Read Online Lady Outlaw by Stacy Henrie - Free Book Online Page A

weight, but his arms were quickly growing tired from keeping the knife at bay. The blade inched nearer to his skin.
    The bandit grinned, releasing foul breath into Caleb’s sweaty face. “So long, sonny,” he hissed.
    Caleb put all his remaining strength into wrenching his arm loose. He angled his gun against the man’s shirt and squeezed the trigger. The bandit’s eyes flew open wide in shock before he crumpled onto Caleb’s chest, dead.
    At this point the dream whisked Caleb away from the horror of the cabin to the sheriff’s crowded office.
    “It was self-defense, Mr. Johnson,” the sheriff said. “No judge would convict you otherwise.”
    “Self-defense,” Caleb repeated, if only to convince himself. “Self-defense.”
    * * *
    “Caleb? Caleb, wake up.”
    Grabbing his guns, Caleb jerked upright in his bedroll. In the moonlight he saw Jennie crouched next to him.
    “It’s all right,” she said, drawing her coat tighter around herself. “I think you were having a dream. You kept muttering something.”
    “I—I’m sorry to wake you.” He rubbed at his eyes to clear the sleep from them.
    Her shoulders rose and fell. “I couldn’t really sleep. I wanted to...” She ducked her head, her next words directed at the dirt. “I wanted to apologize for my...behavior earlier. I don’t like talking about my mother leaving, but it wasn’t right to lash out at you, either.”
    “Apology accepted.” He steeled himself against the questions she would likely ask about his dream, but to his relief, she moved back to her makeshift bed. Caleb glanced at Will. The boy snored softly from his cocoon of blankets. At least he hadn’t awakened him. “You going back to sleep?”
    Jennie slipped into her bedroll, but she shook her head. “You?”
    “Not yet.” He needed to occupy his mind with something else, instead of the haunting images of his nightmare. Sometimes he’d had it twice in the same night. “You mind if I stoke the fire? It sure is chilly.”
    “Go ahead.” Wrapping her arms around her blanketed knees, Jennie rested her chin on her legs as Caleb built the fire into a small but steady flame. “So does your family live around here?”
    Caleb poked at the fire with a stick. “No. My folks live on a farm up north, in the Salt Lake Valley.”
    “What are you doing down here then?”
    “Earning money. I want to have my own freight business.”
    She shifted closer to the fire. “Weren’t there any jobs up north?”
    “There were.” He stared into the dancing flames. “I couldn’t stay up there, though. Not with Liza gone.”
    “Were your parents sad to see you go?”
    “Sad, yes, but more disappointed.”
    He sensed Jennie watching him. “Surely they understood your grief?”
    “In a way.” He let his stick grow black at the end and then pulled it out of the heat. “But I don’t think they knew what to do about me. I quit farming the piece of land they’d given me—me and Liza. I quit going to church, like I told you. The memories of her were everywhere, and one day, I couldn’t stand it anymore.” A shadow of that desperation filled him and he clenched his jaw against it. “I went and told them I was leaving. Told them I knew I made a lousy farmer and I wanted to do something else with my life.”
    “Do they like the idea of you having your own freight business?”
    “I think Pa’s disappointed that I didn’t stick with farming, but really I don’t know if they care what I do as long as I’m working hard at something and helping others. What they really want is for me to come home. But that’s not going to happen. It’s time for me to make my own way.”
    Jennie bobbed her head in agreement. “I can relate to that—deciding to make your own way and not wanting others to step in. That’s why I didn’t want you paying for the candy I ruined in the mercantile seven months ago.”
    The candy? He studied her, her red hair brighter in the firelight, her brown eyes peering back