Once an Outlaw (28 page)

“Unless… what?” Pete asked uneasily.

Jake Spoon took a long drag on his cigar, while both Lester and Pete stared at him.

“Unless we give the danged fool some help.”

“Now why would we want to do that?” Pete exploded. “Let him suffer. Let him go to hell!”

“And what about Emily?” Lester spoke quietly. “You want her to keep suffering too?”

Pete swallowed. He thought of his sister’s drawn face, how angry and quiet and miserable she’d been these past days. The way she’d wept in her room at night when the cabin was dark and still, a heartrending weeping no one was supposed to hear. Emily, who’d cared for Aunt Ida all
alone while he and Lester had been on the run, and Jake had been in prison—Emily, who’d worked so hard to make this rough cabin into a home for them all.

“Aw,
hell
.” He raked a hand through his hair and spun toward his uncle. “If it’ll make Emily happy,” he choked. “Tell us what we have to do!”

LINT
B
ARCLAY, YOU HAVEN’T
heard a word I’ve been saying.” Nettie Phillips poked him in the arm as all around them, chattering people laughed, drank lemonade and elderberry wine, and watched the dancers doing a country jig across the Mangleys’ candlelit parlor.

“I asked you why you don’t just go over there and ask Emily Spoon to dance,” Nettie said as the sheriff turned distracted eyes upon her.

“Any fool can see you’re going to burst if you watch one more cowboy take her for a whirl around the floor.”

Her words penetrated the dark hell of Clint’s thoughts. He tore his gaze from the sight of Emily dancing with Fred Baker and glowered at the frank-talking woman beside him.

“She doesn’t want to dance with me.”

“How do you know if you don’t ask?”

“I did ask. Twice.” Clint’s lip curled dangerously. “She told me no. Then she danced with Homer Riley and Doc Calvin. Then she disappeared with a bunch of ladies, gabbing all the while about muffs and parasols. Then she
danced with Hank Peterson and Chance Russell. She wouldn’t even
talk
to me.”

“Serves you right,” Nettie told him as Agnes Mangley bustled by, making a beeline for Carla and Lester Spoon, huddled in a corner whispering to one another as if they were the only two people in the house.

“You kept that girl in the dark, after all, when you could have saved her a lot of grief if you’d only told her what was going on. Oh, she told me about it,” she added airily at his startled glance. “Poor girl needed someone to talk to.”

Of course, Nettie reflected, Emily hadn’t exactly confided
everything
to her—she hadn’t come out and said she was so in love with Clint Barclay she couldn’t see straight—only that she planned never to speak to him again—but her feelings for the sheriff were plain as day, at least in Nettie’s opinion. She hadn’t even planned on attending the Mangleys’ party until Nettie shrewdly pointed out that if she didn’t come, it would look like she was avoiding him, since the Spoon men and the sheriff were all guests of honor. Did she want to let Clint Barclay know that he could scare her away from attending parties and town functions and dances just because he would be there? Did she want the man to think he had even a thimbleful of power over where she went and what she did?

That had done the trick and Emily had changed her mind about the party. Now the rest was up to Clint, Nettie thought, as she glanced sidelong at the handsome sheriff who had done nothing but scowl and toss back whiskey and prowl the Mangley house like a hungry, restless cougar since the moment Emily Spoon and her family arrived.

“Men,”
Nettie said pointedly. “You always think you know best for a woman, insead of letting her decide for
herself. One of your more foolish and irritating traits, if you ask me. The smart ones learn from their mistakes. Why, my Lucas learned the hard way the first month we were married that…”

Clint heard no more as Nettie rattled on—his attention was caught by the sight of Emily being brought a glass of lemonade by Cody Malone.

Was there a man in the room she hadn’t spoken to, danced with, smiled upon—except for him? He doubted it. And he doubted his own ability to survive this night without hitting someone.

Trouble was, she wouldn’t even give him a chance to explain or to apologize. A chance to even hint at what was in his heart. It was driving him crazy. Feelings he hadn’t ever thought he’d feel tormented him. Jealousy, loneliness, despair. Over a woman.

Not just any woman. The one woman he’d discovered he needed in his life was the one woman who wanted nothing to do with him.

