That return fire came soon enough. The first round hissed through the air to Clint’s left, and the following rounds would have struck home if they hadn’t been intercepted along the way. Just as Clint had planned, it was the doorman’s body that did the intercepting. Clint had stepped behind that man just as he’d drawn his pistol, and bullets from the man at the bar drilled into the doorman’s torso.
By this time, both men at the table had stood up and drawn their weapons. One of them started firing first, but his shots were wild and thumped into the wall a few feet from where Clint was standing.
The second man took his time and sighted along his barrel until he had a clear shot. His finger tightened around his trigger when he saw Clint step away from the doorman’s body. Unfortunately for him, that gave Clint more than enough time to aim and fire a round right back at him. The second man at the table flew backward off his feet and landed in a dead heap upon the floor.
Two men remained.
Despite the chaos and thunder that filled the room, those last two gunmen kept their wits about them and even circled around to get Clint into a cross fire.
Clint knew he only had two bullets remaining and his cover was finally about to drop over. The doorman wobbled on his feet, having been kept upright this long thanks to Clint’s grip upon the back of his jacket. Clint let go of the doorman, dropped to one knee, scooped up the pistol the doorman had dropped and fired a round from each gun in his hands.
Both pistols barked at the same time. The bullet from Clint’s Colt hit the second man at the card table right between the eyes. The bullet from the doorman’s gun wasn’t as accurate, but it took down its target all the same. One man slumped against the bar and the other fell face-first onto the card table.
After that, the room was completely silent.
Clint got to his feet and looked around to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. All the gunmen were down, and Elsa was huddled in the corner. Clint walked over to her, then reloaded and holstered the Colt before kneeling to untie her.
“Are you all right?” he asked after taking the gag from her mouth.
The moment her hands were free, Elsa wrapped her arms around Clint and gave him a big kiss. “That,” she said between more kisses, “was . . . great!”
Clint accepted the kisses, but pulled her to her feet. “We’d better get out of here,” he said.
“Oh, yes. I don’t want to see another card table for a long time.”
As they walked out, Clint saw several gamblers and crew members rushing down the hall toward them. A gambler dressed in a pearl gray suit led the way. “What the hell happened?” he asked. “Were those gunshots?”
“Someone got caught palming an ace,” Clint said. He then walked through the small group, taking Elsa with him.
It didn’t take long before whispers of “just desserts” started drifting down the narrow hall.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Clint could feel Elsa trembling the entire time they were walking away from that poker room. He held her hand and pulled her along, saying, “Just a little farther. Try to look normal.”
He figured she was frightened after what had happened, or nervous from being in the middle of all that shooting. Since he could feel her grip on his hand tightening by the second, he hurried up and tried to find somewhere private so he could talk to her without anyone else listening in.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“My cabin’s not far. I thought we could—”
“No,” she said as she changed direction and pulled Clint toward another set of stairs, leading upward. “My cabin’s closer. It’s right up here.”
Clint followed her to a door at the top of the stairs and to a room with several portholes overlooking the front of the riverboat. “Are you hurt?” he asked once they were inside the room.
Elsa shut the door and rushed toward Clint with a fire in her eyes. She clasped his face in her hands and pressed her lips against his with a burning intensity that made Clint’s heart race almost as it had done when the lead was flying around him.
“I’m not hurt,” she said quickly as she pulled back just enough to start pulling off Clint’s jacket. “I’m doing just fine, and in a second, I’ll be doing even better.” She pulled his shirt open, ran her hands over his chest and added, “So will you.”
“There’s not enough time for—”
“There’s time,” she interrupted. “There’s always time. Solomon won’t be starting his game for another hour. I heard those assholes talking after they tied me up. If I don’t get you right now, I swear I’ll burn up.”
Clint felt like he was riding the crest of a tidal wave. In fact, he felt like he was still riding through the same storm that had started along with all the shooting. Only now, he’d just been swept even higher into the air.
Giving in to the rush that flowed through him, Clint unbuckled his belt and pushed Elsa against a wall. “Damn, your sister was right,” he said. “You are the wild one.”
“You have no idea.”
Elsa hiked up her skirt and propped one foot on a nearby chair. There was a slip beneath her skirt, and when she pulled that aside, she showed Clint that she wasn’t wearing anything else. Her strawberry blond hair fell over her face as she locked eyes with Clint, silently commanding him to do her bidding.
Clint was more than happy to oblige, since his mind was running along the same set of tracks. He stepped between her open legs, reached around to take hold of her firm buttocks and then guided his rigid cock into her.
When he pushed his hips forward, Clint slid easily between the wet lips of her pussy. Elsa pulled in a deep breath, until he was all the way inside of her. Her back was arched, and her nails clawed at Clint so hard that he thought they might have drawn blood. That didn’t matter, since the pleasure he felt was more than enough to distract him from the pain.
