Rocky Mountain Marriage

by Debra Lee Brown

  Chance drew his guns, then climbed the steps to the porch. The outer doors to the saloon stood wide. Inside the shallow vestibule the swinging doors creaked softly in the breeze blowing south off the Platte.

  It was time.

  He entered the saloon and trained both guns on the man who was scrambling onto a chair he’d dragged behind the bar. A late-model rifle rested on the polished pine surface, just out of reach.

  The Hargus brothers stirred when he came in, but Chance paid them no mind. They were bound and gagged, and tethered to the elaborate ironwork of the spiral staircase. The room was a wreck. Tables were overturned, and the piano was riddled with bullet holes. Chance was impressed.

  Delilah’s pepperbox revolver lay on the floor beside the wooden Indian, but Delilah was nowhere in sight. Neither were the girls, or anyone else for that matter.

  A faint sound echoed from the hallway, disrupting his concentration. It was a dull pounding, first rhythmic, then random, as if someone was beating on a door—or a wall. In his mind he pictured the secret entrance to the basement.

  The man on the chair stiffened, finally aware of his presence. Chance had to give him credit. It wasn’t every day a lone man could waltz into a saloon and subdue not only the entire staff, but men as ruthless as the Hargus boys.

  “Go on,” Chance said, as he paused. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  John Gardner turned. His gaze narrowed on the silver badge pinned to Chance’s overcoat.

  “Take it down.”

  “W-what?” Gardner slowly raised his hands.

  “That’s what you came for, isn’t it?”

  The banker’s face was a mask of disbelief.

  Lee Hargus grinned behind his gag, a dirty bar towel. Dickie’s eyes were sharp and cool. Chance thought it peculiar the brothers didn’t even struggle against their bonds.

  “You.” Gardner raised his hands higher as Chance approached. His blue eyes bulged. His face, which was already three shades of pale, went stark white. “You’re a…a…”

  “Looks can be deceiving, can’t they?”

  “…an agent of the Secret Service?”

  He stopped in front of the bar and nudged Gardner’s rifle out of the way with one of his Colts. “I’m your worst goddamned nightmare is what I am.”

  “But…” Gardner began to shake.

  Chance’s gut twisted so tight he could hardly breathe. His fingers massaged the Colts’ triggers as he aimed directly at Gardner’s face. “Take it down,” he repeated.

  “W-what?”

  “The painting.” He glanced at the nude portrait hanging above the bar.

  The Hargus boys watched them, silent, riveted to Gardner’s every move.

  Shaking, Gardner removed the painting from the wall, grunting under its weight. For a second Chance thought he might drop it. “That’s right. Set it right there, facedown.”

  Gardner set the portrait on the bar.

  “Got a knife?”

  “N-no.”

  “Jim keeps one next to the cash register. Get it.”

  Gardner did as he was told.

  The Hargus boys exchanged a look as Chance continued with his instructions. In the background the pounding grew louder. They could hear Delilah’s muffled shouts and Jim’s swearing.

  “Do it,” he said, turning his attention back to Gardner. “You know you want to.”

  With a shaking hand, Gardner slit the heavy brown burlap backing the canvas. “How could you do it?” he said.

  “I haven’t done it yet. You’ll know it when I kill you. Believe me, you’ll know it.”

  Gardner looked up, his tawny brows creased not in surprise but confusion. “I meant Dora. How could you trick her this way, make her love you then break her heart?”

  Chance stopped breathing. He stared into Gardner’s eyes and what he read there didn’t make any sense. He shook off the odd feeling and went on with the questioning he’d lived out in his mind a thousand times over the past year and a half.

  “How did it feel when you hung my father, when you raped my sister and slit her throat?”

  Gardner choked, then froze, staring at Chance as if he were a madman.

  “How did it feel when you made my mother beg for her life before putting a bullet in her head?”

  “W-what are you talking about?” Gardner shook his head, then dropped the knife and again raised his hands in the air.

  “He wouldn’t do it, would he? My father was a good man. He was a judge, goddamn it. He wouldn’t take your dirty money, your counterfeit notes, and cheat the people who depended on him. Would he?”

