She stared at him like that for nearly a minute. Sartain frowned, wondering what thoughts were passing behind that smolderingly beautiful, oblique gaze.
She raised the cheroot to her lips, drew on it, and again let the wind take the smoke.
She smiled. Sartain could see her white teeth framed by those red lips beneath a button nose.
Sartain returned the smile. She flicked the cheroot over the rail into the street, then, keeping her eyes on him, turned her body slowly toward the open door. As she began moving toward the door, she turned her head away from him as well and fairly floated through it, drawing it closed behind her without casting the Cajun another glance.
Sartain felt a hard pull.
His heart thudded.
He looked for a makeshift boardwalk, spied one a half a block away on his right, and crossed over, making his way back to the hurdy-gurdy house, which a small red sign over the double doors identified simply as AUNT IRMA’S.
He stomped the mud off his boots on the boardwalk fronting the place and went in.
Chapter 2
“Well, look who’s here!” said a chubby middle-aged bottle-blonde woman moving down the stairs fronting the door. She wore a pink nightgown under a cream-colored elkskin robe and fleece-lined moccasins.
A parlor opened to the right of the door. A kitchen opened to the left. The plank-walled foyer was dingy and narrow. Its only decorations were two oil paintings of nearly naked young women on horseback, the horses wide-eyed with surprise.
Hurdy-gurdy house humor.
“Tall drink of water, ain’t ya?” the woman, obviously the madam, said, stopping directly in front of Sartain and planting a resolute fist on her jutting hip as she tipped her head back to stare up the long length of him. “What’s the matter? You got somethin’ caught in your throat? You don’t look well.”
She reached up and placed her soft, damp hand on his forehead. “Hmm. Don’t seem to have a temperature.”
“Who is that?” The Revenger croaked out, heart still hammering slowly in his chest. He lifted his chin toward the ceiling.
“Who’s who?”
“The girl on the balcony.” Rarely had he been so captivated by a girl seen from that far away. There’d been only one other time, in fact.
Only one other time...
The memory of that time was mixing with the present, causing both his heart and his brain to hiccup and sputter.
“Oh.” The madam smiled. She nodded slowly. “You must’ve seen Emmanuelle. She’s the only one I got who can jerk such a reaction out of a big, brawny hombre like yourself.”
“How much?” Sartain asked, staring at the stairs as though willing himself toward it, willing himself to climb it to the haunting visage he’d seen on the balcony while his boots remained fixed on the dyed hemp rug on the foyer floor.
“She ain’t cheap, bucko.”
“How much.”
“Emmanuelle is five dollars for the first hour. She’s a dollar for every hour after that. I usually put a lid on how long a gent can stay with her, though. The mayor of our fair town died of a heart attack when the fool was so captivated after the first hour, that he stayed three.” The madam, likely Aunt Irma, shook her head slowly, sadly, widening her eyes in warning. “That was too long. Poor man died of a heart stroke.”
“Heart stroke?”
“Isn’t that sad?” She shook her head again. “Just too much for him, Emmanuelle was. You, however, look like you could handle her. Still, you’d best take it easy your first go round. I recommend only two hours the first time. Even for a healthy man like you obviously are.”
She gave him an admiring up and down. “The second time—if you’re flush enough for a second time, that is—maybe you can go three. I warn you, though, Emmanuelle has been known to make grown men cry, to turn young men into old men, and old men into young men. Too young sometimes for their old tickers, if you get my drift.”
Sartain flipped the woman a gold eagle he’d taken off his last quarry, a killer named Seth Gather out of Alkali Springs, Wyoming since Gather no longer had any use for it.
“Which room?”
“Last door on the left,” the woman said, poking her chin at the ceiling.
The Revenger stepped around her as he headed for the stairs.
The woman called behind him, “Cajun, ain’t ya? I can tell by your accent.”
“French Quarter born and bred!”
