The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1)

by Barbara Ankrum

  Grace eyed the men pressed up against the far wall. None but Shelby found much humor in the remark. He rubbed a nervous hand down his face. "You show 'em, Deke," he called.

  Sanders rolled the tension out of one shoulder. "I'm gonna find out how fast this Irish yellow-belly really is."

  "Get out of here, lady," Donovan ordered without looking at her. "Now."

  Before she could begin edging toward the louvered doors, Deke countered, "Don't you move, girly-girl."

  Anger crept up the back of Grace's neck. They weren't actually going to shoot each other, were they? And not even truly over her—over a bottle of whiskey!

  Appalled, and shaken from her torpor by the thought, she reached for her fan and edged along the bar toward the door. If they insisted on murdering one another, she had no desire to see it.

  "I do not now, Mr. Sanders," she said, "nor have I ever answered to the appellation 'girly-girl,' or 'boneeta' or any other—"

  She didn't see the sawdust-filled gaboon planted near the foot rail until her foot struck it hard. Pain shot up her big toe and, balance lost, she jackknifed over the mucky receptacle. As she fell, the sound of gunfire exploded beside her. How many shots were fired, she had no way of knowing. Her ears rang with the sound. Reflexively, she slammed herself back against the bar in time to see the fat man, Shelby—drawn gun dangling from his fingers—stagger backward and fall across the rickety table behind him, sending the tiger-painted faro box, cards, and stacks of poker chips spinning across the room.

  Grace's eyes widened in horror as Sanders stumbled backward as well, a blossom of crimson spreading quickly across his chest. His hands clutched at the air. She'd never forget the surprised expression on the man's face, or the moment when the life seemed to blink out of his eyes as he dropped heavily to the floor.

  Nor would she ever forget the feral, almost wild, look in Reese Donovan's eyes as he lowered his smoking gun and looked at her, his expression filled with accusation.

  Chapter 2

  He blamed her.

  Grace clamped a hand over her mouth, afraid she'd be sick. Two lives, snuffed out in the flash of a moment. Dead by Donovan's gun. Had she caused it? Certainly, she reasoned, if she'd never crossed the threshold of this little cantina, Sanders and Shelby would have found no cause to fight with Reese Donovan.

  And if she hadn't tripped, distracting them, would they have actually fired?

  Grace flattened a hand to her stomach. No, it hadn't been intentional, but that mattered little now. Two men were dead. For what? And if there was any blame to be pinned, she thought, looking at Donovan's whiskey-soaked shirt, she had little doubt where it should be affixed.

  Donovan's furious gaze left hers and he looked challengingly at the men who'd taken cover behind tables. "Anyone else?"

  A few shook their heads, seeking only a quick exit. They were stopped there by a man blocking the double doors. Tall and stocky, with a full graying mustache slashing across his pale face, he stared disbelievingly at the bodies on the cantina floor. A thick silence shrouded the room as he pushed through the doorway, a revolver pointed at the ex-Ranger. He pulled the hammer back with an ominous click. The tip bucked in the man's shaking hand; his face was red with fury.

  Unbelievably, Donovan made no move to raise his own gun in self-defense. He let it simply dangle at his side, his gaze trained on the other man's weapon.

  "Drop your gun, Donovan," the stranger demanded in a voice rough as gravel and mean as a Texas windstorm. "Put it on that table and slide it across."

  Grace squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself for more gunfire. When it didn't come, she opened her eyes to find the older man reaching for the gun Donovan had eased onto the table. He tucked it in his back waistband, then, with a pistol still trained on Donovan, he knelt near Sanders, who lay dead on the floor.

  It took her several beats to realize that the marshal was merely an older version of Deke Sanders. As he knelt down to feel for a pulse in the man's lifeless body, her gaze fell to the flash of silver on the man's chest and she knew who he was.

  Swallowing back a lump of fury, he looked up at Donovan. "I ought to kill you where you stand."

  Donovan's jaw went tight. "Pity all these witnesses are around, eh, Sanders? But that would be murder and that just might put you out of a steady job. Your brother and his friend drew on me first."

  "Good try," the marshal retorted, pointing at the revolver still nestled in his brother's holster. "But he didn't even clear leather."