Now that he was inside of her, Clint had both hands free to roam over her body as he pumped in and out of her. One hand settled upon her buttocks, so he could feel her muscles tense every time he drove into her. The other hand moved up and down her thigh before finding its way back to her firm breasts.
Elsa arched her back and wriggled her hips slightly to make sure Clint hit all the right spots. When she found the perfect angle, she clenched her eyes shut and trembled as a little orgasm rippled through her. When it passed, she opened her eyes and began grinding against Clint even harder as she moaned all the way from the back of her throat.
Clint reached under her skirts with both hands so he could grab hold of her tight, bare buttocks. Every time he pumped forward, he pulled her closer. Elsa let out a passionate groan every time she felt him drive into her. She then spread her legs even more, as if to urge him to go even deeper.
Clint pumped until he felt her tightening around him. When he climaxed, he thrust a few more times, until he felt Elsa trembling again. They shuddered against each other until they caught their breath. Even after that, it took a while before Clint’s head stopped spinning.
THIRTY-NINE
Clint rushed back to his room with Elsa following him. He pushed open the door to find the cabin crowded, but still short by one person. “Where’s Mia?” he asked.
Crane sat perched upon the only chair that didn’t have someone tied to it. “She hasn’t been back yet,” he replied. “Who’s this?”
“What do you mean she hasn’t been back? Where did she go?”
“She mentioned something about checking one last place for anyone else who might be in trouble. She told me to tell you she’d return shortly.”
“How long ago was that?”
Thinking it over for a second, Crane replied, “Twenty minutes.”
Clint looked around to some of the others in the room. Marty shrugged and said, “Twenty minutes sounds about right. She was loaded for bear, so I wouldn’t worry about her too much.”
“Keep an eye on things while I’m gone,” Clint said.
Marty nodded. “W
ill do.”
“I was talking to her,” Clint said as he ushered Elsa into the cabin.
As Clint hurried through the decks and hallways of the Misty Morning, he felt as if he hadn’t stopped running through that boat since he’d stepped foot on it. Since he’d crawled, run or fought on nearly every inch of the riverboat, he felt as if the vessel had shrunken in size. Now that he knew the boat backward and forward, it seemed more like a box floating along a strip of water than the three-level monster it was.
And yet, despite his familiarity with the Misty Morning, it seemed to take him forever to run all the way down to the lower deck and start looking for the room containing the furnace. He knew that’s where Mia had to be headed. It was the one place on her list of suspicious places that neither of them had covered yet.
Clint thought he’d had an understanding with her that they would go there together. In fact, he even felt uncomfortable going there now. The whole reason for waiting was to let the heat cool off after all these confrontations so the remaining gunmen could settle into one spot where they could be easily found.
Apparently, Mia was tired of waiting. Clint only hoped that lack of patience was her only problem at the moment. Since he hadn’t caught sight of Dench since their run-in at the laundry, Clint knew that jumping the gun could very well prove to be a big problem for Mia.
By the time he reached the lower deck and was following the sound of clanging metal and the smell of burning coal to its source, Clint had gone from being worried about Mia to being mad at her.
She should have known better than to take off on her own when it was so dangerous.
She should know how to stick to a plan.
She should know how to work with someone else if she was truly accustomed to working alongside the Texas Rangers.
The more he thought about how reckless she was, the more Clint’s blood boiled at the prospect of pulling her fat from the fire.
He passed the laundry in a rush. Clint’s eyes were fixed upon a door at the end of the hall that was labeled as the furnace room. Compared to the halls on the upper decks, these were even more cramped and shadowy. Some light from outside drifted in, but it wasn’t enough to make the hall half as welcoming as the ones that led to passenger cabins. Even the dark spots between the poker rooms seemed inviting compared to this.
When Clint saw the flicker of motion in the corner of his eye, he was barely able to turn toward it before he was pulled off balance. His hand was already on the grip of his Colt by the time he got a look at who’d reached out to yank him from the hall.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mia snapped.
Clint found himself in a dirty closet that was just big enough to hold him, Mia, a bunch of brooms and some buckets. “I was just going to ask you the same thing,” he replied. “What possessed you to head down here on your own?”
“I was just taking a look to make sure there was still a reason to come back here. After all the dust we’ve kicked up, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Solomon rearranged all his plans. Now, what in God’s name were you doing stomping toward the furnace like you had a death wish?”
Clint was taken aback by the question, mainly because it mirrored the same thoughts and emotions running through his own mind. “I got back to the room and you weren’t there. They told me you went to go check on something and I figured you came here.”
“Did you also figure I’d go rushing into that room by myself when I knew Dench and Lord only knows how many others would be in there?” she asked.
Pausing for a moment, Clint tried to think of a way to phrase his answer that wouldn’t seem ignorant. The best he could come up with on such short notice was “Yeah. I guess I did. But I was only angry because that would have been so out of character.”
Mia smiled and patted his cheek. Her voice softened a bit as she said, “That’s sweet.”
