The Bounty Hunter and the Heiress (16 page)

“This is no time to be breaking in a new mount,” Raven grumbled as he veered around the washed-out ditches.

“Your Indian pony seems surefooted to me,” Blackowl observed. “You're just dissatisfied because the horse can't sprout wings and fly.”

“Considering the superstitious nonsense about how I'm only half human and half Indian ghost spirit you would think two cousins from the Cheyenne Bird Clan should have the ability to fly.”

Blackowl chuckled. “I have heard the same sort of rumors whispered about me at rendezvous. I usually—”

Raven flung up his hand, cutting off his cousin in mid-sentence. His attention fixated on the articles of clothing that were strewn over tree limbs and bushes that jutted from the steep downhill slope beside the road. His heart stopped beating for several vital seconds and he struggled to draw breath as he surveyed the area, looking for a body—Eva's in particular.

“Not her belongings,” Blackowl declared as he studied the garments scattered on the hillside. “Not her horse, either.”

Raven leaned out to look down from Blackowl's vantage point. Sure enough, a brown pony lay on its side. Its legs were sprawled at unnatural angles and it showed no signs of life.

“That looks like the horse I saw your would-be assassin riding when he set off the rockslide by Seven Falls,” Blackowl murmured. “I guess this means he lost his footing during the storm and won't come gunning for you again.”

Raven couldn't control his mounting concern for Eva. It was coloring his every thought. “Or maybe the bastard disposed of Eva, stole her horse and made another attempt to convince us that he's dead.”

“Or maybe it is true that there
were
two assassins and that one disposed of the other,” Blackowl suggested.

“There is also the possibility that the sneaky bastard overtook Eva and disposed of his own belongings to throw us off track. She could be a captive that will become bait to lure us into a deathtrap.”

Blackowl grimaced as he started up the winding trail. “That is possible, I suppose. I hope you're wrong, Raven.”

Raven sincerely hoped he was wrong, too. But Eva had encountered so many near brushes with fatal danger already that it was making him loco.
If
she was still alive,
if
he caught up with her before disaster struck, he was going to shake the stuffing out of her for scaring a dozen years off his life.

 

Eva mentally scrambled to devise a workable solution to rescue the hapless gamblers. The self-appointed judge of the mob—the burly Irish saloonkeeper—stepped forward to ask Frank Albers and Irving Jarmon if they had any last words before they died.

Suddenly inspiration struck Eva like a lightning bolt and she smiled triumphantly.

Bounding into the saddle, Eva forced her horse to circle around the clump of trees and underbrush where she was hiding. Giving whoops and shouts of excitement—that alarmed the bay and left him sidestepping and tossing his head—Eva waved her arm in expansive gestures. All heads turned toward her in synchronized rhythm as her horse bounded down the steep slope.

“Eureka! We've struck it rich!” she yelled in her exaggerated Southern drawl. “Me and my uncle hit a bonanza!”

The attention-grabbing comment distracted the kangaroo court from its execution.

“Say, that's the kid who came in my store this morning, looking for his uncle.”

Eva nodded vigorously as she waved to the dry goods storekeeper who had sold her canned food earlier.

“Same for me,” the burly Irish saloon owner added. “He was looking for his uncle then, too.”

“I found him!” Eva shouted excitedly. “We stumbled on a rich vein on the north side of this slope.” That was the exact opposite direction she planned to ride in attempt to overtake Gordon. “The vein is in a deep crevice about fifty feet above ledge. You have to see it to believe it!”

Gold fever struck the mob. With the lynching forgotten, they swarmed toward her, causing the bay gelding to prance skittishly. Eva reined the horse through the surging crowd that scrabbled up the rocky terrain and disappeared around the side of the mountain in search of the imaginary bonanza.

“Thank you, son,” Frank murmured as Eva leaned out to remove the noose from his neck then untied his hands from behind his back. “We thought we were as good as dead….
Eva?
”

His voice became a startled croak and he stared frog-eyed at her. “It is you, isn't it? What the blazes are you doing—?”

“Eva Raven?” Irving hooted as he studied her face beneath the shadowed brim of her hat. He glanced this way and that. “Is your husband here, too?”

“No, he is completing an unfinished assignment.” She untied Irving's hands. “I'm tracking the bushwhacker who took potshots at me during the stagecoach journey.”

Frank and Irving massaged their raw-skinned necks as they focused their bewildered stares on Eva.

“So that's why you're in disguise,” Frank ventured. “To protect yourself in this rowdy camp. Good thinking.”

“I identified the bushwhacker who left town immediately before you two were marched out here.” She glanced at them in blatant disapproval. “Maybe it isn't a good idea to gang up on hapless miners. They don't take kindly to being cheated at cards.”

The gamblers had enough decency to look ashamed and contrite. “Folks in these parts seem prone to taking drastic measures in a hurry,” Frank mumbled.

“They will probably take the same attitude in punishing a kid who claimed to have discovered a gold strike that doesn't exist.” Eva cast a wary glance toward the stone-covered hillside. “I better head to Satan's Bluff before the mob descends on me.”

Irving snickered in amusement. “That was a clever distraction and we are eternally indebted to you. If not for you, we'd be swinging from the short end of a rope right now.”

When Eva reined toward the second settlement at higher elevations, Frank called out to her. “I'm not sure you should go there alone. Maybe you should wait for Raven to catch up.”

Eva didn't mention that Raven wasn't coming. Instead, she waved farewell and didn't look back. She had done her good deed for the day by sparing the gamblers, but it had cost her valuable time and she had bypassed the perfect opportunity to pounce on Gordon when he least expected it. Now she couldn't overtake him until he stopped in the next town.

