Читать книгу The Untamed Heart - Kit Gardner - Страница 8

Prosperity Gulch, Colorado

April 1880

“Classin’ up the place again, Miss Wilhelmina?”

J. D. Harkness, owner of the Silver Spur saloon and dance hall, hoisted a crate of clean glasses onto the bar. Swiping a thick forearm over his brow, he dissolved like falling bread dough onto a bar stool and glanced around the deserted saloon. Midmorning sunlight slanted through the windows, capturing the dust that hung in the air. Deep in one corner, beside an upright piano, an old man dozed under his hat. Just outside the double doors two men perched on overturned barrels, taking turns spewing streams of brown goo at a cuspidor set in the middle of the street. A handful of folk drifted past the front windows. The day wasn’t looking promising for business, but today wasn’t any different than any other.

Harkness swung his weary gaze to the flame-haired young woman polishing glasses beside him. “What the hell are you doing here, Willie?”

Wilhelmina McKenna Thorne slanted eyes the color of summer leaves at Harkness. Several fingers slipped beneath her high lace collar, directly at the spot where the lace itched most.

With the other hand, she poked at the knot on top of her head and wished she hadn’t stuck the pins in so far. “Why, Uncle Jeremiah, I’ve come to help.”

“I was afraid of that No, don’t touch another glass. Just get on home, Willie, where you belong.” Harkness jerked his head to the corner. “And take Gramps with you.”

Willie grabbed an apron and swung it around her whippetnarrow waist. “There’s nothing to do at the house for me or Gramps. I haven’t had a boarder in over six months, not since—”

She bit off her words. A flush crept to her hairline and memory blossomed with relentless fury. She swung her face away from Harkness before she betrayed it right there—her secret, the one she intended to take to her grave.

She found herself staring at the portrait of a young woman, ripe and lush and naked, hanging above the bar in framed gilt Willie closed her eyes and tried her best not to think about the things men wanted to do when they looked at a woman’s naked breasts and round hips, the love words they whispered that made a girl forget that her mama had told her never to take off her clothes except for her husband, and then only in the haven of a shuttered bedroom. Certainly not on a grassy knoll at midday when the sun would heat bare skin with a fever.

Willie forced her eyes open. “Besides, Rosie had her baby last night”

“And a fine boy he is. Looks just like his pa did. A shame he didn’t live to see him born. Ah, hell, go home, Willie.”

Willie jerked the apron ties into a stiff bow. “Gertie left this morning to see her sick mother in Denver.”

Harkness grimaced. “Gertie’s got more sick relatives than any widow I know. And she always comes back to work wearing a sassy smile that doesn’t belong on a travel-weary woman. I ‘spect she’s got a gentleman friend in Denver.”

“She might not come back this time.”

Harkness snorted then levered himself over the bar and produced a bottle and two glasses. Splashing the brew into each glass, he slid one over to Willie, eyeing her as if he suspected she was up to mischief. “I can run the place without my girls and you damned well know it.”

Willie worked her glass between her fingers. “True. But without them, where’s your draw?” She jerked her chin at the portrait. “She’s not enough. Even for tired miners who can’t see and travel-weary folk who’ve lost their way. And if the cowboys come through town off the pass as I suspect they might today, all biting at the bit to spend their hard-earned pay, you wouldn’t want them to choose the Devil’s Gold Saloon in Deadwood Run over the Silver Spur just because they believe the whiskey tastes sweeter when it’s served by a woman.”

“They want more from the women at the Devil’s Gold than sweet whiskey. And they get it there.”

“Some, maybe. But not all want what the Devil’s Gold has to offer. Besides, Deadwood Run’s another ten miles further off the pass, a bit far to ride if a man only wants to look at a face that doesn’t grow whiskers.”

“I don’t know many cowboys that would be content with only that.”

Willie smiled, a soft easy curve of her lips that made Jeremiah Dagwood Harkness blush every time she swung it on him. “Sure you do, Uncle Jeremiah. You just can’t think of an argument.”

“The hell I can’t. And don’t call me ‘uncle’ again, dammit. Quit your smiling. You still have to tell me the whole of it. Start talking. All of it. The truth this time.”

Willie felt her smile fade a bit and wished Jeremiah Harkness hadn’t known her since the day she fell off her pa’s wagon over ten years ago and wandered into Harkness’s saloon. He’d taken her home that day and became her Pa’s best friend. Prosperity Gulch had been nothing more than a tent town then. “All of what? I’m here to help. We both know Prosperity Gulch needs the business. So does the Silver Spur.”

