Page 23 of Follow the Lonesome Trail
Ben frowned. He didn’t think there was any need for her to sound so sulky about it. It wasn’t as if he hadforcedher to love him.
Brogan cocked an eyebrow at her tone, then glanced at Ben. “What about you, city dude? Do you love her?”
“Yes!” Ben snarled. Good grief, hadn’t that been established already? How many times would he be forced to say it in front of God and Brogan?
Brogan looked back and forth between them. “I guess you are, judging from the way you fight. Reminds me of my old ma and dad.”
For one alarming moment, Ben actually thought the man was going to burst into sentimental tears.Oh, just kill us quickly.To his relief, Brogan spared them the embarrassment. If he hadn’t been trussed like a package Ben would have fallen over in shock when the bandit announced, “Against my better judgment, I’m going to let you two go. I’ll be hanged if I kill a nice little couple like you in the first bloom of true love.”
“We hope youare,” Caroline muttered. Fortunately, Brogan didn’t appear to hear her.
“Here, I’ll even give you a head start, before somebody else happens by and shoots you just for fun.” Brogan loosened their ropes, then backed away, still brandishing his pistol. “But don’tyou follow me! The claim is mine, and in exchange for you letting me keep it, you get to live. Try to stop me again and I won’t be so easy on you.”
Brogan dashed to his horse and leapt into the saddle. It was hardly necessary that he expend so much energy, since Ben and Caroline were still tied up, but perhaps the considerable struggle he had undergone when he had first bushwhacked them—which had resulted in Brogan being much bloodied by Caroline’s teeth and Ben’s fists—had made him leery.
Or, more than likely, he was simply trying to leave before they started arguing again.
Ben and Caroline watched as he grabbed the reins of their abandoned horses and rode out of sight, then they began trying to untie themselves, wriggling and tugging until, at last, they struggled to their feet, panting and unbound.
They looked at one another. Ben felt a wave of frustration wash over him at the thought of being abandoned in the wild, but it was followed immediately by something far warmer. He hadn’t lost everything. He stepped toward Caroline, hands outstretched.
Caroline spun away from him and started after Brogan. “Come on, Ben! He made off with the deed to our claim!”
“Ourclaim?” Ben began. “It’smyclaim!” He stopped. “I mean.” His heart was suddenly beating faster. “Itcouldbe our claim . . . if you wanted it to be. . . . ”
Caroline kept walking and he followed her. “Miss Weston! He told us not to follow him!”
Caroline paused long enough to pick up Ben’s bowler hat from where it had fallen earlier and tossed it to him. “And you’re really going to listen to him?”
“Listen to Brogan? Well . . .” Ben stuck his finger in the hole Brogan’s pistol had put through his hat. He touched the lump onthe back of his head where the outlaw had hit him earlier, and scowled. “I’ll be . . .hangedif I let him get away with this!”
Caroline cast a gorgeous smile at him over her shoulder. “That’s the spirit, darling!”
Darling? His heart leapt. Why wouldn’t shestop? “ButCaroline—wait!”
“There’s no time. Come on!”
Caroline broke into a jog, and with a sigh, Ben followed her.
He had a feeling he was going to be chasing much more than gold for a long while.
The Princess of Flat Rock
Elisabeth Grace Foley
The moonlight came in through the windows of the rocking, jolting stagecoach, with only once in a while the flick of a tree’s shadow, for the road lay mainly across the prairie. For a long time there had been no sound but the heavy rumble of the coach wheels and the jingle of harness, but now Dominic, curled up on the seat close to Margot’s side, lifted his head a little and whispered, “Margot, where are we now?”
“We are crossing the steppe,” said Margot softly. “We made our escape from St. Petersburg by night, and now we are fleeingacross the steppes with a guard of Cossack outriders to protect us from pursuit.”
There was only one other passenger, a man slouched in the opposite corner who seemed to be asleep, but Margot kept her voice low. It didn’t do to let grown-up people hear these things. “Perhaps they are following us already—or perhaps they don’t even know we have left the Countess’ house yet. When they get there they will find us gone, and not know where.”
“Will the Countess tell?”
“No. The Countess is loyal. Whatever they ask her, she will know nothing.”
Theodore, on her other side, gave a muffled giggle—probably because he was thinking it was easy for the Countess to pretend she knew nothing, when in fact she did not even know she was the Countess. Mrs. Cheyney, with her tight gray curls and the long row of winking jet buttons down the tight basque of her dress, who was always puffing a little by the time she had climbed the stairs to the third floor, thought she was only the landlady of a respectable but dreary New York rooming-house, who considered herself extremely generous in letting the widowed Mrs. Wood leave her children to look after themselves all day while their mother was out giving music-lessons. She had no idea that because of her father the Grand Duke’s loyalty to his deposed sovereign (the sovereign having once saved the Grand Duke from assassination in the streets of Prague), she took a great risk in concealing the secret heirs of the kingdom in an upper room of her mansion, and headed a network of loyal spies who came to the back door to report to her disguised as the butcher’s man, the iceman, and the coal-man.
“Once we are across the Siberian frontier we will be safe from pursuit,” said Margot. “They will never think to look for us in the salt mines. A message has already gone ahead to the faithfulretainer who will take us in charge. He will guard us with his life, while pretending to be our long-lost uncle.”
