Liz Ireland - Millie And The Fugitive

She sent him a look that let him know precisely how absurd his question was. “Most people in the area know what I look like.”

“Sure, but we’re not in the area. Ned Sparks didn’t suspect us — but maybe he hadn’t read the article yet.”

“That old man? He probably couldn’t see us well enough to identify us, anyway. Besides, he thinks we’re newly married.” She laughed. “And didn’t I play my part well? I thought you would have mentioned that.”

“You were fine,” Sam said, distracted. “You should have snatched that paper, though. That old guy might be better at putting two and two together than we give him credit for.” Sam took to his task more hurriedly. “We’ve got to put some distance between ourselves and this place.”

“Good,” Millie said cheerfully, “I’m anxious to get home.”

Sam stopped in the middle of tugging on the girth. At first, he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. But the breezy way she stood nearby, inspecting her fingernails, convinced him that he had. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Aren’t we going back to Chariton?” Her wide, dark eyes were unfazed by his gruff words. “Surely you see this changes everything. I believe you, Sam.”

“That’s wonderful,” he said. “What do you want, a medal?”

“No, I merely want to go home, and now there’s absolutely no reason for us not to. Why should we be gallivanting across the countryside, now that you have a witness who can vouch for what happened? This has all just been a big mistake, and I’m perfectly willing to tell everybody so.”

At first he was dumbfounded. Just a big mistake? Finally, after staring in shock for a few minutes at her standing in front of him, her face the picture of complacency, he bit out a bitter laugh. “Oh, now that’s a relief.”

Her thin shoulders squared proudly. “I should think it would be. I’m willing to explain to my daddy, the sheriff and even a judge if need be that there’s been a terrible miscarriage of justice. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

Sam couldn’t think of what to say. She really seemed to believe that all they had to do was go back and all would be forgiven. “Don’t you realize that your father has probably organized a posse to hunt me down?”

“Oh, yes!” Millie nodded. “The story mentioned that. Twenty men, it said.”

“Twenty men, all with orders to shoot to kill.”

“To kill?” The idea seemed to startle her. “But you’re innocent! I can tell them that.”

“Princess, you don’t understand. They’re going to shoot first and ask questions later. If we go within two counties of Chariton, you’ll be explaining my innocence over my carcass. It won’t be a pretty sight.”

Millie frowned distastefully. “My daddy is a reasonable man. Maybe if you sent me first—”

“Oh, no,” Sam said. “Knowing you, you’ll start talking, and soon as you know it you’ll be leading that posse straight to me.”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “But if you don’t go back, or at least send me, we’ll just have to keep running.”

“That’s right,” he said. “But it’s not going to be we, Princess. It’ll just be me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “And where will I be?”

“With friends,” Sam told her.

“Oh, thank heavens!” she said, obviously relieved. “I’ll go directly to Sally Hall. She’s a notorious gossip, but if I twist her arm and tell her how absolutely imperative—”

Sam shook his head in disbelief. “Are you completely addlebrained? I’m not sending you to your friends,” he informed her.

Millie blinked. “Oh.”

“Actually, Gus Beaver was a friend of my father’s, but I count him as one of my own, too.”

Her expression, so recently smug and self-assured, now flushed with confusion and just a touch of panic. “Where does this Gus Beaver live, if I might ask?”

“About a day’s ride from here.”

“In a town?” she asked, her voice growing shrill with concern.

“Nope. He’s about as isolated as can be. That’s why I’m taking you there—so you’ll stay put.”

“Well, I won’t go!” she said, coming forward, some of the old anger flashing in her dark eyes. “This is the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard of. Here I am offering—no, practically begging!—to tell the world that you’ve been wrongly treated, and your only reaction is to abandon me alone out in the middle of nowhere with some old man you barely know!”

“I trust Gus. And you won’t be alone—he’s married.”

