Tucker’s Claim Read online

  She has no place. Take her, and give her one.

  Damn Shadow for laying that temptation out in front of him. He could imagine it too easily. Wanted it too much. Sally Mae back at Hell’s Eight. Safe, protected, his. He spit again, this time to get rid of the taste his selfish nature left in his mouth. What was good for him was not good for Sally Mae. She was a woman of principle and strong ideas and, with the right partner, would flourish. He just wasn’t that partner. He was so deep in thought he almost missed the alert when it came in the feigned squawk of a jay.

  Shit. Inattention like that would get them killed. He waited until the call came again, this time a perfect robin tweet. Not a note off-key to betray the frustration that Sam had to be feeling in trying to get his attention. Hell, next time Tracker accused him of being a lovesick calf, he’d have to hold back on taking a swing, because a clear-thinking man would not be daydreaming when he knew damn well there were more guns trained on him than he could shake a stick at.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tucker scouted the perimeter. There was a flash to his left. The sun off a rifle barrel? Sam’s call said he had one man, south wall. They’d been tracking five. From his right came a subtle imitation of a bobwhite. Tucker slowed Smoke and waited. The call came again, this time in rapid succession once, twice, three times. Tracker had three men in sight. That made four accounted for, possibly five with the one he’d located. Behind him, a covey of quail took flight, the pounding of their wings spooking Smoke. The horse bolted. A bullet whined off the wall rock where they’d been seconds before. The gunshot echoed immediately thereafter.

  Suddenly, the canyon exploded with gunshots. Tucker recognized the report of Sam’s rifle right off. The special powder the other man used lent a distinctive “oomph” to the shot. Hauling Smoke’s head around to the right, Tucker hunched down and urged him to the deadfall. The shelter was meager, but it beat standing tall in the opening. Smoke took one look at the tight confines and balked. Tucker didn’t have time to argue. He let him go, grabbing his ammo off the saddle horn before he reared, spun and took off. Damn, it was going to be hell catching him again.

  “You hit my horse,” he called out, offering Smoke the only protection he could, “and I’ll skin your worthless asses alive and leave you as ant bait.”

  A bullet hit the tree by his head, detonating an explosion of splinters that stung his cheek.

  “Keep your head down, Tucker,” Sam called, almost cheerily. “Still got one lollygagging, who needs to hurry on to meet his maker.”

  “Shit!” Tucker ducked before Sam could warn him again, eyeing the raw wood just a few inches from where his head had been. Anyone but Sam would have likely blown off his head while trying to deliver that warning. Hell, a shift in the wind and Sam could just as easily have missed.

  Tucker palmed his revolver. In rapid succession, he fired at the blur of movement to his right. There was the unmistakable sound of a bullet hitting flesh, a grunt and then the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. “One of these days, Sam, you’re going to push me too far.”

  There came a single rifle shot and Sam’s still cheery, “But not today.”

  Three shots came in rapid succession from above and to the right. They were high and wide, as if the shooter couldn’t get a better angle. He followed the trajectory back. That wouldn’t last. All the shooter had to do was move over to the right and down to the next patch of rock, and picking off Tucker would be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. But not if Tucker shifted his position one hundred feet over. He’d be the one with the clear shot as soon as the bandit got into position.

  Gambling that the shooter was already on the move, Tucker sprinted up the hill, every nerve ending alive with excitement. Fifty feet up the hill he almost stepped on the outlaw he’d shot first. The wounded man raised his pistol. Tucker dove to the left, rolled to his feet and with a flick of his wrist he buried his knife in the man’s throat. The outlaw’s gun fell harmlessly to the ground, the shot that would betray Tucker’s position still in the barrel.

  Tucker retrieved his knife. As he wiped the blade on the dying man’s shirt, he recognized the report of Tracker’s buffalo gun and, for a moment, as he looked down at the face of the outlaw, who was clearly Mexican, he flashed back twenty years to the time when the Mexican soldiers had raided their small town. He touched the bullet hanging around his neck. For years, all of Hell’s Eight had lived on the hatred that night had birthed, vowing never again to be so helpless, never again to lose so much because they were weak. And they hadn’t ever lost again. They’d been as cold and as vicious as they needed to be to survive as boys living in a man’s world, and by the time they’d become men, they’d made themselves so strong that they could win battles on their reputations alone.

