Love Only Makes It Work - Ch.1

The “Richer Express” rolled slowly and steadily along the sandy, desert track.  Mr. and Mrs. Richer and their son, Jack and their daughter, Amber were sitting happily in their coach, waiting for the small town of Chucksworth to come into view.
The Richer’s had become extremely rich within the last few weeks and were travelling in a brand new coach from Green Lake to Chucksworth, a small town down by the sea.  Mr. Richer had bought a large, wooden house in Chucksworth and the family were excited about the move and also for the chance of a new life.
The trip was slow and hot.  But the family was happy to wait, feeling nothing could go wrong.
But little did they know, they weren’t the only ones who were happy about the slow trip.
“We should be at Chucksworth in less than an hour kids,” Mrs. Richer said, looking at a map of the Texas coast line.
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we get there, Jack?” the little girl asked her brother.
“Well, the first I’m going to do is go out and spend some money!  ‘cause guess what?  We’ve got money to spend!” Their father cut in with a heavy western accent.
BANG!!! The coach suddenly came on an angle and the trip became bumpier as the horses pulling it started to panic.
BANG!!!  The whole coach tipped backwards, only being held up by the horses upfront.
“Holy balony!  What was that?!?” Mr. Richer cried in alarm.
“I think they were gun shots!” Mrs. Richer tried to explain.  Mr. Richer signalled the coachmen to stop the coach and Mr. Richer stuck his head out of the coach window.
“Who in tarnation would be shooting…” his voice trailed off.  What he saw before his eyes was a sight no Texan would ever want to see.  There was a lot of dust swirled up around the back of the coach made by the bullets but the outline of the horror was just seen.  As the dust settled, the image was confirmed.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll take what’s rightfully mine and be on my way,” a young woman’s voice spoke.
“Or I could just shoot you now and be done with it,” she said calmly.  She walked her black horse up to Mr. Richer’s head and landed the point of her pistol on his forehead, finger resting on the trigger.
“If you take our chest, we’ll have nothing left!” Mr. Richer exclaimed, his eyes watering up with fear, his bald head sweating.
BANG!!! There was another gun shot, the horses reared and started to bolt, pulling the broken coach along with it.
BANG!!! There was a crash behind them as the Richer family heard their entire family fortune land in the dirt.  As Mr. Richer fainted from fright, he just heard a horse’s ghostly neigh and saw the black figure of the woman rush past the window.
The horse of the robber galloped across the west, away from the coach’s hard sound of wood along dirt, as the broken wheels fell away and the back dragged along the ground.
The horse kept galloping, along with the most feared outlaw in all of Texas, Lie Ghost, riding atop and into the dusty haze of the Texas desert.
The memory of Mr. Richer’s scared face lingered in her head.
“If you take our chest, we’ll have nothing left!” he had said.
“Well now you know how I feel,” Lie Ghost said to the ghostly west.

No one knows how or why Natilie Barsmon became Lie Ghost.  She used to be such an honest and independent woman.  But one night and everything changed.  They called her Lie Ghost, because everyone used to call Lie for short.  But she became known as half phantom, as she robbed banks all around Texas.  She was suddenly there, did her business and was gone…just like a ghost.  So the name of Lie Ghost came to her and that she was called.  Every sheriff in Texas was after the outlaw and there was a 30,000 gold piece reward for whoever caught her first, that reward rising all the time.  
There’s no past, no present and no future of Lie Ghost…and that’s the way it will stay.