The Renegades: Cole (7 page)

Then they set fire to her temper. The only worse insult was to be called a horse thief.

“I’m
not
stealing cattle! All I’m doing is taking my own down a public road.”

“And I’m not a day over twenty-one,” her
grizzled accuser said, drawing his mule to an arm’s length in front of Shy Boy, where he could stare Aurora in the face.

“Around here, we hang cow thieves,” called out one of the men riding with him.

Then the leader stood in his ratty wooden stirrups and looked all around them.

“Folks, listen up,” he shouted. “This’n here thinks Rocky Springs is full o’ greenhorns. She’s aimin’ to steal our cattle and throw ‘em in with her herd. Mebbe she’s already did such.”

Astounded, Aurora stared at him, then turned to Cole as a buzz of excitement began all up and down the street. Cole kept his hard brown gaze trained on her accusers.

Her palms went cold. Was this coming to gunplay in a hurry? He couldn’t take on five shotguns with his six-shooter, not with this madman holding the muzzle squarely on Cole’s chest.

She waited for Cole to say something that would give her a hint of what to do, but he sat silent and stone-faced, his gun hand hanging at his side. Why didn’t he do something, say something?
This
was the reason she’d hired him!

But all he did was make a quick gesture of his gun hand toward her, as if
she
should act.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said loudly, drawing herself up to her full height in the saddle, glaring at the man who had accused her.

“You’s mistaken about the public road,” the old reprobate said.

So.
Damn
it. They were here to extract a toll. She’d never heard of such problems anywhere this near Pueblo City, but then she had hardly been off the place all winter.

“Virgil …” said one of his henchmen.

“Shut up, Buster,” said another. “Virgil’s in business now.”

Five pairs of beady eyes were trained on her face, but Virgil’s kept flicking back to Cole. He cocked his grizzled head to one side and squinted at him, then looked back at her.

“Wal?” he said. “You cain’t depend on that curly hair and them big blue eyes t’ move them cattle through here.”

He fixed his beady eyes on Cole.

“Nor on yore gunslinger,
Mister
Cole McCord, neither,” he said.

A cold hand gripped her stomach and squeezed. How did he know Cole? Maybe by sight? Or had word traveled ahead of them from Pueblo City?

Cole watched the men as if they were a contingent of rattlesnakes, but he was not going to open his mouth, she knew that now. Her temper flared, as much at him as at this snaggle-toothed rustler sitting in front of her.

“
You’re
the cow thief, collecting a toll!” she said to Virgil’s face.

He laughed at her. His men grinned at her.

“I’m missin’ three yearling heifers and a
matched pair of black steers,” Virgil said. “You got ‘em.”

Fury and fear raced through her blood, fighting for the control of her feelings, making her hands shake on the reins. She wanted to, desperately, but she wouldn’t let herself turn to Cole again. He had to watch those shotguns and besides, hadn’t she demanded to be trail boss?

And there was no other help. Most of her men couldn’t even see her, had no way of knowing what the holdup was.

She tried to think. God only knew how many head they would demand as toll. But even if Cole took over, there wasn’t anything he could do, either, and she knew it. It was two against five—although the point men might be able to avenge them once they fell. It wouldn’t take many shotgun shells for these idiots to kill them all and get the
whole
herd.

Bubba began to growl, deep in his throat, and Virgil cut his eyes down at him without moving the muzzle of his gun. The one called Buster pointed his weapon at the dog.

Behind her, the point men were coming up on the horses blocking the street, trying to hold the herd’s leaders without letting the cattle turn back when they saw there was no grazing here. The bawling was getting louder, and the ones trapped in the cut would be gouging each other trying to turn around or go on. The others, behind them, would be trying to scatter. This was enough of this.

“I don’t want your cattle,” she said, somehow keeping her voice steady, “which is more than you can say. You’ve made a mistake. I’m not paying a toll. Now get out of my way.”

The tall man leaned from the saddle like a wooden puppet bending at the hip and spit a stream of brown tobacco juice. Then he straightened up and looked around him to make sure he had the attention of everyone within earshot.

“I’m missing three yearling heifers and a matched pair of black steers,” he repeated. “I
ain’t
aimin’ to give them to ye.”

A few mutterings rose from the bystanders. Cole was still silent as a tomb.

“I don’t have your cattle. Get out of my way.”

“Oh, but ye do. And I’ve got friends here. We’ll sort through yore herd ourselves, if’n’ you don’t.”

