Lacey peered over Matt’s shoulder. He was holding three kings and two aces, and she decided it must be a pretty good hand by the way he was betting on it.
The man in the blue shirt scowled blackly as Matt slid another five dollars into the pot. Muttering an oath, Blue Shirt threw his cards into the center of the table, face down. Wordlessly, Matt raked in the pot.
He won four hands out of the next six, and Lacey was suddenly aware of the tension building at the table. Matt had won a sizable amount of money, and the other men didn’t seem to like it.
“You’re awfully lucky, stranger,” remarked a tall, thin man sporting a black eye patch.
Matt nodded. “Tonight I surely am,” he agreed affably. And then he smiled. “But I’m due. Lady Luck’s been avoiding me the last few months.”
The man wearing the eye patch grunted as he dealt a new hand.
Lacey glanced across the table and her eyes met those of a man wearing a red hat. He looked at her for a long time, his gaze filled with what could only be described as lust, and then he slid a glance in Matt’s direction, his expression thoughtful. Lacey quickly took her eyes from him, and thereafter carefully avoided his gaze, but she could feel him watching her over his cards. It made her feel dirty, the way he stared at her, as if he were trying to imagine what she looked like unclothed.
Matt won another hand, and then another, and the men at the table began to grumble about his so-called good luck. The man in the red trapper’s hat glared at Matt.
“You’re a little too lucky for my taste,” he growled, his hand stroking his bearded jaw.
“Maybe you’d do better if you kept your eyes on your cards and off my woman,” Matt suggested gruffly.
Red Hat shrugged. “I think maybe you’re helping Lady Luck along.”
“Are you accusing me of cheating?” Matt asked. His words were softly spoken, but the whole saloon was suddenly dead quiet.
The man in the red hat pushed away from the table. “I’m accusing you of being a little too lucky,” he replied ominously.
Matt’s eyes bored into those of the other man, his thoughts racing. He could not risk a shootout, not here, not with Lacey standing behind him, directly in the line of fire. Nor could he take a chance on getting himself killed and leaving Lacey to face this ragtag bunch of men alone.
“There’s no crime in being lucky,” Matt said with a shrug. “But if it bothers you, I’ll leave.”
The man in the red hat nodded. “Do that.” He stood up slowly, his hands dangling at his sides. “But leave the little lady here.”
Lacey swallowed hard. Surely the man was kidding!
Now Matt stood up. “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said, his voice deceptively mild. “She’s my wife, and I’m kind of attached to her.”
“Leave her,” Red Hat insisted, “or she’s gonna be your widow.”
“Lacey, go outside and wait for me,” Matt said, not taking his eyes off Red Hat.
“No.”
“Do as I say!” Matt said curtly.
“Please, Matt.”
“Dammit, Lacey, I don’t have time to argue. Get the hell out of here!”
Frightened, Lacey turned and walked toward the saloon’s double doors. No one tried to stop her. She halted just outside the doorway, refusing to go any further. Whatever happened between Matt and the man in the red hat, she intended to be there. Standing on tiptoe, she peered over the batwing doors.
Matt and the man in the red hat were glaring at each other. The atmosphere inside the saloon was charged with morbid anticipation as the spectators waited to see what would happen next. There was little doubt that there would be a shootout because of the woman, and one of the two men would die. A man in a striped vest made his way to the bar and began taking bets on the outcome.
The other three men who had been seated at the table with Matt and the man in the red hat moved away, out of the line of fire.
The tension and the waiting seemed to stretch into eternity.
Matt cursed softly under his breath. He couldn’t back down now. Vainly he wished for a better weapon than the two-shot derringer shoved in the waistband of his pants.
Lacey held her breath as she waited to see what would happen next. She did not have to wait long. The man with the red hat made a grab for the gun holstered on his left thigh. Matt drew his derringer in the same instant, and there was a long, rolling report as both weapons were fired simultaneously. The smell of gunpowder filled Lacey’s nostrils.
