Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(27)

I’m burning inside, ready to erupt like a volcano, but I give him another hard stare, then I reach up and tip my hat to the chief and then to Gareth. “You gentlemen have a good night,” I say.

“Nice to meet you, Rory,” Gareth says sarcastically. “Give Ariana my best.”

I turn back. “By the way,” I say, “when does your daddy get back into town, Gareth? I might have some questions for the two of you.”

He clearly doesn’t like the sound of that but keeps up his tough-guy act.

“Not till next week,” he says. “Y’all come with your questions. We ain’t got nothin’ to hide.”

Working my way back through the crowd, I can see Ariana looking my way, but I also see a back exit. I push through it, hoping it won’t set off an alarm, and step outside, startling two guys huddled together by the Dumpster. I’m not sure what they were about to do. Smoke a joint maybe? Deal drugs? Maybe something more innocent.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I say. “I needed some fresh air.”

“No problem,” one of them says, and I realize it’s the football coach, Alex Hartley. “We were just headed back inside.”

When I’m alone in the dark night, I try to calm my fury before I take the stage again. I’m a Texas Ranger. But the truth is, I’m no match for an Army Ranger trained in lethal hand-to-hand combat—not without my gun.

The back door pushes open, and Ariana steps out.

“You okay?” she says, her face genuinely concerned.

“You were right,” I tell her. “I shouldn’t have gone over there.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” I say. “He just got under my skin is all. The Rangers have an official name for guys like him.”

“What’s that?”

“Asshole.”

She and I share a good laugh. Before she can ask any more questions, Dale pokes his head out the door.

“Hey, cowboy, we got one more set. This crowd’s getting restless.”





Chapter 35



WHEN WE START playing again, I’m not feeling it, and neither is the audience. My musical mistakes and dropped lyrics are emptying the dance floor.

“You all right?” Dale says to me between songs. “We’re losing the crowd.”

I tell him I’m fine, but I’m not. Then I see Gareth standing in the back, watching me, his arms clasped behind his back like he’s standing at attention all the while, as my dad would say, grinning like a possum eating shit. I put my hand over the mic and tell Dale and Walt I want to try something a little different.

I pluck at the guitar and start singing the country-and-western classic “Big Iron” by Marty Robbins. In the original recording, released as a single in 1959, the beat is fast under Robbins’s signature melody. The year before he died, Johnny Cash recorded a slow, haunting cover, and that’s the version I attempt.

The crowd goes quiet and listens—it’s that kind of song. The lyrics tell the story of a vicious killer named Texas Red and the gunfighter who rides into a small town to bring in the outlaw, dead or alive. The original lyrics describe the stranger as an “Arizona Ranger,” but I switch Texas for Arizona, which gets a few whoops and whistles from the crowd. Otherwise, they’re caught up in the performance, listening to the story, waiting to see what happens next.

Modern country songs typically repeat a chorus around a couple of verses, but old songs like this tell full narratives in several verses with a lot of lyrics to remember. But as a kid I used to listen to this song with my dad, and I know it by heart.

When I get to the part in the story where the two gunfighters face off, I turn my gaze to Gareth McCormack, who spits and stares back at me. In the song, the townsfolk expect Texas Red to kill the stranger, but the gunfighter is so fast that Texas Red is dead on the ground before he can “clear leather.”

I don’t stop staring at Gareth until I strum the last notes. The crowd goes wild, clapping and whistling.

“I’ll be damned,” Dale says. “You got ’em back.”

I grin and say, “I’ve got another idea.”

I tell them I want to try a song that none of us has ever played.

“You think they’ll go for it?” Dale says. “This don’t seem like that kind of crowd.”

“I think we can pull it off,” Walt says. “I’ll play drums. Rory, you play lead guitar. Dale, you just try to keep up.”

I turn back to the audience and find Ariana in the crowd.

“This one goes out to a friend of mine,” I say.

Then we dive into an impromptu country version of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”

The audience loves it. People dance and throw their hands into the air, singing along so loudly that no one notices when I mess up the lyrics a few times. Ariana sings along, too, smiling ear to ear and holding her beer up like she’s at a rock show.

I’m having so much fun that I don’t realize until the song is over that Gareth and his goons have left.

Whether the Marty Robbins song got under his skin or he just couldn’t stand to see the people in his town rocking out to my music, something drove him out of here.

It’s not much, but I consider it a moral victory.