A Heart so Wild - Straton 1 Read online

  She had been in this room hundreds of times to clean it, but tonight she was seeing it differently. The large woven rug had been rolled up and set out of the way against the wall. Why? And why had the rug by the bed been kicked under the bed? The towels and water she had brought earlier had been used, the towels hung over the washstand bar to dry. The single window was closed, the curtains drawn, and she imagined the window was locked. The cast-iron stove in the center of the room was cold. The straight-backed wooden chair beside it was hung with a clean blue shirt, the black vest and neckerchief he had worn earlier, and one belt. The gunbelt hung by the bed, its holster empty. His black boots were on the floor.

  The sight of his rumpled bed mortified her, started her backing up toward the door. She had woken a man from his sleep. How could she have done something so thoroughly improper?

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”

  “But you did. So you’re not leaving until I know why.”

  That sounded like a threat, and as it registered, she realized that he was bare-chested, wearing only pants, incompletely fastened, revealing an indecent amount of navel. She noted the wide mat of dark hair that stretched between his nipples and formed a T with the straight line of hair that ran down the center of his belly, disappearing into his pants. She also noted the short, wicked-looking knife stuck through one of his belt loops. His gun was probably tucked into the back of his pants.

  No, he wouldn’t have taken any chances before opening the door. Men lived by a different set of rules in the West, she knew, and men like this one never relaxed their guard.

  “Lady?”

  She cringed. There was no impatience in his voice, but she knew he must be fed up with her.

  Hesitantly, she met his eyes. They were as unrevealing as they always were.

  “I—I had hoped you might help me.”

  As she had thought, his gun was on him. He reached behind him for it and moved to the bed, returning it to the holster. Then he sat down on the bed, staring at her thoughtfully. It was too much for Courtney, the rumpled bed, the half-dressed man. Her cheeks began to burn.

  “You in some kind of trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “Will you take me to Texas?”

  She said it in a rush, before she could change her mind. And she was glad.

  There was a brief pause before he said, “You’re loco, right?”

  She blushed. “No. I assure you I am serious. I have to go to Texas. I have reason to believe my father is there, in Waco.”

  “I know Waco. There’s more than four hundred miles between here and there—half of it straight through Indian lands. You didn’t know that, did you?”

  “I knew it.”

  “But you weren’t thinking of going that way?”

  “It’s the quickest route, isn’t it? That’s the route I would have traveled four years ago with my father if— Well, never mind. I know the dangers. That’s why I’m asking you to escort me.”

  “Why me?”

  She had to think for a moment before the obvious answer came to her. “There is no one else here I can ask. Well, there is one man, but his price would be too high. And you proved today that you’re more than capable of protecting me. I have every confidence that you would get me to Waco safely.” She stopped, wondering whether to say the other thing. “Well, there is one other reason, strange as it may sound. You seem somehow… familiar to me.”

  “I never forget a face, lady.”

  “Oh, I’m not saying we’ve met. I would certainly remember if we had. I think it’s your eyes.” If she told him how his eyes had soothed her, he really would think she was loco. She still didn’t understand it, so didn’t mention it. Instead she said, “Maybe as a child I trusted someone with eyes like yours, I don’t know. But I do know for some reason you make me feel safe. And honestly, I haven’t felt safe, really safe, since I… I’ve been apart from my father.”

  He made no comment. He got up, crossed to the door, and opened it. “I’m not taking you to Texas.”

  Her heart sank. She had worried only about asking him, not over his refusal. “But—but I’ll pay you.”

  “I’m not for hire.”

  “But—you’re taking a dead man to Wichita for money.”

  He looked amused. “I would have passed through Wichita anyway on the way to Newton.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize you planned to stay in Kansas.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then—”

  “The answer is no. I’m not a nursemaid.”

  “I’m not completely helpless,” Courtney began hotly, but his dubious gaze stopped her. “I’ll find someone else to take me,” she said stoutly.

  “I wouldn’t suggest it. You’ll get killed.”

