The Bounty

by Beth Williamson

  The bounty hunter’s steps faltered for a split second as he walked toward a table with his bottle and glass.

  “I’m fine. As if I need to cheat with the way you play poker,” Nicky hissed.

  The bounty hunter laid his wet coat on a chair to dry, then sat down with a sigh.

  “Got any grub here?” he asked Joey. “I’m mighty hungry.”

  “Yessir, got some stew and cornbread in the back if’n you want some. It’s still h-hot,” Joey answered, his voice breaking on the last word.

  “Much obliged, kid. You can take the cost of the meal out of my half dollar, and then keep the rest. You’d best take the bottle back. I don’t need to come home drunk on an empty stomach. The missus would have my hide.”

  Nicky tried not to snort out loud at that one. Missus? Ha! The man probably was born from a nest of rattlesnakes. He surely didn’t have any family, much less anyone like a wife to worry about him.

  The man held the bottle out to the boy. Joey hesitantly approached him and made a swipe to grab it. Then he turned and went through a door in the back to get the meal as the big man stretched out his legs to wait.

  “Feels mighty good to sit down,” he said to no one in particular.

  In the back of the saloon, Nicky expelled the breath she had been holding. Her hands started to shake so she pressed them down into the table to stop the trembling. From beneath her hat brim, she glared at the man who had called attention to her—he was a gray-haired, older man with a weather-beaten face who at the moment, looked like he wanted to be anyplace else but there. He had the decency to look chagrined. “Sorry, Jesse. Too much whiskey, I guess.”

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered. She felt as if an army of ants had landed on her and were busily crawling up and down her skin. Why did Willard have to get loud and half-drunk when that bounty hunter was here in the saloon? Damn, he was good. Too goddamned good. He tracked her to Hermano’s and now here, two hundred miles away. Her cards were suddenly a blur in her hand, so she folded, then clenched her hands together under the table. She glanced up at the other two card players, Nate and Rusty, who were eyeing her suspiciously. She knew they hadn’t heard her whispered conversation with Willard, but she didn’t trust them for a minute.

  She turned her gaze to the bounty hunter again. He seemed to be napping while he waited for Joey to bring him some dinner. Perhaps Lady Luck would smile on her today. Rising quickly, she scooped up her winnings and shoved them into her pocket.

  “That’s it for me today. I’m gonna head on over to Rosie’s for some dinner. I’ll see you fellas back at the ranch.”

  “Mind if I join you?” a deep voice asked from behind her. Nicky had to bite her lip to stifle the shriek that tried to escape her throat. How the hell had he gotten back here so fast? Like a stealthy black panther.

  “Sure thing, mister,” said Willard. “Long as you got the money, we’re willing to let ya give it away.”

  Willard let loose a low whistle as he took a good look at Tyler’s large frame. “Whooee! You’re a big boy. You ever work the range?”

  “Time and again.”

  “Damn, I’ll bet ya can lift a full grown steer by yourself.” Willard chuckled. “Name’s Willard. This here is Nate, Rusty, and Jesse.”

  The stranger didn’t offer his name.

  Nicky yanked her hat down farther on her head. Time to go.

  “You from around here?” Willard asked the stranger.

  “No.”

  “In town fer pleasure?”

  “No.”

  “Talkative, ain’t ya? Makes no never mind. Ante up, fellas.”

  Nicky tried to get around Willard without raising her head into the light.

  “Wait, Jesse, you’d better get on over to the store to pick up that new fancy cookpot Missus Benson asked you to get. Old man Perkins will be closing up soon for his afternoon siesta.”

  “Dammit!” She could have kicked him for reminding her. “You’re right, Willard. I’d best be getting along then.”

  She grabbed her coat and walked with as much dignity, but as quickly, as she could. Hopefully no one noticed she was running for her life.

  As Nicky exited the saloon, a huge sigh of relief exploded from her chest. Turning in the direction of the general store, she ran across the muddy street. She skittered into the store, earning a disapproving glance from Mr. Perkins.

