“How did you happen to find us?” she asked warily.
“When you went stalking out of the Golden Nugget, I knew you’d be heading straight into trouble. I followed you. You knew damned well I would.”
“The Golden Nugget,” she repeated softly. There it was again. Apparently her attacker hadn’t been delusional, as she had hoped. “You’re a regular there?”
He regarded her as if she’d stayed too long under the blazing sun without her bonnet. Abby flinched beneath his scrutiny. She really was getting tired of turning up in the middle of these scenes without a script. It made her appear quite addled, which dimmed her effectiveness at bargaining.
“Regular enough,” he claimed. “Though to hear you tell it, I have a habit of passing through only when the mood suits me.”
He shot her a look she couldn’t interpret. “Do you and I have a...” She couldn’t bring herself to complete a question to which she so obviously should know the answer.
About that time, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of one of the robbers inching his way up behind Riley, a knife in his hand.
“Behind you,” she shouted.
Before the phrase was completely out, Riley had whirled and shot the man in the leg. The knife fell uselessly into the dirt as the would-be attacker dropped to his knees and clutched his injured calf.
With his gaze pinned on the remaining robbers, Riley said, “Abby, I think maybe you and I ought to take off before I am obliged to put a bullet through these other two.” He gave the one called Higgins a regretful look. “Though I wouldn’t mind a bit taking care of this one once and for all. He’s been a pain in my backside for what seems like an eternity.”
She hesitated. She wasn’t so sure going off with him was such a terrific idea.
“What about the stagecoach?” she asked, as much for a delaying tactic as out of any sense of compassion. “We can’t just leave those people out here. The driver’s dead.”
He regarded her impatiently. “With these three out of commission, the passengers can manage to get the stagecoach back to town.”
Abby gestured toward the panicked trio. None looked capable of standing up much longer, much less of handling a stagecoach. “Please. We can’t leave them here.”
He sighed heavily and pointed to the guns the thieves had tossed aside. “Get their guns.”
Sensing victory, Abby hurriedly scrambled to pick up the weapons.
“Put them in the stagecoach and tell the passengers to get back inside,” he ordered. “Then round up the horses and tie them to the back.”
Just this once and because she knew the odds were slightly skewed in favor of the three villains, Abby did as she was told. In fact, she rather relished being considered part of a team. She could grow quite accustomed to the feeling.
Only after she had clambered onto the driver’s seat next to Riley did she fully comprehend that they were about to ride off and leave the robbers to die in the desert.
“You can’t mean to just leave them here,” she protested to the man next to her.
He turned a hard, disbelieving look on her. “Why not? They weren’t planning to show you any mercy.”
“But they’ll die.”
“I suppose you have a better suggestion.”
“Let’s take them back to town and let the sheriff deal with them.”
“And how do you propose we get them there?”
“They can ride.”
“And what’s to stop them from taking off once they’re on horseback?”
She contemplated that problem for some time, then brightened. “I’ll guard them.”
“How?”
“With a gun, of course.”
“Of course,” he said dryly. “You’re forgetting just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You can’t hit the broad side of a barn.”
She had to assume that was true since she couldn’t recall ever wielding a gun before in her life. “They don’t know that,” she countered reasonably.
In the end, she got her way. They formed an odd little parade as they rode back into a town that looked as if no one there had ever heard of paint or pavement. Any hope Abby might have had that they were going to wind up back in civilization died at the sight of that pathetic little accumulation of wooden structures.
While Riley delivered the prisoners to the sheriff, and the stagecoach passengers headed to the town’s hotel, Abby studied her surroundings.
The Golden Nugget was the most prosperous looking building on the street. She was startled to see a handbill posted in front announcing her nightly appearances there. Judging from the heavily painted women being escorted in and out by the place’s disreputable looking clientele, it was no wonder that that thief had mistaken her for the sort of easy woman who would welcome his attention.
It did not, however, explain her relationship with the man who had rescued her. He clearly acted as if he had some claim on her or certainly as if their familiarity went back a long time. She wondered how long it would be before he expected her to thank him properly for turning up out there in the desert.
Before she could reach any conclusions about that, he was back from the jail.
“Come on, Miss Abby. I think it’s time you and I finished our discussion.”
“Which discussion?”
“The one we were having when you ran out on me.”
“I thought we’d settled all that,” she said airily.
He grinned. “I don’t consider your walking out in a huff as any kind of solution. That’s no way to win an argument. If anything, it just proves my point. You know in your heart that you’re wrong.”
“Wrong?” she said. She didn’t have to manufacture her indignation over the accusation. She really hated being told she was in the wrong about anything. Perhaps if she provoked him enough, he would explain exactly what she had supposedly been wrong about.
“How dare you suggest such a thing?” she said. “It seems to me you’re just being pigheaded.”
“Abby, be reasonable. You don’t want to