“What about you?” Harkness waved his glass at the room. “A few turns around the floor, a buck here for a dance, two bucks there, especially if you smile.” Harkness lifted a smug brow that inched higher in direct proportion to the deepening of Willie’s flush. “Admit it. You’re broke.”

“That has nothing to do with—”

“I can loan you anything. All you had to do was ask.”

“No.” Heat pulsed through Willie in angry surges and she laid a hand on Harkness’s arm as he dug into one pocket “No, J.D., no loans.”

Harkness set his jaw. “You call me ‘uncle’ easy enough because you feel so God almighty friendly with a man just about old enough to be your pa. But when you need me most you treat me like a damned stranger. You’re as blind proud as your pa was.”

Feeling every bit of her feisty nineteen years, she shoved her chin up at Harkness. “Fine. Then I’ll leave.”

“Dammit, Willie—” Harkness caught her arm as she attempted without success to maneuver her bustled, knife-pleated, obscenely narrow skirts around and brush past him. “You’re better off in britches and boots. Suits your temper better, too. But I have to say you look damned pretty just the same. Mighty grown-up all of a sudden.”

Willie squirmed. “I itch. I haven’t worn this dress in years. It took me three hours to iron it.” She fidgeted with the lace collar then drew a breath, feeling the fabric pull taut across her breasts. “It makes me look—young.”

Harkness seemed to release a breath. “If the cowboys come through you’re sure to make a small fortune.”

Willie glanced up at him, hope sputtering to life. She tried very hard not to look as desperate as she felt, even though Jeremiah Harkness was the closest thing to a father she had right now. Even he could guess she was desperate enough to do just about anything, short of leaving Prosperity Gulch. Dressing up in her best clothes and high-heeled shoes and dancing with a few miners and cowboys was nothing. Even

Gramps understood that. No, they’d have to tie her up and gag her to get her out of town, starving and all. No McKenna or Thorne had ever abandoned a dream without one hell of a fight, even if the dream wasn’t theirs but their pa’s, even if chasing that silver dream had seen him dead and buried in his pine box just a year past, alongside her four brothers and a handful of unlucky miners.

What little money Richard Thorne hadn’t invested in his quest for the big strike was now gone. Any sane person would pack up and move on to a town where enterprise flourished and money was being made hand over fist. A town like Deadwood Run. Her pa hadn’t, no matter the temptations or the trials. Then neither would she, no matter how desperate she became.

Six months ago she’d been desperate enough to pin all her hopes on a handsome East Coast businessman passing through. He’d promised to return to Prosperity Gulch and make her his wife. Six months later she’d realized his promise had been made after he’d taken her to that grassy knoll beside the river and laid her on the blanket he’d stowed in his shiny black buggy with the red-spoked wheels. The sun had been warm that October day, heating her skin when the tears of shame had spilled to her cheeks and splashed to her bosom. She’d been a fool to believe Brant Masters would keep his promise and come back for her, even the part about him staying on at the farm once he’d returned East to tidy up some business. She might not have believed him if Mama had still been with them.

Harkness slowly shook his head. “If any of those miners or cowboys even breathe wrong around you, by God, I’ll—”

What was left of his promise was driven from him when Willie threw her arms around his neck and nearly toppled him from his bar stool with her vehemence. Harkness’s huge hands caught her around the waist to keep his balance.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” she promised, pressing a smacking kiss on Harkness’s cheek. “I know you don’t like trouble in your place. Not one glass will be broken.”

“That’s what your pa used to say when he’d bring your brothers in on Saturday nights and break damn near every glass. Hell, Willie, he’d have skinned me alive years ago if he knew one day I’d let his only daughter serve whiskey in my saloon.”

Willie reached for her glass. “I took care of four wild brothers for over nine years by myself. I know how to handle whiskey and men.” Not all men, a voice in her head whispered as she drained the whiskey. “Besides, I always have this.” Bending, she slid the pleated hem of her dress up past her silkstockinged knee and a frilly white lace garter. Tucked into the garter was a short-barreled Colt Peacemaker.

She grinned up at Harkness, expecting his nod of approval. After all, the man had taught her how to drink whiskey and shoot like a man to defend herself while her father and brothers were away at the mines all day and night But his look was far from approving. His usual soft brown eyes were hard, fixed on the gun strapped to her thigh, and his squared jaw flexed with a rhythmic tick that typically boded trouble.

