That brought a smirk to the barkeep’s face. “Don’t think I won’t take you up on that,” he said before turning away from Nate and finding another customer with an empty glass. “Hey, Stan!” he shouted. “Someone here wants to buy you a beer!”
One of the gamblers perked up like a groundhog sticking its head from its hole. “Make it a whiskey and we’re in business!” he said.
Nate nodded at the man who’d tipped his hand for him and waited for him to pour the liquor. When the barkeep walked the glass over, Nate said, “There was a payment in it for you if you would’ve kept your mouth shut.”
“Oh, really? You didn’t specify.”
When Nate thought about what he would have liked to do to that barkeep right then, a few very specific things came to mind. Instead of airing his grievances, he took the whiskey and headed over to the table where Jessowitz was sitting.
Bartenders were a strange sort. Part busybodies and part mercenaries, they were always on the lookout for scraps of information that could be put to use. Nate had come to rely on them while also being wary not to take his eyes off of them for too long. Like unfaithful women, if they were willing to do the dance with you, they’d just as surely do it to you.
Jessowitz was probably within a few years of Nate’s age, but had weathered enough hard times to make him seem much older. A scraggly beard covered the bottom portion of his long face and when he smiled, he showed a set of crooked teeth that had been stained by years of chewing cheap tobacco. There was an empty seat at his table, so Nate sat down and placed the glass of whiskey amid a scattering of clay chips and small coins.
Grabbing the drink before it could be taken by anyone else, the man with the tobacco-stained teeth asked, “What’d I do to earn this here drink?”
“You’re Stan Jessowitz?”
“Sure enough.”
“Then think of it as an advance,” Nate said.
“For what?”
As Jessowitz slurped his free whiskey, Nate drew the finely crafted blade from its scabbard and drove it into the table directly in front of him. “For telling me everything you can about this here knife,” Nate said.
Jessowitz’s eyes turned wide as saucers, and he set down the glass in his hand so quickly that a good portion of whiskey wound up dribbling into his beard. “Son of a bitch!” he roared as he got to his feet. “That’s my damn knife!”
Having surely practiced the move several times in the past, the other miners and drunks scooted away from the table so as not to be knocked over if it was tossed onto its side. Nate, however, grinned widely as he stood up and plucked the blade from where he’d stuck it. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s take this outside.”
Perhaps Jessowitz had been expecting more of an uproar after his display. By the time he reached for the gun at his side, Nate had already come around the table to charge straight at him. Driving his shoulder into Jessowitz’s gut, Nate wrapped his arms around the other man’s midsection and shoved him back into the wall behind him. If that wall had been made of wood, the impact might have driven the wind from Jessowitz’s lungs. Since it was only a piece of stretched canvas however, the wall gave way to allow both men to stampede outside like a pair of proverbial bulls making their way through a china shop.
Once the two men had left the tent, one of the gamblers tugged the canvas back in place while another pair straightened the table so their game could commence.
“All right, everyone!” the bartender announced. “Show’s over. Anyone else makes a mess and they’re cut off.”
Half of the gamblers weren’t about to go against the bartender’s decree and the rest didn’t seem to give a damn that he’d spoken in the first place. None of them missed Nate or Jessowitz one bit.
14
Jessowitz landed on his backside, bounced, skidded a few inches and used both feet to push himself a little farther. “You stole my damn knife!” he wailed. “You’re a thief! Thief!”
“If you’re expecting help to come swarming in from all sides, I think you’ll be waiting awhile,” Nate mused. “This doesn’t strike me as that sort of place.”
Darting his eyes back and forth, Jessowitz looked for any source of backup but didn’t find anything. He then stared at the knife in Nate’s hand and opened his mouth in stark terror as Nate reached out for him.
Nate grabbed Jessowitz’s collar and hauled him to his feet. “First of all,” he said while dragging Jessowitz to a lot behind the saloon tent, “I’m no thief. Second, I know for a fact that you didn’t exactly walk into a store, lay down your hard-earned money and purchase this fine blade.”
