The Renegades: Nick Read Online Free Page A

he was, “but not between the two of us. I want the first claim I staked. I’m guessing by the trees that it has water, and this one doesn’t.”
    “You guess right.”
    His eyes showed not one scrap of remorse, only a quick gleam of interest.
    Most likely, he thought her a curious, amusing and pitiful specimen—a small woman, her old gun and her ragtag wagon useless, flinging foolish challenges at a muscular man wielding a fine pistol aboard a fine, fast horse.
    A muscular man who had her at his mercy out in the middle of the prairie wilderness.
    Her tongue went right on talking anyway.
    “Then you’ve stolen my water from me. Youhad no right. Give it back.” A flash of irritation showed in his face, then, and one corner of his mouth lifted. He had beautiful, full lips that were very expressive when he released them from that hard, straight line.
    But why would she even notice that? He was a ruthless, overbearing bully of the first order.
    Suddenly, she was overcome with fury and disappointment so strong she trembled all over and got dizzy again. Her survival and her baby’s were at stake, and the only weapon she had left was sheer determination.
    “Admit it,” she said. “I was first on that claim. You pulled up my stake.”
    He nailed her with one hot, sharp look.
    “You must not have seen mine,” he said. “It was there first.”
    “Hah! Now you’re lying on top of stealing! This is an exceptional piece of reprehensible behavior on your part, Mr….”
    “Smith.”
    “Of course. Smith,” she said sarcastically. “Well, you’re hardly a gentleman, Mr. Smith. On the way out here I saw a gallant man give up a claim to a lady.”
    She didn’t have one prick of conscience for keeping quiet about the fact that the lady wasn’t a lady at all, but she did feel ashamed of sinking so low as to trade on her gender. It was a last-ditch effort, for sure, because Smithcould say the same as Baxter about a woman alone not being able to prove up a claim.
    Instead, he said, “It’d be hard for me to do that, wouldn’t it?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t reckon a lady would draw down on a man and try to shoot him without a word of warning …”
    He gave her a crooked grin that must’ve melted many a silly girl’s heart. It changed his whole face, and sent a strange thrill racing along her skin.
    “… Or call him a liar for no reason, either.”
    “For no reason! I certainly didn’t see another stake on that claim …”
    His grin vanished.
    “Maybe because you were trying not to see it. I beat you to that claim by a good ten or fifteen minutes.”
    “Prove it.”
    “Look for yourself. My stake’s still there.”
    Panic shot through her, bringing back the nausea with a vengeance, making her sick to her soul. He surely wouldn’t lie about something so easily proven. Oh, dear Lord, had his stake been there all the time?
    All of her insides went cold, in spite of the heat, because he was telling the truth and she knew it. But she
wouldn’t
believe it—not yet. She couldn’t.
    She wheeled and ran back the way she hadcome, desperate to prove him wrong, but only a few strides later she saw it—a flag in the ground on the opposite side of the stone marker from where she’d driven hers. Her gaze skittered past it as if the sight of the windblown white cloth burned her eyes.
    It might be a mirage.
    It wasn’t, though. Hadn’t she learned in these past two months, when she’d lost her one true love and her home and family and all of the life she’d always known, that wishing did not change a thing? Ever?
    Another step or two, and she stopped dead in her tracks. It was plain as the sun overhead that was boiling her brain: she would have a claim with no water, or no claim at all. When she was huge with child and barely able to bend and fill a bucket, she would have to drive those frenzied animals of hers no telling how far to get water.
    The knowledge held her where she stood. She’d been a