My Darling Gunslinger
Read My Darling Gunslinger Online
Authors: Lynne Barron
My Darling
Gunslinger
by
Lynne Barron
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my husband for his support and encouragement, for believing in my dreams and providing romantic inspiration when I was fresh out, for inventing creative excuses as to why I rarely left the house while finishing this story, and for keeping our world spinning while I was lost on the Zeppelin Ranch. Thank you to Princess Whitney Mihalik and to Brandi Salazar for polishing my words to a high gloss, and Melody Barber for designing a lovely cover. Thank you to Samantha Williams for too many blessings to enumerate. And finally, thank you to all the historical romance readers out there who’ve given me a reason to write.
For Michael, my own little lordling who grew into a splendid young gentleman.
Mystic, Montana
November, 1873
Patience always pays off in the end, one way or another.
Cyrus Culpepper
Cyrus Culpepper had been an adversary, a mentor and a thorn in Tyler Morgan’s side for nearly twenty years, but the old gunslinger’s words had been proven true countless times.
Ty waited patiently, ignoring both the biting wind whipping his duster about his legs and the hostile looks of the inhabitants of Mystic, Montana. His quarry would soon alight from one of the railway cars onto the raised platform and into his waiting hands.
Hell, could be Jonas Carter was hiding in the fancy railway car toward the back of the train. Maybe he was peeking out from behind the dark curtains shut tight behind the row of windows.
Even if Carter wasn’t in that particular railway car, there was a story there. Ty knew it in his gut and his gut was rarely wrong.
The doors to the car opened and a tall, dark-skinned man hopped onto the platform before the station master could set the wooden steps. Dressed from head to toe in white, a turban wound around his head, and a shaved cat draped over one huge arm, the man carefully and systematically staked out the comings and goings of every person on the platform and street.
His gaze didn’t linger any longer on Tyler than it did on the crippled old soldier or the dandy nervously flipping his watch cover open and closed.
When the giant turned away, Tyler half expected to see a long, curved blade dangling across the man’s massive back.
But he wasn’t armed, unless his huge hands and massive feet counted as weapons. Ty had once seen another man dressed much the same take down half a dozen cowpokes with only his hands and feet, deftly dodging bullets and blades with a speed and grace that had been a marvel to watch.
Ty almost missed the Chinaman who came next, so quick and quiet was the little man as he alighted from the train, a long, thin braid somehow lying still against his back as he hurried to the end of the platform. He ignored the stairs, neatly jumped to the ground, and took off in the direction opposite the giant, his short legs seeming to float above the wooden walkway and muddy road. In seconds he was little more than a red and black blur bobbing and weaving toward the saloon at the end of street.
Ty returned his attention to the railcar door in anticipation. He’d been waiting for the train for more than two hours, idly watching farmers, cowhands, merchants and the occasional lady come and go. The odd occupants of the private car were the only entertainment he’d had in hours. Hell, they were the best show he’d seen since he caught a play about two feuding families in Helena last month.
Since he’d seen that play, Tyler Morgan had been chasing the last of a gang of rustlers from Montana to Texas. He’d finally cornered Evans and Crowley in a brothel outside El Paso, caught them with their pants down sharing a whore between them. He’d suspected Evans was the stupider of the two and was proved right when he went for his rifle, peppering Ty with buckshot. Crowley had watched his partner die on the floor of the whore’s dreary room and rightly decided he stood a greater chance of survival at the hands of the lynch mob he had to know was waiting for him back in Moss Creek.
Ty was weary to his bones, his buckshot-riddled shoulder throbbing in time to the beat of his heart. He’d ridden Pocahontas at breakneck speed for near a week to meet the train in Mystic. Only to begin all over again.
Another job, another battle to be fought that wasn’t his own.
As near as he could figure, he had six or seven more years of hunting rustlers, robbers and murderers before he’d have enough money stashed away in the bank in Helena to buy himself a small spread somewhere.
He wondered briefly if the notice tacked up at the mercantile offering four hundred and seventy acres outside Mystic might be an omen.
