The Lady and the Lawman

by Jennifer Zane

  THE LADY AND THE LAWMAN

  Jennifer Zane

  © 2013 by Jennifer Zane

  Cover Design © 2013 by Jennifer Zane

  Cover photo by Illustrated Romance

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or copied in any form or format, by electronic, digital, or mechanical means including, but not limited to, information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher. An exception is granted to book reviewers who may quote up to 250 words in a review.

  Other books by Jennifer Zane:

  The Gnome Novel Series:

  Gnome On The Range

  Gnomeless

  Gnome For The Holidays

  Gnome, Alaska

  CHAPTER ONE

  Colorado- 1878

  Curled in a ball on the uncomfortable bench seat of the stage, her arm an awkward pillow against the jolts and rocking of the stage, Margaret Atwater snoozed fitfully. The heat was stifling, covering her like a wool blanket in July. Her dress clung to her sweaty skin, her hair damp and sticking to her brow. She'd undone the top few buttons at the neck, revealing the full swell of her breasts above her snug corset. The smallest of adjustment offered a reprieve from the endless warmth and the strict confines of polite society. Who cared about social mores when it was almost too hot to breathe, much less be covered head to toe in linen and cotton?

  The leather curtains flapped noisily with each rock or lumbering sway. Rays of intense sun intermittently filtered through and burned through her closed lids. She licked her parched lips, anticipating the next stop on the route like a lost man in a desert finding an oasis. She must look as poorly as she felt. But she didn't care. She was safely away from her fiancé's clutches and that was her sole concern.

  It was impossible to say exactly where she was beyond a two days' ride west of St. Louis. She'd lost track in the tedium of horse hooves and the never-ending sway and dip of the stage. If she had to guess, she was somewhere in the new state of Colorado.

  Deafening shots rang out, rousing her. “What?” she whispered to herself, clearing her fuzzy head.

  A second round of gunfire chipped pieces of wood out of the panel above her head and the stage lurched forward with incredible speed.

  “Oh no!” she shouted, instinctively covering her head.

  There was no time to panic, or even think. Chunks of wood flew through the air and landed in her hair, on her lap. The uncontrollable swaying had her reaching her arms out, one hand hitting the side of the stage, her fancy East Coast hat toppling off her head.

  She spread her legs wide on the floor to help maintain her balance and grunted in an unladylike fashion as she held on. If any of her society friends could see her now, they’d probably faint dead away. Her dress was unbuttoned low enough to expose her ample cleavage the lace on her corset, her hat was crushed beneath her feet, and tendrils of her dark hair fell from its pins. Her dress was stained and wrinkled from travel, and most likely beyond repair.

  Through the clamoring leather flap, she could make out a blur of the endless green prairie. A wheel caught on what felt like a deep rut and the stage jumped as if it were a feather in the wind. It fell more like a boulder from a cliff.

  Dust kicked up as the stage slid to a rough stop and she coughed in the thick air. The stage—and Margaret—landed on its side, the horses unable to drag the heavy load farther. Whoever fired the gunshots were nearby. She heard their heavy breathing from where she laid, sprawled in a heap, her skirts around her neck.

  Wincing, she rubbed her hip where she landed on the corner of the seat. Continuing on, she did a quick assessment of the rest of her body and found only a few sore spots and probably, come tomorrow, many a bruise. Attempting to get her bearings, she looked up at the roof, no, the wall of the stage. Carefully but without any ladylike grace, she pulled herself up to the window to peek out, standing on the other wall and door, which were now the floor. Her legs, tangled in the mess of skirts and petticoats, made it extremely difficult.

  Two men on horseback waved their guns and one fired again into the air. Her heart leapt into her throat as she covered her ears and flinched at the deafening sound. Only a squeak escaped her throat, a full scream clogged by fear. She was going to die. Alone, standing in a tipped carriage, a complete mess, shot by bandits or robbers or desperadoes. She'd never contemplated how she would eventually die, but she always assumed she'd be old and gray, and not in the middle of nowhere!