“Enough of that,” Clint said as he swatted her hand away. “What did you find out?”
Still looking at him with a teasing grin, she said, “Maybe you’re a little too worked up to be here right now.”
“That’s enough,” Clint grumbled. “I jumped the gun. Let’s move on. Surely there’s a reason you were hiding in this closet.”
Mia nodded. “They’re still in there, all right. I caught sight of a few of them coming and going in the last couple of minutes. Something must have ruffled their feathers.”
“That would have been me,” Clint said. “I went up to the front poker room and found a few armed men guarding it just like our friend from the flagpole told us there would be.”
“Did they give you any trouble?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t hear the fireworks.”
The humor that had been on her face quickly went away. This time, when Mia touched him, she did so tenderly and asked, “Are you all right?”
“I took them by surprise. Let’s just say that Solomon’s chances of getting off this boat are seriously dwindling. How many do you think are in there?”
Shifting her eyes back to the hall and the nearby door leading into the furnace room, she said, “At least three.”
“That’s not so bad. There was more than that upstairs.”
“One of them’s Dench.”
“Are you sure about that?” Clint asked.
Mia nodded. “I saw him go in there myself and he hasn’t come out.”
Clint took a look for himself and saw nothing but a deserted hallway. “They’ve got to be holed up in there and ready for a fight. I don’t know everything about riverboats, but I’m pretty sure there’s a way for the men down here to signal to the man at the wheel. Solomon’s most likely got someone up there to catch the signal and send reinforcements if they’re needed.”
“And what about those men you found upstairs? Could they have been reinforcements?”
“Possibly,” Clint said. “But they were guarding a prisoner. I do have an idea, though. Are there any men out there who know who you are that aren’t tied up in my room?”
“Not many. Why?”
FORTY
Mia ran up to the uppermost deck, which was mostly one room, perched toward the front of the riverboat. She knocked furiously on the door and then pushed it open. As she bolted into the steering room of the boat, she saw nothing but a few men in uniform. One of them stood behind the wheel and the other two were at the front window.
“Mr. Solomon said to signal the men that are down by the furnace,” she said in a rush.
For a moment, she thought that nobody in that room had a clue what she was talking about. Then, one of the men at the window asked, “And who are you?”
“I’m the one delivering the message,” she replied. “And I’ll be the one to tell Mr. Solomon that you didn’t carry it out right away.”
The man stared at her for a moment and then reached out to one of the several cords that ran down through the floor. He gave the cord three sharp, upward pulls and then looked at her again. “Anything else?”
“No,” Mia said as she stepped out of the room. “That’ll do.”
Clint stayed hidden and watched to see if anyone would come out to chase after Mia. Even though nobody came, Clint wasn’t feeling any better. As he studied the door leading into the furnace room, he began to realize why Dench had chosen that spot as a place to hole up with a few prisoners.
The door was thicker than the rest and may have been reinforced with strips of iron. If nobody wanted Clint to get inside, there was no way in hell he’d be able to force his way in. As that unsettling thought rolled around in his head, Clint heard the muffled sound of a bell clanging three times.
After the bell sounded, there were some noises from inside the furnace room, followed by the rattle of the door being unlocked. Clint hunkered down in the darkness of the closet and watched as the door swung open to let two men walk into the hall.
Clint watched those men and waited for them to draw their guns and walk straight toward him. He waited for them to shout out a
threat or maybe even fire at someone he couldn’t see, but none of that happened. Instead, the men walked right past Clint without so much as looking in his direction. After the men had walked a few more steps down the hall, Clint jumped from his hiding spot and drew his Colt.
“You two might want to drop your guns right about now,” Clint said. “And you should do it nice and slow.”
Both men turned around quickly because they were surprised by the sudden noises coming from behind them. They froze after catching a glimpse of Clint. Their hands stayed over their guns, but they didn’t make a move for them. At least, they didn’t move for them yet.
“You heard me,” Clint said as he felt every second tick by. “Drop those guns and do it now.”
The men looked at Clint, then they looked at each other. From there, they did something that Clint truly wasn’t expecting. As if they’d coordinated their actions without a word passing between them, both men charged toward Clint without caring about the gun in his hand.
Since he didn’t have time to wonder why they thought they could get away with such a move, Clint reacted to it instead. He turned his body to the side and took a quick step forward so he could slip between the charging attackers.
Before Clint could make another move of his own, he saw one of the men pivot and lash out with the back of his fist as his entire torso swung around. Clint did his best to dodge the blow, but still caught some of that man’s fist on his chin. The impact rattled Clint’s entire head and made him unsteady on his legs for a moment. That was more than enough time for the second man to turn and send a punch into Clint’s ribs.
Even though he could have taken a shot at either of the men, Clint kept his finger off his trigger, in hopes of finishing the fight before anyone else inside the furnace room could shut and lock the door. As if playing out his worst fears, someone stood in that doorway and took quick stock of what was happening outside.
Red River Showdown Page 13