Desperate Hearts

by Alexis Harrington

* * *

  Kyla glanced at Jace Rankin across the dying fire. He lay with his head on his saddle again and his rifle in a loose grip. He looked like he was asleep, but she suspected that the snap of a twig would bring him instantly to his feet.

  She wrapped herself tightly in her bedroll and looked at the stars overhead. In the distance, a coyote howled at the sliver of cold white moon riding the western horizon.

  This wasn’t the life she had imagined for herself: banished from her home, dressed in a boy’s dirty clothes, running around the countryside with a bounty hunter she disliked and feared, hoping to convince him to kill a man, while a white-hot coal of anger and vengeance burned within her night and day—

  She had seen none of this coming. When Kyla imagined her life, in her mind’s eye she had finally thrown away all of her boy’s clothes. Sometimes she pictured being married to a strong man, one who would be her equal in wits and will. A man who would honor her independence, but whose heart was noble and whose touch was tender. There weren’t too many men around who would have found that an interesting partnership. Hank had been almost like that . . . but not quite.

  And now? She turned her head to look at Jace again, the stubble-shadowed jaws, the rifle in his hand. Even asleep he was forbidding. She had been scared and lonely sleeping in the open by herself in the month it took her to find him. But now she felt even more vulnerable. At least when she’d been alone, the chances were slim that her true gender would be detected. Tonight, she’d nearly given herself away at least three times. And oh, when he had made that remark about women and their reluctance to discuss ages, she was certain that he had found her out. And if he did?

  But no. She was safe. She had practiced posing as a boy, in varying degrees, since her girlhood. As long as she was careful, no one would ever know the truth.

  * * *

  They were on the road again early the next morning. Jace was stiff from sleeping on the ground. It was cold. A layer of frost covered everything, and mist drifted over the valley, making the sun look like a watery white ball on the horizon.

  He wasn’t in the best of moods. After all the commotion in Silver City, he’d forgotten to buy coffee before they left town. Hot coffee on a morning like this wasn’t too much to ask for, but he had none.

  And he still had Kyle tagging along behind him. He could hear the dun’s hooves back there, clopping on the summer-baked earth. Jace never looked over his shoulder to check on him. It was his job to keep up. He supposed he couldn’t gripe too much. The kid was a rugged, capable traveler, and he was doing his share without complaint.

  But Jace wasn’t used to having someone around all the time. Despite the vast expanse of empty land around them, he felt crowded, as if he needed to shrug off an unwelcome hand on his shoulder.

  He didn’t like people much, and trusted them even less. Often enough they appeared to wear one face, then proved to have another. Years of chasing wanted men had taught him that. Some of those men, when they’d wanted to, were able to fool people into believing they were just one step down from choir boys. But their true faces were usually those of bank robbers, cattle rustlers, and murderers.

  Women were another story altogether, but he’d avoided personal entanglements with them, too. The risk of losing everything—heart, mind, and self—was too great. He’d never had time for them beyond a saloon girl now and then. Anyway, not too many women were likely to beat a path to a man who earned his living bounty hunting.

  He heard Kyle sneeze behind him. At least the boy didn’t talk his ear off. But he made Jace uncomfortable, riding back there, and watching his every move. Why the hell had he decided to let him follow along, anyway? He nudged his horse to quicken his gait. He was supposed to go to Misfortune to talk to Travis, not provide traveling company for this silent, sullen boy with a peck of trouble. Well, he’d made a mistake, but not one that couldn’t be corrected.

  Cord was the next town up ahead. They’d reach it come afternoon, and he could buy coffee there. It might also be the perfect place to unload one angry kid.

  * * *

  When Jace and Kyla reached the tiny town of Cord, dark clouds were stacking up against the foothills of the Cedar Mountains.

  After two days of seeing no buildings or other humans, from the distance Cord looked almost like civilization to Kyla. But as they drew closer she saw that most of its few weathered buildings were abandoned. The town had the look of a community on its last legs. In fact, the only two businesses that remained were the same ones usually established in a new town: the general store and the saloon. The street was dusty, and tumbleweeds had blown to rest in some of the empty horse troughs; plainly, no horse had drunk from them in a long time.

