Outlaw Wife

“Let me go,” she said, squirming beneath him. “You’re too heavy. You’re hurting me.” She was out of breath and near tears.

“Shut up and stop fighting or I’m not moving from here.”

She stopped her frantic wiggles. “Get off,” she said again.

Her body was firm against his. Through his cotton shirt, he could feel the pointed tips of her breasts. He suspected that if his side didn’t hurt so much, the position would be awakening a lot more than anger in him.

“First you tell me exactly what you expected to accomplish by that little trick.”

“I…I was escaping.”

“Yeah. I understood that part. And then what? You were going to just head out of town by yourself without food, weapons, a horse?”

She tried pulling her right wrist free, but he held it in a deathlock. “I could have stolen a horse.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a thief.”

For a long moment she didn’t say anything. They lay still as Simon began to feel a slow radiation from the warmth of the contact of their bodies. Then she sighed, sending a ripple along her chest underneath him. He answered with a shortened breath of his own. Maybe his side didn’t hurt quite as much as he thought.

“I’m not a thief. Not yet. I don’t know what I was planning, if you must know. But anything would be better than going back to that awful cell.”

For his own sanity, Simon eased away from her, letting some space in between them while still holding down her arms. “I assume it was the accommodation you objected to and not the company,” he said.

She didn’t respond to the touch of humor in his tone. “Don’t make me go back there, Mr. Grant” The moonlight pooled in her eyes as she looked at him, pleading.

“Damn it, woman. I’ve got nothing to do with the matter. If I let you go, I’d be committing a crime myself.”

“But the sheriff’s your friend….”

“Which doesn’t mean he’d let me break the law.” He pushed himself up on his knees, then stood, keeping a firm grip on her wrist. “Come on. I’m locking you back up. And as far as I’m concerned, this time you’ll stay there until you rot.”

Simon awoke the next morning with a blessedly clear head. The effects of Jake Patton’s handiwork and John’s medications both appeared to have diminished substantially. He stretched his legs out on John’s hard cot and took a moment to relish the feeling. His broken ribs were no more than a slight nag, in spite of the tumble in the dirt last night. He scowled at the memory and turned his head toward the cell.

She was watching him, sitting on her bed with her back against the cell wall, her long legs thrust out in front of her, exactly the way he’d last seen her before he’d turned toward the wall to sleep last night.

“Bejeezus, don’t you sleep, woman?” he asked her.

Her eyes were shadowed with fatigue. “Not in this place, I don’t.”

Simon sat up, shaking his head. Some part of him deep in his gut wanted to pity her. But he tamped down the feeling. She was an outlaw, after all. And she had tricked him last night. She’d hurt his side and his vanity, as well. He kept his tone cold. “Suit yourself. Sooner or later you’ll have to sleep, I reckon.”

“So are you going to tell the sheriff that I ran last night?”

Before he could answer, both turned their heads at the sound of the door opening. Simon expected to see John, but instead John’s daughter breezed into the office.

“I hear you and my father are guarding a big bad prisoner,” she said, her voice disdainful.

She spared Simon barely a glance and walked right over to the cell. “You poor thing. What in the world can these men be thinking to keep you locked up in there?”

Willow looked at the tiny newcomer with suspicion.

“Good morning to you, too,” Simon said to Cissy’s back.

Cissy glanced at him over her shoulder. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Simon. How can you sleep there while this poor young thing sits on that filthy bed and…”

Simon held up his hand in protest. “Whoa. Your father’s the sheriff, remember? And I’m here on your orders, as I understand. You told John you’d have my hide if I tried to go home.”

“I’m not talking about you and your aches. Isn’t it just like a man to turn the subject around to himself?” She turned to the prisoner for confirmation. Willow was regarding her with amazement. Cissy was wearing pink, her favorite color, with lace running in delicate rolls up and down the front of her trim bodice. She looked deceptively demure, but her voice cut like a cleaver, and the looks she was throwing Simon were dagger sharp. “How old are you, child?” she asked.

Willow opened her mouth twice before the sound came out. “Nineteen.”

