by Jenna Kernan
She lifted her brows at that. Most men could open a can of beans, but did not really know their way about a kitchen.
“Are you teasing me?”
“Nope. I used to make the bread at the Blue Belle.”
He was just full of surprises, she thought. Like her, he wasn’t at all what he appeared.
He reached for the skillet, now cool and empty, and then paused. He remained still just a moment and then stood, bringing the skillet to the water. But now he was silent.
She knew instantly something was wrong again. Was it his mention of the Blue Belle? Curiosity tugged at her. Laurie wanted to know everything about him, but after the last time, when he’d told her about his mother and then practically ran her off, she went slow.
Laurie followed him to the stream, sitting beside him as he dipped the skillet and scrubbed it with wet sand.
“Who taught you?” She held her breath, expecting him to slam down the skillet or storm away, but he did neither, just continued the rhythmic sweep of sand over the cast iron.
“I used to work in the kitchen with Griff at the house. Brought the girls their meals sometimes.” He kept his eyes averted, as if he was too embarrassed by what he said to hold his head up.
It made her angry that he should have to feel so ashamed of his boyhood. It was not his choice, after all.
“It’s a pity no one thought to bring you away from there.”
“Some had worse. Least I had a bed and food. Griff taught me to ride and rope. Gave me my first gun. It was an old gun, but still. Besides, who’d want a rough, foul-mouthed little kid like me underfoot? Nobody could tell me nothing back then, except Griff. I don’t know how I’ve lasted so long.”
She wondered about him. Had his upbringing contributed to his choice to join Hammer’s band of outlaws? Boon seemed such a contradiction. He was hard and tough, but he seemed to lack the cruelty necessary for such nasty business. She lifted her fingers to probe at her swollen cheek and the scab that remained as evidence of the blows landed by both Katz and Hammer.
It might have been worse. Hammer had swung without restraint. She shuddered to think what would have become of her if he had landed that blow. He hadn’t because of Boon. He was as defensive as a guard dog but there was a certain sweetness to him. He’d tended her a little roughly, but perhaps in the best fashion he knew how. So it pained her to think of the end he could expect if he was caught on the wrong side of the law.
Her inquisitiveness warred with the understanding that she had no right to ask him such personal questions. Her manners abandoned her again, beaten back by her need to know him.
“How did you fall in with George Hammer?”
Boon tore a hank of grass up by the roots and used the clean end to dry the skillet, sweeping the long green stalks around and around. He glanced up at her.
“You sure you want to hear this?”
Did she? Laurie paused to consider. She recalled the way he had ended Lawson’s life and felt a chill run up her spine. Then she thought of how he’d snatched her from under their very noses. He was brutal, brave and sometimes thoughtful. She had seen two sides of him. Was he a good man or a bad one? Laurie didn’t know, but she yearned to discover everything about him.
She nodded. “I do.”
He pressed his lips together and drew a great breath as if resigning himself to her request. He sat beside her, drawing up his knees and letting the skillet dangle from one hand.
Dragonflies darted over the water and Laurie noted that the sun now dropped toward the ridge of rock. It would be evening soon and with the dusk, she’d be riding again.
The cold that gripped her now had little to do with the approaching night and all to do with her worry over what he might reveal next.
“Laurie, I’ve done things I’m not proud of.”
His words made her think on her own past mistakes that could never be set right. She understood exactly what that meant.
She felt a connection between them growing. She knew she could resist his handsome face and his melodic voice. But resisting this common ground she recognized between them was harder. Boon made her feel as if she was not the only person in the world trying to live down her past.
Anton never made her feel anything other than obligation and discomfort. But Boon lit her up like the tail of a comet in the night sky. She came alive under his touch and now she felt a connection to him that went bone deep. She knew that she was suddenly on dangerous ground. If she were wise she’d stop him right here, before the sympathy she fostered for him grew even more unwieldy.
“We all have skeletons in our closets, I suppose,” she said. Laurie felt a twinge of guilt. Was she asking to find something to repulse her or because she needed to know him better? The latter, she knew, and felt the uncertainty double, filling her stomach and washing through her lungs. She held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t answer, hoping he would.
He removed his hat, setting it beside him on the ground. Then he raked his long fingers through his hair and gave the back of his scalp a rub. She itched to run her fingers through that mass of sun-bleached hair. Instead she curled her hands demurely into her lap.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about such a topic before a lady.”
“I insist.”
He considered her for a long moment, rubbing his knuckles over the stubble on his jaw. “All right then. But remember you asked.” He drew a deep breath and plunged in. “After I left them that raised me, I signed on as a bush cowboy, chasing wild cows out of thick cover and bringing them in for branding. Still got the scars on my legs to prove it. Thorns on some of those bushes were this long.” He indicated the distance as far as his thumb and index finger could stretch. “Cat claws, they called them. Must have been wildcats, I guess.”
He reached for his hat then stayed his free hand and laid it back on his knee, drumming his fingers. Finally he set the skillet beside his hat.
