The Loner Read Free Page B

“Outlaws need to know such things so maybe they’ll keep their necks out of the noose.”
    â€œIf you’re trying to scare me with all this talk of hanging and nooses and Judge Parker,” she said, “you can forget it. I’ve never stolen a horse.”
    He squatted there on his haunches and looked straight at her in the light from the fire.
    â€œAll judges hang murderers, too,” he said.
    She felt her heart slow down. Inside, she grew even warmer.
    â€œWell, then, you can turn me loose,” she said, “because I never killed anybody, either.”
    Yet. I haven’t killed him yet. And when I do, it won’t be murder.
    â€œExcept for Deputy U.S. Marshal Donald Turner,” he said, in a tone that was flat and oh, so sure. “You shot him in the back down by PawPaw a couple of weeks ago. Have you forgotten about that?”
    She felt her eyes go wide with the shock of it.He really believed that, she could tell by the way he spoke. And the way he looked at her.
    â€œI was down by PawPaw a couple of weeks ago,” she said, and swallowed hard. She really did need another drink of water. “But all I did was rob Tassel Glass’s whiskey-selling friend Johnny Burke of his ill-gotten gains.”
    He looked right through her and into her soul. He had the darkest, most piercing stare she had ever seen in her life.
    â€œAre you The Cat?” he said.
    She didn’t hesitate. He looked like St. Peter on the Great Judgment Day.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou use the sign of the track of the mountain lion?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou left it on a blackjack tree above Donald Turner’s body.”
    That one wasn’t a question. Which was the most fearsome thing of all.
    â€œNo!” she cried. “No! I didn’t shoot him.”
    â€œDid you put your mark on the tree?”
    â€œYes. That’s where I waylaid Johnny McGill.”
    â€œDid you shoot him?”
    She smiled at the memory.
    â€œNo. I didn’t have to shoot one round. He just threw me the money sack and rode off as fast as he could.”
    She leaned up on one elbow and stared at himnarrow-eyed, fighting the panic that was trying to take her. She couldn’t let him see it, she couldn’t let him know that she was so scared.
    Gentle or not, water and coffee or not, bandage or not, this man was her mortal enemy.
    â€œI didn’t even steal his horse,” she said.
    He looked at her for a long, long time, searching her entire self very, very thoroughly.
    Finally, he spoke. “I want to believe you,” he said quietly. “God help me, I want to.”
    His jaw hardened.
    â€œBut I don’t.”

Chapter 2
    B lack Fox tried to make himself stand up and walk away. He needed to see to the fire. He needed to get some more water into her. But he couldn’t stop looking at her—as if somehow that would help him absorb the truth.
    Who would’ve thought that The Cat was a woman? No, a girl. She was very much a girl, probably no more than sixteen or seventeen years old.
    He got up and went to pour some more water into the cup. Then he knelt beside her and held the drink to her lips with one hand as he supported her head with the other. She had a beautiful, full mouth. And her hair felt like silk between his fingers.
    â€œDid you think you could go on forever and not get caught?” he said, when she’d stopped drinking. He laid her head down and folded his jacket to go under it. “What were you doing, anyhow?”
    â€œGetting ready to call Tassel Glass out,” she said. “Just as soon as I got good enough with my handgun.”
    Astonished, he stared at her. He lifted her head and slipped the makeshift pillow beneath it.
    â€œI’m good with a rifle,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “but I never had used a six-shooter very much.”
    His mind raced, trying to understand.
    â€œSo you went to the store today