The Renegades: Cole by Genell Dellin

into the saddle. Now the whole town would be after her for a cow thief.
    She ignored Virgil and looked at Cole.
    “How can that be?” she called to him over the noises of the cattle and the men’s voicesurging them along. “How’d they get in with ours?”
    He shrugged.
    “They must’ve had some help.”
    Virgil laughed.
    “Must have,” he said, and spat another stream of tobacco juice.
    He glared at Aurora with a triumphant gleam in his eye. Then he stood up in his oxbow stirrups.
    “Cut ‘em outta there, boys!” he yelled. “Them’s mine an’ she ain’t gittin’ away with ‘em!”
    Aurora was relieved to see Frank move in smoothly to separate the tight little knot of strange cattle from the herd. He could do it without scattering any.
    “She’s a cattle thief, I tell you, and no tellin’ what else!” Virgil yelled. “If’n’ she ain’t up to somethin’ underhanded, how come she’s hired a shooter to side her? This here famous man my boys have got their sights set on is none other than Cole McCord!”
    Interested murmurs came from the townspeople, and they stretched their necks to see better. Virgil waved one bony arm in the air for them to draw in closer.
    “This ‘ere is how come a petticoated pretty little thing is atrailin’ a herd,” he yelled, looking all around, into one face and then another. “She’s a-figurin’ she can build up her stock on the way t’ Texas and if’n’ she gets caught won’tnobody have the stomach fer hangin’ a woman.”
    Hanging! The word rang in her ears. Now he was threatening to
hang
her if she didn’t give him some of her stock? A rustler given to blackmail?
    “This is nothing but a plot to make me look bad,” she said loudly to the varied faces looking up at her. “I did
not
steal his cattle. He put them in my herd himself.”
    No one answered, no one expressed an opinion one way or the other. That silence made her nervous.
    “I say we hold this herd and hang this little vixen!” Virgil shouted.
    His shotgun still trained on Cole made her even more nervous. It was wobbling as Virgil warmed to his speech—he might even fire it without intending to.
    The townspeople’s curious eyes were staring holes in her, and her face began to burn in spite of the cold seeping through her insides. She felt a terrible need to move her horse closer to Cole’s, but she was frozen in place. Oh,
why
didn’t he do something? But what could he do without getting himself killed before her eyes?
    The cattle kept shuffling by, moving more quickly now, pushed from behind by the ones that had been bottled up in the cut. The riders were urging them on, too, anxious to get them out of the town.
    Panic threatened, Aurora’s heart raced, and her strained nerves made her arms tingle. WasVirgil letting the whole herd go? Did he not want several head for toll, after all? Was the whole purpose of this ridiculous charade to jail her or
hang
her and Cole?
    “What say?” Virgil shouted. “I reckon we oughtta save the folks down the road some cattle and some trouble and take these two off’n’ the trail.”
    His companions shouted agreement, and Aurora thought some of the townspeople did, too. She searched their faces, trying to read them.
    “She’s rich,” Virgil yelled. “And she’s out to rob and steal from the poor! I’m tellin’ ye …”
    His raspy voice shut off abruptly, then a shot cracked, followed instantly by the shattering roar of a shotgun blast.
    Shy Boy half-reared, but Aurora jerked him around anyway, frantically trying to find Cole, already weak in the knees from what she might see.
    He was locked with Virgil in a one-armed struggle for the shotgun, which he immediately won by kicking the skinny man out of the saddle. His other arm wasn’t wounded, either, she saw with relief; it held his six-shooter, which he was firing at Virgil’s man behind him.
    “Aurora!” he yelled.
    He was wheeling his horse toward her as he called, using only his legs