Desperate Hearts Read online

  Desperate Hearts

  by

  Alexis Harrington

  Copyright © Alexis Harrington, 1996 All rights reserved

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Smashwords Edition

  For being my tireless cheering section

  thanks to Lisa Jackson and Margaret Vajdos.

  For the inspiration,

  thanks to Don Henley and Glenn Frey

  PROLOGUE

  Blakely, Oregon

  September, 1895

  “Apparently Mrs. Bailey wasn’t interested in your offer to, shall we say, comfort her in her bereavement? How ungrateful of her.” Luke Jory leaned back in his swivel chair, his long-fingered hands steepled in front of his chest as he considered the man standing before him. “She must be more discerning than I gave her credit for.”

  Tom Hardesty stood on the other side of the desk in the rancher’s office. He shifted from one foot to the other, working hard to formulate an answer. He resisted the impulse to cover his face where a three-inch-long knife cut was finally beginning to heal. Several stitches had been required to close the wound that ran from his temple nearly to his jaw. An ugly scar was bound to be the result.

  “Well, Hardesty, what’s your explanation?”

  He felt as though he were a boy being called to task by the schoolmaster. Beneath his feet lay a thick blue carpet. Expensive furniture filled the room. Jory liked his comforts, and he had a cultured tone and a high-falutin’ way of talking. Even when he didn’t shout, that attitude, combined with his dark, piercing eyes, could make a man feel like a skewered pig turning on a spit. When he did raise his voice, and that was often enough, the sound made Hardesty think of the gates of hell opening. But it didn’t do to show him fear. No sir. Jory could home in on fear like a hungry wolf smelled blood.

  “The woman left at least a month ago.” It galled Hardesty to admit it. “Word is that she’s run off to find Jace Rankin.”

  Jory sat up straight again, tight lines forming on either side of his mouth. He brought his fist down on the desktop. “Yes, I know that! Damn it, Hardesty, we have a nice operation going here in the region, and it’s finally running smoothly. If you’ve jeopardized it because you think more often with your lust than your brain, I will personally see that you pay. The last thing I need or want is someone like Rankin poking around here. You told me the woman wouldn’t be a problem. Do you know which way she went?”

  Hardesty felt his neck grow hot. “Rankin’s in Silver City. I got a wire from a couple of our men who spotted him there. If we’ve got him, she shouldn’t be far behind. I’ll teach her not to run off again.”

  “I want Rankin stopped—I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you do with the woman.” Jory stared pointedly at the scar on Hardesty’s face. “Or what she does to you. That’s your business, and I don’t want it interfering with mine. Report back to me when you know something worthwhile. I expect that to be soon.” He turned the swivel chair away from Hardesty and looked out the window, effectively dismissing him.

  Tom Hardesty left Luke Jory’s office, burning with anger and humiliation. That Bailey bitch had been making a fool out of him for years, but nothing—not even her knife blade ripping down his face—could douse the fire she lit in his blood. That long hair and creamy skin . . . the very thought of her stirred him up until he couldn’t think straight.

  Furious that the Bailey woman had slipped away from him, he mounted his horse and wheeled it around. But, he recalled, the two men in Silver City had instructions to bring her back. And when she returned . . .

  He had mastered her once, and he would do it again. This time, she wouldn’t forget who was in charge.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Silver City, Idaho

  September, 1895

  “Better get the sheriff, Noah,” Chester Sparks called to a youngster on the other side of the street. “A mean-looking cuss has someone cornered in my saloon and he don’t seem to be interested in a card game.”

  The boy took off running, and Chester and his customers lingered on the sidewalk, curious and popeyed, peeking gingerly over the swinging doors that opened into the barroom of the Magnolia Saloon. Just moments earlier they’d stampeded out through those doors, beers and cards abandoned, when a man Chester originally mistook for a youth walked in and leveled his rifle on a drifter holding a poker hand.

