She was the most sensuous and alluring woman Slash had ever laid eyes on, and he’d first laid eyes on her when she was well past thirty.
“Hellkatoot,” he said. “You’re still a raving beauty, Jay. There’s not many women over forty who’ve kept their looks as well as you have. You’ll find a man. You just gotta start lookin’ for one, that’s all.”
Jaycee Breckenridge drew a deep, slow, fateful breath. “I’m not gonna find one out here, am I? The only men who come around here anymore are you and that lummox lounging around inside like Jay Gould.”
Slash smiled.
“And you two don’t deserve me,” Jay said with another laugh.
“We sure don’t!” Slash chuckled and shook his head.
Besides, he knew, they shared too much history. Good history and bad history. He’d once gotten his hopes up about Jay, a long time ago. But then she’d tumbled for the older, wiser “Pistol” Pete Johnson, five years Slash’s senior, old enough to have been Jay’s father.
She’d preferred the astuteness and assuredness of the older man. She’d been taken by the burly Pete’s rough-sweet ways and his bawdy humor. Mere days after she’d met the man at the country saloon she’d been singing in, she never looked back. At least, not as far as Slash knew, and he thought he knew her as well or better than anyone on earth, now that Pete was gone.
“I’m so sorry, Jay,” he said, looking off in frustration.
She frowned at him, puzzled. “For Pecos? Don’t be silly. He only mentioned his old friend’s name.”
“No, not for Pecos.” Slash turned to her. “For me.”
Jay looked at him askance, with sharp admonishment. “Let’s not go down that trail again, Slash.”
CHAPTER 3
“Pete’s death wasn’t your fault,” Jay said. “It was the fault of the man—that deputy U.S. marshal riding for Chief Marshal Bledsoe—who shot him from that ridge. Cowardly devil!” she added hatefully, tears glistening in her eyes once more.
Slash shook his head. “I led us into that trap. I knew those mountains we were riding in. I knew ’em like the back of my hand! At least, I thought I did.”
“It was a box canyon,” Jay said. “The box canyons are filled with lunatics.”
“I took a wrong turn. I was hungover from the night before. I shouldn’t have been drinking the night before a job, but I did. I took a wrong turn and led Pete an’ Pecos an’ Arnie and Devlin into that box canyon and couldn’t find my way out again before that no-account lawdog that was shadowin’ us fired down at us from that ridge.
“To put the cherry on it, that bullet wasn’t even meant for Pete. It was meant for me! That marshal wanted to cut the head off the snake, to take me out, the gang’s leader, but Pete rode in front of me when we were all looking for another way out of that canyon. He’s the one whose ticket got punched when it should’ve been mine.”
Slash gritted his teeth and shook his head as he stared toward the grave, the old sorrow and self-recrimination having returned full-blast. “Dammit!”
“Slash, now—”
“No.” Slash shook his head defiantly. “I reckon I should’ve retired back then, nigh on five years ago. I got careless in my old age. Overly confident. If I’d called it quits, let one of the others take over—one of the younger men that was qualified to take over—Pete might still be alive today.” He turned to the woman, placed his hands on her arms. “I hope to God you can find it in your heart to forgive me one day, Jay.”
She studied Slash thoughtfully. Slowly, a sad smile stretched her lips and she placed a gentle hand on his cheeks, staring deeply into his own sad eyes. “I’ll make a deal with you, Slash.”
He cleared emotion from his throat. “Anything . . .”
“I’ll forgive you if you forgive yourself.” Jay’s smile grew, and warmth filled her hazel-eyed gaze. “How ’bout that? Oh, and I’ll add one more thing. I promise not to break down like a damn weeping fool every time I hear his name. Maybe sometimes, but not every time,” she added, chuckling. “All right, Slash? Do we have a deal?”
Slash gazed back at her, his heart lightening ever so gradually. He removed her hand from his cheek and kissed it. “All right.” He chuckled with genuine relief. “All right. We got ourselves a deal.”
“Good!” Jay picked up her coffee and sipped it, gazing through the steam at Slash. “Now, tell me what brought you both here last night, looking so raggedy-heeled and hang-headed.”
