Wild Is the Night

by Colleen Quinn

  Wild

  Is The

  Night

  COLLEEN

  QUINN

  Copyright © 2012, Colleen Quinn

  For my brother Jack,

  who made me laugh

  when I needed it most.

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Gary and Lisa Rainey, who shared their cattle ranching experiences with me.

  To my daughter Erin, who knew that owls ate mice.

  And to Leslie Gelbman and Gail Fortune, for their talent and enthusiasm.

  Contents

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Chapter

  1

  The air was thick with tension as Logan Benteen stepped from the porch of the Silver Spur Saloon, his gun hand resting lightly on his holster. He was dressed in black, from his weather-stained trousers to his dyed cotton shirt and his Stetson. Sand blew down the street, glittering like gold dust in the hot Nevada sun. The windows remained shut, the curtains drawn; except for one window, which was open, high above the bar. A young woman stood there, motionless, frozen with fear. She tried to scream, but the sound died in her throat as the outlaw walked down the empty road kicking up small puffs of dust with his spurs.

  “You coming out, Haines? You’re gonna be sorry if I have to come in after you.”

  A man emerged from the shadows, his face hidden by his hat. “What the hell—”

  “Draw, Haines.” The black-garbed man spoke softly, continuing to advance. The woman at the window choked as the distance closed between the two men. The one stalked the other like a cat playing with a sparrow—knowing, inevitably, what the final result would bring.

  “I ain’t got my gun. You can’t do this, Logan. I’m unarmed. See?” Haines displayed an empty holster.

  Logan grinned. The woman at the window could see the flash of yellowed teeth beneath the black Stetson. He paused for a moment, as if considering his options, then his hand swept downward so quickly that the woman saw only the blur of motion. Suddenly, she heard a gunshot, saw Logan’s knees bend, smelled smoke in the late afternoon breeze. Haines crumbled, his mouth sagging. His gun hand grappled uselessly for a weapon that wasn’t there.

  The woman at the window cried out, no longer able to restrain herself as the stench of gunpowder and death stung her nostrils. She had witnessed a killing a cold-blooded murder. Pressing her hands to her mouth, she froze in horror as the outlaw’s eyes drifted upward, then locked with hers. For a split second, she couldn’t move as his black eyes wandered over her, memorizing every detail of her face, her smooth brown hair, her blue cotton dress. Logan cursed, his gun still smoking then started for the building where the woman watched him.

  She had less than a minute. Forcing her body into motion, she plunged beneath the bed, her heart pounding. She could hear the killer’s boots as the man slowly climbed the stairs, then paused at the door. Her breath stopped as the door creaked open, taking a lifetime, throwing a sinister triangle of light on the wooden floorboards.

  The boots were black also, smooth from horse hides and covered with a light film of dust. The silver spurs jingled as he stepped into the room and stood just inches away from her. She dared not move, dared not breathe. Her blood seemed to dry up in her veins as she sensed him searching the room, looking for his quarry. Any minute now he would stoop down, peer under the bed with those deadly black eyes, and then kill her, just as mercilessly as he had killed the man outside. She would be dead, would never see the sun again, smell a flower, love a man or a child…

  The bed creaked as he leaned on it, pressing his weight against the mattress with his hand. His body lowered. In a moment, it would be over….

  “Logan!” A masculine voice cried out. “Damn you, Logan! It’s the law! Let’s ride!”

  Logan hesitated, then cursed as the voice cried again: “Logan!” Unbelievably, his body straightened, then he crossed the room, the spurs clinking against the floor. Whatever he saw outside must have convinced him, for he climbed through the window, stepping easily through the frame, his lean, dangerous presence vanishing from the room. Only the scars on the floorboards evidenced that he had been there at all that her life could have ended….

  KANSAS, 1870

  Amanda Edison closed the book, wincing in self-criticism and the terrible consciousness of seeing her own words in print. Stuffing the cheap novel inside her ink-stained pocket, she gazed out the window of the moving train. Papers, scribbled one-liners and painstakingly researched notecards, tumbled onto the floor from her overstuffed carpetbag, and with a sigh, she bent to pick them up, almost losing her glasses in the process. Her light brown hair tumbled out of its prim knot, falling all over her neck like spun brown sugar. She shoved it back in exasperation, oblivious to her unkempt appearance. Something rustled in the covered bird cage beside her, and she lifted the canvas hood and spoke quietly to the indignant barn owl. When the bird was comfortably settled, she glanced around the interior of the coach. It was a small train without a caboose and was nearly empty. Only two passengers, a businessman and his female companion, talked quietly in the seat across from her. Amanda dipped into the fold of her navy stockings, withdrew a letter and read it again, her blue-green eyes scanning the document while her brow puckered in thought.

  “…while it is good, it is simply not realistic enough to be literature. Perhaps you are working too hard, Amanda. Or maybe you should be content with your success as Fess Tyson. Your westerns certainly sell well enough, within the limitations of the audience.

