“It’s quite all right,” Malatesta said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
He looked quite dapper today, as usual, in a charcoal gray suit and black Stetson. Brice figured the count must have purchased the hat at Goldstein’s Mercantile, since it wasn’t the sort of thing a European nobleman would have brought with him.
“I hope things have been going well for you since the last time we met,” Malatesta continued.
“Well enough,” Brice said. “I had to ride up to Red Cliff—that’s the county seat—to testify in a trial, so I was gone for a few days. Nobody’s tried to ventilate you in the meantime, have they?”
“Ventilate?” Malatesta frowned and cocked his head to the side, clearly puzzled, then grinned as he realized what Brice meant. “Ah, you mean shoot! No, there have been no further attempts on my life, for which I’m very grateful.”
“You haven’t happened to think of why somebody would want to ambush you like that?”
“As I said before, it must have been a holdup, Marshal. Those men intended to rob me.”
Brice nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe. And I’m just a deputy marshal. The chief marshal for this region has an office in Denver and is named Long.”
“I see. So I should call you Deputy?”
Brice hadn’t forgotten about Denny slapping this hombre for some mysterious reason, so there was a limit to how cordial he wanted to be as long as that mystery remained.
But his own natural courtesy caused him to say, “Why not just call me Brice? If you’re going to be staying around these parts for a while, there’s no reason we shouldn’t get along.”
“No reason at all!” Malatesta said. “And you must call me Johnny. I may not be an American, but you know the old saying.”
Brice shook his head. “I don’t reckon I know what old saying you mean.”
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do! Only in this case, it’s when in America, do as the Americans do. To be precise, when in Colorado, do as the . . . Coloradans? . . . do. I’ve never encountered a friendlier group of people.”
“I think you’ll find that most folks in the West are friendly, as long as a fella’s not looking for trouble.”
Malatesta held up a hand, palm out. “Trouble is the farthest thing from my mind, I assure you, Brice. Now, as for my suggestion . . .”
Brice looked puzzled again.
“Call me Johnny!” Malatesta reminded him.
“Oh. Yeah, sure. Johnny, it is.”
Malatesta clapped a hand on Brice’s shoulder. “Very good, my friend. Now, I’m sure you can tell me the way to the Sugarloaf Ranch.”
“The Sugarloaf? Smoke Jensen’s spread?”
“That is correct. I sent my man Arturo to make arrangements to rent a buggy and horse for the journey out there, and I believe that is him coming now.”
Malatesta looked along the street. Brice followed his gaze and spotted the buggy rolling toward the hotel, pulled by a big, good-looking gray gelding. Brice recognized the buggy as one that could be rented from Patterson’s Livery Stable and Wagon-yard. Malatesta’s servant and companion, Arturo Vincenzo, was handling the reins and doing a fairly good job of it, from what Brice could see. He maneuvered through the traffic on the street and brought the vehicle to a stop in front of the hotel.
“Will this be satisfactory, Count?” Arturo asked.
“Very satisfactory,” Malatesta replied. He turned to Brice. “Now, if you would be so kind as to tell Arturo and me how to find the Sugarloaf? I was going to ask Sheriff Carson, but since you’re already here . . .”
“Wait a minute,” Brice said. “You’re going out to the Jensen ranch? I thought since there was bad blood between you and Denny—”
“Bad blood? Ha! As I explained before, her behavior during that encounter was simply a matter of her being surprised. The sight of me clearly stirred up some old emotions for her.”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Brice responded drily. “She slapped you, after all.”
“What can I say, she is a hot-blooded young woman.” The smile on Malatesta’s face as he said that irritated Brice, but he kept a tight rein on his temper.
“And I am certain that by now, those emotions of hers have cooled off,” Malatesta went on. “While her presence here in Big Rock was a surprise to me, as well, I really would like to see her again. The two of us shared too much while she was in Italy for me to ignore this opportunity to renew our special friendship, unexpected though it may be.”
