The Outlaw's Kiss (an Old West Romance) (Wild West Brides) (21 page)

Sooner than I thought, we came to a tent with two
pairs of bare feet sticking out of the entrance. It was larger than the others
surrounding it, but still just barely spacious enough for two men to sleep
abreast. “No sounds,” he said, cocking his gun as quietly as possible. He
peered into the darkness, then when he was satisfied that we had the right
tent, he grabbed Eustace Rawls by the foot.

“Whassat? Huh?” Rawls sat bolt upright and
immediately, Seth grabbed the collar of his long-johns and yanked him out of
his tent, gun pressed against Rawls’s throat.

“Quiet!” Seth snarled. “Keep your damn voice down
or I’ll blow your brains all over your friend.”

At that, Captain Ernie began to stir. “Eustace?”
he groaned. “Where’d you come from? Hey! What’s going on?”

Seth gritted his teeth and pushed his revolver
harder against Eustace’s throat. “Keep quiet, Ernie,” he whispered. “You make a
noise and I’ll put a bullet through Eustace’s head.”

I took a slow, silent step backwards. They had yet
to notice me. Rawls was held facing away from me and Ernie was still inside the
tent. I clenched the little weapon in my fist, trying to banish the awful
thought that I may have to use it.

For an agonizingly long, tense moment, the
Captain’s silhouette, thrown against the canvas by the huge campfire in the
center of the tent city, sat unmoving, almost intimidating in its stillness. No
one moved, no breeze blew; it was almost as though the entire world stopped
turning while Ernie decided whether to go along with the sheriff, or not.

“Ernie,” he urged in a soft voice. “Put your hands
out in front of you and come out of the tent. I just need to ask you two a
couple questions, you understand?” Seth shot a quick glance to me and I
retreated a bit further, well outside of eyeshot. “Ernie, don’t reach over
there. Don’t make me see if I remembered to load my gun. Oh, yeah, I
remembered. I can see the bullets in there.”

Rawls squirmed. “Just do what he says, Cap’n. This
ain’t a time for making a stand. Whatever he’s got ain’t worth worrying about,
nor gettin’ me shot over.”

“Listen to your friend.” Seth’s voice was slow,
calm and soothing. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

The big man in the tent grunted and his shadow
shrugged its shoulders. “If you say so, Eustace. I dunno why this couldn’t have
waited until morning though, if he ain’t arrestin’ us.”

“That’s it, Ernie, that’s it. Nice and easy. Hands
out front, just like that.” The sheriff eased Eustace to his feet, and
retrieved one pair of handcuffs from his belt. Eustace hissed when he felt the
cold metal slip around his wrists, but didn’t protest. “Hands out front. Good,”
he repeated.

With a deep breath, Ernie pushed to his feet and
his head emerged from the tent. “Look here, Ernie,” Sheriff Bullock said. “Over
here, good. They’re just for your safety, and mine.”

As Seth locked the cuffs on Eustace, Ernie dropped
to all fours, hands on the ground by his knees. Just then, both Seth and I saw
a glint at exactly the same time. The butt of a gun, loose in an unsnapped
holster, sat only inches from Captain Ernie’s fingers. Seth swallowed hard,
then slid his pistol back into his gun belt without disengaging the hammer. His
hand hovered above it like a gunfighter a half-second from killing a man.

“Hands up, Ernie, get your hands off the ground
and stand up. Don’t be a fool, Ernie. I see your gun. I’m warning you right now
not to go for it, or even make me half-think you’re going to.”

He struggled to hold Eustace’s hands still in the
shackles. If he had to lunge at the Captain, Rawls could easily twist away, and
I didn’t want to think what would happen next. Seth’s face showed clear strain
as he tried to secure both men. The chains around Rawls’s wrists grated against
the metal cuffs, and Ernie still crouched to the ground with his hand
dangerously close to that pistol.

“Get up, Ernie,” Seth growled, clenching his jaw.

The big man’s hand moved, but not in the right
direction.

An image flashed through my mind of Seth firing
his gun, Ernie dropping and Rawls getting away and somehow getting that chain
between his hands around Seth’s throat. I swallowed, closed my eyes tight for a
half of an instant, and then leaped out of the shadow behind the tent.

“Wha’ in the hell?” Ernie cursed in a single
syllable.