Slash and Pecos had pulled in so late the previous night, having awakened Jay from a dead sleep, that once they’d tended their horses, they’d all headed off to bed, Slash assuring the woman he’d explain their unexpected visit first thing in the morning.
Now Slash glowered as he turned to stare out over the porch rail again, holding his coffee up close to the scar on his chest, the top end of which was exposed by the V opening of his unbuttoned longhandle top. “Another foolish mistake, Jay. Just another in a long line of ’em.”
“Tell me,” Jay prodded, rubbing her hand on his shoulder. “Can’t be all that bad.”
“Oh, yes it can, darlin’. It sure as hell can!”
Leaning forward against the porch rail, coffee in his hands, Slash told her in a tone of deep chagrin about how he and Pecos got hornswoggled by their own gang—or by the two upstarts in the gang who decided to take over the gang’s leadership.
“Loco Sanchez and Arnell Squires?” said Jay. “You can’t be serious? Why, they’re . . . they’re foolish young firebrands!”
“They’re both damn near your age,” Slash said, chuckling. “They ain’t schoolboys no more.”
“No!”
Slash chuckled again. “I know—where does the time go? I still see ’em as pimply-faced brats myself!” He shook his head. “All I got to say for ’em is at least they didn’t shoot us. They could have, sure enough.”
“Instead, they shamed the hell out of us!” Pecos said, barreling out the cabin’s door like a bull from a chute, tucking the tails of his white cotton shirt into his black broadcloth trousers. “They got us drunk the night before we was to rob the bank in La Junta—”
“Good an’ drunk!” Slash said, shaking his head in self-disgust.
“Good an’ drunk,” Pecos agreed, leaning against a porch post, his own mug of freshly poured coffee in his big right hand, “while most of the rest of the gang must’ve stayed purty damn sober. They was up at the crack of dawn the next morning, and lit out to rob the bank without us.”
Slash gave a dry, sheepish snort. “They rode off to rob the bank, leaving me an’ Pecos three sheets to the wind in Doña Flores’s place down by the Arkansas River. As they rode into La Junta, they told someone to tell the marshal that none other than Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid was sawing logs over at Doña Flores’s place by the river.”
“Oh, no!” Jay said, snapping her eyes wide in both shock and amusement. “They didn’t!”
Slash and Pecos both shook their heads in unison, flushing to the tips of their ears.
“Well . . . ?”Jay said. “Don’t leave me hanging, boys!”
Slash looked at his partner, who was a good four inches taller than Slash’s six-two, and a good sixty pounds heavier, though Pecos could carry that much weight on his broad, ham-boned frame and not look fat. Long blond hair tumbled down from the snuff-brown, broad-brimmed, bullet-crowned hat on his head. His graying blond mustache and goatee, as well as the fair hues of his face, set off the lake-blue of his eyes.
“Jay’s enjoying this tale way too much, Pecos,” Slash said.
Pecos chuckled despite himself and brushed a big fist across his nose. He gave his head another wag and said, “Well . . . we got arrested. While our own gang was robbing the bank in town, the lawdog and his two deputies . . . well, they snuck into our rooms along the river, an’ . . . they cuffed us. . . .”
He glanced at Slash as though for help.
Flushing an even brighter red, Slash said, “They cuffed us while we was both pa
ssed out. Out cold. I didn’t even know I’d been cuffed and arrested until a good hour, maybe two hours later when I came out of the whiskey fog in the jail cell!”
“Yeah,” Pecos said, nodding with chagrin, eyes on his boot toes. “Me, too.” He winced and clamped a hand to the back of his neck. “Damn, that was one of the worst hangovers I’ve ever endured. Leastways, north of the Mexican border!”
They all laughed at that.
Jay said, “Well, how did you two get out of jail? I’m surprised they didn’t hang you both from the nearest cottonwood!”
Slash looked at Pecos. Pecos looked at Slash. They both flushed in unison once more. Slash chuckled.
Pecos toed a weed that had grown up between the porch boards. “Um . . .”
“Go ahead,” Slash said, grinning at his partner. “Tell the woman, Pecos.”
Turning to Jay, staring at him expectantly, Pecos said, “Well, I uh . . . I know this girl from Trinidad, ya see.”
“A girl from Trinidad, hmm?”
