Beautiful Bandit (Lone Star Legends) (38 page)

Amid the thunder of horses’ hooves and the percussion of gunfire, their fellow passenger—who’d introduced himself only as Mack—calmly unholstered one of two six-shooters. “You got a gun, Doc?” he asked Liam, peeking through the leather window covering.

Liam clutched his medical bag tight to his chest. “Yes, but—”

“Then you’d best get ’er loaded and cocked. There’re three of them and five of us. We might just have us a fightin’ chance”—he fixed his brown eyes on Levee—“if you can shoot.”

Just as she opened her mouth to confess that she couldn’t, one of the stagecoach drivers cut loose a bloodcurdling scream. As quick as a blink, his body hurtled past the window and hit the ground with a sickening thump.

Levee clutched a trembling hand to her throat as Mack groaned. “Make that four of us.” He spun the chamber of his second revolver and, after pulling back the hammer with a snick, leaned over and wrapped her fingers around the grip. “Just aim and pull the trigger, and keep on doing that until you’re out of bullets.”

“B-but, how will I know when I’m out of—”

“Are you two God-fearin’ Christians?”

She heard Liam swallow before saying, “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

Mack aimed a dark glare at him. “If you want to get out of this alive, you’d best pray. Pray like you’ve never prayed—”

His warning was cut short by the shouts of men and the terrified trumpeting of horses and the grinding of gears as the coach came to a jolting halt.

Then, a deadly hush rode in on a cloud of dust.

The door nearest Levee flew open with a bang. “Throw them guns in the dirt,” growled a masked gunman.

When Liam slid his revolver back into his medical bag, Mack gave a slight nod, then tossed his pistol out the door. Uncocking Levee’s gun, he flung it to the ground, too.

The bandit raised his rifle barrel higher. “Now, get on outta there. One at a time—and don’t try no funny stuff, neither.”

Levee climbed down first, followed by Liam. So much for Mack coming up with a last-minute scheme to save us, she thought as he joined them in the shade of the coach.

A few yards away, two more bandits sat in their saddles. The smooth baritone and well-enunciated syllables of the tallest didn’t fit with the rudeness of his words: “Gather anything of value you find on their persons or in their valises,” he told the rifleman. And, nodding to the man on his left, he said, “You. Get the money.”

Their immediate obedience made it clear that this was a man to be reckoned with. Levee’s heart beat harder as his cohorts carried out his orders, but it wasn’t until the strongbox hit the ground with a loud clang that she noticed the other driver, hanging like a half-empty flour sack from his seat. She could almost hear Mack thinking, And now, we’re down to three. Their only hope was the tiny pistol hidden in Liam’s bag. But, even if, by some miracle, the cowboy managed to retrieve it, could he disarm all three thieves?

The second bandit fired one round, demolishing the heavy, iron lock on the strongbox. If he noticed Levee’s tiny squeal of fright or Liam’s shocked gasp, he didn’t show it. “Must be fifty thousand dollars in here!” he said, pawing through the contents. He loosed a rousing “Yee-haw!” and saluted his leader. “All’s I can say is, you sure know how to pick ’em, Frank!”

“Shut up, fool!” bellowed the rifle-toting robber. “Now we’ll hafta kill ’em, so’s they won’t be able to tell the Rangers they was robbed by the Frank Michaels Gang!”

The Frank Michaels Gang? Why did the name sound so familiar? But the question was quickly swallowed by a sickening realization: the outlaws had killed two men in less than two minutes. In all her twenty-one years, Levee had never given a thought to how she might leave this earth—until now.

“No need to get your dander up,” Mack drawled. “Y’all just keep right on helpin’ yourselves to everything we’ve got. Think of us as the three monkeys—we didn’t see or hear a thing.”

“That’s right,” Liam agreed. “And if the Texas Rangers ask questions—an unlikely event, since we don’t plan to seek them out—we won’t speak a thing, either.”