“Oh, lordy!” the woman said in disgust as Sartain climbed the stairs two steps at a time. “You Cajuns with your big grins and syrupy ways o’ talkin’ are dangerous men. You charmin’ that girl off my payroll is also cause for a public hangin’, and I know our town marshal, ‘Dangerous’ Dan Tucker, will back me up on that...along with every other red-blooded man in Grant County!”
Her cackling laugh dwindled away below Sartain as he gained the cathouse’s second story and made his way along the hall paneled in rough, whipsawed pine. The potpourri of various perfumes mingled with the smell of tobacco and wood smoke. No candles or lanterns were lit. The only light was from a single window.
The last door on the hall’s left side stood partly open. The Revenger nudged it wider with his boot and stepped inside, squinting into the fragrant shadows.
An umber fire crackled in a small brick hearth on the room’s far side. Angled near the fire, partly facing the door, was a red velvet couch with scrolled oak arms. She was stretched out on it like food at a smorgasbord, wearing only the lacy black wrap she’d been wearing over the corset and bustier when he’d first seen her.
No, that wasn’t all she was wearing.
She also wore several loops of probably fake pearls, the longest loop sagging toward her belly, which was exposed by the wrap. It was open down there, although it was drawn closed across her chest. One knee was partly raised, leaning toward the other one, which was flat on the velvet cushions.
The brown-eyed succubus was fingering a strand of the pearls, her hair spilling across the blue velvet gilt-tasseled pillow resting against the sofa’s far arm.
She blinked slowly, her lips spreading a subtle, flirtatious smile. “I knew you would come.”
“I hate being predictable,” Sartain said, hooking his hat and shell belt on a wall peg near the door.
He went over and sat down beside her, on the edge of the sofa. He placed his hand on the side of her heart-shaped face, caressed her cheek with his thumb. She had a mole on the side of her neck and another, smaller one just beneath her lower lip. Other than that, her skin was smooth and flawless.
Her molasses-brown eyes sparkled in the mix of golden sunlight and firelight that relieved the room’s dense shadows.
“What a delightful creature,” he said. He ran his thumb across her plump lips. “And who are you, mon cher? Where are you from? I don’t have to know this, but I am curious.”
Her accent bit him deeply, reminding him of the mix of French and Creole accents he’d known growing up. “French?”She smiled.
“I’m Sartain,” he said, letting his gaze roam across her. “I’m from here and there...everywhere.”
Her chest rose and fell slowly behind the wrap. “You are Southern.”
“Cajun from New Orleans.”
“Ah. Oui.”
Sartain leaned down and kissed her. She returned the kiss gently at first, playfully, pulling her head back from time to time, teasing him with her eyes. Gradually, she pressed her lips more firmly against his.
She pushed his head away from her.
“We must pause.”
“Why?”
“There is no hurry.”
“How do you know I didn’t pay for an hour?”
Emmanuelle only chuckled throatily as she rose to a sitting position on the sofa and folded the rap over her chest. “Talk to me, mon cher. I like the sound of your voice.”
“Mon cher,” the Cajun said, sitting beside her and folding his arms behind his head. “I haven’t heard that in a month of Sundays.”
> “Who are you, Sartain? Where are you from? Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. I am always curious. Make something up if you want. Sometimes that is better, depending on how good a storyteller you are.”
As Emmanuelle turned to him, drawing a pretty leg beneath her and curling a lock of her hair around her finger, Sartain let his mind wander around in his past. He didn’t let it wander around long, however. There was too much pain back there, especially back in Arizona where he’d buried the young woman whom he’d considered his wife. He’d also buried her grandfather and Sartain’s child, which she’d miscarried after the soldiers had savaged her.
“Me?” the Cajun said, shoving all of that out of his mind with a wince. “I’m was born of a King and a Queen from a foreign country you likely never heard about. A little, tiny country but a happy one.”
“Oh, you are a prince!”
“Exactly! That’s what I am. A prince!”
“I thought you must be born of royalty. You are very handsome.”