Well, I reckon we’ll just see about that
, he decided, his jaw tightening. He didn’t give up when he was on the trail of some low-down smelly outlaw, or a gang of wily scavengers like the Monroe gang or the Barts—he wasn’t about to give up on the woman he loved.

That he loved her Clint could no longer deny. That he wanted her in his arms and in his bed and in his heart for the rest of his life was an indisputable fact.

That he’d win her over was an iffy matter. No one he’d ever met had a temper and a will and a knack for holding a grudge like the enchantingly hot-tempered Miss Emily Spoon.

As if she felt his gaze burning into her, Emily looked up at that moment, across the room, and directly into his eyes.

But as he excused himself from Nettie and started purposefully across the room toward her, she turned away and immediately disappeared behind a knot of people.

Clint walked faster, his eyes searching the crowd, and all the while he was completely unaware that he was the object of much attention and conjecture by several other guests at the party.

Hamilton Smith and Hoss Fleagle watched open-mouthed as Clint approached the Spoon girl yet again.

“You see what I see, Ham?” Hoss shook his head in disbelief.

“You mean the way Clint keeps looking at that gal? And chasing after her?” Ham sighed over the rim of his crystal goblet filled with elderberry wine. “Mighty sad sight. All these women in town hankering to get him to pop the question, and the one girl he’s trying to talk to keeps dodging him like he was a cow pie in a basket of cookies.”

“If I ever look that lovesick, shoot me and put me out of my misery,” Hoss exclaimed.

And Doc Calvin happened by just then and added his two cents: “Clint’s a goner,” he muttered sadly.

Several of the other townspeople had taken note of the sheriff’s apparently doomed fascination with Emily Spoon as well, but many of the citizens of Lonesome had not even noticed—another development had commanded their full attention. The Spoon boys had suddenly replaced the sheriff as objects of adoration and potential matrimony among the single women of Lonesome. Thanks to their efforts to thwart the plot against the Mangleys, and incidentally saving the lives of Hamilton and Bessie Smith as well, Pete and Lester Spoon were no longer considered outlaws but were hailed as heroes, slapped on the back, welcomed into every conversation.
They were congratulated and complimented, their every utterance listened to with bated breath, applauded, repeated around the room as if it were a nugget of infinite wisdom.

Even Jake Spoon, who stood with his hands in his pockets, hugging the wall, on the outskirts of the festivities, was eventually captured by the throng, hustled to the center of the parlor, subjected to toasts made in his honor, with Agnes Mangley extolling his courage, and every man in the room wanting to pump his hand.

The young women who had previously had eyes only for Sheriff Barclay suddenly were swarming over Pete Spoon like honeybees over a jar of jam. And several had tried to catch Lester’s eye, in the hope he would escort them in to supper or ask them to dance. But Lester Spoon seemed mesmerized by Carla Mangley, and she by him. The most astonishing thing about the entire party was the way Agnes Mangley raised toast after toast to the Spoons, fawned over them, insisted they sit beside her, and looked upon Lester’s captivation with Carla with obvious favor.

The outcast outlaws of the Teacup Ranch had suddenly become the darlings of Forlorn Valley society. But despite the entire town becoming wholly caught up in this phenomenon, once Pete, Lester, and Jake finally managed to escape and meet in the hallway behind the wide oak stairs, they wasted no time thinking about their new status as heroes.

They quickly got down to business.

“Anyone seen Emily?” Jake demanded. “She was right next to the widow Mangley when I saw her at the supper table, and she and that Margaret Smith were talking about some dress or other she wanted Emily to sew, but then she disappeared!”

“She’s in the garden,” Pete said. “All by herself. Lester and I saw her slip out and go around back.”

“She’s sitting right there on the swing, in the dark, no doubt mooning over Barclay,” Lester snorted. “No one’s around, so if we’re going through with this, now’s the time,” he added.

“But where’s Joey?” Pete asked.

Jake grinned. “In the kitchen. He and Bobby Smith swiped a plate of oatmeal cookies and they’re hiding out in the pantry eating them all.” He guffawed, despite the seriousness of what lay before them. “I told him to stay put—that I had a special job for him to do. So how’s about I go get him now—and you boys do your part?”