The way Malatesta was hinting around about what had gone on between him and Denny in Italy got under Brice’s skin, but he controlled himself and said, “I’m not convinced she’s going to be glad to see you.”
“Perhaps not, but I would still like the chance to explain myself to her.”
Brice supposed most hombres deserved a chance like that, whether they were annoying foreigners or not. He nodded and said, “All right, but I won’t tell you how to get to the Sugarloaf.”
Malatesta continued smiling, but anger flashed in his eyes. “I’m sure I can find someone else in Big Rock willing to do so.”
“I reckon you could, but what I meant was, I’ll ride out there with you and show you the way.”
Brice knew he was acting impulsively, but some instinct told him not to let Malatesta go out there and confront Denny alone. She had slapped the count once already. What if the next time she saw him, she took a gun to him? As a lawman, it was Brice’s duty to keep the peace.
Malatesta looked like he didn’t care for Brice’s offer, but he couldn’t think of any way to gracefully decline it. So he nodded and said, “As you wish, my friend. Arturo and I appreciate your assistance and will enjoy your company.”
“I believe I could have found the place without any help,” Arturo said, but neither of the two men on the hotel porch paid any attention to him.
“My horse is tied at that hitch rail right down the street,” Brice said. “Let me get him and we’ll be on our way, if you’re ready to go now.”
“By all means,” Malatesta said, doing one of those elegant hand waves that seemed to be a habit of his. “Lead on, my friend . . . and I mean that literally.”
The part about leading the way, he might have meant literally, Brice thought, but the other . . .
For some reason, he didn’t believe that he and Giovanni Malatesta would ever actually be friends.
CHAPTER 19
The main road leading west out of Big Rock twisted among the foothills of the Rockies that rose majestically in the distance. It ran between thick stands of trees, rugged outcroppings of rock, and rolling grasslands. This was beautiful country, and nearly everyone who saw it deemed it so.
But trouble could lurk hidden in beauty, and that was the case today.
Six men on horseback sat in the trees on a slight rise overlooking the road, about three miles west of town. It wasn’t likely anyone would spot them up here as they kept an eye on the trail, obviously waiting for something—or someone.
“You better be right about this, Seth,” one of the men said in an impatient voice.
“I saw ’em leavin’ Big Rock, Ned,” another man replied. “That Eye-talian count and the fella who works for him. That young federal lawdog was with ’em. The marshal’s on horseback, and the other two are in a buggy. You just wait and see.”
“We’ve been waiting,” Ned Yeager growled. “They should have been here by now.”
Yeager was a stony-visaged man in his forties with cold, blue-gray eyes that looked like chips of ice set deep in the flat planes of his face. His hat was thumbed back on thinning fair hair. Like the other men, he was dressed in range clothes that had seen better days. Their horses and saddles were well cared for, though, and their guns especially were, because those weapons were the tools of their trade.
Yeager glanced around at the others. Fred Kent and Gene Rice had ridden with him the longest. They had been with him at the train station in Big Rock during that disastrous ambush a week earlier, and he tru
sted them.
The other three—Seth Billings, Edgar Norris, and Ben Steeger—were acquaintances. Yeager had never worked with them before. But they had decent reputations as gunmen, and anyway, he hadn’t had a lot of choice in the matter. After losing two men, he’d needed to recruit more quickly, and those three were the ones he’d come up with.
If they got themselves killed, it wouldn’t matter much to Yeager—as long as the Italian count wound up dead, too. The chance to kill that meddling lawman was just a bonus.
If it hadn’t been for the marshal and that gunswift kid who had taken a hand, Malatesta would be dead and Yeager would have collected the promised payoff by now. He and his men would be a long way from Big Rock, taking it easy until the money ran out and it was time to look for another job.
Instead, he had been forced to flee with the target still alive. Yeager didn’t cotton to failure. Never had. It left a bitter, sour taste under his tongue.