  To her horror, Grace realized that, indeed, Sanders's gun was still lodged in its holster. Her disbelieving gaze flew to Donovan.

  "He went for it. I was faster. Ask 'em," Donovan said, gesturing at the men holding up the walls of the cantina. "They all saw it."

  The elder Sanders looked around at the motley bunch of witnesses who shuffled their feet against the floor. Clearly, they were all afraid of him, and none dared venture an opinion.

  "Well? Speak up! Any of you boys see this back-shootin' son of a bitch give my brother a fair chance?"

  Silence thundered through the room as Sanders drilled each man with a murderous look. "Anybody here willing to say that my brother was drawin' on him?"

  Grace stared wide-eyed at the roomful of men, unable to believe not one of them was willing to step forward in Donovan's defense. She looked from face to face of each man as he studiously avoided eye contact with the marshal. Finally, one particularly rough-looking character, a longhaired Mexican, wearing bandoliers across his chest and a distinctive bandanna around his forehead, laughed and sat down at his table, picking up his cards.

  "No vi nada. I seen nothing. Nobody did, eh, amigos?" His black eyes flicked to Donovan and he grinned as he fanned open his cards.

  Donovan's lips thinned as the tide turned against him.

  Angrily, hands on her hips, Maria stepped forward. "I saw."

  Sanders sent her an ugly look. "You?"

  "Donovan ees right," she told him. "Your brother, he began it."

  Grace bit her lip, shamed for ever thinking of Maria as a Black Widow anything. She was the only one with the nerve to speak up for an innocent man.

  Sanders snorted. "You think I'm going to take a whore's word for it?"

  Maria raised her chin. "Es verdad. It ees the truth."

  "You whores wouldn't know the truth if it came up and bit you on the tit."

  Grace's mouth fell open in disbelief. "What kind of a lawman are you?"

  The marshal swung an appraising look at Grace that sent shivers up her spine. "The only kind in these parts. And who are you?"

  She swallowed hard. "I'm Grace Turner, and that woman is absolutely right. Your brother started it by accosting me, then he picked a fight with Mr. Donovan. Donovan was simply defending himself."

  Sanders's eyes narrowed with threat. "And you saw Deke draw on him?"

  Her gaze darted to Donovan. His mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes were bleak. Because, of course, she hadn't actually seen it. Still, there was no real doubt in her mind....

  "Well?" Sanders demanded. "Did you or didn't you?"

  "I saw everything, that is, up until that moment, but I didn't exactly see him draw his gun. I-I tripped over that... that horrible thing down there, you see, and—"

  "Thinkin' and seein' ain't the same thing," Sanders snapped, his face flushed with anger. "I got a roomful of men who say Deke didn't draw, and I got a holstered gun on a dead man."

  One man stepped forward, a thin rail of a fellow with worn-out clothes and a back bent by hard labor. "The woman's right. It was self-defense, Ephram."

  Sanders turned a furious look on the man. He stared at him hard for a full thirty seconds before he spoke. The tip of his revolver moved in an ever-so-subtle threat toward the man. "You willin' to go up against me on this, Peterson? You willing to take this potato-lover's word over everybody else's? Against me? Against my brother?"

  Peterson's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat, and he took a step backward. He
squinted at Donovan, then back at the marshal, a muscle working in his jaw. "I... uh, I reckon not."

  Grace's mouth fell open at the injustice of it all. She looked at Donovan. His inscrutable gaze was pinned on the wall above Peterson's head, as if he'd already removed himself from the discussion of his future.

  Withdrawing a pair of metal handcuffs from his pocket, Sanders shoved Donovan up against the bar and yanked his hands behind his back. He slid the handcuffs closed with a vicious twist of a key, and Donovan sucked in a breath.

  Sanders barked orders for three of the onlookers to carry his brother's body to his office—carefully—and several others to carry Shelby's corpse to Manuello Cabrilla's Undertaking Shop down the street. Grumbling, several men stooped to lift Deke Sanders's limp form and carried him out.

  Grace could hardly believe how fast everything was happening. She felt dizzy and disoriented and sick to her stomach, and she wished, more than anything, that she'd never come here tonight.

  Sanders pressed the barrel of his gun up against his prisoner's back. "Move. I got a special place all ready for you. You're gonna finally get your due at the end of a rope."

