Wed to the Texas Outlaw Read Online Free PDF

saying, “Hell and damn!”
    â€œNo! This is highly irregular. I will not permit it.”
    Boone stood and faced the judge’s chamber. So did the deputy.
    All at once the door flew open and Judge Mathers strode out, his robe flapping like the black wings of doom.
    â€œA situation has come up, Walker,” he announced. He didn’t sit at his podium but he did pick up his gavel and point it at him. “If you help me out I’ll set you free.”
    Didn’t sound so bad to Boone, but his little lawyer bristled.
    â€œMy client refuses. I insist that you release him without putting him through this farce.”
    Melinda tipped her head to the side, the fine line etching her forehead reaching her hairline.
    â€œMay I speak, Your Honor?” Boone asked. “I reckon I ought to know what kind of help you need and why it’s got Mr. Smythe in a tizzy.”
    â€œNot a tizzy, but a bout of righteous indignation!” Smythe marched across the room and stood in front Boone with his hands on his hips, looking for all the world like a bristled bantam rooster protecting his oversize chick.
    It was damn hard not to admire the man.
    â€œYou may speak, sir.”
    â€œSir” coming from a judge...it made his neck tingle.
    â€œWhat kind of farce are we considering?” Not that it mattered much if it earned him his freedom.
    â€œI’m in a bind.”
    The judge set down his hammer and stepped down from his polished podium. Crossing the room, he gripped Boone’s shoulder and looked up, holding his gaze along with his future.
    Whatever the judge wanted, Boone couldn’t imagine refusing, short of murder, that is. He was well and done with that in this lifetime.
    â€œI want you to capture an outlaw gang. If you do, you are a free man.”
    â€œMr. Walker.” Smythe, who had been pushed aside by the judge, elbowed his way back in. “I advise you to refuse. You ought to be a free man, by your own merits. The judge has no right to include you in his dangerous schemes.”
    â€œIt is within my power to set you free or to send you back to the penitentiary.”
    It didn’t matter what Smythe felt about the right and wrong of the situation. Boone knew that in reality, Mathers did have the authority to decide his future.
    â€œHow many outlaws in this gang?” he asked. Not that it mattered. He was not going to turn down his single chance to be a free man.
    â€œLast we knew, six. Shouldn’t be a problem for a man of your...talents, shall we say?”
    Rumor had cast him as a cold-blooded killer and the judge must believe it, otherwise he would not have offered him this opportunity. No one knew that the one killing he had committed had not been in cold blood. Liquor and ignorance had been running hot in his veins that night.
    But he did know outlaws. Had run with them most of his life.
    â€œI’ll take the job, Your Honor, in exchange for my freedom.”
    He only hoped that it would not be in exchange for his soul. It was hard to imagine how he was going to round up six outlaws, possibly hardened killers that folks believed he was, without bloodshed.
    Smythe let out a resigned sigh. “I’ll have this written up, everything neat and legal.”
    The judge nodded, his expression satisfied, then turned toward the podium and started up the steps. He pivoted suddenly.
    â€œOh, and you’ll need a wife.”
    * * *
    Surely the judge was making an absurd joke.
    Melinda cocked her head at him, searching for any sign of mirth.
    Unfortunately all she could detect was satisfaction dashed with a pinch of smugness.
    â€œA wife?” Boone gasped.
    Poor man, trading one shackle for another.
    From outside on the boardwalk a woman’s singsong voice drifted inside. She was reciting a child’s ditty and doing an off-key job of it.
    â€œHow the hell am I supposed to capture outlaws and protect a woman while I’m doing it?”
    The