  Gardner’s mouth dropped open. He continued to shake his head.

  “The ranch wasn’t enough. You had to kill them.” Chance motioned to the slit burlap with one of his guns. “Go on. Take it out. Look at it. I want you to see it before I kill you.”

  “I think there’s been some—”

  “Do it!”

  Gardner tore at the burlap. With shaking hands he reached inside and pulled a banded stack of bank notes from the space behind the canvas. Real bank notes Bill Fitzpatrick had squirreled away from his dealings with the counterfeiter. Real bank notes that had cost him his life.

  Gardner hadn’t been here the night Wild Bill was murdered, but that didn’t mean anything. He could have paid to have it done. There were plenty of men in the West who made a living off killing for others.

  As he stared into Gardner’s terrified eyes, it occurred to Chance that the banker didn’t have it in him to commit the kinds of atrocities that had been perpetrated against Chance’s family. Had Gardner hired that done, too?

  “D-did you hurt her?”

  “What?” Chance’s brow was cold with sweat, his trigger fingers quivering.

  “D-Dora. You made her tell you where it was.” Gardner nodded at the money. “Tell me you didn’t…force her.”

  Chance ground his teeth. Gardner’s reactions made no sense. Moreover, he knew what Dora had told him about the box of counterfeit money in Gardner’s office meant nothing. All bankers collected counterfeit notes. They saved them up and returned them to men like him, agents of the U.S. Secret Service who were charged with seeing them destroyed.

  Desperate to release the volatile fusion of pent-up rage, confusion, and a nightmarish feeling he’d made a mistake, Chance fired into the air.

  Gardner jumped. The Hargus boys watched them, rapt. The pounding in the hallway stopped, and for a long moment the only sounds they heard were the wind outside and the tinkling of the crystal chandelier above their heads.

  Then the pounding resumed in earnest. Chance expected Gus and Rowdy to show up any moment, rousted out of their beds in the bunkhouse by the gunshot.

  “I already knew where the money was.” Chance had to work fast. He stared hard at Gardner. “I’ve always known.”

  “What?” The banker’s eyes bulged. “How?”

  “Bill told me. Two days before he died.”

  Gardner stared back at him in what Chance believed was genuine confusion. “That doesn’t make sense. I thought you were his silent partner, that he was hiding the money from you, that you killed him in order to get it.” Gardner’s gaze slid to the silver star on Chance’s chest. “But that badge…”

  Now both of them were confused.

  “Those things that were done to your family.” Gardner again shook his head. “You’ve got the wrong man, I swear it.”

  Then Chance did something out of character, something he wasn’t used to doing but that he’d begun to do more and more of ever since he met Dora. He set aside his emotions and considered all the facts. Gardner was lying. He had to be. Why else would he have come out here alone.

  “You didn’t wake Max. Why?”

  Gardner looked baffled.

  “The marshal. When Dora told you where the money was, you came out here alone to get it. Only one man would have done that. The man who killed Wild Bill. The man who ruined my father’s cattle business, then murdered my fa
mily in cold blood.”

  “No!” Gardner stepped toward him, and Chance raised his guns.

  “Why didn’t you wake the marshal, let him and his boys come out here to get the painting?”

  Gardner said nothing.

  Chance leaned over the bar, slid one of his Colts against the banker’s forehead. “Why didn’t you?”

  Gardner stopped breathing. His face flushed red as an autumn apple as he stared into Chance’s eyes. “I—I did it for her.”

  Nothing he could have said would have done more to diffuse Chance’s muddled rage. “What do you mean?”

  “For Dora. I…wanted her to think I was…” Gardner glanced at the Hargus boys, whom he’d apparently managed to somehow get the best of. “Brave,” he whispered. “A man. A man like you. Like she thinks you are, or thought you were, or… Hell, I don’t know anymore.”

  Chance stared at him, noted the embarrassment in his eyes, the hands that were still shaking, Gardner’s apparent disinterest in the thousands of dollars that were wedged between the back of the portrait and its heavy burlap backing.

  A moment later he holstered his guns.