“Hmm. Older than you look. It’s those awful pants.” Cissy turned back to Simon again, her hands on her hips, and demanded, “What exactly is my father planning to do with her?”

Simon’s head was starting to ache again. “I…I don’t know. Keep her here. The marshal will be sending for her one of these days.”

Cissy looked around the room in disbelief. “And he expects her to live here while some marshal takes his sweet time deciding what’s to become of her?”

“She’s an outlaw, Cissy.”

“Horsefeathers.”

Simon was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. Cissy had always had the uncanny ability to make him feel like a schoolboy who’d copied his friend’s homework. “Take it up with your father,” he grumbled.

“Take what up with her father?” John asked as he pushed open the door.

With a new victim, Cissy began her tirade all over again, until Willow interrupted, asking in a small voice if the sheriff would be kind enough to escort her to the outhouse. She gave Simon a wary look when the sheriff released her from the cell, as if waiting for him to relate the events of the previous evening.

Simon closed his eyes, leaned heavily back against the wall and held his tongue. It was time for him to go home, he decided, broken ribs or not. He’d had enough of Bramble for a good spell. All he wanted was to get back home to peace and quiet with his father and with Chester, who rarely strung together more than five words at a time. He opened his eyes. Cissy was still there.

“Are you going to sit back and let my father keep her here?” she asked.

“It’s just until the marshal sends for her.”

“Sends who? A man like that deputy? I saw him over at the hotel, half-drunk and eyeing every woman in the place. What do you think is in store for her if she’s at the mercy of men like that?”

Simon’s stomach rolled at the sudden vision of the slender young outlaw struggling on the ground, as she had against him last night. Only, this time it was Sneed on top of her…pressing her down, forcing her…

“I don’t like the idea any better than you do, Cissy, but what’s the answer? She was riding with the gang. The outlaws who nearly killed me. Remember?”

Cissy walked over to her father’s desk and sat in his chair, chewing on a nail, lost in thought. “I don’t know what the answer is, Simon. But there must be some way…”

Simon boosted himself off the bed. “Well, if I can help out, let me know. For now, I’m going home.”

Before Cissy could protest, he crossed the room and took her by the shoulders. “I don’t care if I rebreak every blamed rib in the process,” he said, leaning over to plant a kiss on her cheek. “Thanks for the nursing.” Then he spun around and walked as fast as he could out the door.

In spite of his bravado, it was harder than Simon had anticipated to boost himself onto Rain Cloud’s back, even with the stable boy, Buck, one of the truant Mahoney brothers, giving him a hand up.

But it felt good to be back in the saddle, and even better to be on his way home—to his father’s gruff affection and Chester’s hearty cooking. The day was bright with the lush, grassy smell of late summer. Simon whistled a little tune as he walked Rain Cloud past the Red Eye Saloon and turned to ride south out of town.

Simon called a greeting to Jim Trumbull who was sweeping in front of his general store, then turned his head in the other direction to avoid catching the eye of the widow Halley. He’d squired her daughter, Priscilla, a time or two to the town dances, and ever since, the buxom widow had marked him down as her private mission. At the moment, he was in no mood for a sermon.

He gave Rain Cloud a nudge with his knees, spurring her to pick up her pace, then regretted the command as she moved immediately into a bone-jarring trot. “I guess we’d be better off taking it easy this trip, girl,” he said aloud, pulling gently on the reins. The horse hesitated, then stopped, waiting for her master to make up his mind. Simon laughed.

“Looks like you’re feeling better, Grant.” Simon hadn’t even noticed the rider approaching from the road out of town. He looked up in surprise to see that it was the deputy, Tom Sneed.

“What are you doing back here?” Simon asked, concerned. “Did you run into trouble with Davis?”

Sneed pulled his horse up in front of Simon and stopped. “Nah. The territorial marshal’s office had sent some men down to look for the rest of Davis’s gang, but it appears they’ve cleared out. So they’re going to ride with Torrance and Davis to Cheyenne. Torrance sent me back here to fetch the girl.”

He had a thin, sharp face that showed the effects of too much smoke and too much liquor. Simon instinctively disliked the man. But he did wear a federal deputy’s badge. He had every legal authority to take Willow Davis with him. Cissy’s words came back to him. What do you think is in store for her if she’s at the mercy of men like that?