  A rope! Grace sucked in a breath. They were going to hang him?

  "Wait!" she called as Sanders nudged an unresisting Donovan toward the door. "You can't just mean to hang him! Without a trial? That's... why, that's unconstitutional!"

  Sanders didn't even acknowledge her as he jerked Donovan around toward the exit. Donovan's face was eerily devoid of any emotion—almost resigned to his fate. Sanders shoved him through the louvered doorway and they disappeared into the darkened street.

  "Estupido!" Maria spat on the floor beside her, and glaring at the doorway, she hissed, "Ah, he will have a trial. Sanders ees the marshal, but also, he ees the... what ees the word—? Judge. Reese will hang for the killing of his brother. Of that, you can be sure." Her angry gaze turned on Grace. "And eet will be on your head."

  * * *

  Reese's face collided hard with the iron bars of the jail cell. Pain shot through his cheek, but he barely had time to feel it before Sanders's knee connected with his lower back. Reese groaned and arched backward. His knees buckled as he slid down the bars, unable to stop himself with his hands pinioned behind his back in handcuffs. A few more blows and he suspected he'd lose consciousness. He feared that more than the beating. Even with Connell Smith, Sanders's deputy, standing by, Reese figured Sanders wasn't beneath hanging him in his cell and calling it a suicide. He struggled to stay coherent.

  Sanders's face came close to his. Bits of spittle flecked the sides of his grinning mouth. He was enjoying this, Donovan thought, the way a mad dog enjoys tearing apart his victim. Sanders had been looking for an excuse to put him in his place for a long time now. At last he'd gotten it. Reese squeezed his eyes shut.

  The marshal grabbed the lapels of Reese's shirt and yanked him close. "Oh, no you don't. I'm enjoying this much too much to let you miss this." He backhanded his face hard.

  Reese tasted blood on his lip. "Shag off."

  Sanders laughed. "You always were a stupid bastard, Donovan. Never knew when to quit, did you? I told them. I warned them they never should have let a mick in the ranks of the Rangers. I told 'em it would mean only trouble. First it was John Malchamp. And now my brother's paid with his life."

  "He drew on me fir—"

  The fist came again, knocking Reese sideways against the floor. He lay there for a moment, breathing hard, his bloody cheek pressed against the dirt. Sanders yanked him upright again.

  Connell Smith took a step forward and opened his mouth to say something, but a look from Sanders silenced him. Reese's gaze slid back to the deputy. He was young as Deke, and green, and in the past had even spoken kindly to him. Smith was an eager paper soldier, poor and ambitious, but Reese doubted the idealistic gleam in his eye had ever been quite so tarnished as it appeared just now.

  "My brother didn't deserve a bullet from the likes of you," Sanders said, rubbing the bloody knuckles of his right hand.

  "So why don't you just kill me and get it over with? No witnesses here. Just ol' Connell there. He won't talk, will ya, Connell?"

  Connell's face flushed and he swallowed hard. "I reckon as how I would. No matter who he killed, Marshal, he deserves a trial."

  Sanders wiped his mouth harshly against the edge of his dirty sleeve. "You goin' up against me, boy?"

  "No, sir. I just think—"

  "You aren't paid to think," Sanders snapped. "You're paid to follow orders. So do your job!"

  Connell flinched, his breath coming fast with anger. "Yes, sir."

  Sanders turned back to Donovan. "You'll get a trial, then I got a rafter in the livery all picked out and a nice long rope. You're gonna almost feel that dirt under your feet, but you're not gonna be able to quite get a hold of it. An' while the life is squeezin' out of you, I'm gonna watch. I'm gonna watch, Donovan, for Deke. Ain't nobody gonna help you." Sanders lifted him by the shirtfront and shoved him into the cell. Donovan's head cracked against the dirt floor and he squeezed his eyes shut.

  "You're a dead man, Donovan. You can count on that," Sanders finished, and slammed into his outer office, leaving Connell behind to lock him in.

  Connell stepped over Donovan's legs, reached behind him, and unlocked the handcuffs. A new pain rushed to Reese's nearly numb hands as feeling returned, but he had only the strength to draw his arm up near his face on the floor.

  "I reckon there ain't nothin' I can do," Connell told him.