She rode away, cautioning herself not to become overanxious and make a careless mistake. If she lost the element of surprise—and disguise—that slimy worm might slip from her grasp.

That is not going to happen,
Eva promised herself. Before the day was out, Gordon would be her captive…She hoped.

 

Raven rode into Purgatory Gulch later that afternoon. His stomach growled and his temper roiled. He scanned the street impatiently, looking for the blood-red bay and its daredevil rider. He saw neither. What he did notice was the same speculative glances he usually received when he entered a community—even one as wild and rowdy as this one.

Today he drew even more attention because Blackowl rode beside him. They were given a wide berth and grudging consideration. Legend had it that he and Blackowl were deadly accurate with rifles, knives and six-shooters and challenging them to a showdown was just plain suicide.

Raven halted in front of a makeshift saloon, unaware that he had encountered the same rude Irishman that Eva had contacted when she first arrived in town.

“I'm looking for someone,” Raven said without preamble.

“Ain't we all,” the Irishman answered wryly then lit his cheroot. “I've seen you in town before. Raven, isn't it? We don't want no trouble.” He inclined his greasy head toward Blackowl. “I've seen you before, too. Owl-Something-Or-Other, right?”

“Blackowl.” He bared his teeth menacingly. “I collect Irish scalps.”

The Irishman bit down on his cigar but didn't respond.

Raven retrieved the three bench warrants Marshal Doyle had given him in Denver then waved them in the Irishman's doughy face. “These men robbed a couple of miners in this area. Do you know where I can find them?”

The Irishman snorted in disgust. “Yeah, two of them are rotting in hell and you won't collect any bounty on them. We hanged them last week when they shot one of my fellow countrymen in the leg while trying to rob him. One got away.”

Raven nodded grimly. “This mining camp is gaining the reputation as a ‘hangtown.' You don't get to be judge, jury and executioner.”

“Isn't that what you are?” the Irishman asked insolently. “I've heard there are hundreds of graves marked with an
X,
thanks to you.”

Raven rolled his eyes. Every time that tale was told, the numbers were exaggerated. “There aren't hundreds,” he contradicted. “Only the ones who prefer death to rotting in jail don't make it back to Denver alive.”

The Irishman's expression indicated that he didn't believe Raven. The legend was usually more interesting than the truth, he supposed.

“In my book, the policy of hanging criminals immediately curtails the number of robberies and murders. I'm all for expedient frontier justice. If not for that cunning little brat we would've had ourselves another double lynching this morning.”

Raven snapped to attention. “What brat?”

The Irishman blew smoke rings in the air. “The one dressed in buckskin and moccasins. “He claimed he was looking for his uncle Gordon. I shooed him away from my saloon but he turned up later when we were all set to hang two cheating gamblers. The kid started yelling about how he and his uncle had found a rich vein of gold on the north side of the mountain.”

Raven glanced discreetly at Blackowl, who was also having trouble keeping a straight face. Leave it to Eva to be resourceful and inventive. Hell, that's how Raven had come to have a pretend wife who had him chasing her all over creation.

“Everybody got excited about the possibility of a new mother lode in the area and we raced off, following the kid's directions.” The Irishman bit down on his cigar and his face puckered in a scowl. “We wasted two hours combing the hillside. We finally gave up and walked back to town. By that time, the two men we planned to hang for cheating at cards were long gone. So were the two horses we hoisted them onto so we could leave them swinging from a rope.”

“You think one of the men might have been the kid's uncle?” Blackowl asked.

The Irishman nodded his greasy head and Raven noticed the sunlight glinting off the specks in his hair. “I'd bet my right arm that the kid's uncle was one of those hooligans who fleeced miners at the card table,” the Irishman was saying when Raven got around to listening. “If you happen onto that sneaky brat, remember that he's an accomplice to horse thieving. He can hang alongside his uncle and his cohort.”

“I'll see that justice is served,” Raven said as he pivoted around to mount his horse.

Together Raven and Blackowl rode toward the outskirts of town, continuing to draw speculative stares. Two men darted from a saloon, bounded onto their mules and rode off in the opposite direction in a flaming rush.

“What do you suppose those two are guilty of?” Blackowl asked as he watched the men's hasty departure.

Raven shrugged nonchalantly. “Doesn't matter. I don't have warrants for their arrest.” He halted when he saw the lone pine tree where two nooses swayed in the breeze. “I wonder if Gordon Carter was one of the doomed gamblers.”

Blackowl frowned thoughtfully. “If Eva did manage to take advantage of having him tied up and sitting on a horse, prepared to have his neck stretched, what would she do with him?”

“She claimed she planned to shoot, stab, poison and hang him,” Raven recalled as he stared at the nooses. “Why would she pass up the golden opportunity to watch him die?”

An uneasy sensation trickled down Raven's spine as he glanced over his shoulder toward town. “What if there really are two men who are trying to ambush us and they decided to join forces?”

“Then why come here?” Blackowl questioned.

“I have no clue. This case has me baffled. The bushwhacker—or bushwhackers—struck with guerilla tactics then disappeared when the storm began building.”

“Maybe they decided to clear out since they were unsuccessful in killing you,” Blackowl speculated. “They did manage to lurk around long enough to keep you on defensive alert for several days.”

Raven figured Blackowl might be right on that count. More than once a fugitive he was tracking took potshots at him then cleared out. But Raven still wasn't certain what had become of Eva after she diverted the mob and freed the two men who had cheated death by dodging the noose. His worst fear was that the men had managed to turn the tables on that daring spitfire. She might be their captive by now.

If Gordon Carter was still alive and had taken Eva hostage he had several lucrative options. He could use her to control Raven or hold her for ransom. Gordon knew exactly how much she was worth to her younger sister, Lydia.