Free ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories) by Jane Prescott Page A

Bell's pulse and found it to be going pretty strong. It didn't seem like she was in any kind of emergency medical state, so they let her be. Jerry and Dillard climbed back into the driver’s seat and got the horses going at a pace that would have them to Denver in no time.
                  “Think they'll be at the hotel when we get there?” Dillard asked.
                  “Sure as shit you know they will,” Jerry said. “But I'd rather fight in a hotel, or from a hotel, then have a bunch of those assholes ride down on us like that again. Bunch of fucking bushwhacking scum is what they are. I bet they work for the Mexican Army or gangsters when they aren't out here trying to scare and intimidate people into giving up without a fight.”
                  Jerry heard Dillard take a long pull from the flask he always had with him.
                  “Yeah,” Dillard said. “But I don't know, man. One of these days we aren't going to be lucky. One of these days these motherless whores will ride down on us and lay us out dead like we done to so many others. And I know in the end every man has to be killed, or die, which is much the same. But I don't know if I've got the taste for all this like I used to. It just isn't as fun and it's always the same.”
                  “I hear you,” Jerry said. “And I'm hoping that after this gig we can get on at the bank as full time security. Can you imagine that? Just working eight to five every day? Because I hear at night they take all the money and put it in a big vault and just lock it up. Locked up money don't need no one to watch over it. Or at least that's what I suspect the thinking is. So we would have the nights and weekends to ourselves. It could be a pretty good deal.”
                  Dillard spat again, then took another long pull. Jerry always wondered how some people could keep a plug of chew in their mouth and drink whiskey at the same time. It wasn't something he could do himself.
                  “Well, in any event, up ahead is the hotel,” Dillard said.
                  They had to wake up the clerk to check them in. Jerry took it as a good sign since the clerk would be up already if the gang was in cahoots with the hotel. Dillard didn't seem to care one way or the other. He kept his popper handy and threw Bell over his shoulder like she didn't say anything at all. The clerk looked at the three of them strange, but when Jerry's eyes flashed a warning the clerk slunk back into his room and closed the door.
                  The room they'd rented was one story above the ground—high enough people would need a ladder to get in, low enough they could jump out without injury. Unless they were unlucky, then they'd jump out and break an ankle and be as good as dead. Neither of them wanted to jump, but they always thought about what might happen if the place they were in was set ablaze after a job not too long ago where that very such thing happened.
                  “What's . . . going on?” Bell said as she stirred on the bed.
                  “We made it to the outskirts of Denver,” Jerry said. “Someone must have put something in your drink at the saloon in Boulder. Sunrise is in about an hour.”
                  “I had the most horrible dream,” she said in a voice that sounded very weak. “There were explosions and mean screaming as they died.”
                  For a second Jerry froze. Had there been men screaming? He thought back to it. Now he heard the screams, echoing in his head. It was happening again, he was detaching from some of the reality that he didn't like. While Dillard worried about getting killed Jerry was much more worried about losing his mind, because it seemed like it was happening. He couldn't sleep most nights, kept having dreams where he'd see the cattle thieves he'd caught