“Yeah, a girl from Trinidad,” Pecos said. “She just happened to be in La Junta. She travels with this theatrical troupe. Plays in all the opry houses in Colorado and northern New Mexico, an’ . . . well, she sorta helped us out a little, Slash an’ me.”
“Her an’ her actress friend,” Slash added. “A coupla fine-lookin’ young ladies.”
“Very upstanding, I bet,” Jay said, grinning, eyes bright with humor.
“Oh, very upstanding,” Slash said.
“Well, they normally are,” Pecos said. “But the one, Evangeline Kinkaid, she took a shine to me a while back in Taos, ya see—”
“A very big shine!” Slash added, snickering.
“Understandable,” Jay said, chuckling. “Pecos is a big man!”
Flushing but otherwise ignoring the ribbing, Pecos continued with, “When Evangeline seen me an’ Slash led over to the jail in cuffs an’ leg irons, she decided to offer a hand, an’ she got her actress friend to help.”
“What kind of a hand did these two actresses offer?” Jay asked.
“They waited until the town marshal had organized a posse to go after the gang and its new leaders,” Slash said, speeding up the story. “When he and the catch party left town, he left two older fellas on guard duty in the jailhouse. A pair of old widowers. Apparently, neither widower had known the pleasures of a woman in a lot of days. So it was no hard trick for Evangeline Kinkaid and her friend . . .”
“Magdalena St. Charles,” Pecos filled in, toeing the weed again.
“Yes, yes, Magdalena St. Charles,” Slash said. “It was no hard trick for those two good-lookin’, upstandin’ girls to distract the old-timers long enough to squirrel the cell block key away from ’em . . . as well as a pistol, an—”
“Oh, good Lord in heaven!” Jay’s laughter peeled. “You two old cutthroats were saved from a sure-fire hanging by two girls of the fallen variety!”
“Give the lady a cigar!” Slash said, grinning despite his embarrassment.
All three had a good laugh over two of the frontier’s most notorious outlaws, Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid, having been arrested while drunk on whiskey and then being freed by two young ladies named Evangeline Kinkaid and Magdalena St. Charles.
Slash and Pecos didn’t laugh as long or with nearly as much vigor as Jay, however. Pistol Pete’s pretty widow had a good long laugh over the old outlaws’ latest escapades.
For Slash and Pecos, however, the whole drunken experience had been quite sobering.
“So,” Slash continued when Jay’s laughter had all but died, “we got our horses out of the livery barn and rode hell for leather. We covered our trail pretty good, I think,” he added, glancing cautiously around the cabin, “before we drifted up this way. I don’t think we were followed. Honestly, Jay, we didn’t know where else to go. We been rode hard an’ put up wet, Pecos an’ me.”
“You know you boys are welcome here anytime,” Jay said. She frowned at each man in turn. “Why such long faces?” she asked. “At least you evaded the hang rope. You should be stompin’ with your tails up!”
Pursing his lips, Slash shared another incredulous look with his old trail partner Pecos, then shook his head. “We’re all washed up, Jay. We burned the candle at both ends for too damn long. We’re done. Through.”
“We’re gettin’ out of it,” Pecos said. “Before we embarrass ourselves further or, worse, get our necks stretched for our stupidity.”
“Getting out of it?” Jay said, arching her brows hopefully. “You mean you are going to leave the long coulees and actually get real jobs!”
“There she goes again!” Pecos yelled, pointing a mock-accusing finger at the pretty woman, who was once again laughing delightedly. “There she goes again, Slash! Make her stop!”
Slash chuckled and threw back the last of his coffee. Tossing the dregs over the porch rail, he said, “I reckon you could say we’re gonna get ourselves jobs, sure enough. But we’ll be workin’ for ourselves.”
“Oh?” Jay’s curiosity was piqued.
“Sure,” Pecos said, grinning. “Me an’ Slash done thought it through over the past year or so. We’re gonna go up to Camp Collins, north of Denver, an’ buy a small freighting company from this old man we know up there. Emil Becker. We been through that country a few times, and we both took a shine to it.