  Reese shot a disgusted look at him.

  "Deke was more a son to Sanders than a brother," Connell explained in his own defense. "Raised him nearly himself. But the apple don't fall far from the tree. Deke was trouble waiting to happen."

  Donovan opened one eye and looked up at the deputy. "It was self-defense."

  "Can you prove it was?"

  Donovan edged up on his knees and Connell backed warily out of the cell, slamming the door shut. Dragging himself to his feet, Donovan gripped the bars, breathing hard. He stared at the young man and asked the only question that came to mind. "Can you prove it wasn't?"

  * * *

  The cramped little room at the inn was dark when Grace pushed her way through the door and slid it shut behind her with a trembling hand. For the first time, she wished there had been two rooms to let instead of just this one she shared with Brewster, because the last thing she wanted right now was to tell him what a mess she'd made of things tonight. She wished she were home, where she could crawl into her own feather tick and pull the covers over her head.

  She brushed at her damp cheek and inhaled the unpleasant scent of the coal-oil smoke from the lamp that had recently sputtered out. Darkness shared the small room with her like an entity, stealing the air her lungs sought, pressing in on her throat like a fist.

  The reed shutters, tightly closed to hold the nightly invasion of mosquitoes at bay, blocked not only the moonlight but any hint of a breeze as well, and she began to perspire almost before she'd fully entered the room. From somewhere down the street came the distant roar of voices and bawdy laughter, and closer, the mumbling Spanish song of a drunken pedestrian halfway between cantinas. Here, in darkness of the room, came the rasping snore of Brewster, who lay sleeping in the room's only bed.

  She listened for a moment to the sound, hoping she hadn't wakened him. He needed his rest after all they'd been through to get here. And he wasn't well. She knew that only too well by the increasing coughing fits he was given to and the feverish look in his eyes when she'd put him to bed tonight.

  With a shaking hand, she dropped the wooden door latch into place. Leaning back against the portal with a shaky sigh, Grace stared into the darkness, trying to calm her thudding heart.

  Reese will hang for the killing... he has you to thank for it.

  Grace swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat. Was it true? Was she to blame? Was Donovan to die because of her? God help her, she hadn't meant for any of this
to happen. And she could hardly take all the blame for it. After all, it wasn't she who'd been pickled to the gills with whiskey, nor had she chosen such a foolhardy challenge with a gun.

  Yet she was the one who'd entered into that snake pit of her own free will, seeking help from Reese Donovan. And the blame was hers for being fool enough to believe that she could walk in and out of a place like that, unmolested.

  Nothing in Jack Leland's western adventure novels had prepared her for what happened tonight. Nothing in them told her what she should do now. Certainly, she had no idea what to do with the memory of Donovan's bleak expression as he stared at her, or the unexpected feelings that tingled through her at the remembrance of his rough hands against her flesh.

  She dropped her face into her hands. She'd done many things she'd been sorry for in her life, but never had she managed to make such a complete mess of things as she had tonight.

  "Grace? That you?"

  Brewster's voice came out of the darkness like a beacon of light. She wanted to run to him, fling her arms around him like she'd done as a child and let him make everything all right again. But she couldn't do that, any more than he could fix what she'd done.

  "Yes, it's me." She pulled a sulfur-tipped match out of the tin holder and struck it against the roughened bottom. The match flared blue, then orange as she lit the coal-oil lamp in the wall sconce. The flame sputtered and caught as she replaced the hurricane glass around it. Behind her, Brewster coughed, a damp, chest-racking sound that shook the brass bed.When he stopped, he lay spent, watching her with worried eyes.

  When had he gotten so thin? she wondered, noting the hollows in his cheeks. The sight of it shocked her, and tears welled in her eyes.

  "I woke up a ways back and you were gone," Brew admonished. "Didn't I tell you to stick close to the inn?"

  "You warned me. But I didn't listen." She bent her head, hiding her tears in the shadows of the flickering lamp. "I wish to God now I had."

  He edged up on one elbow, real concern showing on his lined face. "Grace?"

  Her throat constricted, and she dropped her face into her hands and cried. "Oh, Brew, it was awful. Two men dead and it was all my fault. Maria was right. And now Donovan's going to hang and there's nothing I can do to stop it, because I didn't really see it happen."