The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1) (10 page)

The old man leapt toward him, gathering the front of Connell's shirt desperately in his two brawny hands. "You gotta protect me, Marshal. This addlepated boy means to blow my brains to kingdom come!"

Smith stumbled backward, his gun waving uselessly in his right hand. "I'm just a deputy. I ain't the marshal! Now you put that gun down, boy, you hear? Before you hurt somebody with it."

"He tried to steal Augustus!"

"Liar!" the old man shouted.

"Augustus?" Smith echoed.

"My mule! He's been hankerin' after my mule all day. I seen him sneakin' around like a snake in the long grass. But I caught 'im. Hoo-hoo, caught 'im red-handed, I did."

Smith slid a look at the man gripping his shirtfront. "Y-you try to steal his mule?"

"No such thing! I was only borrowin' it!"

A sound of outrage escaped the boy's throat. "Old man! You're sorely trying my patience."

The old man slunk around the backside of Smith, cowering behind him for protection. "Lordy, don't let him shoot me, Marshal!"

"Boy!" Smith shouted, aiming his gun at him. "Put that gun down—now!"

"Not until you jail 'im proper. That low-down weasel ain't gonna get away with it. I'll have his hide stretched and tanned before I let him get near my Augustus again!"

"He ain't goin' nowhere until you put that weapon down on my—"

The rest froze in Smith's throat as the old man's arm wrapped around the deputy's neck and the click of a pistol hammer reverberated near his ear.

Chapter 5

"You were sayin', Deputy?" the old man intoned.

Smith's Adam's apple rose and fell against the fellow's arm. He released the revolver in his hand. In the pounding silence of the room, the gun clattered like a cannon shot to the floor.

"What is this?"

The boy pulled the hammer back on his gun with two hands. A brilliant, white-toothed smile broke over the lower half of his face. The voice that came from that ragamuffin, however, rose an octave with his next words. "This here's a jailbreak, and I'd like to ask you for your keys, Deputy, if you'd be so kind."

Reese grinned, almost laughed out loud, and gripped the bars of the cell until his hands hurt. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! It was Grace the Graceful! It was almost beyond reckoning that she'd think of something so clever as this. Relief speared through him as Smith's dawning gaze slid back toward his cell.

"You won't get away with it," Smith snapped.

"That remains to be seen," Grace allowed, keeping her hat tugged down over those memorable eyes. "The keys?"

Smith reached for his vest pocket and the old man jammed the gun harder against his temple.

"Careful."

"They're in my pocket." With two fingers, Smith reached into his vest and withdrew a circle of iron with one lone skeleton key dangling from it.

Grace held out her hand, palm up. "Much obliged," she murmured as he handed it over. Smith's incredulous gaze went from the slender hand with dirt-encrusted fingernails to her smooth, all-too-feminine jawline.

The deputy's mouth went slack. "You're a girl!"

Her hand curled into a tight fist around the keys. "Hold him," she told her cohort and headed for the cell where Reese waited.

Grace tilted her head back and winked at him as she approached. The gesture stirred him unexpectedly; a flash of gratitude, or desire, or both turned inside him.

"I never thought you'd come." The words, spoken in a whisper, came over the knocking sound of metal on metal as she tried to force the key into the lock. She stabbed at the opening again, her hand trembling with a palsy of nerves. Reese reached around the bars, closing his hand over hers. Despite the balmy night, her shaking hand felt icy beneath his.

For an instant, she froze, head bowed, chest heaving. Slowly, she lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. Her look told it all. Everything. Her fear, her fierce determination, her innocence. Reese knew a moment of regret at dragging a girl like her into his tangled life.

Yet he could no more free her from her promise to help him than he could ignore the sharp tug of desire that pulled at him when she looked into his eyes. Common sense told him it was lust, pure and simple, that Grace Turner inspired, despite the dirt-covered jaw. Nothing so noble as compassion.

"Help me," she whispered. "My hand's shaking too much to get the key in."

Reese tore his gaze from hers, focusing on the slender hand beneath his. Steadily, he guided the key she held into the lock and with a twist opened it. The metal grated loudly as the door swung out, and with two steps, Reese was free. He gulped air, steering Grace with one hand beneath her elbow toward the outer office.

Still pinioned in the old man's grip, Smith stared at them expressionlessly. Only the rapid rise and fall of his chest betrayed the emotion he kept from his eyes.

"So, Smith," Reese said blandly, "it looks as if you won't have to lose sleep after all."

"It's not my sleep I'd be worrying about if I was you," Smith retorted. "Sanders will be after you in a heartbeat. And he won't rest until he's got you by the throat."

"Of that I've no doubt." Reese tossed an assessing look at Brewster, then stooped to retrieve Smith's gun from the floor. He opened it to half-cock, checking the load. Snapping the gun shut, he nudged the revolver into Smith's ribs. "Get into the cell. And don't waste your life or your future with lovely Lilah on any warning shouts. I'll kill you, Smith. Count on that."

"Damn you," Smith muttered as Brewster loosed his pinioning arm.

"Aye, that's already been accomplished, I'd wager."

Reese shoved him forward across the threshold of the cell. Grasping him by the collar, Reese pressed the gun's barrel into the deputy's back. "Are ya ready, Connell?"

Smith half turned in time for the butt-end of the gun to skitter against his skull, missing a full blow, but having the desired effect anyway. With a groan of pain, Smith sank bonelessly to the hard dirt floor, sprawling at Reese's feet.

Reese cursed at his aim, and nudged the fallen man with the toe of his boot, assuring himself the deputy was out cold.

