Free Trilby by Diana Palmer Page A

on his gun belt with fingers that just barely managed it. He was dressed in an exaggerated Western style, with woolly shotgun chaps and leather wristbands, new boots with heavy rowels on the spurs, and a pair of pearl-handled six-guns that looked like something out of a dime novel.
    The Easterner always dressed like that when they went out to hunt rustlers. They never found any, because Lang didn’t trust the Apache boy who scouted for them, and he didn’t believe that anyone could track a man through a stream.
    Torrance shook his head. Somebody ought to tell that dude that woolly shotgun chaps were suited to Northern winters and were worn by Montana and Wyoming cowboys, not Arizona ones. Those heavy rowels were Mexican—no self-respecting, civilized man would think of using them on his horse. The pistols were pretty, but they’d never been fired. And those wristbands would come in handy for a roper, but Jack Lang couldn’t throw a rope.
    Torrance kept his thoughts to himself, though, and just nodded when the boss told him to watch the women. He could track as well as that Mexican, Vasquez, whom Lang had given scouting chores to. Better. And he could still outshoot any one of Lang’s other cowboys. He knew Mexicans because he’d trailed so many of them in hisRanger days. But Lang would never know that, because he didn’t think a man Torrance’s age was fit for cowboy work.
    He sighed more wistfully than he knew when the outfit rode off without him. Teddy came to stand beside him.
    “It’s all right, Mr. Torrance,” Teddy said. “I know that you could do a better job of it than any one of Dad’s men. Even if he doesn’t.”
    Torrance looked down at him with pure delight. “You’re a wonder, Teddy.”
    “So are you, Mr. Torrance.”
    Inside, Trilby watched the men ride away and worried. One of the hands had mentioned going by Los Santos to pick up Thorn Vance. Her father had argued with the man, and Trilby knew why he didn’t want Thorn involved. But then she’d heard the telephone being rung, and her father muttering because it took the operator so long to wake up and put his call through.
    He had the operator ring Los Santos and presumably spoke to Thorn, quite curtly. There was a pause, and her father muttered his agreement to stop by Los Santos on his way after the bandits. She hoped Thorn wouldn’t lead her vulnerable father into any gunplay. Jack Lang posed very well, but he knew next to nothing about violent men….
     
    W HEN THE MAKESHIFT posse got to Los Santos, Thorn was already waiting for them. His rifle was in its sheath and he was wearing a sidearm, a black-handled Colt .45 that had belonged to his great-uncle.
    He’d had to browbeat Jack Lang into letting him join the party. The Easterner had been hell-bent on going alone with his few men, and Thorn had a sudden mental image of the older man lying dead in the Arizona dust.
    His conscience had burned him raw over his assumptions about Trilby. He’d done enough damage to her reputation that he hadn’t felt right about going back over to the Lang place. He knew Jack and the rest of the family despised him for what he’d said to Trilby, although, miraculously, she seemed not to have told anyone what really happened during that ride on the desert. It was better than he deserved, he admitted. Now at least he could help keep her father alive. Perhaps that would atone a little for his actions.
    Samantha had been asleep, and he hadn’t woken her. The child was so withdrawn and quiet lately that he worried about her. She was thin and pale as well, not a healthy child in any way. He wished that his emotions weren’t locked in steel so that he could communicate with her on some level. But since Sally’s death, Samantha had drawn into her own mind. He didn’t know how to reach her anymore.
    He watched Jack Lang ride up, his expression preoccupied.
    Jack, in turn, studied the Westerner, feeling suddenly overdressed and out of place. Thorn looked