Ralph Compton - Bluff City

Clay’s answer was barely audible. “I couldn’t.”

“The same question. Why?”

“I couldn’t risk you taking a stray slug when his men shot me down. I would never risk your life.”

“Oh.”

Clay clucked to the claybank and Melanie clucked to her mare and they rode side by side, the breeze caressing their faces.

“I am grateful you felt fit to confide in me.”

“Do you still aim to report me to Marshal Vale?”

“I don’t know what I am going to do. To be honest, I am so confused right now, my head is spinning.”

“But I just explained everything,” Clay said.

“It’s not your past I’m confused about,” Melanie clarified. “It’s me. My emotions are in a whirl. I can’t get over the fact you have slain four men since I met you, and now I learn you hope to kill a lot more—”

“Only Jesse Stark,” Clay interrupted her. “He’s the one I want.”

“But don’t you see—” Melanie began, and was interrupted yet again, this time by the sudden pounding of hooves as seven or eight riders swept down on them from out of the night and one of the riders bawled, “Kill the man and grab the woman, boys! And be quick about it!”

Chapter 17

Clay recognized the voice. It was Gorman. Evidently Gorman had followed Skagg, just as Melanie had followed him. He figured Gorman had witnessed the shooting and shadowed them.

“Ride!” Clay bellowed, and smacked Melanie’s mare.

A glance showed Clay the outlaws were in a crescent, the nearest a mere fifty feet away. He was furious with himself for letting them get so close. He had been careless, letting his talk with Melanie distract him.

The outlaws whooped and hollered. Several shots boomed and leaden hornets buzzed past Clay’s head. Drawing his pearl-handled Colt, he swiveled in his saddle and fired twice. The nearest badman cried out and clutched at his saddle horn to keep from falling.

“He shot Roy!”

“I can keep up!” the man named Roy yelled. “He only winged me.”

More slugs sought Clay and Melanie. He bent low, his mind racing faster than the claybank. If he stayed with Melanie she might be hit. But if he veered off he could lead the outlaws away, provided they all came after him.

One of their pursuers made up Clay’s mind for him by gleefully bellowing, “Remember! We take turns with the woman and I get to go first!”

Clay stayed with Melanie. Gorman and his friends stopped wasting lead and stayed far enough back to discourage Clay from wasting lead, too, but not so far back as to lose sight of them.

Melanie rode superbly. Clay had known she was competent but now she impressed him even more. She was exceptional. Strong-headed, yes. Impulsive, yes. More independent than most females, yes. But for all that, he liked her more than he had liked any woman, ever.

Clay glanced back. He would rather it was Jesse Stark who was after them. One shot, and he could end it. End Stark’s spree of mayhem and murder. End, finally and forever, a part of his life he would rather not think about.

Clay had felt uncomfortable revealing his secret to Melanie. He had not wanted anyone to know that he once—

A shout from Melanie shattered Clay’s reverie. He looked back again. They had gone almost a mile. The outlaws, to his surprise, were falling behind. They were giving up too easily. Then he noticed the riderless horse. The man he shot had fallen off.

Clay and Melanie galloped for another half mile. By then their horses were winded and they slowed to a walk. Clay kept glancing back, but evidently the outlaws had given up.

“Thank you,” Melanie said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“If you hadn’t shot that man they would still be after us. And you winged him. You didn’t kill him.”

Clay did not point out that he had shot in the hope of doing just that. But firing from horseback was always an iffy proposition, more so at night.

“I also want you to know I have come to a decision.”

“About?” Clay asked, checking behind them yet again. He would not consider them safe until they reached Bluff City.

“You.”

“So soon?” To Clay it did not bode well.

“You can thank Gorman and his friends. They would have killed us if they caught us, after violating me. Stark and his men are wicked clear through and must be stopped.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“I’m getting to that,” Melanie said. “The law has been trying for almost a year now to stop Stark, and can’t. Single-handedly you have done more than all the posses sent out after them.”

“It just happened, is all.”

“There is more to it than that. You are determined enough to succeed where so many others have failed.” Melanie regarded him thoughtfully. “You will be happy to hear that I am not going to tell Marshal Vale who you really are and what you are up to.”

Clay’s smile was heartfelt. “Thank you. You have made the right choice. I promise you that after I settle accounts with Jesse Stark, I will hang up my Colt for good.”

“I wasn’t done,” Melanie said.

“Pardon?”

“I won’t tell Marshal Vale on one condition.” Melanie waited for him to ask what the condition was, and when he didn’t, she said, “I won’t tell him if you let me help you.”

Clay was dumbfounded, and it must have shown.

“Hear me out. In one respect I am as determined as you are. That’s when it comes to my job. I will go anywhere, do anything, for a newsworthy story. You might say the newspaper life is in my blood.”

“So?”

“So Jesse Stark is newsworthy. He sells papers. The robberies, the shootings, they make headlines. Heck, the Courier sold out three days running after Cavendish was taken for ransom, because everyone wanted to read about it.” Melanie’s voice had grown increasingly excited. “Think of how many papers we can sell when I do an exclusive series of articles about the capture or death of Jesse Stark. Told by someone who was there.”

“If you mean yourself, you won’t be,” Clay said.

“Don’t be so hasty. You can use my help in tracking Stark down. I have contacts you don’t. We will hunt him together. I want to be on it at the end, and in exchange I will keep quiet about you. That strikes me as more than fair.”

“You don’t happen to have one of those magnifying glasses on you, do you?”

Melanie blinked. “Why would I need one of those?”

“To find your common sense.” Clay shook his head. “I have heard some addlepated notions in my day but that one beats them all.”

“Give me one good reason why we can’t work together.”

“I can give you six. One for each of the bullets in Jesse Stark’s six-shooter. Or those in Gorman’s. Or Bantarro’s. If not the bullets, then how about a knife or a rope or their bare hands? They can kill you in a hundred ways.”

Melanie said, “You are trying to scare me, but it won’t work.”

“Listen to yourself. This won’t be like covering a fire. We have barely escaped with our lives two times now. Why invite a third?”

“Because I’m a woman.”

Clay mulled that over and said, “I grant you, females are peculiar, but how does being a woman explain your harebrained idea?”

“Have you forgotten our talk at the restaurant? Women have it harder than men. There aren’t as many jobs for women, for one thing. We’re expected to stay at home and be good mothers and dutiful wives. Those of us who want something different, who want a job and a career the same as men, find ourselves having to work twice as hard to prove we are worthy.”

“I will grant you all that.”

“Then grant me this. Think what it will mean to my career, Clay, if I get a story no one else can. The end of the Jesse Stark gang. Newspapers all over the country are bound to carry it. It will open doors for me. I will have opportunities I never would have had otherwise. Maybe I’ll land a job with a prestigious newspaper in Washington or New York City. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”