For a timeless moment no one moved, and Lacey had the feeling that everyone in the saloon had been trapped in some mysterious limbo between life and death. Then, as though all the bones in his body had melted, the man in the red hat slowly sank to the floor. It was then that Lacey noticed the dark red stain blossoming across the front of his shirt.
Matt took a step back, his gun still in his hand, his eyes narrowed as they swept the room in a long, challenging glance. “Anybody else think I was cheating?” he asked in a hard tone.
No one spoke up. The man in the blue shirt shook his head vigorously.
The man wearing the eye patch shrugged. “There’s no crime in being lucky, just like you said.”
“You,” Matt said, speaking to the man nearest him. “Hand me his gun.”
The man quickly did as bidden, and Matt shoved Lacey’s derringer into his pocket as he took hold of Red Hat’s .44. It was a new Colt, and it felt good in his hand.
“I’ll be leaving now,” Matt said curtly. He gathered his winnings from the table and stuffed the greenbacks into his pocket. “Don’t anybody follow me.”
Slowly Matt edged toward the door, his cold blue eyes sweeping back and forth as he crossed the room.
Outside, he grabbed Lacey by the arm and pulled her into the alley behind the saloon.
“Matt—”
“Be quiet.”
He stood there, listening for several moments until he was certain they weren’t being followed. “Let’s go.”
They followed the alley to the livery barn. Matt paid the man at the stable for putting up Lacey’s horse, bought a tall bay gelding for himself, and then, riding side by side, they went to retrieve Lacey’s saddle.
“I guess we won’t be spending the night here after all,” Lacey remarked as Matt saddled the mare.
“No. We’re going to buy some grub and ammunition and get the hell out of here.”
She did not have to ask why. Matt was worried that the dead man might have friends, and that they might come looking for revenge.
Lacey stayed with the horses while Matt bought provisions. In addition to food and ammunition, he bought a deck of cards, a pint of whiskey, a black Stetson, and a sack of tobacco, and then they were riding into the desert. Lacey strained to hear some sound that would indicate they were being followed, but she could hear nothing but the sounds made by their own horses.
“Relax,” Matt said. “Nobody’s following us, at least not yet.”
They rode for over an hour before Matt reined his horse to a halt in a shallow draw. “We’ll bed down here for the night and pick up the trail first thing in the morning,” he said, dismounting.
Lacey nodded, suddenly overcome with weariness. She hadn’t realized how tense she had been the whole time they were in that squalid little town until now. Spreading her bedroll on the sand, she crawled under the blanket and closed her eyes. She could hear Matt unsaddling the horses, hobbling them nearby, then getting into bed.
She closed her eyes, but sleep would not come. A niggling question kept repeating itself in the back of her mind. She had to know. “Were you cheating?” she asked, sitting up. Matt cocked an eyebrow at her. Then, without a word, he pulled a deck of cards from his saddlebag. He shuffled the deck several times, then dealt the cards. He gestured for Lacey to pick up her hand. She had a full house, jacks over tens. She glanced up at Matt, a question in her eyes, and Matt turned his cards over. He had a full house, aces over kings.
Matt looked at her,
one black eyebrow arching upward as he scooped up the cards, shuffled them, cut them, and dealt her another hand. This time she had four kings, Matt had four aces.
For the next fifteen minutes he shuffled the cards, making the ace of spades appear on the top of the deck time after time, and then he dealt two hands. Lacey had a full house, queens over jacks. Matt had four aces.
Lacey tossed her cards on the ground. “You didn’t answer my question,” she remarked, although the answer seemed obvious now.
Matt shook his head. “I wasn’t cheating, but I would have if it had been necessary.”
“Oh.” It troubled her, his knowing how to cheat at cards like that. What other nefarious talents did he have? Did she really want to know?
