The Outlaw (20 page)

When she was nowhere in sight, Abigail sighed
and sat back down. “That woman means well but she’s such a
tyrant.”

Sarah grinned. “I got that impression.”

They sat quietly for long minutes until
Morgan walked over and asked Abigail to go home. She tried to
protest but Morgan was having none of it. He asked Sarah to see she
made it there and told them both he and Colt would join them
soon.

Sarah nodded, agreeing to see Abigail home,
and kept one eye on Colt as she walked his new sister-in-law back
to her house. She followed Abigail in, let her guide them toward
the kitchen and demanded the woman sit when she started to gather
things to make tea. Sarah took over, seeing the exhaustion on
Abigail’s face and sat quietly with her in the early morning hours
waiting for Colt and Morgan to return.

The question of what happened now repeated
itself in her head. The stagecoach was due today at noon. Did she
get on it and return home or did she stay? Her heart told her to
plant her feet in the fertile Willow Creek soil but her head
reminded her of how ornery Colt was. If he wanted her to stay, he
would have said so by now, wouldn’t he have?

* * * *

By the time the sun rose over the mountains
and began to warm the ground, half the town was destroyed. The
hotel was still burning, the marshal’s office in ashes but
thankfully, the Mercantile survived, with only half the store gone.
It was salvageable, as was with the telegraph office next door to
it. It only suffered minor damage to one exterior wall.

Everyone from miles around made their way to
what was left of the town, their wagons filled with blankets and
food, buckets of water and compassionate, soothing words. Sarah was
sitting on the front porch of Morgan and Abigail’s house, wrapped
in blankets. Abigail had been trying to get her to come inside for
well over an hour but the thoughts of it caused Sarah’s pulse to
race. She needed wide-open spaces, the feel of cool air on her
face. She needed to be able to see Colt as he walked the town with
Morgan, accessing the damage.

When both men started back to the house,
Sarah stood and wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
She called in to Abigail that they were returning and both women
waited patiently for the men to join them. When Colt was close
enough to see clearly, the look on his face confused her. He looked
angry, thin lines bracketing his mouth as he walked up the walkway
to the porch. “What’s wrong?”

“Virgil.”

Sarah’s eyes widened at his one word answer.
“He’s here?”

Colt nodded. “He was.” He climbed the steps
and came to her, wrapping his arms around her. “There’s no proof he
started the fires but I’d bet everything I own, they’re the cause
of all this.”

Morgan kissed Abigail’s cheek and wrapped his
arm around her. “Vernon said a group of men came into the saloon
late last night, bragging about a bank robbery and killing a few US
Marshals. Said they were pretty drunk by the time they’d spent
their money and that’s when one of the girls over there overheard
one of them mention Colt’s name. They left after that and it wasn’t
long, Vernon said, that he saw the fire over at the jail.”

Sarah scrunched her brow. “Why would they set
the town on fire though?”

“Because they knew this is where I live.” He
ran his hand through his hair. “They followed us, just like I
feared they would. That and this is what they do. They wreak havoc
everywhere they go. It’s why I spent the last year getting to know
them all. Setting up that bank robbery so we could catch them.”

“Catch them?” Sarah stared at him, confused.
At his nod, old conversations flooded her mind. The things he told
her while drunk on her hotel room floor screeching though her head.
“Wait a minute. You mean that whole story of you being a US Marshal
was true?”

Colt laughed and pulled her closer to his
side. “I told you I wasn’t a bad man.”

A jumble of thoughts flashed through her
head, the most prevalent, Colt wasn’t an outlaw. Not really.

Morgan took Abigail inside the house and when
they were alone, Sarah turned to Colt. “Why didn’t you tell me this
on the first day?”

He smiled. “Because the less you knew the
better off you’d be. Besides, I intended on dropping you off at the
first town I came to.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

The look in his eyes caused her heart to
race. His hand raised, his fingers tunneling into her hair.
“Because it only took a day for me to want to keep you.”

He wanted to keep her? Then or now? She was
so confused. She was sure it was from being awoken in the middle of
the night in a burning building, the adrenaline rush of almost
being burnt alive and the lack of oxygen must have killed off what
common sense she had. Was he saying he wanted her to stay? “Keep me
for what, exactly?”

Morgan joined them and the questions Sarah
had would have to wait. “I’m ready when you are,” Morgan said.

“Ready for what?” Sarah asked, looking from
Morgan to Colt. “You’re leaving?”

“We’ll be back as soon as we can.” Colt
pushed her hair back and tucked it behind her ear. “Stay with
Abigail. She needs to rest and Morgan doesn’t want her to be alone.
His only other option is leaving her with Edna and he’d rather chew
his own arm off than do that.”

Sarah’s chest tightened with the knowledge he
was leaving but nodded her head anyway. “All right.” He kissed her,
uncaring if anyone saw and smiled at her before walking away. When
she turned and saw Abigail at the doorway smiling, she raised one
eyebrow. “What?”

“If you think you’re getting on the
stagecoach when it pulls into town, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“Why do you say that?”

Abigail laughed. “Because I know how those
Avery’s think. I’ve never met Colt before today but I’d bet money
he’s as pig-headed and ornery as his brothers. If he intends to
keep you, he will, and you’ll have no say in the matter.”

Sarah wanted to argue about that but she was
too tired. All she wanted to do was sleep for a week and think of
nothing. Thinking led to questions she had no answers for and come
noon, she had a decision to make. Did she get onto that stagecoach
and leave or did she stay and hope Colt loved her enough to want to
marry her.

Chapter Fourteen

Colt could think of a dozen things he’d
rather be doing than chasing after Virgil’s sorry hide and almost
all of them required Sarah naked.

