Nan Ryan (4 page)

Mollie’s violet eyes were round with shock. They widened more when Jeffrey Battles said calmly, “You sick of being broke? Why not do something about it?”

“He’s doing all he can,” Mollie quickly protested. “We have plenty.”

But Jeff Battles pressed on. “Colonel, you’re absolutely right. It isn’t fair for Mollie to do without nice things. She deserves better. We all do.” He leaned forward, scooped up the coins lying on the table. Then let them slowly spill through his fingers. “There’s a small bank just across the border in Nogales. An old lady with a riding crop could knock it over.” His gray eyes gleamed in the lamplight. “We don’t make any money here, yet we can’t go home. We are fugitives. They can’t hang you but once.”

“I need a drink,” said Cordell Rogers while the wide-eyed Mollie looked from one man to the other.

“By this time next week you could buy all the whiskey you want.” Battles pushed back his chair and rose. “Do what you will. I’m riding to Nogales tomorrow.” He smiled at Mollie and was gone.

Jeff Battles didn’t show up at the mine the next morning. Days passed and Mollie hoped he was gone for good. But one rainy night he showed up at the shack. He walked inside like he owned the place, lowered the heavy rain-splattered saddlebags from his left shoulder, poured out the contents. Gold, silver, and paper money spilled across the table while Mollie and Cordell Rogers stared, transfixed.

Battles opened the other side of the worn saddlebags and drew out a full bottle of Old Crow whiskey and a half dozen Cuban cigars.

“Nobody got hurt. There’s more money there than you’ll make in a decade in the Bonita Hoy.” He grinned broadly and said, “Have a drink and a cigar, Colonel. We’re Southern gentlemen again.”

The next time Jeff Battles rode north of the border, Cordell Rogers was with him. Mollie didn’t blame her father. She wasn’t angry that he had chosen to go on the planned holdup of the El Paso-to-Yuma stage.

But she
was
angry.

She was mad as a hornet that she was a girl and couldn’t ride with him.

Cordell Rogers became the gang’s leader on that very first trip north. He was the boss. All answered to him: Jeffrey Battles and the others from his war days—the quiet, aging Will Hurdman and the constantly bickering Steven Andrews and W. C. Petty. They willingly followed wherever he led.

The gang made a good living from robbing trains and banks and stagecoaches. Cordell Rogers’s conscience bothered him for only a short time. When he’d walked into the tar-paper shack and poured thousands of dollars onto the table before his awed daughter, that had gone a long way toward easing his guilt.

Now, three years later, he never gave it a second thought. For the past two years he and Mollie had lived in a huge hacienda nestled in the broken butte country of northern Mexico, not fifteen miles from the U.S. border. Rumor had it that the thirty-room palace had been built in the days of the conquistadores with gold from the Spanish throne.

So Cordell Rogers lived in total luxury in the isolated mansion with a full staff of servants, his old trusted friends at his side, a trio of loyal Mexican lieutenants, his beautiful young daughter safe in guarded seclusion, and more money than they could hope to spend in five lifetimes.

And whiskey whenever he wanted it.

And he wanted it often.

Rogers and his men were as adept at their profession as they had been at soldiering. Their reputation had quickly spread across Texas and the Southwest. Wanted posters boasted large rewards for the capture of any or all of the Rogers Renegades. Especially Jeffrey Battles. The San Antonio native, known now as “the Texas Kid,” had become something of a legend. People spoke of “the Kid” in hushed tones, and Battles enjoyed the notoriety.

Cordell Rogers—his supply of bourbon assured—and Jeffrey Battles had few complaints with life.

But on her eighteenth birthday, Mollie, pacing restlessly inside the opulent hacienda, was almost as unhappy as she had been back in the Hermosillo shack. She had less freedom than ever. Her father’s men lived in the compound that surrounded the main house. She couldn’t take a step without tripping over one of them.

Especially the Kid.

Now, as the summer dusk descended over the desert, Mollie bristled at the sight of Jeff approaching the hacienda alongside her papa. She had so wanted to celebrate her eighteenth birthday alone with her papa, but he’d insisted on inviting Jeff.

