“I don’t want to leave you to fend for yourself,” she said. “I can help you.”
“I’m certain you can. When I signal you, though, the best help you’ll be able to give me is to get out of my way.”
She smiled at him. “I like the sound of that,” Gigi purred.
“Good,” Clint said as he looked into a wide alley containing a short row of carts that were sealed up tight. “Where’s this lead?”
“Across to Vestibule Street,” she told him. “There’s some nice hotels and a man who builds carriages down that way.”
“What about the sheriff? Might he be somewhere in that area?”
Having already turned to stroll down that alley, Gigi took Clint’s arm and said, “Sheriff Wheeler is a useless lump of a man. There are a couple saloons near his office a few streets down in the other direction. That’s where you’ll find him.”
“Perfect.” With that, Clint gave her the signal.
Gigi broke away from him and headed for a doorway set into the building to her right. She was testing the door to see if it was locked when Clint turned away from her to spin around and put his back to the wall on the opposite side of the alley near one of the carts. Once he’d picked his spot, Clint stayed perfectly still and waited for his target.
The first man to walk past the alley was some chubby fellow with a cane and a monocle wedged in front on his left eye. The next was the tall gunman with the misaligned nose.
“Hello, Paul,” Clint said.
Paul’s eyes snapped over to him. The surprise on his face made it clear that he could very well have walked down the entire length of that alley without knowing Clint had stopped to wait for him. Now that he had seen him, however, he reached for the gun at his hip.
SEVENTEEN
Having seen Paul fight once before, Clint gambled that he wouldn’t be much of a threat with a pistol. That gamble paid off when Clint managed to get away from the wall and several feet to one side before Paul’s weapon cleared leather. Even though he no longer had Clint in his sights, Paul still pulled his trigger as soon as he could. The smoke wagon spat its cargo through the air amid a gritty cloud of burnt gunpowder. The noise exploded up and down the alley, rattling Paul even further.
Clint rushed at him from another angle, grabbing Paul’s wrist to pull him in close. “Where’s your partner?” he asked while thumping a knee into Paul’s stomach.
Even though Paul had absorbed the full brunt of Clint’s attack, he wasn’t about to let go of his pistol. He bent his arm as much as he could toward Clint’s head and pulled his trigger again.
The shot may not have come close to hitting Clint, but the sound of it was more than enough to put a powerful ringing into his ears. Also, the fire from its barrel filled Clint’s vision with a murky cloud that nearly made him pull away from Paul out of pure instinct. He hung on, however, and was about to take the pistol away from Paul when another shot was fired. This one didn’t come from Paul.
Clint knew better than to anticipate what he would find. Doing so would limit what he might see. Even so, it took him a split second to realize that Mose wasn’t in that alley with them. Instead, Mason had been the other man to fire at him and he was about ready to do so again. Before that happened, Clint tightened his grip on Paul and twisted his entire body around.
Paul was nearly taken off his feet by Clint’s sudden movement. He grunted a few surprised words while being pulled to a spot where he caught the bullet that Mason had intended for Clint. Hot lead drilled through Paul’s back and erupted from his shoulder to send a bloody spray onto the side of Clint’s face. Paul thrashed in pain from the impact, which was as good a time as any for Clint to let him drop.
The other man had barely hit the ground when Clint searched for Mason. All he found was a wiry man in a brown suit who was too petrified to move. When he saw a flicker of motion directly behind the man in the suit, Clint shouted, “Move!”
Where the man in the suit had been frozen in place before, he couldn’t move fast enough when he heard that single command. The frightened local got his feet moving so quickly that they skidded against the dirt without finding enough purchase to carry him anywhere. As he started falling forward, he dug his boots in and finally managed to clear the alley.
All of this had taken less than three seconds. In that time, Clint had spotted Mason trying to get into a hat shop across the street. When Mason opened the shop’s front door, Clint drew his modified Colt and fired from the hip to put a round into the edge of the door. Wood splinters flew through the air and Mason jumped away as the door was knocked shut by the passing round.
Pivoting on the balls of his feet, Mason fired two shots in quick succession. The first punched into a wall about a foot to Clint’s left and the second hissed past Clint’s temple. Not wanting to see where a third one would go, Clint threw himself backward to press himself flat against the building behind him. Across the street from him, Mason had ducked behind the best cover he could find, which was a post supporting the awning of the hat shop he’d tried to enter a moment ago.
“You made one hell of a big mistake,” Clint shouted. “It’s not too late to put things right.”
Mason answered that by leaning out to fire a shot toward the alley. There was barely enough time for Clint to find a new place to stand before another bullet punched a hole into the wall a few inches away from him. Each shot was drawing closer to its mark, which meant Mason would draw blood real soon. Instead of waiting for that to happen, Clint brought his Colt up so he could sight along the top of its barrel at Mason.
