Give My All to Jessie (Third in Outlaw Series)

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

After two days of traveling, the duo found themselves riding into Two Finger Gulch. Langley wasn't sure what he'd been expecting from a town with such a silly name but it certainly was the fancy display of money that Two Finger Gulch tuned out to be.

Everything glimmered and shone—including the fancily dressed gentleman and ladies strolling down the road with top hats, canes and parasols. Jessie had told him that this was a layover town for folks traveling by both stagecoach and train. Passengers could enjoy a night off of their mode of transportation and enjoy a night of sleep in any of the vast hotels or they could unwind at a number of saloons—including the Blue Eagle which had a door entry fee of two dollars and boasted of having the best stud, draw and pharaoh games in the state.

Langley's eyes flew everywhere at once as they entered the livery. This hotel for horses was nicer than most of the hotels that Jessie and Langley had stayed in so far during their trip!

"Holy hell..." he mumbled. "I've never seen anything like this."

"It is something," Jessie agreed. "Pa and I were here once before—it's hard for folks like us to blend in."

"Yeah, I can understand," Langley muttered, wiping at a dirt stain on his black trousers and noticing the tears in his sleeve.

He paid the stable hand for the keep of their horses and tossed in a few extra cents to store their saddlebags and supplies. Langley frowned as he and Jessie stepped back outside. "Now what?" he asked. "We don't even have enough money for a hotel room."

"How much do we have left?" Jessie asked.

"Seventy-five cents," Langley sighed. "We have a lousy seventy-five cents to our name."

Jessie winked. "I told you it was hard for our kind to fit in here but not impossible. You just have to know where to look. I happen to know a place where we can earn some quick money and be able to get a big fancy room with a nice soft bed."

Langley followed after Jessie even as a wave of anticipation passed over him. She had said a room—not two rooms. Langley knew that tonight would be the night. Unless she flat refused him, Langley was going to make love to Jessie tonight.

His imagination was painting all kinds of images in his head, each better than the last. He realized they were approaching a fancy white church with stained glass windows and a large bronze cross on a steeple that seemed to stretch up into the sky.

Langley cleared his throat. "Uh... I don't think a church is the right place to make quick money."

They walked through the iron gate and Langley glanced at the nearby gravestones. Call it an overactive imagination, but Langley had always been afraid of graveyards. All he could ever think of when walking through one was that a rotten hand was going to come bursting from the earth, wrap its long fingers around his ankle and drag him down to hell....

"You okay there, tough guy?" Jessie teased, sparing a sidelong glance his way. "You've taken on a few of the toughest outlaws there were and are still alive to talk about it. Don't tell me you're afraid of a couple of dead guys."

"I'm not afraid of anything," Langley countered with a false bravado that had Jessie laughing.

Jessie led him to the back of the church and to a set of wooden cellar doors. They were going under the church? Jessie kicked the wooden door several times and a small hatch was opened to reveal a set of brown eyes.

"Password?" a male voice asked gruffly.

Jessie pulled her gun, cocked it and pointed it down at those brown eyes which were now a good deal wider. "Open the door or I'll shoot you in the face."