Ante Up (Black Aces Book 1)

by Caroline Lee

  From the other side of the room, Finnie spoke up. “Marshal Diamon’s a good man. He’ll stand up for you, if it comes to that.”

  Regina wasn’t comforted. The Marshal had lost too much blood and was only now recovering. “Then we’ll just have to hope it won’t come to that.”

  “It will.” Pony’s ominous words matched his tone.

  Hart cocked his head to one side, as if listening for a sound only he and his grandfather could hear. A half-minute passed before Regina heard it too; hoofbeats, many of them.

  Hart whispered a curse, and stepped away from her. He moved towards the door, placing his body between whoever was coming, and the people he loved. Pony moved in front of Regina, and she craned her neck to keep Hart in her sights.

  Everything was silent as the four of them waited for the storm to break.

  Then heavy footsteps outside. A slap of a palm against the door.

  The door swung open, a cold November wind sweeping through the house and making the flames in the hearth flicker.

  Sheriff McNelis stood there, grinning, and held up a hat. A black hat. His eyes flickered to the bandage around Hart’s forehead, and his grin turned gloating.

  “Hart Hartwell, I’m arresting you for murder and general law-breaking.”

  Hart didn’t respond, and when McNelis approached him and grabbed him by the collar, he still made no sound.

  Regina was the one who gasped and opened her mouth to scream, but Hart’s topaz eyes flashed a warning her way and she pressed her lips closed.

  Instead of screaming, she watched the corpulent sheriff drag the man she loved out the door, heard them mount up, then thunder back towards town.

  But when she looked down and realized McNelis had left the Black Ace’s hat, Regina knew the truth.

  McNelis wasn’t taking Hart back to Black Ace for a trial. He’d left what should have been used as evidence in a trial, so Regina knew there wasn’t a judge waiting in town.

  No. McNelis and King wanted Hart in town because they wanted everyone to see him punished. Their own form of justice.

  She bolted for the door.

  Ten

  Hart’s pulse pounded against the wound on his head, but he didn’t know if it was because of fear or the horse’s hoofbeats. With his hands tied behind his back the way they were, staying upright was a struggle. His concentration was focused on not falling off, because he knew if he did, McNelis, Burton and O’Grady would happily ride right over him.

  Save King the trouble of hanging me.

  No, stupid to think like that. Be positive.

  Alright. Maybe I won’t die today. Maybe Diamon will pull some strings, and I’ll be able to get a real trial.

  What he’d told Regina was the truth. He was ready to face the music. He’d broken the law by standing up to King, even if the law should’ve never supported someone like that. But it was hard to believe a judge wouldn’t see the truth. Hart might’ve been the criminal, but King was the evil one.

  Yeah, a judge would see that.

  But as McNelis thundered into town, holding the reins to the horse Hart rode, Hart swallowed thickly. He wasn’t going to get a trial.

  There, in the middle of the street, at the intersection of Bluff and Blind, a gallows was being built. King’s men must’ve been working on it since their ambush failed in the middle of the night, because it was mostly completed. All that was missing was a noose.

  McNelis led the horse up to the edge of the gallows. When he lashed out and caught Hart in the side with one booted foot, Hart grunted and lost his balance. He fell, and slammed into the newly cut boards making up the floor of the macabre scaffolding.

  He wasn’t going to get a trial. He was going to get a lynching.

  Scrambling to his feet as fast as his throbbing head would allow, Hart forced himself not to look afraid. Instead, he faced the crowd which had already gathered. A crowd of townspeople, who were looking at him with mixed expressions of fear, anger, and sorrow.

  A crowd of people he’d helped over the years.

  If Hart died today, he’d die knowing these people would remember the good he’d done, and that he wasn’t all bad.

  But I don’t want to die.

  That was dumb. He shook his head. No one wanted to die. But in the past, maybe…when he’d gone out as the Black Ace, he’d done so knowing he might not come back. But now? Now he had a reason to come back, and it wasn’t just Pony and the ranch.

  Now he had Regina.

  “What—” His voice sounded hoarse, even to his ears. He swallowed and tried again. “What’s going on here?”

