Outlaw for Christmas (9781101573020) (15 page)

“As much as I'm enjoying this,” Leon broke in, “it's time to go to jail now. Hand over that gun, Billy Jo.”

Ruth blinked at the delight in Leon's voice, a delight she found reflected all over his face. Leon, who only wanted to help the whole wide world, desperately wanted to hang Noah. And Noah, the man she'd dreamed of for half her life, the man who'd been her hero, was a lying, murdering thief.

Had the world gone mad? Or was it only her.

“Wait one minute,” said Noah's—make that Billy Jo's—friend. “You're the sheriff?”

The young man appeared confused, and why not? Leon must have pinned his shiny tin star to his shirt and not his coat. Or perhaps today he hadn't even worn it at all.

“Someone has to be,” Leon answered, but he was looking at Noah, so he didn't see the stranger reach for his gun.

“No!” Ruth shouted.

Quicker than the winter wind across the prairie, Noah drew his weapon. Before the boy could shoot the sheriff, Noah shot him.

Noah watched the young man fall to the ground at Ruth's feet, then raised his gaze to hers. She blinked, stunned at the change in him.

Noah Walker was gone. Billy Jo Kansas lived again.

***

The familiar coldness settled into Noah's bones. He'd just shot a friend, but he couldn't let that bother him. If he hadn't done something, Hoxie would have shot the sheriff.

Noah
had
hesitated as a whole slew of thoughts flashed through his mind in a single instant. If Harker was dead, Noah might get away. Ruth was grown up now. Instead of leaving her behind, he could take her along. All he had to do was let Hoxie kill the man.

But Ruth's horrified “No!” had forced Noah to act. If there was something he could do to keep her friend alive, he'd do it.

Ruth was going to need a friend now.

“Drop that gun, Kansas. Drop it.”

Noah tore his gaze from Ruth's still, white face and focused on Leon. He considered making the sheriff shoot him now rather than hang him later.

But he couldn't force himself to die in front of Ruth, couldn't make the man who'd have to take care of her become a murderer, too, in her eyes. Noah dropped the gun.

“You didn't believe me, did you, Ruth?” Harker picked up the Colt on the ground and held his hand out for the other. Noah complied. “He just killed one of his own men.”

“To save you,” she snapped. “The least you could do is thank him and not gloat.”

Noah was glad to hear some spirit in her voice. He'd been afraid she might faint on the street, so pale had she been since the truth spilled out.

Harker raised an eyebrow, glanced at Noah, and shrugged. “Thanks.”

“Don't mention it.”

Gunfire always brought people into the street. The sight of Noah being held at gunpoint by their sheriff, with a dead body at Ruth's feet, brought questions.

“Sheriff, have you lost your mind?”

“Kelly will have your head.”

“I saw what happened. Walker saved your ass. Why don't you let him go?”

The sheriff lost his temper. “I know what I'm doing. Your golden boy is Billy Jo Kansas.”

The crowd went silent. Then they began to laugh.

“He is crazy.”

“Why on earth would Kansas be working in the bank?”

“You said Kansas was dead, Sheriff.”

“Well, I guess I was wrong, since he's right here.”

John Banyon stepped out of the crowd. “Who says he's Kansas?”

“He did.” The sheriff pointed at Hoxie.

Banyon's lips twisted. “Well, you'll excuse me for pointing this out, Sheriff, but he can't exactly say so anymore.”

Harker glared at Noah as if Noah had planned that. “
I
heard him call Walker Billy Jo Kansas.”

“And you'll pardon me for saying you're not a credible witness,” Banyon said.

The sheriff went still; his face tightened as he tilted his head just a bit. “What was that?”

“Leon, I was at the hotel the other night. You've been accusing Walker of every dirty deed in three counties. I'd be surprised if you
didn't
try to pin Kansas on him.”

Frustrated, the sheriff's face darkened. “Ruth heard it, too. Didn't you, Ruth?”

Everyone stared at her. She still stood exactly where she'd been when Hoxie called Noah's name. She was just as white, just as frail. Noah wanted to pull her into his arms and warm her, pick her up and hold her. But the gun Harker was shoving into his side prevented him from doing much more than loving her.

