Читать книгу The Gunslinger's Untamed Bride - Stacey Kayne - Страница 9

Fall 1876

California Foothills

“Juniper Barns!”

Juniper’s horse crested the last rise of swaying yellow grasses as his name carried back on the breeze in an angry shout. He reined in, his gaze locking on five riders mounted in front of the ranch house that had been his sanctuary for the past six years.

Sprays of light from the setting sun glinted off their guns, raising the fine hairs on the back of Juniper’s neck. Sensation tingled in the tips of his fingers. He forgot about the exhaustion tugging at his muscles and the sweet scent of freshly baked bread that had been calling him home for supper. His free hand flexed, his palm burning for the grip of his gun concealed beneath his range coat.

A kid didn’t shoot thirteen men into their dusty graves without making enemies. He’d known there’d be a day when the demons of his past would come to call.

One of the men shouted Juniper’s name toward the house as he dismounted.

That day had come.

“He’s not here!”

The woman who’d raised him from the age of fourteen stood on the covered porch, baby Isaac in her arms. Rachell’s four-and five-year-old daughters huddled against her skirt. May’s ebony braids set her apart from her younger sister, April, whose hair was as red as her mother’s.

Juniper urged his horse forward. His gaze homed in on the man at the base of the stairs. As Juniper neared the house, the stranger turned toward the sound of his approaching horse.

Flat forehead, square chin, dark beady eyes … features similar to that of Dan Yates.

He hadn’t forgotten a single face of the men who’d fallen to his guns. They rose up in his mind at odd times, haunting him.

He tugged on the reins, slowing his mare as she crossed the yard.

“Stop where you are,” the man called, raising his rifle.

May’s scream pierced the air.

“June!” her little sister shouted.

“It’s all right,” he called out, wanting to calm his sisters. “Go on inside with your mama.” His gaze flickered toward Rachell. She glanced out at the golden hills stretching toward the Sierras. Juniper prayed Jed and the others would take their time getting back. As much as he valued their protection, he didn’t want to see any of them get hurt on his account.

Rachell’s fearful green eyes met his gaze.

“Go on,” he urged.

June, she silently mouthed, hugging her infant son to her chest.

“Wait just a damn minute!” Yates shouted.

“Go,” he said, before turning his attention to Yates. “No sense in scaring the girls.” June shifted the brim of his hat up over his blond hair to keep a clear view of the other four riders. He felt a rush of relief as the door closed behind Rachell and her children. “Your business is with me.”

Narrowed dark eyes moved over him. “I doubt that. I’m looking for a gunfighter from Missouri way. Goes by the name of Juniper Barns.”

June leaned forward, crossing his wrists over the saddle horn. “You found him.”

Low chuckles rumbled from the men mounted behind their friend. Yates only scowled. “Like hell.”

Juniper wished he could deny the fact. No matter how badly he wanted to, he couldn’t erase his past, and he refused to hide behind those who would defend his actions. He’d done what he’d had to, and he held himself accountable.

He dismounted slowly, keeping his hands in clear view, though the men before him didn’t seem to recognize him as a threat.

“You related to Dan Yates?” Juniper asked, facing the man standing a few yards away from him.

Dark eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t know what your game is, kid.”

Nearly twenty years old, Juniper was hardly a kid—no more a kid than he’d been at the age of thirteen when his uncle had shoved him into the street, forcing him to draw his guns to stay alive.

“I’m looking for the man who shot my brother down six years ago in Mason, Missouri. I don’t care if I have to beat that information out of you or the woman.”

Tension coiling through his shoulders, Juniper widened his stance.

“Just tell me where to find Barns and there’ll be no need for you to come to harm.”

“If you didn’t intend harm, you wouldn’t be here. If you had any sense, you’d never have come.” He brushed back the edges of his range coat, tucking the heavy canvas behind the weight of a double holster he’d worn every day since his father had died at the hands of outlaws.

The man’s gaze landed on the matching Colts, his eyes widening with recognition of the twin pearl grips.

“This family doesn’t deserve trouble from my past. You want to have it out with me, fine. Name the place.”

Sheer hatred hardened the man’s expression. “I spent five years in prison waiting to get out and avenge my brother’s death. It took me a year to find you and I’ll damn well shoot you where you stand.”

The men mounted behind Yates stepped down from their saddles. Yates raised his hand. “Stay back,” he ordered, keeping his gaze trained on Juniper. “He’s mine.”

“Don’t make your brother’s mistake.”

“My brother is dead!” Yates shouted.

“By his own doing,” Juniper felt inclined to point out. “I warned him to walk away from my uncle’s bet. He didn’t listen.”

They never listened.

