Helldorado (17 page)

But she felt downright airy. Buoyant. Light as a dancer.

As she sat up in her canopied bed in her room at the Golden Slipper and raised her arms for a good, long stretch, her silky honey-blond hair falling back away from her face, she felt as though stardust were dancing off her eyeballs.

What had ratcheted up her emotions a notch was Miguel telling her all about his jagged back trail—a trail that might have led to a wasted life if his father and Sheriff Severin hadn’t come to his rescue—if you could call tossing him into a deep, dark mine pit rescuing him. But it had done the trick, though Louisa doubted that Miguel’s harrowing four days in the mine shaft had been his only savior.

The young man must have wanted to be saved from his life of crime. Otherwise, his “salvation” would probably have only turned him further away from the straight and narrow. Like a whipped and beaten dog, it would have made him even wilder, meaner. Untamable.

Deep down, he was good. And like Louisa and strong steel, he’d been tempered by hot fires. He was a good young man, with a tested soul, and he’d likely make some deserving young woman a good husband.

Maybe a woman like Louisa herself.

She lowered her arms. Her skin tingled with a subtle craving. The feeling amazed her because no man had ever had that effect on her besides Lou. But she felt it now, and as she did she tossed her covers back and stared down the length of her long, creamy, delicately curved body.

Lou had remarked that she had the body of a debutante, though he’d pronounced it “deb-ya-tent,” with accents on the first and last syllables. She was glad to see now that her debutante’s body showed only light patches of purple where Montoya had abused her. Even the cigar burns were healing, the former round scabs on her hips and thighs and belly showing only round patches of pink.

The ride up from Mexico in the clean, dry air, and all the spring water she and Prophet had drunk, and the wild food they’d shot and grubbed themselves had worked miracles.

After Mexico, she hadn’t given her body to Lou. She hadn’t been ready to give it to any man. But as she cupped her firm, pale breasts in her hands now, squeezing gently, feeling a response in her loins, she knew she was ready to give herself to Miguel. To have his hands on her, to feel his lips on hers, his body on hers, making her feel like a woman.

She wouldn’t rush it, though. And she wouldn’t let him rush it, either. She’d been raised to lay with a man only after she’d married him, and while her wild life on the bounty trail had rearranged her values as well as her priorities and given her appreciation for the satisfaction of her natural carnal desires when they were often all she had, the values she’d been raised with in Nebraska were still inside her, dormant but waiting for her to return to them and the life they were meant for.

A life with a good man and a family in a civilized town. A garden and a chicken coop. Wash days. Prayers before meals. Church on Sunday. Picnics along the river.

A rich life gentling into a seasoned, sweet old age.

Cupping one breast, she ran her other hand across her flat belly, groaning with the pleasure of lying naked in silk sheets. She’d scoffed at such luxury when she’d been on the hunting trail, unable to fathom a life not directed at hunting down killers, but now she found herself wanting to remain here.

Unfortunately, she had a job to do. Wishing she’d not been so eager to take the gold-guarding job—that was one time her knee-jerk defiance of Prophet’s often too-patronizing wishes had backfired—she swung her feet to the floor and walked naked over to one of the room’s two windows and threw the curtain back. She stared out the fine, unwarped glass into the blue-misty dawn of a clear mountain morning.

Birds chirped as they flitted over the rooftops of Juniper, which were limned in soft pale light while the southern ridge leaned away, its rocks and pines bathed in purple. Someone had been sweeping, but now the snicks of the broom stopped. Louisa looked down into the street to see a man standing outside the opera house straight ahead, holding a broom and grinning up at her.

She frowned, puzzled. Then, with a gasp and crossing her arms on her breasts, she stumbled straight back away from the window.

“Pervert,” she groused, feeling her face warm with anger.

There was one bad thing about living in town. She had to mind how she was attired when peering out her own window to see how the day was shaping up.

Hearing the snicks of the broom across the boardwalk fronting the opera house once more, Louisa went to the washstand, filled the marble basin with water, ducked her face in it, then straightened quickly, tossing her head from side to side and using her hands to rub the cold water up through her hair.