  All they could see was the back of the man’s head and most of that was hidden by his wide-brimmed hat and the turned-up collar of his duster. Chester had a bad feeling about this. As rowdy and wild as this town had been over the years, and with all the fights and shootings that had occurred, nobody had ever been killed in his place.

  That might be about to change.

  * * *

  In the Magnolia Saloon, Jace Rankin stared down at the saddle tramp sitting at a table by the stove. The man’s silver hatband gleamed like tiny mirrors in the shaft of afternoon sun that cut through the side window. A pile of money was heaped in front of him and he held a fan of cards in one hand. The other hand, Rankin figured, rested on the grip of his gun, hidden by the terrified saloon girl who sat immobilized on his knee. She wore only a camisole and drawers, and a flimsy shawl. Her upturned face was ghastly pale under her powder and rouge. Rankin pressed his mouth into a tight line as he struggled with cold fury.

  “Get moving, honey,” Rankin instructed the girl. She leapt to her feet and hurried toward the doors, her backless shoes flapping.

  Rankin held his attention on the gambler, appraising his winnings. “Let’s see if your luck will hold, Clark. You put both hands on the table where I can see them and maybe I won’t have to shoot you.”

  Offering him an arrogant smirk, Sawyer Clark dropped the cards while keeping his eyes fixed on the barrel of the Henry rifle aimed at his forehead. Slowly, he rested his hands on the scratched tabletop.

  “I see you know my name," Clark said, “but who are you, boy?”

  Rankin felt his blood rise at the insult, although he’d heard variations of it often enough. Because of his size and youthful face, people often supposed him to be a lot younger than his thirty years. But he had a certain reputation, justly earned, that made some people nervous and balanced the scales. He paused a beat before answering the man’s question.

  “Jace Rankin."

  For the first time, Clark let his attention stray from the rifle to the face of the man holding it.

  Rankin saw the man’s throat work as he swallowed, and he felt an instant of satisfaction as Clark’s bravado slipped away from him like a wet bar of soap.

  “So? What do you want? I don’t have a price on my head.” Clark grinned suddenly. “Before the law figures out I was involved, I’m gone.”

  “Not this time. I’ll kill you first.”

  The grin faded. “What’s your complaint, Rankin? You got nothing on me.”

  “I see you like the ladies,” he replied, referring to the saloon girl who had scampered away.

  “What of it?”

  “Think back a few years. Remember a pretty young blonde in Salem, a blacksmith’s wife? Celia McGuire?”

  Clark shrugged negligently. “Can’t say as I do. I’ve known a lot of women in a lot of towns. I never bothered with piddling details like whether they were married.” A chuckle rolled out of him. “Did her husband hire you to find me?”

&
nbsp; Rankin drew a slow breath, working to keep his finger easy on the trigger. “This isn’t about some barroom scrape, Clark, or a jilted husband. She’s the woman you bragged about killing while you sat in that poker game a couple of months ago in Burns. You strangled her for laughing at you, you said. Remember now?”

  Rankin gently touched the rifle’s cool muzzle to a spot just above the bridge of Clark’s nose. “Celia McGuire was my sister.”

  Comprehension flooded Clark’s expression and sweat popped out on his forehead. “You can’t prove nothing.”

  Rankin smiled. “Oh, but I can. It doesn’t matter anyway. I could shoot you right now and save everyone a lot of time and trouble. This old Henry wouldn’t leave much of your head,” he said, leaning into the weapon. “And I could walk away from your bleeding carcass without a twinge. But we’re going to do this right. The sheriff will be along any minute and I’ve got witnesses willing to testify, Clark. Riled witnesses. You shouldn’t cheat at cards—it can come back on you.”

  The remnants of Clark’s smug expression contorted into a malevolent glower. “I ain’t going to jail over some lousy hay roll, not for a minute. She had it coming—she sure as hell don’t laugh at anyone now." In the blink of an eye the drifter overturned the table and reached for the revolver strapped to his right hip.