“Are you riding out with her right away?”

One side of Sneed’s mouth came up in a leer that showed two blackened teeth. “I figured I’d take myself a bit of recreation first. Torrance hauled me out of your Red Eye Saloon yesterday morning before I’d gotten my money’s worth out of a dainty little blond piece. I gave her three bucks, and I figure she still owes me a hump or two.”

Simon made no effort to soften his grimace of distaste.

“Whatsa matter, Grant? You mean to tell me you don’t hire yourself a whore now and then over at the Red Eye? Maybe them women’s a bit tame for you? You like ‘em wild—like that she-wolf in the jail.”

Simon pictured Willow’s gaunt face, pleading with him to look the other way and let her go free. She was anything but a she-wolf. She was as frightened as a wild rabbit, a nineteen-year-old kid trying to act brave, and worried as hell about her father, even if he was an outlaw. If they’d been on the ground, Simon would have had trouble fighting his impulse to put a fist through Sneed’s grinning face. As it was, he merely shook his head in disgust, gripped Rain Cloud’s reins and started to ride past him.

“I intend to give her a tryout, too, before I’m through,” Sneed taunted to his back. “Might cost me a scratch or two, but she looks like she’d be worth it.”

His good humor shattered, Simon let Rain Cloud head of her own volition in the direction of the ranch. It was none of his business, he told himself firmly. The girl had saved his life, but she’d also been part of the gang who had robbed and beaten him, he told himself for the hundredth time. It was not his responsibility to worry about what would happen to her. His mental battle lasted for about two miles. He’d almost reached Indian Head Butte when he gave up and hauled on the reins.

“Ah, hell. We’re going back,” he told his horse. And when Rain Cloud turned her head as if to ask what in the world was the matter with her master today, he nodded in agreement with her confusion. “Yeah, I know. I’m out of my mind. Loonier than a dogie on locoweed.” Then he wheeled her around and headed back to town.

Chapter Four

As Simon suspected, Cissy and John were in a heated discussion by the time he got back to the jail. John was in his chair behind his desk and Cissy had planted herself on top of it, her skirts ballooning over the stacks of papers. The prisoner was in her accustomed position sitting upright against the wall. Her expression was stony, but her eyes showed that she was following every word of their conversation.

“Simon, you came back!” Cissy cried as he walked in the door.

“I saw Sneed on the road. Has he been here?”

“Been and gone,” John said with a snort. “He said he had some business over at the Red Eye. That man’s a disgrace to his badge.”

“And you’ll be a disgrace to yours if you don’t do something about this situation,” his daughter added.

John molded both hands around his coffee cup and stared gloomily at the contents.

“We can’t let Sneed take her,” Simon agreed. Cissy sent him a surprised but grateful look. He’d come to the conclusion on the way into town. No matter how tough Willow Davis might look in her male attire, no matter how rough the company she’d been keeping, she was a nineteen-year-old girl. Probably a darn scared one. And one who had saved his life.

“What would happen if she just wasn’t here when Sneed came back for her?” Simon asked carefully.

John put his head up sharply, and for the first time, Willow moved inside the cell, letting her feet drop from the cot to the floor. “What’re you saying?” the sheriff asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Sneed doesn’t surface for a day or two. A word to Brad Tilton would make certain of it.” The proprietor of the Red Eye was a respected citizen in town, in spite of the nature of his business.

John set his cup on the desk, safely away from his daughter’s dress. “Do you mean to tell me that you think I should just let her go?” he asked, addressing Simon.

“Yes,” Cissy answered.

“Well…” Simon hedged.

John rolled back his chair, stood and started pacing the room, his hands clasped behind his back. His expression was thoughtful.

“Surely you don’t think this girl is a criminal, Father…” Cissy began, but stopped talking when her father shushed her with an impatient movement of his hand.

“Just let me think a minute,” he said.

They all waited as the sheriff walked to the opposite wall and appeared to be studying a wall ad for chewing tobacco, which had been there since Simon was a boy.

