Oklahoma Wedding Bells. Carol Finch
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captain might not play along the way Mr. Tremain did.”
“You could send Tremain to propose for you,” Josie suggested.
Her friend’s shoulders slumped in relief and she bobbed her head. “I hope he’ll agree to speak in my stead, because I’d rather not face Holbrook. I hope your pretend fiancé can square it with mine.” There was a long pause as she stared anxiously at Josie in the gathering twilight. “Do you think we might have acted too irrationally with this scheme of desperation?”
“Most likely,” Josie admitted. “But what’s done is done. Hopefully, we have resolved the problem of so many unwanted proposals.”
Her friend inhaled a bracing breath, squared her shoulders, then spun on her heel. “I’ll go ask Tremain to be the bearer of surprising news.”
“It’ll probably cost you,” Josie called after her. “It’s what you should expect when you bargain with a wily horse trader.”
Sol escorted Josie’s assailant into camp, intending to tie him up, retrieve Outlaw and gather the horses he had stopped by to sell at the settlement. Damn good thing he had arrived when he did, he mused as he glared at his unkempt prisoner. Sol recognized the man as one of the six gunmen he’d seen loitering around the Saddle Burr Saloon earlier in the day.
“What’s your name?” he demanded sharply.
“None of your business,” the shaggy-haired hooligan said with a scowl.
“I’m making it my business,” Sol snapped. “You tried to molest my fiancée, and we both take offense to that.”
Fiancée? Damn, that sounded odd. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected to have one of those—ever. He knew absolutely nothing about dealing with females, especially one as high-spirited and quick-witted as Josephine Malloy.
“If that hellion is yer fiancée you shoulda kept closer tabs on her,” the attacker snorted.
Sol scoffed. How many desperadoes who blamed him for their shortcomings had he encountered over the years? More than he cared to count. The bastards never wanted to own up to their sins and transgressions.
“You go near Josephine again and I’ll shoot you a couple of times,” he growled threateningly. “If you try to retaliate against her for fighting back, I’ll slit your throat. If you touch her, you’re a dead man. Do you understand me?” He stared at the hombre with fierce intensity. “And make no mistake, you won’t be the first man I’ve killed, and you won’t be the last. Now … what’s your name?”
The defiant ruffian thrust out his stubbled chin and clamped his swollen lips shut.
Sol untied one of the horses he had for sale, then stabbed his forefinger at the prisoner, silently ordering him to climb aboard bareback. Scowling, the man mounted up, then swore foully when Sol coiled a rope around his neck, tied it to his wrists, then hooked it around the mount’s neck and belly.
“We have our own ways of dealing with men who mistreat women,” said a voice behind them.
Sol half turned to see the frizzy-haired, self-appointed leader of the rescue brigade, which had formed a semicircle behind him. “This man is headed for the stockade at the garrison,” Sol declared authoritatively. “This area is under martial law, and vigilante justice is prohibited here and everywhere else.” Damn, he sounded like a lawman, he realized. Sol told himself to watch what he said and how he said it in the near future.
The stocky man, whose face was covered with so much brown hair that he reminded Sol of a buffalo, lumbered forward to extend his hand. “Orson Barnes is my name. I guess you have a right to do as you see fit with this molester of women. And congratulations on your betrothal to Miz Malloy,” he added begrudgingly. “You are the envy of all the single men in camp. I’m surprised she changed her mind, though. When I proposed to her this morning she said she wasn’t ready to settle down anytime soon.”
Sol smiled faintly as he looked past Orson and noted that he was receiving plenty of annoyed glances from Josephine’s jilted suitors. The competition for a woman’s affection in these mostly male tent communities was fierce, he reminded himself. “I must’ve caught her at a weak moment.”
“Didn’t know she had any weak moments.”
Sol doubted she did, either.
“That’s a lot of woman you got there, Mr….?” Orson waited for Sol to fill in the blank.
“Tremain. I’m a horse trader.” He inclined his head toward his prisoner. “Do you happen to know this hombre by name?”
“Harlan Kane,” Orson replied. “He shares a tent with three other scruffy men on the north side of camp.”
“Do you know their names?” Sol questioned.
“Bernie Hobart, Wendell Latimer and Ramon Alvarez.” He rattled them off.
“You’d do well to mind your own business, too,” Harlan muttered threateningly at Orson, who shrugged, undaunted. “My friends might pay you a visit when you least expect it.”
Sol narrowed his gaze at his prisoner. No doubt threats of violence were this gang’s specialty.
“You want me to keep an eye on Miz Malloy until you get back from the fort, Tremain?” Orson volunteered as the crowd of men behind him dispersed.
“Good idea. Thanks,” he said as he mounted Outlaw. “I won’t be back tonight, so tell my fiancée to sleep with her pistol under her pillow and one eye open.”
When the man lumbered off to become Josie’s temporary protector, Sol headed west. He halted Outlaw when he saw Muriel scurrying toward him, waving her arms to flag him down.
“May I have a private word with you, Mr. Tremain?” she asked anxiously, panting to catch her breath.
“Sol,” he corrected. “Give me a minute to secure my prisoner.”
Smiling to himself, Sol dismounted. He had a pretty good idea what Muriel wanted. He had to hand it to these two spirited women; there was nothing passive about either of them. They didn’t sit and wait for the world to come to them, but grabbed the proverbial bull by the horns.
Sol predicted that any man who got tangled up with them would never experience a dull moment.
But hell, he wouldn’t know what a dull moment felt like, even if it walked up and slapped him in the face, Sol mused. He existed in a rough-and-tumble world where flying bullets, slashing knives and hellish weather conditions prevailed. Becoming engaged—even to a lively spitfire like Josephine—couldn’t be that bad … could it?
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