Outlaw Bride (Lawmen and Outlaws)
Read Outlaw Bride (Lawmen and Outlaws) Online
Authors: Tanya Hanson
Tags: #Romance, #Western, #Historical, #Texas, #lawman
Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Outlaw Bride
by
Tanya Hanson
Lawmen & Outlaws
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Outlaw Bride
COPYRIGHT © 2013 by Tanya Hanson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: [email protected]
Cover Art by
Debbie Taylor
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Cactus Rose Edition, 2013
Digital ISBN 978-1-61217-843-1
Lawmen & Outlaws Series
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
To my son-in-law Scott Snyder...if I could have
made you from scratch, you’d be exactly as you are!
Praise for Tanya Hanson and…
OUTLAW BRIDE
: Finalist, Hearts Through History “Romance through the Agents” contest
CHRISTMAS FOR RANSOM
(Lawmen and Outlaws): “The plot hooked me and I couldn’t read it fast enough!”
~Love Western Romance
Chapter One
Verde Valley, Arizona Territory
September 1881
Of all the goddam ways to die!
The thick strips of canvas around her neck wouldn’t give her but a second or two of breathing room. Most times she kept the cloth tight around her bosoms to hide the fact she was a female. But today she wore the only dress she had, and its high collar hid the strips just fine.
Ahab had taught her this trick, and she just might get away with it.
He’d taught her other tricks, too. She dug through the braid twisted atop her head. Grabbed the knife she’d hidden in her hair and started hacking at the noose.
Even if the posse turned back and saw her, she’d plumb choose getting shot quick instead of strangling slow. But she figured they were too lily-livered to watch the hanging of an itsy bitsy girl all the way through to the end.
Right now, she kicked like a pouting mule against the air, not caring one whit she might slice up her knuckles and fingertips. At least the posse had let her keep her hands free. For last minute prayers, of course. And she had kept her hands folded, right until the end.
But the rope was thick. She was dying. She truly was. The world was turning black, her throat collapsing, lungs empty.
And she was dying all alone. Ahab had abandoned her, letting her hang for the years of temptation into which he’d led her.
At last the hemp split, and she tumbled into a heap on the ground. Her ankle twisted, and a rock stabbed her thigh. Blood dripped from a cut on her thumb, but it sure beat a broken neck.
For a while, she lay in the dust underneath the hanging tree, grabbing for air and ripping off the layers of canvas. She shook like an angry diamondback’s rattle while air tore into her chest. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed a straight razor. But she was alive.
And the posse was gone. Big brave men. Some of the folks in Pioneer Meadows had yammered plenty against the lynching of a female. But Ahab Perkins was her brother, after all. For most, that was guilt enough.
But she had no time to whine. She had work to do. After shaking the pain from her ankle and wiping blood from her thumb, she got to her knees, took her knife and started to dig her own grave.
Right there under the hanging tree. When she was done, sweat soaked her like a sudden rain. For sure Ahab would seek proof of her death. Well, those few folks hereabouts who’d pitied her just might have snuck away to bury her in secret and never tell a soul it was them.
But then she reckoned Ahab might dig her up. No, not for proof, but to get Ma’s pearls, the beauteous strand she’d sewn into the hem of her skirt. She reckoned it had been sort of an unfair inheritance twelve years ago, her getting the pearls and Ahab getting
her
. But still. He’d no reason to leave her behind. They shared blood.
So after laying the canvas inside the shallow hole, she relieved herself, both ways, for good measure. Filled it up again, quick, and dotted a line around it with rocks. Pain and weariness pushed down hard on her shoulders. But she had one last thing to do.
She set to work carving her marker on two dry juniper branches. After tying them together with tall grasses, she stuck the crude cross where her head ought to be.
Jessy Belle Perkins
Aged 18
Hanged for an outlaw
Damn, it was eerie, seeing her own tombstone. She wanted to weep, but the thirst wouldn’t let her. The Arizona sun sliced into her body, hard and greedy. Like Ahab cut his meat at mealtimes. She knew something of the Havasupai whose lands these were. All she had to do was look for a dragonfly carved on a rock. Then she’d find a hidden spring.
So far, rocks but no dragonfly. All she saw were scrubby thorny plants and alligator juniper just like the hanging tree. Its lowest branch had been strong enough to bear her weight. She wasn’t very big at all.
The good men of Pioneer Meadows hadn’t even needed to build a hefty gallows in town.
Pioneer Meadows. She almost laughed at the lie. There wasn’t any grass for miles. Just yucca and cactus.
So Jessy Belle Perkins took a fallen branch and swept away what footprints she needed to and set off to find water. And after that, to do what she did best.
Steal a horse.
But no. She started to shake worse than before. She’d almost met her Maker just now. Shock was creeping upon her, but so was good sense.
Make that
borrow
a horse. The girl she’d been was lying now in a fake grave. Her outlaw days were over.
It was time to become Respectable.
To become the woman she could have been if Pa hadn’t killed Mama and left her to Ahab.
And right then she burst into tears.
****
“Not much longer to the creek, boy,” Cleeland Redd announced to his dog. He was never one to feel foolish holding conversations with the big black mutt. Renegade was never quarrelsome, never gave him any lip, and always listened to his advice.
All around him, the red rocks of Oak Creek Canyon glowed like flame against the late afternoon sun. Looked like the Creator had tried His hand at sculpture before He was done. No carvings in Italian museums could beat this.
