul wavered. Colt took another step toward the trembling boy. “Saul, my mother was killed when I was twelve. When I was nineteen, I killed the man I believed murdered her. I pushed him into slapping leather so there could be no question of who drew first, but it didn’t bring her back to me. Now, every time a man thinks he can make a name for himself by killing me and I’m forced to kill him, it takes something out of me. My mother didn’t raise me to be this kind of a man.”

Amelia’s muffled sob knifed through him.

“Your mother and father didn’t raise you to be a killer. Your father was a preacher-man, a man of God. Do you think he’d want you to take another man’s life?”

“No.” Saul’s voice was a pained whisper.

Jenny shook her head vigorously.

“I know my mother wouldn’t be proud of what I’ve become. I’m not proud of who I’ve become. Do you think your mother would be proud of you if you took another man’s life?”

Saul shook his head. “No, she wouldn’t.”

In a whisper, Colt repeated, “Let me have the gun, Saul.”

Saul lowered the revolver, gripped it by the cylinder, and then turned it butt end to Colt. He met Colt’s gaze and extended the weapon.

Colt took the gun, thumbed and held the hammer all the way back and then squeezed the trigger to ease the hammer down. He set the gun on the floor, and bent to gather the shaking boy into his arms. He ignored the flare of pain when he moved his shoulder to hold the boy to him.

Saul’s arms slid up around Colt’s neck and he began to sob. “I just want them to pay for what they did. I just want them to pay.”