Mollie was further upset when she saw that her papa had been drinking. Heavily. She didn’t scold him, but her eyes snapped with annoyance when Jeff, slyly looking her up and down, said, “So you’re eighteen and all grown up.”

She was about to make a cutting reply when a mannerly Mexican servant appeared to announce that dinner was ready. Her healthy appetite overcoming her displeasure, Mollie grabbed her papa’s arm and guided him into the dining room.

“May I propose a toast,” said the Kid when they were seated. He lifted his goblet of Madeira to Mollie.

She gave him a withering look, but smiled when her papa unexpectedly poured a splash of Madeira into her glass.

“A toast is definitely in order,” agreed Cordell Rogers, slurring his words a little.

“To the most beautiful eighteen-year-old woman in the world,” said the Kid.

“Hear, hear,” said her papa, and they all drank.

Before Mollie could swallow the wine, the Kid slid a wrapped present before her.

“I’ve told you not to give me gifts,” Mollie snapped.

“Mollie, honey, where are your manners?” chided her papa. “You could behave a little more like a lady.”

Mollie snorted. “I’m no lady, and I don’t want to be a lady.” She ripped the paper open, stared frowning at the matched pair of ruby-encrusted gold combs resting on a bed of velvet.

“Your hair is the prettiest thing about you,” said the Kid. “Wear the combs in it … for me.”

Mollie glanced at her papa. He was smiling, totally approving of the Kid’s giving her such an expensive, personal, utterly feminine gift, as if she were his sweetheart. The thought made the wispy hair rise on the nape of her neck. She didn’t want to be the Kid’s sweetheart. She didn’t want to be pretty for him. She didn’t want combs and fans and frilly, feminine dresses. She didn’t want compliments or teasing or stolen kisses. Not from him. Not from any man!

“I won’t be needing the combs, Jeffrey,” Mollie announced, shoved back her chair and rose. She dashed out of the room with the two startled men staring after her.

“I’m sorry, Jeff,” Cordell Rogers apologized. “Mollie’s a stubborn girl.”

“She is,” said the Kid, grinning. “I had hoped she’d be grown up by now, start acting like a woman.”

Cordell Rogers shook his head. “She may never start behaving like a woman. I’ve bought her countless dresses and she’s never put one on.” He sighed heavily. “It’s my fault. My wife used to berate me for the way I raised Mollie. Said I was responsible for our daughter being as wild as a savage. I guess Sarah was right; I wanted a son, so I taught Mollie to ride and shoot a gun and … and …”He shrugged, fell silent.

Jeff Battles’s smile remained solidly in place. “She’ll grow up in time.” He turned serious then, said, “Promise me, Colonel, as her father, that I can have her one day.”

His eyes suddenly clouding, Cordell Rogers said, “Who else would want Mollie, thanks to her
bandito
father. Jesus God, Sarah would turn over in her grave if she knew….”

“I’ll marry Mollie,” said the Kid. “We’ll move down to Mexico City where she can be a fine lady like your wife would have wanted.”

Cordell Rogers nodded. “She’s yours, Kid. But it’s up to you to convince Mollie.”

“I will,” said the Kid with total confidence. “Count on it.” He reached out, touched the open velvet box. “She’ll change her mind about the combs, you’ll see. They’ll sure look pretty in her hair.”

Upstairs in her bedroom, Mollie anxiously bolted the heavy carved door. She then hurried across the room to close the rows of slatted shutters opening to the balcony. All portals secured, she went about blowing out all the lamps, leaving only the one atop her dressing table aglow.

Standing before the dresser, Mollie carefully studied herself in the gilt-trimmed mirror. Running her slender fingers through the long golden hair cascading around her shoulders, she thought about the ruby-encrusted combs. And of the presumptuous man who had given them to her.

Temper rising, Mollie impulsively unbuttoned her tight breeches. Muttering to herself that she would “fix the Kid,” she pulled off her boots, assuring her reflection, “I’ll show him how much I need hair combs!”

She removed her tight buckskins and, kicking them aside, began unbuttoning her blouse. She stripped it off, tossed it to the floor. She stood there in the lamplight in her underwear. She drew a deep long breath and, from the clutter atop her dressing table, picked up a pair of embroidery scissors.