  “Boy, I tol’ you before, don’t be runnin’ in my store.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Perkins.” She truly made an effort to be polite, and it was an effort. Jesus, the bounty hunter could be after her already. “I came to get the cookpot for Mrs. Benson at the Rocking R.”

  “Well, then, just so we’re clear on that runnin’ thang. Already got a gob of mud on my floor, and lookit the water.” His gaze roamed over the planked floor. “Missus Perkins is going to have my hide.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Perkins,” she repeated. “The cookpot?”

  With one final scowl at her, he picked up his order book from behind the counter.

  “Let’s take a lookee.” He began to turn the pages slowly. Excruciatingly slowly, blindingly slowly, maddeningly slowly. Nicky thought she might just have to knock him upside the head and steal the cookpot.

  “Here we are,” Mr. Perkins announced with a flourish. “It didn’t come in.”

  He peered at Nicky over the top of his glasses.

  She swallowed the angry words that rose to her lips. He didn’t slow her down on purpose. How was he to know she was running from some stranger in a saloon who was hunting her outlaw hide?

  “Do you expect it soon?” she asked as politely as she could.

  “I reckon so.” His brows came together. “Mud has slowed everyone up this week.”

  “Okay, then.” She started back through the store to make her escape. “Willard will likely come by next week to see if it’s come in.”

  “Young man, wait just a minute,” Mr. Perkins started to say. Nicky closed the door behind her with a thud.

  ———

  Tyler stood waiting beside the general store, moving a coin between his fingers. He listened to the conversation in the store. He heard the door close and the footsteps heading straight toward him. Stepping from the shadows, he waited for her.

  “Fool errand. Didn’t even have the damn thing and now I’ve wasted my…”

  As she raised her arm to put on her coat, she turned and ran right into Tyler’s chest. A muffled “Oh!” preceded her raising her face to look at what she’d run into. The coin made a loud ting as it hit the boards beneath them.

  It was her. He couldn’t believe his luck. That voice in the saloon had been so achingly familiar, he was hard-pressed not to grab her then and there in front of her friends and kiss her. No, not kiss her, capture her.

  “Hello, Nicky.”

  Those green eyes widened and then she was gone, running like the wind across the road, the coat dropped at Tyler’s mud-encrusted feet. Tyler was after her like a shot. The rain had turned the street into a slippery, muddy mess. The two of them must have looked like circus performers as they careened down alleys, between buildings and through a corral, trying not to fall.

  Tyler could see holstered guns thumping against her thighs and was glad she hadn’t pulled one on him. He wanted to get that extra three thousand for bringing Nicky back alive. And she would be dead if she tried to draw on Tyler.

  No doubt about it. If he concentrated on hitting an arm or a leg, not generally his preferred target of course, he could just bring her down if he had to. But damn, that woman was fast. She had legs that ate up the ground like a goat in a cabbage patch.

  Breathing hard and out of patience completely, Tyler’s long legs finally gained the advantage. On an open stretch behind a hotel, he caught up to Nicky and tackled her.

  They landed with an oomph on the muddy ground and slid a good ten feet before they stopped. Immediately she put up a fight, punching and twisting and kicking. The kicking was the worst. He h
ated to be kicked, and his back still wasn’t completely healed from that bandito’s carving job. He had to stop her before he actually cried out in pain.

  “Get off me, you son of a bitch!” She punched him in the balls. That did it. Before he knew it, he’d stopped her with a sharp uppercut to the jaw. After he’d done it, he simply stared down at her. He’d hit a woman. His stomach was rolling with nausea from her well-aimed punch and his balls ached like they were on fire.

  “Let go of me! Son of a bitch! Get off! Get off! Get off of me!”

  Jesus, his mother was rolling in her grave. He had hit a woman for God’s sake and now he was sitting on her. Tyler immediately unbuckled her gun belt and took her knife from its sheath in her boot. He quickly rose, then yanked her to her feet. Still breathing heavily, he pulled off her muddy hat. A mass of chestnut-colored curls sprang up like a jack-in-the-box. Her hair was shorn like a man’s, but no man had hair like that—it looked like pure silk. She rubbed her jaw where he’d punched her.

