The Outlaw Read online

  The Outlaw

  By

  JoAnn Ross

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Epilogue

  "Who is he?"

  The familiar indigo eyes of the man in the picture were so vivid Noel could almost feel the black fire emanating from them. It was him! The man from her dream. The man whose touch had proven both soothing and arousing at the same time.

  "Wolfe Longwalker. Whiskey River's most famous—or infamous—citizen. He was hanged as an outlaw." The shop owner answered Noel's question.

  Into Noel's mind came the image of a single figure seated tall astride a horse, his hands tied behind his back, an ugly noose around his neck.

  "He was also a writer," the woman continued, and pointed to some of Wolfe's books. Noel picked up several to buy, when another book caught her eye. "Rogues Across Time." She read the gold inlaid lettering out loud. When she turned a page and came face-to-face with Wolfe's glowering visage, she imagined she could feel the book growing warm in her hand.

  "I'll buy it," she said. And suddenly, very clearly, she saw Wolfe smiling at her….

  Dear Reader,

  Over the years, I've received letters asking when I was going to write a book about Princess Noel, the youngest daughter in my Montacroix royal family. I always answer that I plan to do that, as soon as I find the right man for her.

  When I first saw Wolfe Longwalker, seated astride a horse in the rain, with a rope around his neck, rigidly refusing to surrender to his captors, even at the moment of his hanging, I knew I'd finally found the man capable of teaching this intelligent woman, whom the paparazzi has dubbed The Ice Princess, the true meaning of passion.

  In The Outlaw, I had the unique opportunity to return to the scene of my January MIRA title, Confessions. Set in the remote, rugged Arizona mountain area, this book kicks off my MEN OF WHISKEY RIVER series.

  I envision Whiskey River as a romantic, magical place. A place where anything can happen. (And often does.) A town like Brigadoon, hidden in the mists, just waiting to be discovered.

  I hope you enjoy Princess Noel's wild, out-of-time adventure in historical Whiskey River. I also hope you'll visit again, when the witch of Whiskey River starts brewing up trouble. And romance. The MEN OF WHISKEY RIVER return this fall.

  Happy reading!

  I love hearing from readers. You can write to me at HC 31, Box 428, Happy Jack, AZ 86024, E-mail to [email protected] or visit on my Home Page on the World Wide Web at http://www.comet.net/writers/joann

  ISBN 0-373-25685-X

  THE OUTLAW

  Copyright © 1996 by JoAnn Ross.

  ROGUES

  THE COWBOY

  Kristine Rolofson

  January 1996

  THE PIRATE

  Kate Hoffmann

  March 1996

  THE OUTLAW

  JoAnn Ross

  May 1996

  THE KNIGHT

  Sandy Steen

  July 1996

  THE HIGHWAYMAN

  Madeline Harper

  September 1996

  THE OUTLAW

  The folklore of the Wild American West could not be complete without the outlaw. Portrayed as romantic heroes of the "wild, wild West" in dime novels and the Police Gazette (reportedly read by half the male population in America in the late nineteenth century), their violent exploits blaze on in the ballads and myths of a nation.

  Wolfe Longwalker was the illegitimate son of an Irish-American cavalry officer and a Navajo mother who died after giving birth to him on the tribe's notorious forced walk to imprisonment at Fort Sumner. Wolfe eventually obtained revenge against his father's people. Not with bows and arrows, but with the formidable power of the white man's words. His stories of Indian life in the Arizona territory became worldwide bestsellers.

  Despite his literary success, he was later convicted of murdering a family of white settlers—a crime dubbed "The Massacre at Whiskey River" by the Gazette—and sentenced to death by hanging. Before the sentence could be carried out, he escaped, eluding his captors for twelve days. But in the end, he was recaptured. And hanged.

  Prologue

  Arizona Territory, 1896

  It rained the day they hanged Wolfe Longwalker.