  “Should you still desire to pursue a career as a literary writer, I do have a suggestion. You need to see what you are writing about, to research beyond the confines of your library, which I understand is excellent. I’m not suggesting that you endanger yourself in any way. I know that since your father’s death, you are living quite alone. However, a trip may be the answer. I know that one of your fans deeded a piece of property to you, in Texas, I believe. Perhaps you should visit the place. It is only a suggestion, Amanda. I know that you don’t get around much, and such an idea may not be within your boundaries. However, most of my better writers stick to what they know…”

  The rest was too painful to read. Amanda once again experienced a sharp stab of disappointment, then folded the tear-stained letter and placed it back in her stocking.

  She had no choice. All of her education, all of her research, all of her years of careful work, writing and rewriting, editing, checking places, dates, locations, then double checking them…all of it amounted to nothing. She had spent her life bent over her Remington typewriter, the gaslights burning well into the morning, trying to perfect her work, yet she still couldn’t achieve the recognition that had become so important to her.

  Her brother Jeff would have laughed, ruffled her hair, and informed her that it didn’t matter in the least. Even when they were children, he would teasingly call her a bluestocking and try his best to entice her into what he
deemed more appropriate activities for a young girl, such as ice skating on a frozen New England pond, snowball fights, dances at the local town hall. Amanda, unaccustomed to any such frivolity, felt awkward and out of place. She didn’t know how to skate, couldn’t dance to save her life, and none of the young men wanted her for a partner anyway. None thought her pretty, or even passable. She did not fit the beauty ideal of the time, the blond-haired feminine woman, “head no higher than my heart.” She was a brunette, and her eyes were blue-green, a bewildering shade. They stared too directly from her tortoiseshell glasses, showing an intelligence that wasn’t fashionable. Her nose was fine and straight, sprinkled with freckles like a plover’s egg, and her mouth was too tight and too tense. Yes, Amanda was no beauty, and it was only because she was Jeff’s sister that the boys treated her kindly at all.

  Her cheeks burned as she remembered. It was only in school that she felt wanted and appreciated. There she could compete and win, for she had discovered early on that she had a brain, if not beauty. She devoured Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens. She read everything, from mathematical treatises to romantic poetry. And it was there she discovered a way to make a living, writing penny dreadfuls under the male pseudonym, Fess Tyson.

  Her study of newspapers became invaluable. She could pick up any of her subscriptions to the western dailies and find a wealth of story ideas, complete with details. It was there she’d read about the murder of a man called Haines, though his killer had not been identified. From that mere scrap of an article she had developed a story of a ruthless gunman. It was just the kind of western that satisfied her readers, gave them plenty of action and a villain they could hate. In the end, justice was done, and Fess Tyson had another success. For a while, her life felt complete. She had money coming in, satisfaction with what she was doing, and protection from the rest of the world where she never belonged. And especially now, with Jeff lying in a southern grave and her parents gone, she often congratulated herself on her choice.

  But lately, she wanted more. Her father would have never been content with her silent success; he would have encouraged her to go on, to become a real writer. Hadn’t he told her as much on his deathbed?

  Mrs. Pincus, her landlady, thought her insane. But when she realized Amanda was determined to go west, she’d packed her a parcel of food, three extra handkerchiefs, a flask of coffee, and a tiny derringer. The gun rested in her pocket, a heavy, foreign weight. Amanda could feel the derringer against her thigh as she shifted in her seat.

  The train whistle blew, and Amanda glanced up, startled out of her thoughts. The wheels screeched, the engines choked furiously, and grey-black smoke blew in the windows. They were slowing down, almost to a stop. Strange, they weren’t due to arrive at the next station for nearly an hour….

  Gunfire broke out like a distant thunder. The few passengers remaining in the car scrambled for cover. A woman shrieked; a man cursed as he fumbled for his gun. Amanda stared out the window in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening, not to her, not now. The train slowed even more, and the door flew open, the sound angry and metallic in the noonday sun. A man stepped through the passageway between the two cars, framed by the blazing sunlight, his gun drawn, his body lean and dangerous. He took one surveying glance around the car, then seized Amanda roughly around the waist and pulled her to the floor.

  “Stay down, it’s Sam Haskwell’s gang.”

  Amanda struggled for breath, her belly aching from the pressure of the man’s leg holding her down. For a moment, she thought she would pass out, so intense were the emotions that numbed her. Gradually, she became aware of little things, like the dark stubble of the man’s beard, the blackness of his hair, and the intense blueness of his eyes. His brows curved over those eyes, lending him a sinister appearance, while pitch-black lashes softened them, an almost incongruous contrast to the stark contours of his lean face. A southerner—his drawl told her that—and a gunman. No one else could aim with such deadly precision, and squint in relief when his bullet struck home.

  “How many are there?” An eastern businessman asked, peering up from behind the seat.

  “At least six.” The gunman answered, pausing to reload. It was the last question the businessman asked. His feminine companion cried out in horror as an outlaw’s bullet found its mark and the man slumped to the floor in a pool of blood.

  “Stay down!” The blue-eyed gunman shouted.

