“You’re making light of a serious situation. The danger is as real as razor’s edge. Think for a minute...your family will be devastated if something happens to you.” He’d shake some sense into her if his hands weren’t shackled.
“Our family, Boone. Believe me when I say that you are an important member—you can’t know how much you are loved.”
He might be able to dismiss what she was saying if her demeanor had not become suddenly serious. As intently as he looked into her eyes, there was no trace of the woman who could clearly get anything she wanted with a smile. “Your absence has been hard on your brother. You owe it to him to do whatever you need to do to come home.”
As true as that might be, he could hardly risk Miss Winston’s safety to accomplish it.
“Besides,” she said, “they will have every confidence, as I do, that you are fully able to protect me. And might I point out that I am far from a withering violet. I am well able to care for my own safety.”
That statement just went to show that the lovely Miss Winston didn’t know a hill of beans about what she was getting herself into.
The woman looked as delicate as a porcelain doll. If she’d ever even been in an outlaw’s presence, he’d eat his hat.
“My brother hasn’t seen me in half a lifetime. He can’t know what I will or won’t do.”
“Maybe not, but, Boone, I know.”
“No.” He stood. It wasn’t worth the risk. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
The walk across the room to the judge felt like twenty miles uphill.
“I appreciate the offer, Your Honor, but you know as well as I do that the risk to Miss Winston is too great.”
“It’s a damned shame, son.”
“It’s a damned outrage!” Smythe actually shook his fist at Mathers.
While it might not be an outrage, it was a damned shame. He’d come so close to freedom, had nearly been able to taste it. Sleeping in the open and being able to go wherever the wind blew him had been within his grasp. He’d been only a decision away from being able to see his brother again.
That was the worst of it, he reckoned. Not seeing Lantree.
“You’re right, Smythe. It is an outrage.” Mathers turned from the lawyer to pin Boone with a hard gaze. “If you choose to spend your days behind bars, that’s no one’s tragedy but your own. But those folks living in Jasper Springs? Well, they live in fear every day. You’ll keep Miss Winston safe by your decision, but their daughters don’t dare to even go into town. The young men are at even more risk. Why, just last week—well, if you aren’t interested, there’s no point in reliving the tragedy.”
“Please, Boone,” Melinda said from somewhere behind him. “This is bigger than us. What’s a temporary marriage when lives are at stake? I’ll never sleep another wink knowing I could have helped and I didn’t.”
He ought to slap himself in irons since no one else seemed to want to, but what Mathers had just revealed pierced him through the heart. He understood more than most the damage that a criminal could do to a green boy.
He’d been those boys, going to town and having their lives ruined. Maybe Melinda was right about this being bigger than they were. What was a temporary marriage—or his freedom to choose his destiny for that matter—in relation to the lives of the people in that town?
Mathers might believe that the champion he was sending to battle was the killer who could round up an outlaw gang as easily as a cowboy herded cattle, but that was not the case.
He was no more than a dime-a-dozen criminal.
But he reckoned he could at least have the courage of Miss Melinda Winston.
And if he did get the pair of them out of this still breathing, he’d be a free man. Maybe he’d go to Montana and meet his baby niece.
“I’m uneasy about this, but I’ll take the job.” Even while he was speaking, he prayed that he was not making a mountain of a mistake.
Mathers clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get the pair of you hitched, then.”
Melinda rose from the bench at the back of the room. She strode toward him without hesitation. The confident smile on her face made him wonder if, in spite of the fact that she looked like a rose petal, she had a backbone of iron.
His own gut was doing backflips. He reckoned he couldn’t force a smile if his future depended upon it—well, hang it, now that he thought about it, it did.
Mathers nodded at the guard who unlocked the handcuffs and took them off.
The ceremony was finished three minutes after Melinda took her place at his side.
Chances were this was not the romantic wedding that a woman like her would have dreamed of, but if he kept her safely through this, she could have that next time, when she married for real.
When the judge said he could kiss his bride, Smythe stepped between them with an exaggerated shake of his head.
Melinda extended her hand and he shook it. The deal was sealed.
“You’re free to go, Walker.”
Go where, was what he wanted to know. He hadn’t a dollar to his name. Only the folks in this room knew him to be a free man.
It was an odd, nearly uneasy feeling to know that he could simply walk out the courthouse door and not be stopped by the deputy.
“Keep low for a day or two. Folks will wonder. We’ll meet at the livery, day after next, 4:00 a.m. on the dot.”
“Since we are married, it would be appropriate for you to stay with me,” the blue-eyed innocent declared.
“Not as I live and breathe.” Smythe snatched Melinda by the elbow. “I’ll escort you to your room, miss.”
Stopping at the door, Smythe turned back to shoot him a glare. “I don’t approve of this, not by a mile. Still, things are what they are. You will lodge with me. Miss Winston will emerge from this ordeal unharmed and a maiden still.”
He answered Smythe with a nod.
Keeping his cousin, or rather his wife, safe, would be his first obligation. Capturing outlaws and protecting a town? He’d do that but only as long as it did not endanger Melinda.
If he failed to return her safely to the family, his freedom meant nothing.
As far as the maiden business went, he’d never bedded a maiden and he could only admit that the idea intimidated the hell out of him. A man had a responsibility to a virgin. Bedding the innocent meant pledges, vows of undying love. Not false vows, either, but sincere and from a committed heart.
That was one thing he could set Smythe’s mind at rest about.
* * *
At four in the morning, the moon sat fat and full on the western horizon. Boone watched its slow decent as he walked from the hotel to the livery.
Buffalo Bend slumbered peacefully. This far into October, even the crickets had gone silent. The heels of his boots clacking against the wooden boardwalk sounded like shots in the night. In a moment folks would be peering out their windows.
He reckoned he didn’t need to fear that any longer. Still, old habits died hard. He leaped off the boardwalk and walked down the middle of the road where the dirt muffled his steps.
Sometime during the night Smythe had packed up his belongings and gone without even a farewell. It only made sense that with this job finished, he was on to the next case that might make him a name.
It