Denny seemed to be urging Malatesta to bring his horse to a stop. He did so, and she slid down from the saddle. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she ran toward Brice. He reined in as well and dismounted with smooth, athletic ease while his horse was still moving. He ran only a couple of steps before Denny reached him. She flung herself into his embrace and threw her arms around his neck. She clung to him with a fierce intensity.
“Brice,” she whispered as she pressed her cheek to his. “I was afraid I’d never see you again.”
“And I was mighty worried about you,” he told her. “Are you all right?”
He felt her nod against his chest.
“Yes. I will be . . . now.”
That made him feel good and warm inside. Denny was, without a doubt, the strongest and most self-sufficient woman he had ever known, but she was human, too, and all human beings had moments of weakness, times when feelings of fear and strain and hurt threatened to overwhelm them and they had to turn to someone else for strength.
Evidently, this was one such moment for Denny—and she had come running to him. Even though she had ridden in on Malatesta’s horse and he must have been the one who found her, it was Brice she wanted to hold her. He stroked her blond curls, which were in tangled disarray, and said softly, “It’s all right now.”
“I know,” she breathed. “I know.”
She was wearing boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt, the sort of garb she wore whenever she rode the Sugarloaf range. But she didn’t have her hat, her horse, or her carbine, as far as Brice could see. Definitely, she had run into some sort of trouble yesterday.
She wasn’t trembling anymore and seemed steadier now. He moved back a little, rested his hands on her shoulders, and said, “What happened to you?” He saw now that her face was scratched and bruised. Rage welled up inside him. “Who did this to you? I’ll—”
“No need for anybody to do anything,” she said. “Both men responsible for it are dead. I killed one of them, and Count Malatesta killed the other when he rescued me.”
Brice glanced at the nobleman, who sat his saddle with a smug look on his handsome face.
“When he did what?”
“Rescued the fair lady from her captors,” Malatesta drawled.
“How’d you even know she was missing?” Brice frowned. “Word just reached Big Rock this morning.”
Malatesta looked a little annoyed that Brice would ask such a question at a moment like this. He made a casually elegant gesture and said, “As I have already explained to Signorina Jensen, I rode out here yesterday to pay her a visit, and I happened to see men preparing to search for something. At the time, I did not know what . . . or who . . . they sought. But I overheard enough of their conversation to realize that Denise was missing, and so I set out on my own to search. I believed her father and the others might not have welcomed my assistance.”
He was probably right about that, Brice thought. Smoke likely would have told Malatesta to go back to Big Rock.
“I had no luck yesterday evening,” Malatesta continued, “but I returned this morning and good fortune was with me. I heard a shot, followed the sound, and came upon Denise about to struggle with her remaining captor.” He shrugged. “The fellow made threatening gestures, as if he intended to shoot me, but I shot him first.”
“And did a good job of it, too,” Denny said. “Killed him just about instantly.”
“Well . . . I’m sure Denny and her folks appreciate your help,” Brice said grudgingly.
“I certainly do.” Denny turned and walked back toward Malatesta. He swung down from the saddle. She went on, “Thank you. I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I’ll never forget what you did this morning.”
Then she held out her hand and waited for him to shake it.
Malatesta’s mouth tightened. A bitter, angry look came over his face, but he quickly wiped it away and clasped her hand.
“The pleasure was all mine, signorina.”
Denny gave his hand a hard pump, then let go of it and turned to walk back over to Brice. She didn’t wait for him to make a move but went ahead and took his left hand in her right. This was no formal handshake but rather a more intimate connection, and anyone with eyes could see that.
Sally came down the porch steps and moved toward the others.
“Why don’t we all go inside?” she suggested. “Inez has coffee on the stove, and I imagine we could all use a cup after so much worrying.”
Malatesta shook his head and said, “My thanks for your generous and gracious offer of hospitality, Signora Jensen, but I should be going.”
“No!” Sally said. “You were the one who rescued my daughter.”
Malatesta smiled and spread his hands.
“Not really,” he said. “I have every confidence in the world that if I had not come along when I did, Denise would have succeeded in defeating that rascal on her own.”
“He was a lot worse than a rascal,” Denny said, “and I’m not sure I would have been able to handle him.”
“Never doubt yourself, cara mia.”
“You still haven’t said exactly what happened,” Brice reminded her. “Did those two varmints kidnap you? Who were they? What did they want?”
“Ransom, I suppose,” Denny said. “They knew who my father is.”
“And they went after you anyway, knowing that Smoke Jensen’s your pa?” Brice shook his head in amazement. “They sure must have been short on common sense.”
“Or else they really wanted money,” Denny said. “But we don’t have to worry about them anymore.” She came up on her toes—not far since she was a tall girl—and brushed a kiss across Brice’s cheek. “And I’m home, so everything’s going to be all right now.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Brice said. With his arm now linked with hers, he turned toward the house.
“Thank you again, Count,” Sally said to Malatesta. “I’m sure my husband will want to speak with you and thank you as well.”
