All I Need Is You Read Free

would never consider it. Wasn’t that Oakley girl a bull-whacker for a time, and a scout, too?”
    “From what I heard tell, that Oakley girl looked more like a man than some men do, dressed like it, too. But what’s your point? You ain’t thinking of doing something stupid like that, are you?”
    “‘Stupid’ is a matter of opinion. The point is, I need to do something. Daddy isn’t going to just miraculously change his mind. He’s as hard-headed as they come, and we know where he got that from, don’t we?”
    There was a snort. Sawtooth had been a good friend of Fletcher’s, after all. But he also admitted, “I’m beginning to not like the sound of this.”
    “Well, too bad,” she grumbled. “I wasn’t asking for permission. But I wasn’t expecting to have to prove myself either, when Daddy already knows I’m capable, so this will require some thought.”
    “Thank God. Spur-of-the-moment actions from you, missy, scare the bejesus out of me.”

Chapter 3
    T here was a fire up ahead, a campfire—at least, Damian Rutledge hoped it was a campfire, because that meant people, something he hadn’t seen for the past two days. He’d settle for even the uncivilized sort at the moment, anything that could point him to the nearest town.
    He was utterly lost. He’d been assured the West was civilized. And to him, civilized meant people. Neighbors. Buildings. Not mile after mile after mile of nothing.
    He should have suspected that this area of the country wasn’t quite what he was used to when the towns he passed through kept getting smaller and smaller in population. But he’d been doing fine, traveling on the railroad all the way from New York City, at least until he reached Kansas. That was where he started running into some unpleasantness.
    First it was the railroad. The “Katy,” as the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway was fondly called, was not running that week because of the small incident of a train robbery that had blownup about fifty yards of tracks and damaged the train’s engine. He had been told the stage lines were running, and he discovered he could catch another train in the next town, so he thought he’d just have a short detour on the stage. What hadn’t been mentioned was the fact that that particular stage hadn’t been used in over five years, what with the railroad having made it obsolete.
    Most folks traveling in that direction preferred to wait out the repairs, but Damian was too impatient to wait. And that was his worst mistake. He should have realized, when he saw he was the only passenger, that there had to be a good reason for most people to shun the dilapidated vehicle.
    There were other stage lines that still ran in Kansas between towns that the railroad didn’t pass through, and they had been having a rash of robberies lately. But Damian didn’t find this out until a watering stop where the stage driver got a bit talkative. And then he also found out the hard way not long after that…
    At least when he heard the shots fired, he knew what was going on. The driver hadn’t stopped, though. He’d tried to outrace the robbers, a foolish endeavor in such an old, cumbersome vehicle. And then the driver veered off the road, for reasons Damian would likely never know. Mile after mile sped by in a blur, more shots were fired, then the coach came to a crashing halt, so suddenly that Damian was tossed across the interior, slamming against the door, his head connecting with the metal door handle, and that was the last he knew for several hours.
    It was the rain pounding against the coach that probably woke him. Night had fallen. And by the time he managed to exit the coach, which was turned half on its side, he found himself completely alone, in the middle of—nowhere.
    The horses were gone, stolen or let loose, he didn’t know. The driver was gone, possibly shot and fallen along the wayside or taken by the robbers, or maybe he had survived and gone for help. But Damian wasn’t