Exhaling slowly while squeezing the trigger, Clint sent a round blazing through the air. Mason stumbled at that moment, saving his own life when the shot missed by less than an inch, shattering the window behind his target. Voices from within the hat shop rose to a chorus of panicked screams, telling him that there were more than a few customers inside.
“Damn,” Clint muttered. He couldn’t fire through that window again without taking the risk of hurting or killing someone inside. There wasn’t a reason for Mason to know that, however.
Before Mason had a chance to think about much of anything, Clint fired twice. Both shots landed exactly where he’d wanted them to go and they chipped off sizable pieces from the post Mason was using as cover. Both pieces of lead wound up embedded within the post, where they could do no harm to any innocent bystanders. They couldn’t do much harm to Mason either, but he didn’t sit still long enough to figure that out for himself. Suddenly losing confidence in the post as a protective barrier, Mason hunched down low and ran away from it.
Clint smiled as he watched his hastily conceived plan come to fruition. Now that Mason was running along the street and people were scattering to clear a path for him, Clint just needed to catch up and take him down. His task was made even easier when Mason fired off his remaining shots behind him in an attempt to cover his retreat. Two of those shots drilled into the corner of the building at the mouth of the alley and the last one sailed through empty air.
After taking less than two steps in pursuit of Mason, Clint was stopped by the sound of another pistol’s hammer being cocked back.
“Not another step,” Mose warned.
Clint slowly turned to get a look behind him. Instinct more than anything else told him that he had enough leeway to do that much at least. Mose stood there, battered from the beating he’d already taken, holding his pistol in a trembling hand.
“You’re in over your head,” Clint said.
“I told you! Not another . . .” Mose trailed off to form a strained wheeze instead of one more word. His finger clenched around his trigger, but not until his arm had become too heavy for him to lift. The limb dangled uselessly from his shoulder as the gun went off, sending its round into the dirt near his feet. Mose dropped to his knees, then to all fours.
Gigi stood behind him. Her eyes were wide and her dag
ger was buried as far into Mose’s back as it could go. For a second, she appeared to be stunned by what had happened. Then, she reached down to grab the knife handle protruding from between Mose’s shoulder blades and leaned all of her weight behind it to drive it in just a bit deeper.
“The other one’s getting away,” she said.
Clint looked into the street to see Mason rounding the nearest corner. If he ran down to the other end of the alley and made a sharp turn, Clint figured he could catch up to the gunman. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have hurried off and left a woman to fend for herself in the middle of a fight. In this case, however, Clint was fairly certain Gigi could handle whatever came her way.
EIGHTEEN
When Clint circled back around to that alley, the only people waiting there for him were a dead body and half a dozen confused locals. The locals milled around, talking to each other and gesturing wildly as if they were describing a stage show they’d just seen. Clint continued moving past them to another group who were also having an animated discussion. This group, however, caught his interest much more than the first.
“Did you see where they went?” asked one man with a long beard and spectacles.
There were three women standing nearby and all of them shivered nervously. One of them said, “I don’t want to know where they went. I just want to go home.”
“I’d like to know where they went,” said the second woman while wriggling in close to a man who was either her husband or suitor, “so I can go the opposite direction.”
“You want to know what I think?” the third woman asked.
Clint hurried forward to cut through the group, grab the third woman by the hand, and lead her away. “You should think twice before leaving your family to fend for themselves for supper,” he snapped. “And a late supper, no less!”
Since he hadn’t jostled any of them on his way through and since the woman was going along with him without much resistance, the rest of the group quickly forgot about Clint and returned to their gossiping.
After taking her another couple of yards, Clint looked to the woman he’d spirited away and snarled, “What the hell is wrong with you, Gigi?”
“I was hiding in plain sight,” she replied. “It’s not like anyone could convince them nothing had happened. Not after you and those other two charged in like bulls in a china shop.”
“Other three, you mean. Two dead and one alive.”
After taking a moment to add them up, Gigi nodded. “Right. I forgot about the one that was shot.”
“He is dead, right?” Clint asked. “He sure looked that way when I left.”
“He’s dead.”
“Good. Now if we could just get away from here without attracting any attention from the law, I’ll be happy.”
“I told you not to worry about the law,” Gigi assured him.
“The best way to stay alive is to plan for the worst and hope for the best.”
She smiled and nodded. “That’s good advice. I’ll have to pass that along to some of my customers.”
“No charge.”
“Don’t be silly.”
After walking down the street and making their way to a short stretch of banks and offices that were locked up for the night, Clint slowed his pace and allowed himself to breathe a little easier. “Where’s someplace we can go for a while?” he asked.
“What for? To hide?”
“I’d just like to get off the street for a few hours, but would rather not circle back around to your tent.”
“I know someplace that should suit you.”
“It needs to suit both of us,” he said. “You’re not going back to that place until I can check on a few things.”
