The Gunfighter and the Heiress - By Carol Finch Page 0,2
this has something to do with that threat—” He sorted through the stack of letters on the table and then waved it in Van’s face. “I didn’t give this warning from the Harper Gang much thought. Outlaws always vow revenge after you wrap up an assignment that didn’t end in their favor. But according to this letter the Harpers are out to get you for killing their little brother, Robbie.”
Van slouched back in his chair to read the missive. It said:
Eye for an Eye. We will get you for this.
Three months earlier, Van had been on assignment to track bank robbers who’d split up. He’d hunted them individually. He’d been forced to shoot and kill the twenty-four-year-old Robbie Harper, who’d had too much to drink and drew on Van in a saloon in a dusty, no-name little town west of San Antonio.
The drunken fool had tried to make a bigger name for himself. Instead, he’d made the obituaries.
Van had apprehended Georgie Harper, age thirty, Charley, age twenty-eight, and Willy, age twenty-six. He had collected the hefty rewards, but he hadn’t had time to recover the stolen money because a high-profile murder assignment awaited him. He’d told the bankers to let the Texas Rangers hunt for the missing money since they worked cheaper.
Unfortunately, the three Harper brothers had escaped from jail and now they were out for Van’s blood.
“You must admit this ploy of an arriving fiancée would entice most men to show up at the railroad depot at five o’clock, if only to see what a fiancée of yours might look like,” Bart was saying when Van got around to listening. “You’re right. This has bushwhacking written all over it.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Van chugged his whiskey. “That’s why you will meet the train and I’ll reconnoiter the area to see if Robbie’s vengeful kin are lying in wait.”
“Me?” Bart crowed.
“You’re the business manager, a practicing lawyer and my spokesman,” Van teased as he rose to stare out the window that overlooked Main Street. “In the meantime, I’m planning to catch up on my missed sleep.”
“That’s it?” Bart huffed. “That’s all the forethought you’re giving this potential threat? But what if it isn’t the Harpers who are using a distraction to lure you out and gun you down? What if you really have a fiancée that you conveniently forgot about?”
“I think I’d remember if I had a fiancée.” He strode over to grab the tray and handed it to Bart. “That’s not the sort of thing a man like me would forget.”
Bart, with tray in hand, headed for the door. “Seems to me that plenty of men conveniently forget about fiancées and wives, in favor of visiting the harlots in Cardinal Row.”
Cardinal Row was the red light district that Van and Bart visited occasionally, along with dozens of other local patrons. If Van had approved of blackmail schemes, he could make a killing off unfaithful husbands who frequented the local brothels. Maybe he’d take up that line of work when his lightning-quick accuracy with pistols and rifles failed him in old age. If he managed to dodge the bullets with his name on them for the next thirty years.
Sighing tiredly, Van returned to the adjoining room and stretched out in bed. He’d need quick reflexes and sharp wits at five o’clock the next day if he planned to deal effectively with the bloodthirsty Harper Gang. “A fiancée?” Van chuckled at the preposterous thought.
What the hell would he do with a fiancée? Leave her at his hotel headquarters for Bart to tend to while Van took one long-distance assignment after another? Anyway, what sort of female would want to attach herself to a mixed-breed with his reputation as a gun for hire? Women didn’t line up to fill a position as his future wife. Never had. Never would.
“No woman with a lick of sense would consider marrying me. I’m the furthest thing from husband material that any man could get,” he mumbled drowsily, then promptly fell asleep.
Natalie Blair, alias Widow Anna Jones, craned her neck to survey the landscape outside the train window. Anticipation bubbled inside her as she appraised Wolf Ridge. The Western community of three thousand residents—more or less—sat on a rise of ground, surrounded by a tree-choked creek known as Wolf Hollow. Even the possibility of this area jumping alive with wolves—and who knew what other vicious predators of the two-and four-legged variety—didn’t diminish her excitement.
She had been riding the rails for four long, tedious days. She was about