Omen?
Was that the word he was looking for?
He dug through his saddlebags, cringing as the movement pulled at the wounds in his right shoulder and arm. He would have to stop at Doc Watson’s and have the pellets dug out of his flesh.
Ty thumbed through the battered dictionary, a gift from a pretty little whore in Santa Fe.
“Omen. A portent. An occurrence that is perceived or happening which is believed to portend a good or evil event or circumstance in the future.” Ty whispered the words. He’d learned he was more likely to remember new words if he spoke them aloud.
He closed the dictionary just as the railway car doors opened again. An Amazon descended the short set of steps, her pale hair shining like a halo around her head. As tall as most men, with long-fingered hands and fair skin pulled tight over a face made up of sharp angles and a firm chin, she moved with surprising grace, her steps long and sure.
Like the two men before her, the lady quickly scanned the scene, pale eyes lingering on Ty only long enough to take in the guns strapped to his hips and the book in his hands. Then she was off, her long legs taking the stairs from the platform at a clip. Her gray dress swooshed around her legs, her square chin jutted out before her as she crossed the street and passed him close enough that he could have reached out and grabbed her if he had a mind to.
As she breezed by him, her gaze dropped once more to the small book all but swallowed up by his hands. She took off down the walkway, weaving around those men and women not quick enough to step out of her way.
Ty grinned and turned back to the private car that had become his very own magical toy box, a belated birthday gift for the boy who’d never been given any such thing. He studied the car, seeing nothing remarkable about it but for the fact that each time the doors opened, a surprise came hopping out. Chipped and peeling green paint revealed that the car had once been red and gold. The roof appeared to be fashioned of tarnished copper or maybe brass. The windows were narrower than the windows of the other railcars and set higher off the ground. Dark curtains—perhaps red or purple—were pulled closed at every window. There were no hand rails beside the door. Ty swept the car once more, only to confirm there were no protuberances whatsoever on the exterior—no rails, no window ledges. The roof was rounded with no overhang whatsoever.
If a man had an inkling to enter that car without invitation, he’d find it damn near impossible.
Maybe the car’s inhabitants belonged to a traveling circus. Ty had snuck into a circus when he was a boy, crawled under the tent to watch in amazement as acrobats had tumbled overhead and skinny men in tights had walked across a thin wire.
The odd travelers could well be the stars of some sort of circus show. Maybe the Chinaman could shimmy up walls. The lady might swallow swords or wrestle men for nickels. And the Arab, there was no telling was he might be capable of — lion taming, bear boxing or lifting a carriage load of clowns.
The door slid open and Ty straightened in anticipation. A shadowy form stood in the portal, two huge fur-covered paws gripping the sides. As Ty watched, one massive furry shoulder emerged from the dim interior.
Ty blinked. Holy shit, a bear.
With a roar the bear ambled down the steps on legs as thick as tree trunks and encased in short black boots and…green velvet?
The roar turned into a bellowed, “God almighty, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here!”
A great shaggy head covered with snow white hair hanging down over bulging eyes and rosy round cheeks rose above a thick neck. A luxurious fur coat draped over a chest that had clearly once been strong and fine but was going to fat.
The old man shivered, his round body shaking like a wet dog, and stomped his feet.
The man turned and hollered into the dark interior of the railcar. “You’ll stay inside, my lady, if you know what’s good for you.”
This man stopped his perusal of the platform and street long enough to pin Ty with eyes watering from the biting wind. With one fur-gloved hand, he patted his hip twice, telling Ty and anyone else who might be watching he was armed. He puffed up his chest and slowly removed his gloves, shoving them into the other pocket hidden in the brown fur. He unbuttoned his coat, flexed his fingers, and patted his hip once more before turning for the stairs.
Ty watched the old man limp across the street, taking the same path the Amazon had tread only minutes before. As he came abreast of him, the old man skimmed green eyes over his battered hat and worn duster, his gaze lingering on the guns riding on his hips.