I swatted the butt of his gun and, luckily, he was
so surprised that he didn’t have the presence of mind to take a swing at me.
His big, meaty hand would certainly have knocked me well clear, but in that
panicked moment of chaos, I managed to stick my foot out and push the pistol
away.

Seth let out a nervous laugh then breathed a heavy
sigh of relief. “Couldn’t have done it better myself. You just keep amazing me.”

“I surprised myself a bit,” I said, flushed but
proud.

“Hold this,” he said, and I took the chain between
Rawls’s hands as Seth shackled the Captain and grabbed them both. “I hate to
ask you to do this, but –”

“You’ve said that a few times this evening,
Sheriff,” I said with a grin. This was
not
the Clara I knew. Three
months ago, I would have fainted at, well, most any of this. But without even
thinking about it, I retrieved Ernie’s pistol from the ground and held it
almost properly.

By that time, the noise had roused the men in the
adjacent tents, at least those who weren’t too drunk, anyway.

“Hold that gun on the Captain,” he said in a
hushed voice.

I did as he said.

“All right, you two,” Seth said. “This doesn’t
have to get messy. We’re going back to the courthouse and I’m going to ask you
some questions, do you understand?”

Rawls spat across the sheriff’s boot and Ernie
grumbled something incoherent, but certainly vulgar.

“I’ll take that as a yes. If either of you make a
move, you’re getting a bullet in you. Am I being clear? Answer me, one of you.”

“Yeah,” Rawls said. “I hear you.”

“Good. Clara,” he turned to me briefly. “Pull back
on that hammer until it clicks.”

It was harder than I thought, but as soon as the
mechanism made that noise and the trigger pushed forward against my finger, I
knew I had it. “Got it,” I said.

“Now don’t take it off him. Neither of these two
are brave enough to try anything, especially since they both know better than
to test me. Ain’t that right?”

Rawls grunted his assent.

As the tent city came to life around us, Seth and
I backed, very slowly and very carefully, away and to the relative safety of
the road leading to town.

October 8, 1878 – Dawn

Deadwood, Dakota Territory

––––––––

D
awn stretched out over the eastern sky as we
finally made our slow trek back to town with Rawls and his goon. The pair had
been quiet for most of the mile’s journey, but that changed as soon as town,
and the possibility that someone would listen, appeared before us.

“What a wild injustice plays out,” Rawls began to
scream at the top of his lungs. “Two peaceful citizens are bein’ dragged to
town by a crooked sheriff! What injustice!”

“Shut up!” Seth snarled. “It’s not my fault you
couldn’t be happy just prospecting and needed vengeance.”

“Vengeance?” Rawls’s voice was piercingly loud,
echoing off the buildings that lined the mostly-empty streets. “I am a proud
patriot who warned you of the raid by those bastard savages. If weren’t for me,
that coward Eli Masterson wouldn’t be in your custody!”

A little activity began to stir in a corner
building as we passed. Lamps were lit, and a few confused faces appeared at
windows.

“Hey!” Someone shouted from the balcony. “The
sheriff’s got Goldtooth and the Captain! He’s got ‘em both handcuffed, and that
James woman’s pointing a gun at Ernie!”

“Oh now, I didn’t expect this at all.” Seth’s
voice was plainly unenthusiastic about this turn of events as he glanced back
at me.

Eustace spat and continued his tirade. “Maybe word
got back to the fair people of this town about your vile disregard for justice?
Maybe if you can’t quietly drag us away, you’ll have to stand tall for what you
done? Injustice! Abuse! The sheriff is abusing his power. He’s trying to shame
a decent citizen to save his criminal friend from going to court!”

“Quiet, you,” Seth. He grabbed Rawls by the hair
and jerked him around. “Quiet!”

I rushed to Seth’s side and tried to calm down the
thrashing he was putting on Eustace, hoping that would make the man keep his
voice down somewhat. “That’s enough, sheriff,” I said. “That’s not going to
help anything. 

Rawls answered with a wild, angry-sounding howl.
Apparently, the sight of others infused him with a certain courage that allowed
him to begin carrying on without fear of reprisal when moments before, he’d
been resigned to a slow walk to the courthouse. Seth shot him a nasty glance,
but turned back to face the town rather than fight, dragging him along behind
by the chain connecting his wrist.

