HANDSOME DAVE DUVALL wasn’t nearly as handsome today as he normally was.
As he reined his trail-weary paint down a hogback near the Missouri River, a heavy layer of clay-colored dust coated his flat-crowned black hat and black cotton duster. His four-day growth of chestnut beard was dusty and seed flecked, and his peeling, sun-seared face bore the scratches he’d received two days ago when he’d ridden through briars just after ambushing the little bitch who’d been trailing him.
Who was that little minx, anyway? Duvall wondered now as he stopped his horse at the river, releasing the reins so the horse could drink. As the outlaw studied the milky brown water sliding between chalky, eroded buttes, he worked his weary mind over the blonde.
And who in the hell was the man she rode with, the big man on the dun? He had appeared armed for bear with a short-barreled shotgun, a Winchester, and what had looked like a Peacemaker revolver through Duvall’s field glasses.
A bounty hunter, no doubt—Duvall had seen no badge— who’d picked up the trail of Duvall’s gang in Fargo.
Dave’s face and neck warmed with anger and confusion as he thought of the man and remembered the shoot-out— his whole outfit cut down in the darkness, wiped out by the bounty hunter and another man Duvall had never gotten a close look at. Having savvied the trap, Duvall was the sole survivor. If he was going to stay that way, he needed to lose the bounty hunter and get the hell out of the territory.
But first, Dave needed to rest himself and his horse. To that end, he reined the paint away from the river, traced a cut through the buttes, and continued south. He had a destination in mind, and when he reached it later that afternoon, after having followed a circuitous route around Bismarck and Fort Lincoln, he halted the horse on a low hill.
With his field glasses, he studied the buildings beneath him. Flanked by the river, they included an L-shaped log house with a sod roof, a log barn, several sheds, a sawmill, and two corrals. The ragged wheeze of a two-man saw rose to Dave’s ears above the breeze rustling the grass and the birds chirping in the cottonwood snag to his left.
A brown-haired young woman appeared on the house’s veranda. She stepped off the veranda with a lunch basket and” headed across the yard to the mill, cream-colored skirts swishing about her legs. Dave waited, watching, until the woman stepped out of the mill and started back toward the house without the basket.
Watching the woman, Duvall grinned. Tired as he was, lust stirred him. And then he knew he was all right. The bounty hunter and the little blonde bitch might have set him back a bit, but by god, Handsome Dave Duvall was still a force to be reckoned with!
“Giddap, horse!” Duvall yelled, spurring the paint over the ridge and down the hill.
With the last bit of juice left in the horse’s tired heart, the outlaw cantered up to the tie rail before the house and swung out of the saddle, feeling fresher suddenly than he’d felt in days.
After all he’d been through—the ambush and the four-day run from the north—it only took one woman seen from a distance to make Duvall feel spry!
He looped the reins over the tie rack, bounded up the squeaky steps, crossed the porch, and noted the wood shingle hanging on the door in which Clawson’s Rodehouse had been burned. He grinned, spun the knob, and pushed into the dark, low-ceilinged room, his spurs clinking on the rough, sawdusted planks.
Looking around at the half-dozen tables decked out in red-and-white checked oilcloth, he called softly, “Margie?”
“Be out in a minute. Have a seat anywhere,” came a woman’s weary voice from another room.
Duvall grinned again, walked to a table, and sat down. His ass was sore from riding, but it still felt good to sit on something besides a saddle or the hard ground. The table was set, and when he’d taken his hat off and run a rough hand through his sweat-matted hair, Duvall thumbed a spoon around the oilcloth while listening to pans clattering in the back.
The saw had grown silent for a while, but its rhythmic rasp resumed now in earnest, deepening as the blade bit deep into a log. Its din nearly covered the drone of the flies against the sack-curtained windows. A fat liver-colored cat sat on a chair not far from Duvall, cutting its keen attention between one of the flies and the newcomer, its eyes big and coppery in the sunlight from the window.
“Here, pussy-puss,” Duvall called to the cat.