  The only life she'd ever known, a life of stifling wealth and loneliness, had changed overnight. Every dream, every girlhood plan, had been wiped away by a few evil words by her fiancé. She’d escaped, but a different destiny started for her now. Scared—no, petrified—in Colorado. Just her, and men with guns.

  Their faces were shadowed because of their hats, worn low over their eyes. Chaps covered long pants, their spurs clinked against their horse’s flanks. The men were filthy, their clothes coated in a thick layer of dust, their sleeves rolled up against the hot sun. Sweat stained the front of their shirts.

  Their horses looked worn, nostrils flaring with each breath, their dark coats glistening with sweat. They nickered and stomped the ground, uneasy.

  This was like a scene right out of a dime novel she secretly enjoyed reading, but Margaret didn’t remember the fear clamping down on her heart like a vice, squeezing the breath from her lungs, when she’d read about the stage robbers. It had seemed exotic, far-fetched and romantic. She couldn't have been more wrong. Her palms gripped the window frame, her knuckles white. A trickle of cold sweat slid down the back of her neck.

  When she’d answered the advertisement for a mail order bride in order to escape a doomed marriage to William Hunt, this little adventure was not something she’d anticipated. Indians maybe, but not stage robbers.

  “Check those bags and look for loot. I’ll go see who’s inside,” one of the men said, pointing his gun toward the stage.

  They were going to find her and kill her. She had to escape! As she ducked back into the stage, her gaze darted around the small space, searching for a hiding place. There was nowhere to go, no secret way out. In fact, her only escape route was through the door above her. She looked up, squinting at the brightness of the sun. All she could see was the blue, cloudless sky.

  Feeling the stage shake, she heard a man climb up onto the overturned side and moved around above her, toward the door. Gulping down her fear, she watched as the metal latch turned, the door thrown open on its rusty hinges. It slammed against the wooden exterior and she jumped, startled by the loud noise. The stage shifted enough from the impact for Margaret to lose her balance and fall with a loud “humph”. Grabbing hold of either side of the doorframe, the man peered into the stage, blocking out most of the sunlight.

  A crooked smile spread across his weathered face. Turning his head, he spit a wad of chewing tobacco out of the corner of his mouth, leaving brown saliva trailing down his chin, as well as the panel he'd hit. He shook his head with what had to be disbelief as he wiped the remaining spittle with his sleeve.

  “Well, looky what we've got here!” His gaze took in her layers of petticoats and ankle exposed from her latest tumble.

  She was embarrassed, but knew survival came before appearances, so she scrambled away from the dirty man as best she could in the tight space, her revealed calves be damned. The man leaned down into the overturned cabin, grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her out int
o the bright sunshine as if he were lifting a baby from a pram.

  He hefted her first onto the side of the stage, then lowered her none-too-gently to the ground. Unable to get her feet planted, she fell into the tall grass. Her backside smarted at the contact.

  “Ow!” she muttered. Tilting, she pulled a rock out from beneath her and hefted it at the man. With bad aim, it hit the wooden stage with a thunk and bounced off, landing on the ground behind her.

  The other man rushed over from his search, knocking suitcases that had been thrown from their high perch out of his way.

  “My, oh, my. Ain't she a pretty one?” The newcomer whistled his pleasure.

  The duo looked her up and down as if they hadn’t seen a woman in a long time, drooling as if she were a piece of meat on a dinner platter after a long fast. She felt exposed and naked and too afraid to speak. Their eyes roved over her hair, her face...and lower.

  She was well endowed, had been since she was fourteen, and this particular attribute always had men noticing, even with a prim dress buttoned up to her neck. Now, with her dress gaping open, she could only imagine what the men thought of her and how she was practically flaunting herself. Her cheeks heated with mortification at the very idea.