That’s all she needed. Talk about scattering the herd. She was going to get them moving again if she had to run right over dear Virgil and his crew.

“All right,” she said tightly, “we’ll see who’s right about this. Let’s get them moving again, ride alongside, and
look
for your five head.”

She turned away haughtily and wheeled Shy Boy, goose bumps springing up on the skin between her shoulder blades, every nerve tingling in expectation of a blast from the shotgun or a shot from Cole’s gun. But none came.

Aurora rode to the side of the road, all the while signaling the point men to start the cattle
walking again. For one heart-stopping instant, she thought Virgil and his friends were staying behind to shoot Cole if they weren’t going to shoot her, but finally they started moving their mules.

“Buster! Toady! You two search the herd on that side of the road fer my stock,” Virgil yelled, loud enough for the whole street to hear. “The rest of ye come with me and keep an eye on this here fast-draw fool, McCord, an’ the thievin’ girl.”

So they moved toward her, Cole in front of Virgil, who kept the gun on him. The other two had one trained on him, the other on her.

It seemed only seconds before the stick man bellowed in her ear.

“Now tell me again you ain’t got none o’ my stock,” he yelled. “Do you see yore brand on them cattle right there?”

A paralyzing shock went through her. He was nodding his head and his friends were pointing, from both sides of the street.

She stood in her own stirrups to see better. Sure enough, the cattle he had described were bunched on the edge of her herd, trotting along with them, a dozen yards or more behind the brindle lead cow.

Her knees gave way, and she dropped back into the saddle. Now the whole town would be after her for a cow thief.

She ignored Virgil and looked at Cole.

“How can that be?” she called to him over the noises of the cattle and the men’s voices
urging them along. “How’d they get in with ours?”

He shrugged.

“They must’ve had some help.”

Virgil laughed.

“Must have,” he said, and spat another stream of tobacco juice.

He glared at Aurora with a triumphant gleam in his eye. Then he stood up in his oxbow stirrups.

“Cut ‘em outta there, boys!” he yelled. “Them’s mine an’ she ain’t gittin’ away with ‘em!”

Aurora was relieved to see Frank move in smoothly to separate the tight little knot of strange cattle from the herd. He could do it without scattering any.

“She’s a cattle thief, I tell you, and no tellin’ what else!” Virgil yelled. “If’n’ she ain’t up to somethin’ underhanded, how come she’s hired a shooter to side her? This here famous man my boys have got their sights set on is none other than Cole McCord!”

Interested murmurs came from the townspeople, and they stretched their necks to see better. Virgil waved one bony arm in the air for them to draw in closer.

“This ‘ere is how come a petticoated pretty little thing is atrailin’ a herd,” he yelled, looking all around, into one face and then another. “She’s a-figurin’ she can build up her stock on the way t’ Texas and if’n’ she gets caught won’t
nobody have the stomach fer hangin’ a woman.”

Hanging! The word rang in her ears. Now he was threatening to
hang
her if she didn’t give him some of her stock? A rustler given to blackmail?

“This is nothing but a plot to make me look bad,” she said loudly to the varied faces looking up at her. “I did
not
steal his cattle. He put them in my herd himself.”

No one answered, no one expressed an opinion one way or the other. That silence made her nervous.

“I say we hold this herd and hang this little vixen!” Virgil shouted.

His shotgun still trained on Cole made her even more nervous. It was wobbling as Virgil warmed to his speech—he might even fire it without intending to.

The townspeople’s curious eyes were staring holes in her, and her face began to burn in spite of the cold seeping through her insides. She felt a terrible need to move her horse closer to Cole’s, but she was frozen in place. Oh,
why
didn’t he do something? But what could he do without getting himself killed before her eyes?

The cattle kept shuffling by, moving more quickly now, pushed from behind by the ones that had been bottled up in the cut. The riders were urging them on, too, anxious to get them out of the town.

Panic threatened, Aurora’s heart raced, and her strained nerves made her arms tingle. Was
Virgil letting the whole herd go? Did he not want several head for toll, after all? Was the whole purpose of this ridiculous charade to jail her or
hang
her and Cole?

“What say?” Virgil shouted. “I reckon we oughtta save the folks down the road some cattle and some trouble and take these two off’n’ the trail.”

His companions shouted agreement, and Aurora thought some of the townspeople did, too. She searched their faces, trying to read them.

