Nan Ryan (8 page)

“The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall …” The minister’s strong, clear voice carried on the cold afternoon winds.

Lew Hatton, the collar of his dark chesterfield coat turned up around his ears, stood in the weak winter sunlight before the newly dug grave, his hands folded before him, eyes dry.

Dan’s was the second funeral Lew had attended that day. He preferred this simple graveside service to the pageantry of the morning’s lengthy ceremony at Saint Mary’s.

He looked down at the closed pine coffin.

And saw again that other one, that heavy bronze coffin, open and draped in white lace. He was again lifting that delicate lace to look one final time on her angelic face, so beautiful, so peaceful in death.

Teresa.
Mi tesoro
.

“… as the soul returneth to God.” The minister concluded and closed his Bible. The short service ended with a prayer.

“Won’t you come home with us, Lew,” said Pascual Castillo. “We will share our grief.”

Shaking his dark head, Lew turned and walked away as the first few flakes of snow swirled down out of the wintry New Mexico sky.

Back in his quiet, lonely mansion, Lew shed his coat, poured himself a stiff drink, and stood staring sightlessly into the leaping flames burning brightly in the stone fireplace.

He had lost them both. His brother and his sweetheart.

Dan Nighthorse had lived for ten days before infection had set in. Long enough to tell Lew who had shot him.

“It was him, Lew. The Texas Kid,” Dan had said. “Big dark bearded man with gray eyes and no left earlobe. Teresa? Is she …?”

“Teresa is fine, Dan,” Lew had lied. “Badly frightened, but unharmed.”

In the beginning Lew had believed that it was true. Teresa had weepingly told him that nothing had happened other than the robbery. The bandits had taken her diamond engagement ring and her cross. He had consoled her, assuring her that the jewelry was not important. There would be plenty of diamond rings and gold crosses.

He had felt sure she would be fine when the shock of her ordeal had worn off and she felt safe and secure again at home. But it hadn’t happened. She was never herself again. She was nervous and distraught and cold and withdrawn. She shrank from his caresses, found excuses to stay away from him.

When she abruptly called off their engagement and entered Saint Mary’s convent, Lew finally forced himself to consider the real reason Teresa had changed so much since the holdup. The hot water that poured into his mouth as fast as he could swallow it was his body’s way of telling him he had guessed the horrible truth.

Two short days after entering the convent, Teresa was dead.

They told him that she had died of natural causes, but he knew that a healthy twenty-year-old woman did not die of natural causes. It was whispered that she had taken her own life, but that wasn’t true either, as far as he was concerned.

His beautiful Teresa had been murdered by the Texas Kid, the same as his brother Dan. The Kid had killed them both. Murdered them in cold blood. Ended their lives before they had ever really lived.

Slowly Lew sagged to his knees before the fireplace. He bowed his head. A sob of anguish—too long denied—broke from his aching throat. His wide shoulders began to shake uncontrollably, and his body jerked. He fell over onto his stomach and cried heart-brokenly, pounding his fists on the floor until his knuckles were red and raw.

Lew stayed there through the long sleepless night while the fire burned out in the stone fireplace and the desert winds howled outside the frosty windows and the room turned as cold as his shattered world.

At dawn he rose from the hard floor. His dreams, his tears, his regrets, had vanished in the night. Only the need for revenge remained.

Lew Hatton strapped on his gun belt.

Mollie shivered and wondered who would be next.

The past year had been a very bad one for the Renegades. Some unknown, overly diligent bounty hunter seemed to have a blood vendetta against the gang. One by one the men who rode with the Rogers Renegades had disappeared.

The Mexican cousins, Jesus and Arto, who shared the same birthday, were the first to be captured. The story came back that when they rode up to Tillie Howard’s Parlour House in Paso del Norte to celebrate, they were greeted by a cold-eyed bounty hunter who had leveled his loaded pistols at them and said, “Happy birthday,
amigos.”