Willie’s brows quivered. “You don’t think I can get to it fast enough, is that it? Well, I can. These stockings are made of silk and they’re very slippery. See, they come up clear to here—” She turned sideways, lifting her hem past the point where the stockings rode high around her thigh. “Damned uncomfortable things—”

She glanced up when Harkness’s chair scraped against the wooden floor. With long, lumbering strides he moved down the length of the bar toward the back room.

“Where are you going?” she shouted at him, planting her hands on her waist. In reply she received a grunt Shrugging, she turned to finish polishing glasses. Some men just couldn’t abide an enterprising woman. Funny, but she’d never thought J. D. Harkness to be one of them.

* * *

The frontiersmen are freeing America from stifling European models and laying the groundwork for a flourishing democracy destined to climax in national greatness.

Sloan had penned those words in his leather-bound journal somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic aboard the steamer he’d boarded in Bristol. The words had flowed effortlessly from his pen, his theory fired by the tales told of the triumph and majesty of the great American West, and his thirst to discover and record it all on paper.

It seemed his theory had soared a bit high in the cushy and comfortable trappings of first-class stateroom accommodations, thousands of miles away. High, maybe, but he refused to believe it unrealistic. No matter that his pocket had been picked in New York and again in Omaha, both times by young boys who looked as if they hadn’t seen a bath or a meal in weeks. No matter that he’d had to throw a man from a train to save himself from the same fate.

Triumph and majesty, innocence and spectacle. Not tragedy, wretchedness, guile. Pocketing his journal and drawing off his spectacles, Sloan stepped down from the wagon and squinted against the late-afternoon sun blasting from out of the snowcapped mountains, straight down Prosperity Gulch’s single dirt street. On either side of the street, weather-beaten storefronts huddled together, looking as if their builders had slapped them up haphazardly in anticipation of disassembling them just as quickly. Only a handful of pedestrians lingered on the street A livery stable marked the edge of town not fifty yards to the east. Beyond that the street seemed to run off into an endless sea of yellow grass.

At the farthest point west, a small building crouched. Three men on tipped-back chairs with boots braced on the hitching post loitered beneath a sign that read Jail. One dozed with his chin on his chest. The other two watched Sloan. Gun belts rode at their hips. Sunlight glinted off the star pinned to the burly man’s vest.

“This is it, mister.” The toothless wagon driver extended a thumbless palm at Sloan and squinted up at him from beneath the dusty brim of his hat. The man looked and smelled as if his body played host to an appalling number of lice and fleas. At regular thirty-second intervals he let fly from his lips a stream of brown spittle that Sloan assumed was the remnants of whatever he jawed with lazy circular chews. Grimy fingers snapped closed over the coin Sloan pressed into his hand.

“Cain’t yet figure why you English folk come all the way out here ‘cept to hawk the railroad or shoot buffalo. Course, there’s no more sport or danger or skill in shootin’ a buffalo than in shootin’ an ox. Ain’t no tellin’ the English folk that. They come fer the sport. But there ain’t no buffalo no more in Prosperity Gulch, mister. Or men, neither. They’s all been kilt.”

“Where can I find accommodations?” Sloan asked.

The driver deepened his squint “Nobody comes and stays in Prosperity Gulch ‘cept the folks who’s fool enough to live here. You sure you ain’t lost, mister?”

“A hotel would suffice.”

The driver scratched his head, glanced off down the street then gave a toothless smile. “Anythin’ a man be wantin’ he can git in a saloon. Try the Silver Spur. Couple paces up the street. Maybe you’ll find a bed that don’t squeak an’ a saloon gal who don’t mind bein’ rode hard. Most don’t mind atall, ‘specially by a fine-lookin’ mister like yerself.”

Both men turned at the sudden rumble of horses’ hooves, preceded by a wall of dust billowing down the street. Hoots and howls accompanied the revelry as a dozen or more men reined their mounts in just twenty paces up the street Dismounting, several fired their guns skyward, startling the horses. Others lifted bottles to their lips, tipping their heads back to drain what remained of their brew. In a dust-choked, animalistic surge, they entered the double doors of one building.