“She’s rich,” Virgil yelled. “And she’s out to rob and steal from the poor! I’m tellin’ ye …”

His raspy voice shut off abruptly, then a shot cracked, followed instantly by the shattering roar of a shotgun blast.

Shy Boy half-reared, but Aurora jerked him around anyway, frantically trying to find Cole, already weak in the knees from what she might see.

He was locked with Virgil in a one-armed struggle for the shotgun, which he immediately won by kicking the skinny man out of the saddle. His other arm wasn’t wounded, either, she saw with relief; it held his six-shooter, which he was firing at Virgil’s man behind him.

“Aurora!” he yelled.

He was wheeling his horse toward her as he called, using only his legs because he had a gun in each hand, leveling Virgil’s shotgun and his six-shooter in front of him. For the first time she glimpsed Virgil’s man who had been holding the gun on her—he was still behind her, but he
no longer held a weapon and he sat slumped in his saddle holding onto one arm, his face a mask of pain.

That was the last thing clear. Cole fired the six-shooter at Virgil’s other henchman, holstered it, and grabbed for her reins all in one move. Shy Boy plunged toward him, and in a blur that was made up of cattle and dust on one side of her and a long, steep sweeping of pine trees on the other, she leaned over her horse’s neck and rode.

T
hey raced up and up the side of a stony, tree-dotted hill. When they’d reached the cover of the thicker trees, they slowed to a long trot slanting across the side of the slope, always heading south, away from Rocky Springs. Aurora reclaimed her reins then, but the terrain still kept them riding single file.

She was happy to let Cole lead, in case there were any more mule-riding hostiles around, but she wanted to talk. She was bursting with relief and gratitude and excitement and frustration and questions, not to mention theories about Virgil and his men. But Cole had signaled for quiet when he’d returned her reins, so she kept quiet as they rode and he only muttered, “Heads down, there’s a low limb coming up,” then, after a long pause to listen, “I don’t hear a thing. I reckon Virgil must be having trouble raising a posse.”

Another mile, and finally he called a halt.

“Catch your breath,” he said to her in his
normal voice. “You’re pale as milk.”

“I am
not!
I’m not even scared anymore.”

She took a long breath and unwound her stiff fingers from Shy Boy’s mane.

He watched her.

“If you’re not scared anymore, why’re you still pulling out your poor horse’s hair?” he said, laughing a little.

Drawing in another, deeper breath, she tried to will her heart to slow down.

“Thank goodness, he still has a little bit of mane left,” she said, smoothing the crumpled handful. “I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

Then she looked at Cole and couldn’t think of a single one of the things she’d been so eager to say before they stopped. He gave her a sympathetic smile.

“You had a right to be a little bit rattled,” he said. “Ol’ Virgil and crew was enough to spook you right out of your skin.”

She nodded.

“To the point I was thinking of trying to ride right over them or through them, screaming my head off,” she said, with a shaky laugh, “and shotguns be damned.”

“I’m glad you decided against
that
course of action,” he drawled, with that slow grin that always made her helpless to take her eyes off his mouth. “It could’ve left me in a troublesome spot.”

They both laughed, and she felt better.

“You took care of the whole sticky situation
in fine fashion. You probably saved our lives.”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Could be Virgil couldn’t have talked up a lynching, after all.”

“He’d have done
something
to us—insisted on the lawman jailing us for stealing his cows, most likely. You know that.”

He gave that little abrupt half-nod that cowboys used to show hearty agreement.

“Looked like it.”

As calm and unruffled as if they were out for a pleasure ride, he started them moving south again, this time side by side.

“Anyhow, Cole, thanks for getting us out of it.”

“That’s what you hired me for.”

“Speaking of
that
—what took you so long? There for
ages
I thought you never were going to do anything because you kept putting it all on me.”

“Whoa,” he said.

Border Crossing stopped in his tracks.

“Situation like that’s why the trail boss draws a little extra pay,” he said, scowling. Shy Boy stopped too.

“But the bodyguard starts earning
his
pay when there’s shotguns pointed at the trail boss.”

“I’m not hired to do your palaverin’ for you. You’re plenty capable of doing
that
for yourself.”

“Well, thank you very much!”

“Now, don’t get all flustered. We just misjudged
their intentions taking them for toll-takers, that’s all.”

She put her hands on her hips.

“Well, even so, weren’t you planning to do anything to save my cattle?”