Next it was N. C. Petty. He had gotten so homesick he had ridden all the way back to El Dorado, Arkansas. He’d no more than sat down at a faro table than the dealer grinned at N.C. and flipped—not a card—but a pair of handcuffs on him, and said coolly, “Welcome home, N.C.”

Mollie found it uncanny that the lone bounty chaser had so easily succeeded where dozens of lawmen had failed. For three years the Renegades had lived in the same grand hacienda fifteen miles south of the border without fear of apprehension. They had raided at will in the U.S. territories and had seldom even come close to being captured.

But for the past year, the danger of crossing the border had made only the most lucrative of scores worth the risk. Even in Mexico, Mollie no longer felt safe. Gone was the big hacienda with its luxuries and servants. They now lived in a never-ending succession of Mexican hotels, moving often from village to village, trusting no one. And still Steven Andrews had been captured in broad daylight from a south-of-the-border cantino.

That last incident had happened a couple of weeks ago, and with the springtime death of Will Hurdman from consumption and the flight of young Raul Rodriguez to Guadalajara, there were now only three Renegades. Her papa. The Kid. And herself.

Mollie felt it was time to give up this dangerous profession. She had argued her point often lately, and to her surprise, the Kid agreed. But only after one last big raid.

Gold mine money was pouring into the Douglas, Arizona, bank. They could grab it and be back across the border in no time.

Mollie was dead set against it, and as soon as she could get her father off alone, she told him so.

“I am ready to give up this kind of life,” said Cordell Rogers. “I’m old and I’m tired and the money doesn’t mean anything to me. I just want peace. I wish that we could …”

“What, Papa? Tell me,” Mollie prompted.

“Nothing. Tell you what, if you’ll stay here, I’ll go with the Kid to Douglas and make it my last holdup.”

“No, I’m coming with you,”

“Mollie, honey, just this once, could you please obey your old papa and stay here?”

“I’ll stay,” she said, “but as soon as you get back, we’re clearing out. You and me, without the Kid.”

Cordell Rogers nodded. “That might not be such a bad idea.”

Cordell Rogers and the Texas Kid, their saddlebags filled with stolen money, galloped out of Douglas, Arizona. A deputy sheriff and a half dozen townsmen chased them for a couple of miles, then turned back.

Relieved that the robbery and lawmen and danger were behind him, Cordell Rogers spurred his mount ahead of the Kid’s. He felt lighthearted for the first time in years. In half an hour they would be back across the border and by nightfall he’d be at their hotel pouring himself a whiskey while Mollie smiled and counted the money.

“Colonel,” called the Kid, “hold up a minute.”

Rogers reined in his mount, turned and squinted at the Kid. “Something wrong?”

“Not a thing,” said the Kid as he drew one of his ivory-handled Colts. “See that mine shack off to your left. Ride to it.”

“What the hell’s gotten into you?” asked Rogers. “Put that gun away.”

“Ride to the shack, Colonel,” the Kid repeated, his gun aimed at Rogers.

At the abandoned wooden shack both men dismounted. The Kid hung his sombrero on the saddle horn and, indicating the shack’s open door, said, “After you, Colonel.”

Inside they stood facing each other, Cordell Rogers with his hands raised, the Kid with both pistols pointed at him.

“Why, Jeff?” Rogers asked. “You’ve been like a son to me.”

“Sorry, Colonel, sentimentality doesn’t do a lot for me.”

“The question is still why?”

“Necessity. No other reason. Alive, you’re in my way. Dead, you have great value.”

“Your reasoning escapes me.”

“No doubt. There was a time you were sharp and I admired your intelligence. Now you’re nothing but a whiskey-soaked old fool and you’re standing in my way.” He laughed at the hurt expression on Rogers’s ruddy face. “All these years you’ve called the shots when it should have been me. I’ve been the brains behind the outfit, yet every time we pull a heist, every damned newspaper credits the Rogers Renegades.”

“Is that what this is about? Because the gang went by my name and you didn’t get your share of notoriety?”

“That’s not it,” the Kid scoffed. “I want Mollie and I want her now.”

“Mollie is not going to—”

“Shut up! I’ll tell you what Mollie is going to do. She’s going to marry me. I’ll console her over her father’s death and she’ll fall right into my arms.”

