Emma and the Outlaw

by Linda Lael Miller

  Steven glowered at the girl, who sat trembling in front of the fire. Although he’d never touched a woman in anger, including the one he was accused of killing with his bare hands, he felt a powerful urge to turn her over his knee.

  He walked away from both the girl and the urge, and prevailed on the cook to lend him a set of clothes. Sing Cho was the only man in camp whose gear might fit Joellen.

  When she’d finished, she went meekly back to the wagon where she’d been hiding all day and changed into the black silk shirt and trousers. While she was gone, Steven reassessed the men in camp and decided not to leave Joellen unattended. His reasoning was simple: it was what he’d want the foreman to do if he had a daughter in this predicament.

  Joellen kept her head down when she returned to face Steven, and he had a feeling that, if he lifted her chin, he’d see triumph in her eyes. Because he didn’t want to end up blistering her shapely little bottom, he didn’t look at her face.

  A light rain began to fall, clattering on the canvas tops of the wagons and sizzling in the fire. Steven dragged Joellen along with him when he went to fetch his long canvas coat from his gear. He put it around her and helped her into the saddle before swinging up behind.

  “Are you taking me back?” she asked, speaking loudly to be heard over the rising storm and the cries of spooked cattle.

  “Not tonight,” Steven answered, his voice bareicipativil. He would have given anything he owned to have Emma sitting in front of him like that, but Joellen was nothing but trouble.

  “Then where are we going?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Miss Lenahan, we’ve got a herd of cattle here. And they don’t cotton much to thunder and lightning.”

  The rain fell harder, soaking Steven’s hair and shirt, and the legs of his trousers. He begrudged Joellen his canvas coat and, at the same time, resigned himself to the loss of it. Nothing in his upbringing had prepared him to let a lady—especially when that lady was little more than a child—suffer the cold while he was covered warmly.

  After that, Joellen huddled silently in front of him, still shivering. Steven suspected she was crying, and although he couldn’t do anything about it at the time, he felt sorry for her. She was a kid, needing to be spanked and sent to bed.

  When lightning cracked the sky, Steven’s horse reared and some of the cattle started running blindly into the darkness, terrified by the brilliance.

  Steven rode after them, grateful that Joellen knew enough about riding to keep herself in the saddle. He had no help, since the other men on watch had their hands full with panicked strays of their own.

  For an hour or more the storm grew continually worse. When a lightning bolt struck not fifteen yards away, Steven’s horse went berserk. Regaining control was difficult with Joellen in the way, and when the gelding took the bit into his teeth, there was no stopping him.

  He ran until he was exhausted, coming to a stop in a stand of towering pine trees. Steven dismounted, cursing furiously, and crouched to check the animal’s legs and hooves. Since it was stone-dark that night, he had to do all this by touch, rather than sight.

  The animal seemed to be all right, though he was lathered, his sides heaving with the effort to breathe. Steven dragged Joellen roughly from the saddle and set her down in the relative shelter of the trees.

  “Stay there,” he rasped, “or I swear to God, you’ll still have the imprint of my hand on your ass when you’re ninety!”

  Joellen was understandably subdued.

  Steven calmed the horse as best he could, then, using wooden matches from the pocket of the canvas coat Joellen was wearing, he made a small, hesitant fire under the trees.

  He and Joellen both crouched close to its warmth.

  “Where are we?” Joellen finally worked up the courage to ask.

  Steven’s horse was winded, the rain was beating down all around them, and the herd was probably miles away. He was so mad it was a full minute before he trusted himself to answer. “The middle of nowhere.”

  In the distance, a coyote howled. Steven could smell his horse’s wet hide, as well as his own and Joellen’s.

  “Wolves,” Joellen whispered, and he saw her eyes go wide in the light of the fire.

  Steven didn’t bother to lend comfort; he was too furious at the situation. He tethered the horse to afallen log and added what wood he could find to the sickly little blaze he’d built. When he straightened from that task, Joellen was standing there, holding out the canvas coat.

  “Here,” she said. “It isn’t right for you to be cold. It’s my fault we’re out here.”

