The Accidental Lawman Read Free

sheriff, Reverend Brand McCormick nodded in agreement.
    “That’s not a bad idea. Are you willing, Mr. Larson?”
    The gent looked shocked. “Of course not. I’m a writer. I’m not a lawman.”
    “Not much to it,” Harrison decided on the spot. “This is a small town. All you’d have to do is keep the peace. Kinda like what you did this morning.”
    “Keep the peace?” Hank Lawson blinked. Then turned to Amelia. “Keep the peace?”
    “That’s what he said.” She shrugged.
    With his dark hair flattened by his now missing bowler and his starched collar twisted to the left, he looked dumbfounded and completely incompetent. Certainly not prospective sheriff material. Amelia bit her lips together to hide a smile until her nagging suspicion about the armed figure she may have seen lingering outside in the sandstorm dispelled her lightheartedness. She was anxious to get home.
    “He’s a writer,” she repeated to the crowd. “He doesn’t want to be sheriff.”
    “He single-handedly captured our first armed robber,” Harrison reminded, as if she hadn’t been there on the floor when the outlaw walked in waving a loaded gun. As if she hadn’t been there when the gun went off right beside her. Amelia shivered.
    “Couldn’t you agree to it temporarily, Mr. Larson?” Preacher McCormick asked.
    “You’d be doing us all such a favor.”
    “I should really look at that cut on your cheek.” Amelia wasn’t actually addressing the man, but thinking aloud.
    Hank Larson heard her, though, and turned. “Cut on my face?” He paled.
    “It’s really little more than a scratch.” She noted he was quite handsome. His eyes were as blue as a clear morning sky and full of intelligence. It would be a shame if the cut left a scar.
    He reached up and gently probed his cheek with his fingertips. She saw the ink again. A writer, he’d said. That explains the stains .
     
    Why, Hank Larson wondered as he stared at the disheveled young woman beside him, does nothing in my life turn out the way I plan?
    A month ago he’d spent nearly his last nickel on a used Hoe revolving printing press and made plans to travel west to set up a newspaper in a town that he hoped was hungry for news. He’d closed his eyes, stabbed his finger on a map of Texas and landed on Comanche County.
    He asked around and narrowed his search to the town of Glory.
    It had all seemed so simple once he’d made up his mind to act, but he should have known that the cards were stacked against him. For the past year, nothing in his life had gone right. He’d been a fool to think things were going to change overnight and that simply putting distance between himself and his past would make life worth living again.
    He’d barely moved his last box into the small empty building he’d purchased sight unseen in the middle of Main Street. This morning he had kept an appointment regarding a loan with Mr. Cutter and now here he stood,surrounded by strangers, caught up in the middle of a scene worthy of the Wild West novel he’d planned to pen in his spare time.
    The folks crowded around staring in admiration, completely unaware that his knees threatened to go weak if he allowed himself to think about what had just happened here. Somehow he’d actually jumped a gunman and pummeled him into submission. He reached up to scratch his head and realized again he had no idea where his hat had ended up.
    To make matters worse, the young woman beside him with a mop of thick, auburn hair falling into her green eyes and a smattering of bright freckles across the bridge of her nose kept staring at what she claimed was “little more than a scratch” on his cheek.
    He was inclined to sit down and lower his head between his knees, before he blacked out, but how could he with everyone in the room congratulating him on a job well-done?
    For the life of him, Hank barely remembered the details of what had happened.
    Not a very promising start for the town’s only editor in