by Tess LeSue
“His lordship?” Ava frowned.
“His odds are almost as bad as mine,” Becky said cheerfully.
Ava groaned, remembering how the irritating Englishman had dogged her steps from the post office. “Don’t tell me he signed up for the Hunt too?”
“Everyone signed up. Didn’t you see how much money is involved? Why wouldn’t you have a try?” She cocked her head. “I thought you must have forgotten to add your name, so I did it for you.”
“You what?”
“I put your name down. Your odds are surprisingly good.”
Ava felt the urge to shake the girl. “Are you mad? I don’t want to compete with those cretins! They’re liable to kill us just to get rid of the competition!”
A cloud crossed Becky’s face. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”
“Obviously. You have no idea who you’re dealing with, and neither does Lord Whatsit.”
“Whent.”
“What?”
“No, Whent.”
“Stop talking now,” Ava ordered. “I need to think.” Good God. She wasn’t just writing about this grotesque Hunt; now she was competing in it. Which led her to a worrying thought . . . “Becky? Why would you want to travel with me and Lord Whatsit—”
“Whent.”
Ava pressed her hand over the girl’s mouth. “Stop talking.”
“His name’s Whent.” Becky’s muffled voice came though Ava’s fingers.
“Why do you want to travel with us if you’re competing against us? Surely you want to find Deathrider before we do?” Ava removed her hand so the girl could talk.
“You’re very bossy,” Becky observed. “Fancy telling people when they can and can’t talk. Last I heard this was a free country.”
“Becky . . .”
“Well, we’re hardly going to win, are we?” Becky said, exasperated. “I’m not stupid. I know why my odds are so long. I’m not likely to actually have to decide whether to kill him or not, or how to beat you and his lordship. I mean, have you seen who’s down there?” She gave Ava a frustrated look. “I know this is a wild-goose chase. I’m not a ninny. But I also know that life is a game of chance. We might as well have roll of the dice, don’t you think? And I figure we’re likely to do better if we stick together. And it’s worth having a man along—his lordship can protect us from the other Hunters while we travel.”
Remembering the limp Englishman, Ava was far from reassured.
Becky shrugged. “It’ll be an adventure. And who knows? Maybe they’ll all get food poisoning and die, and we’ll be the last ones left.”
“Even if we were the last ones left, we’d still have to find Deathrider,” Ava reminded her.
“Yes.” Becky seemed undaunted. In fact, she seemed to get cheerier by the minute.
“And kill him,” Ava said.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” The girl grinned again. “And anything’s better than working here.”
4
Mariposa, three days later
NATHANIEL RIDES WITH Death, known to friends and foes alike as Deathrider, had been through hell more than a few times before, so word of LeFoy’s Hunt wasn’t entirely unexpected. It was just a total pain in the ass.
Inconvenient too, as he had other problems to deal with. Problems that currently involved trying to cram one of his oldest friends into a whore’s pink dress.
“How do I let you talk me into these things?” the friend in question complained, swearing vigorously as the corset pinched off his circulation.
“I don’t know,” Deathrider admitted. He could honestly say that he wouldn’t have done it himself.
Micah was dressed head to toe in screaming pink satin. In order to get the whore’s dress buttoned up over his broad back they’d had to cinch the corset so tight, he could barely breathe. His long hair was crammed up under an ugly pink silk rose-laden bonnet, and Seline’s chopped-off orange locks were dangling from it in a hastily fashioned wig.
The whole ordeal was in order to save Seline from capture, so sacrificing her hair to the cause was the least she could do. She’d turned up in town in a flap, fleeing a man who was trying to keep her as his own private sex slave. Deathrider had known Seline a long time and couldn’t leave her to fend for herself. Besides, he thought he’d found a way to solve both their problems at once: getting him away from LeFoy’s Hunters, and her away from Hec Boehm, the man who was out to kidnap her. And that way just happened to involve dressing Micah up as Seline.
“You look mighty fetching,” Deathrider reassured him. Although he didn’t. He made the ugliest woman Deathrider had ever seen.