So he had set out to rectify the situation. He had found Billings, Norris, and Steeger at a road ranch that was a known haven for men of their stripe, owlhoots and hired killers. Then he had sent Billings into Big Rock to keep an eye on Malatesta, since Billings had never been there before and wouldn’t be recognized. The rest of them had camped in a little canyon about a mile from the settlement. Billings was supposed to hurry out there and let them know if Malatesta did anything that would expose him to another attempt on his life. Since arriving in Big Rock, Malatesta had stuck close to the hotel and to Longmont’s, and neither place was a good spot for an ambush.
Today, though, Billings had galloped into camp with the news that Malatesta was on his way out of town in a buggy driven by his servant. For some reason, the federal marshal was tagging along, too.
Ned Yeager didn’t care where Malatesta was going or why Brice Rogers was with him. All that mattered to Yeager was the chance to finish the job. He and the other men had saddled and mounted quickly, then galloped parallel to the road until they found a good spot to bushwhack Malatesta and his companions.
But where in blazes were they?
Ben Steeger suddenly pointed and said, “Look yonder.”
Yeager looked and saw something moving along the road. A screen of trees that grew beside the trail partially obscured the view. But then, after a moment, the buggy and the man on horseback came out into the open, and Yeager knew their quarry had arrived at last.
He reached down and loosened the gun in the holster on his hip.
“Get ready, boys,” he said. “We’ll let ’em get a little closer, then when I give the word, sweep down there and blast ’em to pieces. We’d better get rid of that lawman first, since he’s the one most likely to put up a fight. But whatever you do, remember . . . Malatesta dies today.”
* * *
They were only about a mile from Big Rock when the horse pulling the buggy started to give trouble, balking and holding up his right forehoof.
“What in the world is wrong with this beast?” Arturo said. He slapped at the horse’s rump with the reins. “Go on! Go on there, I say!”
Brice had been riding alongside the vehicle and had reined in when the horse stopped. “Wait a minute,” he said to Arturo. “Something’s wrong with his hoof. He probably picked up a rock in his shoe.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been trying to force him to continue, then, should I?”
“There’s probably no real harm done. Let me take a look.”
Brice swung down from the saddle and let his horse’s reins dangle, knowing the well-trained mount wouldn’t go anywhere. He approached the buggy horse carefully, talking softly in a soothing tone, then stroking the animal’s nose to calm it down even more. The horse allowed him to pick up the troublesome hoof and examine it.
“Yep, got a little rock stuck in there just like I thought,” Brice announced as he held the horse’s leg up. “Give me a minute and I’ll dig it so I can see how bad the bruise is. It might not be anything to worry about.”
“I hope not,” Malatesta said from the seat behind where Arturo was perched. “For the poor brute’s sake, of course, and because it would be a shame to have to turn around and go back to Big Rock.”
Brice thought maybe it was fate trying to keep Malatesta away from Denny, but he didn’t say that. Still, he wouldn’t be upset if the count’s plans didn’t go as intended.
He pulled out his folding knife, opened it with his teeth, and went to work on the hoof. It took him only a few moments to pry out the small rock that had lodged under the horseshoe. The damage it had done appeared minimal, and when Brice set the leg down and the horse put weight on that hoof again, the animal didn’t flinch.
“I think he’ll be all right now,” Brice said. He would have liked to see Malatesta turn around and go back to Big Rock, rather than bothering Denny, but he wasn’t going to lie about the horse’s condition.
“Excellent,” Malatesta said. “Drive on, Arturo.”
Arturo got the buggy moving while Brice mounted up. He fell in alongside the vehicle again.
“Just how large is this ranch that belongs to Denise’s father?” Malatesta asked. “I assume that you’ve been there, since you seem to be a friend of the family?”
“I hope the Jensens consider me a friend,” Brice replied. “I don’t know the exact acreage of the Sugarloaf, but it’s big. It takes up most of the valley where it’s located. It’s one of the most successful ranches in Colorado.”
“And yet this fellow Smoke Jensen is best known as a gunman instead of a rancher.”
“There are dime novels about him,” Arturo put in. “I’ve read some of them. Quite thrilling tales.”
