Lola Diamond sat beside the old miner and gazed out the stage window from under the bending brim of her straw hat. Suddenly aware of being watched, she turned to see the boy across from her staring at her with wide-eyed wonder. In spite of how tired and hopeless she felt, she smiled at the lad.
“Does someone really want to kill you?” the boy asked innocently.
“Daniel!” the mother snapped, grabbing the boy’s thigh in a claw like grip. “You mind your own business and stop staring at her. She’s bad!”
The miner looked up from the dime novel he’d been reading. “Now, Mrs. Phelps, just because the girl’s in trouble doesn’t mean she’s bad.”
“Oh, doesn’t it?” the woman said sharply. “I know who she is. She’s a showgirl.” The prudish, cow-eyed gaze switched to Lola, who found herself recoiling from it. “I saw her riding into Henry’s Crossing with those show wagons. Harlots, all of ’em! Besides, any woman caught up in the misdeeds of badmen is bound to be bad herself. Harumph!”
“Now. Mrs. Phelps—” the miner continued placatingly.
“That’s all right, mister ... really,” Lola said, offering the man an appreciative smile. “I’m used to it.”
“Used to getting innocent people killed, no doubt, too,” Mrs. Phelps mumbled under her breath as she gazed out her window.
Lola turned to the boy, who was staring at her again. For the boy’s benefit, she stuck her tongue out at the woman, and grinned at the lad. The boy mimicked her, covering his mouth to muffle a snicker. Lola winked at him, then returned her gaze out the window, at the grassy buttes and pine-studded ridges rolling under big, puffy clouds.
She rested against the side of the coach, her mood souring quickly as she considered her situation: nabbed by a bounty hunter determined to drag her back to Johnson City. She doubled she’d get that far. If Billy Brown got his way—and when did he not?—she’d be dead very soon indeed.
How had she gotten to this horrible place in her life? she wondered. She’d been taught by the best drama teachers in the East. She was beautiful, talented, and eager to spend her life doing what she loved: singing, dancing, and acting. She belonged on the best stages in the world reciting Shakespeare, singing the best ballads to the best crowds, performing uproarious vaudeville to guffawing hordes of the impeccably dressed elite. She’d sit at the tables of aristocrats, governors, generals, presidents, and kings.
Her lovers would be tall, dashing, and Italian.
When her private train car rolled into a city, she’d be greeted by marching bands, red carpets, and tall, enclosed carriages driven by fawning men in high hats and white gloves. In the grandest hotels, the world’s best champagne would await her on ice.
That was the life of an Amber Skye or a Lola Diamond. Not this traveling from one rat-bit mining dump to another in a creaking, smelly wagon led by a drunk lech like Big Dan Walthrop, only to get nabbed by some two-bit bounty hunter and hauled kicking and screaming back to a town that wanted her dead.
She couldn’t have cared less about Hoyt Farley. Who was he anyway—or had he been—but some small-time brothel pimp and drink-slinger? It didn’t matter to her that he was dead. She’d be damned if she’d endanger her life just to keep the man who’d killed him behind bars.
As soon as she could, she would run. Run where, she did not know. But the big, half-witted bounty hunter who’d latched onto her like a bramble burr would surely get her killed if she did not escape him soon. She was lucky to have lived as long as she had. Billy Brown’s hired gun had obviously found her by following the unwitting Prophet right to her doorstep.
Damn that bounty hunter!
But how did Bannon know the sheriff of Johnson City had hired Prophet ... unless the sheriff or someone close to him had leaked the information to Billy Brown?
She closed her eyes and shook her head to rid herself of the distressing, convoluted thoughts. All she knew for sure, and all she needed to know to stay alive, was that she was a target. The only way she’d stay alive was if she got far, far away from here ... back to San Francisco, maybe. Or maybe she’d go down to Texas. She’d heard there were scads of show troupes down there. In one of those, eventually, she’d roll into the fame that was rightfully hers.
Surely Billy Brown’s tentacles wouldn’t reach her in Texas ...
Another thought occurred to her that made her heart quicken and her eyes darken. All she had for money was six dollars and a few cents in her carpetbag—enough to buy her a couple of meals, but that was all. Certainly not enough for stage fair to San Francisco or Abilene.
As if out of nowhere, tears flooded her eyes. Feeling her heart and soul shrivel, feeling more alone and wayward than she’d felt since her mother died, she lowered her head to her hands and sobbed. It was as though she were a dry stick broken in a hard wind, all her hopes and dreams scattered like so much flotsam in a hurricane.
“Ah, miss, don’t ... don’t do that,” the old miner beseeched her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her hand over her mouth.
“It’s ... really ... Ever’thing’s gonna work out just fine.”
“Yes ... ”
“You’ll see.”
“I know,” she said, accepting the handkerchief he offered. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Looking up, she saw the boy’s mother staring at her derisively.
“Yeah,” the woman said. “Everything’s gonna work out just fine for her. Just fine in hell, that is!” With that, she turned her head sharply back to the window.
“Oh, Mrs. Phelps!” the old miner chastised.
