Nan Ryan (5 page)

“True,” said the Kid, nodding, thinking he knew exactly what to do with Mollie Rogers.

Battles kicked his gelding into a gallop and rode after the free-spirited Mollie, his heart drumming with admiration. Her latest show of rebellion—the cutting of her long hair and the firm-chinned resolve to ride with the Renegades—added to her appeal. He had always wanted Mollie. Now he wanted her more than ever and he meant to have her. One way or the other. Knowing she would be in on the Tucson bank robbery made the blood surge through his veins.

Jeffrey Battles enjoyed robbing banks and stages. It was more than a means of acquiring fast money. For him it was like a stimulating sexual experience. Each time he unholstered his twin .44s and pointed them at a frightened man’s chest, he felt his belly tighten and found himself half-aroused. More than once he had felt the strong desire to make love just prior to a robbery. Or while the robbery was under way. Or as soon as it was completed. That feeling was sure to increase tenfold with the temptingly defiant Mollie at his side when he burst into a bank, guns drawn. Lips stretched into a wicked grin, the Kid raced after Mollie, envisioning thrilling days and nights ahead. Soon Cordell Rogers could be shunted to the background, left behind at the hacienda, and
he
would lead the gang. He and the tempestuous, daredevil Mollie.

The Kid overtook Mollie, reined his gelding alongside her speeding bay, and shouted, “I don’t much like that short hair, but I sure like you riding with me.”

Mollie’s head swung around. “I’m not riding with you, Kid. I’m riding with my papa, same as you and the others.
Don’t
ever forget that. He’s the leader. You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Seems to me he can’t either,” said the Kid.

Mollie glared at him, leaned low over the bay’s sleek neck and urged him on, leaving the Kid in her dust.

Half past noon and furnace-hot.

The baked streets of Tucson, Arizona, were nearly deserted when a gang of mounted bandits thundered into town, guns drawn, their lower faces covered with bandannas. Before the drowsy town knew what was happening, the robbers were at the First National Bank and a trio of gun-toting outlaws stormed through the bank’s doors.

“Hands in the air, everybody,” shouted the biggest of the three, while a tall, slim youth in tight black charro pants nimbly scaled the counter, swung through a teller’s window, and dropped to the floor, empty sack in hand.

“Put all the money in the bag,” ordered a muscular, dark-haired man standing just beyond the wire cage. The frightened teller nearest him noticed that the drawstring of his black hat hung over an ear whose lobe was missing.

Mollie moved rapidly from teller to teller, filling the bag with gold and paper money while the Kid covered the employees and her father covered the door. In less than sixty seconds the bag was filled, Mollie was back out into the lobby and rushing for the door, while behind her the Kid and Cordell Rogers held their ground, waiting for Mollie to mount her horse.

But as she stepped on the wooden sidewalk, a cowboy, smelling trouble, rushed around the corner from the barbershop, his face covered with lather. He grabbed Mollie and held her body in front of him as a shield.

“If you fire you’ll hit the boy!” the cowboy shouted to the mounted Renegades.

He began backing down the street toward the sheriff’s office, dragging the masked outlaw with him. His chin bumped the struggling bandit’s Stetson, knocking it to the ground. Chopped blond hair gleamed in the sun as the cowboy’s hand, seeking a firmer hold on the robber’s shirtfront, grabbed a handful of soft, feminine flesh. Mollie heard his sharp intake of breath. Thunderstruck, the cowboy automatically released her, muttering in disbelief, “Why, you’re a girl!”

“And you’re a fool,” was her reply as she shoved the gaping cowboy from her and ran for her horse.

She swung up into the saddle, wheeled the bay about, and galloped away. She was rounding the corner when she heard the first shots. Her head snapped around. She started to turn back, but the aging Will Hurdman shouted, “No! Keep going!”

She did, galloping ahead of the others as men poured into streets, gunfire erupted, and pandemonium broke out. Riding hell-for-leather, Mollie and the Renegades raced out of Tucson, quickly losing their pursuers.

But leaving behind the trapped Cordell Rogers and the Texas Kid.