“Fine by me. This is the only part of this whole damned scheme I’m going to enjoy,” Pete said with relish.

“Me too.” Lester nodded at Tammy Sue Wells, who glided slowly by, her glance shifting from him to Pete, her hips swaying as she walked. He waited until she slipped into the dining room before continuing. “I’m still not so sure this is a good idea.”

Jake’s deep-set eyes fixed themselves first on his son, then on his nephew. “If it works,” he said gruffly, “I’m not going to like it any more than you do. But it’s what makes Emily happy that counts.”

Lester sighed resignedly. Pete rocked back and forth on his heels for a moment, wrestling with the strong, contradictory emotions tearing through him.

“Oh, hell,” he said at last, taking a deep breath. “If it makes Emily happy, I’d eat a mountain of tumbleweed. So let’s quit jawing about it and just get it over with.”

His body tensed and straightened as he spotted Clint Barclay, a cigar stuck in his mouth as he leaned against the wall of the parlor, his hard gaze scanning the crowded room, no doubt looking for Emily.

“I want to do the honors,” Pete told Lester. “She’s my sister.”

“I’ll flip you for the privilege,” Lester quickly countered.

Jake pulled out a coin.

“Heads,” Pete said. The cousins watched intently as Jake tossed the coin, caught it, and turned it over in his palm.

“Heads,” the older man announced.

As Lester swore under his breath, a cold smile touched Pete’s lips. His gaze shifted again to Barclay and he started forward.

“Let’s go.”

INT’S
HURT?
W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
he’s hurt?” Emily jumped off the swing, her heart suddenly hammering, and peered at Joey through the moonlit darkness.

“I didn’t see him, but Uncle Jake said you should come quick—he’s in the jail—hurt
bad
.” The boy was nearly hopping with excitement, his little face flushed his arms waving. “Hurry, Em-ly! Uncle Jake said
hurry!”

Emily raced around the house and up the darkened street toward the jail, fear tearing through her like ripping needles. All evening Clint had been trying to approach her, trying to dance with her, and she’d been avoiding him—outright dodging him as she tried to convince herself she needed to banish him from her life for good. And now he was hurt—what if he’d been shot, what if he’d been stabbed what if he didn’t survive?

She clutched her skirts in one hand and ran along the deserted main street, her feet flying along the boardwalk. Tinny piano music and raucous shouts came from the saloon as she flew past it toward the dim outline of the jail-house, illuminated in a silvery glow by stars and moon.
She reached the building, gasping for breath, pain and fear clutching at her heart as she burst inside.

Clint’s office was in shadow, the oil lamp turned low. At first she couldn’t see much of anything except Clint’s desk, the bookshelves, the metal bars of the cells glinting just beyond the office.

“Clint! Uncle Jake!” Panic-stricken, she peered through the gloom. “Clint, where are you?”

She moved forward, stumbled over the leg of a chair, and righted herself. Then she saw him.

He was in the jail cell—sprawled, arms akimbo, upon the cot.

“Clint!” Running to him, her heart in her throat, Emily felt a terrible fear descend upon her. What if he was
dead
, what if she was too late …

“My darling, what happened to you?” she cried in a broken whisper as she bent over his prone form.

He groaned, stirred.
He was alive
.

“Thank God,” Emily breathed. There was no blood upon his white linen shirt, no wound that she could see. Kneeling beside him, she took his hand, pressing shaking fingers to his pulse.

That’s when she heard the jail door clank shut and a key scrape in the lock.

She twisted around and saw Pete in the shadows, gazing at her. Lester stood just behind him.

“Quick, he’s…” Her voice faded as she suddenly wondered why they had shut and locked the cell door. “What are you doing?” she gasped, as a horrible idea occurred to her.

“Pete—Lester—open that door.”

“Sorry, Sis. Can’t do that.”

“Don’t be mad,” Lester muttered.

She sprang up and ran to the bars, grabbing them, shaking them. “You open that door this instant. He’s hurt, he needs help, you need to go fetch Doc Calvin—”

“He doesn’t need a doctor, Em. I just coldcocked him, that’s all.” Pete shrugged, trying not to look pleased with himself as he turned away.