  A heartbeat after that, both he and John Gardner got the shock of their lives.

  “Nice work, Chance.”

  They turned at the sound of her voice. It was different somehow. The cadence, the accent…

  Lily stood with her feet planted in the doorway leading to the hall. She had a shotgun pointed directly at them.

  “Miss Sugrah!” Gardner said. “W-what are you doing?”

  Lee Hargus smiled behind his gag. Dickie’s eyes gleamed.

  Chance started for his guns, but Lily’s face hardened to Spanish steel. “I wouldn’t, Chance. I’d hate to have to kill you. It makes such a mess.”

  As she moved into line with the bound men, Chance saw what a man in his position never should have missed.

  The resemblance.

  “Sugrah,” he said in disbelief. “Hargus.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “She’s their sister?” Gardner slid a sideways glance at Chance.

  “Looks that way.”

  Lily cut her brothers’ bonds, her shotgun still trained on Chance. Lee Hargus made a show of dusting himself off before drawing his gun. Dickie’s six-shooter was in his hand an instant after he was freed. The brothers approached. Chance considered his options. There were damned few, and none that he liked.

  “Delilah always did like to change the names of her girls.” Lily smirked at them. “What she didn’t know was I’d already changed mine. Sugrah was my brother’s idea.”

  “Which one?” Chance asked, buying time.

  “Which one do you think?” Lee grinned at him. “Dickie here’s not much on alphabet puzzles. He’s more the musical type. I, on the other hand, take pleasure in the written word. I guess that makes me a lot like that schoolteacher ya’ll seem to think so much of.”

  “Leave her out of this.” Chance’s blood began to heat all over again. “It was you all along, wasn’t it?” he said to Lee. “You murdered my family.”

  “Well, technically that ain’t true. Dickie here did the killin’, but I did all the upfront work. Always do. Find the marks, make the deals…” He flashed his eyes at his sister. “Lily here does the collectin’. She does a mighty fine job of it, too. Usually.”

  Lily and Lee exchanged looks of mock disdain.

  Chance saw red. It took every shred of control he could muster to stop himself from drawing his guns. It would only get Gardner killed right along with him, and he couldn’t be sure if he’d even get one shot off before he went down. No. He wanted all of them, Lee and Dickie especially, but all of them would pay.

  “Y-you were the one who set Dora’s father up.” Gardner’s voice was a raspy croak. It occurred to Chance that he owed the innocent banker an apology. If he got out of this alive, he’d deliver it. “Y-you were his silent partner.”

  “That’s right.” Lee smiled.

  “You murdered Wild Bill,” Chance said to Lily. “You were here that night. It was you.”

  Lily sighed dramatically. “Hated doin’ it. Bill was a nice old geezer.”

  “My sister here jumped the gun,” Lee said. “Thought she knew where the old man had hidden the money. Our money.”

  “We got it now,” Lily said. “That’s what counts.” The three of them turned their gazes on the portrait. The burlap backing was stripped away, revealing bundles and bundles of cash. “How much is there, do you reckon?”

  “Don’t rightly know,” Lee said.

  “Fifty thousand, give or take.” Chance knew that bit of information would raise a brow or two.

  It had the desired effect. The siblings’ attention was momentarily fixed on the money. Chance noticed that the pounding in the hallway had stopped. Looking past the Harguses, he recognized the business end of Tom’s army revolver slide around the doorway behind the spiral stairs. Gardner noticed it, too.

  At the far end of the saloon, Jim stepped silently from the opposite end of the hallway into the room, his old flintlock rifle trained on the Harguses.

  Chance shot Gardner a look. The banker’s rifle was still on the bar, an arm’s length away from him. Gardner surreptitiously nodded back. It was now or never.

  Chance went for his guns.

  Lucky for him, Lily’s aim was as bad as her judgment. She jumped back as she fired, slamming into Lee, whose shot went wide. Chance felt the burn in his left shoulder as he drew his Colts. Gardner, to the surprise of everyone, didn’t go for his rifle, but plowed headlong into Dickie.

  The room exploded in gunfire.