  It was a cold spring afternoon, with an icy rain falling unceasingly from a darkened sky. Thunder boomed from anvil-shaped gunmetal-gray clouds. The dirt road leading through Whiskey River had turned to thick mud—a red mire that smelled like horse dung and made a loud sucking sound as boots slogged through it.

  Normally, such filthy weather would have kept the population of the isolated western town indoors drinking whiskey and brawling in the saloons or seeking pleasures of the flesh in the town's bordellos. But it wasn't every day a horse-stealing, murdering half-breed was going to be hanged.

  Not even in Whiskey River.

  The fact that Longwalker had been a thorn in the community's hide—or, as one drunken cowhand pointed out succinctly, another more vital anatomical part—made the day even more special.

  The public hanging was being treated as a holiday. The bank and the general store were closed, as were the mines and sawmills, so workers could attend the hanging. Reporters for newspapers throughout the territory were on hand to record the event. The militia, having traveled from the territorial capital of Prescott, marched in precise formation through the muddy street.

  The short, uneven expanse of warped and weathered boardwalk had been claimed by the women: ranchers' wives in bright, flower-sprigged calico skirts and starched white shirtwaists; farmers' and miners' wives in rough, pigeon-brown homespun; and prostitutes decked out in shiny, lace-trimmed satin and feathered hats all stood shoulder to shoulder in an atypically feminine unity.

  "It's such a damn waste," one hennaed fallen dove complained. Crying openly, she blew her nose on a man's red-and-white bandanna.

  Although no one answered, more than one so-called respectable female was seen surreptitiously dabbing her eyes with the corner of a lace-trimmed handkerchief.

  The rain continued to fall.

  The man responsible for the large turnout sat rigidly astride his blood bay mare, his hands tied behind his back. Wolfe Longwalker was wearing the same clothing he'd been wearing when captured two days earlier—buckskin trousers and a pair of bark-brown boots. His long jet hair was held back from his forehead with a red cotton headband. Rain ran in rivulets down a rigidly muscled chest the hue of burnished Arizona copper.

  Normally, in bright sunlight, Wolfe's eyes were a dark blue, betraying his cavalryman father's Irish roots. On this overcast day, they appeared as black and hard as obsidian.

  Appearing disinterested in the proceedings, Wolfe kept those dark eyes directed straight ahead as he looked out across the fierce red landscape where the Dineh—The People, his people—had once roamed with impunity.

  A familiar cold anger flowed through his veins. As if sensing Wolfe's mood, the mare's nostrils flared, but she remained obediently still.

  "Any last words?" a man sitting on a buckskin gelding asked.

  Jess Buchanan, the territorial marshal who'd finally succeeded in tracking Wolfe down, was wearing a yellow oilskin slicker. Water streamed off the brim of his fawn Stetson, dripped from his thick handlebar mustache. Beneath the slicker, he was wearing a Colt .45 Peacemaker in a hand-tooled leather holster; in his hands he was holding a thick, braided rawhide rope.

  Wolfe did not turn his gaze away from Dook' o' oosliid, one of the four mountains that marked the boundaries of the sacred Navajo earth.

 
"It is a waste of breath to talk to a coyote." He refused to look at his captor.

  Despite the chill in the air, Buchanan's cheeks flushed a hot crimson, as if with fever. "Then you'd better start praying to the Great Spirit, Longwalker," he growled as he attempted to slip the heavy rope over Wolfe's dark head.

  The mare snorted and nervously sidestepped. Cursing, the lawman tried again as the mostly drunk rabble began chanting its impatience with the delay.

  "Quit jawin' and hang the murderin' Injun," one cowboy called out. He spit a long stream of Bull Durham juice into the mud.

  "Send the son-of-a-bitch savage on his way to the happy hunting ground," a miner shouted. That suggestion received a burst of hearty laughter.

  As the lawman managed to tug the noose tight, one woman wasn't laughing. "Don't you get any idea of droppin' by my place the next time you're in need of female comfort, Jess Buchanan," the redheaded whore yelled out. "Because the Road to Ruin is off limits to you from now on." Despite the raw emotionalism in Belle O'Roarke's voice, her threat only earned another round of male chuckles.

