Rebel Outlaw

by Carol Arens

  “Thank you, Miss Munroe. If our folks caught us together they’d tan our hides, for sure,” Susan said around a sip of her warm drink.

  “We don’t mean to cause you trouble, but we couldn’t meet in the woods like we usually do because of the rain.”

  Holly Jane remembered how tricky friendship had been for her growing up. She liked having friends, but she couldn’t be a friend to a Broadhower child without becoming the enemy of a Folsom child, and the other way around.

  With the exception of carousel days, those poor children kept to themselves.

  Holly Jane got herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table with the girls.

  “We only want to be friends,” Susan said. “Why should we have to hate each other only because our parents and grandparents do?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Bethanne added. “I believe that most of the stories we hear aren’t even true.”

  “With winter coming, you won’t be able to meet in the woods anymore.” Holly Jane tapped her finger on the table, thinking. “I’m closed on Sundays. You can meet here. I’ll leave the key under a stone beside the back door.”

  “Oh, Miss Munroe!” Susan got up, came around the table and leaned down to give her a hug. “You are an angel on earth.”

  Bethanne reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  “It doesn’t have to be just the two of you, unless you want it that way.” Holly Jane savored a sip of her hot chocolate, the front of her gown damp from Susan’s hug. “Anyone else who needs a friendly place is welcome, too.”

  “It’s hard to say anything... We don’t want to get caught.”

  “I understand. I’ll just leave the two of you to visit.” She stood up, cradling the warm mug in her fingers. Lulu followed her toward the kitchen. “And, Susan, move a little closer to the fire.”

  * * *

  Colt sat on the corral fence watching the mare and stallion that Holly Jane had paired up. They seemed to like each other well enough. Silver, the stallion, was midnight-black and the mare was as lustrous a brown as Holly Jane’s eyes.

  Chances are the mare wouldn’t be interested in breeding until the spring, but it was good to let them get acquainted in the meantime.

  In the distance he saw Holly Jane carrying a pumpkin. She set it on the carousel then went back to the garden and brought another. After she had collected four of them, she sat down on the platform and set one of the big orange gourds on her lap.

  His interest perked when she drew a small knife from her apron and began to saw at the thing.

  Leaping down from the fence, he walked toward the carousel.

  “Halloween will be here and gone before you get anything done with that knife.”

  He drew the Arkansas Toothpick from its sheath and sat down beside her.

  “I’ve never carved one of these things before,” he admitted. “Mind if I give it a try?”

  “I know you’re teasing me.” She passed the pumpkin to him.

  “At the ranch I grew up on we had a pumpkin once. One of my aunts stole it off of someone’s front porch during a holdup. All of us children were amazed by the thing, but we never got another one. Show me what to do.”

  “First you cut the top off, like I started to.” She traced a line with her finger around the stem on the gourd.

  “What are you going to do with all these?”

  The Toothpick made easy work of the top cut. He pulled the plug free and a glob of orange pulp came with it.

  “They’ll go in front of The Sweet Treat tomorrow night,” she said. “All the merchants in the square set them out. We stay open late on Halloween so the town children can come to look at them.”

  “I reckon Grannie Rose and Aunt Tillie would like to see that.” They had missed so many of the joyous things in life being shut away at the outlaw ranch. He aimed to make up for it. “I’ll fetch us some dinner from the hotel and we can all watch the younglings together.”

  Holly Jane stared at him for a moment, her eyes squinting, as though she were trying to figure him out. Hell, he couldn’t even do that most days.

  “You have to scrape the seeds out next,” she said, apparently coming back to the task at hand.

  He glanced about for something to scoop with.

  “You have to dig them out with your fingers.”

  She reached her hand into the pumpkin and withdrew a fistful of strings and seeds.

  Following her example he dug in and came out with a pawful of slime.

  “Do the Broadhowers and the Folsoms get along that night, for the children’s sakes?”

  “They never come.”

  “That’s a crime.”

  “It ought to be.” Holly Jane shook the seeds from her hand into a pot.

  “Why don’t you give those to the pig? Looks like she wants some.”

  “These are for roasting.” She scooped out another handful, then he did the same. “I had a pair of visitors to the shop today.”

  “Which swains do I need to set straight, Folsoms or Broadhowers?”

  Holly Jane laughed and the sweet tinkling sound made his belly flip.

  “One was a Folsom and one was a Broadhower—now you get to carve a face, happy or scary, it’s up to you—but they were girls looking for a place to meet where their parents wouldn’t know.”

  “Brave little souls. What if I carve half the face scary and half happy?”

  “Get to it, Michelangelo.”

  The blade slipped and he came within a hair of cutting his finger. He hadn’t had a nick in ten years or more.

  “It might not be safe for you to offer shelter. It’ll cause trouble if they’re caught in your place.”

  “It will... But I told the girls they could use it on Sundays during the winter. Really, Colt, somebody needs to help them.”

  “I reckon you’re right.”

  “Too bad the carousel isn’t working. We could fire it up and have a big party. Just like when I was a child.”