He grinned that grin again.

“I’m guardin’
your
body. Not your cows’.” He smooched to Border and started them south again. “And I must admit that I’d sure rather watch yours than theirs.”

“Don’t you try to change the subject,” she said, and dragged her gaze from his sensual mouth to look him in the eye. “I wanted you to tell Virgil that they should get out of the way of my herd that minute or you would shoot them all.”

He threw back his head and laughed, really laughed.

“You’re not paying me enough for that kind of action, Miss Aurora,” he said. “And, even if you were, I’m not quite
that
fast.”

“I think you are,” she said. “I think you were just waiting to see what I would do about the toll.”

That made him laugh even more.

“My curiosity don’t rum
quite
that strong,” he said. “Although I’ll tell you straight that you do rouse it some.”

She felt a blush warm her cheeks.

“Well, you rouse mine a
lot
,” she blurted, before she thought. “I mean you
did
… back there in the road … wondering if you had any idea what we should do.”

“I’ve been in worse jams.”

He made a gesture of disgust and turned suddenly somber. “I deserve to be horsewhipped, letting them get the drop on me like that. I’m gonna have to do more scouting ahead, and behind us, too. Can’t take a chance on another ambush.”

A new, fretful fear chilled her. It was too frightening not to have him riding beside her; she didn’t even want to think of it. What would’ve happened to her if he hadn’t been there to come to her rescue?

“No,” she said tightly, “stay with me. You can’t be everywhere and see everything.”

He appeared not to even hear.

“My gut should’ve told me,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I must be losin’ my handle all of a sudden.”

He spoke in a calm, careless tone, but it held an edge of hardness that told her he didn’t intend to let such a thing happen again. Oh, Lord, he’d be going out scouting around all the time and leaving her alone.

“You’re only human,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended. “You couldn’t have known they were waiting for us. You can’t see everything for miles around.”

Her voice came out sounding like a stranger’s, even shaking a little bit. He finally looked at her, gave her a long, searching look.

She wanted to cry, suddenly, with relief at their narrow escape and frustration that he was
even
thinking
of not being constantly at her side every minute from now on.

“Aw, come on, now,” he drawled, “we’re taking all this way too serious. I don’t see a scratch on us, do you?”

She forced a smile onto her stiff lips.

“You’re just like all the rest of the men—can’t stand to see a woman cry,” she said.

He raised his brows.

“All the rest of the men? …” he said, in a teasing singsong meant to distract her.

She ignored that.

“Well, you needn’t worry,” she said, and was thankful that she sounded much more like herself. “I’m not going to put you through any tears. I’m not going to worry about what’s down the road, I’m just going to be happy right now because you got us out of a really dangerous situation.”

“Me, too,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong about this second-guessing of my tactics. I
am
plenty glad not to be swinging from a tree right now.”

She smiled back at him and relaxed inside for the first time since she’d seen Virgil on his mule.

“Well, you’re the one who saved us,” she said, “even if you did take your time about doing it. All
I
could think to do was try to
talk
the good people of Rocky Springs out of hanging us.”

He raised his eyebrows, and his eyes twinkled with glee.

“See? What’d I tell you about the power of your palavering? Now I wish I’d held off a few minutes more to hear you. Most likely you could’ve talked ‘em into hanging Virgil instead.”

“Just because I talked
you
into coming on this pleasant little jaunt with me and my cows.”

It pleased her that that made him laugh. Then he fixed her with a long, serious look, as if he were sizing her up all over again from a new perspective.

“We
both
got it done,” he said. “I wouldn’t’ve had my chance at ol’ Virge if you hadn’t ridden to the side of the road and split the rubes into two bunches.”

She stared at him in surprise.

“I never thought of it that way.”

“You should.”

“Ol’ Virge himself did that for us,” she said, trying to be as nonchalant as he had been in accepting praise. “He sent the others to the opposite side of the street.”

“You made it happen,” he said generously.

The warmth from his praise began to melt the cold knot lingering in her stomach. Maybe she
hadn’t
been so helpless, after all. Oh, yes, she had. Her riding away from the bad men had been desperation, not craftiness or courage.

“Good ol’ Virge,” Cole said, lifting his horse into a trot again.

By unspoken agreement, they began angling down and down out of the trees toward the valley floor and the herd.

“Good ol’ snaky Virge,” she said. “Gates hired him, don’t you think?”