“Ah, hell.”
“You are very handsome and very big. Big through the shoulders, long in the legs.”
She leaned toward him and breathed into his ear, “Large in all the places a woman cares about.”
He chuckled at the tickling sensation and turned to her, placing a peck on her neck. “Your turn, Emmanuelle. Tell me about yourself.”
The girl arched her brows as though surprised. “Me?”
Most men she entertained probably didn’t ask such questions. They were probably more interested in getting down to brass tacks with the lovely girl. Sartain had been taught by the ladies of the Quarter who’d raised him to take his time.
“Me?” she said again. “I was born of gypsies. We traveled the frontier in many wagons, singing and dancing. My mother and father and sisters and brothers were very happy. We earned a living where we could, but we never needed much money. Villagers paid us for repairing their pots and pans with chickens and with vegetables from their gardens.
“They said our happiness and serenity was a joy to behold. It was a simple life. We followed rivers and streams, spent the summers in the mountains. We lived on the kindness of strangers and on the happiness that love and travel and seeing new things and people brings.”
“Ah, the life!”
“Ah, it is true,” said Emmanuelle, twisting her finger in his thick curls now. “It was a beautiful life.”
“You got a silver tongue.”
“You liked that one, eh?” She looked up at him from beneath her brows, quirked a sexy smile, and nibbled his ear.
Waves of pleasure rippled through the Cajun.
She turned her head to face him and smiled warmly into his eyes, her brown eyes flashing like sunlight off a deep pond. “You know what, Sartain?”
“No,” Sartain whispered. “What’s that, darlin’?”
“I think I am going to like you.”
She sandwiched his big face in her hands and placed her mouth over his.
Chapter 3
Sarah Mangham said, “Two nickels, one dime, and two pennies...and that makes two bits back to you, Mrs. Farmington.”
The old woman cleared her throat and wrinkled her brows.
“Pardon me?” Sarah said.
The old woman looked down at the coins in her wrinkled palm. Sarah followed her gaze. “Oh, I’m sorry!”
She fished one more penny out of the cash drawer under the mercantile’s business counter and dropped it with the other coins into Mrs. Farmington’s hand.
“I never would have expected the daughter of Brian Mangham to cheat an old lady out of a penny!” the old woman intoned, carefully pouring the coins into the open mouth of her beaded reticule.
“Mrs. Farmington, it was an honest mist—”
“I guess the rumors going around are true. Your father really is in financial trouble.” Mrs. Farmington gave Sarah the stink-eye. “But that gives you no right to cheat an old woman out of her hard-earned pennies, Miss Mangham. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Mrs. Farmington, I assure you, I...”
Sarah let her voice trail off. The woman had already turned away and was stomping her stout-heeled black shoes off between narrow aisles toward the front door, her chin cleaving the air like a ship’s prow.
Sarah sighed. Her cheeks were warm with embarrassment. She was chagrined not only for unintentionally shorting the old woman, whose husband had died five years ago and who had been surviving only on the chickens she raised at the edge of Silver City, but because of what the woman had said about the rumors going around about the Mangham family’s business trouble.
Sarah hadn’t realized that anyone outside of Sarah, her father, and her brother knew about it. The Mangham family had been trying to keep their financial straits under their hats. It was a matter of pride as well as survival.
Sarah was staring out the front door when the door to her father’s office opened. Her bespectacled father stepped out wearing his bowler hat and carrying his carved oak cane. His gray wool overcoat was buttoned.
“Sarah, honey, I’m going to go over to the café for my morning coffee. Has everything been going smoothly out here?”
Sarah saw no reason to mention her gaffe with Mrs. Farmington, nor what the old woman had said about the rumors. That would only worry Brian Mangham more than he already was. He had enough to worry about.
“Everything’s fine, Poppa. Remember, the stage is due here in another hour or so.”
“I said I’m going out for coffee, Sarah. I’m not leaving the territory.”