“Yeah? I won it! So what?”
“Who’d you win it from?”
“Some rough-looking bastard on his way to some train depot outside of Joplin.”
“He’s going to Joplin?”
“That’s what he told me,” Jessowitz replied shakily. “But he was drunk as a skunk. Who the hell knows if it was true? We was all saying plenty of things to each other while playing cards.”
“Was he traveling alone?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Nate bared his teeth as if he were about to use them to tear the face off of Jessowitz’s skull and snarled, “You sat with him. You must’ve seen something. Tell me, or I swear to Christ . . .”
Very rarely did Nate ever have to finish that threat, and this time was no exception.
“He wasn’t traveling alone,” Jessowitz sputtered. “I didn’t see who he was with, but I recall him mentioning someone.”
“Just one?”
“He might’ve talked about a few here and there, but you gotta believe me that I ain’t gonna remember every name he might have mentioned. We was playing cards and that’s all I cared about. Also, I was drinkin’ and . . .”
Nate nodded quickly just to shut the other man up. He didn’t have any problem believing that, but now that the gears in Jessowitz’s memory seemed to be turning again, he pressed onward. “What’s your best guess about the number of men that were with him?”
Jessowitz thought for a moment since Nate had let him go and backed up a step. It helped Nate’s cause even more that the men who glanced at them as they passed by were more interested in catching sight of something interesting than they were of lending a fellow miner a hand.
“I suppose he could’ve been riding with a small group,” Jessowitz said. “Or could have been a larger one.”
“All right then. Tell me about the man himself.”
* * *
Kaylee’s room was sectioned off, but not private by any means. The walls were still canvas and they didn’t even stretch as far up as the tent’s ceiling. None of that mattered to Deaugrey as he was led into the room, however. It had taken every bit of restraint he’d had to keep from dropping his britches before she’d closed the flap behind them. As soon as he’d pulled some money from his pockets, those pants were down around his ankles and a beaming smile was plastered onto his face.
“You’re an anxious one,” Kaylee mused as she took his money.
“More than you know.”
Having counted up her pay, she secreted it into a small pocket in her skirt and gazed down at what Deaugrey had to offer. Kaylee raised an eyebrow and said, “Let’s get started then.”
“God, yes.”
She lowered herself to her knees and cupped him in one hand while reaching around to grab his backside with the other. Her soft, painted lips parted and she took him into her mouth. As she slid all the way down his length, she used her tongue to trace a line along the base of his shaft.
Deaugrey let out a breath and eased his fingers through her thick, curly hair. Although she responded expertly to even the slightest touch, he didn’t need to direct her. She knew exactly what she was doing, and Deaugrey wasn’t about to mess with perfection.
After a minute or
so, however, he eased her head back and said, “Just a moment, just a moment.”
Licking the corner of her mouth, she asked, “Was I doing something wrong?”
“Not in the slightest, my dear. In fact, you were doing it better than right. I just need to catch my breath so you can get my money’s worth.”
Before she could correct him on his choice of words, Kaylee was helped to her feet and wrapped up in his wiry arms.
“You catch your breath yet?” she asked.
Deaugrey’s hands wandered freely over her body. First, they went around to feel the tight curve of her hips and then moved up along her back. Next, they spun her to face the other direction so he could wrap his arms around and cup her breasts. “How much time did my money pay for?” he asked in a hungry whisper spoken directly into her ear.
Squirming at his desperate touch as well as the closeness of his voice, she replied, “For you, as long as you want.”
He smiled like a wolf that had finally cornered the biggest hen in the coop. Keeping one hand firmly on her breast, he hiked her skirts up to find she wasn’t wearing any undergarments beneath her slip. Pressing against her, Deaugrey savored the way their bodies came together. She leaned forward to grab the frame of her cot while moving her legs into a wider stance. Looking over her shoulder at him, she asked, “Is this what you had in mind?”