“Go to hell.”
Deathrider gave him a smack on the rear, and Micah kicked out at him like a cranky mule. He wasn’t happy with Deathrider’s escape plan. Or with the plan to rescue Seline.
“No one is going to believe this,” Micah said, regarding himself in the mirror with pure disgust. “Forget looking like her,” he sniped. “I don’t even look like a woman. This is never going to work.”
“No,” Deathrider agreed, tossing Micah a pair of pink satin elbow-length gloves, “probably not. But it can’t hurt to try.”
“It can,” Micah grumbled. “It can hurt to try.” He pulled at the bodice of the dress. “In fact, it does hurt to try. Quite a lot.”
They were upstairs at the La Noche whorehouse in the gold town of Mariposa, locked in the madam’s private office, planning their escape from LeFoy’s Hunt. It was two in the morning, and the whorehouse was bedlam. That was mostly Seline’s fault. She’d got the clientele all riled up by parading around in nothing but that ugly pink bonnet, so half the town would see her in the flesh—all the flesh. He’d been shocked to hell when she’d appeared in the main saloon buck naked. That part hadn’t been Deathrider’s idea . . . but he grudgingly admitted that it was a good one. Who wasn’t going to remember a naked redhead strutting around in a big pink hat? Despite his shock, he’d played his part by throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her off upstairs. The Outlaw and the Whore.
“I think we were memorable,” Seline said happily as soon as they’d locked themselves away upstairs, ostensibly for a night of passion, but in actuality to get Micah disguised as the whore.
Their performance certainly guaranteed they’d be the gossip of town, and everyone would recognize the pink bonnet and the shock of orange hair in the morning, when Deathrider and Micah rode out. Seline hadn’t been thrilled about losing her hair, but it was better than losing her life. At this stage, she’d have been willing to do just about anything to escape Hec Boehm, the man who’d taken a shine to the idea of owning her.
Deathrider was going to make a circus of leaving Mariposa in the morning, dragging Micah-dressed-as-Seline ostentatiously along with him. He was counting on witnesses telling both Hec Boehm and the Great Hunters that the Plague of the West and the whore had left town. Together. He and Micah would draw Hec Boehm after them, allowing Seline time to escape. And they’d draw the Hunters too. . . .
The goddamn Hunters.
They’ve got a bet running in Frisco, Tom Slater had told him, still breathless and shiny with sweat after riding hard from San Francisco to warn Deathrider about LeFoy’s scheme. People all through the goldfields are gambling on who will shoot you first; there’s big money in it. Tom had come into Mariposa like some spirit of doom, his usually serious face more serious than ever. Tom’s distress had startled Deathrider. Tom was the calmest man Deathrider had ever met; if he was worried, then things were bad. Very bad.
You’ve got to get out of the territory . . . , Tom had insisted. And then he’d started listing the names of the men hunting Deathrider: English George and Irish George, Cactus Joe and Kennedy Voss.
Kennedy goddamn Voss. It beggared belief. The man was an utter sadist. A woman killer. What in hell was he doing chasing down
Deathrider?
You got less’n a day on them. Tom had been relentless, pushing Deathrider and Micah to move fast. His anxiety was palpable. Less than a day. And it would be a hard-riding day.
The thought made Deathrider tired. These past few years he had felt increasingly like a rabbit being run down by wolves. No matter where he went, the predators followed. Someone was always getting it into their head to shoot him. There seemed no end to the idiot gunslingers or the random drunks made brave by cheap beer or the wet-behind-the ears kids. They lurched from the shadows on the trail, reared up at him in saloons, ambushed him in the middle of the street in broad daylight. . . .
Each and every one of them looking to kill him.
Hell, even men he’d known for years were tempted to shoot him clean through. All for the sake of imagined rewards. Or, worse, for fame. The temptation of money Deathrider could almost understand, but fame? Imagine killing a man in order to be famous?
Hunger for that kind of renown showed a shallowness of character. A starvation of spirit.