“You think those fancy pistols make you some kind of special, don’t you?”

“Mister, I wish to God I’d never strapped on a gun. I’ll tell you exactly what I told your brother. I got no will to kill you. You can walk away right now.”

Yates tossed his rifle aside. “Your luck just ran out. No one’s ever outdrawn me, and I’ve been hunting you for a long time.” The man hunched forward, bending at the knees, his elbows hiked high.

Juniper had to wonder if Yates was giving his impression of a giant crab.

“When I’m done with you,” Yates said, his fingers flexing above his holster, “I’ll be sure to show your family the same respect you showed mine.”

Rebelling against a lash of fear, a numbing calm settled over Juniper as he accepted the challenge. Keeping his gaze on Yates, he noted the position of the four armed men standing behind him. Killing didn’t take any great skill. For Juniper, it was merely reflex.

His senses keen, his arms idle yet poised, he waited, in no more a hurry to kill than he was to die.

As if sensing the change in him, Yates narrowed his gaze, a look of caution stealing into his eyes. Sweat trickled down from his temples.

“What are you waiting for?” Juniper taunted. “Shoot me.”

Yates tensed. His breathing began to sound labored. All bad signs—for Yates.

“Flinch and I’ll kill you,” Juniper warned. “Say the word and you can walk away.”

Yates went for his gun, the dark metal making it a fraction out of his holster before bullets exploded from Juniper’s twin revolvers. He fired four consecutive shots, his aim shifting to the men beyond Yates’s falling form. Metal pinged and sparked as two revolvers fell to the ground. The fourth bullet chipped wood from a rifle grip in another pair of hands.

His fingers on the triggers, two men in his sights, Juniper stared at four gaping expressions. All four had just seen proof that it wouldn’t take more than a blink for him to drop every one of them.

He didn’t have to check Yates to know the man was lying in a pool of blood, a hole through his heart. Juniper had learned, his first time in the street, wounding an adversary only meant he’d also suffer a bullet before having to fire another. The men staring at him hadn’t challenged him—yet.

“Anyone else here for vengeance?” His low tone was barely a rustle on the breeze, his heart slugging slow and hard against his chest.

“No,” one of them called out, still shaking the sting from his fingers. “I got no quarrel with you.”

A second man vigorously shook his head. “We, uh—”

“Ride or die.”

They scrambled onto their horses, hooves trampling weapons as they made a hasty retreat.

Juniper stood just beyond the porch, watching all four fade into the distance. The moment they disappeared over the western hillside, the tremors hit, staggering him.

He leaned forward, planting his hands on his knees. His gaze landed on Yates lying in a circle of crimson, his glassy eyes reflecting blue sky and white clouds.

Nausea rose up like a wave of fire.

The sound of his sisters’ sobs filtered outside as Juniper sucked air. Hearing the door squeak open, he turned toward the house.

“Rachell, don’t let—”

April shoved past her mother before he could tell them to stay inside. “June!” She crossed the porch in a flash of red hair and leaped from the steps into his arms.

Holding her face to his chest, he rushed up to the porch, but he was too late. May stood beside her mother, her wide eyes locked on the man lying in the dirt.

“Is he … dead?”

Rachell turned her oldest daughter toward the door and ushered her back into the house. “We’re just glad you’re okay,” she said as Juniper shut the door behind them.

May glanced at his holster and took a step back, her frightened expression hitting him like a blow to the gut. She stiffened as her gaze shifted toward the sound of horses approaching from the northeast pasture.

“It’s your daddy and Uncle Ben and his boys,” Juniper said, and realized his whole life was about to be exposed. Ben’s sons were just a bit younger than him and had no idea their adopted cousin hid a bloodstained past.

He crouched down to place April on her feet. May rushed forward, crowding into his arms beside her sister. Juniper hugged them both, relief warring with a deep sense of loss. Though he wasn’t related to this family by blood, they’d given him the first real home he’d ever known, sealing his place in the family the day their first daughter had been born. “Now I’ll have May and June,” Rachell had said, June being the nickname Rachell had given him, and he’d never been so honored. April and May were his sisters in every way that mattered.

“You girls stay inside with your mama until your daddy comes for you, okay?”

Both girls nodded, moving toward their mother as he straightened. Juniper was afraid to look at her, ashamed of the terror he’d brought into their home.

The moment he’d taken this man’s life, his own had been stolen. Once the others reached town, word would spread about the gunslinger from Missouri.

More would come. He couldn’t stay.

“You did what you had to.”

Rachell’s gentle voice penetrated the anguish welling up inside him, pulling at his emotions as he felt the door close on the people he loved, the home he’d just lost.