The Gunman's Bride

Chapter Two

Faster than a cat with its tail afire, Rosie pulled herself out from under the deadweight of the unconscious man. She grabbed the oil lamp from the dressing table across the room and nearly doused its flame as she swung back to the bed to take a closer look.

Clamping a trembling hand over her open mouth to keep from crying out, she studied the intruder. He wore leather boots caked with dried mud. Two six-shooters and an arsenal of cartridges hung on belts at his waist. He lay face down, his nose pressed into a rumple of pink quilt. Every breath he took sounded like a distant train engine as the air struggled in and out of his lungs.

Eyes focused on him, Rosie reached for the pistol Etta had held earlier that evening. The heavy metal felt reassuring, and she hugged it close. Bart, the man had called himself. And he had known her name—her real name!

But this shaggy bear draped over her bed couldn’t possibly be the Bart she once knew. She lifted the lamp until its yellow glow spread down his entire length. No, she thought with relief, this certainly wasn’t her Bart. Her Bart had been much shorter. This man more than filled up the bed. Her Bart had been as lanky as a colt, but the stranger’s weight made the metal bed frame bend toward the middle.

Certainly her Bart would never have let his shiny black hair get into such a state as this. The tangled mop that covered his broad shoulders couldn’t have been washed in months. His bloodstained buckskin jacket and faded trousers looked as though the man never took them off. No wonder her room had smelled so odd. Who knew how long this great malodorous hulk of an outlaw had been hiding under her bed?

Shivering, Rosie wondered what on earth she was going to do with him. If he regained consciousness, she wouldn’t stand a chance against such a brute.

“Okay, mister,” she said, jamming the pistol barrel against his skull. “I’ve got you now, you hear?”

He didn’t budge.

What if he were dead? A dead man, right on her very own bed! Swallowing, she bent toward him to listen for the ragged breathing that had sounded so loud only moments before.

“Rosie…” The moan came from deep inside his chest.

“Don’t move!” she cried out. “I have a gun, and I’ll use it.”

A muffled groan welled out of him. “Rosie? Rosie…help me.”

Her hand shook as she brushed a hank of hair from his face. “Oh, dear God, please don’t let this be happening,” she mouthed in a desperate prayer.

But there was no mistaking the angle of the man’s high cheekbone or the smooth plane of golden skin that sheered down from it. Rosie knew those lips, that jutted chin. No doubt about it. The man on her bed was Bart Kingsley. And yet he couldn’t be. This was a huge shaggy outlaw with a bullet in his side. This man was wanted for murder.

Then he opened his eyes. Green eyes, shot with golden threads, just as she remembered. “Bart?”

“Where are you, girl?” Grimacing, he lifted his head. “Rosie, I think I’m gonna die.”

Rosie carried a glass of water from the washstand and knelt at Bart’s side. His mouth felt like a dry creek bed, parched and sandy. Somehow she had known.

“I gotta turn over,” he whispered. “Help me, Rosie.”

She let out a breath. “Raise your shoulders if you can.”

“Tarnation,” he muttered through clenched teeth as she helped him up onto one elbow. He grabbed at his side. “Hurts like the devil.”

“Hush your cussing and drink this.” She sat on the bed beside him.

Pain ripping through his gut, Bart took a sip and then fell back. “Blast that Pinkerton son of a—”

Rosie clamped a hand over his mouth. “You stop swearing this minute, Bart Kingsley!” she snapped. “You’re turning the air in my room blue. You never used to talk like this.”

No, he hadn’t always cussed. There had been a time when he hardly said a word, bottling his frustration, anger and rage deep inside. But if he hadn’t allowed himself to swear, neither had he permitted the good words inside to come out. Now all he could think about was how much he wanted to tell Rosie what it meant to see her again. How beautiful she looked. How black the years without her had been. How soft her long hair was as it brushed against his hand.

“Bad enough you had to sneak in here and bleed all over everything, and stink like a pair of old leather shoes and scare me half out of my wits…”

Her admonitions trailed off as he slid his hand down her arm. Oh, but she smelled good, he thought as he pressed his lips lightly into her palm.

With a squeak of dismay, she snatched her hand away. “What are you doing here, Bart? Nobody passes through Raton, New Mexico, but miners and homesteaders. And how did you come to climb in my window and hide under my bed?”

Eyes shut, he forced down deep breaths. “I came looking for you, Rosie. I tracked you here.”

“But I changed my name!”

“Kingsley?”

“It was all I could think of when I applied for the Harvey job. I was scared about running away. I had planned everything down to the last detail, but when the recruiter asked my name, I went blank and just blurted it out.”

“It is your name. Laura Rose Kingsley.”

“Stop that!” She pushed him away and stood with her arms crossed. “I have a good mind to call for the sheriff this minute.”

“No, Rosie! They’ll haul me back to Missouri and hang me.”

“The law should hang you if you’ve done all the wicked things Sheriff Bowman told Etta and me tonight. You rode with Jesse James. You robbed banks and trains, stole cattle and horses, killed people.”

“I’m no stock rustler.”

“Oh, that’s a relief!” She glared down at him. “You don’t look a thing like you used to.”

“It’s been six years. I grew up.”

“You grew up into a gunman. An outlaw.”

He closed his eyes. Rosie was right, of course. He’d grown into a man, and he’d done everything he was accused of—except rustling livestock.

The James brothers had a policy against that. Their grievance wasn’t with small-time Southern farmers and ranchers. No, Jesse, Frank, and the others set their sights on northern banks and trains. Trained by Charley Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson, they had served as guerrilla raiders until the end of the war.

But when the rest of the Confederate guerrillas returned to their homes and farms, the James brothers and their pals, the Youngers, elected to continue raiding. Others joined along the way, men who came and went as part of the gang during its sixteen-year reign.

Bart swallowed against the knot of regret in his throat. He had known every one of the fringe members of the James-Younger gang—most of them killed by lawmen or captured and lynched. Others were serving time in prison or, like him, hoping to escape the law.

The men had accepted a half-breed homeless boy when no one else would. They fed him, boarded down with him at night, saw to it that he had clothes and boots…and guns. They taught him to shoot and let him join them playing checkers, swimming in the river, hunting deer and squirrels. Oh, they had a fine time, Bart and the boys.

Until the day that was burned into his memory like none other: October 7, 1879. Glendale, Missouri. The Chicago & Alton train.

Bart opened his eyes, knowing that light always erased the haunting blackness of his past. And there was his Rosie, gazing down on him with her velvet eyes.

“Rosie,” he whispered, hardly able to believe he had found her at last. Porcelain skin, delicate cheekbones, lips the color of roses. Rosie, his prim-and-proper, educated, high-society lady. Rosie, his tree-climbing, pond-wading, horse-riding love. His Rosie.

“You’re going to have to leave,” she said abruptly. “I’ll help you to the window.”

But she didn’t move, and he couldn’t stop staring at her.