  Damn, now he was sure both his mother and his grandmother were rolling in their graves. How the hell did he lose control like that? Tyler took a good look at the woman he’d finally captured. She was dressed in jeans, a blue shirt, and men’s boots, but Tyler noticed, couldn’t help but notice, the womanly curves beneath the disguise now that the mud had plastered her clothes to her body.

  “Are you going to gawk at me all day?” She bracketed a hip with her free arm. “Lonely, bounty hunter? Haven’t been with a woman in a while? Did you miss me?”

  He shook her arm. “You’d best keep your mouth shut, Malloy,” he growled, all too aware her remark hit a nerve. It had been quite a long time since he had scratched that particular itch, but it was none of her damn business. He fixed her with his hardest expression. She didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, but instead looked back at him with fearless determination.

  “I’ll never go back to Wyoming with you,” she said in a voice laced with bitterness and challenge.

  “Yes, you will.” He all but slammed Nicky’s hat back on her head and pulled her forward. “Sorry I had to knock you around a bit, girl, but when you punch a man in the balls, you’re aiming for some payback.”

  “Was that an apology?”

  “Of a sort,” he said through gritted teeth. The strain of not limping along and cradling his nether regions was enough to make him break out in a sweat, even in the cold rain. Damn, that woman had a hard fist.

  They walked back to the saloon with their feet making godawful noises through the muddy street. Tyler kept a firm grip on his prisoner’s arm. The second time she slipped in the mud, he stopped and glared at her.

  “Do you need to be carried?” he snapped.

  “No. This goddamn mud is slippery. And it doesn’t help that you’re dragging me along like a farm plow.”

  “I think you’d prefer this to bouncing along on my back when I throw your little ass over my shoulder.”

  “Just try it, bounty hunter.” She stuck her chin up at him. “I’ll be happy to go another round with you.”

  “The bounty is dead or alive, Malloy. You’d do best to remember that.”

  “As if I could forget,” she snorted as he yanked her forward again. “How did you find me anyway?”

  Tyler didn’t answer. He was still surprised the idiot cowboy had been right.

  She scooped up her discarded coat from the sidewalk as they passed the general store. She tried to get some of the mud off it, but it was too wet and she ended up smearing the mud like yesterday’s dessert. “Can we at least wash the mud off?”

  At that moment, the mist of a rain became a steady downpour. The mud started to run down their faces like dirty tears.

  “Does that answer your question? Looks like Mother Nature is doing the washing for us.”

  Nicky stuck her tongue out at him as he turned away from her. He promptly ignored the jolt that went through him at the sight of her pink tongue. A tongue he was sure had featured itself in at least one of his dreams. Damn her for kissing him.

  When they reached the saloon, Tyler asked, “Which horse is yours?”

  “The dun mare.”

  Conveniently, his horse was directly next to Nicky’s. Funny how things like that happen. Tyler was nearly dragging her now.

  “You feel like a boat anchor, woman. Would you mind walking for yourself?”

  She dug her heels even further into the mud. “I’ll do anything I can to make this as hard for you as possible.”

  As they neared the horses, Tyler got a clear look at the mare. He couldn’t help but be impressed with the fine horseflesh—Nicky’s mare was a beautiful animal. She looked well taken care of, and Nicky’s saddle and tack were well oiled and in great shape. He didn’t want to remember that he normally respected people who respected their horses so much. Outlaws had never fallen into that category, until Nicky Malloy, anyway. Shaking the unwanted thoughts from his head, Tyler grunted as he dragged her the last five feet to the horses.

  With one hand, he rifled through her saddlebags searching for weapons or anything else he needed to confiscate. Something cold and metallic touched his hand. He pulled it out to discover that it was a man’s pocket watch.

  “Don’t you touch that.” She dropped her coat in the mud again and reached for the watch.

  “Something you stole?”

  “No, you stupid son of a bitch, it was my brother’s. Give it back to me,” she said, voice full of fury as she tried to wrestle the watch out of his hand.

  “Fine. Here, take it.” He handed it to her.

  As she made a grab for the watch, it almost slipped out of her wet palm. Releasing a shaky sigh, she kissed the watch and tucked it into her pants pocket.