  Steven wasn’t about to deny that, but he shook his head, refusing the coat.

  Joellen draped the garment over his shoulders, then pulled it close around them both. “Kiss me,” she said.

  Steven glared down at her, but he made no move to back away, because they both needed the other’s body heat. Without it, they’d catch their deaths. “There isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to do that,” he replied, his voice rough as gravel in the bottom of a rusty can.

  She laid her cheek to his chest and yawned expansively, and he remembered that she was a child. Some of his fury abated, displaced by a protective, fatherly mood.

  “I’m so tired,” she said.

  Steven was worn out, too. In fact, he could hardly see straight. Without answering, he lowered Joellen to the ground, next to the fire, and the two of them lay there, snuggled together, wrapped in the canvas coat.

  Joellen gave a contented little sigh and wriggled her pelvis against Steven’s. “Miss Emma Chalmers will have a cat fit when she hears about this,” she said.

  The news was bound to get back to Emma, all right. Cowboys were gossipy as old ladies, and the foreman and the boss’s daughter spending the night together on the range would be too good to pass up. Steven closed his eyes and prayed that Emma loved him enough to believe the truth.

  Throughout the night he lay inside the coat with Joellen, except when he had to add wood to the fire. Once he dozed off and dreamed that he and Emma were married and living at Fairhaven, without fear of the law. He awakened to find himself lying beside another woman, and an oppressive loneliness settled over him.

  He pulled away and stared glumly into the fire until morning came.

  Steven and Joellen rode into the main camp just as the Chinese cook was dishing out breakfast. Some of the men stared openly, while others made a visible effort to be subtle. Joellen acted as perky as a new bride just risen from a featherbed, but Steven ached in every bone and muscle of his body. Between his mending ribs, the fight with Johnson the day before, and a night spent on the cold, hard ground, he was a little the worse for wear.

  Joellen got down from the horse without waiting for help from Steven and made her way over to the fire. “That bacon smells wonderful,” she exclaimed.

  None of the cowboys actually spoke to her, but one got up so she could sit on an upturned soap crate. A plate of eggs and bacon appeared in her hands, and she ate happily.

  Steven had no appetite at all. After sweeping the men gathered around the fire with one quelling look, he got a mug from the chuck wagon and helped himself to coffee. The stuff was awl, but it braced him up a little.

  “Don’t you want anything to eat, Steven?” Joellen chimed, her voice as intimate as a wife’s. She was still wearing the canvas coat, and she looked back at him over one shoulder.

  Instead of answering, Steven glared at her briefly, tossed his coffee onto the muddy ground, and then pretended she wasn’t there. “This is a trail drive, not a box social,” he said. “Let’s get those cattle moving.”

  “I’ll ride with you,” Joellen informed him, still chewing the last of her breakfast.

  “You’ll ride with the cook,” Steven replied.

  For just a moment, Joellen’s full lower lip jutted out, but then she brightened. “All right, darling,” she said, in a voice as clear as a chime in the desert.

  The men scrambled to finish t
heir food and mount their horses, but the commotion didn’t fool Steven. They were hanging on every word that passed between him and the boss’s daughter.

  He caught her hard by the arm when she tried to climb up into the box of Sing Cho’s wagon. “Tell them nothing happened.”

  Joellen batted her thick eyelashes at him. “All right, Steven,” she said, in a dulcet tone that nonetheless reached every corner of the camp. “If you want me to, I will.”

  Steven glanced uneasily at the men and saw that most of them were watching. “Nothing happened,” he snapped.

  He saw disbelief and amusement in their eyes, along with the occasional glint of envy. After all, Joellen was a pretty girl, even after a night spent on the ground, huddled inside an old canvas coat.

  Spitting swear words, Steven remounted his horse and reined it toward the herd. They were moving due north now that they’d crossed the river, and Spokane was still five or six days away.

  Frank Deva’s paint pony came abreast of Steven’s gelding. “Mr. Fairfax?”

  Steven’s expression clearly showed that he was waiting o hear what the scout had to say.