  She'd often dreamed of walking into a room and grabbing every man's attention. To be alluring and desirous enough to make men forget themselves and fall over their own feet to ask her to dance, to talk to her. Never again. She'd do anything—anything—to be homely and plain and as unappealing to men as physically possible if these two men would stop leering at her. She flew a hand to her neck, adjusting and tugging at the ends of the fabric. No use. Without buttoning it, which took time and steady fingers—which she did not currently have—it was a lost cause.

  These men were no gentlemen. Rough around the edges was a generous description. Several days of stubble covered the lower half of their sweaty faces. The whites of their eyes were bright because of their sunburned skin and yellow teeth. She was sure they hadn’t seen fresh water in weeks. To top it all off, they smelled. Badly.

  Dear Lord, give me strength!

  “I don’t know who you gentlemen are but, if you’d be so kind as to leave me alone, I...I’d appreciate it.”

  The men appeared baffled by her words, as if she spoke a foreign language.

  “I’d appreciate it!” One mimicked her high-pitched voice. The man who’d found her in the stage laughed so hard that he choked on his chewing tobacco, before his cohort smacked him on the back soundly. Margaret felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment, humiliation.

  Instead of standing there and being ridiculed, she walked away. Before she could make it around the stage, Tobacco Chewer grabbed her and yanked her back in front of him.

  They weren’t going to let her go. She was going to die. Or worse. She was going to live and have these men do things to her. Fear rolled in her stomach like the movement of the runaway coach.

  She struggled with all her might. “Leave me alone! Let go of me!”

  Her elbow struck true to the man’s stomach and his grip loosened, air coming out of him with a whoosh. Frantic, she ran blindly around to the front of the stage and tripped over the uneven ground, falling face first into the grass with a scream. The bone-jarring drop knocked the wind from her lungs.

  Gasping for breath, she wiped her long hair, long since loose from its pins, from her mouth and eyes. Staring at the tall grass, she concentrated on sucking air into her empty lungs. Breathe. In. Out. Tears welled in her eyes from the panicky sensation of not being able to breathe. In. Out.

  The men stood directly above her with their bodies blocking out the sun, laughing at her. After what seemed like hours, she wheezed and coughed heavenly air. Rolling over, she came face to face with the stage driver, the old man who so kindly helped her with her bags, his unseeing eyes in line with hers. They stared blankly straight at her, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.

  She screamed and used her heels and hands to back up, but became tangled in her skirts and fell back to the ground with a thud and a loud, unladylike grunt. She felt his warm blood seep through her dress, coat the palms of her hands. She’d tripped over a dead man!

  Face down, his blood soaked the back of his shirt and coated the broken grass around him. Mr. Cawley was...had been a decent man. He’d kept an eye out for her ever since they left Omaha, protecting her when the stage entered one of the larger towns. He’d even offered to guard the door to her hotel room one night since a rowdy, albeit very drunk, group of men heading to the gold rush were patrons as well.

  These dastardly men who held her fate were quick. One grabbed her wrist in a snakelike grasp to keep her from running off again, pulling her up roughly as if she were light as a feather. Her breasts pressed firmly against his dirty shirtfront, transferring Mr. Cawley’s blood onto him.

  She'd felt the solid expanse of a man’s chest pressed into her once before, the night before she ran away. Her fiancé had lured her with words and gestures, and Margaret had finally succumbed to a man's baser desires. As if she'd had a choice. It had been one of William's kinder moments, and those didn't occur very often. Talking with her married girlfriends, she'd learned bits and pieces of what a man and woman did together. But the rough coupling, quick as it was standing up and against the wall in her parlor, was not what she'd been told about, nor what she'd dreamt of. It had been...empty.

  When she touched herself in the darkness of night, alone and protected beneath the covers of her bed, she felt things, pleasurable, wonderful things that she imagined a man's hands doing. His weight pressing her into their bed, his hands replaced by his...

