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

being led up the gallows. Or maybe it would a dream where he was running through the desert, pursued by a faceless man as swift as a thoroughbred horse. During his waking hours Jerry would see thing sometimes. He'd read it was called Soldier's Heart by some doctors, that it might have to do with all the terrible shit that he'd done and seen. Jerry was sure that it was affecting Dillard as well, wearing on his soul. They saw and dealt so much death, and somehow neither of them had ever been touched.
                  “JERRY.”
                  It was Dillard's voice.
                  “Snap out of it, they're surrounding the hotel,” Dillard said.
                  Jerry was back and in action, just as suddenly as he had slipped away into his own head. Bell looked at him strangely as he moved back to life, like a slipping gear in his head had suddenly caught.
                  “Start shooting,” Jerry said. “It's almost morning. If we even so much as wing a few of them then they'll lay low and by the time they get the balls to try something else the sun will be up and they'll have to fall back or get shot to pieces.”
                  So both of them moved from window to window, firing out into the night at any shadow they deemed to look enough like a man to warrant some kind of violence. Then they went room to room, scanning out into the night. Most of the hotel was vacant, so that worked in their favor. The clerk got jumpy, though, and Dillard had to put a gun to his head and tell him to calm down to get him to lower his voice a little bit. After doing one round of room to room shooting into the night around the hotel the two men did another, then a third. By the time morning rose both men were low on ammunition. But alive, and thankful for that.
                  “So it turns out the clerk has a telegram machine down there,” Dillard said.
                  They were back in the room discussing what they should do.
                  “Well, I think Bell here should wire the bank opening and tell them it'll be delayed for a day. And then wire our friends in the mountains and see if they can't come down here with some moon shine and ammunition.”
                  Jerry and Dillard had made fast friends with some of the mountain peoples that lived in the foothills. And although sometimes they weren't the best kept or well-mannered people, they would come down and help if they could. The mountain people hated the law men and the bandits, which made them easy allies for Jerry and Dillard. Dillard went down to tell the clerk to send out the two telegrams, and then to telegram everyone he knew to let them know they needed to send a posse up to take care of the bandits.
                  “What do you think will happen?” Bell asked.
                  She looked scared. She was lying in bed but nothing but her lacy underwear with the sheet pulled up over her. She looked like the shooting had really frayed her nerves. Which it should have.
                  “Now, we wait. I don't think anything bad will happen, though, if that's what you're asking me. If they were going to storm the place they would have done it already. Now they have to wait until night fall, and by then we'll have already left, or we'll have been resupplied. I'm hoping to have already left, but not on our own. With an escort. If can get a couple of the mountain folk to come down here and ride with us into Denver no one will touch us, I can guarantee you that much. Not after what they did to the last bandit bunch they caught up in that pass in the winter, after the bandits had raided their food stores.”
                  “What did they do?” Bell asked quietly.
                  “Nothing you want to know about,” Jerry said. “But I'll sum it up with: The bandits had a bad time and then