When she’d finished giving herself a quick sponge bath, she dressed in her freshly laundered clothes—cotton camisole, knee-length pantaloons, cotton socks, calico blouse, wool riding skirt, red neckerchief, and tan felt hat. She strapped her matched Colts around her waist, quick drew each to make sure there were no impediments, then grabbed her saddlebags and rifle and headed out.

As she made her way to the cafe on the first floor, she pondered her situation.

She shouldn’t have taken the gold-guarding job. She’d come here to settle down, and it probably looked odd for a girl being courted by the banker’s son to be guarding his gold shipments. She’d make this run today then resign her position and look into the job being offered at the haberdashery.

She wasn’t sure she really wanted to wait on persnickety old ladies in feathered hats and gauntleted gloves buying buttons, piping, bolt goods, and such, but she could manage it until something else came along. Maybe she’d rent a house—unlike Prophet, she had a rather large nest egg stashed away in her saddlebags—and raise chickens to sell to the Juniper eateries.

It was only five thirty, but the Golden Slipper’s cafe was open. Louisa was the day’s first customer. She had her usual pancakes, bacon, and tall glass of goat’s milk. She ordered two pancakes instead of her usual one. Normally, when on the trail—and she was always on the trail—she ate a minimal breakfast to keep her edge up. Sometimes just a handful of beans washed down with creek water.

Nothing like an overfilled belly to slow a bounty huntress down.

But since she was trying to settle down and become civilized again, she could do with more grub in her belly and even a little extra tallow on her bones. It wasn’t the fashion in town to be too thin. Besides, a civilized girl needed curves and the extra sustenance for the hard work it took to make a home.

When she finished her breakfast, she headed over to the livery barn behind the hotel to saddle her horse, then headed over to the Muleskinner’s Inn on the other side of the opera house that occupied much the same place in Juniper that churches did in Mexican pueblos—the center.

She saw Prophet as she approached his dingy hotel that looked as though the first strong wind would scatter it like stove sticks. He was sitting on the porch in a wicker chair, kicked back against the front wall, spurred boots crossed on the railing. His hat was tipped back, a quirley smoldered between his lips, and a stone coffee mug smoked in his right hand.

The bounty hunter’s despicable horse stood saddled at the hitchrack fronting the shabby place, twitching its ears that were frayed from many fights. Louisa’s brown-and-white pinto whinnied anxiously as it approached the hammer-headed dun, and Mean and Ugly swished his tail and gave a customarily belligerent snort.

Prophet sipped his piping-hot belly wash and watched Louisa draw her horse up just out of biting distance of his dun. The blond looked up at the building, gave her head a condescending little wag, and crossed her gloved hands on the saddle horn. “Sleep well?”

Prophet merely grunted. Louisa didn’t need to know he’d spent most of the night at the same hotel she had, in the company of the actress known as Gleneanne O’Shay, though he hadn’t slept a wink after the actress’s mysterious caller had left. After Sivvy, as he preferred to call her, had gone back to sleep, Prophet had dressed quietly and tramped over to the Muleskinner’s where he’d had a big breakfast in the shabby, makeshift kitchen before fetching his horse.

He’d considered asking Sivvy outright who the man in the hall had been, but his manhunter’s sixth sense had told him he wouldn’t get any straighter answer than the one he’d already gotten. And he didn’t want to tip his hand about his suspicions.

Damn perplexing, though. And disappointing, too. He liked Sivvy and had figured she liked him. She’d certainly
acted
like she’d liked him, judging by all the racket she’d made, writhing beneath him. Had she only been playing him? If so, for what reason?

The gold he’d be guarding was the only thing he could think of.

“How was Mr. Fancy-Pants?”

“You mean Miguel?”

“Is that his name? I forget.”

Louisa spread her pretty lips slightly as she stared over her horse’s head at Prophet. “He’s handsome.”

“Too much hair, you ask me. But I reckon girls like hair.” Prophet sucked his quirley, blew the smoke out over his boots. “He steal a kiss?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Not really. I was just makin’ conversation.”

Louisa glanced at Mean and Ugly, who was eyeing her horse owlishly, the pinto looking away as it tensed its withers. “You’re up early. I figured I was going to have to bang pots over your head.”