Sarah winced at the uncustomary sharpness of the retort. Brian Mangham had started walking toward the front of the mercantile, but now he stopped and turned to his daughter with a weary sigh. “I’m sorry, honey. I guess my nerves are a little jangled. I didn’t mean that. I’ll be sure and be back here by the time the stage arrives. I’m sure Scott will be back from his delivery, as well.”
Scott was Sarah’s brother, two years her senior, who often delivered supplies to area farms, mines, and ranches. At the moment, he was delivering parts for a stamping mill to the Fog Hat Mine up near Rogue Mountain.
“Poppa?”
Again, he turned back. “Yes, honey?”
Sarah walked slowly down the counter toward her father. She didn’t realize that she was wringing her hands. “Who was that man who left here a few minutes ago? The big man in the pinto vest, and...and wearing that rather large revolver.”
Mangham turned his head to stare out the large windows at the front of the store. “Oh, him. He’s...well, he’s no one important, Sarah. I called him in to...to give me his advice on certain matters. He gave it, and now he’s gone.”
He said this last with another weary sigh and bestowed upon his daughter a phony reassuring smile. “No one important. And now he’s gone.”
“Yes, as soon as he left here, he headed right across the street to Aunt Irma’s.”
“I don’t doubt that,” said Mangham, walking toward the door as though his shoulders weighed an anvil. “I don’t doubt that a bit.”
“Poppa?”
“Yes, honey?” Mangham said as he reached the door.
“What kind of advice did you want from that man?”
Mangham stared out the door’s glass pane for a time before he glanced over his shoulder at Sarah and offered that chillingly phony attempt at a reassuring smile again. “Please don’t worry about it, Sarah. I’m the only one who needs to worry about it.” He winked, opened the door, jangling the bell over it, and went out.
Sarah watched him drop slowly, carefully down the mercantile’s front steps. He’d been walking more and more gingerly lately, Sarah had noticed. He had arthritis in his knees and hips, and it had seemed to be progressing more rapidly of late.
Worry must do that to folks, she speculated. Her father had been plenty worried lately. And he’d been wrong about him being the only one who needed to worry...
That thought had only begun lashing its fam
iliar whip across Sarah’s mind when she was distracted by three men outside the large window right of the front door. They must have walked down the break between the mercantile and the harness shop to the west because they’d moved into Sarah’s view from the right, mounting the porch from that direction.
One by one, they stomped along the porch, shoulders brushing the window and leaving sweaty smear lines. They all glanced through the window from beneath the brims of their Stetsons. They were silhouetted against the daylight, so Sarah could see only the sharpest lines of their faces.
The bell jangled again as the first man opened the door and sauntered inside. The second man followed him, their boots thumping loudly. They were large men in crude trail gear, all wearing pistols on their hips or thonged on their legs.
When the third man had entered the store, he closed the door and turned the pasteboard sign so that OPEN now faced the inside of the store, which meant CLOSED faced the street. He drew the shade down over the window.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Sarah asked from behind the mercantile’s business counter, a hard edge in her tone.
“You’re closin’ up for a while, sweetheart,” said the first man, sauntering toward her along the narrow aisle.
He was tall and rangy, and he had a battered Stetson pulled low over his eyes. He wore two pistols up high on his right hip, one with its handle jutting forward.
“How dare you!” Fury burned through Sarah as she flipped back the counter lid and strode down the aisle, intending to turn the sign back around. “I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing, but—”
Her scream cut off her sentence as the cowboy laughed, picked her up in his arms, and threw her over his shoulder.
“Put me down!” the girl cried, shocked and incensed, punching the man’s back with her fists. “Put me down this instant!”
“There you go, Drew—you got you a wild one!” yelled the third man coming down the aisle behind the second man.
“Don’t take all the fight out of her before I get my turn!” ordered the second man as the first man strode through a break in the counter, holding Sarah even more tightly against his shoulder.
The Revenger Page 76
