by Carol Arens
Truly, who could blame him for that?
Still, there must be something that she could do to prevent this injustice.
She covered her face, thinking, trying to figure a way out of this mess...other than the obvious one.
Peeking out from between her fingers, she saw the harlot press her beleaguered charms against Boone’s arm. He stared down at her with a frown.
“Miss Cherry,” Boone said while disengaging his arm. “As much as I appreciate your willingness to help, I’ll do this on my own or not at all.”
“Good day to you, ma’am.” Stanley plucked Miss Cherry’s sleeve and hustled her out the open doors of the courtroom.
My, but that was a relief. The very last thing she wanted to do was report that Boone had been forced to marry that brightly hued woman.
As far as Melinda could tell, Boone was a man who could capture the outlaw gang all on his own. He had a hard, worldly edge to him that his brother did not have.
Truly, all Boone had to do was cast the outlaws the scowl that he was currently giving the judge and they would put themselves in irons.
“It’s a wife or a jail cell, Walker. The choice is yours.”
“That is no choice at all!” Melinda leaped to her feet, feeling the injustice to her bones.
“It’s the one he’s got, young woman. Perhaps you would like to volunteer for the assignment...grant this outlaw his freedom.”
The challenge had been laid at her feet...and it was not as though the idea had not been making her stomach churn for the past fifteen minutes. Could she really make such a leap without running outside and losing her breakfast?
Marrying a stranger, no matter that he didn’t quite feel like one because of Lantree, was beyond bold. It was life-changing and perhaps the most foolish thing she would ever do.
But in the end, family stood up for family. It was the way love worked. Lantree loved his brother and Rebecca loved Lantree. Melinda loved Rebecca and they all loved baby Caroline, therefore—
“Perhaps I would!”
Her mind reeled; she could scarcely find her breath. With three words she had changed the course of her life. In all, though, she was not sorry she had risen to Mathers’s challenge even if she had to resist the urge to run outside and be sick.
Honestly, there was nothing else to be done.
Judging by the loud objections of Stanley and Boone, they were not well pleased with her decision. Indeed, her ears rang with Boone’s curses and Stanley’s bellows of outrage.
Mathers was grinning, though. It occurred to her that maybe he had brought the harlot here simply to goad her into volunteering. When one thought about it, Melinda would make a far more believable homesteader than Scarlet Cherry would have.
Yes, indeed. All she needed was a couple of sturdy brown dresses and she could play the part to perfection.
“I’d like to speak with you for a moment, Boone.” Her quiet statement silenced the profanity. “Over in the corner.”
She led the way toward a bench in the rear of the room.
Boone followed, then the guard and, after him, Stanley. Only Mathers remained near the podium, hands in his pockets. Rocking back on his heels, he looked like the cat who’d swallowed the canary.
“Gentlemen, I’d like a word with Mr. Walker in private,” she said with a nod at her escorts.
“I’ll allow it,” called the judge.
With a scowl at everyone, Stanley Smythe followed the guard to the far side of the room.
“Miss Winston, have you lost your mind?” Boone whispered before they had even taken a seat on the bench.
“You’ve been speaking to my mother?” She laughed as she fluffed her skirt on the bench. Couldn’t help it because she clearly heard her mother’s voice in her head. She had heard the disapproving tone too many times growing up to not hear the familiar voice in this moment of upheaval.
“This is hardly a laughing matter, ma’am. Mathers isn’t talking about acting married, he’ll have us hog-tied in a second.”
“Judge Mathers?” She stood and turned toward the podium. “What if we simply acted as though we were married? It would accomplish the same thing.”
“It would accomplish your reputation being ruined. I’ll not have that misfortune darkening my career. No, no, indeed. It’s marriage or prison.”
She sat back down.
“We’re strangers.” Boone rubbed a hand over his face. She heard his palm scrape the rough stubble of his beard, the chain of his handcuffs jingle. “Why do you want to help me?”
“Because we aren’t strangers at all. We may have only just met, but through Lantree, Rebecca and Caroline we are family...forever bound.”
He stared at her, his brows lowered while he shook his head in apparent denial of the facts.
Well, no wonder he was in a sullen state. He was being put in a completely unfair situation.
Yes, indeed, and hadn’t he spent the better part of his life the victim of an unfair situation?
“Your Honor?” Melinda stood again. “Once Mr. Walker fulfills his mission and you grant him his freedom, can our marriage be annulled?”
“Under a certain condition.”
She sat down, arching a brow at her reluctant relative. “There, you see? Once we meet the condition, everything will be as it was before, except that you will be a free man.”
“Not worth the risk.”
“But it is! Do you know how much your brother has worried about you over the years? How he’s watched the Wanted posters, praying that you hadn’t been captured or killed, hanged even?” She caught his hand and pressed it between her palms. “Boone, you owe it to Lantree to fight for your freedom.”
“With you as the ammunition?” He snatched his hand from hers. “Woman, are you insane?”
