Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 165476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 827(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 827(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
He was contemplating his two spare shirts when the door opened, and Rory popped in his bright red head, staring at Ned with wide eyes. “A man just took Nugget, and your saddle!”
Frost bit Ned’s back like an icy river running down his spine. He couldn’t think, and as Rory got to his feet, hair messy from running, he could barely hear the boy’s words through his frantic heartbeat. “He told me he knew Jesse James.”
The fucking audacity.
“Which direction did he ride off to?”
The boy shifted his weight, blinking. “Down the path to Mr. Linden’s house.”
Ned shoved some more basic items into his bag, but he couldn’t be rational about it anymore and dashed out of the room as if his life depended on it. In the kitchen, Brianna was arguing with her mother that she couldn’t have possibly eaten the whole porter cake herself, but a life where such trifles constituted problems was dispersing like fog.
Ned snatched the shotgun from a case lying under a side table in the hallway and burst onto the porch. He jumped down the three stairs and bolted for the stable, calculating which of the remaining horses would be fastest. Dylan yelled something to him from his own mount far away, but Ned didn’t have time to listen and focused on his feet rather than ears.
His cousin Cody’s voice boomed in the stables as Ned rushed inside. “What do you mean he just ran off with Nugget? You were right there. Didn’t a stranger coming in on his own alarm you?”
Ned’s face flushed with heat, because this was all his fault, but he didn’t stay to check who was enduring the verbal abuse. Instead, he focused on Cody’s horse, which waited for him, saddled, in front of the stable. He ran past the open door, put his foot in the stirrup, and nudged Daisy into motion, his empty stomach tightening into a ball at the thought of what he was about to do. But he had to. At least that was what he chose to tell himself.
Cody hadn’t noticed a thing and was still yelling at the poor man when Ned galloped uphill, then past the open gate and down the forest path he’d earlier directed the Pinkerton agents to. The clouds were low in the sky, heavy and dark, ready to unleash torrential rain, but the upcoming storm had its core in Ned’s heart. Could he really do this? Should he fraternize with a man who rode with the very people who left Ned’s family to die, or did the cause not excuse the means after all?
Cole might’ve been a wolf, but if he thought Ned a sheep, he had another thing coming!
Ned pulled his bandana over his nose to protect his lungs from the dust lifting under the hooves and clenched the shotgun, on the lookout for any sign of two horses ahead as fury drove him to the hunt. Fresh tracks continued down the shadowed path, only to abruptly change direction and dive between the trees.
Cole couldn’t have been much farther.
“I’m warning you, Flores!” Ned yelled out, never stopping his gallop. He pulled on the reins to make Daisy turn up a low slope where the treetops cleared, showing the overcast sky. “You better stop right now! My mount is swift, as will be your death if you don’t hand over my horse!”
Laughter. As if that crazy man had no care in the world. Maybe that was what being alive meant for someone so liberal with bullets and threatening words. “Well damn me! Isn’t that Ned O’Leary?” came from beyond the slope, and the confidence in Cole’s voice made Ned stiffen. Was this it? Would he end up with a hole in his forehead the moment Cole caught sight of him?
Ned urged the panting mare to a trot, but the moment he spotted Cole in a small field of blue columbines scattered around a massive boulder, he raised his double barreled shotgun and aimed it at him. The man faced away, calmly taking in the pines shooting from the ground like needles from Aunt Muriel’s pin cushion. Both horses fed on the grass beneath their hooves, and while Nugget glanced Ned’s way with his calm eyes, Cole kept him in place with a tug on the reins.
Heat flashed in Ned’s chest as he came closer, his hands sweaty on the rifle. “The ladies would hate to see half that pretty face blown off. Hand him over, for fuck’s sake!”
Cole chuckled but didn’t even bother to turn. That was it—the end to Ned’s patience.
He pushed the leather strap attached to the firearm on his shoulder so it hung there and grabbed the lasso Cody had left hanging off the horn of the saddle. Ropes and knots have been Ned’s friends since early childhood, and he swung the lasso above his head before casting it Cole’s way with the same proficiency he rode with. The loop knocked Cole’s hat off as it fell in place and tightened around his midsection at Ned’s tug. At last, Cole glanced over his shoulders in surprise.