  “Are you really the Black Ace?” someone called from the crowd.

  “You got a lot of guts, standing up there looking confused after you shot that Marshal!” someone else hollered.

  Is that what they really thought?

  There was some nodding and mutterings in the crowd.

  Well, Hart could speak the truth at least.

  He straightened his shoulders as much as he could with his hands still bound behind his back. “I didn’t shoot the Marshal,” he said confidently.

  “Come on now, boy, no need to lie,” called out an oily voice Hart knew well.

  Through the crowd stepped Augustus King, looking dapper as always in his silk waistcoat and tie, carrying his silver-tipped cane. As if he had all the time in the world—maybe he did, he wasn’t the one standing on a gallows—King climbed the steps to stand on the walkway in front of the sheriff’s office.

  When he smiled, he looked like a shark.

  “After all, boy, you’re about to meet your maker. Wouldn’t you like to go to your grave with a clear conscious?”

  Hearing the man confirm his fate so baldly had Hart growling. “Don’t I get a trial?”

  King shrugged, and gestured to the sheriff, who—along with King’s goons—was joining him up above the crowd. “Unfortunately, Black Aces is a bit small for a judge. But here we have the mayor and the sheriff, our little town’s two most prominent leaders, and plenty of curious folks who’ve come out for the excitement.” He turned that feral grin on Hart once more. “Don’t you think that’s good enough for a trial, Mr. Hartwell?”

  From the crowd, a male voice called out, “This isn’t a trial!”

  It sounded like Matthias, but Hart couldn’t make himself focus at that moment. He was too busy glaring at King. “It’s a lynching,” he growled.

  King had the gall to shrug. “Maybe a lynching is what’s called for, then. You are guilty, aren’t you?”

  Through the terror pounding in his chest, Hart managed to scoff. “Guilty of what, exactly?”

  “I’m so glad you asked.” King’s feral smile got even bigger as he removed a piece of paper from his pocket and glanced at it. “Ah, yes. Let’s see. Inciting chaos. Standing in the way of justice, multiple accounts. Ignoring laws—”

  “Justice?” Hart blurted, incredulous. “Justice? You were having homes and businesses burnt down, King.” He raised his voice. “Look around you. Five years ago, Black Aces was a nice little town. Bustling. But you drove out so many people that those who are left are in danger of collapsing. Half our industry is gone, and we already have to go to Helena if we want anything Gomez or Van Hoosen’s store doesn’t have!”

  As he spoke, he noticed more than a few people in the crowd nodding along, and the muttering began again. If he was going to stand up here for this farce of a trial, the least he could do was finally say his piece.

  “You’re the cause of this town failing, King. You waltzed in here, claiming to own us, but no one knows how you got Hoyle’s title anyhow.” Before King could reply—if he was even going to—Hart pushed on. “Everyone here knows it’s your heavy-handed tactics that pushed so many out, and if they couldn’t pay, you burned them out. That’s not justice!”

  The mutterings increased, and about half the crowd turned angry faces towards King.

  For his part, King’s expression had gone coldly neutral. He gestur
ed, and O’Grady and Burton stepped up on either side of him, with McNelis behind. O’Grady was cradling his rifle, and the sheriff had his thumbs hooked in his gun belt. When the two of them glared at the gathered crowd, the mutterings subsided.

  The people of Black Aces remembered how King had cowed them. Guns and flame.

  King cleared his throat and glanced down at this list again. “I do believe the rest of these charges are fairly minor, but the last one is important.” He met Hart’s eyes. “Murder.”

  “Murder?” Hart repeated. “Who did I murder?”

  “As the Black Ace, you ambushed United States Marshal Diamon the night he arrived in town, shooting at him from the rooftops as you are wont to do.”

  Of all the crimes he might’ve committed, shooting Diamon was one Hart knew he was innocent of.

  He swallowed thickly, but forced himself to scoff. “Murder? The Marshal ain’t dead, despite your best efforts.”

  “My efforts?” King’s grin turned feral once again. “What exactly are you accusing me of?”

