The judge sank into his high-backed, leather swivel chair. He donned his reading spectacles, took up the single-page will in his hand, and began reading.
By the time he was finished, Celeste stared straight ahead. Even from behind her, Waylon could tell that her face was as white as a sun-bleached bone in the desert. Carleen said nothing, merely sat in her chair with her head down.
“All righty, then—thanks, Judge!” Waylon dropped his boots to the floor and rose.
“Well, Warren,” the judge said, “you’re a very wealthy man. Your niece and your sister, however, seem to have been left out in the cold.”
Celeste bowed her head in dejection.
“My dear niece will be well taken care of.”
Carleen smiled at him, winked. “Thank you, Uncle Warren.”
Waylon returned his daughter’s wink. He turned to the stricken Celeste. “Ah, don’t worry, sis.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll get you out of that big old house and into Mrs. Embry’s boarding house in a few days.”
Celeste turned to stare up at him in shock, eyes brimming with tears. “What? You’re kicking me out of the house?”
“Gonna tear it down, build another one. A bigger one.” Waylon opened the judge’s humidor and helped himself to one of the judge’s cigars. He struck a match on the mantel of the judge’s Tiffany lamp, and the flame sputtered. “You don’t need all that room. Hell, you’d get lost in a house the size o’ the one I’m plannin’. Be much more comfortable in town. We’ll get you a two-room suite—don’t worry. Find you a job over at the millinery. You’re a young woman, Celeste. You been pampered long enough. Time to get out on your own, make a livin’ of your own. Toughen you up a little. You’ll find life much more enjoyable, once you’re toughened up and bringin’ in your own bacon. Maybe you’ll even find yourself a man before you get too long in the tooth.”
“You bastard!” Celeste screamed, leaping to her feet and squaring her shoulders at her brother. “I’ve spent the bulk of my life, the best years of my life, taking care of our father! And you had the nerve, the gall, to convince him in his crazy, demented state to have me written out of the will!” She sobbed and rushed at him, swinging her arms, her fists. “You’re pure evil!”
Waylon grabbed his sister’s arms. “Celeste, you’re overwrought. Pa’s and Waylon’s deaths an’ all . . . I assure you, dear sister, I do not intend to see you starve. You will live quite comfortable. But, while I know it’s gonna be hard at first, you’re simply gonna have to start working—”
He stopped when someone knocked on the door.
“What is it?” the judged barked from where he stood behind his desk.
The door opened. The stocky Mexican, Vicente, stuck his head in the room and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Maybe you better come out here, Sheriff.”
Waylon thought his brother’s associate might have placed a slight, ironic accent on “Sheriff.” Or was Waylon just being paranoid?
“Why?” he asked his friend, whom Warren had never liked and whom Waylon no longer trusted. Vicente, who’d put his outlaw past well behind him, had turned into a goody two-shoes.
“Someone you know’s out in the street . . . Sheriff.”
There it was again—unmistakable this time!
“Well, who in the hell . . . ?” Waylon let his voice trail off as Vicente pulled his head out of the room and clomped down the hall toward the courthouse’s front door.
Waylon scowled as he grabbed his hat. “Goddammit, what the hell’s goin’ on?”
He headed into the hall. The judge came next, and then Celeste and Carleen. Waylon followed Vicente out onto the boardwalk fronting the courthouse and froze.
Vicente grinned at him, sneeringly, and sidestepped to Waylon’s right. Meanwhile, the judge came out to stand between Waylon and the Mex. Celeste and Carleen stepped to his left.
Waylon heard the two women gasp at the same time.
Maybe he himself gasped, as well. He wasn’t sure. He did know that his heart turned a quick, painful somersault in his chest.
“What the hell . . . ?” Waylon said, scowling at the big man standing directly across the street from the courthouse.
The handsome, dark-haired, clean-shaven man in the pinto vest and light tan Stetson, a heavy LeMat hanging low on his right thigh, was leaning against an awning support post of Nora’s whorehouse. He frowned beneath his hat brim. A white bandage shone beneath the hat. The ends of his knotted neckerchief blew around in the mid-afternoon breeze that smelled like rain again.