But Lester’s expression was somber. “He’ll come around soon enough, Em.” Sighing, he followed Pete to the door.

“Where are you going? You can’t
leave
us here—”

“We’ll be back for you in the morning,” her brother promised.

“In the morning? No! Stop! What do you think you’re—” She broke off as the door slammed shut behind both of them and the next thing she knew another key scraped in another lock. The door to the office, locked from the outside.

Emily gripped the bars and pulled as hard as she could. She shook them, rattled them, kicked them.

She wanted to scream in frustration. She was trapped in there, in this cell. With Clint.

Another groan from the cot had her whirling around.

Clint’s eyes opened. Lying on his back, he stared blankly up at her. “What the hell… happened …”

“You tell me!” Incensed, Emily glared at him. “Are you in on this too?”

“In on… what?” He sat up slowly, looking dazed. “What are you doing here, Emily?”

“Joey told me you were hurt—that I had to come immediately—” She broke off, biting her lip.
Why would they do this to me?
she wondered, fury churning through her and, with it, shock. Her family hated Clint Barclay. What possible reason could they have for tricking her and locking her in a jail cell with him for the entire night?

“What are
you
doing here?” she demanded.

Slowly, as she watched, a frown darkened his face and the familiar keenness returned to his eyes.

“Reckon… Lester tricked me. He found me at the party—told me that Deputy Stills had just ridden in from Denver. He said Jenks had escaped from jail in Denver and Hoot McClain was organizing a posse. Said Stills wanted me to meet him here and… oh, hell.”

He groaned again, this time in disgust.

Emily stalked to the farthest end of the cell, which was only about five feet away from where he sat on the cot. “So you came here and then what?” she asked, her stomach doing little nervous jumps and flips.

“I came in the door fast, looking for Stills—then someone hit me over the head and that’s all I knew. Must’ve been Pete,” he muttered. A dangerous glitter entered his eyes. “I’ll have their hides, the both of them,” he growled.

“You’ll have to stand in line. I’m going to kill them,” Emily muttered. “With my bare hands.” She drew a ragged breath. “Why did they do this to me?
Why?”

Clint looked at her as she stood, her back to the wall as if she wished she could melt right through it and get as far away from him as possible. But she couldn’t. She was so near—only two steps away. He suddenly didn’t feel like horsewhipping Pete and Lester anymore. Emily wasn’t going anywhere and neither was he.

“I don’t have a clue why they did it,” he said, rising to his feet. The pain in his head was already easing—Pete Spoon must not have hit him that hard after all. But the pain in his heart was still as intense as ever.

“But I’m sure glad they did,” he added, and took a deliberate step toward Emily.

She suddenly looked like a cornered doe. “Stay back,”
she warned him, alarm shooting through her. “Don’t come any closer.”

“Emily—”

“The last place I want to be is here in this cell with you.”

“But you came here—fast—when you thought I was hurt.”

“I… I…” Emily bit her lip as he took another step toward her. Her body felt heated, her face flushed. Being close to Clint Barclay always had an unsettling effect on her, but never more so than at this moment, when she knew she couldn’t get away. It was difficult to breathe and even harder to think when he was gazing at her that way, his eyes glittering in the gloom, the faint glow of the lamp just barely illuminating the strong handsome planes of his face, the firm line of his mouth, those keen hot blue eyes.

“I thought you were dead, actually, and I… I wanted to gloat,” she told him in a cold tone.

His brows shot up. “Gloat. Ahuh.”

Emily suddenly couldn’t remain still another moment. She darted forward past Clint to the opposite side of the cell where shutters enclosed the high window. Reaching up, she tried to unlatch them.

“I’m getting out of here. Someone’s going to come down this street, someone leaving the saloon or going to the hotel—and they’ll hear me if I scream—ahhhh!”

Clint seized her around the waist and yanked her away from the window before she could unlatch the shutters.

“Forget it, Emily. This is what you get for not letting me talk to you all night. It’s justice in a way.”

“Justice! I didn’t commit any crime. I demand to be let out.”

Blue fire suddenly ignited in his eyes. “You think you didn’t commit a crime? I say you did.”