  That was too close to what Sarah had said, and Courtney’s anger rose. “I regret disturbing you, Mister Chandos,” she said sharply and deliberately before marching stiffly out of his room.

  Chapter 10

  TWENTY-FIVE miles north of Wichita, A Newton was becoming Abilene’s successor as the cattle-shipping center of Kansas. Built on the bawdy pattern of its predecessor, the town would likely enjoy only one season, since Wichita was already gearing up to claim the next season.

  South of the railroad tracks, in the section called Hide Park, was where all the dance halls, saloons, and bordellos were. Cowboys from the cattle outfits were always in town, and the hell-raising went on around the clock. Gunfire was common. Fistfights, begun at the slightest provocation, were equally common.

  This was standard during the droving season, for cowboys were paid off at the end of the trail, and most of them spent their earnings in a matter of days.

  As Chandos rode through Hide Park, he noted that these cowboys were no different. Some would head back to Texas once their pockets were empty, some would drift on to other towns. One heading south might even stop off in Rockley and be enticed by Courtney Harte to take her to Texas.

  Chandos rarely let on what he was thinking, but just then he came damn close to scowling. The thought of young Courtney Harte alone on the prairie with one of these women-hungry cowboys was not a comforting one. He liked even less the fact that he cared. Stupid Eastern woman. She hadn’t learned a thing in the four years since he’d held her life in his hands. She still had no instinct for survival.

  Chandos stopped in front of Tuttle’s Saloon but didn’t dismount. He reached into his vest pocket and drew out the small ball of hair he had carried with him these four years, the long strands he had found stuck in his hand after he’d twisted Courtney’s hair.

  He hadn’t known her name then, but he’d found out soon after, when he went to Rockley to find out what had happened to his cateyes. Cateyes was how he thought of her, even after he learned her name. And Chandos had thought of her often over the years.

  He’d never pictured her as she was now, of course. Her image in his mind had been of the frightened girl not much older than his sister had been when she died. The image had changed now, for the foolish girl had become a beautiful woman—one who was just as foolish as ever, maybe more so. He could easily imagine her raped and killed because of her stubborn determination to get to Texas, and he knew his imaginings were based in reality.

  Chandos dismounted, tethering his piebald pinto in front of Tuttle’s. He stared at the ball of hair in his hand for a few seconds more. Then, disgusted, he tossed it away and watched as the breeze took it skittering a few feet down the dirt street.

  He went into the saloon and saw that though it was only midday, there were at least twenty people scattered around the bar and tables. There were even a couple of low-cleavaged ladies. A professional gambler had a game going at one of the tables, and the town marshal sat at the other end of the room, drinking with six buddies, making as much noise as the rest of the drinkers. Three cowboys were having a friendly argument over the two whores. Two dangerous-looking hombr
es were quietly nursing drinks at a corner table.

  “Dare Trask been in yet?” Chandos asked the bartender as he ordered a drink.

  “Don’t ring a bell, mister. Hey, Will, you know a Dare Trask?” the man called to one of his regulars.

  “Can’t say as I do,” Will replied.

  “He used to ride with Wade Smith and Leroy Curly,” Chandos supplied.

  “Smith I know. Heard he was shacked up with some woman down in Paris, Texas. The other two?” The man shrugged.

  Chandos downed a whiskey. That was something, at least, even if it was only a rumor. In fact, it was by asking some innocent questions in a saloon that Chandos had heard that Trask was headed for Newton. He’d heard nothing about Smith for two years, however, not since he learned the man was wanted in San Antonio for murder. Chandos had trailed Leroy Curly to a small town in New Mexico, and hadn’t even needed to provoke a fight. Curly was a born troublemaker. He delighted in showing off his fast gun, and he picked the fight with Chandos that got him killed.

  Chandos wouldn’t be able to recognize Dare Trask, for he had only a sketchy description of brown hair and brown eyes, a short man in his late twenties. That fit two of the cowboys and one of the gunmen at the corner table. But Dare Trask had one notable feature. He was missing a finger on his left hand.