The woman acted as if she hadn’t heard the man. She continued gazing primly out the window, her gaudy coiffure secured beneath her cheap, feathered hat. It was the hard set of the woman’s persnickety double chin, the pug, upturned nose, and dull eyes that saved Miss Lola Diamond from total defeat. Watching the woman in all her disdain—a drummer’s wife, probably, or a store clerk’s— filled Lola with a disdain of her own. The anger seethed up from her toes to her legs to her stomach and chest, until she was suddenly, inexplicably steeled by it.
A woman like Mrs. Phelps would, in a few years, be salivating over newspaper accounts of the bewitching actress known as Lola Diamond.
With that satisfying thought, Lola gave her nose another blow, dabbed at her cheeks, and returned the handkerchief to the old miner with a grateful smile. “Yes, I know it will, sir. Thank you.” Turning to the woman staring out the window, she lifted her chin high and said again, cheerfully, “Thank you very much. It will indeed.”
She inhaled deeply and, relaxing her shoulders, gave the boy a wink. She returned her gaze to the countryside rolling past the window, and considered her options. Admittedly, there were few. But when she found one— when she found a way to escape the unsavory Lou Prophet—she’d grab it like a rope at the bottom of a well.
“Yes,” she told herself, a wistful light entering her eyes. “Everything is going to be just fine.”
That wasn’t what Owen McCreedy, sheriff of Johnson City, was thinking at the moment.
He stood looking out the window of his small sheriff’s office and jail, the draw ring of the shade hanging just above his black felt Stetson. He watched Hart Baldridge heading this way, a black-suited figure catching the golden rays of the dying sun on his shoulder. Paper fluttered in the lawyer’s right hand as he swerved to avoid a puddle left by the rainstorm that had roared through town a few hours ago. Puffing proudly on a stogie, Baldridge approached the jailhouse and bulled his way through the door.
“Knock-knock,” he said with an impudent smile.
“Why don’t you try it for real sometime?” McCreedy said.
The fat end of Baldridge’s cigar reddened as he drew on it, blowing smoke out the right side of his mouth. He was a tall, heavyset, hog-jowled man with black mutton-chops and wire-rimmed spectacles that hung perpetually down his nose. A barber tended him daily, and he always smelled sweetly of lavender and expensive tobacco.
“Why bother knocking? You’ve been watching me come for the last two blocks.”
“’Cause it’s the polite thing to do,” the sheriff said tensely, showing his teeth.
He’d been as wired up as an Indian wagon for the past week, his nerves shot from worry and lack of sleep. Worry over the girl ... wondering if Prophet would get here alive ... worry over his deputy, who’d seen Brown and two of his thugs leave Farley’s saloon the night Farley was killed, chasing the girl down an alley ... and worry over himself.
McCreedy had always fancied himself a brave man— in his prime, he’d fought Indians on the cattle trails up from Texas—but he couldn’t sleep for thinking Billy Brown’s hired guns were going to storm in and fill him with lead. He was also worried they’d find his wife, whom he’d secreted away at a friend’s farm south of town when all the trouble had started. If they got their hands on Alice, there was no telling what those savages might do.
Reading the sheriff’s mind with a mocking, self-satisfied grin on his fat face, Hart Baldridge said, “You know, you’d be doing yourself a big favor if you just forgot about this thing. Who was Hoyt Farley, anyway, but a simpleminded barman? You were no friend of his, he of yours.”
“No, but he is the man whose murder I’m finally gonna use to put away Billy Brown for good,” McCreedy said, getting up close to Baldridge’s face in spite of the sickly sweet stench of the man. “He’s the man whose murder I’m gonna hang your client with ... once and for goddamn all!”
“Easy, easy, Sheriff,” the lawyer said, holding up his small, fat hands, palms out, and taking two steps back. “You’re getting very close to assault. You wouldn’t want that additional complication, now, would you?”
“To tell you the truth, I’d like nothing better,” McCreedy growled.
He hated the lawyer almost as much as he hated Billy Brown, and not only because Baldridge was representing the cold-blooded killer and local crime boss who had plagued McCreedy since the very day the sheriff had taken office two and a half years ago. McCreedy hated Baldridge because Baldridge thought he was as much above the law as Billy Brown did. But at the same time, the attorney never hesitated to use the statutes to his best advantage, to hide himself and Brown behind them whenever McCreedy got too close.
“Now, now,” Baldridge admonished. “Temper, temper.” He thrust the stogie into his mouth and gave several satisfied puffs, savoring McCreedy’s discomfort. He looked around. “Say, your deputy get back yet ... from his hunting trip?” His eyes cooled as a smirk toyed with his lips.
“Not yet,” McCreedy snarled.
He’d sent his deputy, Perry Moon, into the mountains, to get him out of town. He was afraid that Billy Brown’s men would kill the young deputy to keep him from testifying against him, about what he saw the night Farley was killed: Billy Brown and his thugs running out the back of Farley’s Saloon, chasing a sobbing girl down the alley.
