The Outlaws by Jane Toombs Read Free Book Online Page A

and pines and canyons. A lot nicer than where they’d been in Texas.
    Papa had always talked of how close together everything was in England, where a man might ride clear across the entire country in a day and a night if he’d a mind to. Ezra couldn’t remember much at all about England or even crossing the Atlantic Ocean. His memory of his mother was only a faint recollection of someone holding and rocking him.
    Tessa was one who’d mothered him. And Texas was the country he remembered. He hadn’t wanted to leave, but now he liked the New Mexico Territory.
    “Best country in the world,” Billy had said and Ezra couldn’t help but agree.
    Tunstall needed Billy and right now he could use Ezra. Not for chores, but because he was a pretty good shot and getting better all the time. Not that Tunstall wanted a shooting war.
    “I won’t sacrifice the life of a single man to keep my cattle,” he’d insisted more than once since the trouble started.
    Ezra scowled. It was a cinch Dolan didn’t feel the same.
    “I know some of those boys Dolan hired to tote iron for him,” Billy had told Ezra the month before. “Jesse Evans would soon as kill a man as pass the time of day. And I heard that son-of-bitch Morton say he was sharpening his scalping knife. He don’t mean to use it on Mescaleros.”
    “What do you aim to do about it, Billy?” Ezra asked.
    Billy grinned. “Why I mean to turn you into a crack shot, Ez. Then the two of us’ll go for the bastards,”
    Ezra’s jaw dropped and Billy laughed outright. After a moment Ezra grinned sheepishly. Billy liked to joke and it seemed like Ezra never could catch on when he was and when he wasn’t.
    “You can count on me when you go after them” he told Billy. “Even if it does turn out there’s only the two of us.”
    Billy had nodded. “Keep practicing, Ez. Don’t forget what I told you. You got to say to yourself, I’m pointing my finger, before you aim the Colt. Never fails to send the bullet true.”
    Ezra slowed the pinto a little as he began to climb. The land over toward the Pecos was more like Texas with its grassy high plains and only a few cottonwoods and willows by the streams, maybe a tangle of salt cedar. Around Lincoln, though, there has got to be real mountains with snow on the peaks and pines covering the sides. He’d heard there was arid and desolate country to the west, but he hadn’t yet seen it.
    This trail he rode to Tunstall’s was over Pajarito Mountain, not so high as some of the others, but not a hill either. Today he wished the going was easier and quicker.
    Lincoln itself was a little town of several hundred people with the usual Mexican plaza in the center. Most every building was of adobe bricks. When you entered from the east, you came to the jail and the courthouse and the little San Juan church before you got to Tunstall’s store and the bank. Then came the McSween house.
    If you came in from the west you passed Dolan’s store, still called the “House of Murphy,” and right across was the town’s largest hotel, Whortley’s.
    Lincoln was built along the south bank of the Rio Bonita right where the canyon opened up. There were lots of cottonwoods scattered between the buildings. Right now they didn’t have any leaves, but Ezra thought it must be nice and shady in the hot summers.
    He glanced back toward Lincoln. Tessa ought to be safe enough without him in the house. True, McSween didn’t carry a gun, but Shield did and he lived right there in the east wing. Besides, with two women and six children in the McSween house, Dolan wouldn’t have the nerve to start any trouble.
    Or would he?
    Ezra slowed the pinto. Maybe he ought to head back. He felt Tessa and Jules were his responsibility since papa died. If only Tessa and Tunstall would get married. Next to Billy, Ezra admired Tunstall most of any man in the Territory. Tessa liked him too, Ezra could tell. But she also seemed to like that smooth-talking Rutledge. And