Nan Ryan
Authors: Outlaws Kiss
Outlaw’s Kiss
Nan Ryan
In loving memory of my mother
R
OXY
B
OST
H
ENDERSON
September8, 1915–November 15, 1995
Contents
San Carlos, Arizona Territory
September 1872
The bride was crying
.
She allowed the tears to slip down her pale cheeks unchecked. With only moments left until noon, she had given up all hope. There was no way out. No one was coming to save her, to sweep her away to freedom.
To deliver her from evil.
It was a high price to pay, but she would, just as promised, walk down the aisle of this old adobe mission at high noon to become the bride of a man she did not love. Would never love. A man she despised and feared.
A violent chill surged through Mollie’s slender frame although the day was still and hot, the tiny back room where she waited stifling. She lifted cold fingers to her aching throat, swallowed with difficulty, and moved once more to the vestry’s one small window.
Anxiously blinking back the tears to clear her blurred vision, Mollie looked expectantly down the street as she had one thousand times before.
Just as before, all was quiet in San Carlos. No clouds of dust stirred on the northern horizon; no sounds of hoofbeats heralded a last minute arrival. The street was silent and empty. That long, straight road leading out of San Carlos—distorted by rising heat thermals—shimmered and swayed and took on a dreamlike quality.
Much like her own life.
None of this was real. It couldn’t be real. Not the white lace dress nor the old mission nor the waiting bridegroom. This couldn’t possibly be happening to her. Not to Mollie Rogers. Surely it was all a dreadful nightmare. Soon she’d awaken and
he
would still be alive. She would turn and see beside her on the pillow, that dark, handsome face she adored. His beautiful eyes would be open and focused on her. Seeing she had roused, he would wrap his long arms around her and draw her close against his lean, bare body. He would kiss her tenderly with those sexy, sulky lips and make warm, lazy love to her while both remained half-asleep.
Mollie shut her eyes tightly and shook her head forcefully, willing this time, this place, this bad, bad dream to go away.
She opened her eyes.
All was just as it had been. The silent streets of San Carlos. The white lace wedding gown. The hopelessness and despair. In seconds the mission bells would begin their dooming toll and her fate would be sealed. She would be forever tied to a man whom she hated to the depths of her soul.
Mollie shook her head again, this time wistfully, sadly, and thought back to the summer when she was just a girl, not quite fifteen years old. To that hot, hot July night in 1865 when the sound of hoofbeats had awakened her from a peaceful slumber. On that long-ago summer night in Texas her destiny had been determined because a man she did not even know had killed another man she did not know.
Marshall, Texas
July 1865
At the first faint echo of hoofbeats, Mollie
Rogers’s violet eyes flew open and she came instantly awake. Heart hammering beneath the worn cotton nightgown, she crept nimbly from the tall four-poster, pushing her tumbled golden hair back from her face. Her slim body tensed, she strained to hear as she crossed the darkened bedroom, slipped out into the hall, and hurried to the stairs.
Feeling her way in midnight darkness, Mollie clung to the polished banister and stole swiftly down the threadbare carpeted stairs. With single-minded determination she headed for the heavy Henry .44 rifle leaning against the front doorjamb. She jerked up the rifle, dashed to a tall front window, eased back the tattered lace curtain, and peered cautiously outside.
The lone nighttime intruder was galloping up the oblong front drive. In seconds he would reach the weed-choked front yard.
Jaw set, eyes squinting in the darkness, Mollie raised the rifle. She poked the long steel barrel through the open window and waited, gun poised, finger curled around the trigger.
At the front gate the trespasser pulled up on his horse, dismounted, and started toward the house. He was now close enough for Mollie to determine his size, but nothing more. He was a gigantic man, tall and strapping and wide-shouldered. He was, she thought fleetingly, almost as big as her papa. Without hesitation Mollie raised the rifle, sighted, and fired a warning shot directly over the head of the approaching stranger.
Cordell Rogers heard the bullet whip over his head, the echoing slam of the rifle fire, and the scream of a woman all at the same time.
“Mollie, child! It’s your papa!” he shouted in a loud, booming voice and threw his big hands high into the air.
“Papa?” Mollie blinked and lowered the heavy gun. “That really you, Papa?”
“Yes, it’s me! Mollie, Sarah, it’s Cordell. I’m home.”
Sarah Rogers stood on the landing above her fourteen-year-old daughter, her screams of fright instantly turning to sobs of joy and relief. With shaking hands she lifted the globe of a coal-oil lamp, lighted it anxiously, and started down the stairs. Midway down she saw her deliriously happy daughter being swallowed up in the powerful arms of her long-absent husband.
“Cordell,” Sarah Rogers silently murmured, lifting the lamp high so that she might gaze on the dear familiar face, the thick curly red hair and beard, the twinkling green eyes. “Cordell,” she repeated, this time audibly.
At the sound of her cultured voice Cordell Rogers looked up, and Sarah suddenly felt shy in the compelling presence of the handsome, massive man she’d not seen for two long years.
“Papa, I almost shot you,” Mollie declared, her slim arms wrapped around her father’s neck as she hugged him tightly. “Why, I might have killed you. I might have … oh, Papa.”
Eyes only for the frail blond woman slowly descending the stairs, Cordell Rogers said, “You did right, Mollie. Like I taught you.” Then he lowered his only child back to her bare feet and stepped onto the stairs.
“Sarah, my love,” he said when he reached his wife.
He took the flickering lamp from her shaking fingers, held it away in one big hand while his arm came around his wife’s narrow waist and he pulled her into his embrace.
He held her so close Sarah could feel the tarnished buttons of her husband’s worn Confederate gray tunic biting into her flesh. But she hugged him even tighter, elated to be safely enclosed once more in his sheltering arms.
“Thank God you’re home, Cord,” she whispered breathlessly. “At last. Oh, my dear, you’ve finally come home to us.”
Pressing her head to his shoulder, Cordell Rogers gently stroked his wife’s golden hair, wondering miserably how he could tell her that he would not be staying home, nor could she. How could he possibly tell this woman he worshiped that they must flee before the morning sun rose?
How could he tell her that he was a wanted man, hunted by both civilian and military law? That his men, riding from the Confederacy’s last capital in Shreveport, had shot and killed a Union officer escort guarding a Yankee gold shipment moving through Louisiana? That she must leave this East Texas cotton plantation where he had brought her as his starry-eyed eighteen-year-old bride? That she could take nothing with her, not furniture or paintings or silver or trunks filled with dresses?
How could he possibly tell this gentle soul that they must leave for Mexico with only the clothes on their backs and that they could
never
return to Texas—or to anywhere else in the United States and its territories?
Dreading the moment, Cordell Rogers waited until Mollie had gone back to bed and he was alone with his wife in the privacy of their room. There he held her in his arms and broke the bad news as gently as possible.
Devastated, Sarah Rogers argued, “But, Cord, if you were not the one who shot the Yankee colonel, then surely you could be pardoned.” Her eyes misted with tears.
“My dear, it doesn’t work that way.
I
am responsible. I was the commanding officer and I led my men on the raid.” He paused, shook his head, sighed wearily. “There’s more. The man who was killed, the late Colonel Hatton, was the nephew of the secretary of war, Stanton.”
“No,” gasped Sarah, a hand lifting to her throat.
Cordell nodded. “Yes. We’ve no choice. We must flee to Mexico.”
Sarah stared at him and swallowed hard. “Mexico? Couldn’t Mollie and I stay here? Then when all this blows over you could—”