Chapter Three
“While it’s true that I’m overwhelmed by this hornet’s nest we’ve landed in, I’m quite lucid. I understand what I am doing.”
“I’m in a hornet’s nest. You are not.”
The woman smiled at him as though they were not about to jump hand in hand off a cliff. Hell’s curses, there was a twinkle in her eye.
“You’re making light of a serious situation. The danger is as real as razor’s edge. Think for a minute...your family will be devastated if something happens to you.” He’d shake some sense into her if his hands weren’t shackled.
“Our family, Boone. Believe me when I say that you are an important member—you can’t know how much you are loved.”
He might be able to dismiss what she was saying if her demeanor had not become suddenly serious. As intently as he looked into her eyes, there was no trace of the woman who could clearly get anything she wanted with a smile. “Your absence has been hard on your brother. You owe it to him to do whatever you need to do to come home.”
As true as that might be, he could hardly risk Miss Winston’s safety to accomplish it.
“Besides,” she said, “they will have every confidence, as I do, that you are fully able to protect me. And might I point out that I am far from a withering violet. I am well able to care for my own safety.”
That statement just went to show that the lovely Miss Winston didn’t know a hill of beans about what she was getting herself into.
The woman looked as delicate as a porcelain doll. If she’d ever even been in an outlaw’s presence, he’d eat his hat.
“My brother hasn’t seen me in half a lifetime. He can’t know what I will or won’t do.”
“Maybe not, but, Boone, I know.”
“No.” He stood. It wasn’t worth the risk. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
The walk across the room to the judge felt like twenty miles uphill.
“I appreciate the offer, Your Honor,
but you know as well as I do that the risk to Miss Winston is too great.”
“It’s a damned shame, son.”
“It’s a damned outrage!” Smythe actually shook his fist at Mathers.
While it might not be an outrage, it was a damned shame. He’d come so close to freedom, had nearly been able to taste it. Sleeping in the open and being able to go wherever the wind blew him had been within his grasp. He’d been only a decision away from being able to see his brother again.
That was the worst of it, he reckoned. Not seeing Lantree.
“You’re right, Smythe. It is an outrage.” Mathers turned from the lawyer to pin Boone with a hard gaze. “If you choose to spend your days behind bars, that’s no one’s tragedy but your own. But those folks living in Jasper Springs? Well, they live in fear every day. You’ll keep Miss Winston safe by your decision, but their daughters don’t dare to even go into town. The young men are at even more risk. Why, just last week—well, if you aren’t interested, there’s no point in reliving the tragedy.”
“Please, Boone,” Melinda said from somewhere behind him. “This is bigger than us. What’s a temporary marriage when lives are at stake? I’ll never sleep another wink knowing I could have helped and I didn’t.”
He ought to slap himself in irons since no one else seemed to want to, but what Mathers had just revealed pierced him through the heart. He understood more than most the damage that a criminal could do to a green boy.
He’d been those boys, going to town and having their lives ruined. Maybe Melinda was right about this being bigger than they were. What was a temporary marriage—or his freedom to choose his destiny for that matter—in relation to the lives of the people in that town?
Mathers might believe that the champion he was sending to battle was the killer who could round up an outlaw gang as easily as a cowboy herded cattle, but that was not the case.
He was no more than a dime-a-dozen criminal.
But he reckoned he could at least have the courage of Miss Melinda Winston.
And if he did get the pair of them out of this still breathing, he’d be a free man. Maybe he’d go to Montana and meet his baby niece.
“I’m uneasy about this, but I’ll take the job.” Even while he was speaking, he prayed that he was not making a mountain of a mistake.
Mathers clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get the pair of you hitched, then.”
Melinda rose from the bench at the back of the room. She strode toward him without hesitation. The confident smile on her face made him wonder if, in spite of the fact that she looked like a rose petal, she had a backbone of iron.
His own gut was doing backflips. He reckoned he couldn’t force a smile if his future depended upon it—well, hang it, now that he thought about it, it did.
Mathers nodded at the guard who unlocked the handcuffs and took them off.
The ceremony was finished three minutes after Melinda took her place at his side.
Chances were this was not the romantic wedding that a woman like her would have dreamed of, but if he kept her safely through this, she could have that next time, when she married for real.
When the judge said he could kiss his bride, Smythe stepped between them with an exaggerated shake of his head.
Melinda extended her hand and he shook it. The deal was sealed.
“You’re free to go, Walker.”
Go where, was what he wanted to know. He hadn’t a dollar to his name. Only the folks in this room knew him to be a free man.
It was an odd, nearly uneasy feeling to know that he could simply walk out the courthouse door and not be stopped by the deputy.
“Keep low for a day or two. Folks will wonder. We’ll meet at the livery, day after next, 4:00 a.m. on the dot.”
“Since we are married, it would be appropriate for you to stay with me,” the blue-eyed innocent declared.
“Not as I live and breathe.” Smythe snatched Melinda by the elbow. “I’ll escort you to your room, miss.”