Levee looked up at her husband, unable to decide which surprised her more, the fact that he’d opened his mouth, or that he’d opened his medical bag. In one beat of her hammering heart, his hand disappeared inside the bag. In the next, his puny revolver was dangling from his fingertips. “I think you boys should—”

One shot rang out, and even before its echo fell silent, Liam fell to the ground in a heap. “No-o-o!” Levee wailed. “Why-y-y?” Dropping to her knees, she cradled his head in her lap, wishing for the first time since graduating from the New England Hospital for Women that she hadn’t earned a degree in nursing, because one look at the bloody wound in the middle of his chest told her that, although he wasn’t dead yet, he soon would be.

“I—I wanted to—give them—the gun,” he sputtered, “to prove we—could be trusted—”

“Hush, now,” she whispered, kissing his cheeks and combing the dark curls from his forehead with her fingers. “Shh.”

Mack threw his Stetson to the ground. “Of all the….” He kicked the hat. “Did you hear what the man said? He’s from Boston, for the luvva Pete. He meant you no harm. Why, I doubt he could’ve hit the broad side of a barn with that peashooter of his, even if he’d tried!”

“Looked to me like he was aimin’ to shoot,” one of the men said in his defense, “an’ nobody takes aim at Frank Michaels.”

The rifleman cursed under his breath. “Thought I tol’ you to shut up, Tom.”

“Both of you shut up,” Frank snarled. He touched a finger to his hat brim and aimed a steely stare at Levee. “My apologies, ma’am. And, to prove my sincerity, we aren’t going to kill you. You have my word on that.” A grating chuckle passed through the red and black fabric of his bandanna. “At least, not today.”

His implied threat hung on the parched air as Levee looked into her husband’s ashy face. “Fight, Liam,” she urged him. “Hang on—stay with me! You promised that, as soon as we were settled, we’d—”

His eyelids fluttered open, and an enormous, silvery tear leaked out of the corner of one eye. “S-sorry, Levee,” he rasped, grabbing her hand. “S-sorry….”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Liam. You’re going to be fine.” Oh, please, God, let it be true! “Just fine, do you hear me?” No sooner had the words passed her lips than his body shuddered once, and the fingers that had been squeezing hers went limp. A trickle of blood crept from the corner of his mouth to his chin. Then, with one ragged breath, he was gone.

A swirl of raw emotions roiled inside her, and, like a cyclone, lifted her to her feet. These horrible men had murdered her husband, but she acknowledged the part she had played in his death. If she hadn’t put her graduation ahead of their wedding plans, they would have had a house, and maybe a child or two, to keep Liam’s boredom at bay. Maybe with a family to occupy his time and fill his heart, he wouldn’t have reacted with such enthusiasm to that article in the Boston Globe bemoaning the lack of medical professionals in Mexico. She’d agreed to travel through this godforsaken country to help him achieve his dream because the Good Book and the dictates of society told her that her place was beside her husband. Well, she had no husband now, thanks to her own self-centeredness and these heartless killers. She watched, helpless, as the thugs helped themselves to Liam’s hard-earned savings, as Frank tucked Grandpa O’Reilly’s gold pocket watch into his vest, as his men carelessly poked through her small suitcase in search of jewelry.

Almost from the moment they’d left Boston, Levee had been afraid. Afraid of ghastly-looking bugs and wild animals, afraid of the unrelenting wind and the dry, desolate land that seemed to stretch on forever. Afraid of outlaws and bandits she’d read about. Distraught and anguished, she was beyond fear now. With her fists balled at her sides, Levee marched up to the leader’s horse.

“You killed my husband for no reason, and you think a phony apology will make things right? You’re—you’re a lunatic, Frank Michaels, and so are these so-called men who ride with you.” Levee swiped angrily at her traitorous tears. “Hiding behind your masks—why, you’re nothing but cowards, that’s what! Heartless thieves and—and cold-blooded killers. You’d better shoot me good and dead, right here where I stand, because, the very first chance I get, I will report you to the Texas Rangers!”

Her hysterical tirade silenced even the chorusing insects and the chirruping birds. Silenced the amused chortles of Frank and his cohorts, too. The men exchanged puzzled glances, and then the one called Tom said, “You want me to plug her, Frank, or d’you wanna do it?”

Frank rested one leather-gloved hand atop the other on his saddle horn, as if considering the idea. “I gave her my word, and I intend to keep it.”

Tom snorted. “She’ll probably die of thirst before she reaches the next town, anyway.” Winking, he added, “If the coyotes don’t get her first.”