“Any time, signora,” he said. He took off his hat, flourished it as he executed a bow that made Sally laugh and then blush. She told him good-bye and then turned to follow Denny and Brice into the house.
Malatesta stood stiffly beside his horse, watching them all go.
* * *
He was seething inside as he rode toward Big Rock. His plan had gone . . . not perfectly, of course, but things had proceeded in a reasonable-enough fashion that he should have been able to salvage them and achieve the results he wanted.
Those two louts were supposed to hold Denny captive overnight, and then today, as they were moving her to another camp, actually they would have led her straight to the spot where Malatesta was waiting to “rescue” her.
As things had turned out, he actually had been forced to search for her, but since he’d already been in the vicinity to carry out the plan, he had been able to hear the shot that had led him to them.
Benjy Bridwell and Dave Nelson had believed that Malatesta would simply take Denny away from them at gunpoint. Actually, his intention all along had been to kill them from ambush so they would never be able to tell Denny that he had paid them to kidnap her. A wise man never left anyone alive with information that could be used for blackmail.
Then she would have been grateful to him for saving her, and she would begin to wonder if she was wrong about him. Malatesta knew that the slightest crack in Denny’s armor was all he needed to work himself back into her good graces—and her affections.
Instead, Denny had escaped from those idiots not once but twice, and the second time she had killed Nelson. That was no great loss, since he was slated to die anyway, but because of Denny’s success at handling the men, she might not feel as grateful to Malatesta as she should have. She might believe she could have handled the situation alone if she had to.
He had said as much, back there at her parents’ ranch house, just to make her deny it out of politeness but still plant the seed of doubt in her head.
Evidently not. She had expressed her appreciation to him with a handshake. A handshake—after she had gone running to the arms of that infernal deputy marshal, Brice Rogers.
After that, Malatesta hadn’t trusted himself to remain at the Sugarloaf. He had said his farewells and gotten out of there as briskly as possible before he lost his temper out of sheer frustration. It was clear from what he had seen today that Brice Rogers was the main obstacle standing in the way of him getting what he wanted.
The glare on his face gradually turned into a smile as he slouched along in the saddle. He had a plan for dealing with Rogers, too, and it didn’t involve killing the man. The last thing he wanted was Denny pining away over a lost love.
No, he would destroy Rogers in her eyes, so that she wouldn’t want anything more to do with him. And then, naturally, she would turn to her former lover . . .
Malatesta heeled his rented horse to a faster pace. He was eager to get back to Big Rock now. He had things to do. He had already laid the groundwork, and now he had a plan to put in motion.
And it would start with that saloon girl Rosemarie.
CHAPTER 40
Red Cliff
As the county seat of Eagle County, Red Cliff was somewhat larger than Big Rock, the other main town in the area. None of its saloons were quite as nice as Longmont’s, but the Pemberton House wasn’t bad.
Most of the customers were dressed well enough that Ned Yeager felt a little out of place as he strolled in there. He went to the bar, rested his hands on the gleaming hardwood, and told the slick-haired bartender, “I’ll have a beer.”
“Coming up,” the apron replied. “Don’t think I’ve seen you around before. You new in town, friend?”
Yeager wanted to snap at the man and tell him he wasn’t his friend, and he wasn’t in the habit of answering nosy questions, either. But such a sharp response wouldn’t serve any purpose, the gunman told himself. He didn’t want to attract any attention until he found out why he had been summoned here tonight. So he just nodded and said brusquely, “Yeah, that’s right.”
A crooked lawyer in Denver named Duncan Price was the one who lined up most of Yeager’s jobs and kept in touch with the people who hired him to perform his special services. Yeager preferred not to meet his employers, and usually they felt the same way about him. Whenever Yeager had something to report, he would find the nearest telegraph office and send a carefully worded wire to Price, who would then contact the client and pass along the news, good or bad. That system had worked flawlessly for quite a while.
Then he had gotten a telegram from Price telling him to be here at the Pemberton House tonight. Price wouldn’t be there himself, according to the wire, but someone would meet Yeager.
Yeager didn’t like it. The whole thing felt wrong to him. He needed to be spending his time recruiting more men for his crew, not carrying out some mysterious errand.
Three more men dead . . . He could barely believe it. That blasted Italian had the luck of the devil, as well as some dangerous acquaintances.
On a personal level, the loss of Gene Rice had hurt Yeager pretty badly. He and Rice had ridden together for quite a while. He had depended on the man, along with his other old partner, Fred Kent. Billings and Norris hadn’t meant anything to Yeager. They were just guns, anonymous tools to be used to finish a job.
Now he was left with Kent and the other newcomer, Ben Steeger. He needed to put the word out on the circuit that he was looking to hire more men.
He hoped he wouldn’t get them killed, too.
But meanwhile, he was wasting time here, he thought as he sipped the beer the bartender set in front of him. It was good, he had to admit that. Considering that he didn’t want to be here in the first place, it really would have been a shame if the beer was lousy on top of everything else.
“Mr. Yeager?”