  Brother, my horse’s behind.

  “Brother? Hermano’s watch, more like it. Reckon he took care of you right nice.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “Not that it’s any of your business, bounty hunter, but it did belong to my brother, a brother who gave his life for mine. He was more of a man than your sorry ass will ever be.”

  Tyler quirked a dark, disbelieving eyebrow at her passionate defense, but said no more on the subject.

  “Put your coat on, woman. You’re not going to do yourself any favors by getting any wetter than you already are.”

  Nicky glared at him as he helped her not-so-gently slip the coat on without ever letting go of one of her arms. After hooking her gun belt over the horn of his saddle, he tucked her knife into the saddlebags and pulled out his custom-made shackles. They allowed him to shackle a prisoner to his saddle and still ride a comfortable distance on another horse. As he turned to her, shackles in hand, her eyes widened.

  “Are you planning on riding out now?” she protested. “It’s pouring.”

  Tyler was silent. He had no intention on letting her in on his plans, not that he’d made any specific plans yet other than to head north. He secured her hands with the shackles and ran the length to his own saddle. She wasn’t going anywhere without him. He lifted her up onto her horse, strangely aroused by the feeling of her soft flesh in a man’s clothes. His cock was beginning to recover from the fist, and lurching to life.

  “These aren’t very comfortable, you know,” Nicky continued, her voice high and tight. “Can we at least eat something first? I was, uh…heading to the restaurant before you decided to tackle me. I can’t eat Joey’s stew no matter how hungry I am.”

  Her husky voice was beginning to grate on Tyler’s nerves. What happened to the quiet stranger in Texas who had saved his life? Swinging up into the saddle, he held both pairs of reins as they started out of town.

  Through the saloon’s dirty window, Tyler noted that the old man, Willard, had watched as Nicky was secured to her horse. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the woman for a moment.

  Tyler and Nicky rode in silence for a while as the town grew smaller and smaller behind them. He was reciting hymns in his head to calm the lust that seemed to want to join the party. Finally his blood stopped r
ushing and he felt more in control of himself.

  The rain tapered off within a short time, and then the silence between them grew larger and larger. He knew Nicky wasn’t going to keep quiet much longer. Her anger was almost physical, radiating in waves, and it was aimed at Tyler. It at least distracted him from the dull throbbing in his balls as his body recovered slowly from his first run-in with a she-cat.

  “Don’t talk much, bounty hunter?” she finally said.

  “I don’t talk to murderers and thieves.”

  Nicky’s eyes widened. “What? Is that what Owen said?” she asked, her voice breaking. “That I’m a thief and a murderer? Incredible. What did I steal?”

  Tyler noticed that she didn’t deny the killing. “Ten thousand dollars.”

  Tyler had learned not to trust outlaws, but this woman looked sincerely surprised. “Ten thousand dollars? Holy shit! I didn’t steal any money from that snake. And protecting yourself isn’t murder. Did you know Owen Hoffman is a cold-blooded murderer?” Her voice grew cold with fury. “That he killed my brother? Shot him in the head while he was bound and on his knees?”

  “Was he thieving too?” Tyler knew he’d made a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. Nicky’s face clouded with rage and she let loose a war cry that would curdle milk. She lunged for him, muddy fists raised and shackles clanging. The horses bumped into each other, startling them into a gallop. Tyler tried to slow the horses down with one hand while fending off blows from Nicky with the other.

  “Enough.” He grabbed both of her wrists with one powerful hand and yanked her hands over and pinned them to his thigh.

  “Whoa, boy, whoa.” Tyler crooned to his horse. He pulled hard on the reins, slowing the horses to a trot and then stopping them. Nicky looked up at her captor with disgust. Tyler returned the look.

  “Look, Malloy, we’ve got a lot of miles to cover. It’s gonna be even longer if you keep fighting me,” Tyler said through clenched teeth.

  “Then it’s gonna be longer because I’ll never bend to your will, mister. What is your name anyway? I want to be sure they spell it right on your tombstone.”

  “Calhoun. Tyler Calhoun.”