“You know that ice-cold witch’s finger that pokes the back of my neck from time to time?”

“What about it?”

Prophet sipped the hot mud again and winced at the burn in his throat. “It’s pokin’ again.”

Louisa frowned. She knew not to take Prophet’s premonitions lightly, however superstitious they seemed. He was a hillbilly from the Georgia mountains, birthed by witches and raised with talismans on his crib, and he’d grown up with weird Appalachian legends and evil hexes.

His dark presentiments had proven real more than a time or two in the past. They’d saved both their lives, in fact.

“What’s it about, do you think?” Louisa asked him.

Prophet hiked a shoulder. It wouldn’t do her any good to know what had spawned his unease. “We’d best just keep our eyes open today.”

“You think those men who ambushed us were here for the gold, and they might have friends who are still after it.”

“Like I said . . .”

Prophet let his voice trail off as the door on his right flank opened, scraping across the veranda’s warped floor, the window curtains jostling. A man stepped out, followed by three more.

They were a ragged-looking but well-armed crew, three holding either Henry or Winchester rifles, the last one holding a long-barreled, double-bore shotgun on his shoulder, two bandoliers filled with shells crossed on his chest.

As the men filed out, their eyes found Prophet, who’d instinctively dropped his hand to his holstered revolver. Louisa kept her hands on her saddle horn, leaning forward slightly, but her pistols were in easy reach. The newcomers stopped on the porch, making no sudden moves with their guns.

The first man rolled a stove match from one side of his mouth to the other. He was tall, with thick red hair hanging over his forehead, beneath his gray, flat-brimmed hat, and his gray eyes had an insolent air. He wore a gold ring a little larger than a wedding band in his right ear. “You Prophet?”

“All depends,” Prophet said mildly.

“It’s him,” said the man with the shotgun, whom Prophet suddenly remembered from outside the cantina last night. He was the pewter-haired man wearing large Texas spurs, called Sawrod. “He almost got tangled up with Dryden last night.”

The man beside Sawrod was the Mex, Casol, who’d also been outside the cantina last night and had made disparaging comments about the procedures of the local law. He grinned under his low-crowned straw sombrero, black eyes flashing. Under them were heavy purple bags. The whites of his eyes were a deep bloodred. Obviously, he’d drunk his share in the cantina last night.

“I’d like to see that,” he said, staring at Prophet. “A big man like him against Dryden.”

“Dryden’d pull a knife.”

“Hell, he’s got a knife,” the Mex said, pointing at the tip of the hide-wrapped knife handle barely visible above the collar of Prophet’s shirt.

The red-haired man with the earring, with Indian-flat facial features, changed the subject in a sharply sarcastic tone. “You’re our new boss.”

Prophet glanced at Louisa as he eased his grip on his .45. “You’re Encina’s gold guards?”

“Si,”
said Casol. He wore a bull-hide charro jacket and baggy sheepskin leggings tucked inside his worn, brown, copper-tipped boots.

The man standing beside the red-haired, gold-earringed gent was the oldest of the crew—a large, potbellied man with bulging blue eyes and a large belly shoving his double shell belts down nearly to his crotch. His face was haggard but friendly, as was the light in his eyes.

“You’ll have to forgive Bronco here,” he said, canting his head toward the red-haired gent to his right. “When the old ramrod Chisos Owens pulled out, Bronco thought he’d get the job. In fact, he was throwing money around at the blackjack tables like he already had it.”

The older gent laughed, stepped forward, and extended his right hand to Prophet. “I’m Hitt. Orrie Hitt.” With another glance at the red-haired man, he said, “This here’s Bronco Brewster. These two are Juventino Casol and Royal Sawrod. Or Saw for short. Fittin’ if you ever heard him snore, which you’ll likely do since we’re often on the trail a few days at a time, holin’ up together in old mine shacks an’ such.”

Prophet rose from his chair and shook Hitt’s hand, then that of the other men, saying, “I reckon Casol and Saw here I did meet last night, though not so formal-like.”

Bronco Brewster chomped down on his stove match as he gave Prophet’s hand a fishy, insolent squeeze before shunting his lustily brightening gaze to Louisa. “And who might this golden-haired little filly be?”