“What are you checking on?” she asked.
Clint tightened his grip on her arm to pull her in close for a few steps. “Could you just take me to this spot you’re thinking of instead of asking so many questions?”
“Sure, but it may be a little cramped.”
NINETEEN
When Gigi had taken him to the wagon parked on the outskirts of town, Clint had thought she meant for them to ride out to whatever spot she’d been telling him about. After unlocking the rear door and stepping inside, however, it became clear that she wasn’t planning on going anywhere else.
Clint stood at the back end of the wagon. “We’re not driving this thing anywhere?” he asked.
Lighting a single lantern and twisting the knob so the flame was just bright enough to dispel a few shadows, she replied, “Did you see any horses hitched to it?”
“No.”
“Well, that answers that question, doesn’t it?”
The wagon was only slightly wider than something that any family might use to carry their household from one side of the country to the other. Small trunks lined one side and the other side was piled high with boxes of different sizes that somehow fit together like a massive puzzle. Gigi placed the lantern on top of one of the trunks and then turned toward the front of the wagon so she could root through another trunk.
“Do you sleep in here sometimes?” Clint asked.
Without looking back to him, she replied, “No, that’s what the house in town is for.”
“Considering how much sweet-talking you do for your customers, I’m amazed what a smart mouth you’ve got.”
“You’re not a customer.”
“That’s true. What are you doing?”
Gigi peeled off the first few layers of fabric wrapped around her hips. “Getting out of these rags and into something a bit more practical.”
Clint hunched over so he could step into the wagon and shut the little door behind him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I kind of like those rags.”
“Of course you do. Everyone does.”
“I’d think the men who visit you would be more partial to them than the women.”
“The men like them for obvious reasons,” she said while removing all but the last layer covering her lower half. As she unwrapped her upper body, she explained, “Women like them because they make me look like they expect me to look.”
“You mean . . . like a gypsy.”
“Exactly.”
“You look like a gypsy because you are a gypsy.” Furrowing his brow, Clint added, “Aren’t you?”
“Whatever you prefer.”
Clint reached out to steady himself using the stacks on either side of him. The top of the wagon was too low for him to stand completely straight, but he was able to get mostly there once he’d removed his hat. Thanks to the iron hoops functioning as arches above him, he was granted a bit more room than he’d been expecting.
Now that she’d removed her loose-fitting blouse and some of the scarves that had been wrapped around her shoulders and midsection, Clint could see the smooth skin of her back and neck. Squinting into the flickering light thrown off by the lantern, he approached her and placed his fingertip near her shoulder at a spot that was partly covered by her hair. “What’s this?” he asked while tapping a black circle that was about the size of a penny.
“The tattoo?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t notice that the last time I was undressed?” she asked.
“I’ll admit I was a bit distracted.”
“Just a little memory from my youth.”
“Is that a gypsy marking?” he asked.
“I’m not really a gypsy,” Gigi told him. “I’m Russian.”
“Plenty of fortune-tellers put on the whole gypsy act. You certainly pull it off better than most.”
“Thank you. I do come by it honestly, though. My grandmother was as gypsy as any woman could get. I’m halfway there myself, but don’t have all the blood ties needed to get all the way.”
“Close enough to fool me,” Clint said. His attention had already been distracted
just by watching her. Having removed some simpler clothes from one of the trunks, Gigi stripped out of the rest of the filmy material that had covered her. That left only a wide swath of thin cotton wrapped around her waist and tied on one side to keep it in place.
She took hold of a red blouse with gold embroidering and was lifting it to slip over her head when she stopped and asked, “What are you doing?”
Clint’s hands had started on her back and moved to her sides. “Nothing,” he said while easing his hands around to brush the sides of her breasts.
“Doesn’t feel like nothing.” When he pressed against her so she could feel his erection on her backside, she added, “And neither does that.”
Pausing, Clint said, “I’m trying to figure out if that was an insult or not.”
“No,” she whispered while reaching back to run her fingers through his hair. “It definitely wasn’t an insult.”
TWENTY
Gigi allowed the clothes she’d gathered to fall from her hands as Clint moved in behind her. She let out a long, contented sigh when he began playing with her nipples and kissing along the side of her neck. When she tried to turn around to face him, however, he tightened his grip just enough to keep her in place.
“I see you have something in mind,” she whispered.
Clint answered that by unbuckling his pants and sliding them down. His cock was rigid and he rubbed it against her backside like a promise of things to come. She grabbed on to something on either side for support and let her head fall forward.
“You feel so damn good,” she groaned.
Keeping one hand on her breast, Clint slid his other hand down along the front of her body until his fingers moved through the thick patch of downy hair between Gigi’s legs. They’d been together only once before, but that was enough time for him to pick up on a few things here and there. One of those things was a particular little spot on her right inner thigh that caused a good portion of her body to quake. He found it in a matter of seconds.
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