WildOutlaws (2 page)

Annabelle batted her eyelashes. Gaping at her target, she whispered to Mary Margaret, “Claim him or pass him. Your choice.”

The cowboy looked straight ahead, pretending—and undoubtedly it was in fact an act—he wasn’t the main topic of conversation. He splayed his thick legs and propped the heel of his boots on either side of the bar stool. Relaxing his elbows on the flat surface in front of him, he straddled the wood under him with far too much ease.

“Damn,” Mary Margaret whispered. “He knows how to make a woman jealous.”

“What’d you mean?” Annabelle asked. “I told you take him or leave him.”

“I’m not talking about you. I’m wishin’ I was that barstool right at the moment.”

Annabelle laughed and then redirected her focus, immediately dropping her gaze to the man’s package tightly bunched in the front. She rubbernecked to the point her head was hanging upside down.

“Oh for God’s sake,” Mary Margaret snipped, gently slapping Annabelle’s shoulder with the back of her hand.

Annabelle jerked to attention. “On second thought, I want him.” She hurried away and quickly made her first introduction.

Bob grabbed a bottle from behind the bar. He set up several glasses in front of their customer. Then he left his post and took a seat at an old piano with stained ivory keys. Blood had splattered over them, leaving them forever tainted after a gunfight left one man dead, two weeks ago on a Thursday.

Mary Margaret remembered the day well. She watched a young man take his last breath all because he made the youthful mistake of boasting. He stated he was the quickest on the draw in some gunfight right outside of Tombstone. As bad luck would have it, the outlaw present actually pulled the trigger. As it turned out, the desperado didn’t want some two-bit youth claiming a kill he didn’t have to his credit.

Poor kid never saw a showdown coming and when he wouldn’t step outside the saloon, the outlaw who called him out decided to teach him a valuable lesson, one he’d remember for the rest of his short life—which was something like ten seconds. Mary Margaret felt the bile rise in the back of her throat. He had been nothing more than a kid, probably around seventeen or eighteen.

Staring outside at the new arrivals, Mary Margaret summed up the rest of their visitors. They were hungry, thirsty, horny, and worst of all? They were outlaws sure as shootin’ and they were the worst of their kind. She’d seen enough of them to know.

Killers owned a certain strut. They possessed hardened expressions, walked with a pronounced beat, held their shoulders back, their heads high, and dared a stranger to mess with them.

When they ran together, they were untouchable. They were like a pack of wolves, typically led by an alpha male, the one who called the shots, took the best for himself, and roughed up anyone who challenged him for his position.

Another cowboy entered. He walked with a limp and chose a seat at a small table, acting as if he expected sudden service. The man Annabelle had approached glanced at the newcomer but didn’t acknowledge him with a tip of his hat. Apparently, the older fellow wasn’t with this gunslinger’s group.

The doors parted again and another cowboy strutted inside, working his walk like a woman’s man might. He had poise, not at all lacking in confidence. In fact, one glance and Mary Margaret understood she’d first been mistaken. The fellow entertaining Annabelle was definitely a hard-ass but he wasn’t the one packing bricks, carrying stone.

Mary Margaret focused on the man’s dusty boots and let her gaze slide up the contour of well-shaped legs, imagining the flex of every sculptured muscle. She lingered at the spot right below the belt, focusing her attention on the protruding masculine evidence of raw hunger. Then she continued upward, following a cylinder neck heavily veined with tight cords pulsing with pure pent-up angst.

Their eyes met and he copped a smile. He crooked his finger back and forth as if he expected her to swoon at the summons. She’d been there before. She’d been the whore to jump for a rapid score. Now, she wasn’t so easily impressed, or maybe she simply liked playing hard to get.

“I’ll be right back.” She passed Bob and traipsed up the first flight of stairs. By the time she reached the landing overlooking the heart of the saloon, another few wayward bandits had entered the bar. She twirled a lock of hair around her forefinger and kept strolling up, taking eight more steps as slowly as possible and without another glance over her shoulder. She didn’t really care if she enticed her guests or not. In fact, Mary Margaret wasn’t in the mood to entertain company.