Stepping away from Smith's limp form, he shoved the door shut with a clatter of iron. "Where's the key?" he demanded of Grace. "Give me the bloody key!"

She thrust it at him and he wrenched it into the lock with a vicious twist.

"Is he dead?" she asked, her voice a quiet tremor. She stared at Smith's still form with dread.

Reese shook his head, shoving the key into his pocket. "No. But he'll have a headache he won't soon forget."

Brewster gathered up a rifle from the gun rack on the wall, pocketed several boxes of ammunition, and tossed one to Reese.

"Brew!" Grace admonished, catching him stuffing the boxes in his canvas greatcoat. "That's stealing!"

"It's a bit late to be worryin' about ethics, isn't it, princess?" Reese asked.

Grace swung an accusing look back at him.

"He's right," Brew reminded her. "We'll need the guns once the marshal gets wind of this. And if we don't hurry, it won't matter what we steal." He gestured toward the door with a solemn flick of his gray head. "The horses are outside. And don't try nothin' funny, Donovan. These guns are as much for you as for Sanders if you're thinkin' of parting company once yer out the door."

Reese grinned amiably. "I wouldn't think of it, old man."

"It's Brewster to you."

"Let's save the formalities until we're away from here, all right?" Grabbing his gun belt off a peg near the door, Donovan fastened it around his hips with a gunman's ease. He shrugged on a dirt-colored oiled canvas duster hanging beside it, then lifted his black felt hat with its band of silver conchos off the peg and fitted it on his head. He pulled the heavy door open and swept a mock-gallant arm across the threshold. "After you."

Grace slipped out into the darkness, followed by Brewster and Donovan. They hurried through the shadows around the corner of the jail, beneath the overhang of thick pine beams protruding from the adobe. In the distance, the faint sounds from the cantinas up the street drifted to them, punctuated by laughter closer by.

As one, they pressed into the shadows of the building at the sound. The moon darted in and out from behind the high, fast-moving clouds, mocking their attempts at invisibility. The sound of laughter drew closer, distinguishing itself from the ramshackle buildings across the wide span of road separating the north and south sides of Pair-a-Dice. Several men were coming their way.

Reese cursed under his breath, gripping his gun harder and drawing Grace roughly closer to him. Not fifteen feet away, he could hear the soft snorting of the horses Brewster and Grace must have left tied there. Fifteen feet of open ground, more than enough to be caught cold.

Seconds dragged by. The pounding of his heart echoed the thud of hers against his ribs. She hadn't stopped shaking. They heard the drunken voices of two men somewhere in the lengthening darkness. Too close to judge, too far to see.
Of all the times to run into company,
he thought. But they had to go. Every second they delayed could mean disaster.

He looked up at the moon, which was suddenly and frustratingly clear of the very clouds they needed to obscure their escape.

"Let's go," Reese urged, shoving Grace forward. She balked, stumbling to a halt two steps away.

"Wait. What if they see us?" she whispered urgently.

"We have to take that chance. One at a time—go!" he ordered in a hoarse whisper.

She lunged forward into the dappled spill of moonlight, feeling utterly exposed. Covering the ground between the wall and the horses at a dead run, she collided with the hitching rail in the darkness with a grunt of pain. Donovan appeared beside her like an apparition in the darkness.

"You all right?" he demanded in a harsh whisper.

She nodded. With shaking hands, she untied the reins of all three horses, the warm, steamy breath of the black brushing the back of her neck. Her knuckles whitened around the whipcord leather.

"Mount up," Donovan ordered.

Brew relieved her of the reins of his horse and launched himself aboard the black-stockinged bay. "C'mon, Gracie, dad-blame it!" he called. His breath came in rattling puffs, and Grace feared a coughing spell coming on.

Indeed, only seconds later, Brew hacked hard and loud, his breath a wheezing rattle that echoed across the dusty street like a warning shot.

"Hey!" came a shout from the street behind them. "Hey, you there!"

Hands locked around her mount's saddle horn, Grace froze. "Oh no."

"It's Donovan!" came another voice from the darkness. "He's gettin' away! Ree-ward's mine, if I nail 'im first!"

Grace cried out as gunshots exploded nearby, tearing into the adobe wall of the building beside them. Beside her, Reese's gun thundered with a deafening roar, the shot sending a plume of water gushing upward from the trough the man had crouched behind.

The man cursed, ducking back into the curtain of darkness.

For a moment, Grace lost sight of Donovan in the dark. His black clothes made him seem part of the night. She grabbed the saddle horn of the sixteen-hand gray gelding she'd bought from that flimflam liveryman down the street. As she crow-hopped with one booted foot locked in the stirrup, and the reins of both her and Donovan's horses clamped in her hand, it occurred to her that only an idiot would have chosen Mt. Everest for a getaway steed. Not only could she not haul herself into the saddle of the dapple gray behemoth, she was in serious danger of being trampled under the hooves as it scrambled, white-eyed, away from her.

"Whoa! Whoo-hoahh!" Grace cried, hanging on for dear life. Without warning, a large hand planted itself firmly on her backside and shoved her upward and nearly over the other side!

Grace shrieked, clawing for purchase on the horse's wide neck. Donovan cursed again and caught her by the leg before she could fall. He righted her halfway onto the saddle before he reached for the reins of his horse.

A bullet plowed into the dirt at their feet, and the horses gave a unanimous, squealing cry of terror, sidestepping frantically. Donovan's horse backed into the hitching rail, splintering it with the force of the blow. Jerking its reins from Grace's hands, the black went down in a tangle of shattered wood and flaying hooves. Before she or Donovan or anyone could do anything to stop it, the downed horse found its legs and bolted into the darkness, dragging its loose reins behind it.