Cole shot her a quick, approving glance.

“Yep, glad you noticed. And I’d call him good ol’
simple
Virge. Gates probably would’ve paid him just as much for shooting us but he thought he had to throw a necktie party.”

“I don’t know. If they’d hanged us, then the responsibility would’ve been spread around to the whole town. And that’s more Gates’s way. He’s an upstanding citizen, you know, one who doesn’t like to take responsibility for his crimes.”

Cole nodded.

“At least now we know Gates is serious.”

“
I’ve
known it all along—didn’t you believe me?” she said indignantly.

“I took the job, didn’t I?”

That silenced her as they made their way downward to take the trail again. Did he mean he’d signed on to protect her from Gates and not for the money? Not to get out of town and keep from killing Kid Dolby? Not to go back to his home state of Texas?

No. It was silly to even let herself think something like that.

It was silly to be thinking so much about Cole McCord, even if he
had
just become her hero of the day. She must get her mind on her business and keep it there.

“How far do you think the herd is by now?”

“We’re ahead of ‘em,” he said. “We covered some ground back there.”

“Our horses covered it, you mean.”

She leaned over and gave Shy Boy’s neck a hug.

“You did great,” she told him. “Good Boy.”

Cole cleared his throat ostentatiously.

She turned and saw mischief in his eyes.

“What?”

“I reckon I deserve a hug, too,” he drawled. “I was the one kicked ol’ Shy Boy loose so’s he
could
carry you out of there.”

“Cole McCord, you’re impossible,” she said lightly, entering into the fun, glad to get her mind off the future. “First trying to bet a kiss, now shamelessly asking for a hug …”

“There’s no
try
about that bet,” he said, holding her gaze fast with his hot brown one. “It’s a done deal.”

Her heart began suddenly beating faster. Why did the idea of kissing him do this to her? No, of him kissing
her
. She had no intention of kissing him back if such an unlikely thing should occur. She had been kissed before, several times, and it certainly was nothing to get all wrought up about.

“You
are
impossible,” she said.

“That’s what they all tell me.”

“Who all?” she said boldly, eager to know something about his past, something that might help her understand why he had taken the job with her.

But he changed the subject.

“You’ve got more sand than most, though, Aurora, you’ve got to know that. It took a lot
of guts to turn your back on those shotguns the way you did.”

That pleased her inordinately, but she tried not to show it.

“No, it was pure frustration,” she said. “Worry about the herd. I couldn’t bear to just sit there until the cattle scattered or ran over each other to get out of the cut.”

“Spoken like a true trail boss,” he said, as they trotted off the slope and onto the flatter ground of the narrow valley. “Let’s go see about your cows and their nursemaids.”

“While keeping a lookout for ol’ Virge,” she said.

“You got it. But I doubt he’ll come after us now if he didn’t follow right then. Not without new orders.”

“Maybe he’ll run off and hide in the mountains as a failure. Lloyd Gates has a rep as a pretty hard boss.”

“Maybe. But if it’s not Virgil, be ready for somebody else to give it another try on down the trail.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” she said dryly.

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“No, what you’re here for is for
you
to be ready,” she said, and gave silent thanks again that he’d accepted her offer of a job for
whatever
reason.

They picked up the pace and didn’t talk any more. Aurora was glad, because her relief at their escape and her pleasure at Cole’s praise
were sinking now, beneath some other feelings she couldn’t quite name.

Or perhaps she was only still scared. That surge of stark fear when those shabby men had materialized in the middle of the road, three shotguns at the ready, would stay with her for a long, long time.

They met the herd within a mile, pushing on a little bit faster than before they’d come through Rocky Springs, with the flank men riding back and forth between their own positions and the drag to help watch for attackers from the rear. The wagons had gone forward without knowing anything of what had happened.

“We won’t stop for nooning,” Aurora told Monte, whom she had chosen as her segundo. “Tell the men Cole and I will be back after awhile with cold food from the wagon to keep them going until dark. I want to bed them down as far away from Rocky Springs as we can.

“You got it,” Monte said. “Them plowboys is liable to follow and try to give us a stampede for a good-bye present.”

“I’ll pick a spot where they’ll be hard to scatter,” she promised, and, waving to the men farther back, turned her horse to head south.

What if there was no such spot? What if Gates did arrange a stampede the first night on the trail? What if she didn’t know what to do about it, what orders to give? What if she froze with fear and couldn’t come out of it?