“Don’t know that there’s a rule against it but—”
“I’d be ever so grateful.”
Had she practiced that batting of the eyelashes? He’d wager a hundred dollars that she had. She was skilled; he’d have to give her that. He’d wager another hundred that the deputy didn’t know he was being reeled in, a fish flopping on a hook.
“I reckon it can’t do any harm, as long as the two of you keep your distance.”
“Thank you.” She gave the deputy’s forearm a quick squeeze then sat on the bench. “You are a true gentleman.”
Bedazzled, the man could only nod.
Boone sat on the left side of the lawman. By damn, the fellow was preening.
Miss Winston, with her hands folded in her lap, leaned forward so that she could peer at him around the guard.
“What I didn’t have time to tell you last—” She stopped suddenly. Apparently she didn’t want it known that she had snuck out in the dark of night. “Last time we met, is that Lantree is more than—”
“This is a mockery of every legal standard!” Stanley Smythe’s voice penetrated the wall. He reckoned even the saloon keeper could hear the ruckus. “I will not stand for this.”
That didn’t sound promising for his future. Melinda cast him a quick frown.
Long silence stretched in which he could only guess the judge was speaking in a quieter tone. The clock in the courthouse seemed to tick louder all of a sudden...with a longer time between each swing of the pendulum.
Even the deputy turned his head in the direction of the judge’s chambers, listening.
“My client should walk free on the merit of his own innocence and you know it.”
More silence, except for the clock that grew ever louder.
Melinda stood and turned toward the door with her hand at her throat.
Oddly his mind conjured the sound of his brother’s voice saying, “Hell and damn!”
“No! This is highly irregular. I will not permit it.”
Boone stood and faced the judge’s chamber. So did the deputy.
All at once the door flew open and Judge Mathers strode out, his robe flapping like the black wings of doom.
“A situation has come up, Walker,” he announced. He didn’t sit at his podium but he did pick up his gavel and point it at him. “If you help me out I’ll set you free.”
Didn’t sound so bad to Boone, but his little lawyer bristled.
“My client refuses. I insist that you release him without putting him through this farce.”
Melinda tipped her head to the side, the fine line etching her forehead reaching her hairline.
“May I speak, Your Honor?” Boone asked. “I reckon I ought to know what kind of help you need and why it’s got Mr. Smythe in a tizzy.”
“Not a tizzy, but a bout of righteous indignation!” Smythe marched across the room and stood in front Boone with his hands on his hips, looking for all the world like a bristled bantam rooster protecting his oversize chick.
It was damn hard not to admire the man.
“You may speak, sir.”
“Sir” coming from a judge...it made his neck tingle.
“What kind of farce are we considering?” Not that it mattered much if it earned him his freedom.
“I’m in a bind.”
The judge set down his hammer and stepped down from his polished podium. Crossing the room, he gripped Boone’s shoulder and looked up, holding his gaze along with his future.
Whatever the judge wanted, Boone couldn’t imagine refusing, short of murder, that is. He was well and done with that in this lifetime.
“I want you to capture an outlaw gang. If you do, you are a free man.”
“Mr. Walker.” Smythe, who had been pushed aside by the judge, elbowed his way back in. “I advise you to refuse. You ought to be a free man, by your own merits. The judge has no right to include you in his dangerous schemes.”
“It is within my power to set you free or to send you back to the penitentiary.”
It didn’t matter what Smythe felt about the right and wrong of the situation. Boone knew that in reality, Mathers did have the authority to decide his future.
“How many outlaws in this gang?” he asked. Not that it mattered. He was not going to turn down his single chance to be a free man.
“Last we knew, six. Shouldn’t be a problem for a man of your...talents, shall we say?”
Rumor had cast him as a cold-blooded killer and the judge must believe it, otherwise he would not have offered him this opportunity. No one knew that the one killing he had committed had not been in cold blood. Liquor and ignorance had been running hot in his veins that night.
But he did know outlaws. Had run with them most of his life.
“I’ll take the job, Your Honor, in exchange for my freedom.”
He only hoped that it would not be in exchange for his soul. It was hard to imagine how he was going to round up six outlaws, possibly hardened killers that folks believed he was, without bloodshed.
Smythe let out a resigned sigh. “I’ll have this written up, everything neat and legal.”
The judge nodded, his expression satisfied, then turned toward the podium and started up the steps. He pivoted suddenly.
“Oh, and you’ll need a wife.”
* * *
Surely the judge was making an absurd joke.
Melinda cocked her head at him, searching for any sign of mirth.
Unfortunately all she could detect was satisfaction dashed with a pinch of smugness.
“A wife?” Boone gasped.
Poor man, trading one shackle for another.
From outside on the boardwalk a woman’s singsong voice drifted inside. She was reciting a child’s ditty and doing an off-key job of it.
“How the hell am I supposed to capture outlaws and protect a woman while I’m doing it?”
The judge shrugged away Boone’s concern. “I had a deputy and his missus set for the job, paid them a pretty penny of taxpayer money, too, by way of a bonus. Yesterday I was informed that the wife is in a family way and now they’ve backed out of the deal.”
“I’ll get things done quicker on my own,” Boone declared, his complexion looking blanched. “Where in blazes would I get a wife anyway?”
How odd that Boone cast her a brief sidelong glance. No, perhaps not. No doubt he had only been breaking his stare-down with Mathers.
“A wife is a must, my boy. Everything has been arranged for you and the missus to pose as homesteaders—it’s the only way to draw the criminals out. This particular gang goes after settlers.”
“I’ll settle as a single man.”
Mathers shook his head. “No, that won’t do at all. A wife gives the impression of vulnerability.”
“That may be, but where the blazes do you think I’ll conjure up one?”
The singsong