  Rankin jumped back, avoiding the shower of cards and beer. Time and events slowed to a crawl and became slightly distorted. Even Clark’s actions seemed sluggish, as though he were moving through winter-cold molasses, giving Rankin plenty of time to take aim and pull the Henry’s trigger—

  * * *

  “Leave the bottle.”

  “Yessir, Mr. Rankin.” The skinny, nervous bartender who had introduced himself as Chester Sparks polished a tumbler on his apron. He set it next to the whiskey bottle he had delivered to the back table, than hovered solicitously. Is there anything else you want?”

  Rankin eyed the nosy group that loitered in a semi-circle behind Sparks. They maintained a safe distance, but they were gawking just the same.

  “Yeah—to be left alone.” With slow, deliberate movements, he laid the Henry across the table. The rifle seemed especially heavy.

  The action had the desired effect. Chester looked at the long, polished barrel and flinched. He took two good paces backward. After all, the bartender had seen him kill a man with that weapon just an hour earlier, and right here in his own saloon. Even the old man playing the piano froze, choking off the peppy melody of “Camptown Races” in mid “do-dah.”

  Chester turned and herded off the spectators. “You boys heard Mr. Rankin. Let him be now. We’ve had enough excitement around here today.”

  The men shuffled to the bar with backward glances, murmuring among themselves. Rankin stared them down in order to hurry their progress. A couple of drunks at a corner table stared at him as if he were the most interesting thing on the face of the earth. Their curiosity felt different from that of the others, but no less annoying. He watched them until they looked away, then he lowered his gaze to the bottle in front of him and breathed a deep sigh.

  Nearly seven years after his sister’s murder, Jace Rankin had finally found the man who had killed her. The sheriff, after talking to him and the other witnesses of today’s events, was satisfied, and the matter was considered closed. Now Sawyer Clark lay stretched out in the undertaker’s back room with a bullet in his chest.

  For a long time Rankin had believed that Celia’s husband, Travis McGuire, had strangled her. McGuire had even served five years of a life sentence for the crime. That was what being in love got a man. But when his accuser, in a deathbed confession, admitted to false testimony McGuire was freed.

  It had been hard for Rankin to grasp McGuire’s guilt—they’d been good friends. But once he had, it was even harder for him to let go of it.

  He shrugged out of his duster and hunched over the table, hooking his boot-heel on the chair rung. He made no move to pour a drink from the bottle Sparks had left him.

  He ought to be celebrating. He had expected to celebrate. His vendetta had sent him looking for Travis first, then Clark. The search had taken him all over the Northwest. It had ended today, when he faced Clark in this dark, smoky saloon. After having eaten up so much of his life, it was now finally behind him.

  So why didn’t he feel better about it? It didn’t bother him the slightest bit that he’d killed Clark. He’d assumed that might happen, depending on the circumstances. Without a second thought he’d killed other men, men with black hearts and no consciences. But this evening he felt a strange emptiness.

  He had thought he would buy a saloon girl for the entire night, maybe get good and drunk. Well, he supposed he could get started on that. He let his hand drift down the side of the whiskey bottle. A stiff drink might do the trick—and shut off the questions bumping around in his head.

  Tomorrow he’d cross into Oregon and head for Misfortune. He owed it to Travis to let him know that Celia’s killer, the man he had spent five years in jail for, was dead. Then . . . what?

  As if he could see the future in its clear amber depths, he studied the full shot glass on the table. He supposed he would go back to the job he’d been doing for ten years, the one that had earned him a reputation that generally made men think twice about crossing him. He had craved their nervous respect to make up for those years when no one had respected him at all.

  But winter was coming again. It got damned cold up here, and every year seemed colder than the last. He hunched forward, with his elbows on the table and the shot glass between them. Maybe this year he’d go to California or Arizona—there were just as many wanted posters down there, and the weather was kinder. The more he thought about it, the more it appealed. He had nothing holding him here now—no kin, no friends, no grudges left to satisfy.