  Chandos ordered a second whiskey. “Trask comes in, tell him Chandos is looking for him.”

  “Chandos? Sure thing, mister. You a friend?”

  “No.”

  That said it all. Nothing riled a gunman more than hearing someone he didn’t know was looking for him. Chandos had found the sometimes-cowboy, more-times-drifter Cincinnati with that same challenge. He hoped it would draw out Trask, who had managed to continually elude him these last four years, just as Smith had.

  Just to be thorough, Chandos turned his scrutiny on the three men who came close to Trask’s description. Everyone’s fingers were intact.

  “What the hell you lookin” at, mister?“ said the cowboy who now sat alone at his table, his two friends having just gotten up, with the whores, to go upstairs. He had obviously lost the argument and so was forced to wait until one of the whores returned. He wasn’t happy about it.

  Chandos ignored him. When a man was itching for a fight, very little could be done to calm him down.

  The cowboy got up and grabbed Chandos’s shoulder, whirling him around. “Sonofabitch, I asked you a ques—”

  Chandos gave him a hard kick to the crotch, and the fellow went down, landing hard on his knees and clutching his injured area, his face sickly pale. As the cowboy fell, Chandos drew his gun.

  Another man might have fired, but Chandos did not kill for the sake of killing. He merely aimed the gun, prepared to shoot if he had to.

  Town Marshal McCluskie, who had gotten to his feet at the start of trouble, made no move to interfere. He was not in the same league as his predecessor, who had tried to tame Newton. For a brief moment the stranger’s blue eyes looked at the marshal. The message was clear. He was not a man to trifle with. Besides, you didn’t confront a stranger who already had his gun drawn.

  The other two cowboys inched forward from the stairs to collect their friend, hands outstretched in a conciliatory gesture. “Easy, mister. Bucky’s got an empty basket when it comes to sense. He’s not tied too tight, but he won’t be causin” any more trouble.“

  “Like hell I—”

  The cowboy jabbed an elbow in Bucky’s side as he hauled him to his feet. “Dumb shit! Shut your trap while you still got one. You’re lucky he didn’t blow your head off!”

  “I’ll be in town a few more hours,” Chandos told them, “if your friend wants to resume.”

  “No sir! We’ll just take Bucky back to camp, and if he still ain’t got no sense, then we’ll beat some into him. You won’t be seein” him again.“

  That was questionable, but Chandos let it pass. He would just have to be on his guard until he left Newton.

  The moment Chandos’s gun slipped back into its holster, the noise in the room picked up again. The marshal sat down with a relieved sigh, and the card game continued. Altercations of this type weren’t even worth discussing. It took some bloodshed to stir excitement in Newton.

  Chandos left Tuttle’s saloon a few minutes later. He still had the other saloons to cover in his search for Trask, as well as the dance halls and bordellos. The latter might just claim some of his time too, for he hadn’t been with a woman since before leaving Texas, and his unexpected run-ins with Courtney Harte in her goddamn nightgown hadn’t helped.

  As he thought of her, he saw the ball of hair in the dirt a few yards from where he had tossed it. As he watched, a light breeze rolled it back toward him. It stopped a few inches from his feet. His impulse was to step on it before it blew away again. Chandos picked it up and put it back in his vest pocket.

  Chapter 11

  WHILE the good folks were off to church that Sunday morning, Reed Taylor was sitting in his parlor-office, one of the two rooms he kept for himself above his saloon. He had a chair pulled up to the window and a stack of dime novels beside the chair.

  He was a fanatic for tales of high adventure. Ned Buntline had once been his favorite writer, but tales about Buffalo Bill by Bill’s friend Prentiss Ingraham had taken the top spot recently. Reed loved Buffalo Bill’s own novels, too, but his all-time favorite was still Seth Jones, or The Captive of the Frontier, by Edward Sylvester Ellis. That one was Beadle and Adams’s first dime novel to feature a Wild West background.