By twilight that day, the talk on every street corner and in every gambling den, saloon, dance hall, and bordello in Tucson was of the daring daytime robbery. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in months, and the fact that two of the infamous Rogers Renegades were cooling their heels in the city jail was cause for celebration. Townspeople were delighted that two of the West’s most notorious outlaws had fallen into their hands. They spoke loudly of a lynching, theorizing that it was their duty to rid the frontier of outlaws like the pair of animals incarcerated in their jail.

A holiday spirit prevailed, and men drank and shouted and laughed and hurried in and out of the freestanding jail, rushing back to the rear of the building to point and jeer at the captured criminals. One loudmouthed drunk bragged how he would lift the Kid’s other earlobe for a souvenir.

No one was having more fun than the lanky cowboy who had discovered, first hand, that one of the Renegades was not a man. Repeating the story over and over, he said, “… so I held this here young boy before me, shielding myself from all them mounted bandits. I was pulling the boy along with me when I knocked off his hat and I seen a lot of shiny short blond hair. I clutched at his shirtfront and danged if I didn’t have me handful of soft female breast!” He hooted with laughter and added, “Hell, I should have hung on for dear life!”

By dark there was nobody left in Tucson who hadn’t learned that one of the Rogers Renegades was a female, a brave, daring young blond girl. A girl they said was Cordell Rogers’s daughter. A girl they speculated to be the Texas Kid’s woman.

Inside the close, small cell at the rear of the jail, the Texas Kid, his left hand throbbing, paced back and forth, his thin lips pulled tight over clamped teeth, his sunburned face etched in lines of pain.

The marshal’s bullet had caught the flesh between his knuckles before he could squeeze the trigger of his .44. Both of his guns had crashed to the wooden sidewalk as he had instinctively grabbed his wounded left hand and shouted, “Get him, Colonel!”

But, strangely, Cordell Rogers had refused to shoot the lawman, although he clearly had the drop on him, a fact that sorely rankled the Kid. He turned now and looked at the big red-haired man lying relaxed on one of the cots.

“You know, don’t you,” said the Kid, “that they are as apt to hang us as not.”

Rogers looked up. His green eyes were calm, pensive. “You knew that going in, Kid. Did you suppose we could spend our lives robbing banks and not court death?”

A muscle twitched in the Kid’s jaw. “Why the hell didn’t you shoot that marshal?”

“I’m no killer. We’ve been over this before.” Cordell Rogers rolled into a sitting position and swung his legs to the floor. “Since the Hatton shooting, no one’s been hurt. I never want another woman to find herself a widow because one of my men killed her husband.” He rose to his feet.

“Goddamn it, I don’t want to die,” was the Kid’s angry reply.

“Then you should have chosen another profession. Robbery carries risks.” Rogers turned away, called through the bars to the guard, “Jailer, reckon it would be possible for a thirsty prisoner to have one little drink of whiskey?”

As he waited for an answer, his troubled thoughts turned to his daughter. What would become of Mollie if they hanged him? What would happen to his young, defenseless daughter? Who would take care of her if he was six feet under?

He shook his head.

He had meant, so many times, to tell Mollie that if anything ever happened to him, she was go to his and Sarah’s dear old friend, Napier Dixon. But he’d never gotten around to telling her. Now it was too late.

Mollie was still wandering in and out of his liquor-clouded thoughts as midnight approached. He had persuaded the jailer to leave him a half-full bottle of good Kentucky bourbon and he lay on his cot half dozing, half daydreaming of happier times.

“Listen!” The Kid snapped him out of his pleasant reverie. “It’s the fire wagon! I thought I smelled smoke!” He anxiously sniffed the air.

Cordell Rogers blinked in confusion and tumbled from his bunk as the clang-clang of the fire wagon grew closer. Men shouted, horses whinnied, and the strong smell of smoke permeated the still night air.

“Jailer!” the Kid called out frantically, his hands gripping the bars. “Let us out! The jail’s on fire! Open this door!” But his pleas fell on deaf ears as the frightened night jailer dashed for the front of the building and safety. “Jesus God,” hollered the Kid, “we’ll burn to death!”