  A drum rolled.

  The uniformed troops drew their sabers and presented arms.

  The marshal gave the rope an experimental tug. Satisfied that it would hold, he raised a black whip and slapped the mare's rump. Hard.

  At the same time the whip struck the horse, a rolling clap of thunder boomed, echoing against the slate clouds like a hundred—a thousand—deerskin drums. A crack of lightning split the sky above the snow-covered sacred peak of Dook' o' oosliid. Whinnying her distress, Wolfe Longwalker's bay reared up on her hind legs. Then she took off running.

  1

  Montacroix, 1996

  The alabaster wedding-cake spires of the Giraudeau palace jutted through the silvery morning fog surrounding it, like Brigadoon rising from the mists. The scene, which had graced innumerable postcards, was familiar the world over. Set on an island in the middle of the sapphire waters of Lake Losange, the palace appeared both glamorous and serene at the same time.

  But as so often was the case, appearances were deceiving. Inside the palace, the mood was anything but serene as staff and family bustled about, preparing for a royal wedding.

  "Well? What do you think?"

  Uncharacteristically on edge, Princess Noel Giraudeau de Montacroix surveyed her reflection in a gilt-framed mirror. The wedding gown was a floor-length tube of ivory satin; the refined sweetheart neckline and the long, pointed sleeves were adorned with white embroidery. A lace veil was held in place atop the princess's pale blond head by a pearl tiara.

  Sabrina Giraudeau, Noel's sister-in-law and friend, chewed on a scarlet fingernail and treated the princess to a judicial look.

  "I think it needs something," she said finally. "Some ruffles, maybe. A few flounces. At least a decent train."

  Noel laughed. "I should have known better than to ask for fashion advice from a woman who got married in a hoopskirt."

  "Hey, it worked for Scarlett O'Hara. Besides, Burke liked it." An attractive color rose in Sabrina's cheeks as she recalled exactly how much her husband had also enjoyed taking the voluminous dress off her once they were alone after the day-long celebration of their public nuptials.

  "Really, Noel," she said, returning to the discussion at hand, "your usual conservative style is fine for the office. But hopefully, a woman gets married only once in her life. You should pull out all the stops. Like I did."

  Indeed, Sabrina Darling's marriage could have come from the pages of a fairy tale. It had all the proper ingredients—a dashing prince charming, a beautiful, but impoverished bride and enough glitz and glamour to have people still talking more than three years later.

  "Burke is regent," Noel said. "Your son will rule Montacroix some day. I'm merely the youngest Giraudeau daughter."

  "You're still a princess," Sabrina argued. "And you owe it to the people of Montacroix to show up at your wedding dressed like one."

  "That's unfair," Noel protested laughingly.

  Everyone in the family knew Noel's deep-seated sense of royal obligation. All her life, the princess had tried to live up to other's expectations. She'd dedicated herself to the tenets of duty and loyalty to her family. And country.

  While her older sister, Chantal, had been jet-setting all over the world, Noel had been in school in London and Paris and Geneva, earning degrees in business and public policy.

  While her half brother, Prince Burke, had been heading up the Montacroix polo team, winning Grand Prix races and being voted the most eligible bachelor in the western world, Noel had labored as head of her country's social services agency, struggling to find ways to maintain Montacroix's generosity to its citizens while remaining competitive in a global business climate.

  It was not that she didn't enjoy her work, because she did. And it wasn't that she envied Chantal or Burke. The truth was, Noel had always been more than happy to leave the spotlight to her two more famous siblings.

  The only reserved member of one of the world's most glamorous families, there were times when Noel almost felt like a changeling, left on the palace's marble doorstep by mistake.

  "You need more oomph," Sabrina pressed her case.

  "Oomph?" Although her native language was French, Noel's English, thanks in part to her American mother, was impeccable. She normally had no trouble with idioms, but this term was unfamiliar.