“Most of those are based on things that happened in Smoke’s life when he was younger, before he married his wife and settled down to be a cattleman,” Brice explained. “And if you ask Smoke about them, he’ll tell you that most of those books are just wild stories made up by fellas who are too drunk or eccentric to care about the truth.” He shrugged. “Still, Smoke’s led a pretty exciting life, and there’s no denying that.”
“So he actually is skilled with a gun?” Malatesta asked.
“Maybe the best the West has ever seen,” Brice answered simply.
Arturo said, “For a time, I was in the employ of a young man named Conrad Browning, whose father is Frank Morgan, another famous gunman.”
Brice was a little surprised by that, but he nodded.
“I’ve heard of Morgan. He’s supposed to be mighty fast with a gun, too. I’m not sure how he’d stack up against Smoke, but if those two ever faced off, it would be a sight to see, let me tell you. More than likely it won’t ever happen, though, because I’ve heard that they’re actually friends. And to be honest, they’re both getting on in years, too. Morgan’s older than Smoke, I believe. He’s probably hung up his guns for good by now.”
“Perhaps,” Arturo said.
Malatesta was starting to look impatient with this conversation. He leaned forward in the buggy’s rear seat and asked, “How much farther is it to the Sugarloaf?”
“Between four and five miles, I’d say,” Brice replied. “It won’t take us long to get there.”
They rode on in silence for a few minutes. Arturo might have felt chastised by his employer’s sharp question about the distance. He didn’t bring up the dime novels and Smoke Jensen’s reputation again.
Brice had enjoyed their conversation, though, and was especially interested in Arturo’s comment about working for Frank Morgan’s son. As a lawman, Brice had heard quite a bit about Morgan, who was also sometimes known as the Drifter, and he had heard Smoke speak about him as well, but he had never met the man.
Brice was still thinking about that as they traveled past a line of trees close beside the road and entered a stretch with open ground on both sides, although to the right, about a hundred yards away, was a wooded rise. He wasn’t looking in that direction, but from the corner of his eye he caught a sudden flash among the trees. The ingrained inst
incts of a man in a dangerous profession made him look sharply toward the rise.
Because of even that tiny warning and Brice’s swift reaction, it didn’t take him completely by surprise when half a dozen men on horseback burst out from the cover of the trees and charged toward the road, the guns in their hands spouting flame and lead as they opened fire on Brice, Malatesta, and Arturo.
CHAPTER 20
Smoke had talked Denny out of riding Rocket again, at least for the time being. Sooner or later, though, she was going to teach that big stallion who was boss.
The problem with Rocket was that he was unpredictable. Sometimes he was calm and didn’t seem the least bit inclined to cause any trouble—and then he’d explode and take off running, and nothing a rider did would bring him back under control.
Some people were like that, Denny mused, too volatile to be around without worrying about what was going to happen next. If she was being really honest with herself, she might have to admit she could be like that at times, too.
Being too antsy to just sit at home today, she saddled a different horse, one of her regular saddle mounts, and set off toward Big Rock. She hadn’t been to town since the shoot-out at the train station, and she didn’t have any legitimate reason for going there today, but she didn’t want anybody thinking she was staying away just because of Giovanni Malatesta. She wouldn’t even allow that possibility to float around inside her own head.
She was dressed in riding clothes—boots, jeans, man’s shirt, and vest—but she hadn’t bothered tucking her blond hair up under her hat, nor was she wearing her gun belt and holstered Colt Lightning today. She didn’t expect to need a gun, but the stock of a Winchester carbine stuck up from a sheath strapped to her saddle, just in case. Few westerners rode the range unarmed, because there was always a chance you’d run across a snake—or some other low-down varmint—that needed shooting.
Denny jogged along the road at a leisurely pace on the big chestnut gelding she had picked out for today’s ride. It was a pretty day, and she successfully let her mind wander as she enjoyed the beautiful weather and surroundings. Worry and resentment and old hates still lurked in the back of her head, but she managed to ignore them.
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