“Why can’t I at least go with you? That way, if you’re caught, I could —”

“Because without you along I stand a better chance of not getting caught. You stick out, Millie. Somebody’s bound to notice you sooner or later. I’ll move faster on my own.”

“But as I was trying to explain, if you were apprehended, I could vouch for your character.”

Sam was anxious to get going again. “We don’t have time to stand here all day arguing, so listen tight. It’s not only my own hide I’m concerned about. I have a brother in jail, and he’s going to be swinging from a noose in eleven days if I don’t manage to bring in the man who really killed his wife. That’s going to be a hard feat in itself, but saddled with you, Princess, it becomes nigh on impossible. Do you want to be responsible for a man’s death?”

She drew back, stung by his blunt words. “I only wanted to help.”

He handed Mrs. Darwimple’s reins to her. “Fine. Just keep doing what I tell you to do.”

“You don’t have to treat me like a hostage anymore,” she assured him, grudgingly accepting the reins. “I’m on your side.”

Somehow, her words failed to give Sam the solace he suspected was intended. Having Millie Lively on his side was about as comforting as having an ant in his boot. And, to his way of thinking, about as helpful.

Millie wrinkled her nose and, with her fingertips, held her once pristine white ruffled pinafore away from her person. The garment was letting off a dreadful odor that she felt sure not all of the scrubbing in the world could get rid of.

She couldn’t really complain. It had been her idea that Sam teach her how to clean the fish he had caught that evening in a stream they had stopped near. She’d been so excited at the process of a square meal — not to mention a chance to prove how helpful she could be to Sam—that she had eagerly volunteered for the task. But that was before she’d known what a smelly, disgusting experience it would be. Sam could have at least warned her! Her poor pinafore, a mess from all the fish guts and the wounds Sam’s knife had inflicted on her own poor hands, had been rendered unwearable, not to mention unattractive to anything but a swarm of flies.

No doubt Sam would tell her to wash it a couple of times. But with what? The man had thought to pick up things like fishhooks and a knife and ammunition for his stolen arsenal at Ned Sparks’s store, but had he thought of soap? Millie had no intention of lugging a stinky, sticky pinafore around until she got to the Weavers’ or the Beavers’ or whatever their name was. She didn’t care if Sam did think only a spoiled rich girl would be so shameful and wasteful. It was her pinafore, and she was leaving it here.

She just wouldn’t let him know about it.

She scoped out the ground around her. Everywhere the earth was dry and hard, or covered with thick yellow grass she would never be able to claw through to bury the pinafore. The only thing left to do was stash the thing away under a bush and hope Sam didn’t see it. It was nearly dark, anyway, and they would leave well before sunrise. Chances of him spotting it and forcing her to bring it along were slim.

She wasn’t certain why Sam’s opinion suddenly mattered so much. Maybe it had something to do with the quavery feeling she got every time she looked into those hard gray eyes of his—like her knees were about to collapse underneath her. No man she’d known had been capable of making her feel so fluttery inside.

After hastily pushing the pinafore beneath some leafy branches of a low bush and covering it with loose dirt and dried leaves, she hurried back to their makeshift camp.

Sam barely glanced at her as she returned. He was hunched over the smallest campfire she’d ever seen, fanning what little smoke the burning embers of mesquite wood gave off by waving a leafy branch over the fish, which, after she had scraped and mutilated the poor thing, now seemed pathetically small. Hardly worth the effort, really.

“You were gone long enough,” he said.

Sam obviously didn’t want to admit it, but Millie was certain he was glad she believed his story. In fact, she had a vague hope that she was winning the man over. Didn’t that comment about her being gone a long time indicate he had been restless for her return?

The thought gave her a little lift. “A woman likes to have some time to herself, you know,” Millie said, plopping onto the ground nearby and arranging her filthy dress neatly around her.

“Woman?” he muttered, poking at their dinner. “You’re still a kid.”

“I am not. I’ll be twenty in December.”

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