“Ruth?” Banyon pressed. “Did you hear the dead man call Noah Billy Jo? Is what Leon is saying true?”

Ruth looked from Banyon to the sheriff and then to Noah. Her lip trembled. She opened her mouth to answer. But Noah didn't want her to lie any more than he wanted her to have to live with the knowledge she'd condemned him.

“I'm Kansas,” he said. “Take me in.”

Chapter Twelve

Though he might be a bad man, Noah was a very good outlaw. He'd never been caught. So he'd never been arrested, never seen a mob, never imagined how fast a crowd could turn from friends to vigilantes.

“Did he clean out the bank?”

“Check his pockets!”

“Hang him! Hang him now!”

The crowd closed in. The gun Leon held to Noah's side slammed painfully against his ribs when folks started shoving.

“Here's a rope!”

“There's a tree!”

Hands jerked at Noah's coat, his arms, his neck. He was pulled away from the sheriff and toward the crowd. Harker raised the gun from Noah's ribs, pointed it at the sky, and fired. Everyone froze. The sheriff lowered the gun and tucked it against Noah once more. “He's going to the jail, where he'll wait for the judge.”

“What for?”

“Why wait?”

“Because I'm sworn to uphold the law. And the law says he gets a trial.” Harker smirked. “
Then
we can hang him. Now, out of my way.”

The crowd grumbled, but they let them through. Noah came face-to-face with Ruth. Harker tried to pull him away, but she put her hand on the sheriff's arm. “Wait.”

Noah braced himself to be slapped, spit upon, kicked. Any one of which would have been preferable to what she did.

“Why?” she whispered, staring into his eyes as if she could find her answers there.

He had no explanation for her because he didn't know what she asked. Why was he an outlaw? Why had he lied? Why did he love her more than life?

“Ruth, go home,” Harker said gently. “There's nothing for you here.”

He tugged Noah away, but not before Noah heard her say, “I know,” in a voice filled with such despair, he shivered. Why hadn't he left her alone?

The crowd closed in behind them, and Noah lost sight of Ruth in the mayhem, which was probably for the best. He didn't want her to see him being dragged away like a rabid dog.

The undertaker already knelt on the frozen ground, measuring Hoxie for his coffin. Noah paused and bowed his head. Hoxie had been ten years younger than him, but in the outlaw life only half as long. Very few men became outlaws at the age of sixteen, as Noah had.

Good with a gun but not very smart, Hoxie had only survived this long because of Noah. It didn't seem right that he had died because of Noah, too. But what did seem right now that everything in his world had gone wrong?

The undertaker glanced up. “He'll need an extra-long coffin.”

“I'll pay,” Noah murmured.

“That you will,” Harker replied, and pulled Noah across the street.

The crowd continued to trail in their wake. There had not been this much excitement in Kelly Creek since . . . Well, Noah had no idea, but he figured in a mighty long time.

“Sheriff!” Banyon shouldered his way through the crowd. “I'll need to interview you both.”

“Forget about it.” Harker increased their pace.

Banyon kept up. “Kansas is news, Sheriff. Bigger news than just Kelly Creek. Hell, I could get a book out of this! I always wanted to write one of those penny dreadfuls.”

“Great,” Noah muttered.

“If you two won't talk to me, I can always interview Miss Ruth instead.”

Noah and Leon stopped, looked at each other, then faced Banyon. “No,” they said as one.

The newspaper man smiled. “Thought you'd see things my way.”

***

In a daze, Ruth picked up the packages Noah had dropped. No one paid her any mind; they all followed after Noah and Leon. She'd best get out of town before that changed. Folks would start questioning her, blaming her, and right now she could barely think past the pain in her heart, the panic in her brain, and the slightly ill sensation in her belly.

She'd never seen a man killed, and while she knew in her head that if it hadn't been Hoxie, it would have been Leon, her stomach rebelled that it had been anyone at all. She carefully avoided looking at the body as she crossed to the wagon.

Ruth tossed the packages—ruined now, since the mob had stomped all over them—into the rear, climbed up onto the seat, then clucked to Annabelle. The gay jingle-jangle of the bells mocked her as they left town.

