A Promise in Defiance: Romance in the Rockies Book 3 (18 page)

Corky didn’t have to be
told twice to fetch help. Eyes wide as harvest moons, he bolted from the
saloon. Emilio shot in the opposite direction. Dodging and ducking flying
chairs and fists, he raced to the theater door. Otis and Smith were busy trying
to bring the melee under control. Taking advantage of their distraction, he
tried the knob. Locked.

He couldn’t call
himself a man if he let this auction happen, but how to stop it?

God, there must be some
way
 . . .

All he had were his
bare hands and . . . Desperate, he looked around for anything
that would get him through that door. He spied a miner’s backpack tucked in the
corner behind the piano. A pickaxe was strapped to it. Not wasting a second,
Emilio grabbed the tool, ripping it free from its leather ties, and went to
work on the door.

He swung hard,
splintering and shattering wood. Otis and Smith both saw him, tossed aside the
men they were dragging to the door, and made a beeline for him, knocking men
down and throwing punches as they went.

Emilio swung over and
over, harder and faster. A larger piece of wood tore free. One more strike and
he had a hole. He leaned in for a look—

His collar tightened
painfully around his neck and he was snatched violently away from the door.

“No—no, boy.” Otis
tightened his grip on Emilio’s shirt and grabbed his pant leg, hefting him into
the air. Suddenly, Emilio was looking down at the wild fracas.

Oh, this isn’t good
 . . .

A gunshot rang out from
the front door and the fighting halted almost instantly. Otis dropped Emilio
like a rotten piece of meat, but on his way to the floor Emilio caught a
blessed glimpse of Marshal Beckwith, smoking gun pointing at the ceiling, tan
blazer swirling around his knees. Beside him, Deputy Wade Hayes stood with his twin
Peacemakers drawn on the crowd.

Emilio pushed to all
fours, his shoulder throbbing from the fall.

The girl
 . . .

Beckwith thrashed
through the crowd, shoving men aside, searching for the initial troublemakers. “All
right, I want to know who started this.”

A chorus of voices
accused the cowboys as Emilio staggered to his feet and clawed his way within
earshot of the lawman. “Marshal, the theater,” he yelled over the heads of
bleeding miners and cowboys. “They’re auctioning off a young girl. You have to
stop it.”

Beckwith stormed toward
Emilio, eyes blazing. “Where?” The grim expression on his bony, chiseled face
encouraged Emilio.

“The theater.”

“Wade, no one leaves,”
he ordered as he and Emilio strode toward the theater. Reaching the door, it
opened unexpectedly. Delilah surveyed the crowd as she brushed her hands down
her slender waist. “What seems to be the problem, Marshal?”

The scowl deepened on Beckwith’s
face. “This is my third excursion to Tent Town this week. Make no mistake,
somebody is going to jail. At the very least for disturbing the peace. If you
have a young girl in there against her will, I reckon I can arrest you for
kidnapping.”

“There’s no one in
there at all.” She pressed herself against the doorframe, purposely showing off
her curves. “See for yourself.”

Beckwith surged past
her, entered the room and looked all around.
Too late.
Emilio knew the
theater was empty, and his spirits sank. Where was that little
señorita
now? In a tent somewhere with a filthy, drunken miner?

Beckwith came back and
stopped in front of Delilah. “Since you opened up shop, I’ve made more trips to
Tent Town in a month than I ever have in a year. Somebody already took a potshot
at my deputy. You make my job harder than it has to be—more
dangerous
than it has to be because of the rabble you attract. Now we’re adding cowboys
to the recipe. They mix with miners like oil and water.” He leaned in. “You don’t
calm things down over here I’ll hold you personally responsible.”

“You can’t do anything
to me and you know it.”

Beckwith’s icy stare
drilled into her, unwavering.

“Marshal,” she laid her
hand lightly on his lapel and lowered her voice, “we don’t have to be on
opposite sides of the table.”

He pushed her hand
away. “Yes, we do.”

Logan rolled over and
stared into the darkness. Sleep eluded him. A boomtown had a sound to it like
no other. The tinny banjo and weak, warbling voice of some gal who should stick
to humming floated over to him. She couldn’t drown out the drunken voices
raised in anger not far from the church. Another fight was brewing, this time
over a missing pocket watch instead of a woman. Shortly, the smacks, thuds, and
grunts of a brawl peppered the air. Logan could hear the crowd growing, based
on the cheers, mocking insults, and shrieks of women wanting a bloodier show.