“A thousand times over, darlin’,” he said while guiding himself into her.
There were always noises coming from the rest of the tent, but a few of them became sharp enough to catch his ear. Since Deaugrey was finally indulging in what he’d been thinking about for way too long, it wasn’t difficult to ignore them.
Kaylee let out a satisfied grunt as she took him inside of her, but was more easily distracted from their dance than a man who’d been locked away for months at a stretch. “What’s that sound?” she asked.
Grabbing her hips in both hands, Deaugrey closed his eyes and committed himself to his task. “Don’t hear a thing. Just . . .”
“I think something’s wrong.”
“Things couldn’t be better.”
* * *
Jessowitz had stopped fighting. Like any other man who’d let go of the hopes he’d been entertaining before, his entire body deflated and he couldn’t come up with a good reason to struggle against the tide any longer. “The man who lost that knife,” he said, “was a cold son of a bitch. Best bluffer I ever did see.” He closed his eyes as if he were seeing him at that very instant. “Come to think of it, I do recall someone else being with him.”
“Yeah?” Nate asked. He’d backed up to give the other man some room to breathe but was close enough to grab him if Jessowitz got the sudden urge to run. “Go on.”
“I was hoping that one would’ve sat down at the table, but he didn’t. I could’ve won a fortune off’a someone like that.”
It was Nate’s experience to allow men like this to stray a little when they started reminiscing. It meant they were more comfortable with their company and oftentimes getting ready to let go of something really good. For that reason, Nate fought the urge to nudge Jessowitz along with a swift boot to the ribs and instead grunted, “Uh-huh.”
Jessowitz wasn’t aware that his audience was barely tolerating his reflections. “Yeah, that other fella wouldn’t have been able to bluff for shit. The ones with the crazy eyes never can.”
Suddenly, Nate perked up. “What was that about crazy eyes?”
* * *
Despite the fact that most of the blood had run to the lower portion of Deaugrey’s body, even he could now hear the sounds that had caught Kaylee’s attention. That didn’t mean he was going to stop what he was doing, however. Still thrusting his hips back and forth, he took one hand off of her rump so he could reach for the door flap. It was just a bit too far for him to open without moving away from the cot.
“Damn it,” he grunted.
“I know,” Kaylee replied. “It—it sounds—”
“Yeah—I think—”
Suddenly, their bodies forced them to pay attention to only one thing. Both of them were rewarded by a flood of sensation that caused Kaylee’s toes to curl in her boots. In just a few more crucial seconds, Deaugrey would be next to feel the surge of pleasure.
A second before that surge happened, the sounds from the front of the tent became too loud to ignore.
“That sounded like trouble,” Kaylee said.
As much as Deaugrey wanted to ignore what he heard he couldn’t help but agree. A man’s gruff voice said something to a woman who now shrieked at him to leave. Her demand was cut short by the unmistakable smack of a fist against flesh.
“Just a little more . . .” Deaugrey pleaded.
Kaylee was looking toward the door, fidgeting on her feet, but not pulling away from him just yet.
The voices at the front of the tent were quieter, but Deaugrey was paying enough attention to hear them.
“I won’t let you hurt her,” said the woman that he recognized as the one who’d greeted him at the front door.
The man’s words were indiscernible but filled with enough anger for Deaugrey to get their meaning.
There was going to be more noise soon that would put the previous commotion to shame.
Deaugrey stepped back and pulled up his pants. He was buckling his gun belt around his waist when Kaylee turned around to face him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just cover yourself up and be ready for me when I get back.”
* * *
“That other fella,” Jessowitz said, “had crazy eyes.”
“What did he look like . . . apart from the eyes?” Nate asked.
“Taller than you. Big bull of a dude.”
Brushing his hand along one part of his chin, Nate said, “Were there burns on this part of his face?”