  “I wonder if Grannie and Aunt Tillie ever rode one?” He couldn’t recall them mentioning it.

  “Can’t you see them now in their colorful new gowns, going round and round? Pass another pumpkin over here, Colt.”

  He set it between them, and she motioned for him to give her his knife. Other than its creator, no one had ever touched the blade—he hadn’t allowed it.

  “Be careful...it’s wicked sharp.”

  It wasn’t easy watching the metal slice through the firm orange flesh of the pumpkin. Any second he expected to see blood spurting from Holly Jane’s finger. Couldn’t very well insult her by snatching it back, though.

  It would seem like he thought she was incompetent, which he did not think at all.

  At last she set the blade down and he relaxed.

  Holly Jane tugged and twisted the lid off the big gourd. He reached his hand in at the same time she did.

  He felt the backs of her small fingers brush against his. A seed slid between them. For half a second her hand jerked away, but then it came back...it turned.

  Her palm cupped the backs of his fingers. He pivoted his hand through slick strings and seeds. Small fingertips slowly tickled his palm.

  She stared out at the horses who were nudging noses in the corral.

  He watched the late-afternoon sun dip below the tree line.

  Pumpkin goop and lumpy seeds squished through his fingers as he slid his calloused palm over her smooth one. He laced his fingers through hers, rubbed his thumb across her knuckles.

  Hesitantly, she stroked his wrist, and then she turned the full force of her melted chocolate gaze on him.

  Someone might have punched him in the gut, his reaction to the amber sparkle was that intense. No seductress he’d ever seduced had been half
as enticing.

  “For a beginner,” she said, “you’re doing very well.”

  “I was tender as a grass shoot when I left the outlaw ranch. I had to learn things quick.”

  “Colt, do you ever think Grannie Rose and Aunt Tillie might be right?”

  “About us?”

  She nodded. The setting sun shot her hair with golden shimmers. It grazed her lips in dewy light.

  “Don’t think so.” He withdrew his hand from the gourd and stroked the line of her cheek with his knuckles. He lifted her chin. An orange string dappled with seeds stuck to her jaw. “I reckon we ought to prove them wrong, once and for all.”

  Prove it to himself, is what he meant. Nothing would spark between them. Only a sordid woman would understand and accept his past.

  “That way they won’t look at us like we’re already standing in front of the preacher.” Damned if her voice wasn’t breathless with innocent excitement.

  What she said shook him, because in his mind he had only seen as far as the pile of sweet, fresh straw in the barn.

  He sure as hell saw the preacher, now... Couldn’t get the damned vision out of his head.

  Holly Jane would never be a visit to the barn. He ought to run while he could because, at this moment, he couldn’t swear an oath that the old ladies were wrong.

  There was only one way to prove it, and that one way was a pair of lips, full and pink, glistening only a few inches away.

  He dipped his mouth, felt the warmth of her breath and inhaled the scent of pumpkin.

  Holly Jane leaned into his kiss and very neatly stole his heart.

  What began as something as sweet as a butterfly on a flower suddenly flared, burning him like a wildfire in dry grass.

  With strands of pumpkin draped over his knuckles he buried his hands in her hair, clutching sunshine and silk in his fingers.

  Somehow she managed to crawl onto his lap.

  He couldn’t tell how much time had passed before they broke apart, panting and staring at each other in surprise.

  “You have pulp all over your shirt,” she murmured.

  He nodded, catching his breath. “You’ve got it in your hair.”

  “We’d better stop by the pump before we go inside or Grannie Rose and Aunt Tillie will think they’re right.”

  “I reckon we’ll need to scrub up pretty damn good.”

  Hell, there wasn’t enough lye soap in the world to scrub her out of his heart now.

  Chapter Eight

  As soon as daylight faded, Holly Jane came outside to light her pumpkins. A cool breeze dusted a shower of red leaves from the trees in the square. She stopped for a moment, closed her eyes and listened. She breathed in the scent of fresh evening air.

  She knelt and struck a match, then lighted two candles and set them inside a pair of smiling-faced gourds to the right of the front door. She did the same to the pair on the left. These were Colt’s creations and really very nice, even though one had a snarling face and the other, half scowl and half grin.

  Aunt Tillie and Grannie Rose clapped their hands as the faces came to life with a flickering orange glow.

  Hopefully the wind would not blow hard enough to put the candles out.

  “Let me get a blanket from inside to cover our laps,” Holly Jane said. “Then we’ll watch for children to come.”

  “Won’t it be lovely when Holly Jane and Colt have some children of their own?” she heard Grannie Rose say as she stepped over the threshold of The Sweet Treat.

  “Yes indeed, sister. I was beginning to despair that our boy would ever find the one.”

  She wanted to point out to them that she had grown up on a ranch. She knew that it took more than a kiss to create a child.

  Even a kiss as enthusiastic as the one Colt had given her—and as eagerly as she had returned it—would not give the sweet old ladies what they wanted.