He couldn’t seem to get her out of his
thoughts. Ever since he left the clearing the day before, knowing
she was upset with him about something, she’d consumed his
thoughts. He’d been ready to leave, to go as far as his horse would
take him and hoped that given time, he’d forget about her.

Finding out the hotel was burning, and she
was in it, caused something inside him to snap. He’d never known
fear like that and knew to his bones he never wanted to live
without her. If that required doing the unthinkable, and asking her
to marry him, then so be it. He’d crawl to her on bended knee and
beg her if he had to. One way or the other, he’d keep her, even if
he had to kidnap her again and hold her hostage until she was old
and gray.

Morgan slapped him with his hat and Colt
turned to glare at him. “What the hell was that for?”

His brother laughed and repositioned his hat.
“I’ve been saying your name for the last five minutes. Stop
thinking about that girl and help me track these outlaws of yours.
She’ll be right where you left her when you get back.”

Colt sneered and tried to clear his head,
focusing on their task instead. The prints Virgil and the others’
horse’s made showed they’d lit out of Willow Creek in a hurry,
which left a trail easy to see. They tracked them for a good
portion of the morning and finally slowed when they saw smoke up
ahead in the trees.

“That them, you reckon?” Morgan asked.

Colt nodded. “Probably. They’re a bit too
stupid to know any better. They’re probably sitting around the
fire, filling their belly's and deciding what hell to cause next.
They’ll not have sense enough to think we’re looking for them.”

Morgan motioned him to the left of the road,
into the forest, and Colt followed. They dismounted, hobbled the
horses and checked their guns before making their way further into
the brush.

They came up behind them and counted heads.
Only five, which meant they’d lost three since the last time Colt
had seen them. “There’s three missing.”

“The three you saw setting fire to the jail,
you think?”

Colt shrugged. “Possible.”

They crawled closer, making sure they stayed
low to the ground.

“How you want to go about this?” Colt
asked.

Morgan tipped the front of his hat up with
the barrel of his pistol. “I say we just shoot them but I think the
US Marshals want them charged for their crimes.”

Colt grinned. “They do but they shot three of
my men. I don’t think anyone would cry if I turned these in
dead.”

A branch cracked behind them and Colt turned,
getting a boot to the face for his trouble. A gun was pressed to
Morgan’s head and the three missing outlaws stood grinning down at
them.

“I think my momma would cry if I was dead.”
He spit out a stream of tobacco juice. “Yours, on the other hand,
aint here to cry.”

“Hey Virgil! Look what we found.”

Colt and Morgan were disarmed and pulled from
the ground and pushed in the direction of the outlaw’s small camp.
Everyone was accounted for, Colt saw, as he counted heads.

“You think I was just going to let you go,
Colt?” Virgil looked at the others and laughed. “We been searching
high and low for your sorry hide and finding that piss-ass little
town was just dumb luck. Who’da thought we’d end up right where we
needed to be?”

Morgan dropped to his knees when someone
kicked him in the back of the leg and Colt bit his tongue. This was
why he preferred to work alone. The less people around him he cared
for, the less vulnerable he was. When they forced him to his knees,
Colt look up at Virgil and grinned. “You do know I’m going to turn
you in, right?”

Virgil laughed. “How you plan on doing
that?”

Colt didn’t answer, just stared the man in
the eye and smiled. He knew Virgil to be a coward at heart. The man
acted cocky and would do and say anything as long as those guns
were strapped to his hip but when it came right down to it, he’d
piss himself and beg for his life. He just hoped he got a chance to
prove his point.

The gang was careless at the best of times
and staging the bank robbery had been all Colt’s idea. The others
would have ridden into town and gotten killed trying to escape if
it hadn’t been for him and he knew, capturing him hadn’t been
thought out. They had him now but they were still just standing
around gawking. If they had any sort of plan, they would have acted
upon it by now.

A single shot from a gun echoed in the
distance and everyone turned to look. Colt used their distraction
to his advantage. He reached for Virgil’s holster, pulled his
pistol before standing, grabbing Virgil around the neck and forcing
the gun into his cheek. “Tell them to not move, Virgil, or I’ll
blow your head off.”

Virgil struggled and Colt tightened the hold
around his neck. After several long moments, Virgil stuttered out
a, “Do what he says.”

Morgan stood, disarmed the man who kicked
him, and punched him in the face before aiming the gun at him.
“What now?”

Colt grinned. “We truss ‘em up really pretty
and take them back to town, what else?”

They made them all sit, Colt holding two guns
on them as Morgan ran back to get their horses. He looked at
Virgil. The man was seething, his face red with anger. “What did
you think, Virgil? That I’d eventually just let you go?”

He didn’t answer, choosing to spit at his
feet instead. Morgan returned and dug a length of rope from his
saddlebags and once everyone was tied, they began marching them
back to town.

“This was way too easy, Colt. Are all the
outlaws you catch so easy to take down?”

Colt laughed. “Not usually, but there’s
always an exception to the rule, especially when you have a bunch
this stupid."

Morgan grinned. "Must be your lucky day,
then.”

"After the day I've had, a bit of luck would
be nice."

* * * *

By the time Colt saw the lingering smoke
wafting from the trees, he was ready to make Virgil and the others
run. Willow Creek was still smoldering and he had half a mind to
chain their sorry hides together and make them clear out every
scrap of burned wood before turning them over to US Marshals.

They entered the town proper, the acrid scent
of burning embers thick in the air. Colt saw the stagecoach and
something twisted in his gut. Sarah’s ride was there and he sighed
in relief that he’d made it back to town before it left. Before she
left.