“I couldn’t ride very well then and more than once I roped a cow and ended up on the wrong side of a tree on a half-wild pony. Been gored, stomped on and thrown more times than I care to recall. But I learned to ride and rope and earned enough to buy a good pair of chaps.” He indicated the ones he wore, scarred though they were. “Next I bought a pistol, then another. I never went into town on Saturday nights like the rest of the boys.”
Laurie nodded. “I’d imagine your boyhood had included one too many Saturday nights.”
That arrested him. He stared at her a moment and then nodded. “That’s right. I just couldn’t do to those women what I’d seen done to the ones who raised me. The boys got no idea. They’re just looking for a good time, you know? But it’s not good. Not good at all. I seen women, good women, forced into such a life because of one mistake. Then they get stuck and can’t get out.”
She rubbed one hand absently along her opposite arm. What would he think if he knew how narrowly she had escaped such a fate? That she, too, had made that one mistake? If her parents had discovered her disgrace, of what she had allowed Anton to do to her, would they have cast her out? She had told Anton no, but she hadn’t fought him and afterward she’d been too ashamed to tell her parents what they had done. A second mistake, she realized. But she’d been so afraid that they’d make her marry him and she couldn’t bear the thought of him doing that to her again.
Boon didn’t seem to note her distraction as he went on.
“Some get clear, though. Big Mary saved enough. She wrote us from Kansas City and said she was now Mrs. Mary Smith Mann, widow and owner of a respectable boardinghouse. She just made up a new past including a dead husband.”
He laughed at that. The musical sound made Laurie’s stomach flutter. She inched closer, watching his eyes dance at the memory and watched the humor die a quick death.
“But most, they are too ashamed even to let
their kin know what became of them.
“That’s why I got no name. My ma would never say it for fear her family might discover how far she’d fallen.
“Anyways, I swore I’d never do that to a woman, never use her body and then just take off. It’s not right what men do. I’ll never take a woman unless I married her first.”
Laurie could not stifle her shock. Never? She struggled with the recognition that in this area, she had more experience than he. The experience had been all bad, but still. Laurie watched Boon as he used a stick to poke a small stone into the water and then tossed the stick in after it. She thought back to what he had done to her that first night. Tried to compare the sweetness, the wildness and the pleasure to the humiliation she had experienced with Anton. Her face grew hot.
“Anyway, this isn’t proper talk, I reckon.”
She inched back from him and forced a smile. “No. Please go on.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and finally stared at her.
“I got into a lot of fights growing up. Tried working in town, but got fired a few times. Never drew my pistols on a man, but I was quick to raise my fists. It felt good to hit someone. I even liked getting hit back.”
“But that makes no sense.”
He shrugged. “Just the way I was. Folks called me Bad Boon and that I was—born bad, raised bad, just plain bad—though I wasn’t yet an outlaw. One time, after I tangled with a fellow in town, instead of getting tossed in the hoosegow, I got offered a job. A feller from the C. Bain & Company thought I’d make a good guard for the mail. Had me riding shotgun on one of their stages next day. Man, you ain’t lived until you’ve sat on top of a stage behind a team of eight running full out.”
He gazed at the water for a while then came back around, glancing to her. She smiled and nodded, silently encouraging him to continue.
“I got pretty good with that rifle. They gave me one and this hat.” He patted the brim, still beside him on the bank. “I wanted black, but they only had gray.”
“It’s a handsome hat.”
He ran a finger over the stiff felt of the upturned brim. “Riding guard made me feel important, though it was mostly mail, magazines, parcels and such. They never carried money and advertised as much to try to cut down on robberies. Nobody called me Bad Boon then and I stopped fighting. We outrun a few outlaws. My driver was Ralph Corragan. He was eight years older. He said if I kept out of fights, I’d be a driver soon with a driver’s pay. He had a wife and two kids, young ones, not even walking yet.”
Laurie noticed that he spoke of Ralph in the past tense and the anticipation of bad news made her queasy.
“He even taught me how to hold the reins when the way was straight and he held my gun. He was holding it the day Hammer’s gang attacked the stage. They shot Ralph in the belly, two shots. The blood was dark and there was a lot of it. Those shots were meant for me. I was the guard, not Ralph.”
Laurie failed to suppress her shiver.
“He was the first real friend I ever had. I don’t much like to get close to folks because of things like that.”
“Did the shot kill him?”
Boon shook his head, his lips pressing into a thin line and his restless fingers closed into fists.
“There were too many and I wasn’t a good driver. They surrounded us. I pulled up, because I didn’t know what would happen next. I never met a man as ruthless as George Hammer.”
Laurie thought of how Boon had ridden their horses until they staggered and knew he had learned of Hammer’s ruthlessness through hard experience.
“If I’d known, I’d have driven those horses to death rather than stop. But Ralph was hurt. He could barely hold on. I was afraid he’d fall. So...” He motioned to pull an imaginary brake.
