Outlaw Hearts (24 page)

He walked up the steps and into the saloon. It was nearly dark now, and the place was packed with every sort of lowlife imaginable.
Including
me
, he thought. Lowlife was right, for the way he had walked out on his wife, a good woman, devoted. She had taken a big risk marrying a man like him, and already he was proving she had made a mistake.

God, how he wished he could just stay away, stick to his first idea that maybe she should get rid of him right now and find some other man. But life without Randy would be the worst hell of all, worse than what he had suffered as a child, worse than taking a bullet or being cornered by Kennedy and his bunch. He couldn't live without her, and that was that. He'd have to face this father thing and own up to his responsibilities; but if he ever hit that kid, ever found himself even
wanting
to hit him, hell, he wouldn't want to live.

He walked up to the bar and asked for a whiskey, and a pretty blond prostitute sauntered his way, her breasts almost fully revealed by the low bodice of her purple satin dress. Her diamond earrings dangled nearly to her shoulders, and she was a little more pleasant to look at than most whores. He thought how at one time he would have grabbed this one up and enjoyed her for the night. Now she didn't interest him in the least. She wasn't Randy. There
was
nobody like Randy. He'd never gotten such pleasure from being with a woman as he got from his wife, and he supposed it was because he was really making love.

“Buy you a drink, mister?”

Jake allowed himself a look at the low neckline. “No, thanks,” he answered. “I'm just looking for someone.”

She smiled, rubbing up against him and moving her hand to his rear. “If you're looking for a good lay, you've just found her. My name is Mellie.”

Jake picked up his shot of whiskey and downed it. Yes, it would be so easy to go back to this. He'd played a few hands of poker at one of the other saloons, as a way of getting to know the men better, finding out about the different mines and trying to determine where Wes might be. But all the while he had been unable to get his mind off of Randy.

“You're a big man, right handsome too,” Mellie purred. “I like those big guns you wear.” She moved her hand to his privates. “You got another one in there?”

Jake took hold of her wrist and pulled her hand away. “That's for my wife to know.” He gave her a wink and she looked disappointed.

“She must be some woman. Not many married men turn me away.”

Jake let go of her wrist. “I don't expect they do. And if I
wasn't
married, I'd be whipping out my money right now.” He swallowed the second shot of whiskey, then turned to scan the room, always wary of walking into a saloon in a town like this, where there wasn't much law. Some men who regularly frequented favorite taverns had a kind of possessive feeling about the place, didn't like newcomers.

A few glanced his way, looked him over. One in particular looked awfully interested. He was young, maybe eighteen or twenty. His blond hair hung nearly to his shoulders, and he sported a poor semblance of a beard and mustache. Jake pegged him as a boy who thought he was a man. He even wore a gun on his hip and he was giving Jake a challenging look. Jake hoped the kid wasn't stupid enough to try to start something.

He looked back at Mellie and pulled out Wes's picture for what seemed the hundredth time that day. “There is one thing you can do for me,” he told her, handing her the picture. “His name is Wes Baker, and he's about twenty-two. He's my wife's brother. We came here to find him. His last letter was from Virginia City. You know him?”

Mellie's mouth fell open as she studied the picture for several seconds. When she looked up at Jake, he was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “Yes. He used to come in here a lot.” She looked back at the picture. “He was a nice kid. He used to say I was his favorite and we, I don't know, we got to be pretty good friends. He was sweet, liked to drink and gamble a little too much, never had any money because he gambled away his earnings every weekend.” She looked back up at Jake. “I'm sorry to tell you this, but Wes Baker is dead. He was killed in a mining accident last year.”

Jake felt like someone had hit him in the chest. Dead! How the hell was he supposed to go back to Randy with news like that? “Maybe you're mistaken. A lot of men hang out in these places. Maybe you've got him mixed up with somebody else.”

