She stood weaving between Palmer and Colby, one of Hastings’s men, groggy and stupefied on laudanum. It was the safest thing to do, Usher had decided years ago. Keep the girl and her mother drugged so there was never any danger of them escaping. He had always wondered what the stuff would one day do to the girl’s brain. But it did not matter now. Jubilee Usher wanted that deserter Riley Fordham so bad that the colonel had promised the girl as a reward to the man who brought back Fordham’s head in a burlap sack.
The girl no longer mattered.
At last, Wiser looked at Hook, finding on the Southerner’s face a strange, pinched look.
“You don’t want the girl?”
Hook swallowed hard, trying to grin, not being able to. “This one—is she … is she still … a—”
“A virgin, Mr. Hook?” Wiser replied, then laughed easily. “Of course. That’s the very reason she’s worth all that money you’ve got in front of you.”
Eloy Hastings edged from the spectators to bend at Wiser’s ear. “Major, just how you gonna square this with Colonel Usher?” he asked. “I mean—he’s got her promised to the man who brings in Fordham—”
“That’s my concern, Captain,” Wiser snapped.
He’d let the southerner win, if that’s the way the cards ran against him this last hand. Wiser ran his hands over his five cards, lying face down on the table. Then tapped his fingers on them. And after Hook had gone off with the girl—he’d have the men kill the Confederate, just as he was about to sully his young, virginal prize. Wiser would have the girl back before Usher was any the wiser.
“Jonah?”
Hook gazed at Wiser, his eyes narrow, dark slits in his bony face.
“What’s it to be?”
“Let’s play this hand through, Wiser.”
There was something to the tone in Hook’s voice that struck Wiser as different from what he had heard up to this moment. Perhaps it was because Hook knew he might be beat—bested here at the last by a better man. A true gambler. Not just a man who played with money, especially other men’s money. No, Wiser told himself, I’m a true gambler—making a wager on life itself.
“What do you have, Jonah?”
“A full house …”
Wiser felt his throat constrict, swearing he would not let any of the men see him sweat.
“Three tens …”
Seeing those cards, Wiser sighed in relief. That was the best Hook had. And Boothog looked down at his own three kings.
“And two aces.”
Wiser’s throat seized, a hot lump choking him. Very conscious of moving slowly now, to keep from lunging across the table, he leaned forward casually and studied the Confederate’s cards. Then he sank back in his chair, standing finally, turning over his own cards.
“You have me beat,” Boothog said. Then, with a wave of his hand he whispered, “You win the girl.”
That news had inspired more lewd cheering as the others gathered at the yellow-splashed doorway in those dark early-morning moments, bidding him luck, others saying he needed no luck now—all he needed was stamina. Then more crude jokes as the voices slowly faded behind him.
Hook glanced quickly over his shoulder. No one out on the street now. They had all gone back inside. He could hear them yelling and laughing back there, but only faintly.
He could make it out onto the prairie. Sure of it. Get two horses saddled. Get his daughter tied onto one so that she wouldn’t fall when and if they had to make a race of it.
He prayed they would not be faced with that.
Yet he knew Wiser was not the sort to let Hattie stay with him. Never mind that it was Hattie … or any young woman for that matter. Boothog Wiser didn’t seem like the kind of man who took easily to losing at all. Especially losing everything.
He had a pocket filled with Wiser’s money. And he had the reward Jubilee Usher had promised to the man who found and killed Riley Fordham. There was no doubt in Jonah’s mind that Wiser would be coming to get it all back.
With Boothog’s money, Jonah could get someone to take care of Hattie for a few weeks. Maybe a few months. However long it would take to double back and ride west to Fort Laramie—where he would find Usher and … reclaim Gritta from her captor.
His stomach went sour.
Then he looked at Hattie as they pushed through the short door into the fragrant livery. Beyond, a half mile away or more on the flat prairie, he heard someone playing a mouth harp. Maybe a lonely soldier. Maybe one of Wiser’s men in their camp by the river. Jonah could not be sure. He only had to find two horses now. Any two. Saddle them. And get lost going east.
Jonah set his daughter gently down among the aromatic hay in a vacant stall, listening to the snorts and pawing of hooves. He lit a single lamp and hung it on a nail, quickly looking over the stable, finding bit and saddle for two mounts. And hung from a nail some short lengths of rope that he would use to lash her atop her mount for their hard ride.
Better that they head south. He knew some of that country: the Republican, Solomon, Saline, and down to the Smoky Hill. Keep Hattie safe until he could finish with Usher and bring Hattie’s mother home.
Get the girl safe and then he’d have to return to the Platte. It was here he would come to deal with Boothog Wiser.
After that—farther west. To the place called Laramie. Then he’d finally look in the eye of Jubilee Usher.
But first, he had to get Hattie atop this horse, tied on, and led out onto the trackless prairie, praying no man would follow them into the night as black as the heart of hell itself.
47
WISER SENT HASTINGS with a half dozen of his scouts around to the back.
Boothog himself would go in the front door of the livery stable. Backed up by four of his own men.
He knew they enjoyed this. Every last one of them. He had seen it burn in their eyes more than once. Whenever Wiser had been crossed and wronged and felt the burning need for taking revenge on one of the men. The rest—especially these most trusted by him—they all watched unflinchingly as Wiser had taken his pound of flesh each and every time.
He could remember seeing that love of it in their eyes. They had enjoyed watching the torture and the blood, the begging by the victim.
And Boothog Wiser knew they would take no small pleasure in what he, Wiser, now had in store for this simple homespun Southern sodbuster named Jonah Hook.
Wiser figured he had given Hastings enough time to get around by the run-down stable’s double-wing back door, a stable that slightly listed to one side with age and the incessant prairie wind.
Silently moving to the small door, he tested the latch and hinges gently for noise. He wanted to be in the stable before Hook knew he had arrived. As Wiser was pushing in on the short door, a hollow shot echoed from within.
Wiser froze. A quick exchange of gunfire, intermingled with a pair of grunts. Then shouts swamping over everything from out back. Calling for him.
He glanced at his own men, then shoved his way into the stable, both hands filled with the fancy pistols.
