Bushedwhacked Bride (3 page)
“But we can’t go away empty-handed.”
“Yeah, that ain’t fair,” added Gabe.
“Then what would you have us do, little brothers?”
So the five men were brothers.
Interesting,
thought
Jessica.
Billy hesitated a moment, then pointed at Jessica. “I
know. We’ll take her.”
At once, Gabe joined in with, “Yeah, let’s take her!”
“Maybe we can ransom her,” suggested Luke.
“Not on your life!” cried Jessica.
“Young man, I must insist you not molest this young woman,” put in Professor Billingsly bravely.
“Molest?” laughed Billy. “Hell, geezer, we ain’t gonna molest her. We’re just aimin’ to have ourselves a little fun
with her. Ain’t that right, Cole?”
Again Cole’s dark gaze flicked over Jessica, as if she were a ripe plum he could devour in a single bite. Then
he shrugged. “She’s got a real mouth on her, and I say
she’s more trouble than she’s worth. But suit yourselves.”
Jessica shot the scoundrel a glare, for all the good it
did her.
“Yeah,” said Billy eagerly, rubbing his hands together.
Again Walter stepped forward to confront Billy.
“Young man, you’ll kidnap this young woman over my
dead body.”
Billy pointed his pistol. “My pleasure, Sheriff.”
“No!” protested Jessica.
She rushed between the two men, slapping Billy’s pis
tol away from Walter’s chest. Balling her hands on her
hips, she faced Billy down. “I told you not to point that
weapon at him, you little jerk.”
Billy chuckled. “Hell, sugar, I plumb forgot.”
Ignoring new bursts of insufferable male laughter, Jessica turned to Woody. “Mr. Lynch, please, you must do something,” she pleaded. “I don’t care what kind of joke
this is. It’s
not
funny.”
The poor man appeared miserable, his eyes half
crazed, his lower lip trembling. “Ma’am, I don’t know
how to tell you this, but this ain’t no joke. These here men
are a’feared outlaws, wanted dead or alive in these parts,
and we’d best take ‘em serious.”
“Oh, God,” muttered Jessica, and then she felt her arm being seized.
“Come along now, sugar,” coaxed Billy. “You’re gonna
take a nice little ride with me and the boys.”
“Yeah, and then maybe a
long
ride with the rest of us,”
added Gabe wickedly.
Jessica threw off Billy’s hand. “How dare you touch
me! You men are evil, vile, and despicable. You’re dan
gerous fugitives who obviously belong in the custody of
the law.”
Billy glanced helplessly at Cole. “Well, big brother,
maybe she is more trouble than she’s worth. Should we
shoot her?”
Jessica gasped in fear as Cole started toward her, his stride sleek and purposeful. Her heart pounded as he
stared at her long and hard. But to her surprise, instead of
shooting her, he brazenly grabbed her about the middle, easily hefted her up over a broad shoulder, and started walking off with her dangling there. Outraged, Jessica screamed and beat on his back. He took no note, only
striding to his horse and tossing her over it. For a moment, with her derriere pointing skyward, her face to the ground,
Jessica was too stunned to react. Then Cole mounted be
hind her, and she felt his muscled strength, his heat, and
she was mortified to find her mouth shoved intimately
against his hard, warm thigh. She could even smell him—
leather, sweat, and pure
man.
Yet when she struggled
again in earnest, his hand slammed down on her rear with
enough force to make her cease her struggles at once.
“Lady,” he muttered, “consider yourself in the custody
of the Reklaw Gang.”
All five outlaws rode off with their prize, shooting,
whooping, and hollering.
Chapter Three
“Who d’ya reckon will get to kiss her first?”
As Jessica bounced along, squeezed between the sad
dle horn and Cole Reklaw’s hard body, she could hear the
men’s voices, though it was more difficult to tell whose
was whose. She guessed it was Gabe who had posed the
question. Not that she cared, she was so miserable at
the moment. Her body was jolted with each lunge of the horse. Her cheeks throbbed from the rush of blood to her
face. The choking dust rising from the trail coated her
hair and face, stung her eyes, and made her cough and sneeze. Of course, none of this could compare with the
indignity of having her face and mouth pressed intimately
against the outlaw’s male thigh, in having her entire body
inundated with his heat, his scent, to know the man had
an unrestricted view of her rear end bobbing up and down
as they barreled along. She wanted to scream, to rail
against her appalling plight. Yet she dared not, or her cap
tor might “discipline” her again. Worse yet, he might just
shove her off his horse—in which case, she’d doubtless land on her head and break her neck.
What did her captors have in store for her? She shuddered to think.
