The Loner Read Online Free

for a shootout with him?”
    Her eyes blazed.
    â€œMaybe. Maybe not. I was testing him,” she said impatiently.
    â€œThat’s usually what a shootout is,” he snapped, irritated by her tone. “A test to see who can draw faster.”
    She narrowed her eyes at the sarcasm.
    â€œThis test was to see if he recognized me dressed as a boy. To see if he knows that The Cat is me. To see if he knows I’m back in the Nation and after revenge. That’s why I use my sign—he knows my family nickname is Cat for Cathleen.”
    â€œRevenge for what?”
    â€œHe trapped my stepfather by giving him a job,supposedly to work off all the money we owed at the store. Instead, he shot him dead. He raped my mother and then killed her by setting fire to our house.”
    Her jaw clenched, although it trembled along the line of the delicate bone.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œTo try to bed me,” she said. “And I am going to kill him.”
    Her tone was low and even. Every word came out fierce and sure.
    Every word proved he’d been right not to believe that her lawlessness ended with thievery.
    â€œOh,” he said, “and will you steal his horse, too?”
    She sagged back against the ground. She knew what he meant by that. It didn’t make her waver one bit.
    â€œNo,” she said. “And I won’t kill and I didn’t kill anybody else , either. All I want is that son of a bitch out of business and off the face of the earth.”
    Black Fox sat back on his heels and took a long, deep breath. He’d better quit thinking about her as a girl and think of her as a prisoner who would escape if he gave her half a chance.
    Yet the thought of her being tormented by Glass’s lecherous intentions, maybe even touched by his hands, made him want to kill the man, too. To try to bed me , she had said. At least old Tassel must not have succeeded, which was a miracle, given his known ruthlessness.
    â€œGlass has a lot of enemies,” he said, “and you or one of Becker’s bunch shot him today. He may be dead right now.”
    â€œIf he’s not, he will be,” she said.
    â€œBut not at your hand,” he said, in the same un-giving tone she had just used.
    It was for his sake and not for hers that he was arguing with her. It’d make it easier for him if she were convinced there was no reason to try to escape.
    Which was a stupid way to be thinking when he’d already told her she was on her way to be hanged.
    No, it wasn’t. She cared more about Glass’s death than her own life or she wouldn’t be planning to call him out. And that was a sad comment on life in the Nation when a young person, much less a woman, felt she had to impose her own justice. It made him feel derelict in his duty.
    He turned away from her and stood up. Then he looked down at her, hard and straight.
    â€œThe reason you took such a risk as to go openly into Glass’s store,” he said harshly, “is that you’re wishing all this mad wildness was over with. Well, now it is. You’re on your way to the Fort Smith jail.”
    Cat gave him her best defiant glare for as long as she could, then she closed her eyes and turned her face away. He might as well have stabbed her in the heart.
    You’re wishing all this mad wildness was over with.
    He was right, and that chilled her mind worse than her body already was. How could he know that about her? He really could look into her soul with those dark eyes of his. When she got ready to escape, she’d have to be careful not to let him see her thoughts.
    Because he’d said that, her weakness reached even deeper into her and called up her loneliness. It pulled at her until she wanted to turn loose and fall into it, to let it take away her will.
    But if she did that, she would never get to her goal. What she needed to do was rest up and drink every bit of water he gave her and sleep. He wasn’t going to