Matt Drago stared into the darkness long after Lacey was asleep, his thoughts troubled. It was never easy, killing a man. Had he been alone, he might have turned and walked away from the fight, but Red Hat wore the look of a man who would have shot him in the back without turning a hair. Matt couldn’t risk that, couldn’t take a chance on leaving Lacey alone in a strange town, at the mercy of men who had little or no regard for a decent woman.
Loosing a long sigh, he closed his eyes. He had tried gambling for a living once, but it had been a rotten way of life. Spending most of his waking hours in crowded, smoke-filled saloons, depending on the luck of the draw, or his own nimble fingers, to earn his keep. Having to defend himself when he was accused of cheating. And he had faced that accusation more times than he cared to recall, because he was lucky at cards, just plain lucky. Like tonight. So he had given up gambling and earned his living breaking horses, working at one ranch or another until he had enough money to move on, drifting until his money ran out, and then working again. He drifted off to sleep, his dreams haunted by the faces of the men he had killed over a game of cards. Red Hat’s face was there, too, only this time it was Red Hat who cleared leather first. Matt uttered a strangled cry as he saw Red Hat’s finger squeeze the trigger. Time slowed and the images warped and he saw the bullet leave the barrel of the gun and head straight toward him.
“Matt. Matt!”
Lacey’s voice penetrated his nightmare, and he woke to find her kneeling beside him, a worried expression on her face, her long russet-colored hair falling over her shoulders.
“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.
“Yeah.” He looked at Lacey, at the horses resting nearby. It had only been a dream after all.
Lacey sat back on her heels, a quizzical expression on her face. “Were you having a nightmare?”
“Yeah.” He hated to admit it, it seemed so childish. Damn! It had seemed so real.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“It might help.”
It might at that, Matt thought, but how could he tell her about the nightmares that plagued him? He was a grown man, not a little boy frightened of the dark.
“Go back to bed, Lacey.”
“Not until you tell me what’s troubling you,” she argued, and then, out of the blue, she knew what was bothering him. “It was that man you killed, wasn’t it? That’s what your nightmare was about.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have bad dreams often?”
“No.”
“Just when you…when you kill someone?”
“Lacey—”
“Have you killed a lot of men?”
“I don’t know,” Matt replied sarcastically. “How many men makes a lot? Two? Four? Ten?”
“Have you killed ten men?” Lacey asked, awed by the thought.
“No. Just four, counting the one tonight.”
Numbers were a relative thing, Lacey mused. Four cents didn’t seem like much, but four dead men seemed a high number.
“Why did you kill them?” She had not meant to ask, but her curiosity got the best of her.
Matt shrugged. Sitting up, he stirred the ashes and placed the coffee pot over the glowing coals. It was obvious he wasn’t going to get any sleep until he told Lacey what she wanted to know.
“I used to be a gambler,” Matt said, gazing into the distance. “I’ve got a way with cards, I guess. Always been lucky. Too lucky. When you win too often, most men can’t believe you’re not cheating. There’s always a few who want to shoot it out. So far, I’ve been lucky there, too.”
“Oh.” Lacey watched Matt’s hands as he lifted the blue enamel coffee pot and poured himself a cup of coffee. His hands were large, capable. The fingers were long, the nails short and square. It was easy to imagine him in a dark suit and flashy brocade vest, sitting at a green baize table in a noisy saloon. She remembered how at home he had looked back in the saloon, how nimble his fingers had been when he shuffled the cards. So, he had been a gambler. “Why did you quit?”
“The last man I killed was just a kid. He lost every cent he had in an all-night poker game. He accused me of cheating and demanded I return his money. When I refused, he pulled a gun on me, and I killed him.” Matt shook his head. “I didn’t find out until later that he was only seventeen, and that he had stolen the money he’d lost from his mother.”
“How awful for you.”
“Yeah, awful. I haven’t picked up a deck of cards since, until tonight.”
Lacey felt a rush of sympathy for the man sitting beside her. He had turned his back on gambling, determined never to play cards again. But he had done it for her, because they needed food and supplies to go after her father and gambling was the quickest way to get it.