Finally the prisoner spoke. “I’d hightail it out of here if you let me go. I’d never be a problem again. I promise.” Her voice held a tightly leashed note of hope that made Simon’s throat go taut.

There was a moment of silence so complete that the ticking of the sheriffs wall clock seemed to echo in the room. Then he turned around and looked from the prisoner to his daughter and finally to Simon.

“I’ve been wearing this badge more years than this girl is old,” he said with a gesture toward Willow. “And I’m not about to let an accused felon walk out of my jail to get into who knows what further mischief.”

Simon, Cissy and Willow all erupted at once with protests, but the sheriff waved them once again to silence, his eyes still on Simon.

“But I can’t say as how I think any good would be served by handing her over to a snake like Sneed. So I have a proposition for you, my friend.”

“For me?” Simon asked, confused.

John walked over to the cell and peered in at Willow, his eyes sharp under the bushy brows. “Come on over here, girl.”

Slowly Willow stood and walked up to the bars.

“Were you telling me the truth when you said that Jake Patton is not your man?” the sheriff asked her.

Willow looked as confused as Simon, but nodded.

“You don’t have yourself a man, right?” the sheriff persisted.

“I don’t need a man,” Willow answered sharply, her back stiffening with irritation.

John nodded, then turned back to Simon. “I’ll let her go on one condition. I’ll release her if you agree to take her as your wife.”

Simon’s laugh died in his throat as John continued watching him with a serious expression. “You are joking, aren’t you?” he asked his friend. He looked over at Cissy for confirmation of the ridiculous nature of John’s remark, only to feel his mouth grow dry at the stricken look in her eyes. More than anything it told him that her father’s offer had not been made in jest.

Simon was about to speak when his protest was made for him. “You’re plumb out of your mind, Sheriff,” Willow said with an indignant laugh.

John turned to her, his tone sober. “Would you rather go riding off alone with Tom Sneed?”

“Why can’t you just let her go, Father?” Cissy asked, the words slightly stilted.

“What would she do on her own? Where would she go? Do you want to just send her off into the wilderness and hope we never see her again? Would that be any kinder than letting her go to trial in Cheyenne?”

Simon found himself backed up against the door. “Wait,” he said, holding up his hands as if to ask for peace. “I could put her up out at the ranch for a while, if that’s what you want, John. I reckon I owe her that much for saving my hide.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Not good enough.” He walked over to his desk and picked up a piece of paper. “It says here that Miss Winifred Lou Davis is under arrest for armed robbery. Unless we want the marshal’s office swarming down on us, that person has to disappear.”

“You mean you want me to hide her out on Saddle Ridge?”

“I mean that there’ll be a new Mrs. Grant at Saddle Ridge.”

Simon rubbed his chin in agitation. “You’re crazy, John. How would I explain this sudden acquisition of a wife to my father?”

John shrugged. “Love at first sight? You were swept off your feet in the middle of selling your cattle in Laramie and couldn’t resist her charms.”

Cissy jumped off the desk. Her face was flushed and she was obviously upset. “You’re doing this because of me,” she accused her father.

Now Simon looked even more mystified. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The sheriff walked over to put a gentle arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “Now, honey, weren’t you the first one who said we shouldn’t keep this girl locked up?”

“But I never suggested that you marry her off to Simon. That little scheme came out of that devious brain of yours. And it’s not going to work.”

Simon watched as Cissy pulled herself away from her father’s comforting arm. Was it possible that there was some truth to her accusation? He, himself, would never have accused John of being devious, but the sheriff was one of the smartest men he knew. And there was nothing more important to John than his daughter’s happiness. “I want to talk with you alone,” he told the older man.

John nodded and reached over to pull open the door. “We’ll be right back, ladies,” he said, giving his daughter a worried smile.

Once they were outside, Simon asked directly, “What exactly is going on here, John? What does Willow Davis’s future have to do with me and Cissy?”

John’s gray sideburns twitched as he searched for the right words. “Nothing. The girl needs a new identity. And you’re in a position to provide it for her. You can let Harvey in on it or not, as you choose. But as far as the rest of this town is concerned, she’ll be Mrs. Simon Grant, your lawful, wedded wife—a beautiful young thing who spun your head around so fast that you ended up marrying her. She’s plenty pretty enough to make the story believable.”

