Teresa Medeiros (26 page)

Mr. Death wore his gunbelt low on his hips. A broad-brimmed slouch hat shadowed his face. Bartholomew lived in fear of the inevitable moment when he would reach up with one graceful finger and tip it back, revealing the hellfire in his eyes.

Whenever he could no longer bear the suspense, he would turn his face away from the mouth of the cave and
take another long swig from the whiskey bottle. He’d never been much of a drinker, yet empty bottles littered the cavern floor around him. Although he would have died before admitting it to the men who had so briefly called him leader, the taste of alcohol made him a little sick. But not as sick as the prospect of facing the specter lurking outside that cave stone-cold sober.

He spent his days huddled against the cavern wall, paralyzed by his own fear. He’d shuffled into a dank corner of the cave to pee one morning only to come face-to-face with his own reflection in the fragment of mirror he’d used to trim his beard when the cave had been his gang’s hideout. He’d recoiled with a high-pitched yelp, barely recognizing the feral creature gawking back at him with its wild, red-rimmed eyes and bushy beard. He’d buried that face in his hands and stumbled back to the wall, Mr. Death’s laughter ringing in his ears.

Night was the worst. Although the chill that came creeping out of the desert after the sun sank was enough to make a man’s fingers and toes tingle and ache, Mr. Death never lit a fire. He preferred the cold.

Bartholomew would fight sleep, his exhausted body twitching with the effort, but his eyes would always betray him by drifting shut, leaving him alone in the darkness.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw blood. Welling from the blackened edges of a fresh wound. Pooling on the floor. Soaking the chaste white of his sister’s gloves. But worse than the blood was the look in Esmerelda’s eyes, a look he almost hadn’t recognized the first time he saw it because it had been so foreign to him.

Shame
.

His sister—who had glowed with pride every time he trotted home from school with a clumsily written story clutched in his plump fist; who had fussed and crowed over
even his most humble efforts at badly rhymed poetry; who had held him while he wept out his disappointment, her own eyes burning with indignation, when a less talented classmate had won the annual essay contest sponsored by the
Gazette
—was ashamed of him.

One night, after he’d been cowering in the cave for over a week, his tortured imagination devised a new ending for his disjointed dreams. An ending in which it was Esmerelda who lay sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood, shot through the heart by his own hand.

Bartholomew started from sleep, his heart pounding, his shirt drenched with sweat. His lapse of consciousness had given Mr. Death the opportunity to creep a little closer. So close Bart could almost hear the rasp of his breathing in the darkness.

Bartholomew’s cheeks were wet with tears. He swiped at his upper lip like the snot-nosed kid he used to be. Only this time Esmerelda wasn’t there to offer him her handkerchief and gently remind him to blow.

Dropping his head into his hands, he wondered how everything could have gone so wrong so fast. When he’d created Black Bart, he’d only intended him to be a character, the immoral yet charming hero of his very first novel. Using part of the money Esmerelda had set aside for his college education, he had outfitted himself with a sharp suit of clothes and a shiny new Colt. He’d soothed the sting of his conscience by promising himself that the royalties from his first novel would double that money, perhaps even quadruple it. He would return to Esmerelda in triumph, an acclaimed author with enough money to lavish upon them both.

Garbed in his handsome new costume, he’d taken to frequenting saloons and gambling halls. He’d scripted his dialogue as he went along, then hurried back to his hotel
room before dawn to carefully record his impressions on the crisp pages of his journal.

He’d soon learned that playing a role could be a heady experience. Women who wouldn’t have looked twice at a plump, bashful young man studying at Boston College to be a teacher or law clerk began to lean over Black Bart’s shoulder and whisper in his ear which card to play. He found the ripe musk of their perfume and the deliberate press of their breasts against his back more intoxicating than any shot of bourbon. By the time the last card was played and they took his hand to draw him up the stairs, he was already too drunk with desire to resist.

His reputation had been born there, in the darkness, between the sheets, with those velvet-soft hands ushering him into manhood. He’d swear them to secrecy, then speak in a voice still hoarse with spent passion of trains he had robbed, women he had loved, men he had killed. He would rise from their rumpled beds, buckling on his gunbelt with sure and steady hands before leaning over to give them a kiss so hot and fierce they always believed it might very well be his last. As soon as he was gone, they would seek out their sister whores. It was their hushed whispers and shivers of fearful delight that had helped him weave his own legend.

Soon men began to be drawn to him as well. Desperate men. Lazy men. Greedy men. Men like Flavil Snorton, who hoped only to be in his company when he blew open his next safe or demanded the halt of another stagecoach. Basking in their respect and adoration, Bartholomew had felt himself slowly disappearing into the skin of his creation without ever once committing an actual crime.

He was abiding quite comfortably in that skin the night Thaddeus Winstead had ambled into the Santa Fe saloon where Black Bart was holding court over a game of poker. So comfortably that he’d let Bart do all the talking while
Bartholomew Fine looked on with his mouth hanging open, mute with shock at his character’s audacity.

Sadly enough, Black Bart, with his shiny guns that had never been fired and his slick veneer of sophistication, had been naive enough to believe in honor among thieves. He’d never dreamed that Winstead would use him, then betray him. After all those months of gleefully pretending to be a fugitive from the law, Bartholomew suddenly found himself trapped in the role he had created.

He’d suspected Eulalie was nothing but an ambush from the beginning, but the worshipful glint in the eyes of his men had driven him to take the bait. He’d even deluded himself into believing he could outwit Winstead now that he knew the rules of engagement. Until he’d charged into that bank and come face to face with Mr. Death.

Bartholomew shuddered.