  Washing up at the pump yesterday evening, she and Colt had both agreed that while they had enjoyed their kiss, it had been the result of something in the air. Something that made them behave in a way they would not ordinarily.

  He considered her an obligation to be fulfilled. A promise to be kept to her grandfather.

  She would do well to remember that the next time she felt like a moth drawn to his flame. He would singe her heart and not even realize he had done it.

  That kiss was going to keep her mind occupied for...well, forever. The hot pressure of his mouth, the scrape of his stubble against her cheek...she was certain that she had been waiting for it all her life.

  She would need to be on her guard from now on. She might lose the heart for buying the ranch back if she were to fall in love...real love, that is...since she was already in some kind of love, with Colt.

  Even now she wasn’t sure. He loved this ranch as much as her granddaddy had.

  If he had been serious about not selling for a million dollars, she had no hope by raising that much money, regardless of how she felt about it.

  Holly Jane took the blanket from a closet in the kitchen and folded it over her arm.

  She would hold to her dream of buying it back because she had to. Without it, all she had was The Sweet Treat and a circle of the ranch that she had to walk over Travers land to get to.

  Outside, she sat down on the bench in between Aunt Tillie and Grannie Rose. She spread the blanket over their knees.

  As much as she enjoyed living with them, she was in the end, a visitor. She needed a place of her own, because in spite of the fact that she had told Colt that the kiss meant nothing, and he’d told her the same, it meant a great deal.

  It meant that she should not be living under his roof unless she wanted to risk making the old ladies’ dreams come true.

  Footsteps crunched on the road and she looked up from her thoughts.

  Colt strode past the spring, coming from the hotel carrying a couple of dinner trays. His gait was long and smooth. He brought to mind one of the stallions in the paddock...lean, strong and male to the core.

  She was saved from having to gawk at him any longer by a pair of children running up to admire the pumpkins.

  Colt went inside The Sweet Treat. He came out a moment later with the tray of chocolates she had planned to serve her visitors.

  A line of what appeared to be grease showed faintly under his fingernails. Granddaddy’s nails used to look that way even though he’d scrubbed them with a brush.

  Colt must have been working on the equipment in the barn. It hadn’t been used in a very long time.

  He squatted and held out the tray to the children.

  “Miss Munroe made them special for you, buttercup.” He nodded at the pair of them, with a smile. “You, too, cowboy.”

  Darn those dimples. The more time she spent at her carousel the better off she would be.

  * * *

  Colt dug a broken bolt from his shirt pocket and handed it to the blacksmith.

  “Can you make one like it?” he asked.

  “Reckon so.” The blacksmith scratched his beard and squinted at it. “What’s it from?”

  “A carousel.”

  “Holly Jane’s carousel?” He held the pieces of the bolt up to the afternoon light streaming in through the open doors. “A weld might work but I reckon you’re better off with a new one.”

  “When can you have it finished?”

  “An hour, maybe less... Say, you trying to get that old thing running again?”

  He nodded. “It’s a surprise for Holly Jane. I’d appreciate if you kept quiet about it.”

  “No one will hear it from me. Miss Holly Jane is a special little gal, always has been. I used to take my son to ride the carousel on Sunday afternoons. She did her best to see that the Broadhower children and the Folsom kids had
fun together. Even way back then she was a baker.” The blacksmith’s eyes took on a glassy look while he visited the past. “I recall how she would get all the children sitting on the ground under a tree, then she’d pass out the treats she’d made and get everyone talking and laughing. Yes, sir, she is one special lady.”

  Damned if he didn’t think so, too, and that was before the story of the younglings under the tree. If only he could find some fault in her, something that might make him more acceptable in her eyes.

  “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “It’s good to have you here in Friendship Springs, Mr. Travers. That was a pretty string of horses you brought in.” The blacksmith tugged his apron over his round belly. He picked up a hammer.

  Colt figured the fellow must be good at his job. His biceps looked like rocks.

  “Good luck with that carousel.”

  Colt stepped into the sunshine. Even though it was sunny, the first day of November had begun with a hard frost. The chill lingered in the air.

  He turned north, toward The Sweet Treat. He’d promised the ladies he’d bring home a pie.

  The south side of Friendship Springs wasn’t as pretty as Town Square and the north end of town. The liveryman, the blacksmith and the butcher must not have felt the need for flowerpots beside their front doors.

  The Watering Can, Friendship Spring’s only saloon, was a half mile south of town. Only a trail through the weeds led from Main Street to the saloon. To reach it by horse or wagon one had to take a road that circumvented town.

  The better to keep drunk Folsoms and Broadhowers out of town proper, Holly Jane had explained.

  And speak of the devils, here came one now, walking south on the other side of the street.

  He strutted along with his red hair standing up at the crown and his hands shoved in his pockets. His elbows bowed out against his portly belly.

  “Better watch your back, stranger,” he heard the fellow call from behind.

  Colt pivoted slowly on his boot heel. Dirt crunched under his steps as he walked across the street.

  “You crow something, Cock-a-doodle?”

  The man’s face flushed from his hairline to his bulbous nose.