To Tease A Texan. Georgina Gentry

was a fast horse, and Larado was a good rider, so he was soon out on the rolling prairie some miles from town. He reined in to rest his lathered mount. “Larado, you damn fool, how did you get yourself into this mess?”

      Last night he had lost almost everything at cards when he never should have gone in there. He wasn’t a very good poker player, but he’d been desperate. Today, he’d gone into a bank, blown his nose, and was suddenly in the midst of a bank robbery with people shooting at him. Then he discovered he was still holding on to the bank bag Snake had dropped in all the confusion. He hefted it in his hand. “Pretty lightweight, must be all bills.”

      Money. This morning he had been flat broke except for his gold watch and his horse and saddle. Now he held untold riches in his big fist. His first inclination was to turn around, go back to town, and turn it over to the bank. “Are you loco, Larado?” he muttered to himself. “They’d have you swingin’ from a rafter of a barn before you could tell them it was all a big mistake—even if that fat banker didn’t shoot you first.”

      Snake. That rascal had gotten him in a lot of trouble, but maybe Snake hadn’t meant to—maybe he was just like Larado, always being misunderstood. Snake had taken some buckshot in the arm and might be bleeding to death somewhere. Even if he didn’t much like the hombre, it wasn’t like a Texan to abandon a man who was in a bad way.

      Larado turned in his saddle and looked behind him, squinting in the early morning sun. He didn’t see a posse coming yet, but it shouldn’t take too long for one to form up and come looking for the two bank robbers. “I reckon I ought to light a shuck for Texas, bein’ as how as I got all this money and that posse may be hot on my trail, but I can’t leave Snake hurt and bleedin’ somewhere.”

      The camp on the bend of Rock Creek. Yep, he knew where that was, and certainly Snake trusted him to meet him there. It didn’t make good sense to alter his course, but then, Texans might be brave but they weren’t always known for their good sense. Maybe he could convince Snake they’d be better off to explain to the law that it had all been a big mistake and return the money. He turned Chico to the east and headed for Rock Creek.

      Lark had stood gaping in surprise as the two yanked the reins from her hands, mounted up, and put the spurs to their horses. “Land’s sake, what—?”

      She didn’t get a chance to finish as the two galloped away. It was pretty obvious what had happened, with the fat banker waving his shotgun and men running from every direction. “Those two killers shot down my poor teller in cold blood!” he wailed. “And after I give them the money, too!”

      “Lynch ’em!” the barber yelled, and the cry was taken up by the others. “Dirty robbers, we’ll string ’em up. No need to wait for a trial.”

      Another man paused to stare at Lark. “Hey, that gal was in on it. She was holdin’ their horses and bein’ the lookout.”

      “No, you’re mistaken.” Lark drew herself up proudly. “I know nothing about this.”

      “We’ll deal with her later,” the blacksmith said. “Let’s get saddled up and get them outlaws before the trail gets cold.”

      Men appeared from everywhere on horseback and in buckboards. “Come on, Mr. Barclay,” one called to the banker. “We’ll need you to identify them.”

      The fat man clambered up into the rig, still hanging on to his shotgun. “I’ll give ’em a double load of buckshot for killin’ my teller,” he vowed.

      “Shouldn’t we wait to be deputized?” another man asked.

      “Oh, hell no!” another swore. “We ain’t gonna do nothin’ official, just string up a couple of polecats.”

      The whole mob took off out of town in a cloud of dust and jingling spurs, leaving Lark and a curious hound dog staring after the posse.

      “Oh my, now what am I supposed to do? They’ll never believe I wasn’t part of the plot. All I was trying to do was get the next stage.” She looked up and down the street. A few curious women and some children were poking heads out of windows to see what the excitement was about. The stage must be running late. In a few minutes, some of the posse would surely be returning to arrest her.

      “That damn Texan,” she muttered. “If he hadn’t had such a charming grin, I wouldn’t have tried to help him last night and got myself fired. Now look at the mess he just got me into.” In her mind, she imagined revenge, like maybe tying him down, Comanche style, on a bed of red ants. His charming, lopsided grin might fade then.

      What was she going to do? By the time the stage got here, she’d be wearing handcuffs and locked up in the hoosegow. “Think, Lark, think. This mob isn’t going to listen to your explanation. What would your smart sister do?”

      Lacey wouldn’t get herself into a mess like this in the first place, she decided, not over some big, stupid cowboy. For a moment, there didn’t seem to be anyone on the streets. Picking up her small valise, she hurried down the nearest alley to get out of sight. Maybe she could hide there until the stage came though. Land’s sake, that wouldn’t work—they’d stop the stage and check it first thing, or at least go on to the next town, knowing she might get off there. Damn that Texan. That grinning cowboy had gotten her into more trouble in half a day than she could get out of in a week of Sundays.

      Behind the barber shop, an old gray horse stood dozing, hitched to a wagonload of manure. “Well, any transportation beats nothing.” At least this was one way she bested Lacey. Lark had always been a tomboy and could ride and rope and shoot like a man. She’d been happiest on her uncle Trace’s ranch, but she’d been sent off to school with her smart, perfect sister to Miss Priddy’s Female Academy in Boston in an attempt to turn Lark into a lady. It hadn’t worked.

      Lark considered taking the wagon, then decided a woman driving a wagonload of manure would attract too much attention. Instead, she unhitched the old horse and took his harness off. Hiking her dark blue skirts, she swung up on the bony back, balancing her small valise before her. She slapped the old horse on the neck and he started off at a slow walk.

      “If I ever get my hands on that cowboy, I’ll wring his neck!” she vowed. “He’s cost me my job, got me tangled up in a bank robbery, and now I’m a horse thief on the run—riding a fugitive from the glue factory.”

      Which way to go? If she went due south along the stage route, that might be the first place a posse might look. Maybe if she rode to some settlement off the beaten path, she could get a job, or at least stay out of jail until she could decide what to do next.

      The old gray horse had a backbone like a razor that cut into her bottom. If she were a real lady, she would only ride sidesaddle. “Who are you kidding?” she said. “Ladies don’t steal horses, especially not a nag tied to a manure wagon. Your prissy sister would have an attack of the vapors if she knew what her twin was doing.”

      That made her smile to picture it. However, there was nothing funny about her predicament, Lark thought as she rode. She wondered if the posse had caught the pair. Funny, she might have expected something like this from the ugly, scar-faced one, but she’d thought Larado was just a Texas cowboy dealing with some bad luck. He didn’t seem like a bank robber. “Now, Lark,” she lectured herself, “how would you know what a bank robber was like—have you ever met one before?”

      Of course not. She’d lived a sheltered life on her uncle’s big ranch until she’d been sent away to school, failed there, came home, felt she had to compete with her twin, and run away. It was just so much easier to flee than compete.

      As the day passed, she rode to the outskirts of a small town and drew in. “Whoa, old horse. This place looks pretty isolated. Maybe I can hide out here until things blow over.”

      She dismounted, turned the old horse back the way they had come, and slapped it on the rear. It broke into a dead walk and started up the road toward Buck Shot. “At least they won’t get me for horse stealing.”

      She watched the gray nag until it disappeared