  Just then, a drove of loud, braying miners burst into the saloon to disturb the funereal hush that hung over the waning autumn afternoon. They whooped and hollered like cowboys just in from three months on the trail, and they smelled a hundred times worse.

  Rankin looked up, irritated. He couldn’t even sit here and drink in peace. And with their arrival he felt a subtle shift in the tension in the barroom.

  Six or seven strong, the miners brought with them a cloud of dust and dragged along a scrawny kid Rankin figured was no older than fifteen or sixteen. Strung out in a line along the gouged pine bar, the rowdies ordered whiskey and beer.

  “Come on, sonny,” the loudest of them directed, “we’d better give you a real drink and wean you off that sody water you were pullin’ at outside.” The miner’s coarse, bearded face bore a scar that looked to be a souvenir of a knife fight.

  “I don’t want any,” the boy snarled, trying to twist away. “Let me go, you stinkin’, shovel-pushin’ ox, and give me back my gun!” The kid’s words sounded tough, but his voice thinned out to a soprano twang, betraying his fear. His hat was knocked off in the tussle, revealing a head of fire-colored hair that grazed the tops of his thin shoulders. Rankin took note of the empty holster on the kid’s right thigh.

  “You mean this gun?” Scar-Face dangled a blue-barreled revolver in front of the boy’s face. “You’re pretty young to be carryin’ a weapon like this. You’ll have to prove you’re a man to earn it back. What’s your name, boy?”

  “None of your damned business.” The youngster pulled harder against the grip that Scar-Face had on the back of his collar, but he couldn’t break away.

  Unseen at his corner table, Rankin leaned back in his chair and watched the proceedings. He saw ice-cold terror in the kid’s eyes as a whiskey glass was forced to his mouth. His only choice was to drink or drown. The boy coughed and sputtered, trying to catch his breath. The rest of the miners roared in amusement, and one clapped him on the back, nearly knocking him off his feet.

  Bullies, Rankin thought. He hated bullies. As a kid he’d had more than his share of misery from them. He unhooked his boot heel and sat up.

  “Let me
go, you mangy bastard!” The youngster struggled like a wet cat.

  "By God, you’re a smart-mouthed little snot, aintcha," one of the other miners remarked with a booming laugh. “Full of piss and vinegar. Must be that red hair that gives you so much sass.”

  Behind the bar, Chester Sparks cleared his throat. “Clem, maybe you ought to let the boy go. I’d like to finish the day without any more fuss.”

  “You just stick to sellin’ your beer, Sparks, and there won’t be any fuss,” the scar-faced Clem warned, pointing his finger in Chester’s face. “We found this young’un hangin’ around outside, all curiouslike. We aim to oblige him and show him what a man does in a saloon.”

  “I told you I was waitin’ for someone,” the kid protested. Clem tightened his hold on the back of the boy’s shirt and shook him the way a dog would a rag doll.

  “Hell, if you want to stick with that story, son, that’s fine. We was all greenhorns once ourselves. Time you learned about life. Here, have another drink.” Clem grabbed the whiskey bottle from the bar, sloshed another shot into the youngster’s glass, and repeated the force feeding. Half the liquor dribbled down the front of the kid’s shirt.

  “Now, let’s see if one of Chester’s girls don’t have time to make you a man proper. You’re such a little spud, she’ll probably let you dip for honey cheap. Anyway, it ain’t good for a man not to get a leg across a gal now and then.”

  Clem scanned the barroom and spotted a saloon girl. “Gracie! Hey, Gracie! Look what we brung you!”

  Rankin recognized the long-limbed painted female who had occupied Sawyer Clark’s lap earlier. Seeing the youngster, she disentangled herself from her chair and sashayed over.

  “Hi there, boys. Where’d you get this little rabbit?”