Stiffening, fighting down the urge to drop the beer and reach for his gun instead, Yeager turned his head and saw a man in a dark, sober suit standing next to him. The gent was medium-sized and sallow-faced, and there was absolutely nothing that stood out about him. He was the sort of man you’d glance at once, and by the time a minute passed, you would have forgotten that you’d ever seen him.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Yeager said slowly. He didn’t see how an hombre like this could be any sort of a threat. “What can I do for you?”
“My employer is the one who had Mr. Price summon you here. He’d like to speak with you.”
“Price? I didn’t think he was going to be here.”
“No, I’m speaking of the man I work for. And the man you work for.”
“And who would that be?” Yeager asked.
The man gestured toward a large table at the rear of the room. Two men sat there, one of them a huge bruiser with a too-small derby on a mostly bald head, the other slick and well dressed. The second man was the one in charge. Yeager had no doubt of that.
None of this odd trio looked like he belonged in Red Cliff, Colorado. On the other hand, Yeager had never been picky about who he took money from. All of it spent the same, no matter what the source.
“All right,” he said, “but I’m bringing my beer.”
“Fine,” the dour man agreed.
Yeager followed him through the room to the table, which was set in an alcove in the Pemberton’s rear wall, giving it at least an illusion of privacy. The well-dressed man didn’t get up as Yeager approached the table, and neither did his hulking companion. He held out a hand toward an empty chair, though, and said in a voice as smooth as his freshly shaven jawline, “Please, sit down and join us, Mr. Yeager. You are Ned Yeager?”
“I am,” Yeager said as he set his beer on the table in front of the empty chair. He had carried it in his left hand so his gun hand would be free, a detail that he didn’t think the smooth hombre had missed.
“I thought so. You match the description that Mr. Price gave us when we visited his office and asked about you.”
Normally, Price would have kept his mouth shut about their working arrangement. He certainly wouldn’t have provided Yeager’s name and description to anyone. That was the way Yeager wanted it.
He could understand how Price would have had a hard time saying no to these men, however. They gave off a real air of menace, even the unassuming one.
“And who are you?” Yeager asked bluntly.
“The man who has engaged your services. Surely you must have grasped that by now.”
“I don’t know your name,” Yeager pointed out. “You know mine.”
The smooth hombre smiled, even though the expression never reached his eyes.
“And turnabout is fair play, as the old saying goes. Very well. My name is Nick Scaramello. My associates and I are from New York City.”
Yeager hadn’t asked where they were from, but he had known they weren’t from these parts. He figured it wouldn’t hurt to sit down and listen to what Scaramello had to say, even though he liked to keep plenty of distance between himself and the people he worked for.
He settled himself into the empty chair and said, “I’m listening, Mr. Scaramello.”
“In the matter of that traitor and deadbeat Johnny Malatesta, you have so far been unsuccessful in carrying out my wishes.”
Yeager frowned and said, “I thought he was some sort of Italian count.”
Scaramello shook his head and let out a bark of laughter. He said, “Malatesta is Italian, that much is true, but he’s no more a count than I am. That’s just a pose. He’s a criminal. A killer and a swindler . . . and a man who fails to honor his debts.”
“And I’m betting that’s the reason you want him dead. He owes you money.”
The huge man sitting at Scaramello’s right hand said, “Watch your mouth, bub.”
Scaramello raised a finger to forestall any more comments from his companion.
“My motives are no concern of yours, Mr. Yeager. But I am concerned with your lack of success.”
“We’ve made two good tries at him,” Yeager snapped. “One of them should have worked. He got lucky, both times.”
“Luck is no excuse for failure,” Scaramello said, his voice hardening. “That’s why I’ve decided to take an active hand in this. I’ve never let luck stop me from getting what I want.”
Surprised, Yeager leaned back a little in his chair. “You’re firing me?”
“Not at all. In fact, I’m increasing your pay.” Scaramello took a wallet from under his coat and removed several bills from it. He dropped them on the table in front of Yeager and went on, “Hire as many men as necessary and keep me advised of your plans. I’ve decided I’m going to be there when Malatesta dies.” Scaramello smiled again. “I want to see his face when he realizes who’s responsible for his death.”
Yeager looked at the money. He wanted to take it, but he hesitated.
“That’s not usually the way I operate,” he said.
“I know. That’s why I’m paying you extra. Under the circumstances, it seems like a reasonable request.”
“Very reasonable,” the giant in the derby rumbled.
Yeager shrugged, then reached out and raked in the bills.
“All right,” he said. “I guess if you’ve really got a grudge against this Malatesta, I can see why you’d want to be there. But while my men and I are working, I give the orders.”
The giant leaned forward, his hamlike hands balling into fists as he said, “Listen, pal—”
“No, it’s all right, Pete,” Scaramello said. “Mr. Yeager is a professional. He has a right to call the shots.”
“But he ain’t accomplished a blamed thing—”
Yeager’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “If you think you can do better, you big tub of—”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, such hostility serves no purpose,” Scaramello broke in. “We understand each other, Mr. Yeager, and we’ll leave it at that. My friends and I are staying at the best hotel here in Red Cliff. When you’re ready to make another move against Malatesta, just let us know.”
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