Nevertheless, these
sounds weren’t why he couldn’t sleep. Big Jim had said the auction was tonight.
The auction of a virgin to a filthy, drunken, toothless miner no doubt.

And Logan was lying in
bed, bellyaching about it. Angry, he sat up and swung his feet over the bed. He
had to do something. Frantic pounding erupted at the back door.

“Preacher! Preacher! It’s
me. Emilio. Please, let me in.”

Logan shot to the door
and jerked it open. “What is it?”

“We have to find her.
We have to save her.”

“Who?” He grabbed
Emilio’s shoulder and pulled him inside. “What are you talking about?”

“Delilah auctioned off
Sai Shang tonight. I tried to stop it. A fight broke out, and then she was
gone. Marshal Beckwith said he can’t do anything.”

“Let me get my boots.
We’ll find her.”

Only, they didn’t find
Sai Shang. Doors slammed in their faces. The girls in Delilah’s cribs turned
them away. Miners hurried off into the dark, afraid to tangle with Logan. For
the millionth time, he wondered if he was wrong in trying to deny his past. If
for one moment he could turn loose the old Logan . . . if he
could grab one man by the throat, or put a gun to the side of a miner’s head—

“Preacher.”

Logan pulled his gaze
away from a man making tracks down the muddy road. Afraid to answer their
questions, he had run tile swallowed by the darkness and rows of cabins and
tents.

Emilio nodded at a
shack to their left. “I saw Big Jim in the window. Maybe he can help.”

The two hurried to the
door. Logan pounded on it, rattling the hinges.

A gun cocked, the door
opened, and the barrel of a .44 greeted them. “Only drunks and troublemakers
bang on a man’s door at this hour.”

“It’s me, Big Jim.
Preacher.”

The door instantly flew
open and the man hobbled out, lowering the gun. “You got more trouble at your
church?”

“No, we’re lookin’ for
a young girl. Sai Shang. Delilah auctioned her off tonight. We thought you
might know where she wound up.”

Even in the faint
light, Logan could see Big Jim’s countenance fall. “I reckon I do know. You
gonna kill the fella that bought her, are you?”

The hesitation in Big
Jim’s tone told Logan plenty. “Not if I can help it. Tell me where she’s at.”

“Jim Rizzo, I heard.
Least, I know he was biddin’ and he’s a big spender.”

“Take us to him.”

“Preacher, this ain’t
none of my business.”

“For God’s sake, she’s
just a girl.”

Emilio stepped forward.
“
Maybe
sixteen, and not a hundred pounds soaking wet.”

“How can you call
yourself a man?” Logan hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. “How can you call
yourself a human being if you don’t help me stop this?”

“I can’t save the
world, Preacher.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

After a tense moment,
Big Jim dropped the gun into his holster. “Fine.”

Logan watched Big Jim
with awe. Once the man made up his mind about something, he was as determined
as a bull and as ferocious as a grizzly. He stormed through Tent Town like a
raging thunderstorm. As they approached a low, one-room cabin, screams
shattered the night. Big Jim never slowed down or hesitated. Balancing on his
wooden leg, he kicked the door in, shattering it as if it had been blown by a
stick of dynamite. Logan had never seen anything like it, especially by a man
with one leg.

Guns drawn, he and
Emilio hurried in after him, but Big Jim had already swept a naked man into a
bear hug, and Sai Shang, her dress in shreds, was scrambling off the bed into a
corner.

The man flailed and
cursed, and Jim hugged him tighter. “Stop squirming, Rizzo, or I’ll squeeze ya
in two.”

“Let me go, Big Jim. I
paid for that gal and I’m gonna finish what I started!”

“No, you ain’t.” Big
Jim glanced at the girl and Logan saw the birth of real compassion in the man’s
eyes. “You ain’t gonna touch her.”

Holstering his gun,
Emilio tore off his jacket and raced over to Sai Shang, who screamed and
cowered and turned her back to him.

“Shhh,” Emilio
whispered as he draped the coat over her.

Rizzo exploded with
curses and tried swinging his head back into Big Jim. “She’s mine, she’s mine,
she’s mine! I paid good money for her!”

Jim’s patience
evaporated. He growled, and brought a hammer blow down right on top of Rizzo’s
head with eye-popping force. The man’s bellowing stopped as suddenly as if
someone had slammed a door in his face. Silent, he fell limp as a rag doll.

Big Jim huffed and
tossed Rizzo aside. “I hope his head feels like I split it with an axe when he
comes to.”

Logan whistled in awe. “One
punch.”

Big Jim cracked his
knuckles and winked. “Learned it from you, Preacher.”