  Hart paused. He knew the truth. King knew the truth. But if Hart accused King and his men of being the ones to ambush Diamon, it would be basically admitting that he was the Black Ace, and had been there last night.

  He watched King’s eyes travel to the bandage around his forehead, and knew King was just waiting.

  Dammit. Whoever had shot him last night had done him a real disservice. Loss of blood was one thing, but the proof of his injury had been all King and McNelis had needed to drag him away.

  Hart was about to damn the consequences and admit out loud to being the Ace, if it meant the chance to tell everyone what King had been up to behind their backs, when a commotion down the street had him and at least half the crowd turning. A horse was tearing up the road, a familiar rider on its back.

  He felt his heart lurch in his chest when he saw Regina pull the animal to a hard stop.

  No!

  It was one thing to stand here, foolish and afraid and determined to do the right thing, but it was another thing entirely to know he was likely to die an ugly death while the woman he loved watched.

  He jolted forward, thinking to help her—she was a piss-poor rider, wasn’t she?—when suddenly her father was beside her and pulling her from the horse. Hart exhaled slightly, glad at least she wasn’t hurt by a fall off the horse, but he couldn’t stand the pain in her expression.

  “Hart!” she screamed as she lurched towards him, only to be held back by her father. “Hart,” she whimpered again, then turned to bury her face in her father’s shoulder.

  And he felt a little bit of warmth curl around his terrified heart. He might die today, but Regina loved him. He saw it in her expression, heard it in her pain. She loved him, and now she was going to lose him, just like she’d been afraid of all along.

  Dammit.

  No, he couldn’t die today. He couldn’t prove her right. He needed to prove to her that two people in love could have a long and happy life together.

  But when he turned back to King, the man was gloating again, staring at Regina. It was clear from his expression that he’d been hoping Regina would show up.

  Why? So he could kill Hart right in front of her?

  Vicious bastard.

  Hart’s mind whirled, trying to think of a way out of this. “If Diamon’s not dead, King, then that means your charges of murder don’t stand.”

  King blinked, then frowned, as if he’d forgotten his line of questioning. Then he waved his little piece of paper dismissively.

  “Diamon’s not dead, which means your naughty little scheme didn’t work. But Mr. Diamon isn’t necessary after all, is he? Because we caught you sneaking into his room last night, when you were trying to finish him off. That means you have been caught, Mr. Black Ace.”

  Hart didn’t acknowledge the accusation. “So the charge is attempted murder?”

  “No.” King’s face dropped into a harsh scowl. “Murder. Or are you forgetting Stilton? And Davis two years ago? And McAuliffe?”

  “McAuliffe’s dead?” Hart blurted, then winced, not sure if that had been smart. How the hell had he managed to kill two of King’s goons in the space of weeks, both without trying? Both while falling off a roof, and both with a wild shot?

  He was either damned lucky, or damned unlucky. He wasn’t sure which yet.

  Apparently, his surprise over McAuliffe’s death had appeared to make him look more innocent to the crowd, because they quickly began muttering in his favor.

  “Yes, McAuliffe is dead!” King slammed his cane down on the boardwalk. “You shot him last night behind the High Stakes Saloon. You are a murderer.”

  “No!” Screamed Regina from her father’s arms, tears running down her face. “He’s a good man! You know he’s a good man!”

  Hart felt as if his chest had ripped in two, seeing her pain. But more than that, he saw people in the crowd nodding and whispering.

  “She’s right. He’s a good boy,” stout Mrs. Gomez called from her place by her husband. “He is polite.”

  “Hart’s honorable,” called out Matthias.

  Bert Wheeler shifted his feet. “I ain’t never had any issues with him.”

  “He and that Injun grandfather of his helped me fix my corral las’ year, remember?” Edsel Kinard called out.

  More people began to mutter back and forth growing louder and louder, and when Hart met Regina’s eyes, he saw a bloom of hope in them.

  “Silence!” King banged his cane against the wooden boards once more “Silence! Hart Hartwell is a half-breed and a liar, unworthy to live in this town. And as the Black Ace, he’s committed crimes against the law and against decency.”