  All of them went down in a pile. A moment later, amidst a chorus of feminine shrieks, Delilah and the girls burst from the hallway on Tom’s heels and inserted themselves into the confusion.

  At one point Chance was wedged between Columbine and Rose, who were both struggling to rip the shotgun from Lily’s hands. Lee was on top of him, Dickie and Gardner beneath him. More shots were fired and more screams rent the air. Pain exploded in his shoulder as Lee grabbed him. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was the smell of blood.

  His own.

  “W-what happened?” Chance sprang up and instinctively reached for his guns. They were gone.

  “Whoa! Hold up there, Chance. You been shot.” Jim tried to push him back down onto the Persian carpet where they’d evidently moved him.

  Chance wouldn’t let him. Seeing friendly faces around him, all save one, he struggled to his feet. His shoulder burned like a son of a bitch. “Christ.” He looked around. “Where are they?”

  “Gone,” Tom said. “Got away.”

  Chance swore.

  “Rowdy went after ’em. Gus got hisself shot. Susan’s tending to him upstairs. We sent Daisy and Iris for the doctor.”

  “How long have I been out?”

  Tom shrugged. “Not long. Ten minutes. Maybe a little longer.”

  “Damn it!” He scanned the room for his guns. They were lying on a nearby card table. He quickly checked the ammunition in his coat pockets.

  “We got her, though. That’s something.” Jim nodded at Lily, who was tied to a sturdy chair. Delilah and Rose were putting the finishing touches on the knots.

  “And we saved the money.” Columbine smiled brightly, as if she were talking about the proceeds from a church bake sale. “Well, most of it, anyway.” She removed the rest of the bundled bank notes from between the portrait’s canvas and backing and stacked them on the bar.

  “Where’s Gardner?”

  “Here.” The banker poked his head up. “Just gathering up the rest of the cash.”

  “You okay?”

  “Miraculously, yes. Not a scratch on me. Don’t know how I managed it.”

  “What about them? They wounded?”

  “The Hargus brothers? I don’t rightly know. But there’s a lot of blood on the floor. Can’t all be yours.”

  “Yeah, it could.” Delilah approached him. “You’d be
st sit down, Chance.”

  “There’s no time.” He reloaded his Colts, holstered them, then tightened his gun belt across his hips.

  “Wait for the doc,” Delilah said. “And the marshal. Why didn’t you bring him back with you to begin with?”

  Gardner looked at him. He already knew why. This wasn’t about justice or the law. It was about vengeance.

  “Are you really a federal agent?” Rose’s gaze fixed on the silver star Dora had pinned to his coat.

  “Can’t say it surprises me.” Delilah arched a fiery red brow at him as she pressed a clean bar towel into his shoulder. “I always knew there was more to you than meets the eye.”

  Lily spit at him. Her green eyes blazed.

  Never in his life had Chance ever struck a woman. He wanted to now. Badly. “Where’d they go?”

  She tipped her chin at him and smirked. “What makes you think I’d tell you?”

  “Why, you little—” He had to physically stop himself from picking her up, chair and all, and shaking her.

  “Chance, wait.” Delilah produced a slip of paper. “I found this in Lee’s pocket. He got away, but his jacket didn’t.” She nodded at the torn suit coat on the floor next to the wooden statue of the Indian, which had toppled over and split clean in two.

  “Let me see that.” Chance took the note from her.

  “Looks to me like the name of a ranch. Could be their local hideout. Know the place?”

  He ground his teeth together so he wouldn’t curse. “Yeah. I do.” He pocketed the slip of paper, then looked around for his hat.

  Columbine finished with the portrait, and with Tom’s help, turned it face-up on the bar. For a moment they looked at the nude who, in the portrait, lounged on a velvet chaise, her back turned.

  “Wild Bill’s favorite whore.” Tom let out a low whistle. “No wonder the danged thing was so heavy.” He shot Jim an amused look. “And all this time I thought it was just the frame, ordered special all the way from Kansas City.”

  “It was special, all right.” Jim examined the portrait. “It was right under our noses all the time. You were waitin’, weren’t you?” he said to Chance. “Using the money to draw ’em out.”