Indeed, Cleeland Redd, known to most as simply Redd, was a spiritual man. He believed in the Holy Spirit and the Great Spirit, and once in a while righteously celebrated them both with New Testament wine and Navajo peyote. And he sure as hell respected the Good Book in spite of its big, mysterious words.
But right now, he was assisting Sister Adelaide Eugene for one reason only. Money. Once he delivered this wagonload of supplies to her mission school outside Cathedral Rock, he’d bring in ten more of the dollars he needed to stock his new ranch at Whisper Ridge.
Day before last, he’d finished earning all he could assisting at fall roundups. Now he had time as well as need. For once, he guessed the Lord was on his side, too.
Although he had to admit, Redd had long feared Sister Adelaide Eugene. She reminded him too much of his school days, when nuns smacked his knuckles just because the letters on the chalkboard didn’t spell the same way inside his head.
He liked his world better, where an X or a handshake was all a man needed.
Right then, in a clump of chokecherry along the road, he saw it.
A woman’s body.
“Damn. What the hell?” He swallowed hard.
Without meaning to, his mind dizzied and his stomach churned. His years as a Cavalry scout had hardened him to just about anything. But when he shut his eyes, he still saw Tawana. Or what was left of her. He’d been miles away, too far to be of help. Right now, he choked down the memory and settled his disposition quick.
“Whoa,” he yelled to the mule team and “Hold up, boy” to Renegade. As he slowed and braked, the dog jumped down anyway and hightailed it to the scene.
Redd’s heart hammered. Truth was, the nightmares he’d seen during the Apache Wars had finally convinced him to leave the military and make a new life. Lay Tawana’s ghost to rest. Most of all, be kind as he could to all living things.
“Hey, Renegade.” He yelled again with some concern as the dog started on the woman’s face with his tongue. “You watch for rattlesnakes, boy.”
But in a way, Renegade’s actions calmed him. That meant she wasn’t dead or bloody or covered with decay. Renegade enjoyed wild times, but his explorations had limits.
So Redd gathered up hope and grabbed his canteen, hopped out and knelt in the dust by her side.
“Let me get to who we got here, pup.” He brushed the dog away, his heart slowing. The woman was breathing, at least.
Although not quite conscious, she groaned and cringed against him. Just like Renegade had when he’d found the pup near dead from a brute’s boot heel. And now, like then, his heart tightened in sympathy and a firm resolution to protect.
Something he hadn’t gotten to do for Tawana. Grief burned the millionth hole in his gut and flared up his throat.
“Why, boy, she’s nothing much more than a girl,” he reckoned, voice soft so as to encourage her he meant no harm, “with that long yellow tail of hair.” Almost with wonder he touched the flowing blond locks. A tenderness from long ago swept over him like wind.
Renegade snuffled in response.
“Could be heatstroke. Maybe dehydration,” Redd said. “Either of them can kill.”
Her skin was clammy and flushed, but when he lifted an eyelid, he saw a normal-sized pupil in a circle of startling blue. Her pulse, though weak, pumped steady. All this lightened his mood.
And her face, why, talk about something else God had sculpted special. She looked like an angel.
“Whoever you are, little one, I reckon you’ll be on the mend now that you’re found. Got some good cold water in my canteen.”
He did what he could. Dabbed water on her lips, patted her face. Soaked his neckerchief and unbuttoned her bodice to make way for the cooling rag.
But then he blushed himself silly. As he laid the wet kerchief on her, he realized the truth right away. She might be small and slight, but she was a real woman, no little girl. And no angel. Her bosoms, full and female, heaved with real-live breath.
But he felt no lust, not for a woman in his protection. For it was then he saw the savage bruises on her neck, and Redd knew well the signs of strangulation.
He’d seen wounds just like this on his mother’s corpse.
And he figured out why this woman wore a man’s boots too large for her. Or at least suspected why. Someone had tried to kill her. She’d escaped the danger just in time and was attempting to leave a false trail.
Closest doctor would be at Pioneer Meadows. An hour away on horseback. His skin crawled like lice as he remembered the cold-blooded injuries his demon stepfather had inflicted upon his ma.
It would shame him to his grave that he hadn’t been around to protect her, either. Out of respect for his ma’s memory, and his sweet Tawana’s, he wasn’t about to lead this female’s attacker to her whereabouts.
“You got no need to worry about me, ma’am,” he announced resolute to her blinking eyes. “I’ll keep your secret.” Leastwise, he finished silent to himself, until I get some of my own investigating done.
He reckoned she could hear him, for she nodded while he held the canteen to her mouth. Far as he could tell, she was breathing fine, pretty much awake now and choking down water as fast as her injury would allow.
Renegade whined at the woman’s side as Redd scooped her in his arms. She felt light as a kitten.
“Looks like it’s up to you and me, boy.”
As the dog barked, he almost seemed to nod his head. The woman’s arms came around Redd’s neck, and something stirred in him that he thought he’d never feel again.
Her eyes sparked to life in a shy way.
“You perking up okay, ma’am?” he asked, polite, boot heels coughing up clods of red dirt. “Me, I’m Cleeland Redd. Call me Redd is fine by me.”
Gazing up into his eyes, she parted lips he wanted to kiss. And he was ashamed. Tawana might be gone, but he’d vowed never to forget her even when life and breath left his carcass. They’d share Paradise together.