“Cowboys is here,” the driver said, wiry brows arching when yelps and yowls suddenly erupted from the establishment. He spat into the dust. “Gertie must be workin’ tonight. That’s one helluva fine lookin’ woman. More than enough there ta keep a man warm at night. I first saw her at the Silver Spur after she lost her husband when the mine blew. She’s right particular, though.” The driver shook his head, as though amply impressed. “It ain’t every night she takes a man up to her room.” Slitted eyes flickered up and down over Sloan’s travel-weary attire, settling on the stickpin at his throat “You just might be the lucky one tonight, mister, in a room fulla hard-ridin’ cowboys.”

Something about the odd glitter in the man’s eye stirred a faint wariness in Sloan. Tenderfoots provided great sport for frontiersmen. Sloan had to wonder how often strangers wandered down the sun-bitten streets of Prosperity Gulch.

Retrieving his valise from the wagon bed, he bid the driver good-day and headed for the Silver Spur. The sounds of revelry grew more pronounced the closer he came, bursting over him in a cloud of smoke and heat as he shoved open the saloon’s double doors and stepped inside.

He paused to draw his top hat from his head, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. The place was small. Every table bulged with cowboys and hard-bitten men, most engaged in card playing. The air hung thick and oppressively hot with the stench of smoke, drink and bodies gone stale. Candles dripped wax from two cheap gilt chandeliers hanging overhead. In one corner an old man hunched over a piano, struggling out a tinny tune. A cowboy jostled heavily against Sloan, belched, then stumbled out the door. Behind the bar a shinypated, massive barkeep in white shirt and suspenders splashed whiskey into an endless row of glasses, then turned and disappeared through a back door.

On the wall above the bar hung a garish portrait of a copperhaired woman reclining naked amidst lush grapevines. One leaf rode conveniently high between her plump thighs. Demure fingertips brushed at the base of her neck. A secretive curve graced her small lips, promising the world. Her belly was full, pink and smooth, her breasts like firm, ripe, overgrown white melons. Sloan’s eyes narrowed on the large, rosy peaks and his belly tightened. A feast for any man’s fantasy.

His blood seemed to heat.

He saw her then at the bar, carefully arranging full whiskey glasses on a tray. Gertie, copper haired as the lady in the portrait, peach skinned and luminous in a sheath of white. For some reason an unexpected jolt jarred through Sloan. Perhaps because she looked too young to have experienced widowhood already. The way she moved reminded him of a girl not yet fully a woman: the willowy, long-limbed, rangy sort of unselfconscious movement common to prepubescent girls. Not to widows, or to women who took men up to their room for a hard ride on a squeaky bed because they had no other way to feed themselves.

Cornwall’s brew houses were full of women whose husbands never returned from the mines or the sea. Scrubcheeked, freckle-nosed women of all shapes, ages and sizes, yet all had the same dead look in their eyes, a look that made a parody of the seductive words they whispered in a man’s ear and the breast they offered for him to fondle, all to lure him to their bed for a few shillings.

Sloan had become a champion for those forgotten miners’ widows. The stipend Cambridge sent him for his contributions to their publications had retired many a widows’ debt on her brew house and freed them of their servitude to the mine owners. Sloan had come to know those women well enough to recognize that Gertie was not one of their lot. At least not yet.

She turned from the bar, tray -balanced in her hands, hair sliding from the knot on top of her head. She focused on the whiskey sloshing out of the glasses with eyes uncommonly large and uniquely slanted. Her tongue peeked out of one corner of her mouth as she attempted to maneuver among the tables. The bustle seemed to be causing her some navigational problems. The dress was all wrong—high-collared, rose-sprigged, virginal white, at least one size too small. Sloan had seen dresses like that several fashion-years before on girls going to church in London.

Sloan watched her hips swing around one cowboy’s chair. Uncomfortable though she might be in her clothes, she possessed a fluidity of movement uncommon to most young women. In that dress she looked like a beautifully tapered white lily.

A subtle fullness settled deep in his loins.

She lifted the tray over her head and turned sideways to shimmy through a narrow path between tables. The movement, unconscious as Sloan was certain it was, offered up her more visible assets like a feast to a roomful of starving men. Every eye in the place seemed to rivet on her. A sudden hush descended over the room, save for the piano’s off-key tune.

A seated cowboy turned, licked the spittle from his lips and ogled her bosom with a lascivious intent that fired a longdormant but staggering fury in Sloan. He took a step, watching the cowboy’s dirty hands.