  Emboldened with the courage from the townspeople, Hart called out, “That’s not true.”

  King spun at his words. “You’re denying being the Black Ace?” he asked with a sneer.

  “I’m denying that I committed crimes against decency.”

  King drew himself up. “Are you, River Hartwell, known as ‘Hart,’ the Black Ace?”

  The silence stretched. Hart looked out over the gathered crowd, and wondered if he could feel every single heartbeat pounding in time with his. His eyes locked with Regina’s, and when she shook her head just slightly, he lied.

  “No,” he said firmly.

  King scoffed. “You’re denying it outright, now?”

  Hart turned away from Regina and met King’s gaze with a hard glare of his own. The two men stared for a long moment, as if each willed the other to break first. Slowly, Hart raised one brow.

  “Fine.” King pounded his cane again. “Mr. Caplan, if you please?”

  Movement beside him had Hart swinging around to stare wide-eyed at Millard Caplan as he approached. The mild-mannered assayer had been assigned to the Bicycle Mine for years, but now he worked for King.

  Hart had had dealings with him before.

  “Sorry about this, Hart,” Millard said, eyes downcast.

  That’s when Hart realized the other man held a noose.

  Millard threw one end over the cross-piece, and Hart shuffled backwards a few steps, unable to believe this was happening. He backed right into someone, who turned out to be McNelis. When had the sheriff pushed his way through the crowd to the gallows? Hart’s pulse was pounding in his ears and he knew he was breathing too fast.

  “You ain’t going nowhere, boy,” McNelis declared with a chuckle, his fetid breath washing over Hart. “You’re gonna die here today, and we’ll be done with all this Black Ace foolishness.”

  Hart’s knees went weak as McNelis pushed him under the crosspiece, reached up, and tugged the noose down. As he fitted it around Hart’s neck, Hart’s eyes found Regina’s.

  McNelis tugged hard on the rope, lifting Hart onto the toes of his boots. He tried to swallow, but his throat wouldn’t work. His neck was stretched impossibly long, and he already couldn’t breathe. No nice and clean broken neck for him, apparently. All it would take was King to give the wor
d, and McNelis would yank hard on that rope, lifting Hart up off the ground, to dangle until he suffocated.

  Hart kept his eyes on Regina’s. Her eyes were the color of the sky over his ranch, the color of the best things in his life. If he was going to die, he was going to do it looking into her eyes, no matter how many people separated them.

  Her lips moved, forming the words, “I love you,” although he couldn’t hear them.

  And that was enough. She loved him.

  His lips tugged upwards, and he whispered, “I love you,” in response.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw King lift his cane.

  * * *

  King’s silver-tipped cane swung down against the wooden boards with a deafening thwack. Sheriff McNelis tugged hard on the rope, lifted Hart off his feet, and Regina screamed for all she was worth.

  “Hart!” She scrambled to get to him, ignoring her father’s grip on her arms. “Hart! No!”

  A moment ago, she’d told him she loved him. Said it for anyone to hear, and he’d smiled. He’d said he loved her in return. Not just here, but under the big sky of his ranch. He loved her, and—

  “I love you, Hart!” she screamed again, clawing her way through the crowd towards him. “I love you!”

  She was outright sobbing by now, but refused to look away. Hart kicked, his feet trying futilely to find purchase on the wooden boards only a few inches below his toes. As he kicked, he rotated in a circle, and she lost eye contact with him. But that was alright, because she couldn’t stand to see the panic and fear in his beautiful eyes.

  “Hart,” she sobbed, quieter, still trying to push her way through the crowd. “No, no,” she whispered, not sure if she was giving up, or if she’d lost her energy as she watched his ebb away. “Hart.”

  Up on the gallows, McNelis had pushed Mr. Caplan out of the way and stood, grunting and heaving, fighting the rope against Hart’s struggles. The corpulent sheriff had the rope wrapped around one fist and pulled hard with the other hand, leaning backwards to put his body weight into keeping Hart off the floor.

  Regina had this vague notion of reaching the gallows, of pushing McNelis aside, of making him release Hart so she wouldn’t have to see him suffer so.