  Reed was thoroughly engrossed in his fifth reading of Bowie Knife Ben, The Little Hunter of the Nor’west by Oil Coomes when Ellie May sauntered out of his bedroom, purposely distracting him with a loud yawn. But that was the extent of his distraction. Her scantily clad body held no interest for him that morning because he had used it so well the night before.

  “You shoulda woke me, sugar,” Ellie May said throatily as she came up behind Reed, draping her arms around his neck. “I thought we was gonna spend the whole day in bed.”

  “You thought wrong,” Reed murmured absently. “Now run along to your own room— that’s a good girl.”

  He patted her hand, not even bothering to look up at her. Ellie May’s mouth screwed up in vexation. She was a pretty girl, had a fine figure, and she liked men, liked them extremely well. So did Dora for that matter, the other girl who worked with her in Reed’s saloon. But Reed wouldn’t let them service any of the customers. He had even hired a particularly mean gunman who was passing through town last year to enforce his rule that there be no hanky-panky. Gus Maxwell did as he’d been ordered.

  Reed considered both girls his own private stock, and could be mighty unpleasant if he was kept waiting when he was in the mood to take one of them to bed. Problem was he didn’t take either to bed often enough because he divided his attentions between the two. Ellie May and Dora, once friends, were now mutually hostile because Reed was the only man available to the two of them.

  Ellie May almost wished Courtney Harte would marry Reed. Maybe then he’d let her and Dora leave, as they both wanted to do. He’d threatened them not to leave, and neither was willing to see what he would do. He said he was going to take them with him to Wichita, so maybe it would be different there, Ellie May hoped. At least there would be a marshal they could complain to if things didn’t change. Here in Rockley, no one would believe Reed was a bully, for he ran a clean, decent saloon and was respected.

  “You know what your problem is, Reed?” Ellie May was dissatisfied enough to say. “You only got three things that really interest you— money, them stupid dime novels, and that fancy miss across the street. I’m surprised you didn’t walk Goody-Goody to church so’s you could finagle an invite to lunch. ”Course, it’d shock the reverend if you was to show up in church. Poor man might just keel right over.“

  Her sarcasm was wasted. Reed wasn’t even listening. Ellie May turned away angrily. The open window caught her eye and, down the street, the lady in q
uestion. Ellie May smiled, her eyes gleaming wickedly.

  “Well now, I wonder who’s the fella walking Courtney home from church?” she drawled.

  Reed was out of his chair instantly, shoving Ellie May away from the window so he could get a good view. Then he yanked the curtains together and turned to glare at Ellie May.

  “I ought to slap you silly!” he said furiously. “You know Pearce Cates when you see him!”

  “Oh, was that Pearce?” she asked innocently.

  “Get out!”

  “Sure thing, sugar.”

  She smiled smugly. It had been worth Reed’s anger to see him upset, even for only a few moments. He was so used to getting everything he wanted that he fell apart if it looked like things weren’t going his way. Courtney Harte was one of the things Reed wanted, and although she hadn’t tumbled right into his arms, he had no doubt that, in the end, she would. He already thought of her as his. Ellie May hoped the little lady would stick to her guns, though. It would do Reed Taylor good to be humbled for once.

  “Courtney!”

  She stopped, groaning when she saw Reed Taylor crossing the street toward her. Of all the luck. Another few yards and she’d have been safely inside the hotel.

  Mattie and Pearce stopped too, but with a long-suffering look, Courtney nodded them on, then waited for Reed to reach her. He did quickly. In fact, she noted, he must have rushed out of his saloon the moment he saw her, for he’d come out without his coat or hat, most unusual for a man who prided himself on dressing impeccably at all times.

  His grooming wasn’t up to par, either. His blond hair was mussed, and he hadn’t yet shaved. His disheveled state made him no less handsome, however. Courtney doubted anything could detract from Reed’s appearance. The combination of dark green eyes, aquiline nose, and engaging dimples was lethal. And he was a big man, tall and thick-set—strong. She always thought of strength when she saw Reed. He was a winner, a very successful man. Yes, strong.