Chaney shook his head in fury, bunching his lips. He stepped off the boardwalk and clamped a hand over the walnut grips of his pistol. “Who the hell are you? You aren’t Sartain. I left him for bobcat bait in the bottom of a canyon. What are you up to, amigo? You know who I am?”
“I know who you are, Waylon,” Sartain said with quiet menace.
“Waylon?” Celeste and the judge intoned at the same time.
“Waylon,” Sartain said, pushing away from the awning support post, dropping his hands to his sides. He’d already released the keeper thong from over the LeMat’s hammer.
Carleen slowly raised an arm to point at her father, sliding desperate gazes between the mayor and Celeste. “This . . . this is my uncle Warren.”
Sartain curled his upper lip. “No, it ain’t, honey. You know that as well as I do.”
“Horse fritters!” Waylon Chaney barked, taking one long stride toward Sartain, his dark-blue eyes fixed on the Revenger. “You killed the mayor and now you’re here to kill me, ’cause you’re a killer!”
“Ah, hell, Waylon,” Vicente said, smiling. “I seen it all, Judge. I seen Waylon kill the mayor, and then he shot Sartain. The mayor was dead, but I fished the Revenger out of that canyon. He didn’t rape Miss Carleen, neither. She prob’ly raped him.”
He snickered.
Carleen wheeled on him, seething, but holding her tongue.
The judge turned to the imposter. “Waylon Chaney?”
Chaney glared at Sartain.
He slapped his walnut-gripped Colt, started to whip it up out of the leather.
Sartain wasn’t particularly fast, but he was faster than Waylon Chaney by half a wink. And he was calmer. That’s why his slug hammered Chaney’s right arm, causing Chaney to trigger his own pistol into the dirt of the street, halfway between himself and the Cajun.
Sartain wanted Chaney alive.
Waylon yelped and grabbed his upper right arm.
“No!” Carleen screamed, bending forward at the waist.
“Give it up, Waylon,” Sartain advised.
Chaney shoved his left hand into his vest pocket. Silver-chased steel glistened in the fading sunlight as he raised the derringer.
Sartain’s LeMat spoke again. The bullet punched through Chaney’s left side, throwing him back onto the boardwalk. He dropped the derringer and lay writhing and cursing like a gut-shot bobcat.
“No!” Carleen screamed again. “Pa!”
She ran to her father, dropped to both knees beside him. She whipped an enraged, hard-jawed glare at Sartain. “Damn you!” She looked at Vicente and repeated, “Damn you!”
Chaney slid off the boardwalk, trying to stretch his left hand out toward the derringer. Sartain had been striding toward him, and now he bent down to scoop up both the derringer and the Colt Peacemaker.
He tossed both pistols into an alley to the right of Nora’s Place. All of Nora’s girls were either on the second-floor balcony or on the front stoop, muttering in shock amongst themselves.
Celeste moved to Sartain. Tears wavered in her eyes. She threw her arms around him, pressed her cheek to his chest.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Me, too. Would have been if Vicente hadn’t hauled my worthless carcass out of that canyon.”
Celeste glanced back at the mewling Chaney and the sobbing Carleen and then turned to Sartain once more. “Oh, I don’t think it’s all that worthless. Thank you.”
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“Ah, hell.”
The judge moved as though in a daze down off the boardwalk, and stood before the Revenger, frowning in consternation. “You’re . . . Sartain?”
The Cajun didn’t say anything.
The judge glanced back at Chaney. “He’s . . . Waylon?”
“You can dig his brother up from the grave out at the Chaney ranch. Celeste will confirm it’s Warren out there, and that this here polecat is Waylon.” He glanced at Carleen glaring over her shoulder at him. “But I reckon Waylon’s daughter already done that.”
“I’ll be damned,” the judge said, shaking his head in shock. “I reckon . . . I reckon I’ll be sending a telegram to the U.S. marshal about this bit of nastiness.”
“You’ll be needing a new sheriff.”
