Outlaw Wife

Willow Davis watched the men leave and gave a little shudder of relief. She wasn’t concerned for herself. The deputy had had no compunction about putting his hands all over her when he’d searched her for a weapon, but spending time among outlaws, she was used to men’s rude ways. Her concern was for her father. Seth Davis had prided himself on never being arrested. And she was sure that if it hadn’t been for her presence, he would have shot his way out of it this time. She still expected him to try something foolish any minute, and the marshal didn’t look like a man who would think twice about shooting an escaping prisoner in cold blood.

“Are you two hungry?” the sheriff was asking. He looked much easier to handle than the marshal and the deputy. His weathered skin was crisscrossed with smile lines and his snowy white hair made him look like a kindly grandfather rather than a lawman.

Seth Davis approached the bars. “I reckon we could stand something to eat, Sheriff, but I want to ask you again to release my daughter. She hasn’t done anything.”

The sheriff shrugged. “It’s not in my hands. I’m just holding on to you for the marshal. And it sounds to me like he’s pretty determined to take both of you in.”

Willow could swear that there was almost an apology in his expression as he glanced at her, in spite of the fact that she had kicked him with the solid toe of her boot. It puzzled her.

“I’ll take some food, Sheriff,” she said, relaxing her tense stance.

“I reckon you look like you could use it,” the sheriff replied. “Though you kick hard enough for a scrawny thing.”

Willow hesitated. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I’ve been having a bad day.”

For the first time she smiled, and Simon felt as if the air had been sucked out of his gut. While it was true that she was almost too slender, she was anything but “scrawny.” And when she smiled, her face lit up like daybreak on a hazy summer morning. He hardly heard the sheriff’s question.

“Will you be all right while I go arrange some food?”

“Excuse me?” He tore his eyes away from the girl and turned toward John.

“Get back down on that bed, Simon. You look as if you’re about to keel over.”

Simon moved over to the cot and sat down heavily. “I need to see to Rain Cloud.”

“I’ll take care of Rain Cloud. You lie back down and behave yourself or I’m going to get Cissy over here again to start in on you.”

Simon smiled. It would be no hardship, he decided, to sit here a spell and feast his eyes on the young outlaw girl. Though it was a pity to think that anything so pretty was on the wrong side of the law. “I appreciate that, John. And I’ll keep a close watch on your prisoners here while you’re gone.”

John followed Simon’s gaze over toward the cell, where the girl had taken off her hat, letting loose a cloud of thick reddish gold hair. “I expect you will. On one of them anyway,” he muttered, turning toward the door.

When he’d left, Simon looked back over at the cell. The old man was sitting on one of the cell’s two cots. The girl was ruefully examining the other. “Was it you?” Simon asked softly. “Were you the one who untied me and left me water?”

Seth Davis’s head came up.

The girl continued her examination of the bed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Simon settled back against the wall. His chest would feel better if he were lying down, but then he wouldn’t be able to watch her. “I think I remember seeing you.”

“You couldn’t have seen her.” The old outlaw spoke sharply. “She wasn’t there. I’m trying to tell you that my daughter isn’t guilty of anything.”

Simon shook his head slowly. “It was you, wasn’t it? You probably saved my life, you know.”

The girl evidently decided that the dirty blanket of the cot was a better alternative than the cold floor and she sank down on it, curling her long legs up underneath her like a child. “You heard my father. I wasn’t there. So I couldn’t very well have saved your life, could I?”

Simon was fascinated. Her voice was low and remarkably controlled for one so young. “How old are you?” he asked, without even considering the question.

“She’s fourteen,” the old man said promptly. “A baby. And she doesn’t belong in a jail.”

“I’m nineteen,” the girl said calmly, throwing her father an affectionate smile. “I’m old enough, I reckon. But that doesn’t make me an outlaw.”

“Plenty old enough to untie the ropes of an unconscious man,” Simon replied.

“If I’d been there.”

Simon gave a nod. He wasn’t going to press the point. What he’d said had been the truth. The girl had undoubtedly saved his life. First by her mere presence at the scene, and then by loosening his bonds. He had no desire to be the one to send her to prison.

“I was a danged fool to let you live,” Seth said bitterly.

Simon looked from the outlaw to his daughter. The girl might have saved him, but he wasn’t about to forget that her father had sat by and let one of his men nearly kill him. He had no sympathy whatsoever for Seth Davis. The two men’s eyes locked. “I reckon you were,” Simon said grimly.

Chapter Two (#ulink_daaeed6d-1dde-56cf-a002-3f001596b61e)

After their brief exchange, the three occupants of the sheriffs office had settled down in silence, each busy with their own thoughts. Willow’s had been gloomy. She was thinking back over the past several months, trying to decide exactly where her life had begun to spin out of control.

She could now appreciate the lengths to which her father had gone to protect her from his lawless world. Growing up, she’d resented it. Resented his absences. Resented the fact that she’d had to live with Aunt Maud on a tiny ranch in the middle of the endless bare plains of Nebraska, never seeing anyone. Never visiting a neighbor or being visited by one. When Aunt Maud had died last year, she’d been almost glad because it had forced her father to take her away from the desolation of that place.

Now she finally realized what he had been shielding her from.

She looked around at the jail cell. It had two cots, which were the only furnishings. A chamber pot stood in one corner, without so much as a screen for modesty. Would she have to use it—in plain view of everyone? Would she have to sleep here, watched by strange men? She rubbed her hand along the blanket. It was old and greasy. She swallowed down rising tears.

“They can’t hold you in here, darlin’,” her father told her softly from across the cell, reading her dismay.

She looked out at the man on the bed—the one she’d watched Jake stomp so savagely yesterday that she’d almost lost her breakfast. Simon Grant, the marshall had called him. He appeared to be sleeping. Turning back to her father, she said, “But I was there, Pa. And I did ride with you on those last few jobs.”

“They can’t prove that, Willow. Swear to me that you’ll deny everything if they ask you.”

She glanced again beyond the bars to the injured man. “He said he saw me there.”

“He said he thought he saw you. He was too far gone to know what he saw.”

“I was foolish. I should have kept my neckerchief in place.”

“You were damned foolish to go back to him in the first place. I should have suspected you weren’t off all that time on ‘feminine business’ as you so sweetly put it.”

“He would have died.”

“And we would have sold his blasted horse and been three counties from here by now.”

Willow looked down at her lap. “I’m sorry, Pa.”

Seth hoisted himself up off the bed and went to sit beside his daughter, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Not much use in frettin’ over it now.” He lifted her chin. “You’re not going to turn all Weepy Willow, now are you?”

It had been one of his pet names for her when she was a child, crying to see him ride off yet again for who knew how many months. “Don’t you get Weepy Willow on me,” he’d say teasingly, then he’d take her in his arms and gently wipe away the tears.

“What’s to become of us?” she asked.

“I reckon it depends on that young feller lying over there. They’ve already got about a mountain of things to pin on me. If they can add his testimony, it should be enough to put me at the end of a rope.”