“Jesus Christ, after all these years you still don’t know a thing about my daughter. Mollie will
never
marry you.”

The Kid’s eyes narrowed. “I know how to handle women like Mollie. She’s spirited and needs a firm hand. I’ll tame her.”

He fired one of his drawn revolvers.

Cordell Rogers didn’t flinch when the bullet stung his left ear lobe, tearing it away. Blood dripped down onto his shoulder.

“Now I understand,” he said with no emotion.

“Do you?”

“You figure that when the authorities find my body, they will think I’m you.”

“So the liquor hasn’t completely pickled your brain, eh, Colonel?” said the Kid. “You’re right. When your body is found, word will spread that the Texas Kid has been killed. Meanwhile I’ll have Mollie and the money.”

“I like the scheme. Only problem is, if they find me too soon, they’ll wonder when the Texas Kid’s hair turned red.”

The Kid grinned. “I’m told that when a man is burned, his hair is the first thing to go.”

“I see,” said Cordell Rogers.

“Good for you.” One-handed, the Kid unfastened the clasp of the gold cross he wore around his neck. Handing it to Rogers, he commanded, “Put this on.”

Puzzled, Cordell Rogers took the cross, turned it over, and read the inscription:
Mi tesoro
. “Is this added identification?”

“You talk too much.” The Kid aimed, squeezed the trigger again, and watched in fascination as the bullet slammed into Rogers’s chest. Rogers swayed, but stayed on his feet.

“Touch Mollie,” he warned, “and I’ll come back from hell for you, Kid.”

Two more bullets struck his chest in quick succession. He sagged to his knees, clutched his throat, which was rapidly filling with blood, and fell forward.

The fire caught and blazed as soon as the Kid put the match to the rotting wood. He felt the heat on his face as tongues of flame shot up the plank walls. He looked one last time at the dead man on the floor.

“It was nothing personal, Colonel,” he said. Then he grinned, pivoted, and hurried out of the burning building.

Outside he climbed atop Rogers’s mount, leaving his own tied to a nearby cottonwood with his black sombrero hooked on the saddle horn. Laughing, he laid the spurs to Rogers’s big steed and headed for Mexico.

And Mollie.

Mollie was devastated
.

Despite her father’s weaknesses, she had always thought him indestructible. Now he was gone—killed by a lawman’s bullet—and she was alone.

Head aching, eyes red-rimmed, Mollie was ushered away from the brief late afternoon memorial service by the solicitous Kid. Back at the hotel, he ordered a meal sent up to her suite.

When the food arrived, he poured Madeira into two glasses and handed one to Mollie. “Drink it,” he urged. “It will help you relax.”

Mollie sipped the wine and almost instantly began to feel its calming affects. When she had drained the glass, she said, “Thank you, Jeff, for taking care of everything. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m awfully tired.”

“Have another glass of Madeira and you’ll sleep like a baby.”

“It would be nice to sleep,” said Mollie wearily. “I am tired, so very tired.”

“Of course you are,” he said sympathetically, pouring her another glass of wine.

Then Mollie found herself seated on the sofa with the Kid beside her, his comforting arm around her. With her thoughts jumbled, her reflexes slowed, it seemed normal to lean her aching head on his shoulder. She finished the second glass of wine.

“I’ll stay with you tonight,” the Kid said, and warning bells began to ring in Mollie’s fuzzy brain.

“No, no, that isn’t necessary,” she said, slipped from his arm, and stood up.

The Kid rose. “Mollie, honey, your daddy’s gone and now it’s up to me to take care of you. Tomorrow we’ll marry, and—”

“Marry? You?” She was incredulous. “I’m not about to marry you, Kid, and I want you to go. Get out of my room.”

“You don’t know what you want. You’re a child. A spoiled child who has no idea what it is to be woman.” He loomed big and close before her. “High time I showed you. Don’t want marriage? Fine with me, but you’re
my
woman, Mollie, and I’m not waiting any longer to have you.”