Again, Jessica wondered who the bandits really were.
Having seen the fear in Mr. Lynch’s eyes, she could no
longer rationally believe he had hired these lunatics on
horseback, especially since she still couldn’t make sense
of the fact that all of her colleagues had somehow changed
their appearances right before the outlaws had shown up.
She wasn’t even sure she’d left the same people she’d
started out with this morning.
Nothing was making sense. Why were her colleagues
suddenly sporting altered demeanors and new names?
And where had the armed men come from? Were they
pretending to be the Reklaw Gang, or were they real?
They must be impostors, for the only other logical expla
nation was that the stagecoach had somehow traveled into
an earlier time—and that wasn’t logical at all.
On the other hand, could all of this be a dream or a hal
lucination? Was she actually still in the stage, lying there
unconscious after having hit her head? As her captor’s horse stumbled slightly, the saddle horn’s jab in her side
convinced her otherwise. No, if anything, this nightmare was
too
real.
The sounds of the men’s agitated voices interrupted
Jessica’s frantic musings, and she listened, appalled, as
they argued over her.
“I’m gonna kiss her first,” Billy declared. “It was my idea to take her, after all.”
“Hey, that ain’t fair,” protested Luke. “We gotta draw
straws for her or somethin’.”
‘This is an outlaw gang, not a gall-durned knittin’ circle,” Billy shot back. “I’m the one that took her, so I get
first dibs.”
“I’ll play you a hand of blackjack for her,” offered Wes.
“Hell, no—you cheat, Wesley,” Billy shot back.
“Do not!”
“Do so!”
“You take that back, Billy Reklaw.”
“Hell, no, Wesley Reklaw, I ain’t takin’ nothin’ back.. I
saw you pullin’ that queen from the bottom of the deck
the last time you dealt blackjack.”
“That’s a gall-durned lie. I may steal, but I ain’t never
cheated. Ma brung us up better’ n that.”
“Boys, give it a rest,” put in Cole in his deep, com
manding voice. “Any of you given a thought to what’s going to happen when her people find out she’s missing,
or when Ma learns we brought home this—er—
lady.”
Jessica wriggled in impotent fury at the cynical inflection in Cole’s voice. She heard his low laughter, only ex
acerbating her ire.
“Ma won’t mind,” asserted Billy with bravado. “We’re
just aiming to have a little fun with her.”
“Yeah, the
lady
here can help Ma with her woman’s
chores once we’re done with her,” suggested Wes slyly.
“And Ma’s gotta understand why we took her, ‘cause there weren’t no strong box,” argued Luke. “Fair is fair,
after all, and maybe we can win a goodly ransom for her.
Heck, we couldn’t go away empty-handed, like a bunch
of sissies.”
Cole chuckled. “Whatever you boys say.”
Jessica’s spirits sank. So she was in the custody of a
bunch of crazy men who thought they were Old West out
laws, along with their equally demented mother. The
Barker Gang, complete with evil Ma.
All at once, Jessica tensed as she felt Cole’s horse slowing its pace. Her body shifted forward as the group headed
down an incline. Gradually, she began to hear the sounds
of chickens cackling, the oinking of pigs. Then she
smelled the strong odors of a barnyard, mingled with wood smoke.
The men halted their horses. Cole dismounted, then pulled Jessica to the ground with him.
Disoriented, half nauseated, she stared about her to see that all five men had removed their masks. Were she not so furious, she would have gasped aloud, for they were a
handsome lot. Recognizing them from their shirts and the
fact that Billy was smaller, she noted that he, Gabe, and
Wes all appeared to be in their early to mid twenties.
Leanly built, all three had blue eyes, the faces of angels, and thick blond hair worn longish. Luke, tall and slightly older, greatly resembled Gabe and Wes, except that his
shock of shiny hair was light brown.
At last her gaze shifted to Cole, and she struggled not to flinch. He was so different from his brothers—older, closer to thirty, she judged. His frame was massive and
hard-muscled, and his stance oozed arrogance. His thick
dark brown hair, also worn long, shone with highlights,
and his deep-set eyes were dark. His features were
tanned, fiercely handsome. The hard lines around his
mouth and eyes testified that he truly was the leader of this
gang of cutthroats, that he was a dangerous, determined
man. And, from the way he was staring at Jessica, he was
also sexy. Too sexy. In a very dark, smoldering way.
Jessica suddenly felt weak and defenseless. For in that
moment she somehow knew she could handle all four of
the younger Reklaw brothers. But this older one—this
Cole—this one she
couldn‘t
handle.
Billy stepped forward, grinning. “Welcome to our
home, little missy.”