Simon looked at him suspiciously. “And this has nothing to do with my breakup with Cissy?”

John’s eyes were grave. “I won’t lie to you, Simon. Cissy hasn’t been able to move on the way I’d like since you two split. She should be looking out for some other young fellow. Why, Will Waxton would have her in a minute if she’d so much as look his way.”

Simon looked down at the wooden sidewalk. “Would he make her happy, do you think?”

“How the hell do I know? Maybe she should go back East to that nursing school she always talked about before she took it into her head that she wanted you. All I know is that if it didn’t happen between the two of you in the two years you dawdled on about it, it probably never will. And I’m not about to let her spend the rest of her life mourning what might have been.”

Simon clapped a hand on John’s shoulder. It seemed to him that the sheriff had lost something in height in the past couple years, but perhaps it was just that Simon had grown to tower over him. “Don’t you think it’s a little drastic to marry me off so that your daughter can be happy?” he asked with a twist of humor.

John’s eyes twinkled. “I call it divine justice.”

Simon rolled his eyes.

“The lass did save your life, Simon.”

“Look, John. I’ll talk to Cissy. I’ll make her see that she can’t refuse to look at new opportunities because of me. But there’s no way I’m going to hitch myself to some…”

The door to the sheriffs office opened and the object of their conversation stepped between them. “I think you should do it, Simon,” Cissy said in a low, calm voice.

“Then you’re crazy, too,” he snapped.

“If it doesn’t work out, you can always get a quiet divorce down the line….”

All humor gone from the situation, Simon looked from the sheriff to his daughter as if both had suddenly sprouted tulips from their heads. “If what doesn’t work out?” he shouted. “You can’t be suggesting that there could ever be any real marriage between me and this…this…”

“Woman, Simon,” Cissy filled in. “Marriages usually take place between a man and a woman.”

Simon shook his head and stepped backward, nearly tumbling off the sidewalk. “I should’ve just kept on riding back to the ranch,” he mumbled.

“And why didn’t you?” John asked sharply. “How come you came back?”

Simon hesitated. “Well…some of the things Sneed said just stuck in my craw.”

John gave a satisfied nod. “Of course they did. They would to any decent man—especially one who owes a debt to the female Sneed’s got his eyes on. So what’ll it be? Do I release Miss Davis to Sneed…or to you?”

Simon was still feeling the way he had when he was fifteen and a bull in the south pasture had broadsided him, tossing him into the air and knocking all the air out of his body with a great whoosh.

In one long, insane afternoon, his entire, orderly existence had been shattered. He was officially, signed and sealed by Judge Abercrombie, with Cissy and John as witnesses, a married man. It defied belief.

When he had some time to think about it all, he’d try to figure out exactly why he hadn’t been able to hold firm against the relentless onslaught of both Walkers. He suspected that deep down it had something to with the look of fear he’d glimpsed so fleetingly in the outlaw girl’s blue eyes. His wife’s eyes. Lordamercy.

She rode alongside him in silence on Cissy’s horse. John and his daughter, who had pretty much taken over the arrangements as Simon and Willow played their parts with dazed acquiescence, had decided that it wouldn’t do to have Willow claim her own horse, which was in legal custody at the livery. They didn’t think that either Sneed or Marshal Torrance would spend much effort looking for Davis’s daughter, but if they should decide to ride out to Saddle Ridge, it would be enough to hide Willow without having to hide her horse, as well.

John had suggested that Simon and Willow could ride double out to the ranch, but Cissy had said that Simon shouldn’t risk further injury by bouncing around in the saddle with another person.

Cissy left briefly, returning with her horse in tow and a carpetbag. She’d sent her father off to fetch the judge, and then had shooed Simon out the door. “It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” she’d told him breezily.

He’d paced up to the Red Eye and back again to the jail. The door was shut and the shade pulled over the window. So he walked over to Trumbull’s store for some cinnamon sticks for Chester that he’d forgotten to buy in Cheyenne—all the time wondering if that blow to the head had affected him more than he’d thought it had. Surely he was dreaming all this.