“Not as I recall. He did have half a beard, though. I thought that was mighty strange. Could be it was burnt. I don’t know.”
“And this fellow with the crazy eyes, he wasn’t the one playing poker with you?”
“Nah.”
Nate’s stomach twisted into a knot. Mostly, he was angry at himself for committing one of the worst and most common sins for a man in his line of work. He’d gone into a situation thinking he already knew the answers and hadn’t given anyone a chance to prove him wrong. He’d been so convinced that he knew who’d played cards with Jessowitz that Nate hadn’t asked what should have been the first question as soon as they got outside.
“This man you played cards with,” Nate finally asked, “what was his name?”
“Abraham Keyes. I remember because of Lincoln’s name and . . . well . . . keys.”
“Awww hell.”
* * *
Deaugrey stomped out of his room with gun in hand, fully expecting to put the scare into some drunk who’d stepped out of line by hitting a woman.
“I don’t give a damn what you want,” the man at the front of the tent said in a voice that was as steady as a stone slab.
The woman who ran the cathouse stood with her back to the opening that led to the small room at the front of the place. “You won’t hurt my girls!” she said.
Before Deaugrey could make it all the way to the front of the tent, the woman’s head was snapped back by another blow to the face. She reeled from the impact, spinning all the way around while dropping to one knee. Now facing Deaugrey, she started shaking her head but was too afraid to do much more than that.
When he motioned for her to step away, Deaugrey smirked in anticipation of putting that rowdy drunk in his place. He took a few more steps and, now that his path was no longer impeded by the fallen woman, could see a tall man dressed in a black suit and a knee-length brown coat standing with fresh blood still dripping from his knuckles. He stared at Deaugrey with the cold, dead eyes of a killer and
kept his other hand resting on the grip of his holstered gun. That pistol cleared leather before Deaugrey could even think about taking aim with his own weapon.
“Deaugrey Scott,” the man with the cold eyes declared. “There’s some important people looking for you.”
“Awww, hell,” Deaugrey sighed.
15
“There he is,” the madam said as she swept a hand back at Deaugrey. “That’s the man you were after, right? The one that just arrived?”
The man with the cold eyes nodded once. It was a barely perceptible motion that struck anyone who saw it like a jab to the kidney. “He is,” the man said.
“Then take him and go!”
“Hey, now!” Deaugrey said. “A moment ago, you were trying to keep me alive.”
“Not you, you damned fool,” the man growled. “Her girls. She was just trying to make sure her girls stayed alive long enough to pick another man’s pockets.” Shifting his eyes to her, he added, “And they will.”
Wilting like a flower that had been tossed into a fire, the madam lowered her head and sought shelter behind the table where her ledger and ink pen were kept.
“Seems I picked the wrong time to leave my room,” Deaugrey said. “I’ve always insisted that being a coward was severely underrated.”
“You are definitely Mr. Scott,” the man said. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about you and every last one of them mentions that big mouth of yours.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Don’t matter. Shut your fucking hole and drop that pistol.”
Deaugrey prided himself on being able to know more than one way out of any situation. Even more valuable was being able to quickly decide which of those ways to take. He made his choice this time by diving to one side with the most powerful jump he could convince his legs to give him. A shot blazed through the air, tearing through the canvas near Deaugrey’s head and causing one of the girls inside the tent to scream frantically.
As soon as he hit the ground on his chest, Deaugrey scrambled to get his feet beneath him and plow into the next wall. His plan had been to charge straight through one flimsy barrier after another until he was outside. Unfortunately, his gall was more powerful than his sense of direction and Deaugrey wound up stampeding into yet another girl’s room. He caught a glimpse of long red hair and fair skin before his feet knocked against something solid that had been on the ground directly in front of him. Whoever had been huddled there grunted in pain after taking a boot to the ribs. The grunt sounded too deep to be feminine, but Deaugrey wasn’t overly concerned with that since he was already tripping through the next canvas wall.
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