  The outlaw stared at him, eyes wide in terror, his last breath cut abruptly short. Tucker blinked, realigning past and present, feeling the oppressive silence rather than the satisfaction of victory. The bullet felt warm against his skin. He sheathed his knife.

  From ahead came a high-pitched cry of agony. Shadow’s knife had found its mark. The scream raked down Tucker’s spine long after it stopped. The scream itself was just another signal. Shadow always let the last man scream. It shouldn’t bother Tucker, but lately a lot of things had lost their luster, including, he realized, his job. Hell, when had justice lost its shine?

  Might does not make right.

  Tucker angled back down in Sam’s direction, pushing Sally’s belief out of his head. Out here, the only thing that made right was might. It was ridiculous to believe otherwise. Halfway down the ridge, he saw a rifle propped on a rock, sighting a target. He followed the trajectory. Twenty feet away, Sam stood, back against a tree. As he reached into his pocket to pull out his makings, Tucker heard the hammer cock back. Shit! Six. There’d been six.

  Tucker was too far away to grab the rifle. “Sam, duck!”

  A single shot rang out at the same time as he shouted the warning. The rifle barrel jerked upward, discharging harmlessly into the air. Two seconds later, the man stumbled into Tucker’s path, clutching his chest, his eyes meeting Tucker’s in one moment of silent realization before he fell to the ground, arms akimbo. His open eyes stared at the sun in a last-ditch effort at clinging to life. From habit, Tucker kicked the gun out of his reach and continued onward toward Sam, anger flaring with relief.

  “Jealous because you didn’t get to play decoy?”

  Sam smiled that easy smile of his that meant nothing. “Couldn’t resist when Shadow up and gave me the opportunity.” He leaned back against a tree. His fingers were steady as he rolled his makings. “Thanks for the warning though.”

  Apparently not everything about Sam had changed. He still took chances. Even when he had no right to. “You’re welcome.”

  “That’s the last of them,” Shadow growled as he dropped out of the tree to the ground in front of them before melting into the underbrush and disappearing back up the ridge.

  Sam struck a sulfur. “I never get used to seeing him do that.”

  Tucker blew out a breath, wishing, not for the first time after a battle, that he smoked. “Me, either.”

  “You hurt?”

  “No. You?”

  Sam pulled his shirt away from his side, exposing a rip. “No, but Bella is going to have a fit when she sees they put a tear in my new shirt.”

  “You’ll have some sweet-talking to do.”

  Sam’s smile was easy, and…genuine. “I’m getting to like that.”

  Sam was a man who’d always had women chasing him. He’d never had to resort to sweet talk. All he’d needed to do was smile and they’d tumbled into his arms like ripe fruit. Tucker couldn’t suppress the spurt of unwarranted resentment that finding love, for Sam, had been so easy. “Just smile at her.”

  Sam smiled around the cigarette, his blue eyes slightly narrowed against the smoke. “You’d think that would be all I’d have to do, but Bella’s different. She doesn’t find me charm
ing.”

  Tucker snorted and reloaded his revolver. “The woman is head over heels in love with you.”

  “Yeah. She might love me, but that doesn’t stop her from having expectations.”

  Sam’s attempt to sound disgruntled fell flat.

  “You might as well give it up, Sam. A blind man could see you love every expectation that woman throws at you.”

  Sam’s smile broadened and he rubbed his chest. “Yeah, I do. Especially when she emphasizes them with her teeth.”

  “I think that qualifies as more than I need to know.”

  Sam laughed. A genuine laugh, and once again Tucker marveled at the change Bella had brought to his best friend’s life. She was like Sam’s private sun, lighting up every corner of his life, driving away the darkness that Tucker and the rest of Hell’s Eight had worried was consuming him.

  “You wait until Sally Mae gets more comfortable with you, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  “I told you, there’s nothing to get comfortable for.”

  Sam looked at him from beneath his hat brim. “Just because you say it doesn’t mean I believe it.”