“Last time we was through there, after robbing the bank up in Laramie”—Pecos added with a devilish wink—“Emil took us aside and said he’d sell his freight outfit to us for ten thousand dollars. Four big Pittsburg freight wagons, heavy-axled for mountain trailing, and a dozen big Missouri mules. Emil wasn’t in no hurry to sell at the time. He told us to think on it for a year and then get back to him. He figured in that time, he’d be ready to retire and go live with his daughter in Denver.”
“Well, it’s been a year,” Slash said. “So . . . since our minds about retiring from the owlhoot trail were sort of made up for us . . . by Sanchez an’ Squires . . . we decided to go ahead an’ pull the trigger on our new careers.”
He smiled winningly and threw an arm around Pecos’s broad shoulders. He doffed his low-crowned black hat and held it over his chest. “Miss Jaycee Breckenridge, meet the new proprietors of Front Range Freighting—James Braddock and Melvin Baker!”
“Oh, so you’ve already bought the business?” Jay asked.
Slash and Pecos shared another conferring glance.
“Ah . . . well, no,” Pecos said.
Slash winced. “You see . . . we, uh . . . we’re flat broke. I might have a gold eagle rolling around in the hollowed out heel of my boot, but . . .”
“I got a couple of nickels in my vest pocket,” Pecos put in sheepishly. “But mostly lint. I reckon I spent the last of my jingle at Doña Flores’s place.” He winced as he raked a thumbnail along his unshaven jaw. “I was really countin’ on the takedown from that bank in La Junta, gallblastit!”
“So you’re gonna need a stake,” Jay said, crossing her arms on her chest and drawing her mouth corners down, knowingly.
“Yeah,” Slash said, dropping his gaze to the porch floor and toeing the weed that Pecos had been toeing before. “So we’re gonna pull one more job. Just one more! Then . . .”
He wagged his head, sighed with resolve, and shuttled Jay a direct, open gaze. “Then we’re gonna take our cold hard cash up to Camp Collins an’ plunk it down on old Emil’s barrelhead. We’re gonna be freighters. We’re gonna haul goods from Denver to the mining camps up high in the Rockies. A good, honest life of hard work an’ clean living—ain’t that right, Pecos?”
Pecos grinned and rose up onto the balls of his boots as he draped his long, thick right arm around Slash’s shoulders. “Gonna be a life of peace an’ quiet from here on out for old Slash an’ Pecos!”
“Uh, make that James Braddock an’ Melvin Baker,” Slash corrected.
“Right you are, partner. Ole Slash an’ Pecos is dead as fence posts. Long live James Braddock an’ Melvi
n Baker, proprietors!”
Just then the clay water pot hanging beneath the porch roof exploded.
Clay shards and water rained down over the porch and onto the toes of Slash’s and Pecos’s boots.
For a half second, they and Jay just stared at the frayed rope jostling from the ceiling, where the pot had been hanging a moment before. Pecos swiped his left hand across the side of his neck and stared at his fingers, dumbfounded at the greasy blood from the bullet burn.
As the shrill, echoing report of the rifle reached the trio’s ears, Slash grabbed Jay and shoved her through the cabin’s open door, bellowing, “Ambush!”
CHAPTER 4
As Jay lay sprawled on the cabin floor, just inside the front door, Slash clawed both his .44s from their holsters and swung back around, crouching in the open doorway to stare off into the trees and rocks bordering the cabin’s broad yard, carpeted in dun-brown grass.
He held both pistols barrel up, hammers cocked, waiting.
Pecos stood crouched to Slash’s right, also aiming his cocked Russian straight out into the yard.
The silence after the bullet and the wailing report was deafening.
Sunlight splashed the yard. The smell of summer-cured grass and warm pine resin and mountain sage peppered Slash’s nose. Birds flitted in the pine branches.
That was all there was out there now. Slash almost wondered if he’d imagined the bullet, but the frayed rope hanging from the porch ceiling and the shards of the clay pot lying on the wet floorboards were all the proof he needed that they had, indeed, been shot at.
But from where?
By who?
Pecos swallowed nervously and, keeping his cocked Russian aimed straight out from the porch, said, “You see the devil?”
“Nope.” Slash paused, raking his gaze slowly across the yard and the furry green of the pines and cedars bordering it, roughly fifty yards from the cabin. “I sure don’t. But he’s out there . . . somewhere.”
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