Sartain crouched over Chaney and ripped the badge off his vest. He tossed it to Vicente. “I can’t think of a better man for the job . . . at least until you can run another election.”
“If you want the job,” the judge told Vicente, “it’s yours.”
Vicente shrugged. “For a week or two. What the hell?”
He pinned the badge to his shirt, grabbed the back of Waylon’s coat, and began dragging the wounded owlhoot into the courthouse. Carleen ran to keep up with him, both she and her father cursing like banshees.
Sartain looked at Celeste. “You’re next of kin.”
“That means your father’s wealth is now yours,” the judge told her, “since Warren is dead and Waylon will likely hang. I’ll get the county prosecutor on the case straightaway, and we’ll get some deputy U.S. marshals in here to watch over the trial.”
Celeste looked around at the town, as though she’d never quite seen it before.
“About Carleen . . .” the judge said, frowning at the window of the sheriff’s office. “I’m not sure about her.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Celeste said. “When she calms down, I’ll take her up to the house. If she wants a home there with me, she’ll have one. For as long as she wants. I guess it’s time what’s left of the Chaney family starts to heal its considerable wounds.”
The judge yelled for one of the many onlookers to fetch the local sawbones, then turned to Sartain. “As for you . . . if I remember correctly, you have quite a reward on your head, Mr. Sartain.”
“That’s right, Judge. I do.”
The judge fingered his chin whiskers. “Best not let any grass grow under your feet in Bittersweet. That said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank you for what you did here. I guess justice has been served . . . by a wanted man. Go figure.”
“I think he serves plenty of justice, Judge,” Celeste said, smiling up at Sartain. “May I offer you a glass of brandy, Mike? Perhaps supper?”
“Where?”
“Up at my house,” Celeste said, as though it were a silly question. “Where else?”
Sartain turned and hooked his arm for her. She threaded her own arm through his.
“This ain’t gonna look one bit proper,” he warned.
“I don’t care much about proper,” Celeste said. “You know that as well as anyone, Mike.” She kissed his cheek warmly.
They started walking together along the street, in the direction of the Chaney house. Sartain whistled, and Boss came running from where the Cajun had left him ground-tied a block north of the courthouse. The buckskin slowed to a walk and followed the arm-in-arm couple up the path to the large house on the butte.
Behind them, Waylon Chaney’s screamed curses echoed.
GOLD DUST WOMAN
Chapter 1
Hooves drummed in the distance.
Mike Sartain, the Revenger, sipped his tequila and turned to stare out the cantina’s open door toward the west, where a horseman was galloping down from a low ridge, heading toward him.
Horsewoman, rather. A fine one at that, sitting smartly on a fine, sleek grullo.
She was silhouetted by the setting, blood-red New Mexico sun. The rays shone like liquid fire in her thick, blond hair tumbling messily across her shoulders and down the sleeves of her man-sized canvas coat. She rode straight-backed, lightly, with an easy hand on the reins, letting the grullo pick its own way through the prickly pear and Spanish bayonet.
Sartain took his gaze from the woman beyond the door, slid it toward the five men clad in dirty dusters, leather chaps, gaudy Spanish-style shirts, and billowy neckerchiefs standing at the bar of this little cantina on the outskirts of Fort Sumner. They stood six, maybe seven feet apart, one boot hiked on the crude wooden beam that served as a foot rail at the base of the wainscoted counter.
They’d come in together, had obviously been riding together, but were not speaking.
One was smoking a quirley, occasionally blowing smoke at the ceiling over the bar.
There was no back bar in the roughhewn watering hole, only a few plank shelves with a dozen or so unlabeled bottles and a single, cracked mirror about the size of one you’d find mounted on your average hotel dresser. One of the five men standing at the bar glanced into the mirror. Sartain met the man’s brown-eyed gaze, and the man quickly lowered his eyes to the bar. With a casual sigh, he lifted his shot glass to his lips and tipped his head back as he drank.
The man standing to his right glanced at him, drew on his quirley, glanced away, and blew smoke at the ceiling.
