The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1) (4 page)

She went numb with fear as the air whooshed from her lungs. She kicked wildly and pounded on his back with her fists. He seemed not to feel any of it. The crowd roared with laughter as he spun drunkenly, trying to regain his balance.

As the room whirled by, Grace felt her heel connect with something hard, followed by the sound of breaking glass and the collective gasp of the crowded cantina. Deke apparently heard it too, and staggered to a rolling stop in front of Reese Donovan's table.

After a drunken pause, Deke laughed and said, "Aw, now, that's a real shame."

Stunned by the sudden stop, Grace ceased her flailing and looked under her captor's arm to see an upside-down view of Donovan, rising with slow menace from his chair; his shattered new bottle of whiskey leaking across the table, his shirtfront soaked with liquor. Grace's eyes widened at the furious expression on his face as he spoke.

"Buy me another, Sanders."

In the eerie silence that followed Donovan's demand came the sound of chair legs scraping against the wood-planked floor as men vacated their seats and hurried to the far edges of the room. Shelby, apparently frozen by indecision, only backed halfway to the wall, in halfhearted support of his friend.

Her tormenter looked around accusingly at the men who'd abandoned the fun like scattering cockroaches, then he looked back with whiskey-induced courage at Donovan. "I don't buy drinks for
micks."

The room had gone deadly quiet; quiet enough to hear the whiskey drip from Donovan's table in a steady tattoo against the floor. Quiet enough that Grace was sure the frightened thud of her heart could be heard by all in the room as it pounded against Sanders's shoulder and sent blood rushing straight to her head. Squeezing her eyes shut tight, she waited for the inevitable explosion of male outrage she was certain would follow.

Donovan stepped deliberately away from the table. "What'd you call me?"

With a bigot's confident swagger, Deke glanced around the room at his friends. "You heard me—
mick."

Even upside down, Grace thought, Donovan looked appallingly sober. Maria, who'd been standing near Donovan's elbow, edged away.

His words were deceptively quiet. "Put her down."

"The hell you say."

A muscle jerked in the ex-Ranger's jaw. "Put her down,
now,
or by God you'll wish you had." He pointed the barrel of his gun purposefully downward toward Deke's crotch. "I've a clear shot."

Sanders stilled, considering that awful consequence. Weighing his options, he slid Grace off his shoulder, and dropped her heavily onto the floor. She landed with a thud. Black spots swam before her eyes as the blood rushed from her head. She grabbed the edge of a nearby table for balance and pulled herself up. Swallowing hard, she backed up against the long wooden-planked bar.

Without taking his eyes off Donovan, Sanders pointed at her. "Stay there,
bon-eeta.
I ain't done with you—
yet."

"Oh, I think he is. Get out of here, Miss Turner," Donovan told her, hitching his chin in the direction of the door, but she found herself rooted to the spot. Her feet refused to cooperate with the command to run.

"Mr. Donovan," she pleaded in a choked whisper, but he wasn't looking at her. His gaze was riveted to Sanders.

Sanders gingerly pulled aside the edge of his jacket to reveal a shiny, ivory-handled revolver strapped to his hip. "I ain't afraid of you, Donovan. I'm younger and faster'n you'll ever be. Your hand ain't steady enough no more to aim that gun of yours."

"Think not?"

"Yeah."

"Willin' to bet your life on it, are you?"

"Try me."

Donovan eased his pistol back into its holster and lifted his hand away. "You're drunk, Deke. Go home and sleep it off."

Sanders laughed uneasily. "You yellow, Donovan? I heard that about you. That you was yellow. I heard you even shot a friend in the back. That true—
mick?"

"Get out of here, Deke, before I have to kill you."

"Ooh-hoo, I'm shakin' in my longjohns. Ain't I, boys?"

Grace eyed the men pressed up against the far wall. None but Shelby found much humor in the remark. He rubbed a nervous hand down his face. "You show 'em, Deke," he called.

Sanders rolled the tension out of one shoulder. "I'm gonna find out how fast this Irish yellow-belly really is."

"Get out of here, lady," Donovan ordered without looking at her. "Now."

Before she could begin edging toward the louvered doors, Deke countered, "Don't you move, girly-girl."

Anger crept up the back of Grace's neck. They weren't actually going to
shoot
each other, were they? And not even truly over her—over a bottle of whiskey!

Appalled, and shaken from her torpor by the thought, she reached for her fan and edged along the bar toward the door. If they insisted on murdering one another, she had no desire to see it.

"I do not now, Mr. Sanders," she said, "nor have I ever answered to the appellation 'girly-girl,' or
'boneeta'
or any other—"

She didn't see the sawdust-filled gaboon planted near the foot rail until her foot struck it hard. Pain shot up her big toe and, balance lost, she jackknifed over the mucky receptacle. As she fell, the sound of gunfire exploded beside her. How many shots were fired, she had no way of knowing. Her ears rang with the sound. Reflexively, she slammed herself back against the bar in time to see the fat man, Shelby—drawn gun dangling from his fingers—stagger backward and fall across the rickety table behind him, sending the tiger-painted faro box, cards, and stacks of poker chips spinning across the room.

Grace's eyes widened in horror as Sanders stumbled backward as well, a blossom of crimson spreading quickly across his chest. His hands clutched at the air. She'd never forget the surprised expression on the man's face, or the moment when the life seemed to blink out of his eyes as he dropped heavily to the floor.

Nor would she ever forget the feral, almost wild, look in Reese Donovan's eyes as he lowered his smoking gun and looked at her, his expression filled with accusation.

