Silver Nights With You (Love in the Sierras Book 1) Read Free

down for cover, but the valise was too bulky. She yelped in protest as he grabbed the bag and threw it out of the window. As she watched her possessions fall to the ground, the dead body of the coach driver followed and tumbled beneath the rattling wheels. She screamed before she felt the arms of her father pinning her down to cover her.
    The other women cowered near their knees while men covered them and fired their pistols out of the windows. Lila knew her father never carried a gun. He was a healer who did his best to save lives, not take them. His shrunken elderly frame was the only shelter she had from whizzing bullets and wooden debris. The thought of her remaining parent dying in a barren desert woke an anger that pushed fear aside.
    They had braved miles of Indian territory with their scalps intact. She wouldn't just cower while they lost their last twenty-five pounds of property, and she wouldn't lose her father, too. Not without a fight. She pushed Argyle off her, pulled a derringer pistol from her boot and aimed it out of the window. Her father stared at the gun, no bigger than her palm, and his mouth fell into a wide circle of shock.
    “Where did you get that?”
    “Ft. Kearny,” she answered before turning her attention to the approaching threat.  A quick survey showed four riders, their faces hidden behind bandanas, swarming toward them with pistols braced in each hand. When the first bandit drew near enough, she pulled the trigger. The crack of multiple firing guns filled the air like thunder, and he fell from his saddle and bounced off of the spinning wheels.
    As shots continued to ring out, the other three bandits wove in and out of view, and Lila saw the coach’s conductor, the last man controlling the mules, fall to the ground. She knew then that they were racing at a breakneck pace without a driver. That left only three guns, including hers, to fire back at the bandits.
    A young man inside the coach stood as much as the space allowed and removed his coat, as if the thought of scrambling out to take hold of the reins was too dirty a job for his good attire. As soon as he threw open the door he was shot back into his seat. Blood sprayed from his shoulder, and Argyle scrambled over six dovetailed laps to care for the wound as they all jostled about.   
    So engrossed in the injured man, she missed the approach of another bandit until he clutched onto the wooden railing beside her. He jumped from his horse and plastered himself against the door, and she recoiled against her seat with a shriek. Sunlight glinted off of a shiny onyx ring on his little finger as he reached in, grasping for her throat, but his fist closed around the open side of her collar instead. She raised the derringer again.
    Before she could pull the trigger, the echo of a far-off shot reverberated through the coach, and she felt the warm spray of blood across her face as the man’s body went limp and fell from view, taking a large chunk of her collar and camisole with him. The rear wheels thumped over his body, causing the coach to tilt dangerously toward the ground. She braced herself, but the carriage soon slammed back down onto its supports and rattled away.
    She wiped at the blood on her cheeks, smearing it onto the sleeve of her dress and looked out the window to see where the shot had come from. Another rider stood on the horizon, a long black coat cloaking his body while his hat and a long-barreled rifle obscured his face. She watched the slow shift of the barrels toward the remaining two bandits. Mauve clouds of desert dust shot into the air as his shells hit the brush. The two bandits finally broke away from the coach and disappeared over a hill.
    The lone gunman kicked his horse toward them and their runaway mules. Spellbound, she watched him maneuver his mount slightly ahead of them, and just as the coach raced past, he leapt from his saddle and landed in the leather rigging of the harnesses. She stretched further to see as