At that moment, a heavy chain came snaking through the small back barred window and an unmistakable feminine voice said calmly, “Okay, boy, now!”

Cordell Rogers and the Kid whirled about and watched as the window exploded from the back wall leaving a hole large enough for a man to crawl through.

They looked at each other. They looked at the gaping hole before them. They looked at the mounted horseman outside in the alley.

“Well, what in blazes are you waiting for?” shouted an exasperated Mollie.

Laughing now, the Kid quickly wiggled through the opening and turned to help Rogers get out as thick smoke swirled in and filled the tiny jail cell. Astride her bay, Mollie held the reins of two saddled mounts.

Asking no questions, her father and the Kid climbed atop the horses. The trio headed for the open desert, swiftly disappearing over the horizon while behind them excited, perspiring men pumped water into the brightly blazing, fully engulfed jail shouting to one another, “My God, the prisoners will burn to death!” “How did it happen?” “Somebody must have set the fire!”

The two grateful men making tracks for the border behind a fearless young woman didn’t wonder for a second who had set the fire.

Santa Fe Sun
, August 18, 1868

ROGERS RENEGADES STRIKE AGAIN!

The infamous Rogers Renegades rode into Tucson last noon and made off with $847,638 in gold and paper money. Riding with them was a bold young female believed to be Rogers’s only daughter.

It looked as though the gang had finally overplayed their hand when Rogers and the Texas Kid were apprehended and thrown into the Tucson jail. But at midnight a mysterious fire broke out and when it was doused, authorities discovered the outlaws had escaped through a forcefully opened back window. So the city comes up empty-handed, losing the money, the red-haired Rogers, the blond female, and the man with the missing earlobe known as the Texas Kid.

Lew Hatton slowly lowered the newspaper to his desktop. His jaw was clenched, his blue eyes clouded.

“My friend, you do not look like a man who is to celebrate his engagement this very evening.”

Dan Nighthorse, the trusted
segundo
of Lew Hatton’s huge New Mexico ranch known as Plano Pacifica and his closest friend, had entered the mansion’s study so quietly that Lew hadn’t heard him. The tall half-breed stood in the doorway, hands in the pockets of his tight black trousers.

Lew held up the paper. “The bastards are at it again, Dan. Thumbing their nose at the law and at me.”

Dan Nighthorse didn’t need to ask who Lew was talking about. He crossed the room, saying, “What have they done now?”

“Read this,” Lew rose and shoved the newspaper at him.

Dan Nighthorse read the article, lowered the paper, shook his head. “I know how you feel, but—”

“Do you, Dan? It’s them. It’s him, the Texas Kid. Jeffrey Battles, the murdering bastard who killed Dad!”

“You can’t be certain.” Nighthorse’s flat black eyes flickered.

“I am certain. I’ve told you I learned long ago that dad’s murderer was a young, muscular Texan with wavy dark hair, gray eyes, and a left earlobe that had been partially shot away. How many men fit that description? It’s Battles, and I’m going—”

“Don’t do it, Lew,” Dan Nighthorse interrupted him. “It’s suicide. Let the lawmen handle it.”

“You see how well they’ve handled it,” said Lew. “Had Rogers and Battles locked up and let them escape. They’ve been riding and robbing for more than three years, for God’s sake. Now they’re so sure of themselves they’ve got Rogers’s kid riding with them. That sound like they’re afraid of getting caught or killed?”

Ben Nighthorse admitted that Lew had a point. He said, “Says in the paper she’s the Kid’s woman.”

“A charming couple, I’m sure,” said Lew. “Imagine what she must look like.”

Dan nodded. “And smells like. And acts like. She lives, rides, eats, and sleeps with a bunch of hardened outlaws. I doubt she’s much different from them.” He smiled, hoping to soften Lew’s mood.

Lew’s face remained rigid. “I’m going after them. All of them, including the woman who shares Battles’s bed.”

“His is probably not the only bed she shares,” said Dan, still attempting to defuse Lew’s anger. Seeing it was no use, he said resolutely, “If you go, then I go with you. If you will not listen to reason, then we ride together.”