  A gun cocked behind her. She froze, her body in line with the robber, so close she felt his hot, fetid breath against her cheek. Flinching back, she brushed loose curls out of her eyes and felt her bonnet brush against her back as it hung from its ribbon around her neck.

  They were going to put a bullet in her back, and leave her to die!

  Before she had any more thoughts about kingdom come, she was ripped out of one man’s arms and into the other’s like two children vying for the same toy. The loaded weapon pressed painfully into her side.

  “What—”

  One shot fired. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart jumped into her throat, her ears rang like church bells on Sunday. Doing a mental tally of her body, she felt no pain. Slowly, she opened one eye and watched as one of the men crumpled and fell to the ground.

  She gulped down the bile that rose in her throat at the sight of a hole that gushed blood from the center of his chest. More bubbled from his mouth.

  Tobacco Chewer turned her head roughly, forced her chin up so their eyes met. “Do what I tell you, and I won't have to shoot you, too,” he dared, his gun unwavering. Nodding vigorously, tears stung her eyes. She couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. Her blurry gaze returned to the unmoving body on the ground then back to the man threatening her.

  His breath was potent, his teeth brown or missing altogether, but in comparison to being shot in the chest, it wasn’t an overly important issue. She evened her breathing and tried not to gag at his stench, the evilness he exuded. He was gangly, all arms and legs, but solid, wiry muscle. He gripped her arm painfully with grimy fingers, dirt caked under the nails.

  “Why?” she whispered. She knew why he’d shot Mr. Cawley, but she couldn’t understand the need to kill his own partner in crime.

  His smile was menacing. “I don’t share anything with anyone.”

  Not completely innocent—not anymore, but still naïve in the ways of the world, Margaret knew he referred to more than money or stolen property. He practically licked his lips in anticipation as he looked her over. She wanted to flinch away, but didn't dare. He’d already killed one innocent man and one guilty one, certainly he’d have no qualms about killing her, too.

  He shoved her out of the way, all but knocking her to the ground, and turned to loot through the fallen bags and trunks. Clothing and other belongings
were tossed into the air and landed haphazardly into the grass. She recognized her small bag and her white blouse as they were tossed over one of his shoulders.

  She saw his gun tucked into the back of his pants, the handle out and easily accessible. She didn’t want to take any chances to escape with a loose cannon like him.

  After pulling out some money and a few pieces of jewelry, he strode over to her. “Now little lady, give me all your money.” The man held out his free hand, waiting.

  She turned her back on him and walked toward the stage. A shot pierced the calm summer day and she froze in place, lifting her arms above her shoulders. She bit down on her lip to stifle a scream. Squeezing her eyes shut, she waited for the second shot.

  “Where do you think you’re goin’?”

  Slowly, she turned to face her captor and gulped at the gun. It was pointed at her head, smoking from the end.

  “My...my reticule fell when I was pulled from the stage.” She waved her hand in the direction of the stage, her eyes not veering from his. “I don’t have anything of value on my person.”

  For once, her revealing neckline was to her advantage. It would be impossible to hide something within. Hopefully the lie didn’t show on her face. Somehow William had been able to tell when she lied and retribution was swift and painful in the form of a slap or a punch. Once even a kick.

  With her hands casually at her sides, she gently pressed her left palm into her hip, feeling the money she’d sewn into the lining of her dress. She’d put it there for emergencies, and this certainly was one. But she definitely wasn’t going to share its existence with this common criminal. This murderer.

  Her captor gently released the hammer before pointing his weapon at the ground. He nodded his head. “Go on, don’t dawdle now!”

  The man couldn’t make up his mind, but she wasn’t going to complain. She rushed to the stage, trying not to look at either of the dead bodies. Bending down, she grabbed her small purse off the dusty ground where it had landed when she’d been pulled from the stage. As she opened the small velvet bag, Tobacco Chewer yanked it from her fingers and searched it himself. He pulled out a few coins and held them up.