  “We’ll be coming within a few miles of a town long about four this afternoon. It ain’t much, but there’s a telegraph office.”

  For the first time since he’d found Joellen hiding in the supply wagon, Steven smiled. He would wire Big John as soon as he reached the place, and install the young lady in a hotel room to wait for her daddy. “Thanks,” he said, touching the brim of his bedraggled hat.

  Deva grinned and rode on ahead.

  The day was long and grueling. It had rained hard during the night, and the trail was muddy. Twice the supply wagon got stuck and had to be dragged out of the muck, and at noon a half dozen Sioux warriors appeared on top of a ridge. They kept their distance, but they made the men nervous, since there might have been a hundred more of them riding just out of sight.

  “What do you make of the escort?” Frank Deva asked, when he came back to ride alongside Steven again.

  “Could be they want a few head of cattle,” he replied.

  “Or the girl,” Deva said.

  Steven drew the Colt from his holster and checked the chamber, even though he’d already done so half a dozen times. “Maybe I’d better go up and have a word with them.”

  Deva’s eyes widened in his weathered face, and his handlebar mustache twitched just a little. “Alone?”

  “I was counting on you to go with me, Frank,” Steven answered, hiding a grin.

  The scout hawked and spat. “I’m still a young man, Mr. Fairfax,” he said. “I ain’t through sowin’ my wild oats. And you want me to ride up to a pack o’ Sioux, just like that?”

  Steven was still watching the Indians. “I think there’s going to be trouble if we wait for them to come to us,” he answered. And with that, he reined the gelding toward the incline leading up the ridge, leaving the choice of whether to come along or not to Deva.

  He wasn’t surprised to hear Deva’s pony scrambling up the rocky hillside behind him.

  Three of the six warriors rode forward to meet them. They were wearing paint and carrying spears, and Steven knew a moment of fear—but not because he might be run through or scalped. It was the thought of never seeing Emma again that scared him.

  The leader of the little band broke away from his escorts, his black eyes bright with a strange mingling of hatred and hope. His rib cage looked like a washboard, and his stomach was concave. It was soon apparent that he spoke missionary English. “Want cattle,” he said.

  Steven sighed and rested one arm on the pommel of his saddle. With his free hand, he pushed his hat to the back of his head. Despite this display of good-natured indolence, his Colt was ready to leap into his fingers at any moment. “We’ll give you five head,” he said reasonably.

  The Sioux was caught off-guard. He glanced back at his companions who looked, one and all, as if they were ready to lift some hair.

  The Indian got greedy. “Want woman.”

  With a slow smile, Steven shook his head. “Can’t let you take her,” he said. “She belongs to a powerful chief. Besides, you’d have to beat her twice a day for a year before she’d be any good to you at all.”

  “What chief?” the Indian wanted to know. He kept squinting toward the cook wagon, down in the gorge. Joellen’s yellow-gold hair was probably the major attraction.

  “His name’s Big John Lenahan.”

  The black eyes narrowed slightly. A suspicious silence fell, and the red man clearly thought he was calling a bluff.

  “You’ll find his brand on every one of those cattle down there,” Steven said cordially. “Deva, show him the mark on that horse you’re riding.”

  Behind him, Steven heard the clatter of hooves on rocks as Deva maneuvered his pony, ostensibly to display the intertwined J and L burned into its flank.

  The Indian was satisfied, and he eyed the cattle hungrily. If his condition was any indication, the rest of the tribe must have barely survived the winter. “Ten cattle,” he said, falling back on bravado.

  Steven knew then that half the Sioux nation wasn’t lurking beyond the ridge, and he was relieved. His smile didn’t falter. “Six,” he countered.

  The Sioux held up the fingers of both hands, tucking his thumbs against his palms.

  “Six,” Steven repeated with a shake of his head. “And we’ll bring them to you. If you try riding toward that herd down there, there’s going to be some bloodshed.” The tone of his voice altered only slightly when he spoke to Deva. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you, Frank, that you’ll probably lose those silken tresses of yours if you take the hillside at a dead gallop. Get down there and have the boys cut out half a dozen of the best heifers.”