Taking a seat before the mirror, Mollie lifted a thick lock of gleaming gold hair. Without the slightest hesitation, she snipped it off two inches from her scalp. The pink tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, her violet eyes narrowed in fierce concentration, Mollie sat there in the blistering August heat and clipped and cut and snipped until all her glorious hair lay in discarded golden ringlets at her bare feet.

She stared at herself in the mirror and was pleased. Without her hair she felt certain she was plain, almost ugly. Good! She ran her fingers through the spiky, blunt-cut locks and began to laugh, imagining the reaction of her papa and the Kid. She laughed harder.

She had an even bigger surprise than the haircut in store for them both!

At dawn the Rogers Renegades assembled outside
the hacienda. Cordell Rogers stood on the broad flagstone patio and told them where they were going. Only he and the Kid knew. It was they who planned each robbery, they who chose the bank, the stage, the train, the paymaster that would be hit.

“It’s the First National Bank in Tucson, boys,” said Rogers. “The bank has some of the richest depositors in the state, and I expect to come away with at least two hundred thousand dollars. No need wasting any more time. Let’s go.”

Spurs jangling, cigar smoke swirling around their heads, the men headed for the stables and their saddled mounts. In high spirits, Cordell Rogers swung up into the saddle, wheeled his roan about, and saw a lone horseman approaching from the east. Backlit by the rising sun, the rider galloped directly toward the mounted men.

“Who the hell is …” Cordell Rogers’s words trailed away and he stared, puzzled. “Who goes there?” he shouted, squinting. “Identify yourself!”

Face concealed beneath a low-pulled hat brim, the rider galloped straight at Cordell Rogers. Waiting until the big bay drew up alongside Rogers’s roan, the silent rider yanked firmly up on the reins. The stallion reared up on its hind legs and whinnied, but the rider easily stayed in the saddle.

When the beast’s front hooves again struck the ground, Mollie laughed and shouted gleefully, “Papa, you thought I was a man!”

“Mollie?” Rogers eyes widened in disbelief.

“Yes, it’s Mollie.” She flashed him a mischievous grin. “You didn’t know me, did you?”

“Well, no … you’re not on your Appaloosa, and your hat’s covering your—”

“It covers nothing, Papa,” Mollie said, whisking off her Stetson.

“God in heaven!” roared Cordell Rogers, dumbstruck. “You’ve cut off all your hair! You’ve ruined yourself. You look like a … a …”

“A man?” She finished for him and laughed. “That’s what you were going to say, Papa? You’re right. I can ride with the Renegades and no one will know I’m a woman, not even without my hat.”

“Ride with the …?” Rogers’s face suffused with color and his eyes flashed green fire. “You get up to the hacienda this minute, young lady! I forbid you to—”

Interrupting, Mollie said, “I can outride and out-shoot any of your men.”

“That has nothing to do with it, damn it! You’re a woman, and—”

“It has everything to do with it, damn it!” Mollie argued. “I am eighteen and I refuse to be punished any longer for being born a female!” Her violet eyes sparkled, and her stubby blond hair gleamed in the rising sun as she reined her bay about and laid her big roweled Mexican spurs to him. The stallion shot away as Mollie shouted over her shoulder, “What are you waiting for, Renegades? Let’s ride!”

“Damn it to hell, Mollie Louise Rogers, I’ve a good mind to turn you over my knee and—come back here! I’ll be a son of a …” Cordell Rogers cursed and hollered and threatened.

It did no good. Mollie couldn’t hear him. She was too far away and she was laughing too loudly.

His shock and anger quickly subsiding, Rogers looked after the slender mounted figure with the butchered blond hair and began to smile. His beautiful, headstrong daughter possessed the same eruptible passions that he had in his youth. Her violet eyes were lusty with life, and from the time she was old enough to think for herself, she had tolerated forced rules, but never fully submitted to anyone. Not to him. Not to her mother. To nobody. “Hell, Kid,” he said, grinning as he turned to the younger man, “I can’t do anything with her. I don’t believe any man can.”