  “Humor me and pretend, okay.” He pushed away from the tree. “It’ll keep you healthy.”

  Sam chuckled and jerked his chin in the direction of the hill. “I suppose we have to bury them.”

  “We could just leave them for the coyotes. By now, Tracker and Shadow have relieved them of anything valuable.”

  “Hopefully they had a lot. Billy’s mother could use every penny.”

  “Yeah.” It was Hell’s Eight’s policy for the dead to reimburse their victims. Money didn’t right a wrong, but it could help the survivors live in the aftermath. He looked at the rocky ground. Digging a grave was going to be almost impossible.

  “Too bad I forgot my shovel.”

  Sam took a last drag on his cigarette. “Bella sent one.”

  “What the hell for?”

  Sam ground out the cigarette under his boot. “She feels strongly about such things.”

  Tucker smothered a laugh. “I guess that means you’re shoveling.”

  On a shrug, Sam said, “There’s a price for my not being able to see her tear up.”

  Tracker stepped out of the trees beside them. “There’s a price for everything.”

  His hat, as always, was pulled down over his face, hiding his eyes, showcasing the scar. Not for the first time, Tucker wondered if he did it on purpose.

  “Everyone all right?” Tracker asked.

  “Yup. How about you?”

  Tracker looked at the body near them and then down to where Shadow was removing guns and valuables from another. “Shit, the fight this lot gave us hardly makes it worth their burying.”

  “That is a fact,” Sam agreed.

  Tracker nudged the dead man with his foot, as if he expected him to get up and redeem himself by putting up a better fight. “Almost made me feel guilty for killing them.”

  Tucker looked at the dead man, Sam and then Tracker. They’d stood this way too many times to count after a battle, but this time something was missing. Instead of feeling edgy and restless in the aftermath, today he just felt…empty. Had the outlaws been that inept or had they just gotten that good at killing?

  He pulled his hat down over his brow, blocking the sun, his thoughts.

  “It does at that.”

  It was midnight before they got back to town. Anyone with any common sense would have stayed overnight at the campsite as Tracker had suggested, but Sam hadn’t wanted to be away from Bella and, claiming the quarter moon gave enough light to see, had headed out. Tucker had his own motivations for tagging along. About fifteen minutes later, Tracker and Shadow had ridden up, not even bothering to hide their amusement. Fortunately, they held their tongues. At least until they got to Lindos.

  “Hell, even the saloon is shut down.” Tracker shook his head at the quiet. “It’s a sad day when the drunks have more sense than the law.”

  “Or it could be that whiskey doesn’t have the allure that my Bella does,” Sam countered.

  “Yeah,” Tracker scoffed, with a lift of his brow. “Or it could be, there’s just no fool like a fool in love.”

  “Say what you want. Bella’s waiting for me in that hotel yonder, which is a hell of a lot better than anything you three have waiting.”

  The truth hit like a punch in the gut.

  “You talk too much, Sam,” Shadow snarled.

  Sam swore. “Hell, I didn’t mean it like that, and you damn well know it.”

  Tracker and Shadow just stared at him. There were some things Sam just couldn’t understand and one of them was the barrier their skin color put between them and most of the world. As one, the twins turned their horses toward the livery. The hotel didn’t allow Indians beneath its roof. It didn’t allow Mexicans, either. Tracker and Shadow were out of luck on both sides of their ancestry.

  Sam stared after them. “Shit.”

  “They know you didn’t mean it,” Tucker said.

  “Making it up to them is going to cost me a fortune in pancakes.”

  Tracker and Shadow were always willing to let Sam pay off his debts in food. Of course, getting a restaurant owner to serve an Indian usually accumulated a few bruised ribs, but Sam always pulled it off and Tracker and Shadow always forgave him. “Beats them taking the insult out of your hide.”

  “That is the truth.” They rode down the street in companionable silence. Sam took a last pull on his smoke and pushed his hat back from his face.

  “What I said earlier, it stands, Tucker. If things ever get to a point between you and Sally Mae where you want to move forward, there is a place for you at Rancho Montoya.”