  "Pizzazz. You know, pow!"

  "Ah." Noel nodded. "Pizzazz."

  Noel decided that single word described Sabrina to a tee. Dressed in a crimson cashmere sweater, matching leggings and fringed red leather boots, the former Broadway actress reminded her of Will Scarlet.

  "I'm not suggesting that you wear thirty pounds of beading and crinolines like I did, Noel, honey." Sabrina's voice carried a honied south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line accent. "But you really should jazz up that dress just a little."

  She grinned, then played her trump card. "Just think of Bertran's face when you walk down the aisle looking like something out of Sleeping Beauty."

  The idea was enough to make Noel smile. "He wouldn't recognize me."

  Noel's fiancé, Bertran Rostand, was vice president of the Montacroix Bank. He was also a very distant cousin. And her best friend.

  Stifling a slight sigh, Noel continued to study her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror and did her best to ignore the vague misgivings about her dress and her upcoming marriage.

  Displaying a tenacity that had always served her well, Sabrina was not ready to give up. "You know Chantal would agree with me."

  "Probably. But my sister and I are different."

  Now, that, Noel considered, was definitely an understatement. Once described by a particularly ebullient society columnist as the quintessential fairy-tale princess, Chantal's jet-set existence had brought her fame and scandal prior to her marriage.

  These past years, however, the ultraglamorous princess who'd once kept an entire army of paparazzi working overtime to keep up with her, was happily settled down with her husband and two children in Washington, D.C. Caine O'Bannion, Chantal's husband, a former Secret Service agent, operated a private security firm, while Chantal continued to gain acclaim as a gifted artist.

  "Oh, that reminds me," Sabrina said, reaching into a pocket of her sweater, "you received a letter from Chantal today. Your mother asked me to bring it up to you."

  Grateful for an excuse to move the subject away from her admittedly restrained wedding gown, Noel opened the cream envelope. "It's an invitation. To her latest fund-raiser."

  Along with her painting, Chantal had continued her fund-raising efforts for her beloved Rescue the Children foundation. It had been on such a tour to the United States that Chantal had met the handsome American hero who would become her husband.

  "She's sponsoring a gallery showing of unknown western artists." Noel skimmed the invitation. "The week after my wedding."

  "It's too bad you're going to be on your honeymoon," Sabrina said, knowing of Noel's fascina
tion with the American West.

  "The timing could certainly be better." Noel wished she could get more excited about the planned cruise through the Greek Isles.

  For the cover of the engraved invitation, Chantal had selected a woodcut sketch depicting a group of Indians on horseback watching a settler's log cabin burn. The title read: Massacre at Whiskey River. As she studied the drawing in more detail, although it made no sense at all, Noel could hear drunken laughter, the faint sound of a piano, the clatter of poker chips. She could smell cigar smoke and beer and whiskey. And overly sweet perfume.

  "Noel?"

  Noel belatedly realized that Sabrina had been talking to her. "I'm sorry." Slightly disoriented, she shook her head in an attempt to clear it.

  "Are you all right?"

  The prudent thing to do was to lie. Noel opened her mouth to assure her sister-in-law that she was fine, when an image shimmered in her mind's eye. A misty picture of a single figure, seated tall astride a horse, his hands tied behind his back. Her fingers tightened on the edges of the engraved invitation.

  "No." Noel barely recognized her own faint, shaky voice. "Sabrina, something's very, very wrong."

  "Not with the dress."

  It was not a question. Just last month, Noel had told Sabrina and Burke that their dream of parenthood would soon be realized. Two days later, they'd received a telephone call from their attorney, informing them that an infant boy had just been born in a Montacroix hospital. A child whose young, unmarried mother was making the ultimate maternal sacrifice in putting him up for adoption.

  If she'd harbored any doubts about Noel having allegedly inherited the gift of second sight from her Gypsy grandmother, that day Sabrina had definitely become a believer.