  He heard Deva turn and ride slowly down the hill. A new admiration for the scout was born in Steven in that moment, because it took a brave man to not panic and plunge his spurs into his horse’s sides.

  The Indian was gazing speculatively toward Joellen and the cook wagon again. “She is bad woman?”

  Steven suppressed an urge to turn and look at the girl himself. Knowing her, she was probably standing on the wagon seat, stark naked and waving both arms. “Bad woman,” he confirmed.

  The cattle had been cut out of the herd; Steven could hear them lumbering up the hill, Deva whistling and shouting behind them.

  When the prime heifers had been turned over to the Sioux, Steven offered a hand to the Indian leader, holding it upright the way he’d seen trappers and scouts do. Their palms touched, and their thumbs interlocked briefly.

  “Nice doing business with you,” Steven said when the handclasp was broken. With a touch to the brim of his hat, he turned and rode down the hill with Deva

  The herd was still moving, but four cowboys had stayed behind to keep an eye on the proceedings. When Steven reached them, he saw a grudging respect in their eyes.

  “Don’t you boys have anything to do?” he asked.

  With sheepish grins and shakes of their heads, the cowhands spurred their horses to catch up with the herd. The supply wagon trundled along just ahead, and Joellen was peering out through the flap at the back.

  Deva glanced over one shoulder at the retreating Indians and gave a low whistle. “It’s been a while since I met up with a bunch like that. You suppose we’ll see ’em again?”

  Steven brought a bandanna out of his hip pocket and dried his neck. Until then he hadn’t realized he was sweating. “They’ll be busy celebrating for a day or two, if we’re lucky. All the same, keep an eye peeled. They might develop a taste for beef.”

  With that, the two men spurred their horses to a run, closing the gap between them and the herd.

  Joellen’s eyes were round as cow pies when Steven came up alongside the cook wagon. She’d clambered back ont the seat at the front by then.

  “You saved my life,” she said dreamily.

  “I begged them to take you,” Steven replied. Then he forgot the girl and rode on a
head. He didn’t return until several hours later, when Frank Deva told him the town of Rileyton was just beyond a little rise.

  Joellen’s face lit up when he lifted her from the wagon box onto his horse. She rode sidesaddle in front of him.

  “You missed me, didn’t you?” she asked, smiling in a loony, unfocused sort of way.

  Steven was chewing on a matchstick. “About as much as I missed those Sioux after they lit out with six head of your daddy’s cattle,” he responded, spurring the patient gelding toward the tree-lined rise.

  Joellen looked up at him with an affronted expression. “But you’re just pining for Miss Emma, I suppose.”

  He maneuvered the match to the other side of his mouth and held back a grin. “I suppose I am.”

  “Well, she’s probably spooning with Mr. Fulton Whitney at this very moment!”

  “Probably,” he agreed.

  Joellen finally noticed that they were going one way and the herd was going another. “Where are you taking me?”

  “To town. I’m going to wire your daddy and get you a hotel room.”

  Her blue eyes filled with silvery stars. “You want to wire Daddy so you can ask for my hand,” she crooned. “You’re going to marry me.”

  “I was thinking more in terms of murder,” Steven replied.

  Joellen’s cheeks reddened. “Well, you have to marry me, Steven Fairfax—you’ve compromised my good name!”

  “I’m going to compromise your bottom if you don’t stop talking as if I had my way with you out there. I never touched you, except to share a coat, and you know it.”

  “Daddy doesn’t,” Joellen said, with a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. “And neither do all those cowboys, or Mr. Deva, or Sing Cho. They’re my witnesses that you’ve spoiled me for any other man.”

  Steven sighed and kept his silence. They reached the top of the rise and started down the other side. A rutted road wound along at the base of the hill, toward a small town in the distance. Steven’s spirits lifted at the sight of telegraph poles and chimney smoke.

  Rileyton’s telegraph office was located in the general store, according to a boy driving sheep at the edge of town, and Steven headed straight for it.