Suddenly Clint’s arm snaked around her waist so that she couldn’t twist away. His other hand cupped her chin and tilted it up so that she was gazing directly, inescapably, into his eyes.

“You’re a thief, Miss Spoon. The worst kind of thief.”

“I never stole anything in my entire life!”

He tugged her closer still. His fingers burned her skin.

“That’s a damned lie.” His voice was thick, husky. “You stole from me. You stole my peace of mind. My concentration. My regard. My heart.”

Emily couldn’t speak. Her lips parted, but not even a whisper emerged for she was hearing the words he’d just spoken in her mind—over and over again.

“You don’t have a heart.”

“Want to bet?”

She moistened her lips. “Don’t try to … to sweet-talk me. After what you did—”

“I did what I thought was best, Emily—at the time. I didn’t want you mixed up with Ratlin and Jenks and Frank Mangley and his damned foreman. We had a plan and you weren’t part of it and—”

“You knew what I was thinking! That night when Uncle Jake rode off and you dragged me inside the barn—you knew what I suspected!”

“That he was up to his old ways again.” Clint’s eyes were solemn. “Yep, I reckoned that’s what you thought. But it seemed safer to let you think that a little longer until—”

“You bastard!” She shoved him away from her as a lump rose in her throat and tears sparkled on her eyelashes. Her voice throbbed. “I was torn in two! I wanted
so much to believe in him, and in Pete and Lester, but that shook my faith and my loyalty—I didn’t know what to do—and then there was everything I was feeling for you!”

“I know, Emily,” Clint said grimly. “But don’t you see? By then it was almost over and it seemed better to—”

“To what?” she interrupted furiously. “To let me believe that they were going back to their old ways? Only worse? Because that’s what I thought, you know! When I overheard Uncle Jake talking to Ratlin and Jenks, I thought he and Lester and Pete were up to their necks in murder. Do you know how that felt? Can you imagine? I was trying to escape, so I could turn them in—my own family. I was going to turn them in—to
you!”

She broke off on a sob and drew in deep trembling breaths as she fought for control. Pain seared him as he saw the anguish in her face. He hadn’t thought about it exactly like that, hadn’t realized the true depth of the situation she’d been put into. All he’d wanted was to keep her safe, but he’d hurt her—they’d all hurt her with the secret. Not physically, but in a place more tender and vulnerable than blood or flesh could touch.

“I’m sorry, Emily. So … very sorry,” he muttered.

Studying her in the feeble light, he took in the shining mass of midnight curls, the creamy fairness of her skin, the full lushness of a mouth that he well remembered tasted of summer berries. But he also saw the faint shadow of the bruises still marring those fine-boned cheeks. The bruises that resulted when Ratlin and Jenks had struck her, hurt her. They had mostly faded but were not completely gone, and the sight of them reminded him that if he’d been honest, if he’d trusted her with the truth, she wouldn’t have followed Jake Spoon that fateful day, wouldn’t have been captured, tied up, terrorized by men intent on murder.

“I don’t make many mistakes when it comes to my work, but this one was a big one,” Clint said slowly. “And I’ll try to make it up to you, Emily, if you give me a chance.”

He reached up and lightly, gently, brushed his thumb across the fading bruise.

She flinched, no longer from pain, only from the effect of his touch.

“They hurt you,” he said in a low, tortured voice. “I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

Emily couldn’t breathe as she read the sorrow in his eyes. Her chest felt as if it would explode with a heartrending pain.

“Did he … did Jenks…” Clint cleared his throat, his own heart pounding, “did he hurt you… in any other way?”

She knew what he meant and a shudder shook her. “He k-kissed me,” Emily whispered, feeling sick as she said the words. “It was disgusting.” She was trembling now, every part of her trembling. “I tried to fight him but my hands were tied … and then Ratlin stopped him, told him that afterward, when the holdup was over… before they killed me … he could … he could …”

Her voice broke, her face crumpled, and she swayed against him. Clint swept her into his arms, locking her tight against him, as icy pain and a fury unlike anything he’d ever known crashed through him. He wished there were a way he could hold her tight enough to block out every painful memory of her capture, to keep out any hurt or sorrow in the future, to protect her from ever knowing fear again.