Ernie just followed along, though he did send some
nasty glares my way every few seconds.

“What are we to do?”

“Get to the courthouse. That’s all. Just get to
the courthouse. Sol Star will be there for his shift at watching the jail,”
Seth replied. “Just get to the courthouse.”

“But what then?” I asked.

Seth shook his head. “Think of it when we get
there. Just keep going.”

Rawls continued screeching and carrying on as
Sheriff Bullock dragged him through the street. The more he screamed and
yelled, the more people awakened from their beds, or their stupors, and came to
watch. Slowly, though not as slowly as either I or Seth would’ve liked, the
dirt street began to fill, and as it did, confusion gave way to chaos.

Straight through the main intersection in the
center of the town, we went. From all four sides, people emerged from rooms,
and came out of doors. Some were leering, some shouting and some brandished weapons
of all imaginable types.

“Get to the courthouse,” Seth said through gritted
teeth when he turned to check on me. “Just get to the courthouse, no matter
what happens. We’ll be safe there, and as soon as we get these two in jail,
everything will calm down.

I ducked my head just in time for a coffee cup to
sail past me and shatter against the wall. When I looked in the direction it
flew from, such a crowd had gathered out front of a boarding house that I
couldn’t begin to divine who’d thrown it, so I just ducked my head, drew my
shawl up as a kind of make-shift shield against whatever else might go my way,
and faced forward.

My hands trembled, but I was determined not to
show any fear, to show any weakness, in the face of the danger surrounding us.
I knew it wouldn’t do any good. No one was waiting to sweep down from the
heavens and pluck us from the earth.
Get to the courthouse. Just get to the
courthouse, no matter what happens
. Seth’s words rattled in my mind.

Something else – a bottle, I realized after it hit
wood and exploded into a thousand tiny shards – whizzed past my head so closely
that I felt the wind from it against my neck. That time, I didn’t bother
turning to look.

“Let ‘em go!” Someone shouted. “They ain’t done
nothin’!”

From where we were, the Gem stood a thousand feet
on our left, and straight ahead, about the same distance, was the courthouse.
The side that Itan and his band blew off to free Eli had been roughly patched,
but was still a weak spot – only boards and plaster, rather than concrete. It
wasn’t going to keep assailants out for long, but might give us just enough
time to figure out a plan of escape, if it came to that. I hoped that Seth was
right, and as soon as we got out of view and no one could hear Rawls’s endless
ranting, they’d lose interest.

But none of that mattered. Not until we actually
got there.

A thrown cup and a thrown bottle became a steady
hail of hurled things, all of which missed, thankfully, but threw debris that
didn’t. A mist of broken mortar and splintered wood struck my cheek, drawing
blood, and forced me to look away for a moment in surprised pain.

That one, single moment, was all it took.

“Now!” Rawls shrieked. “Do what I pay you for!”

The Captain turned and darted toward me, yanking
his shackle chains out of the sheriff’s hands. He charged me like an enraged
bull, but in the instant before he struck, I stumbled into one of the thousand
muck-filled potholes on the road and tumbled forward.

Ernie let out a terrible roar and dove at me, but
missed and crunched his shoulder into the ground, going down with a howl.

“Enough!” Seth fired two rounds into the air, but
it did no good. “Enough, Ernie, stop this
instant
or you’ll get a bullet
in the chest!”

I stumbled a second time as I tried to regain my
feet, barely getting my hands underneath me in time to stop from bouncing off
the ground. Luckily, my combination of stumbling and trying to regain my
footing pushed me close enough to Seth that he was able to help me off the
ground before Ernie caught me with another charging shoulder, but not before
the gun was throttled out of my hand by the impact, and bounced harmlessly into
a wagon-wheel rut, disappearing beneath the brown water filling the rut.

“Clara!” Seth shouted. “Get to the jail! Just go,
I’ll handle these two.”

The front door of the Gem swung open hard and
fast, slapped against the whitewashed walls and then swung closed, then open,
as first a handful, and then a whole crowd, of men emerged from inside to gawk
at the proceedings. I took a quick look up to the balcony, but was surprised to
see Mr. Swearengen still within somewhere.

“Clara!” Seth called my name again, jarring me
from my torpid trance. “Listen to me! Get up. Get to the jail and, here take
this!”