Another cowboy slid his chair into Gertie’s path, trapping her with the tray balanced above her head. Her smile cut like a knife through Sloan. It was the smile of a child, a guileless, slightly mischievous smile that had no place in the Silver Spur around these men. She belonged in a sun-dappled, tightly sealed parlor with all the other virgins of the world, working a needle through cloth and dreaming of the noble man who would love her.

The first cowboy rose from his chair, his lean, muscular body not a hairbreadth from Gertie’s. Narrow hips jutting, broad chest straining at his shirt, he braced his muscled thighs wide and poised his sinewy, sun-hardened arms to crush around her. Sloan could smell the man’s thoughts. Those slitted eyes had already stripped Gertie of her sheath and laid her on that squeaky bed.

Sloan moved through space without volition or thought to consequences. All he could see was Gertie turning in profile to face the cowboy. Her eyes widened as he spoke to her and realization swept over her. Her lips parted in silent protest. She wasn’t strong enough to defend herself against a man gone rabid with need. His cohorts would cheer him on. She had only one champion in this room.

Shoving a cowboy from his path, Sloan shouldered between two others and then he burst upon them.

Gertie’s head snapped around. Her gaze froze him midstride. He saw the helplessness in the quiver of her brows, the desperation in the heightened color in her cheeks. He knew only that the upward curve of her breasts brushed against the cowboy’s chest with her breaths.

“Madam Gertie,” he rumbled as he surged past her, “I will handle this matter for you. Step aside.”

“But—”

The cowboy’s eyes met Sloan’s long enough to register the challenge issued. But his fingertips got no further than his gun belt. With a lightning-quick slice of his hand Sloan slapped the cowboy’s trigger hand away, blocked a wild punch with his forearm and easily ducked another. In two strides he drove the cowboy back against the table and the table up against the wall. The cowboy raised his hands beside his ears in wide-eyed, dumbfounded surrender.

“I jest asked her ta dance, mister,” the cowboy sputtered. “Ain’t no laws against dancin’ in a public place.”

Sloan shoved his nose an inch from the cowboy’s. “Is that what you call it here? Where I come from, we call it something else, and we conduct it privately. I doubt very much the lady would have consented to what you suggested.”

“The hell she didn’t. I was gonna give her two dollars!”

Sloan stared at the man as the grumbles of agreement rippled through the crowd. He turned and found Gertie standing directly at his back. Hands on her hips, one brow arched with disdain, she didn’t look the least bit grateful for his intervention and saving of the day. She looked…as if he’d muddled her plans.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Sloan said, suddenly very much aware that he towered over her and that the air seemed to grow instantly thicker between them. And hotter. Her skin was of the most astonishing shade of warm apricot.

Her emerald eyes dropped to his tailored topcoat, then narrowed on the stickpin at his neck. Suspicion lurked in her voice. “Who are you?”

He found himself watching the slow descent of one thick copper curl onto her shoulder. “Sloan Devlin, madam, late of—”

“You’re from the railroad.” An icy shadow fell over her features.

“Indeed, I came from—”

“Get the hell out”

He bit off his reply as Gertie turned abruptly and made her way through the swarm of men. Sloan’s attempt to follow was instantly thwarted by the bulging chest of one particularly foul smelling man with only a handful of teeth to register his sneer. Sloan set his jaw wearily. “Don’t make me move you.”

“D’ya hear that, fellas?” The man spread his sausage legs wide and punched one fist into his palm. “This gussied-up railroad gent says he’s gonna move ol’ Reuben. Better take off yer fancy coat, railroad gent. Don’t wanna mess up yer Sunday best with yer blood.”

“No chance of that” Sloan’s eyes slid over the man’s shoulder. Gertie stood at the bar, arranging whiskey glasses on a tray. Another young cowboy stood at her side, feasting on her every movement.

Oddly enough, none of the brew-house maids he’d championed had ever rejected his help so recklessly, so defiantly, so damned foolishly. Virgins couldn’t afford to.

“Leave him be, Reuben,” a leathered old man wheezed from one table nearby. “He ain’t even got a gun.”

A chorus of jeers went up. Two men began shoving at each other. Several others exchanged heated words. Someone stuck the old man’s nose into a glass of whiskey.

“My wife run away last year with one of them fancy railroad gents came through after the mine blew,” Reuben snarled. “Left me with four kids an’ her own ma who cain’t even cook. I been lookin’ fer revenge ever since.”