Apparently, the girl had witnessed the killing. That’s why she was indispensable to the case against Brown. The deputy’s testimony would be circumstantial. Perry had seen Brown and his men leaving the saloon right after Farley was killed, but he hadn’t seen the actual killing. The girl had. Only her testimony could convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
Fortunately, she’d given Brown the slip. Unfortunately, she’d given McCreedy the slip, as well. He’d figured out who she was, however, when the master of a traveling theatrical troupe reported one of his girls missing—a Miss Amber Skye, the name the girl had been going by in Johnson City—the next day. McCreedy had cabled every sheriff in the territory to keep an eye out for her, not really expecting to find her.
He’d already resigned himself to watching Billy Brown walk away scot-free from another murder, when he got a cable from the sheriff at Millerville, reporting that he’d seen the girl McCreedy was looking for, and that she, now known as Lola Diamond, was en route with her troupe to Henry’s Crossing. Remembering that his old cowpoke buddy turned bounty hunter, Lou Prophet, had lit out for those parts, he’d sent letters to him and to the sheriff at Henry’s Crossing. Prophet may have been a carousing hillbilly at heart, but he was as good a man-tracker as you’d find in the West, and he wouldn’t draw as much attention as a lawman would. McCreedy just hoped he’d prove effective at nabbing a female witness who, for very good reason, was afraid for her life.
It was only after McCreedy had located the girl that he’d arrested Brown. He thought Brown might run if he knew McCreedy had a witness to the murder. He’d also thought that by locking Brown up, he might be able to keep Brown from sending someone to kill the girl. But he’d realized the folly in such a strategy the first time
Brown’s lawyer visited Billy in jail. Obviously, Hart Baldridge was relaying messages to Brown’s men—messages no doubt including the one to make sure Lola Diamond did not reach Johnson City alive.
McCreedy knew now that by arresting Billy Brown before he had the girl under wraps, he’d telegraphed his knowledge of the girl’s whereabouts and had inadvertently endangered not only his case, but the girl’s life. He’d realized this only after he’d sent Prophet the letter. For days now he’d been haranguing himself for his error, and hoping against hope that Prophet and the girl made it here alive. If they didn’t, it would be McCreedy’s fault.
“The hunting must be good in the mountains, eh. Sheriff?” Baldridge asked jovially, referring to McCreedy’s deputy’s prolonged vacation.
“Must be.”
“Any luck finding the girl?”
“None whatsoever, Baldy,” McCreedy lied. He knew that Baldridge and Brown knew he’d located the girl. He could see it in the smug expression on the attorney’s face. What McCreedy hoped, however, was that they had not yet learned where he’d found her. Certainly they didn’t know that Prophet was the man—of all people— McCreedy had sent to retrieve her. The only people who knew about that were McCreedy, the sheriff in Millerville. Sheriff Fitzsimmons of Henry’s Crossing, the girl, and Prophet himself.
“Uh ... that’s Baldridge.”
“Sorry.”
“Yes, I am, too ... about the girl, I mean.”
McCreedy shrugged, not liking the self-satisfied gaze in the attorney’s eyes. Could he and Brown have located her, as well? McCreedy chastised himself once more for not warning Prophet about possible trouble. “Well, I’m still hopin’ she’ll turn up somewhere,” he said, hiding his torment and feigning resign as he looked askance at the attorney’s beady black eyes.
“Yes, well, maybe so,” Baldridge said, clearing his throat. “Now then. Sheriff, I’m here to see my client.”
“It’s gettin’ late—I’m about to close,” McCreedy growled, turning to the stove for a cup of coffee.
“I’m sorry, Sheriff, but it’s urgent.”
“Diddle yourself.”
Baldridge sighed. “Sheriff, must we go through this again? You know all I have to do is go to Judge Frye. It’ll take some time, sure, but time you could otherwise be spending eating a big steak and a plate of beans ... uh ... if you still have an appetite, that is....”
McCreedy poured coffee into a stone mug and smiled in spite of himself. “You know, Hart—you don’t mind if I call you Hart, do you?—I’m really gonna love seeing you hang next to Billy. You and Billy together ... one last time.”
Baldridge sighed again and rolled his eyes. He removed the cigar from his mouth and tapped ashes on the floor. “What’s it going to be, McCreedy? Do I get to see my client now or thirty minutes from now—with an order from Judge Frye?”
“Oh, go ahead ... knock yourself out,” McCreedy said resignedly, sipping from the cup. “You know where the keys are.”
“Oh, for the love of—!” Baldridge marched over to McCreedy’s desk, found the key ring, and opened the door to the cell block.
As he jerked the door open, McCreedy said, “Hold it, Baldy. You know the drill.” He put down his coffee cup and patted down the attorney, who stood with his arms held theatrically out from his sides, head inclined, eyes rolled to the ceiling.
“All right—you’re clean,” McCreedy said. “But remember to put those keys back where you found them!” Puffing with exasperation. Baldridge bolted through the door and slammed it behind him. Hearing his footsteps echoing down the cell block, McCreedy turned toward the door. The disdainful grin faded from his lips without a trace, his eyes betraying his anxiety.
He’d waited to get Billy Brown behind bars for a long time. But now that he had, he knew it could very well be the end of not only him, Owen McCreedy, but his buddy Lou Prophet and the girl, as well.