She’d been an unwilling eyewitness to what those mangy canines could do to a deer carcass, and in very little time, too. Levee pressed her fingertips into her eyes to block the grisly image, and, when she did, the picture of Liam’s lifeless body took its place. A dozen thoughts flitted through her head. Could she have done something, medically, to save him? Why hadn’t she seen the gunman take aim before he’d fired on Liam? If she had, what might she have done to prevent the shooting in the first place?

“Coyotes,” she heard the rifleman say. “You’re right, Tom. Not much chance she’ll live long enough to tell anybody what happened here.”

And then Mack’s enraged voice broke through. “That was uncalled for,” he grumbled. “The poor woman just lost her husband, for the luvva Pete.”

As if she needed a reminder! Please, Lord, please let this be a terrible nightmare. Let me wake up and realize that—

A deafening explosion ended her prayer. She wasn’t dreaming, as evidenced by the whiff of smoke spiraling from Frank’s gun barrel—and the ghastly sound of Mack’s body hitting the ground. “No-o-o,” she wailed. “Not him, too! But—but you promised,” Levee sputtered. “You promised not to—”

“I promised only not to kill you.” Then, he coolly holstered his revolver and faced Tom. “Unharness the team. Now.”

Frank and his men had ended four lives in little more than four minutes, and then, with four words, he’d dismissed the matter. The howling wind whirled around them, gathering the dust into tiny twisters that hopped across the prairie like jackrabbits. Levee buried her face in her hands, unwilling to let them witness one more moment of her misery. She had the rest of her life for that.

Life. She almost laughed at the notion. Sitting in the middle of the Texas prairie, waiting for only the good Lord knew what to kill her, wasn’t her idea of life.

Suddenly, an idea dawned. Perhaps, if she got them good and angry, they’d shoot her, too.

Levee started hurling insults and slurs, shrieking like a fishwife and waving her arms. But she might as well have been a cactus or a tumbleweed for all the attention they paid her. Infuriated, she picked up rocks and sticks and hurled those, too, yet they continued to ignore her.

When the stagecoach team scattered in opposite directions, she bit back a sob. As they stuffed their saddlebags full of money, she admitted to herself that they really did intend to leave her out here in the middle of nowhere to wait for starvation and thirst—or hungry coyotes—to kill her. Oh, Father, please let it be the coyotes, she prayed. As painful as that would likely be, at least it would be quick. Until then, she’d have ample time to atone for her sin of selfishness.

“You’re no better than the coyotes!” she called after them.

But her words disappeared into their cloud of dust and gleeful bellows. Hugging herself, Levee sunk to the dirt between the bodies of Liam and Mack and sat on her boot heels, rocking and groaning, groaning and rocking, as she waited for the tears to start.

But not a single teardrop fell—not for her husband or the baby they’d lost, not for the brave, young cowboy who’d died defending her, not even for herself, alone and afraid, somewhere in West Texas.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when the sun began to sink behind the horizon, like a golden coin disappearing into a slot. A dark chill blanketed the plains, waking snaky shadows that slithered from bush to scrubby bush. Strange and forlorn moans spilled from Levee, ascended into the blackness, and blended with the cacophony of night birds and bugs and coyote howls.

By the time exhaustion rendered her silent, the moon was high in the sky, and Levee found herself cuddled up to Liam. And, though his lanky body offered no warmth or comfort, that’s where she stayed, praying that before morning, the Almighty, in His loving mercy, would call her home, too.

Chapter Two

December 1888 • Eagle Pass, Texas

Becky cupped a hand between her mouth and Samantha’s ear. “See, I told you he’s teacher’s pet,” she whispered.

Her seatmate rolled her eyes and sighed. “Shh, before your whispering gets us into trouble.”

Levee tapped her pointer on the chalkboard. “Rebecca, Samantha, I’d hate to make you stay after school again.”

“Sorry, Mrs. O’Reilly,” the girls chorused.

Levee had done her best to look and sound stern, but her heart just wasn’t in it. In the seven months she’d been in Eagle Pass, she’d developed a deep affection for every one of her sixteen students, from four-year-old Willie Neville to thirteen-year-old Tim Boone. “Now, let’s pay attention to Billy’s story, shall we?”