Walking down the short hall, she pounded on the first bedroom door and then the second, skipped the third and fourth, since those quarters belonged to her and Annabelle, and lightly tapped on the fifth. Several girls appeared before she started down the opposite side. “Company,” she announced. “And we got lots of it down there. Everybody is working tonight.”

She knocked again on the fifth room when Constance didn’t make an appearance. “Everything all right, Constance?”

She didn’t hear a reply so she pressed her ear to the door. “Anyone in there?”

Mary Margaret turned to face the other girls waiting. “Get on downstairs and help Bob.”

Tara, a light-haired woman in her mid-twenties approached her. “That creep she entertained last night paid her a visit about an hour ago. I heard him tell her he ain’t gonna let her work tonight.”

“I don’t know about all that. You whores work for your keep just like I do and unless that young fella is planning on marrying her, I reckon it’s not in her best interest to listen to a blasted thing he says.” Mary Margaret pursued her own room in an effort to insinuate she’d let the issue go for the time being.

Bob had a rule. The girls avoided confrontation, but if there was trouble, they were supposed to let him handle it. Poor Bob was five-foot-four and weighed about a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. He didn’t care to wave a gun in the face of danger but he was quite treacherous with his weapon. There were about seventy-two bullet holes in the walls and floors to prove the saloon owner was a lousy shot.

Mary Margaret feared one day he’d take aim, fire, and come up with a bull’s eye. Since he couldn’t keep his avocado-colored gaze from darting toward the closest female, the girls tried to handle their customers on their own. It was a matter of self-preservation. Every woman residing there knew with absolute certainty if Bob readjusted the gun’s sights, they’d be the only target at the wrong end of the barrel.

Tara walked away but came back. “Mary Margaret, You might want to check on Constance. I’m afraid she’s got a right smart amount of trouble.”

“There’s gold to find down there tonight,” Mary Margaret said, refusing to look at Tara as she entered her room.

“But Mary Margaret—”

“I’ve got this up here,” Mary Margaret assured her. “Get to work. Make you some money. Have a good time.”

Mary Margaret never turned around. She pretended to busy herself with primping until Tara disappeared.

The piano at the foot of the stairs hummed with vibrant ragtime tunes. The music was loud enough to drown out other sounds. Mary Margaret strolled across the varnished pine floor and stared down at the trio of hitching posts where their guests’ horses had been tied. The shiny leather saddles sported heavy gear and packs, suggesting the strangers downstairs were wealthy enough to spend some of their profits.

These men had blood on their hands. She’d seen outlaws come and go, serviced quite a few of them. When a bunch of horses were loaded down with goods, it was telling. The riders had robbed, and probably killed, for their belongings. Oh yes, the stench of dirty money was in the air.

Mary Margaret didn’t care how much they wanted to toss her way. Considering her mood? She wasn’t working the crowd. Besides, with her position and clout, she didn’t have to negotiate a price.

The townspeople didn’t call her a privately kept whore for nothing. Unlike the others who lived there, Mary Margaret only worked for wayward cowboys when she needed a little extra spending change. Several miners and bankers kept her busy enough to pay the rent, shop a bit, and travel by train whenever she took a notion to visit relatives out in California.

In that particular moment, Mary Margaret didn’t need the money. She made out all right with what she earned from slim pickings. It was a hell of a lot better than worrying over a beatin’, too, a sad occurrence she’d endured several times when the liquor did more talking than the man paying for her services.

Clutching her hairbrush, Mary Margaret combed through a few tangles. She’d just reached for some powder when she heard what resembled a muffled yelp coming from the other side of the wall. The faint sound produced a horrifying signal she’d hoped she wouldn’t hear.

Immediately, she rushed to her bed, felt under the mattress for a small pistol, and hurried toward Constance’s room. An outright blood curling scream resounded.  

She jiggled the brass knob, knowing good and well she should’ve hollered downstairs for assistance. With enough patrons in the place, chances were good Bob wouldn’t retrieve his rifle but several men down there would perhaps rush upstairs with their pistols drawn. Without another thought or fear, she entered the small quarters, stepping inside Constance’s bedroom in time to see a lunatic aim his gun at young Constance’s pretty head.

“Get out of here, Mary Margaret!” Constance cried, clutching the white cotton sheet to her chest. “He’s gonna kill me. He said he’d rather see me dead than hear of me bedding another man again.”