Half the country seemed to be starving, though. And they looked at him and saw a solution to their hunger.
And it was all that woman’s fault. Because of that Archer woman he had to watch his back wherever he went. It was obnoxious. And now there was Kennedy goddamn Voss to be worried about. Drunks and kids dreaming of being gunslingers were bad enough . . . but Kennedy goddamn Voss? What had he done to deserve that?
Nothing, that was what. He was a simple man. He lived a quiet life. He roamed the trails, relishing the great spread of country stretched out wild before him, enjoying the peace, the silence, the sense of being completely and totally at ease. When he stopped moving, his mind grew choppy with thoughts, like a rushing river. At home with Two Bears and his people, he spent his days keenly feeling his difference, his gaze drifting to the horizon. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t fit. And in his mother’s world . . . well, just look what had happened to him out here. Everyone was trying to kill him.
When he was younger, his difference had eaten him up inside: was he white? Was he Hinono’eino? He was both, and he was neither. . . . At home his father, Two Bears, was always pressuring him to marry and settle into life with his people, to take up his responsibilities as a warrior, to turn his back on his mother’s white history, to be fully Hinono’eino. But there was a deep restlessness in Deathrider’s spirit. He couldn’t stay. Not anywhere. He moved through the world like the ghost that Archer woman accused him of being: unsettled, lost.
He wasn’t lonely exactly—he had friends along the trails: mountain men and settlers, farmers and nomads, Arapaho and Cheyenne and Pawnee, wagoners and gold miners, whores and fortune hunters. And he did have family—his wandering always led him back to Two Bears and his extended family, the way a river always found its way to the sea. But just like a river, he had no capacity for stillness.
It wasn’t that he was unhappy. He just moved along, keeping ahead of his own restlessness. He belonged to the plains and the sky; he belonged in the saddle, with the sun in his face and the wind at his back. He was never alone; his dog ran alongside him and kept his feet warm on cold nights, and Micah fell in beside him for months at a time, talking enough for both of them.
Deathrider counted himself a lucky man. Or he had until that Archer woman had started writing about him. Lying about him.
And now there was this damn Hunt.
It was irksome. That had been his first response, as he’d listened to Tom’s increasingly dire warnings. He’d been sobered by Tom’s evident disquiet, but mostly he found the whole thing a wretched bore.
These Hunters and their posses were just more of the same. It was annoying rather than frightening, like finding your bed full of fleas. He’d been dealing with people trying to kill him for years now. He and Micah would just pick up and move along, as they always did. Hell, he was just as likely to be shot here in Mariposa by some drunk kid as he was to be shot by Kennedy Voss or English George.
But then Tom threw another name in the mix. A name that did change everything.
Guess who’s with them, Tom had snapped when Deathrider and Micah hadn’t seemed concerned enough. A.A. Archer herself.
That had made Deathrider sit up. A.A. Archer.
Of course she was involved. Everything bad that happened to Deathrider happened because of that woman. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d engineered the whole stupid Hunt.
She’s writing a book about it, Tom had snarled.
Of course she was. Deathrider’s thoughts were racing as Tom described the scene he’d witnessed in San Francisco. The killers pouring into town; the packed house at the dance hall; the bookmakers tallying odds; and Ava Archer herself, on display as an enticement—offering fame to the man who brought Deathrider’s head to San Francisco.
It would make a great book, he thought. The best one yet—and he’d read a few. When Tom rode up, Micah had actually been reading the latest one: The Notorious Widow Smith and Her Mail-Order Husband. It was loosely based on reality and included the time Deathrider had rescued Mrs. Smith’s son, Wilby. It was also the book that had confused him with Tom Slater. That was Matt Slater’s fault—it had been his idea to pass Deathrider off as his brother after Deathrider had been shot in Fort Kearney.
The problem Deathrider had with Miss Archer’s version wasn’t that she mistook him for Tom Slater, however; the problem he had was that in her version Deathrider wasn’t rescuing the kid; he was kidnapping him. And then threatening to drink his blood. It was thoroughly ridiculous.