She studied the picture again. “No. That's my Wes, all right. There's no mistaking it. I mean, that was his name, and this is his face. He even used to tell me about a sister he had back in Kansas City. I expect I knew more about him than anybody. In a place like this, men don't generally share too much about where they came from and all.” She wiped at her eyes. “I'm the one who made sure he had a decent burial. The men where he worked told me his body had been brought down to town, so I went and saw it for myself. There were five or six mine workers at the funeral, and me.” She handed back the picture. “I guess I should have maybe tried to find his sister, maybe sent a letter to a Miss Baker in Kansas City or something. He never even told me her name. I wasn't sure she'd get the letter and I sure as hell knew she wouldn't want to know he'd been hanging around with the likes of me.”

Jake took the picture. “Sorry I upset you. You want a drink yourself?”

“Yeah, I think so.” She called out to the bartender and asked for a whiskey. “I'm awful sorry, mister, your wife coming all the way here from Kansas just to find him.”

Jake sighed, shoving the picture back into his pocket. Poor Randy. Here he'd walked out on her this morning when she was trying to share something wonderful with him, wonderful to her at least. She probably thought he didn't want the kid, maybe even figured he wasn't coming back and she was stranded here alone. Now this. He'd have to go back and tell her Wes was dead. Wes was all the family she had left. It didn't seem right, when folks had decent family, that they should have to lose them. And now
he
was all she had left, him and the baby. She would need him now more than ever.

Mellie sniffed and swallowed the whiskey, wiping at her eyes again. Jake noticed the kid with the blond hair had moved closer. He approached Mellie. “This guy giving you trouble, honey?” he asked, a possessive ring to the words.

“No, Clarence, nothing like that. We're just talking about somebody who used to mean a lot to me.”

Jake ordered one more whiskey, and the kid named Clarence came around Mellie and stood before him in a challenging stance. Jake tried to remember why the name Clarence rang a bell. Wasn't that the name of the kid who had tried to rape Randy? This couldn't be the same one. That kid had been traveling with a preacher. He couldn't be the tobacco-chewing, gunslinging man-child who stood before him now.

“Part of my job here, mister, is to keep an eye out to make sure nobody comes in here and hurts or upsets the girls,” the boy told Jake. “You made Mellie here cry, so maybe you'd just better leave.”

“Clarence, I told you it's got nothing to do with him. Leave him alone.” Mellie moved in front of the young man, but Clarence shoved her out of the way.

Jake drank down another shot of whiskey and took his cheroot from an ashtray on the bar. He stuck it in his mouth and puffed on it a moment, studying the snot-nosed kid before him. Why in hell was he doing this? “I think you've had a little too much whiskey, boy. It's making you do something real stupid. Now I'm warning you, I'm in a damn bad mood right now, and you don't even want to see what I can do when I'm in a
good
mood, so if you have any brains in that skull at all, you'll back off right now while you're still healthy.”

Clarence rested his hands on his hips in a haughty stance. He was standing up to this big man with the big guns, and he liked the feel of it, especially with Mellie and his boss and others watching. He felt confident. After all, he knew most of the men in here, figured they'd back him up. This man surely realized it wouldn't be wise to try anything when he was surrounded by men who would jump in against him.

“I saw you the other night when you came into town with Mrs. Hayes,” he told Jake. “I've been wondering about that, who you really are, how the pretty widow woman ended up taking up with the likes of you. Are you really her husband, or just another traveler helping out the poor widow in distress?”

Jake straightened, slowly setting down his shot glass and studying the young man. Good God, was this Clarence Gaylord? The little sonofabitch! “Her name is Mrs. Turner now, and I'm
Jake
Turner. Maybe you can tell Mellie here and anybody else who's listening just how you know my wife, Clarence. It
is
Clarence Gaylord, isn't it?” Several men sitting closest had already stopped their drinking and cardplaying to watch the confrontation.

“First you tell me how in hell she ended up with you,” Clarence challenged.

Mellie herself backed away then, confused by what was happening. She didn't like Clarence. Ever since that first night she had taken his money for sex, he had begun hanging around, being a nuisance. He seemed to think he ought to be her favorite, that he should be able to come and see her for free whenever he had the yen, just because he worked here now. He was a cocky, stupid kid eager to be a man and prove he could hold his whiskey with the rest of them. “You'd better be careful, Clarence. This man doesn't look like any ordinary Joe,” she warned.