“A bath might have served you better,” Sloan replied, attempting to shoulder past. Reuben shoved him in the chest. Sloan stood his ground and met the man’s bleary but antagonistic gaze. Sloth, filth and a marked penchant for fighting. Nothing encouraging to be found so far in. Prosperity Gulch, save for Gertie. A peculiar, almost overwhelming desire to talk to her took hold of him.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Sloan said. “Let me pass.”

Reuben stepped from his path with a travesty of a bow. “Whatever you say, fancy gent.”

Sloan took two steps and realized his mistake an instant too late. He’d allowed distraction to get the better of him only once before, and a bullet meant for him had found his father. He thought he’d learned that lesson well. Apparently not. Reuben put all his weight behind a punch that caught Sloan in his ribs and drove the breath from him. Sloan doubled over, spun to the left and swung his left leg in a blinding arc into the side of Reuben’s thick skull. Like a mighty oak felled by the single stroke of an ax, Reuben toppled to the floor.

“I didn’t want to do that,” Sloan muttered, stepping past the man’s motionless body, one arm pressed to his ribs. It was then that Sloan realized every man in the place was engaged in a fistfight. He stepped over one fallen cowboy, ducked as a chair flew past, and narrowly missed being crashed over the head with a whiskey bottle. Fists met flesh everywhere he looked. Blood spurted. Curses spewed. And above it all the piano belched out its gay tune as if playing to a room full of civilized people.

He made his way to the bar. Gertie had disappeared. His eyes flickered to the stairs. She wouldn’t have gone up there with that young cowboy…or had she?

The shiny-headed barkeep met him in front of the bar, hamlike hands braced on his hips. He was a formidable-looking man, powerfully built, but the glint in his eyes revealed far more than a lust for a bloody fight. There was something distinctly possessive in the man’s stance, a protectiveness that extended beyond the tables and chairs in the place. Sloan was fairly certain the man didn’t easily lose his temper.

“Where is she?” Sloan asked.

“You’re goin’ nowhere but out that door, mister. And you can take your fancy fightin’ with you. It won’t do you any good against a Smith and Wesson.”

“We’ve no quarrel between us. Where is she?”

“You leavin’ or do I get my rifle?”

“I want to talk to her.”

“I’m going to start counting, mister.”

“Sloan Devlin’s the name, late of—”

The man moved one step closer. “If you don’t leave my place, I’ll kill you.”

“Yes,” Sloan said, looking deep into the man’s eyes. “I believe you would.” Again his eyes shot to the stairs. “I’m leaving. Just tell me, is she up there alone?”

A growl came up from the man’s broad chest, bursting from his lips in a bellow of rage. And then Sloan knew beyond a doubt that this giant was deeply in love with the reckless Miss Gertie. A part of him must have understood that, must have forgiven him his vulnerability, because he didn’t strike out when the man clamped his fists onto Sloan’s shirtfront and shoved his face close.

“She’s never been up those stairs with a man, mister,” he snarled. “And she never will, least of all with another finelooking, smooth-talking gent who’ll give her nothing but empty promises and another broken heart.” The man released Sloan and rubbed an unsteady hand over his brow. The creases around his eyes seemed to deepen and the glitter of rage faded as he glanced around his saloon. “Now get the hell out of my place.”

With a curt incline of his head, Sloan tugged his topcoat smooth, turned on his heel and maneuvered his way to the saloon’s double-doored entrance, retrieving his valise along the way. As he stepped into the late-afternoon sunlight he passed the bandy-legged wagon driver who’d pressed his face up against the saloon’s front window and worked his jaw in a circular motion.

Sloan had just stepped onto the wooden boardwalk opposite the saloon when gunfire exploded through the Silver Spur. A moment later two cowboys crashed through the beveled glass front door, spraying the street with tiny shards.

An odd hush fell over the saloon and the street. Even the piano fell silent. One by one the cowboys crept out into the street, some rubbing bruised jaws, others limping, most with blood streaming from flesh newly laid open. Sloan leaned a shoulder against the corner of one building, drew his journal from his valise and flipped it open. He squinted out into the street as the saloon owner emerged from the Silver Spur with a long-barreled rifle.

Sloan’s gaze ventured up, drawn to the rooms above the saloon. At the windows, white lace curtains stirred in the soft breeze. The curtains hung motionless now, like the dust hanging heavy and still over the street. There was no breeze to be found. Lace at a window would stir if someone moved past them.

He glanced down at the journal and wrote, Women allow themselves the privilege of a broken heart only once. After that, they never fully part with it again.