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Dark had fallen by the time Branch rode into Salt Lake City. He had spent a good part of the day making a side trip to Coalville, where he had left Black Jack Mendoza in the care of Constable Moore's deputy. Jenna would carve him into tiny pieces for removing Mendoza from her realm of control without discussing it with her first. But Branch felt better knowing the man was behind bars and under constant guard. If she did as told and stayed in bed until he returned, she would never know.
The long ride gave Branch plenty of opportunity to consider all Mendoza had told him of his whereabouts the past month. Branch still did not want to believe the man. Gamblers were born liars, weren't they? And the fact that the only person who could verify Mendoza's story was a whore didn't seem much help. Especially if the whore had special feelings for Mendoza. That was something he'd be better able to judge after his visit to Aunt Fanny's Boarding House for Young Ladies.
What vexed Branch most was that, under different circumstances, he'd probably enjoy Mendoza's company. The two men were as similar as sugar and vinegar—with Branch being the vinegar, he supposed, with a half-amused snort.
In many ways, Mendoza was still a little boy, seeing the world as his own personal playground. He could laugh off the murder charges facing him because he found it inconceivable that anything bad could happen to him. Being a gambler, he believed in his goddess of Fortuna the way Branch had been taught to put his faith in the Virgin Mary. Where life had furrowed Branch's brow with worry and doubt, Mendoza's swarthy good looks bore only laugh lines. The Spaniard took everything good in life for granted and shrugged off the bad like an ill-fitting cape. Perhaps it was those very differences that created the rapport Branch had sensed between them as he had sat in the smelly old barn talking with the man.
Did Jenna feel the same rapport with Mendoza? Her mien was as sober as Branch's and, like him, she was readier to believe the worse than the best. Of men, anyway.
He better understood her feelings about men now after learning what her life had been like once her father abandoned her. But why was she so afraid to love? Lord knew, Branch had his own reasons for rejecting the idea of love and marriage. But he had a hunch there was more to Jenna's story than she'd told him so far.
She was nothing like his wife. Lilibet hadn't feared passion; she'd simply seen it as a means to an end. Branch had seen passion aplenty in Jenna. He'd smelled desire and yearning on her hot flesh, felt it in the way she trembled under his touch.
No, something had happened to make Jenna afraid to let herself love a man. Something, he was sure, that had to do with her childhood. When he got back to Park City, he would find out. Then he would discover a way to eliminate that fear and teach her the joy of giving herself to a man, body, and soul.
The thought had barely entered his mind before he cast it out again. How could he ask Jenna to give him her heart when he wasn't ready to give his? His life held no room for a woman. He desired Jenna, but that was all there was to it. Lust, pure and simple. Nothing more. It had simply been too long since he'd been with a woman—one more thing he could take care of at Aunt Fanny's Boarding House for Young Ladies.
Music and laughter spilled into the rutted road from the open doorways of gaming houses and saloons as Branch rode slowly up First South Street. Women with painted cheeks—wearing dresses of vermilion satin or yellow-green silk—clung to the arms of men with over-bright eyes and unsteady feet, as they made for the bordellos on Regent Street. Branch caught the faint scent of cheap perfume and wondered if any of the women had dark skin, high cheekbones, and a fondness for Spanish gamblers.
JENNA STARED DISBELIEVINGLY into the empty stall at Watts and Brizzie's Livery where Miguel Mendoza was supposed to be imprisoned. A chain attached to the corner post lay coiled in the straw like a snake. The smell of sweaty horseflesh and urine-soaked straw clung to the air. Only the manacles—streaked with dried blood—a cracked chamber pot, and a rumpled blanket, gave evidence to the recent occupation of the cubicle by a human.
She backed away, whirled, and raced from stall to stall. All empty—except for horses and a yellow-and-black mottled barn cat.
With slow, dragging steps, she returned to the first barren rectangle. "Blast you, McCauley. What have you done with him?"
"Done with what?"
Jenna spun about. "Oh. Rembrandt. Where's that rat you're partnered up with taken my prisoner?"
The old man glanced into the empty stall, then back at the young woman. His bushy white brows rose at the sight of her fierce scowl, and he stifled a chuckle. She was too young, too lovely, to be so ferocious. "Considering the level of malice I detect in your voice, I'm not certain I should divulge that information. What are you going to do to 'the rat' when you catch up with him?"