“Shut up, Mellie! I know he's pretty good with a gun once it's drawn. I just don't know how fast he is at drawing it.”

Jake almost laughed. “Go dry yourself behind the ears, boy. You try drawing on me, and I'll blow you clear into the wall behind you! Fact is, I ought to do it anyway after what you did to my wife!”

“Yeah? Well, before you do that, maybe you'll tell me how it is Mrs. Hayes got to
be
your wife, if that's really true.”

“I don't owe you any explanations, you little sonofabitch! Why don't
you
tell everybody how she trusted you and that preacher uncle of yours, how she was a widow woman trying to get here all the way from Kansas just to find her brother. Tell them how you attacked her and tried to rape her, and how your good Christian uncle left her to die after she got snakebit!”

Clarence began to redden a little. He didn't like being embarrassed this way in front of men who knew him, especially not in front of his boss and Mellie. He hadn't wanted any of them to know his uncle was a preacher. God, he'd like to kill this man! It would make him look big, really big. And it would leave Mrs. Hayes or Mrs. Turner or whatever she called herself a widow again, alone in a town where all kinds of things could happen to a woman like her.

He backed up a little, and men began moving out of the way. Was this man really fast with a gun, or just a big bluff? He'd gotten pretty good himself, had been practicing. “Your wife lied to you, mister. It wasn't that way at all. I never tried to rape her. She was a widow woman hungry for a man, and I accommodated her. When my uncle caught us, she cried rape, but my uncle knew what she
really
was. She was a troublemaker! That's why my uncle left her at that trading post. She was too much a temptation for me and his brothers. He was afraid we'd all end up fighting over the slut.”

The whole room quieted at the words, and Jake moved to face Clarence more squarely. “You're a cocky, lying little rapist, Gaylord! You're itching to draw on me, so go ahead. I'd like nothing better than to blow your privates clear down the mountain! I tried to warn you, but you're too fucking stupid to know when to quit! I'd advise you to take back your words and tell these people the truth.”

“
I
believe your side, mister,” Mellie put in. “You'd better apologize, Clarence. You've got yourself in too deep already.”

“That's right.” Jake seethed. “Only it's too late for an apology.” He pushed his jacket behind his guns. “Go ahead, boy. Show Mellie here what a big man you are!”

Clarence swallowed, his whole body suddenly bathed in perspiration. What had he gotten himself into? He'd started this. Now he had to finish it. Maybe, just maybe, he was faster than this man. He went for his gun, but he had barely touched the handle to pull it out when one of Jake's guns was already out and aimed directly under his nose.

“You dumb sonofabitch,” Jake snarled. He came closer, grabbed Clarence's gun from its holster and tossed it aside. Quickly his booted foot came up between Clarence's legs, making the boy cry out and bend over. Before he went all the way down, Jake brought his knee into his face, and the sound of his nose breaking could be heard all over the room. No one made a move to interfere, most astounded at the speed with which Jake had drawn the gun.

Clarence crumpled to the floor, gasping for breath and holding his privates. Jake was on him then, shoving him onto his back and forcing the barrel of his ivory-handled .45 into the boy's mouth. Blood poured from Clarence's nose across his cheeks and into his ears, and he stared wide-eyed at Jake, making little whimpering sounds as terror engulfed him. Jake shoved a knee against the boy's chest to pin him down, and he cocked the gun.

“You know what happens when you stick a gun in a man's mouth and pull the trigger, boy?” he growled. “It's not a pretty sight! Now you listen up good. If you were a grown man, I'd splatter your brains all over this room! You're getting a break because you're a stupid, goddamn kid! But if I ever see you anywhere near my wife, or if you give her or me any trouble at all, I won't be so accommodating next time! You picked the wrong man to prove yourself, you little bastard!”

Clarence began to choke at the feel of the end of the gun barrel against his throat, the taste of metal. He had never known such terror in his life, nor such humiliation. Jake finally yanked the gun out of his mouth, and he rolled over and threw up, grunting with fear when Jake yanked at his shirt to grab a piece of it to wipe off his gun.