He patted his thigh but turned when a door opened to his right and the brown-haired girl with vanilla skin entered holding a black coffeepot in one hand, a bluestone mug in the other. Striding toward his table, she said, “Sorry, but I just took a pie out of the oven, and—”
She stopped suddenly as her eyes picked Duvall out of the shadows surrounding his table several feet from the nearest window.
Duvall grinned his trademark Handsome Dave grin, his bristly cheeks dimpling, brown eyes flashing as they dropped to the low-cut, Spanish-style dress with short, puffy sleeves that revealed a good bit of the girl’s cleavage. “Hi, Margie.”
The girl’s chocolate eyes blinked astonishment, her jaw sagging. “Dave? Duvall?”
“Been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Why, Dave!” Margie’s face flushed as she stood fidgeting, sliding her eyes around self-consciously. “What on earth ... what on earth are you doing here?”
“Oh, it’s a long story, Margie,” Duvall said balefully, rubbing his hands over his tired, dusty face, then swiping them through his hair. “A long, awful story, and I really, really need some good food and rest. I remembered your old man bought this place from Childress. I was hopin’ I’d find you here.”
The girl stared at him with a hard-to-read expression, then gave a start as she regained her wits, and moved to Duvall’s table, setting the cup before him and filling it from the pot. “Yeah, Pa died last year. Now—”
Duvall gently took her wrist in his hand. “How long’s it been, Margie? Three years? Why, last time I saw you, you were just a girl.” Duvall let his smoky eyes run down the young woman’s curvaceous figure deliciously clad in the light cotton dress, and back up again, lingering in the valley between her breasts, which was lightly peppered with freckles. “Now, why, you’re a full-blown woman. Every inch.”
“Dave, I—”
“Come on, Margie, let me look at you,” Duvall urged, drawing the girl onto his knee. Stiffly, she obliged him, looking at him askance and quickly sliding her eyes away, appearing only semi reluctantly trapped.
“My, my, you are some kinda woman” Duvall said softly, seductively, as he ran his hand along her neck, lightly fingering the auburn curls hanging over her collar. “You know, since we last parted, I haven’t met a girl—a woman—who could do half of what you did for me, Margie. Even back then, when you were just a little girl still cypherin’ and readin’ out of little yellow books with pictures, you had a stranglehold on my soul. I felt your fire burn all the way down to my toes.”
His eyes closed, Duvall lightly nuzzled her neck, making light sniffing sounds and puffing her ringlets. His hands gently kneaded her supple thighs through the dress. She appeared drugged, her head sagging slightly back and to the side, her eyes heavy.
“Oh, nanny, Margie—what you did to me! I still dream about you, ‘most every night. And I wake up calling your name in my sleep....”
“Dave, please,” she said, halfheartedly attempting to stand. His hands on her thighs, he held her in place, and she swooned back against him as his tongue flicked out and traced a semicircular trail along her neck, just below her ear. His hands held taut to her thighs, his thumbs inching inside, making her squirm.
“Dave, please,” she said, breathless. She squirmed around and ran her hands through his thick, wavy hair, then pulled them back quickly, as though from a hot stove. “Dave, things are ... different now....”
Just then the door opened, laying a prism of afternoon light on the sawdusted floor. A broad, stoop-shouldered man in coveralls and floppy hat stood silhouetted in the doorway, his face cloaked in shadow. Another, shorter man in a cloth cap stood behind him, rising up on his tiptoes to see over the bigger man’s shoulder.
“What in the hell’s goin’ on?” The man’s voice grumbled up like oil bubbles from deep in the earth.
Margie yanked away from Duvall’s grip and stood, stumbling over Dave’s left boot, then sidestepping away, smiling with embarrassment and nervously smoothing her sweat-damp dress across her thighs.
“Jack!” she said, twittering. “Jack, Dave’s here.”
There was a silence as the two men stared at each other. Dave’s cheeks were still dimpled with his grin, though not as deeply as before. Jack took two slow steps into the room. The man behind him took his place in the doorway, peering in warily.