Stopping at the door, Smythe turned back to shoot him a glare. “I don’t approve of this, not by a mile. Still, things are what they are. You will lodge with me. Miss Winston will emerge from this ordeal unharmed and a maiden still.”
He answered Smythe with a nod.
Keeping his cousin, or rather his wife, safe, would be his first obligation. Capturing outlaws and protecting a town? He’d do that but only as long as it did not endanger Melinda.
If he failed to return her safely to the family, his freedom meant nothing.
As far as the maiden business went, he’d never bedded a maiden and he could only admit that the idea intimidated the hell out of him. A man had a responsibility to a virgin. Bedding the innocent meant pledges, vows of undying love. Not false vows, either, but sincere and from a committed heart.
That was one thing he could set Smythe’s mind at rest about.
* * *
At four in the morning, the moon sat fat and full on the western horizon. Boone watched its slow decent as he walked from the hotel to the livery.
Buffalo Bend slumbered peacefully. This far into October, even the crickets had gone silent. The heels of his boots clacking against the wooden boardwalk sounded like shots in the night. In a moment folks would be peering out their windows.
He reckoned he didn’t need to fear that any longer. Still, old habits died hard. He leaped off the boardwalk and walked down the middle of the road where the dirt muffled his steps.
Sometime during the night Smythe had packed up his belongings and gone without even a farewell. It only made sense that with this job finished, he was on to the next case that might make him a name.
It was just a shame that Boone had never had the chance to thank him for all that he had done.
From half a block away, he spotted a light shining from under the livery door. He hoped there was a fire in the stove, as well. Nights had turned cold enough that a man could see his breath.
He went inside without knocking, figuring he would be expected.
A man shoving a log into the stove, turned. He nodded.
“Boone Walker?” the fellow asked.
Boone nodded back.
“Frank Spears. Owner of this livery.” Spears slapped his hands on his pants, dusting off the splinters. “They say you’re a killer.”
“Folks like to talk.”
“Don’t mean any offense by it.” Spears crossed the livery and extended his hand. “You’ll need all the meanness you got to get rid of those vipers in Jasper Springs.”
Boone let the heat seep into him, gathering it for the time he’d be on the trail again. Maybe someday he’d have a hearth of his own, four solid walls.
A new life was opening up to him; one never knew how it would end up. A roof over his head and a fire seemed—
“Got a brother in Jasper Springs. A niece, too. I only hope you can help them.”
“Sounds like Mathers has told you everything.”
“He hired me to get the wagon loaded. Things were all set for the married couple, but it looks like a bit of good luck for you that they quit.”
“Time will tell, but I reckon this beats a life term.”
“There’s the wagon over in the corner, loaded with most of what you’ll need to set up housekeeping. I’m sending my best team to go with it.”
“I’ll do my best to return them to you.”
Spears nodded, quiet for a moment. “You sure you’re a killer? I don’t see it in your eyes.”
“That I am...but only the one time and both of us were drunk.”
“It’ll sound strange, but I’m disappointed to hear it.”
“I’ve been a thief since I was in long pants, if that eases your mind.”
“Some, I reckon. Say, I don’t hold a man
’s past against him. I needed a fresh start myself, once. And don’t worry about the return of the wagon and horses. They’re yours—just—if you’ll keep my kin safe.”
Generosity on the part of strangers was not something he was used to. While he stumbled around in his mind thinking of a proper way to thank him, the door creaked open.
Mathers and Miss Winston—Mrs. Walker, rather—stepped inside.
His wife’s cheeks were blushed pink from the cold. It hit him all of a sudden how glad he was that his bride was not that Cherry woman.
“I’ve written up a few things,” the judge said, bypassing any sort of cordial greeting. “There’s a map to Jasper Springs, a bit about the outlaws, the parts you and your wife will play. Oh, and you’ll need cash.” He handed him a roll of money wrapped in a rubber band. Hard to tell how much, but it seemed to be a good sum.
“Good morning, Boone.” Melinda’s smile might as well have been sunrise, it was that bright and cheerful. “I hope you slept well.”
“Best I’ve slept in some time.” He hadn’t expected to, but he must have since he hadn’t even noticed Smythe take his leave. “You look refreshed.”
“It must be married life.” She shot him a wink and he sucked in a breath.
“Where’s Deputy Billbro?” Mathers asked, glancing around.
“Just went out to relieve himself. He’ll be along as soon as he smells folks in the livery.”
“Everything you need to know ought to be in here.” The judge handed the stack of papers to Melinda.
“One more detail...” Harlan Mathers dug around in his coat pocket. “Here it is. Don’t put it on until you make an arrest, your settler roles would be compromised.”
“It” was a deputy’s badge, bent and tarnished, but a symbol of law and order none the less.
What Boone wanted to do was dump it in the dirt. That badge had been his enemy for too many years.
He tossed it in the air, caught it and then put it in his coat pocket.
“Send me a wire now and again to let me know how you’re progressing.”
Without warning, the door opened again.
Boone had to blink to make sure he saw right.