Jenna was glaring at the vacant bed of straw and its discarded blanket, her mind racing as she attempted to answer her own question. "I may brew him up a special pot of coffee. Or turn his boots into sieves.”
"Sieves? And special coffee? Doesn't sound too vengeful to me."
"You've never had my coffee. Where did he take Mendoza?"
"Where the man would be well guarded and more secure than he could be here, what with Branch being gone. Shouldn't you be in bed trying to regain your health rather than skulking about an old livery stable?"
"I have more important things to do than lie around in bed. It's Branch who needs to worry about his health. . . once I get hold of him."
Her eyes darkened to sapphire and her voice contained an edge that could pierce rawhide. Still, the old man found it difficult to take her outrage seriously. He stuffed his worn hands into his pockets and stared pointedly at the papers tucked under her arm. "Such as?"
Jenna handed him the stack of posters. "Such as posting these around town, so I can find my father."
He sobered as he read the paper. "I see."
"Where is Mendoza, Rembrandt?"
He sighed, knowing what would happen if he gave her what she wanted. "Branch took him to the Coalville jail so he wouldn't have to worry about the man while he was in Salt Lake City."
"I thought Constable Moore was off at some trial with Judge Street.
"The deputy is there. He's quite capable of guarding the man."
Jenna's brows drew together. "That may be, but Mendoza is my prisoner. I'm the one who should be seeing to him. I'll get one of the children to post the reward notices for me. I have to go to Coalville."
He knew better than to try stopping her. But when she held out her hand for the posters, he refused to relinquish them. "I'll take care of these for you."
"Thank you, Rembrandt." She put her hand on his sleeve and gave him a smile. "I wish your partner were as nice as you."
The old miner laid his callused hand over hers. "He is, in his own way. Believe me, child, he only did what he thought best."
"Perhaps, but does he have to be so blasted high-handed about it?" For the first time, she noticed the weary sag to his shoulders and his bloodshot eyes. "Do you feel okay?"
"Just a headache. I'll be fine."
Rembrandt followed her to the big double doors of the livery and watched her walk briskly up the street toward the hotel, dressed once again in the baggy trousers and boy's shirt she seemed to prefer. A revolver in a holster rode her hip. He shook his head and immediately regretted the action.
"WELL, WELL, WELL. WHAT do we have here?"
At the sound of the voice, Miguel Mendoza rose from the moldy cot to face the man who had indirectly turned his life around fifteen years ago. "Buenas noches, Sleed. You are here in official capacity?"
The marshal grinned as he strolled arrogantly toward the tiny cell, cracking the knuckles of his good hand. "I bet you're real glad to see me, aren't you, Mendoza?"
Mendoza gave the lawman the sleepy Mexican look he reserved for those moments when he wished to hide his feelings.
"Si, always Miguel is happy to see a friend."
"Yeah?" Hendricks slid the jail's big metal key ring along the bars. The sound echoed ominously inside the thick rock walls. "You'll be overjoyed when I get you out of here then, won't you?" Miguel faked a lazy grin and nodded.
Hendricks laughed. He inserted the key and gave it a twist. The lock squealed, then clicked. He swung the heavy door open and jerked his head toward the doorway that led into the constable's cluttered office. Miguel shuffled into the room as gracefully as the short chain on his iron ankle bracelets allowed.
When they entered, the constable's deputy handed Miguel his walking cane. Then he dipped a pen into an inkwell and held it out to the marshal. "Jest sign here, Marshal Hendricks, and he's all yours."
The marshal bent over the release form and carefully printed his name. "Virg, did you get Mendoza's horse?"
Across the room, Virgil Godbe pulled his finger from his nose and wiped it on his stained trousers. "It's out front, Sleed."
"Get him mounted up then."
Taking the prisoner by the arm, Virgil escorted him to his horse outside. Leering up at Miguel, he unlocked the leg shackles. "Your ass is as good as dead. You know that, don't you?"
Mendoza heaved himself into the saddle and laid his cane across his lap. As the deputy-marshal snapped the shackles back into place beneath Fortuna's belly, Miguel said, "Si, it occurred to me."
A ROTUND WOMAN, WEARING a white ruffled apron over somber black with a matching frill on her frizzed head, answered Branch McCauley's knock at the boardinghouse.
"I'm looking for a woman called Dove," he said in reply to her unvoiced question.