Laurie watched him with wide, nervous eyes. Was she sorry she’d started this train? If she wasn’t, she soon would be, Boon thought. He planned to tell her everything. Then she’d know what he was and that would be best for them both, because the way she looked at him sometimes gave him crazy ideas. It got him thinking he might just run off with her and make a home for them. He could work and she could mind their children, teach them to read. He’d like to have boys and girls who knew how to read and cipher. As if Laurie would have him, but she did have the look of a woman who wanted what a man could give her. That’s why she needed to know exactly the kind of man he was. Bad Boon, bad through and through.
He met her eyes, holding them without mercy as he told her what came next.
“First thing they did was shoot the passengers. Two women schoolteachers and a Baptist preacher headed for El Paso to start a school. Shot him first, shot him in the face and one of the women in the breast. The last in the back when she tried to run.”
Laurie huddled in upon herself as her eyes went round as a horned owl’s. She held a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
“I was holding Ralph in my arms when they came at me. When they got close, I drew my pistol and aimed it at Hammer. I should have shot him and died right there. Would have been better.”
Laurie removed her hand from her mouth and scowled at him. “Don’t say that.”
He snorted. She hadn’t heard the rest yet and it proved full well that she needed to.
“Hammer ordered his boys to hold fire. He told me that I was fast enough to join his men. I said I’d die first. But they didn’t point the gun at me—they pointed it at Ralph and ordered me to my feet.”
Boon stopped to wipe the sweat from his face. He could still see Ralph staring up at him, that dark blood leaking out of his mouth.
“They shot him anyway?” she asked.
Boon shook his head. If only they had. Why hadn’t he shot Hammer when he’d had the chance?
“No. They ordered me to do it.”
She gasped. It was hard to have her know, hard to say the truth that he had not spoken to anyone.
“They told me they’d kill Ralph and then shoot me or I could shoot him and join the gang.”
“Oh, no.” Her words held shock at the realization of what he had done.
“I didn’t want to die. Ralph said he was done for anyway. Blood was coming out his mouth and still leaking from him with each beat of his heart. He was pale as a bedsheet and his lips had gone blue. But he wasn’t dead until I put the bullet in his heart and became a murderer like the rest of them.”
She inched toward him. “But you had no choice.”
He snorted and smiled. “I had a choice. Made the same one I always do. I picked myself first. He was my friend and I killed him.”
He waited for her to condemn him, waited for her to tell him that he turned her stomach or that she hated him.
But, to his surprise, she continued to inch across the bedrock that separated them, advancing with a slow determination and a look in her eyes that kept him from doing what he knew was right. If he was a respectable man—the kind of man she deserved—he’d warn her off, tell her to keep back. Instead Boon waited, letting her come.
“You were placed in a horrific position. But your friend was right—he was dying. Even if there was a doctor waiting, he would not have survived such wounds.”
“I ended him. Took him from his wife and his babies. Nobody else—me.”
“No. Hammer did that. All you did was end his suffering.”
Boon gaped, staring down at Laurie’s lovely upturned face marred only by the shiner that now circled purple under her left eye. He had expected censure and received mercy. No wonder he could not keep himself from her. Laurie was not like any woman he’d ever come across. She was compassion, beauty and innocence, all contained in the most appealing package he’d ever seen.
Could she be right?
He shook his head, refusing the clemency she offered.
“You’re not an outlaw,” sh
e insisted, inches closer now.
“I rode with them.”
“They held a pistol to your head. You would have left at the first chance, had the opportunity arisen.”
“Opportunity? I left them because your father’s partner shot my horse out from under me.”
“Did you have any occasion to leave them before that? Tell me you had a chance to run and you didn’t take it and I’ll believe every harsh word you have uttered.”
He couldn’t because he hadn’t. Hammer and his men had watched him like a captive, especially on the one robbery he’d gone on. They wouldn’t even give him a gun. He’d been without a gun when her father had captured him. It was one of the captain’s questions, why he didn’t have a weapon. But he did, that small derringer in his vest pocket. He could have used it to kill Hammer at any time. But he knew that if he did, he’d never get out alive.
Laurie waited, chin raised, certain in her own judgment. At last she nodded. “You see? I knew it. You’re a good man, but you just can’t see it.”
Laurie was wrong. She saw the man he wished he could be, not the man he was.
“I’ve seen you take great risks to get me out. You kept George Hammer from hitting me. You saved me from the others. If you’re so unscrupulous, why did you do all that?”
“Your father sent me.”
“I know that. But why you? If he thought you were so wicked, he wouldn’t have chosen you.”
“I’m the only one who could get past the sentries. Anyone else shows up and they shoot you first.”
Her eyes rounded, but her recovery was fast. If he blinked, he’d have missed it.
“I understand why my father sent you. I don’t understand why you agreed to come. Did my father offer to pay you?”
“He gave me these.” He rested his hands on the twin pistols, seated in the holsters that she now noted looked rather new.
She glanced from his holsters to him and then shook her head. “That wasn’t pay. That was arming you for the job. Did he offer a reward for my return?”