Out on the prairie the sound seemed to bounce off the frozen tundra and pound against her forehead. Annabelle, who had no idea that Ruth's dream had just died, tossed her head up and down, back and forth, until Ruth couldn't bear it anymore.

“Whoa!” Ruth climbed out of the wagon and plucked the bells from Annabelle's mane. By the time she had them all free, her fingers ached from the cold, and her nose burned with it, too.

She stared at the pile of silver bells in her hand—so shiny and bright, unlike her life. Ruth pulled back her arm and threw with all her might, scattering the handful to the wind.

The bells hit the ground, one after the other, the
ping-ring-a-ling
a sound of loneliness and an accent to her despair.

Annabelle snorted and pawed. She could smell Ruth's distress. Needing a friend, needing some warmth as she began to shake, Ruth put her arms around Annabelle's neck and buried her face in the mare's mane.

The garnet, which she always wore beneath her dress, next to her heart, now lay like a lump of ice upon her skin. Ruth couldn't get her mind around the fact that her sweet Noah was a notorious outlaw. Leon had not been far wrong. A gunfighter was a whole lot closer to an outlaw than a farmer.

Had every word from Noah's lips been a lie? Had the kisses, the touches, the promises, and the dreams been as much a lie as Noah Walker himself?

What did it matter? Because when Billy Jo Kansas died, so would the dream of Noah and Ruth. Whether a lie or the truth, the dream would be just as dead.

Hoofbeats broke into her reverie. Figuring someone from town had spied her and come to investigate, if not help, Ruth didn't bother to raise her head. Her luck that John Banyon wanted to ask her questions about Noah that she could not answer even if she wanted to.

Her visitor reined in and dismounted. The crunch of boots across the frozen snow grated along Ruth's tightly strung nerves. When they stomped on a stray bell, the resulting jingle and screech brought up her head with a jerk. “
What
do you want?”

A complete stranger stood far too close. “What else could I possibly want but you, ma'am?”

Dumbfounded at his words and his appearance, Ruth gaped. Fringed by yellow lashes and a face as pale as snow, his eyes shone like polished ebony and held about as much emotion as the stone. Despite the weather, he wore no hat, and the sunshine shade of his hair shone garish in the winter light. Though only a few inches taller than she, the man had a neck as thick as a tree trunk and arms to match.

Ruth liked the look of him less than Annabelle liked his smell. The horse bucked and whinnied, which was good enough for Ruth.

She tensed, prepared to run—though where, she had no idea—but he grabbed her arm in a bruising grip and held on as she struggled. “Who are you?”

“Dooley.”

Ruth stopped struggling and frowned. “I've heard that name.”

“Most likely from Billy Jo. We're pals, him and me.” He grinned, revealing gaps in teeth as yellow as his hair.

“Pals?” Ruth couldn't imagine Noah being pals with this frightening creature. But then, today had proved she knew nothing of Noah. “Did he send you after me?”

Images came to her of a jail break, a mad ride through the night to a secret hideout, a race to Old Mexico and safety. Ruth wasn't sure if the flutter in her belly was excitement or fear.

Dooley laughed, a high-pitched, cackling, crazy sound that carried over the prairie. Annabelle bunched up one hind leg and kicked a hole in the wagon.

“No, Billy Jo didn't send me. He's got himself in a peck of trouble, as I'm sure you know. I was watchin'. Saw you two together. So you're going to have to come along with me now.”

“What for?”

“You can show me where he hid the money.”

“What money?”

“My five thousand dollars.”

“Yours?” Ruth recalled talk of five thousand dollars, too. That was the money stolen in the Danville bank robbery by the Kansas Gang. “Are you in the Kansas Gang?”

“Sure am.”

Ruth scowled at Dooley. “Did any of you actually die?”

***

By the time night fell, Noah was heartily sick of the view from behind the bars of the Kelly Creek jail. All he had to look at was Harker's happy face, the huge, frightened eyes of Deputy Barnett, who appeared to be all of twelve years old, and the varying expressions—from disappointment to outright hatred—of the townsfolk who meandered through.

He'd best get used to it. This was the view he'd have for the rest of his short, cursed life.

He was also sick of the questions Sheriff Harker peppered him with whenever they were alone for a moment or two.