“Matt…” Her voice trailed off as she realized she didn’t quite know how to put her feelings into words, nor was she sure just what those feelings were. She knew only that Matthew Drago no longer seemed like a stranger. She felt remorse because she had caused him to do something he had turned his back on, and affection because he had done it for her.
“Go to bed, Lacey,” Matt said wearily.
Lacey placed her hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze, wanting him to know how grateful she was. “Thank you, Matt.”
He nodded, his eyes moving over her face, his skin growing warm where her hand rested on his arm. She was so lovely in the moonlight, so damn lovely.
With a low groan, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, his mouth drinking in the sweetness of her lips, one arm holding her tight while his hand caressed her back. Lord, she was sweet.
For a moment Lacey was too stunned to move, too startled to think. She was only aware of Matt’s lips on hers, of a sudden warmth rushing through her, as if her blood had turned to fire. She knew she should be outraged by Matt’s ungentlemanly conduct, and she fully intended to let him know how she felt, but first she wanted him to kiss her just a little longer. It was such a gloriously intoxicating feeling. Shivers of excitement shook her body, making her feel weak and a little lightheaded. No one had ever kissed her with such passion, such fierce intensity. Breathless, she kissed him back, her arms stealing around his waist, her body pressing against his.
It was only when she felt his hand begin to stroke her thigh that reality came crashing down. With a cry, Lacey pulled out of Matt’s embrace and jumped to her feet.
“How dare you!” she said with what she hoped was the proper amount of righteous indignation.
“Lacey, I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” she replied haughtily, although she knew she was just as guilty as he.
“I said I was,” Matt snapped, feeling his own anger rise. What the hell was she so mad about, he thought irritably. She had kissed him back, after all. If she hadn’t liked it, why hadn’t she said so sooner?
Without another word, Lacey turned on her heel and flounced back to her own blankets. Crawling under the covers, she pulled them up to her chin, then gazed into the darkness, too keyed up to sleep. Lifting her hand, she ran a finger over her lips, remembering how Matt’s kiss had felt. The memory had warmed her clear down to her toes. Smiling into the darkness, she fell asleep.
Chapter Four
The
y picked up the trail early the following morning. There were times when Lacey could see nothing at all to indicate that anyone had passed by, but Matt seemed confident they were heading in the right direction and she took comfort in that.
When they stopped at noon to eat and rest the horses, she asked him where he had learned to read trail sign.
“During the war,” Matt replied. He bit off a piece of jerky and chewed it thoughtfully for a moment. “Old Smoke Johnson was in my outfit. He’d been an Army scout out West before the war, but when he heard the Yankees were marching through Georgia, he came home and joined up. Old Smoke was a talkative cuss, and he must have told me everything he knew about tracking and Indians and the fur trade. When he wasn’t yapping at me, he was teaching me to read sign, and how to navigate by the stars. Between battles, he used to go off into the woods and I’d see if I could pick up his trail. He ran into a half-dozen bluebelly scouts one night when I was following his tracks.” Matt laughed with the memory. “That was a hell of a fight. I don’t know who was more surprised, those six Yankees or me and Smoke. Anyway, we recovered first and killed four of them. The other two ran like scalded cats. Smoke took a bullet in the leg, but he said it was no more than he deserved, since he’d walked right into their hidey hole.”
“Where is Mr. Johnson now?”
“Dead. He was killed at Chickamauga.”
“I’m sorry,” Lacey said softly. “Were you born in the South?”
“Yeah. Virginia.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Too many bad memories. My brothers were killed at Vicksburg. My stepmother died during the war, and my sister entered a convent. There was no reason to stay, so I decided to see the country and I lit out for Texas when the war was over.”
“I’ve never been there. Was it nice?”
A picture of Claire Duprey flashed through Matt’s mind: soft white skin, hair as black as sin, eyes as green as emeralds. “It was all right,” he said with a shrug.
LaceysWay Page 6