If the creature lurking outside the cave tipped back his hat, Bartholomew knew it was that face he would see. Grim, resolute, ruthless enough to make Black Bart look like nothing more than some city cartoonist’s ineptly drawn caricature of a gunslinger. If Mr. Death chose to deepen their acquaintance, Bartholomew would be forced to gaze into the smoke green eyes of the man he had murdered in cold blood. Only this time, William Darling wouldn’t demand the surrender of his freedom, but his soul.

Bartholomew groped for the whiskey bottle nestled between his legs. It was his last bottle and less than half of it remained. The amber liquid glimmered like fool’s gold in the moonlight, brighter even than the bags and bars of treasury gold that lined the back wall of the cave. Fool’s gold indeed. Only he was the fool.

Tomorrow he would be forced to battle his demons with his senses undulled by liquor.

But not yet. Not tonight.

Bringing the bottle to his lips, he drained it in one long, thirsty gulp.

“I’m sorry, Esme,” he whispered as the bitter heat scorched its way down his throat and settled in the pit of his belly. “I only wanted to make you proud.”

Without bothering to wipe away the tears trickling down his cheeks or the whiskey dribbling down his chin, he slumped to his side and into a mercifully dreamless stupor.

Bartholomew woke to the glorious warmth of sunshine streaming across his face. He slowly pried open his eyes, squinting against the incandescent brilliance.

The mouth of the cave was empty. Mr. Death was gone.

He scrambled to a sitting position, hardly able to believe his good fortune. A disbelieving bark of laughter escaped his lungs.

Then died as he heard the shuffle of boots behind him. Right behind him. He clenched his teeth against a shudder of terror so keen he could actually feel the hair on his scalp begin to lift.

It seemed Mr. Death had come to call while he’d been sleeping.

Bartholomew reached for his gun, remembering too late that he’d flung the hateful thing away after fleeing the bank. Too physically and emotionally exhausted to elude his destiny any longer, he slowly turned to find himself gazing at four pairs of dusty boots.

He blinked in a vain attempt to clear his vision. He’d heard of drunks seeing double, but he’d never heard of one seeing quadruple. He was still trying to puzzle it out when a massive hand swooped down, seized him by the collar, and lifted him clear off the ground, bringing him eye to eye with a golden-haired giant.

“Howdy, son,” the giant boomed, an amiable grin breaking through his sandy beard. His three companions watched with polite indifference as the giant shook him this way and that, like some gargantuan mastiff worrying a bone. “We hate to disturb your nap, but I do believe you just might be the miserable little sonofabitch who shot my baby brother.”

The giant’s grasp on his collar was decidedly mortal, as was the stale blast of his cigar-tainted breath. His face was curiously familiar, but lacked the ruthless cast of Mr. Death’s.

Bartholomew went limp in the man’s grip, so relieved he would have gladly confessed to shooting Lincoln himself.

Until he saw the braided noose swinging from the man’s other hand.

Esmerelda Fine’s accounts always balanced. If she came up even a penny off, short or over, she would spend half the night poring over the books by candlelight until the tidy little numbers inscribed in their neatly drawn columns began to blur before her aching eyes. She used the same meticulous care in her cooking, refusing to even consider substituting a dash of this for a pinch of that. When a piece of music was set in front of her, she played note for note what was written on the page, ignoring the yearning of her hands to ripple and soar in a flight of fancy.

Yet suddenly two and two equaled eleven, her dash of salt had been replaced by a bucket of sugar, and her heart was playing all the wrong notes, arranging them in a melody too compelling to resist.

With a fitful sigh, Esmerelda rolled herself out of her
quilt and sat up. She cast the loft a long-suffering look, surprised her heart’s song wasn’t being drowned out by the rumble of Zoe’s snoring. The sound was enough to make the walls quake and the rafters tremble. How odd, she thought, that she had never once heard it when Billy had been so desperately ill.

Flickering moonbeams sifted through the open door, beckoning her into the night. Perhaps if she escaped the stifling heat of the house for a little while, she might be able to clear her head of the cotton batting that had filled it since sharing breakfast with Billy. Leaving the quilt in a dejected puddle, she padded across the floor and slipped onto the porch.

A puff of wind too forceful to be called a breeze stroked her brow and plucked at her unbound hair. The rising wind was scented by a hint of rain, faint enough to be nothing more than another unfulfilled promise. Clouds came billowing in from the west, casting a mighty shadow across the vast sweep of land.

Esmerelda wrapped an arm around one of the porch posts, searching the night with restless eyes. She had hoped to find peace out here, but the reckless abandon of the wind stirred something deep within her—something wild and dangerous that had been fettered for too long.

It made her want to take her mother’s violin out of its case and saw madly at the strings. It made her want to laugh because she, Esmerelda Fine, a woman who had always prided herself on her stern practicality, had been foolish enough to fall in love with a man who was not only a gunslinger, but an avowed bachelor. It made her want to burst into tears.

She might have given in to that last urge if her sensitive nostrils hadn’t detected a whiff of smoke. She whirled around, clapping a hand over her galloping heart.

“You do delight in sneaking up on me, don’t you?” she accused.

Billy stepped out of the shadows of the yard, a lit cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth. “Since I was here first, it could be argued that you snuck up on me.”

Painfully aware that Billy, shirtless and barefoot in the faltering moonlight, just might be more than she could bear at the moment, Esmerelda dropped her scowl to his cigar. “You really shouldn’t be smoking right now. Where did you get that?”

“Ma’s private stash.” His mouth curved into a rueful grin. “I knew there’d be hell to pay if I made off with her pipe tobacco or her snuff.” He flicked the glowing stub into the darkness before arching one tawny eyebrow at her. “There. You satisfied?”

Having recently learned that she never would be, Esmerelda snapped, “Nor should you be out here without a shirt. What if you catch a chill?”