The only sounds in the room were the hollow ticking of a cuckoo clock on the wall opposite the bar, the occasional glassy thuds of a shot glass being set down on the bar, and the growing hoofbeats of the woman’s grullo as she rode on into the yard and reined up before a peeled-log corral, scattering chickens.
One of the men turned toward the woman. The others did, as well, and then returned their attention to their drinks.
They all seemed to be purposefully keeping their hands away from the pistols holstered on their hips and behind which the flaps of their dusters had been tucked.
Sartain threw back the last of his own tequila and set the glass down on the table. He looked out the open door again. The woman was striding toward the cantina, batting her tan Stetson against her right thigh. She wore a blue chambray shirt under the canvas coat, and blue denims tucked into her high-topped riding boots. A red neckerchief fluttered in the breeze beneath her fine, assertively sculpted chin.
Her thick, curly hair, sparkling gold with hints of red, winnowed behind her in the cool autumn breeze that skidded yellow leaves this way and that about the hard-packed yard littered with pieces of watermelon rind pecked clean by the chickens.
The men at the bar had all turned to watch the woman approach the cantina, mount the small, rickety stoop, and stop in the doorway. One of them chuckled softly, with sneering, goatish approval.
The man nearest her turned full around to face her, his chin dipping as he studied her up and down. He said, “Say, now—ain’t you lovely.”
One of the others snickered softly.
The man nearest her held up his shot glass. “Miss, you come to the right place. I’m gonna buy you a drink.”
The woman looked at him and the others standing at the bar. She turned to Sartain, who was one of only three men seated at one of the six tables to the left of the bar. The other two were old, bearded Mexicans involved in a game of checkers behind the Revenger, near the bottom of the narrow staircase that rose to the cantina’s second story. Pungent smoke from their slender, black cigars peppered the air in the room.
The bartender had excused himself from the cantina a few minutes ago. A middle-aged Mexican with a young family, he’d muttered that he’d needed to check on his children. They were alone in his shack flanking the cantina, as his wife had gone into town to sell eggs. He’d demurely, almost regretfully, put his customers on the honor system. Sartain had silently opined that the barman had not liked the way the climate inside the cantina had changed when the five pistol-packing riders had entered a few minutes behind the Revenger himself.
The woman glanced once more at the man who’d offered her a drink and the
n strode toward Sartain, meandering around the tables, nudging a chair with a nicely rounded hip.
“All right,” said the man at the bar. “How ’bout you buy me a drink?”
The man who’d snickered now laughed openly.
The woman stopped before Sartain, her back to the bar and the five men who’d all turned to follow her with their appreciative gazes. Their eyes had lowered to appraise her backside, which, judging by their glassy stares and eager smiles, was not unfavorable.
“Are you Sartain?” the woman said loudly enough for everyone in the saloon to easily hear.
Sartain inwardly winced and glanced behind her at the men, who now stared at him instead of her. Their appreciative grins dwindled.
The woman pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. She glanced over her shoulder toward the men at the bar, then folded her arms on the table and leaned toward the Cajun. She kept her voice lower this time.
“You’re the Revenger?”
Her face was only two feet from his. God, she was pretty. A brown-eyed blond with a light spray of freckles across the nubs of her tanned cheeks. She was no spring chicken—there were lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth—but some women retained a youthful beauty despite their years and the unforgiving southwestern sun. Her mouth was wide and practical, her eyes brash and earnest. She was probably thirty, maybe a few years older than that, with a few extra pounds on her. Still, the man who’d been raised by toothsome, sexually astute young doxies in the wilds of the New Orleans French Quarter found her as alluring as any woman ten years younger than she.
Still, she was the last person Mike Sartain wanted to see at the moment.
“Miss... er, ma’am... this, uh, may not be the right—”
“You got my note, I take it. You are Sartain, correct? I have a job for you, Mr. Sartain. It is very urgent.”
She frowned at him, saw that his eyes were not on her but on the men standing at the bar, who now faced him, staring at him, their faces blank. A few of their hands had come down to sidle up against the grips of six-shooters.
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