The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1) by Barbara Ankrum Read Free Book Online Page A

his shirt. "You didn't by any chance bring me the makings for a cigarette, did you?"
    She shook her head. "Smoke makes me sneeze."
    Naturally. He rubbed an anxious hand across his mouth and lifted one hopeful brow. "A drink?"
    Shock flooded her expression. "You mean spirits? Certainly not."
    "Should have known. Look, I haven't a clue why you're here, so can we just get t' the bottom of it?" He reached for the tin cup of water Connell Smith had left in his cell and took a drink.
    She leaned closer, gripping the bars, and whispered conspiratorially. "We're going to liberate you, Mr. Donovan."
    He nearly choked, spewing water across the moth-eaten blanket of his cot. "You're gonna what?"
    "Make a break for it," she enthused, "bust you loose—you know, set you free."
    "In all my livelong life..." he muttered under his breath, tossing the tin cup back on the hard-packed dirt floor."Did anyone ever tell you, you ought to be on the stage, Miss Turner?"
    She appeared to consider this. "Well, Miss Eustasia always claimed I had considerable talent in that area. Of course," she added, chewing thoughtfully on a thumbnail, "I don't believe she meant it as a compliment."
    Donovan rolled his eyes.
    "At any rate, I'm quite serious, Mr. Donovan. Brewster and I intend to break you out of here. It can all be done quite simply."
    He stared at her a moment, imagining she was on the wrong side of the bars and he was looking in—at a raving lunatic. "Is that so?"
    "Oh, yes, you see, Jack Leland has done this in all of his best books."
    He frowned. "Jack who?"
    "Leland. The novelist? Surely you've heard of him. Revenge on the Purple Sage, Riders on the Great Divide, The Gunslinger and the Lady?"
    A novelist? He was about to be lynched and she was planning his escape based on some half-baked greenhorn's fantasies?
    "No matter," she assured him, that cockeyed smile of hers ebullient. "I've read them dozens of times. I know them from front cover to back. Of course, each jailbreak's a bit different... But we can talk about that later." She glanced furtively at the pine door, then back at him. "We haven't much time, and I must have something from you in return for getting you out of here."
    He narrowed his eyes at her, then slowly turned his empty pockets out. "For the sake of argument, you should know, I'm fresh out of bargaining power."
    She looked insulted. "Not money! A promise."
    He was in the habit of putting a considerable distance between himself and any female who asked for promises. But he was in no position to go anywhere. "What kind of a promise?"
    She tugged at the cuff of her sleeve and cleared her throat delicately. "I don't suppose you, uh, remember our conversation of last evening? About my brother?"
    He raked one hand through his rumpled hair. It was all a little fuzzy, but it was beginning to come back to him with a low, thudding sense of doom. Something about wanting his help for something. What was it? Her brother had been unjustly imprisoned in—Reese's blood went cold. "Querétaro."
    A pleased smile spread across her face. "Yes. Exactly so. Then you recall my brother's dilemma."
    He glared at her in reply.
    She cleared her throat. "I must have your promise that if we free you, you'll go to Querétaro to free my brother. It's an even trade, I think."
    This was too much. Reese lurched to his feet."An even—?"
    "Shh!" She waved her hands at him frantically with a horrified look at the marshal's door. "Do you want him to hear?"
    He ground his teeth together and gripped the bars of his cell until his knuckles went white. "An even trade?" he repeated in a strangled whisper. "You're the reason I'm in here in the first place. If it weren't for you, I'd be sleeping off my hangover in the comfort of my own room, instead of waiting for the hangman's noose t' be fitted 'round my neck!"
    Her lips fell open in real dismay. "Oh, now that's hardly fair, Mr. Donovan. After all, you are the gunslinger with whom that awful Deke Sanders seemed to