Just imagine what she’d come up with this time. She’d probably have him laying siege to Mariposa. Kennedy Voss would be transformed into an avenging hero, while Deathrider would be the stuff of nightmares.
As he fell into grimness, an idea flickered and then flared.
She was making it all up anyway . . . so why not lend her a hand . . . ?
“If she wants a book, let’s give her a book,” Deathrider had said to Micah and Tom, his mind racing with possibilities.
Tom had scowled, and Micah had laughed. It was only when Seline turned up and Deathrider’s plan had started to solidify that Micah had stopped laughing. Tom didn’t know about the worst of it yet—they needed him to be in the dark about Seline’s identity for the plan to work. Because, as usual, things had got complicated fast.
Seline had turned up in Mariposa not long after Tom Slater. The sassy whore had been dressed like a nun, of all things. She had one of her girls in tow—also dressed like a nun.
“I’m in hiding,” she’d said sourly. She was as full to the brim of grim news as Tom had been. It seemed to be one of those days.
Seline was on the run from Hec Boehm, a man who ruled the goldfields with his petty tyranny. She’d fled to the whorehouse in Mariposa, which she owned shares in, but Boehm was hot on her tail, and she couldn’t stop for long.
“He’s going to catch up to me,” she sighed. She and Deathrider were old friends. They’d traveled across the plains together after he’d been shot in Kearney, when she’d been striking west to start up her own business. Seline was good company. He liked her. And he didn’t like that many people.
When she’d come riding into Mariposa and heard Deathrider was in town too, she’d wasted no time in finding him, looking for help. And, of course, that meant he’d been dragged right into her problems. He couldn’t seem to help himself.
“What is it with men?” she’d complained to him, looking strikingly odd in the heavy black nun’s habit. “Why do they think a woman is like a gold claim? You can’t claim a woman.”
“Some men think they can claim everything,” Deathrider said with a shrug. He helped her find a wagon and get provisioned for a long piece of traveling. The girl with her was Mexican, and he’d convinced Seline to go south with her to Mexico, to hide out until Boehm had run out of puff. Which he was bound to do eventually.
Tom was headed south too. It seemed logical he should escort them. So long as he thought they were nuns, he was hardly likely to refuse, was he? Who wouldn’t help out a couple of desperate nuns? Deathrider wished he could be there when Tom finally realized they weren’t nuns at all, and he was actually escorting a couple of whores. . . .
“Leave Boehm to me,” Deathrider told Seline. He cursed himself for volunteering, but what else was he supposed to do? Leave Seline to Hec Boehm’s mercies? Not likely.
And besides, as he’d listened to Seline’s problems, an idea had blossomed. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Why not give Miss Archer a story too good to pass by?
“I reckon there’s a nice little tale in The Outlaw and the Whore,” he’d said mildly as he and Micah were loading up her wagon, not wanting to give away his rising excitement. He’d given Seline a sideways look. “I always did like redheads.”
She laughed. “Too bad mine ain’t entirely natural.” Then she caught up. “What are you yapping about?”
An idea had been brewing ever since Tom had mentioned that Archer woman’s name, an idea that cracked his boredom with the whole situation wide open.
Why not turn things on their head?
What if he decided he didn’t want to be hunted anymore? What if he decided he’d rather be the hunter?
Which brought them to Micah in the dress. Deathrider was going to make sure the whore and the outlaw came to a bad end—an end that Miss Archer would be compelled to write about. She was going to put the nails in the coffin of his legend by writing about his demise. His and Seline’s.
Which would leave both of them free as birds.
“Why do you always have to play at being a white knight?” Micah grumped once Seline had ridden off into the night with Tom Slater, headed for Mexico under cover of darkness, disguised as a nun. Micah was suffering in the tight corset, and he was souring on the idea by the second. And he’d been plenty sour to begin with. “You’re always off saving people. I wish you’d think about me once in a while.”