At last Jessica had the presence of mind to look at her
surroundings. To her right loomed a large, old-time, na
tive stone farmhouse with a homey swing on the porch
and a high tin roof. Hanging baskets spilled flowers from the eaves, and a calico cat dozed on the steps. To her left
stretched a swept yard dotted with a few brave clumps of
grass and wildflowers, giving way to a cluttered barnyard. In the distance sprawled a weather-beaten barn and
a ramshackle bunkhouse, the structures hulking against a
backdrop of misty
Colorado
mountains.
Where on earth
was
she? Perhaps she should run—but
where? Beyond the homestead, she could see only raw
wilderness where mule deer grazed and distant moun
tains where hawks circled.
She turned to Billy. ‘This is your home—a living farm?”
Billy chuckled. “Don’t she say the most peculiar
things?” he asked Gabe.
“Sure do,” Gabe agreed with a grin.
Then Jessica became distracted as the door to the farm
house swung open and a huge, scowling woman appeared
carrying a broom. She was dressed in a ragged homespun
dress and a badly soiled apron. Straggles of gray-brown
hair dangled about the sagging jowls of her fearsomely
set mouth. Dirt smeared her cheeks and nose, and her
dark eyes held a predatory gleam.
She lumbered down the steps, glowered at the men,
then at Jessica. “What in tarnation have you boys brung
home this time?” she demanded.
“Ma, it’s a girlie-girl,” announced Billy proudly. “We took her off the stage we robbed. Maybe we can ransom
her.”
“You boys gone and done another robbery?” the
woman hollered. “Oh, sweet mercy!”
“Ma, it’s an honest livin’,” protested Gabe, digging the
toe of his boot in the dirt. “You see, there weren’t no
strong box, so we took her instead.”
The woman swung her ferocious features on Jessica.
“Who you be, honey?”
Though it wasn’t easy, Jessica drew herself up with dignity and faced down the intimidating woman. “I am
Professor Jessica Garrett, of
Pawnee
College
.”
“Professor?” the woman gasped. “You’re some sure-
enough schoolmarm?”
Schoolmarm.
Hearing the word, Jessica suddenly found her instincts taking over as she remembered
“Sheriff” Lummety declaring to the outlaws that she was
Mariposa’s expected new schoolteacher. Heck, if noth
ing was making sense here, she might as well join in the
lunacy.
Primly straightening her cuffs and raising her chin, Jessica declared, “That is correct. I am the new schoolmarm, and was on my way to Mariposa when these scoundrels robbed the stage and abducted me.”
Jessica’s bold lie had more than the desired effect. Ma
Reklaw appeared horrified, her huge mouth gaping open. Waving a hand in disgust, the woman turned to her sons.
“Great jumping Jehoshaphat! What you boys gone and
done this time, shanghaiing the new schoolmarm?”
“Ma, we didn’t know,” insisted Billy, while guiltily avoiding his mother’s eye.
“Don’t you tell me, ‘Ma, we didn’t know,’ you lying
little pipsqueak,” she thundered back..
“We thought she was a Cyprian,” explained Gabe.
“Hell, she was in Lila Lullaby’s old pussy-wagon,”
added Luke.
To Jessica’s amazement, the woman’s face reddened in
outrage; then she raised up a hand and soundly slapped Luke’s face. As he recoiled, she thundered, “You rascal!
Hush up that evil talk. There’s a lady present, I’ll have
you know. I didn’t raise you up to carry on like no parlor-
house flesh-peddler.” She jerked a thumb toward Jessica.
“‘Sides, do she look like some Cyprian?”
All five men scowled at Jessica.
“But it was a yeller stagecoach,” protested Luke
weakly.
“Yeah, with red velvet seats,” stated Wes.
With a look of forbearance, the woman turned to Jes
sica and touched her arm. “Honey, you just get your
sweet self up there on that porch. This here is between me and my boys.”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied a very relieved Jessica.
Jessica beat a hasty retreat up the steps, securing her
self behind a post. From her vantage point, she was
amazed to watch all five men begin backing away from
their menacing mother. Meanwhile, Ma Reklaw stood clenching and unclenching her hands on her broom han
dle, adjusting and re-adjusting her grip, like a batter get
ting ready to step up to the plate. All the while, she
glowered at the men with a burning vengeance that made
Jessica pray that she would never cross this ferocious
woman.
“Now, Ma,” scolded Billy, holding up a hand, “don’t
you go gettin’ riled.”
The huge woman lifted her broom. Jessica went wide-
eyed as an enraged roar welled up from the woman, mak
ing the image of a charging bear pale by comparison.
Then Ma Reklaw began to swing.