  Damn, why did everyone keep holding out the impossible, as if it were possible?

  “Thanks.”

  The abrupt response was supposed to dissuade Sam from talking anymore on the subject. Sam never was good at taking hints.

  “Sally Mae always impressed me as the kind of woman a man made changes for.”

  “She scares the hell out of me.”

  “Bella scared the hell out of me, too.”

  He cocked his brow at Sam, who smiled wryly. “Doesn’t seem like she scares you anymore.”

  “In different ways on any given day, but on not a one of them do I regret letting her convince me we’re worth it.”

  “That’s a strange way of looking at things.”

  “We didn’t grow up like everybody else, Tucker. We grew up desperate, violent and convinced of the right of our view. I’ve learned, since meeting Bella, that sometimes that view needs changing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Sam looked down the street toward Sally Mae’s house. “Everything is changing, Tucker, including Hell’s Eight.” He smiled. “And believe it or not, some of the notions we held as golden when we were little more than kids don’t hold water nowadays.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the belief we don’t need love. I’ve got news for you, Tuck. It feels just as good to us to be loved as it does any other human being.”

  It wasn’t like Sam to be so philosophical. “Son of a bitch, have you been nipping at a bottle tucked in your saddlebag?”

  “No, I just hate to see a friend run away from a good thing.”

  “You know what they’ll do to her—us—if they even get wind of my interest, let alone trying to take her to a social.”

  She’d be ridiculed, raped, beaten. And the ones doing it would say she deserved it.

  Sam tossed his smoke in the dirt and wheeled his horse around toward the hotel. “So you don’t take her to a social. You take her to Hell’s Eight.”

  “And then what?”

  Sam was just a shadow in the night by the time Tucker finished asking.

  “Love her.”

  The answer was so faint that Tucker wasn’t sure if it was Sam who answered or just his imagination. Either way it didn’t matter. The rhythmic sound of Smoke’s hooves echoed in the quie
t of the night. Sally Mae couldn’t live his life. It would kill her.

  The barn behind Sally Mae’s house looked as it always did. Dark and empty. There was a note nailed to the door. He read it before crumpling it up and stuffing it into his vest pocket to put with the other five that’d been left before. Leave or die.

  They weren’t getting any more clever in their threats, but the directness of this one did signify a bit more determination. It was time to move on. The door swung open soundlessly as he led Smoke in. He stripped her of her saddle and bridle, giving her a brief rubdown before patting her flank. “I’ll do it right in the morning.”

  Tonight he was too tired. He’d thought everything would be all right when he came home, that being in the familiar surroundings would settle the restlessness inside, but it hadn’t. Inside, the nameless feeling grew. He opened the narrow door to the room he’d been staying in ever since Jonah had rented it to him a month before he’d been killed. The first thing he noticed was the supper pail on the bed, sitting dead center of the quilt. He walked over, dropping the saddlebags on the floor. The quilt smelled of soap and sunshine. Sally Mae had washed it. He touched the pail’s lid, locked down to keep the rodents out. Sally couldn’t know when he’d be coming home, which meant she’d been out here every day making sure when he finally did, he’d find food and comfort.

  Damn her. He curled his fingers into a fist, wanting to smash the pail. As if destroying a piece of tin would destroy the relentless longing inside.

  She has no place. Take her, and give her one.

  He spun on his heel. She couldn’t keep doing this. He got halfway to the house and remembered the quilt that smelled of soap and fresh air. Cursing under his breath, he angled toward the pump. He was still going to tear a strip off her, but he didn’t need to smell of three days of hard riding while he did it. The water was biting cold. It didn’t do a thing to cool his temper.

  He expected to see Crockett on the back steps. Concern blended with anger when there was no sign of the pup. It only took a minute to jimmy the door lock. Slipping into the house, he took the stairs two at a time. Her door, the second to the right, was ajar. He eased it open. The wind blew the curtains in a gentle billow that directed his attention to the bed. As if he needed direction. His gaze always naturally went to Sally. The faint light flowed over her like a caress, picking up the whiteness of her skin, the pale blond of her hair, the dusky gleam of her lashes. His moonbeam.