To Hell and Back Read Online Free Page A

reaching through the bars to finish cleaning the bullet graze.
    “If that banker has anything to say about it, they’ll probably string us both up,” Jake winced as she continued her further clumsy attempts at nursing.
    “I don’t understand any of this,” Amanda said with a sigh, while her hands kept busy tending the raw, ugly rip in his scalp.
    “Your good friend, the banker, just robbed his own establishment is what I’m saying. With some help of course. I had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with a sack full of money that wasn’t mine.”
    “Of course. I think I had that part figured out. What I don’t understand is how he hopes to gain by making it appear we did it.”
    “You don’t?”
    Amanda shook her head.
    “We’re probably the best scapegoats he could have hoped for. If I hadn’t turned up, he would have had to let the sheriff go charging off after the real outlaws and hope the man didn’t catch up with them. Instead, with us in hand, by his account part of the gang, and you being the one who actually killed that boy.” Jake gave a shrug. “Things slow down a bit. Somebody’s dead. They have to take time out for a trial, and probably a hanging before they can get down to the serious tracking of the other three who have no doubt met with the banker, split my twenty thousand dollars as well as the bank money between them and are now riding hell for leather out of the territory.”
    He eyed Amanda as she ripped a length of petticoat for a bandage.
    “Me I can understand, but the man has to have a grudge against you, honey, and it must be a beaut. What in blazes did you do to get that fella out for your blood?”
    Amanda’s hands froze at their task of rolling the bandage, and she stared at Jake in open disbelief.
    “Don’t be ridiculous! I didn’t do anything worthy of the kind of anger needed to justify this!”
    “But you did do something.”
    Amanda reddened. “It was nothing. It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time.”
    “And that was?”
    She didn’t respond, just returned to furiously readying the bandage.
    “Come on, lady, we’re hip deep in prairie fuel here. I need to know what we’re talking about.”
    “Well, I—it’s just that I didn’t respond to Mr. Berglund’s advances.”
    “He wants to spark you and you refused?”
    A short nod from Amanda was his answer.
    Jake grunted when the door swung open with a bang. Amanda jerked toward the door and the sheriff lit one of the oil lamps hanging overhead as John Berglund followed him inside.
    “Told you we’d probably find them like that,” the banker said with a leer, the chill in his deep-set brown eyes enough to chill the dead.
    “That pair is thick, Matt. I saw him in the bank a time or two before. Said he was just passing through. Must have been when she told him when there would be the most cash on hand and when it would be easiest to hit my bank. When poor Eddie tried to stop them, she pulled that gun from her drawer and shot him. Who would have figured it?”
    “That’s not true!” Amanda jumped to her feet. “Can’t you see he’s lying, sheriff?”
    “You said that before,” Carson said calmly, his hazel eyes indifferent. “You can say it again at the trial soon as they have things set up over at the saloon.”
    “What?”
    “You’re gonna get a fair trial. The both of you.”
    “Fair! No trial could be fair. I didn’t do anything. Neither did he,” she finished pointing a finger in Hollander’s direction.
    The banker strolled closer to the jail cells looking at Hollander sprawled on his cot, one knee up, wrist resting on it with studied indifference. When he spoke it was for Amanda’s ears.
    “Never know at a trial. Could be someone might not remember things clearly. Could be I might remember you didn’t have anything to do with it. That it was just the drifter in the next cell.”
    “You bastard!” Amanda ground out the oath, amazed at how easily it had