“What did you do with the money from the Danville bank?”

Noah refused to answer. He'd hang whether he returned the money or not. Where the money was, it stayed.

“Did you care for her at all?”

Noah refused to answer that, too. Any truth about his feelings would accompany him to the grave.

“Did you think you'd get away with it?”

He had. That was the sad and sorry truth. He'd actually begun to believe that the life he'd never even known he wanted was within his grasp.

Things didn't get much better when John Banyon arrived with his notebook. “Ready, Noah?” Banyon pulled up a chair on the other side of the bars.

“You better not get too close,” Harker said. “He might strangle you.”

“I might strangle you,” Noah muttered. “But John's safe.”

The sheriff scowled as Banyon laughed. “If he was set on killing anyone in town, he'd have done it already. Right, Noah?”

“His name's Billy Jo Kansas,” Harker snapped.

“No.” Noah met Harker's eyes, steady and sure. He knew who he was as well as he knew what he'd done. “It isn't.”

“When you die, you'll die as Billy Jo. Accept it.”

“I already did. Long ago.”

He'd almost forgotten what it was like to be Billy Jo in the days and weeks he'd rediscovered Noah. He'd begun to believe the dream he'd had—that he could fashion Noah into the man he'd once hoped to be and live a life he'd always wanted with the woman he'd never dared to touch.

So he'd dared; he'd dreamed; he'd touched. Then he'd learned. Who a man was had nothing to do with his name and everything to do with his soul. Whether Noah or Billy Jo, that soul was black, and he couldn't cleanse it no matter how much he might want to.

“Why did you change your name?” John asked.

“He was trying to hide,” the sheriff put in.

John shifted in his chair. “Leon, I'd like to hear this from him.”

Harker shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“
Did
you have something to hide?” John, ever the newspaperman, pressed.

“Not then.”

“Why Kansas?”

Noah raised an eyebrow. “It's where we were.”

“Did you start the gang?”

Images flickered—shouts, shots, blood, a single death. “No.”

“But you became the leader.” Noah dipped his head. “How?”

“The way a man usually becomes a leader. I was the biggest, the strongest, and the meanest.”

Understanding flickered over Banyon's face. “You killed the leader.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You didn't have to.”

Noah read condemnation in the eyes of every man in the room. The baby deputy got up and left the jail altogether. Harker put his feet up on the desk and shook his head. John rubbed his forehead and contemplated his notebook.

Well, to hell with them. Noah hadn't wanted to become an outlaw leader any more than he'd wanted to become an outlaw. Circumstance had dictated the path of his life. It still did.

Banyon continued with the questions. “Why hide your face?”

Why this man was working in a tiny Kansas town, Noah had no idea. He was annoying enough to work for a big-city paper.

“Why not?” he returned.

He'd actually gotten the idea from a penny dreadful himself. At that age, being mysterious had appealed. As the years passed and the legend of Billy Jo Kansas grew, yet Noah could walk down the street of any town without being recognized, he had kept wearing a bandanna and made certain all his men did, too.

His men.
How many were left? Why didn't he care? He'd ridden with most of them for years, yet word of their deaths had only brought relief. Looked as if he were as pathetic a leader and an outlaw as he was a banker and a gentleman.

“How many in the gang?”

“Varied. Men came and went. Stayed for a job or two. Got some money. Left again.”

With himself the only constant, Noah had kept friendships from forming and remained in charge, because when he was in charge, things went smoothly and fewer people died. Until Danville, at any rate.

Sadness swamped him; despair took hold. He hated talking about his past. He'd lived this life for years because he'd had little choice, but he hadn't thought about it, talked about, studied it. He'd just survived.

“Noah?”

He glanced at John. “What?”

“I asked when you killed your first man.”

Noah winced. Was that how people saw him? Well, why wouldn't they? The penny dreadfuls of the day painted Western outlaws as lying, thieving, killing animals—because most of them were.

Noah had always been closer to an outlaw than a gentleman. His sojourn into respectability had only proved how woefully inadequate he was at anything other than what he knew—lying, stealing, and leading rough men who wore guns.

He'd done what he'd done; he had his reasons. But they were
his
reasons. No one else's.