Free The Texan and the Lady by JODI THOMAS Page A

soundlessly between two buildings. He almost wished Buck Lawton and his gang would show up tonight. He’d take all twenty of them on single-handedly if it would help put her out of his mind. She had such a soft-sounding name. Jennie. The kind of name men made up songs about out on the trail, to settle the herd. But her name didn’t match the way she made him feel, be it anger or need. She was the first woman who’d made his solitary life seem more a curse than a blessing.
    She’d gotten more upset that he didn’t believe her lie about never being kissed than she had about him actually kissing her. Did she think him simpleminded? No woman who looked like she did, with hair of midnight and eyes the color of evergreen, could have reached full growth without men fighting over her.
    How many times had he told himself he’d never care for a woman who lied, and as near as he could tell it was a universal trait of the gender.
    Austin circled the depot and headed back toward town, trying not even to look in the direction of the Harvey House. Paying little notice of the leaves blowing across the road or the crackle of winter sounding behind him, he moved through the night.
    He wasn’t about to care for her, he thought. Not if she were the last woman west of the Mississippi. Not if she came to him and begged him to forgive her for lying. Miss Jennie Munday could wait until she was old and gray before he’d bother to kiss her again.
    “Evenin’, McCormick,” Spider Morris whispered as they passed the lights of the Harvey House.
    Austin jerked so violently he almost tripped. “Where’d you come from!”
    Morris laughed away Austin’s question. “I’ve been walking in your tracks a spell now. Hell, if I’d have had a mind to, I could have tattooed the stars and bars on your back for all the notice you’ve paid.”
    “I knew you were there.”
    Spider waved his defense away and pulled an ancient pipe from his pocket. “Sure you did, son. You were just interested in my heritage when you almost fell over your feet there. Tell me, how’d you live so long in Texas without getting bushwacked?”
    Austin knew the old man well enough to realize that he might as well take the ribbing quietly or he’d never hear the end of it. “I guess I got more on my mind than usual.”
    Spider Morris sucked on his pipe stem while he cradled his rifle in his arms. “I feel the same. I don’t know what it is, but I can almost taste trouble in the air.”
    Austin thought of reminding Morris that any taste was probably coming from the wool and tobacco in his pocket, but he knew what the old man meant. After a while a lawman developed a sense for danger. For no reason at all, he’d tighten his muscles and walk a bit softer. Austin couldn’t remember how many times the feeling had passed over him strong enough to make him check the bullets in his Colt, or untie the leather holding his rifle in place on his saddle.
    Spider lit his pipe. “It was a night almost like this one six years ago when Buck Lawton and his gang robbed the train. The six-fifteen out of Kansas City was late that night. Some gamblers from Dodge had been up to the city for a high-stakes card game. Talk was the game had run all day and all that night when they decided to move the table down to Dodge. The gamblers boarded the train planning to make it to Wichita by dark.”
    When Morris seemed more interested in smoking his pipe than continuing, Austin asked, “And the train was robbed near here?”
    Morris nodded as he smoked. “I think Buck planned to rob it anyway for the strongbox, but the quarter million in table stakes the gamblers carried made it all that much sweeter a pie.”
    “But from what I’ve seen of gamblers, they don’t part with their stakes that easily.”
    “That’s what Buck found out. By the time the firing stopped, half of Lawton’s men were dead and most of the gamblers. Buck never made it back to the car carrying the strongbox, but he did get