"What do you want with her?" The maid scowled as she looked his muscular body up and down, noting the Peacemaker on his hip. She was nearly as tall as he, and Branch did not doubt her ability to bar entrance to any man who didn't suit her fancy. "Tell her Miguel sent me."
"Humph. Barely noon, girls ain't up yet," she muttered, stepping aside to let him in. "How am I s'posed to get my cleaning done when men start cluttering up the parlor 'fore the sun's even down?"
Branch followed her into a room so crowded with furniture and bric-à-brac, he wondered how more than two people managed to maneuver themselves without breaking something. Fringed velvet swags in deep magenta hung from window casings and doorways. Alabaster statues of nude females adorned pedestals in every corner, surrounded by potted ferns, palm trees, and urns bearing magenta-dyed plumes. Ornate chairs and sofas upholstered in green and rose brocade lined the walls. A piano draped with a deeply fringed scarf and littered with framed photographs and a collection of empty crystal perfume bottles, dominated the room.
Branch stood on a gigantic polar bear rug and breathed in the scent of herbs, and dried flowers thrust into draperies, light fixtures, vases, and along the tops of massive sideboards where gleaming glassware and cut-glass whiskey decanters awaited the night's business.
"Sit yourself down," the maid told him. "I'll see if Miss Dove's up to entertaining at this ungodly hour."
He shoved aside a conglomeration of pillows, all ruffled or ruched or fringed and embroidered with entwined hearts and roses, and sat down. Above the furniture and shrubbery, framed pictures of dainty, half-clad women hung on wires from the molded plaster cornice. The effect of the decor, he concluded, was as feminine as it could get; something a female-starved man might enjoy, for one evening, at least.
"You are a friend of Miguel's?"
Branch surged to his feet at the sight of a young woman the color of dark honey standing in the doorway. Her sheer, cream-colored dressing gown showed the copper tips of her breasts and a darker triangle at the apex of her slender thighs. Remembering the housekeeper's comment about the girls still being in bed, he realized this one evidently slept naked. The thought went straight to his loins.
Miguel's description of the half-Ute whore matched the girl perfectly, right down to the precise English learned as a child from a Mormon family. Still, holding his hat in front of his groin, McCauley asked, "You're Dove?"
Black hair as straight and sleek as a waterfall swayed gracefully about her hips as she made her way to the claw-footed piano stool. He caught a whiff of violets as she sat down. "It is what they call me. You did not answer my question. How do you know Miguel?"
Branch remained standing, knowing it would be too uncomfortable to sit. "He's in some trouble, ma'am—"
He held up his hand when she blanched and stood up. "He's safe enough where he is. But he sent me to you because he thinks you can help."
She glanced toward the hall. "Say no more here."
He followed her up a flight of stairs and past several closed doors along the second-floor hallway, encountering no one. Finally, she stopped near the front of the house.
An image of Jenna flashed through his mind as he stepped into her room and spied the prostitute's unmade bed. Quickly, he shuffled the vision aside.
JENNA LIFTED HER HEAD, letting the water she had scooped up run through her fingers as she strained to make out the noise coming from upriver. Voices. Men's voices. If it were Branch McCauley, he'd better have Mendoza with him, or she'd fill him so full of arrows he'd look like a porcupine.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and waved away mosquitoes as she rose to her feet. The voices stayed at the same decibel which meant the men weren’t moving. Leaving her sorrel ground-tied, she crept through the willows and cottonwood trees that crowded the banks of the Weber River until she could hear the voices clearly.
The men—three of them—were mounted in a clearing on the far side of a tight bend in the river. From where Jenna crouched, she had a clear view of them through the shrubbery and recognized them instantly. The U.S. Marshal and his deputy; one short and squat, the other tall and reed-thin. The third man was Black Jack Mendoza.
Their words, carried by the wind across the broad expanse of river, were as clear as the swirling water.
"How could you think I'd take in an old campanero like you, Miguel?" she heard the marshal say.
"It would not be so much of a problem, I think."
"How can you say that?"
Mendoza chuckled. "It is called honestidad, my friend. . . honesty. If you are truly willing to let me go, there must be something in it for you, no?"
Now Hendricks laughed. "You're smarter than you used to be. Let's just say, for you to be hung would interfere in some, uh. . . business ventures of mine."
"Business, eh?"
All three chuckled. A bit nervously, Jenna thought. "Such as robbing trains?" Mendoza asked.
"Mebbe." Hendricks gestured to his deputy. "Get them bracelets off him, Virg."