Chapter 2

He blamed her.

Grace clamped a hand over her mouth, afraid she'd be sick. Two lives, snuffed out in the flash of a moment. Dead by Donovan's gun. Had she caused it? Certainly, she reasoned, if she'd never crossed the threshold of this little cantina, Sanders and Shelby would have found no cause to fight with Reese Donovan.

And if she hadn't tripped, distracting them, would they have actually fired?

Grace flattened a hand to her stomach. No, it hadn't been intentional, but that mattered little now. Two men were dead. For what? And if there was any blame to be pinned, she thought, looking at Donovan's whiskey-soaked shirt, she had little doubt where it should be affixed.

Donovan's furious gaze left hers and he looked challengingly at the men who'd taken cover behind tables. "Anyone else?"

A few shook their heads, seeking only a quick exit. They were stopped there by a man blocking the double doors. Tall and stocky, with a full graying mustache slashing across his pale face, he stared disbelievingly at the bodies on the cantina floor. A thick silence shrouded the room as he pushed through the doorway, a revolver pointed at the ex-Ranger. He pulled the hammer back with an ominous click. The tip bucked in the man's shaking hand; his face was red with fury.

Unbelievably, Donovan made no move to raise his own gun in self-defense. He let it simply dangle at his side, his gaze trained on the other man's weapon.

"Drop your gun, Donovan," the stranger demanded in a voice rough as gravel and mean as a Texas windstorm. "Put it on that table and slide it across."

Grace squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself for more gunfire. When it didn't come, she opened her eyes to find the older man reaching for the gun Donovan had eased onto the table. He tucked it in his back waistband, then, with a pistol still trained on Donovan, he knelt near Sanders, who lay dead on the floor.

It took her several beats to realize that the marshal was merely an older version of Deke Sanders. As he knelt down to feel for a pulse in the man's lifeless body, her gaze fell to the flash of silver on the man's chest and she knew who he was.

Swallowing back a lump of fury, he looked up at Donovan. "I ought to kill you where you stand."

Donovan's jaw went tight. "Pity all these witnesses are around, eh, Sanders? But that would be murder and that just might put you out of a steady job. Your brother and his friend drew on me first."

"Good try," the marshal retorted, pointing at the revolver still nestled in his brother's holster. "But he didn't even clear leather."

To her horror, Grace realized that, indeed, Sanders's gun was still lodged in its holster. Her disbelieving gaze flew to Donovan.

"He went for it. I was faster. Ask 'em," Donovan said, gesturing at the men holding up the walls of the cantina. "They all saw it."

The elder Sanders looked around at the motley bunch of witnesses who shuffled their feet against the floor. Clearly, they were all afraid of him, and none dared venture an opinion.

"Well? Speak up! Any of you boys see this back-shootin' son of a bitch give my brother a fair chance?"

Silence thundered through the room as Sanders drilled each man with a murderous look. "Anybody here willing to say that my brother was drawin' on him?"

Grace stared wide-eyed at the roomful of men, unable to believe not one of them was willing to step forward in Donovan's defense. She looked from face to face of each man as he studiously avoided eye contact with the marshal. Finally, one particularly rough-looking character, a longhaired Mexican, wearing bandoliers across his chest and a distinctive bandanna around his forehead, laughed and sat down at his table, picking up his cards.

"No vi nada.
I seen nothing. Nobody did, eh,
amigos?"
His black eyes flicked to Donovan and he grinned as he fanned open his cards.

Donovan's lips thinned as the tide turned against him.

Angrily, hands on her hips, Maria stepped forward. "I saw."

Sanders sent her an ugly look. "You?"

"Donovan ees right," she told him. "Your brother, he began it."

Grace bit her lip, shamed for ever thinking of Maria as a Black Widow
anything.
She was the only one with the nerve to speak up for an innocent man.

Sanders snorted. "You think I'm going to take a whore's word for it?"

Maria raised her chin.
"Es verdad.
It ees the truth."

"You whores wouldn't know the truth if it came up and bit you on the tit."

Grace's mouth fell open in disbelief. "What kind of a lawman are you?"

The marshal swung an appraising look at Grace that sent shivers up her spine. "The only kind in these parts. And who are you?"

She swallowed hard. "I'm Grace Turner, and that woman is absolutely right. Your brother started it by accosting me, then he picked a fight with Mr. Donovan. Donovan was simply defending himself."

Sanders's eyes narrowed with threat. "And you saw Deke draw on him?"

Her gaze darted to Donovan. His mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes were bleak. Because, of course, she hadn't actually seen it. Still, there was no real doubt in her mind....

"Well?"
Sanders demanded. "Did you or didn't you?"

"I saw everything, that is, up until that moment, but I didn't exactly see him draw his gun. I-I tripped over that... that horrible
thing
down there, you see, and—"

"Thinkin' and seein' ain't the same thing," Sanders snapped, his face flushed with anger. "I got a roomful of men who say Deke didn't draw, and I got a holstered gun on a dead man."

One man stepped forward, a thin rail of a fellow with worn-out clothes and a back bent by hard labor. "The woman's right. It was self-defense, Ephram."

Sanders turned a furious look on the man. He stared at him hard for a full thirty seconds before he spoke. The tip of his revolver moved in an ever-so-subtle threat toward the man. "You willin' to go up against me on this, Peterson? You willing to take this potato-lover's word over everybody else's? Against me? Against my brother?"

Peterson's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat, and he took a step backward. He squinted at Donovan, then back at the marshal, a muscle working in his jaw. "I... uh, I reckon not."