Jack said, “Dave Duvall?” His deep-set, heavy-browed eyes slitted.
“Hi, Jack. How you been? Long time no see. Didn’t expect to find you here.” Duvall chuckled. “I mean, I know you was seein’ Margie back in Julesburg, but I never knew...”
“We got married, Dave,” Jack said. He stood about ten feet before Duvall, his high-topped Wellingtons shoulder width apart. His jaw was a straight, grim line.
“Well, that amazes me,” Duvall said with another chuckle. “So you took over Margie’s old man’s sawmill. That it?”
“That’s it, Dave. I’m a changed man. I ain’t like I was when I rode with you an’ the boys. I work an honest job now, cuttin’ wood for the steamboats and servin’ vittles to folks travelin’ the post road yonder. I work hard, and so does Margie. Honest hard. Neither one of us are like we was before.” Jack turned to Margie, who was staring at her shoes. “Ain’t that right, Margie?”
She jerked her head up and glanced at Dave. Turning her gaze to Jack, she said hurriedly, “That’s right. I ain’t like I used to be.”
Duvall turned to her, said brashly, “You mean, you ain’t whorin’ anymore, Margie girl?”
Margie turned to him as though startled. “Dave, please ... I—”
“No, she ain’t whorin’ no more, Dave. And that’s the last time that word will be spoken in my house.”
“By who? You?”
“By anyone.”
Duvall shook his head with mock exasperation. “Boy, that sure is paintin’ with a broad brush, don’t you think, Jack?”
“And Margie is off limits.”
“There you go again—another damn rule. Next, I s’pose you’re gonna tell me when I can sip my coffee and shake the dew from my lily.”
Jack didn’t say anything. The man in the doorway swallowed so hard that everyone in the room could hear it.
Duvall sighed and canted his head to one side. “You don’t understand, Jack. Margie and I had something special. I mean real special—like I could feel it before I even met her.”
Jack’s upper lip curled. “Special, huh?” he snarled.
“Real special. Like I think Margie felt it before she met me. Like I think she’s been feelin’ it every day we been apart. Like I know she’s feelin’ it right now, while she’s standin’ there listenin’ to us talk.”
There was a long silence. Then Jack’s eyes narrowed and his lips formed a tight circle. “Why, you—”
“It’s so special, Jack, what Margie and I feel between us, that there ain’t nothin’ can keep us apart. Now, whether you like it or not, I’m going to take your wife into your bedroom and diddle the holy hell out of her.”
“You son of a bitch!”
Duvall gained his feet and swung his duster back from the two matched pistols on his hips. “And you and I both know there ain’t one goddamn thing you can do to stop me.” He took three steps toward Jack, who didn’t move a muscle. “’Cause you and I both know I can beat the holy hell out of you!”
Simultaneous with “hell,” he rammed his left boot hard into Jack’s groin. As Jack doubled over with a guttural cry, Duvall lifted his left knee, which met Jack’s face with an audible crack of Jack’s nose.
Jack bellowed like a pole axed bull and tumbled over backward, toppling two chairs and a table. Margie screamed, covering her mouth. Duvall squatted down beside Jack, lifted Jack’s head with a fistful of hair, and went to work on Jack’s face with his right fist.
With grim determination, he worked on the face for close to a minute. He punched with his clenched, gloved fist, knuckles turned out. He drew the arm back like a piston, then shot it straight forward, over and over, at regularly spaced intervals, opening tear after tear on the already-swollen face of the woodcutter.
When he was satisfied with his work, Duvall stood and stared down at the unconscious Jack Clawson, whose face gleamed with blood. Duvall brought his boot back, then shot it into Jack’s ribs. Duvall could tell from the snapping sound that he’d broken at least two.
His chest rising and falling, his eyes round and dark, he turned to the door. The other man was gone.
Duvall turned to Margie, who stood against the wall with her head in her hands, sobbing. “You see, Margie girl,” he said, “what we have between us is powerful!”