  Kyla saw only one other person on the street, a trail-dirty man heading out of the saloon. He paused to stare at them through narrowed eyes as they passed, his hand resting on the batwing doors. Something about him was ominously familiar to Kyla, but she didn’t know why. The look he gave them was malevolent, but Jace didn’t favor him with even a glance.

  Jace led them to the general store and dismounted from his bay. Securing the reins to a wobbly hitching rail, he looked up and down the street. Kyla remained in her saddle. She longed to get down and look around in the store, but she was too tired to fight with him if he were to bark at her. Actually, he didn’t bark—half the time she had to lean in to hear him when he spoke. It was one of his unnerving characteristics. However, although he’d been no more taciturn than usual, she’d sensed his sour mood.

  “There sure isn’t much left of this place.” The remark was made more to himself than to Kyla. Then he glanced up at her with speculative eyes, and she thought she saw an odd expression of disappointment, as though he’d hoped for more here. It made a chill run through her.

  “Well, come on if you want,” he said finally, turning toward the store. “I’m not going another morning without coffee.”

  She jumped down and followed him across the rotted plank sidewalk, mindful of the holes. When they walked into the store, Kyla noticed the poorly stocked shelves and the lack of warm, inviting scents that floated through most general stores.

  While Jace ordered coffee from the clerk, she idled at the glass display case. Her eyes fell upon a pair of real tortoise shell combs that lay on a scrap of yellowing lace, and an unexpected surge of regret tightened her throat. She’d worn combs like that when her hair hung to her waist. When she’d finally had the chance to grow it out, she had thought it was her best feature, her long, thick hair. That was before she stood at a mirror a month ago, with tears in her eyes and a razor in her shaking hand, and resolutely hacked off the blazing badge of her femininity. Now it was hideous, a jagged-edged mop. She wondered if she’d ever get the chance to wear it long again. Not as long as Tom Hardesty lives, she vowed silently, her fist clenched against her chest.

  When she looked up, she saw that Jace was studying her, the same speculative expression in those ice blue eyes. Realizing that her interest in the combs might seem odd, she hastily moved on to examine a crosscut saw hanging on the wall.

  Jace watched the boy a minute longer, then turned back to the clerk. “Could you use some extra help around here?” he asked, keeping his voice down. “Maybe give that boy over there a job if I left him here in town?”

  The clerk snorted and gestured at the nearly empty shelves. “Hell, even a blind man could see I don’t need any help. You’re joking, right, mister?”

  Jace stared at him, but said nothing.

  He swallowed hard under the scrutiny. “Uh, no, I don’t suppose you are. Well, Cord hasn’t got much left to it beyond the saloon and this place. It’s folding up like a spavined horse.”

  Jace nodded. Despite his wish to be rid of Kyle, the boy didn’t deserve to be left in a town like this. Misfortune wasn’t in much better shape than Cord, but maybe Travis could give him work in the blacksmith shop when they got there. It might put some bulk on the kid’s bones. He looked over his shoulder and saw him s
tudying the peppermint sticks in the jar on the counter. At least he’d quit eyeing those women’s gee-gaws in the display case.

  “Hey, Rankin.”

  Without seeing who the voice belonged to, Jace recognized its tone. Even if he hadn’t, the expression on the shop clerk’s face told him plenty. The man’s eyes darted between Jace and the speaker behind him, and he looked suddenly chalky, as if a gun were pointed at him. He backed up until he bumped into the empty shelves lining the wall. Jace felt Kyle tense next to him too.

  Jace pivoted slowly, tucking the front edge of his duster behind his holster as he turned. He recognized the skinny young saddle tramp he’d seen when they first rode in—he was one of the two men who’d sat at the table in the Magnolia Saloon, obviously conferring about Jace. It wasn’t easy to forget someone so ugly. His pale eyes bulged like a frog’s and what remained of his teeth were ocher-colored and overlapped one another behind a pair of lips that made Jace think of calves’ liver. His stained buckskins looked as if they’d been on his back since the first day he put them on. He was unsteady on his feet, and the smell of sweat and pop skull whiskey radiated from him in waves.