  “He’s dead! He can’t be…” Within minutes, the slender, red-haired woman joined the man as another bullet from outside the train struck home. Amanda grew sick with horror as a red stream of blood snaked its way across the floor, ending in a still, wet pool just above her face.

  “You got a gun?” The man released her, his body poised at the window, his gun still firing steadily.

  Amanda nodded, thinking of the ivory-handled pistol in her pocket. She withdrew the tiny derringer, trembling with fear, then heard the southerner’s derisive chuckle.

  “You call that a gun? Well, it should do for laughs. Stay beneath the window and see if you can hit anything. Except me.

  At that moment, Amanda hated him. Hated his filthy southern accent, his cocky manner, his obvious disregard for the deaths of the two people lying behind them. Brushing her loose hair out of her face, she crept determinately up to the window. Her hands shook as she aimed the gun, and she clamped her eyes shut and attempted to squeeze the trigger. Perspiration dripped from her palms and the barrel trembled miserably, then the weapon slipped from her fingers through the window and onto the ground below.

  “Jesus Christ.” He cursed as the gleaming ivory derringer disappeared into the grass. “You have a god-damned pop gun and you’re afraid to shoot it. Stay the hell down.”

  Amanda opened her mouth to retort, but a bullet whined by, the sound softer than she would have thought and far more sickening. She’d written dozens of gunfights, all of them wrong. The irony of that would have made her laugh except this was real. She stared in horrified fascination out the window as another barrage of gunfire exploded.

  “Get down, or you’ll wind up like them!” He gestured to the corpses behind them.

  Humiliated, frightened and ill, Amanda ducked. The birdcage toppled over and she scrambled for it, ignoring the disgusted look the gunman gave her.

  “What the hell is that?” He lowered himself beneath the window and gazed curiously at the covered cage. The owl rustled inside.

  “Aesop.” Amanda answered, hugging the cage. “He’s an owl.”

  The gunman shook his head, then leaned against the wall. “Owl. She’s got an owl. We could be killed, and she’s worried about the damned owl.”

  “But Aesop…”

  The gunman put his finger to his lips, silencing her. The gunfire slowly died as the train surrendered to the outlaw band, and Amanda choked as she heard the sounds of screams, of men cursing and women crying out in protest. She could hear the coarse laughter of the Haskwell gang as they made their way through the cars, taking their reward from the passenger’s wealth.

  “He could have a gun.” The southerner gestured to the dead body of the businessman, while Amanda froze in revulsion, knowing what his next words would be. “See if he does.”

  “I can’t…”

  “See if he does.” The southerner repeated in that same, bored drawl. Appalled, Amanda put the owl’s cage aside and crept across the floor fighting the nausea that threatened to overwhelm her. Throwing up would certainly complete her misery, yet as she fumbled through the dead man’s pockets, trying not to look at his open eyes and pale, white skin, she came remarkably close. It was only the thought of further embarrassment and the gunman’s caustic reaction that made her retain her lunch.

  “He doesn’t.” Amanda scuttled quickly away from the corpse, taking deep breaths and fighting her natural queasiness. “His pockets are empty.”

  “Great. They’re still three cars ahead.” The southerner said, almost to himself. “Ferriman gave orders not to stop under any c
ircumstances. Shame this train doesn’t have air brakes.”

  Amanda barely heard him. The engines whined but did not stop. Terrified, she gazed up at the southerner, her fingers clutching the bird cage, her blue-green eyes wide and unblinking.

  “Won’t they kill them? Us?”

  The southerner shrugged. “Won’t they anyway?”

  Horrified, Amanda closed her eyes, refusing to let the thought complete itself. Think, you have a mind, for God’s sake, think! she scolded herself. The owl squawked. The southerner reloaded, his gun smoking, burning his fingers, while the sounds from the other cars continued to terrify her…

  “The coupler.” She glanced up, her eyes bright and intense. “Can’t you uncouple the car? This train should have a simple pin coupling. When the train pulls out, we’ll be safe.”

  He looked at her in amazement, then he broke into a chuckle. His sides shook as he shoved the gun inside its holster, then he stood up and glanced through the soot-covered window.

  “You just may have something there. There is some risk involved. We could get killed, you know. This train, uncoupled, could derail…”

  “They’ll kill us anyway, you said so!” Amanda protested.

  “You’re right.” He agreed. “And worth a shot. For a woman, you may have a good idea.”

  He was gone, his body crouched between the cars. He struggled with the iron bolt that linked the last car to the rest of the train, twisting and yanking the pin while trying to maintain his balance between the two moving cars. The train lurched around a corner and Amanda gasped as the gunman disappeared, the two coaches colliding on the far side, the metallic crash harsh and sickening. Her breath returned as the car straightened and she saw him, plastered against the train, his face white as death. Yet, as soon as it was safe, he knelt down again and resumed tugging at the pin. Amanda was almost tempted to call to him, to tell him it was too dangerous, when the bolt slipped out with a rusty squeak. The gunman stood erect, still clutching the useless pin, then the two cars slid apart. Slowly, inexorably, the train slipped away from them to the west, and the caboose started its own eastern migration to nowhere.