“Rose,” Joe said gently. He stood barely a dozen feet away.
Swallowing hard, she said: “You must think I’m the biggest kind of baby.” Then she noticed that his eyes were also misty, and added: “Maybe we both are.”
“You were always fond of that horse.”
“He’s the best friend I ever had.”
“Why didn’t you leave when you had the opportunity?”
“Let me go now. I got nothin’ holdin’ me here anymore.”
“It’s too late. You’re wanted by the law.”
“Whose law?”
“It doesn’t matter who owns it. You’re a wanted woman, and you’re still on top of the cattlemen’s list. That’s Ostermann’s gift to you. That and a price on your head that will never go away.”
“You figurin’ to collect it, are you?”
“No, I won’t take you in.”
“Then you aim to leave me hangin’ in a tree as a message to others, like you done to Sam Matthews and them boys at the mouth of the box cañon, and Wiley and Dave?” Her eyes darted involuntarily to the old, lightning-scarred pine where vigilantes had strung up Muggy so long ago.
Joe shook his head. “No, I’ll see that you’re buried properly. I promise you that. I’ll bury you beside Muggy, if you’d like.”
“It ain’t him so much as I was always partial to the view from up there.”
Joe made a motion with his revolver. “You’d best drop your shooter, Rose.”
She did as she was told, then moved away from Albert. Joe was pulling some pigging string from his pocket and shaking it out. She knew he intended to bind her wrists with it, the way they’d done Muggy.
“Come here,” he said.
“You ain’t gonna wait for your pards to catch up?”
“No, they’re a crude lot and would only make this harder. We’ll settle it before they get here, for old times’ sake.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
He looked up, his expression suddenly furious. “It’s too damn’ late for that,” he rasped, his face turning dark with anger, the prim and proper man he had become in his association with the big cattle outfits peeling away like dried mud. “I all but begged you to get outta this territory so it wouldn’t come to this. Don’t you dare start pleading for your life now.”
“I ain’t pleadin’,” she said, taken aback by the rawness of his voice, the quick, savage breaths he was taking to control his temper. It made her realize just how difficult this was going to be for him, and she wondered if he’d have the wherewithal to see it through in Regulator style—which meant hanging—or if he’d weaken in the end and shoot her down, quick-like, to get it over with. “I admire your pluck, Joe,” she said, her voice all of a sudden shaky with emotion. “I always said you was no quitter. No matter how difficult the task, I’d tell folks ….”
“Shut up,” he said in a ragged voice, then repeated his command for her to come closer.
Keeping her gaze on his pistol, she walked toward him, stopping again only a few feet away. Her pulse was thundering in her ears. “Joe,” she said. “There’s something I forgot to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“I got me a little hide-out gun under my left arm.”
He leveled the Colt between her eyes, cocking it. “I need you to pull that piece slow, Rose, real slow.”
She lifted the lapel of her jacket to reveal the Merwin Hulbert, then cautiously slid it from its holster, the moment so charged Rose thought surely one of them would have a stroke.
“Hand it here,” he said, reaching for the stubby pistol with his free hand. As he did, the Colt’s muzzle shifted slightly away.
“Joe,” she whispered.
He froze, his gaze locked with hers; the Colt’s aim was still to the side, somewhat lowered now. “Yes, Rose?”
She was holding the revolver toward him butt first, her forefinger curved through the trigger guard just like Sam Matthews had taught her. She paused uncertainly. Then a reckless grin split her face and she said: “Have I ever showed you my road agent spin?”
the end
About The Author
Michael Zimmer grew up on a small Colorado horse ranch and began to break and train horses for spending money while still in high school. An American history enthusiast from a very early age, he has done extensive research on the Old West. His personal library contains over two thousand volumes covering that area west of the Mississippi from the late 1700s to the early decades of the twentieth century. In addition to perusing first-hand accounts from the period, Zimmer is also a firm believer in field interpretation. He’s made it a point to master many of the skills used by our forefathers, and can start a campfire with flint and steel, gather, prepare, and survive on natural foods found in the wilderness, and has built and slept in shelters as diverse as bark lodges and snow caves. He has done horseback treks using nineteith century tack, gear, and guidelines. Michael Zimmer is the author of twelve previous novels. His work has been praised by Library Journal, Historical Novel Society, and Publishers Weekly, among others. Zimmer’s City of Rocks (Five Star, 2012) was chosen by Booklist as one of the top ten Western novels of 2012, the reviewer saying of the first-person narrator that “at times we can hear the wistfulness in his voice, the bittersweet memory of a time when he and the country were raw, young, and full of hope and promise. A stirring tale, well told.” Zimmer now resides in Utah with his wife, Vanessa, and two dogs. Visit his website at www.Michael-Zimmer.com.
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