  And Jace had read the shopkeeper’s fear like a newspaper—the weaselly little bastard did have a gun pulled, but it was trained on Jace’s own chest.

  “You’ve been following me. Who the hell are you?” Jace inquired.

  “Name’s Hobie McIntyre, not like it’s your business.”

  Jace looked him up and down. “Well, McIntyre, it’s my business now. Where’s your partner?”

  “Lem’s around, don’t you worry ’bout that.”

  “I guess nobody taught you it isn’t polite to point a gun at a man’s back. If you learn it from me, it’s going to be a hard lesson.”

  As soon as he said the words, the other customers in the store—two men—looked up and dropped the coil of rope they’d been measuring, beating a hasty retreat. Only Kyle stayed put, frozen in place like a rabbit with a hawk circling overhead.

  The stranger didn’t lower his gun. “Damn, if this ain’t my lucky day—Jace Rankin. I knew it was you as soon as I seen you ride by. Where’s the Bailey woman? I know she found you in Silver City. A saloon girl told me.”

  Jace felt every nerve in his body snap to attention. He had no clue what the man was talking about, but with that gun pointed at him he chose his words carefully. "I don’t know anything about a woman, mister, but I can promise you that you’ll be sorry you ever walked in here.”

  “No, I won’t. I heard all about you and her at the Magnolia Saloon. They say she’s a real looker, all nice curves and fire-colored hair. Now, there’s folks lookin’ for her, and I aim to know where you got her.”

  Jace’s senses, focused sharply on all the details around him, suddenly and completely fixed on the business of survival. Though he didn’t take his eyes off the man in front of him, in the periphery of his vision he saw the grime-smudged windows, the festoons of cobwebs in the rafters, a rag doll on the shelf. He smelled the coffee behind him, the trail dust on his own clothes. A cool, detached calm came over him, the same deliberate control that he’d learned long ago. Hotheads made mistakes; sometimes they landed in the undertaker’s backroom.

  “Do you see a woman here? You’ll just end up with a bullet in your head,” he warned again, more pointedly this time. “Go sleep it off, and you’ll wake up to live another day.” He could usually outstare almost any man and scare the pee out of him, but it wasn’t working with this saddle bum. Christ, not much was worse than a drunk with a gun. Any kind of wild shot was likely to fly.

  He felt Kyle still holding his ground, but he couldn’t risk sparing him even one glance or a word to tell him to move. Damn-fool kid—didn’t he have the wits to stay back? Jace had enough to worry about without that boy getting in his way.

  “Whatsa matter, Rankin? You scared? Prob’ly no tougher than him.” McIntyre snorted and gestured at Kyle, then his red eyes narrowed. "Say—now I remember. A boy—Gracie said she was dressed like—”

  Kyle gasped as McIntyre turned suddenly in his direction and advanced on him. That was exactly the opening Jace had been looking for. He leveled his revolver on him. But with familiar dream-slow movement, he saw Kyle whip out his gun and aim at the drunk. The man grinned evilly and kept coming. A brief confusion of close gunfire exploded in the tiny store, combined with the ping of ricochets and broken glass. Through the smoke Jace saw McIntyre go down. Jace could not tell who had shot him. He might have, or it could have been the boy.

  When the air began to clear, McIntyre lay howling and swearing on the floor. He gripped his shattered, bleeding right hand.

  “You son of a bitch! Look what you did to me!” he yelped, adding to the chaos.

  The racket scraped Jace’s nerves. He kicked Mclntyre’s boot. “Shut up that goddamned caterwauling!”

  Jace whirled and saw that Kyle was down, too. He sat slumped against the rough counter, his face white, and his eyes blank and staring. He still gripped his gun with tight fingers but he didn’t move. Jace dropped to a crouch next to him and grabbed his shoulder. He looked dead.

  “Kid! Damn it to hell, kid, why didn’t you get out of the way?” he demanded.

  Slowly, the boy turned his head to look at him. "My name is Kyle," he muttered.

  Relieved, Jace almost laughed. “Where are you hit?”