He passed by, his outrageous coat billowing out around him, allowing Ty a moment to appreciate the sight of a flashy purple waistcoat pulled tight over his round belly. If he wasn’t mistaken, the buttons of that waistcoat were rubies.
The old dandy mumbled something to Ty’s back that sounded remarkably like, “Wait till she gets a look at the lad.”
Another door opened two cars down, and Ty’s gaze shifted.
A short man with thinning blond hair and a pair of wire rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his long nose descended the steps the station master had left behind. He wore a somber gray suit over a crisp white shirt. In one gloved hand he carried a shiny black case. In the other he held a walking stick.
Without so much as looking around the train station or street, the man turned and headed for the stairs. The walking stick clattered against the wooden platform, a sure sign the skinny little man was unused to carrying it.
“Affectation,” Ty murmured. He’d looked up the word three weeks past when he’d heard a fancy lady’s trilling laugh after a banker in Silver City had told the woman that Senator Johnston’s rolling Rs were an affectation.
Jonas Carter descended the stairs and headed off toward the Grand Hotel.
Ty considered following his latest bounty but, hell, he couldn’t leave now. There was at least one more traveler inside the car. A lady if he’d understood the old man’s words.
He could no more walk away than he could forget his mother’s smile or the smell of the cheap perfume she’d spritzed about her room between customers.
Instead he lit a cheroot, sucked the spicy tobacco deep into his lungs, and shifted to a more comfortable position against the hitching post.
Pocahontas lifted her head, her warm brown eyes seeming to crinkle with merriment as she stared at him.
“Best damn show I’ve ever seen,” he told the spotted palomino.
But the best was yet to come.
The door slid open and out of the gloom stepped the prettiest woman Tyler Morgan had ever seen.
Ty adjusted the brim of his hat down over his forehead as heat washed over him.
This was a lady the likes of which the lonely hired gunman had never seen in all of his thirty-four years.
She was dressed from neck to ankles in blue-gray velvet, the exact shade of the storm clouds that gathered over the Ox Bow mountains in winter. The coat was cut to frame her gentle curves, to mold her high breasts and tiny little waist, to embrace her slim hips, to shift against her long legs when she descended the three steps to the wooden platform. The sleeves were puffed up at the shoulders in some mysterious way that only ladies knew the name of, before tightening to hug her long, elegant arms from elbow to wrist.
On her head perched a small gray hat, a dyed-to-match feather tilting jauntily up and over her head, curving down to dangle in the air above her right eye.
Beneath that frivolous hat was a veritable mountain of honey gold hair, braided and twisted into a convoluted concoction of rolls and coils, adding a good three inches to her dainty stature. Her skin was fair, her cheeks glowing in the winter sunlight.
Jesus, her skin looked soft. Unbelievably soft. His fingers itched to touch her, to coast lightly over her cheeks, to travel down the long length of her neck, to strip off her gloves and find the pampered hands of a real lady beneath.
Ty’s left hand came up to the butt of his gun, his hard, calloused fingers caressing the pearl handle worn soft from years of use. It was cold, not warm as he imagined her skin would be.
Even from the distance of a good two dozen feet, Ty could see that her eyes were blue—the brightest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen—surrounded by dense, dark lashes and topped with delicately arching brows.
She scanned the platform, her gaze skipping over the woman with the two small children, the elderly couple with the gawky young man and the crippled old soldier. Instead she studied the able-bodied men, from the businessmen to the banker to the cowhand.
Then she trained her eyes—those amazing wide blue eyes—to the street. Her gaze slid over the two sheep herders—brothers if Ty didn’t miss his guess—and landed on him.
Ty felt her gaze like a caress. Felt it from the roots of his hair, long overdue for a wash and a cut, to his fingertips curled around the cheroot in his right hand, to the tips of his toes, numb with cold inside his worn boots, and everywhere in between.
The lady tilted her head as she studied him, making no effort to hide her perusal. Her face was still, her long, lean body motionless. She didn’t so much as blink as she absorbed his presence there on the street. Ty imagined she catalogued his every feature from the whiskers shadowing his jaw to the guns lying heavy and cold on his hips.