Jenna's eyes narrowed as Virgil Godbe dismounted and limped over to unlock the handcuffs. Miguel had told the truth about not robbing the trains. What of the murders? Had the marshal framed the gambler for them, too?
Miguel rubbed the chafed skin of his freed wrists. He took the reins the deputy handed him and nodded to Hendricks. "I am grateful, mi amigo.''
"Sure. We old campaneros have to look out for each other, right?"
Miguel's smile displayed sadness and resignation. "Again, I thank you," he said. "It is doubtful, I think, that we will see each other again."
"Yeah. Real doubtful. So long, Miguel."
Abruptly, Mendoza wheeled his horse around. He smacked the horse's rump with his cane. Like a bullet, the buckskin exploded toward the trees. Jenna kept her eyes on the two lawmen, her .44 Starr cocked and ready. She didn't trust Hendricks, and Mendoza would be no use to her dead.
Hendricks drew his weapon and aimed at Mendoza's fleeing back. The same instant the marshal fired, Jenna squeezed the Starr's trigger. The revolver bucked in her hand as twin explosions rent the air.
Hendricks' horse screamed and went down. Virgil threw himself to the ground and looked about frantically. Jenna cursed. She hated knowing she'd killed a horse.
The marshal rolled free of the dead horse and fired three shots in Jenna's direction. As he raced crab-like for cover, she took careful aim and fired again. He yelped as his gun flew from his hand. An instant later, he vanished from view.
"Other side of the river bend, Virg," she heard him yell. "I'll keep the bastard busy; you cut around there and get him. Hurry."
Jenna couldn't see the deputy marshal or Mendoza. She returned Hendricks' fire, but his rapid shooting forced her to keep her head close to the ground, and her shots went wild. The strong scent of fertile soil mixed with the acrid odor of burnt gunpowder to sting her nostrils. Her ears rang from the blast of her gun and the whine of bullets over her head.
When silence fell at last, she raised her head and peered across the glistening expanse of water. The quiet seemed loud after the racket of gunfire. The marshal must be reloading. She scrambled through the brush toward her horse, intent on escape.
Gent waited where she had left him despite the shooting. He nickered softly and nudged her shoulder as she picked up the reins and prepared to mount.
Jenna stuck her foot in the stirrup and prepared to mount. A hand clamped onto her arm and swung her around. Knocked off balance, she fell to the grass. A body landed on top of her, and she found herself staring into the leering face of Virgil Godbe.
"Hello, girlie." Blackened teeth showed between thin lips webbed with strings of saliva as the hawk-nosed man grinned down at her. "What say we have us some fun 'fore I have to take you back to Sleed, huh?"
She winced as he ground himself against her, his hipbones gouging her soft belly, his bony knees scraping her shins.
"Damn if you don't feel good," he breathed in her face. "All soft and female-like. Smell good, too. Honeysuckle. My mama smelled of honeysuckle. You been with a man before? Hope not. Ain't never had me no virgin before."
A grunt of pain escaped her as he latched onto a breast and squeezed.
"Don't you fret none, girlie. Virg'll take good care of you, show you a real good time. Yes, siree."
His mouth came down on hers with sticky precision though she attempted to turn her face aside. His teeth scoured her tender lips until she felt the skin tear and tasted the metallic flavor of blood. His knobby hands were everywhere, like sticks probing and prodding at her flesh, and the stench of his breath brought up her gorge.
When he levered himself up to tear at her shirt, she managed a scream before his fist slammed into her jaw.
"Now, don't be doing that, girlie. You'll bring old Sleed over here on a dead run, and he'll want first go at ya. Virg don't like sharing, hear?"
Jenna struggled to remain conscious. Through the darkness that threatened to descend on her and the roar in her ears, she heard only the mumble of his voice. She felt his hands at her shirt again and a rush of cool air as he bared her breasts. The nip of sharp teeth on a nipple and the searing pain that accompanied it brought her around enough to fight him.
She clawed at his face and bucked wildly to throw him off, but didn’t seem to make any progress until the man gave a sudden jerk. He gasped. His eyes widened in pain and disbelief, then went blank, and he fell heavily across her body.
Jenna knew he was dead. She'd heard the death rattle deep in his throat before he went limp. A dead man lay on top of her, one claw-like hand still on her breast. Horrified, she shoved at the weight pinning her to the ground. Her mouth opened to scream. Then a dark face appeared above Virgil's shoulder.