  “My arm, I think.” He looked down his left shoulder at his upper arm where a bullet ripped his coat. “It’s burning like fire.” His eyes drifted closed for a moment, and a sheen of sweat broke out on his thin face.

  Jace considered the sleeve that was growing soaked with blood and shook his head. “Where’s the doc in this town?” he shouted to the shop clerk.

  From the depths behind the counter, the clerk replied, “We don’t have one anymore. He got killed in a card game last year.” His voice shook so much, Jace had trouble understanding him.

  He made a noise of impatient disgust. He thoroughly regretted ever stopping in this place. It seemed like his mistakes were compounding by the day. “It figures. All right, then,” he said, and hauled Kyle to his feet. “I’ll see to this.”

  He put an arm around the boy’s waist to keep him upright, and was struck again by how slight he was.

  “I can walk,” Kyle protested, and pulled away. Swaying, he rested against the wall and cradled his injured arm at the elbow.

  Jace leaned over to look behind the counter. “Come out of there—it’s all over,” he snapped at the clerk. Even Kyle had more guts than he did. “I want some bandages and a bottle of whiskey.”

  The store had no bandages, but the rattled clerk produced a package of a dozen new linen handkerchiefs and a dusty bottle of expensive rye that had obviously been in stock for years.

  While Jace tied up Kyle’s arm with a temporary bandage, McIntyre finally stopped yowling long enough to regain his feet.

  “You’ll pay for this, you bastard!" he vowed as he staggered out the door

  Jace wanted to get out of Cord just in case Lem lost interest in the proceedings at the saloon and decided to come looking for his partner.

  “Can you ride?” he asked Kyle. He didn’t like the kid’s pasty color.

  The boy nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Right.”

  * * *

  They left town at a gallop, but when no one followed they slowed to a trot.

  Jace broke with their established custom and rode next to Kyla. She could feel his eyes on her but she couldn’t turn to look at him. She was too drowsy and exhausted—it took all of her concentration to stay in her saddle. The landscape of endless beige dotted with scrub zoomed in and out of focus, and the horizon bounced around as if it were not attached to the earth. Juniper’s gait made her arm throb; it felt like a thousand hot knives were stabbing it. She was chilled everywhere else, though, and beginning to tremble with the cold. If she’d had tears, she wouldn’t be able to stop them. But she had none.

&
nbsp; Jace said if they were lucky, she had only a flesh wound, that the bullet had plowed a deep furrow in her arm but had not lodged. That way, he told her, he wouldn’t have to dig the lead out with a knife.

  Shot. She’d been shot. She considered it with numb surprise that would probably sharpen after the shock wore off. Seldom in her life had she known such fear as when that filthy, louse-ridden McIntyre pointed his gun at her. Now she recalled seeing him at the Magnolia Saloon two days before. Surely it was only the worst possible luck that had brought him and his partner to Cord.

  That Jory or Hardesty would send men to capture her was something she had not once considered. No one knew where she had gone except for a few of the Midnighters. Now she had been tracked all the way to Silver City—God, this was a hundred times worse than she’d thought.

  So Gracie had realized Kyla’s true gender during that incident at the Magnolia. Oh, damnation, she thought. Who else would the woman tell?

  During the confrontation at the general store, she’d seen the bounty hunter’s face under the brim of his hat—icy, controlled. He never raised his voice. The universal respect and fear he roused in people made her wonder why anyone would dare cross him. Drunk or sober, McIntyre had to have been a complete fool to challenge Jace Rankin.

  And she had challenged McIntyre, so who was the bigger fool? But the reaction that made her draw on him had been purely instinctive. She didn’t know why she hadn’t done the wise thing and hidden in the corner, instead of staying close to the danger and Rankin. But it required far too much energy to figure out now. She remembered the feel of Jace’s arm around her when he pulled her up from the floor. For a second, it was almost comfortable to lean against him. But even in her shock she’d known she couldn’t give in to it. She didn’t want to be touched, and Kyle wouldn’t permit such mollycoddling. And anyway, she didn’t like Jace.

  “How are you holding up?” she heard him ask.

  She glanced at him and shivered hard enough to make her teeth chatter. “I—I’m okay. B-but it’s so cold.”