Mary Margaret pointed her small gun. “Is that what you said, boy?” She took one step and then another.

“This is a family matter,” he said, pressing the muzzle against Constance’s cheek.

Noting the devil’s juice on the bedside table and the blood streaks running through the man’s eyes, Mary Margaret realized she’d made a dreadful mistake. One wrong move and she could cost Constance her life. She’d be lucky to leave the room alive.

Barely twenty-one and full of fear, Constance shivered so violently, the bed squeaked. Her shoulders were bare and her hair was a mess. Streaks of smeared lipstick encased her mouth.

Mary Margaret had been in the business long enough to see just about everything, but typically the life she tried to preserve was her own. Now she had someone else’s future in her hands, hanging in the balance.

Constance snatched another tattered blanket, balling the material right under her chin. The soft cries falling from her lips resounded and the noise fell upon the room like a doomsday drum.

“You said this is a family matter, did ya?” Mary Margaret asked, thinking of ways to keep a madman talking.

“It is, ma’am and it ain’t none of yer concern.”

“That’s debatable,” she muttered, eyeing the pistol. “We don’t like trouble here. You know that, boy.”

“I ain’t no boy!” he screamed, kicking a pair of boots away from the bed when he damn near lost his balance.

“You’re not,” Constance managed to say, sobbing between syllables. “Of course you aren’t. Jack, you’re more man than I’ve ever had in my bed. I swear it!”

The blood washed out of Jack’s face and Mary Margaret gasped. That was the wrong thing to say to a jealous renegade. Unfortunately, it took Mary Margaret a minute to conjure up a better way to distract him.

Jack cocked the gun.

Shit.

Mary Margaret was out of time. She’d best start thinking and come up with a right intelligent way to outsmart the man who held her friend’s life in his hands.

“Jack?” she crooned. “This is
the Jack
you’ve been talking about?”

Constance, God love her soul, didn’t catch on right away. She looked bewildered but given her current predicament, utter confusion was to be expected.

The young woman finally cleared her throat and said, “Why yes, Mary Margaret. This is Jack. I thought the two of you had met.”

Mary Margaret tossed her gun aside and said a silent prayer it wasn’t a move she’d die regretting. Placing her hands on her hips, she took a parental tone, a forced voice inflection her own Ma once used whenever she tried to taunt Mary Margaret into doing something she didn’t want to do. “Well, I’ll be. This is
the Jack
you’ve been babbling about? I declare, woman, I see what you’ve been bragging about now. You said he was the handsomest man in Colorado. I just didn’t believe it until I saw proof with my own eyes.” A beat later, she added an exasperated, “You’re Jack.”

“Yeah so? What of it?” he asked, trying his best to remain on his feet but teetering around all the same.

If he wasn’t so drunk in the first place, he’d soak in a few more compliments. The man couldn’t steady himself to save his life. Mary Margaret wished she could hand him another bottle and give him enough liquor to knock him out cold. Maybe then she could convince some of the cowboys downstairs to drag him out to the alley.

“Well I’ll be,” Mary Margaret muttered, continuing her exaggerated charade. She walked over to the window and stood where anyone might see her, hoping if a cowboy entered the saloon he’d look up and see the fear scribbled across her face. “If I’d known Jack was such a looker, I might have called you out for a draw. He’s the kind of man a woman will fight over, or at the very least barter for a share.”

Constance’s eyes widened. “You want me to share him with you?” She acted as if she were considering the possibility and that alone irritated the hell out of Mary Margaret. Constance, like most of the young prostitutes housed there, was so gullible.

“Why sure,” Mary Margaret drawled, left without a choice but to agree.

“What ‘chu talkin’ ‘bout, woman?” he asked, his thick accent evident. He must’ve been from back East.

“All this girl talks about is Jack this, Jack that. She tells everybody who’ll listen about some man named Jack, some fellow who promised to come here and take her home with him. Around here, all me and the girls hear is Jack, Jack, Jack. It’s every day, all day. I don’t know how we live with the girl.” She hoped Tara hadn’t passed along wrong information. She was winging it on a prayer, assuming Jack and Constance had spent a considerable amount of time with one another.