A Promise in Defiance: Romance in the Rockies Book 3 (2 page)

Both Logan and his
horse, Flint, warily eyed the busy street of Defiance. It hadn’t changed much.
Filthy miners flowed like a river in spring, mud flaking off their clothes as
they rode along on their horses and mules. The constant din of shovels banging on
the gold pans hanging from the saddles reminded him of bells on Christmas
morning. Above the noise, men shouted and cursed as they sought to maneuver
wagons pulled by antsy horses into the current of traffic. Freight shifted and
creaked. Leather squeaked.

Then Logan became aware
of faint whistling accompanied by strange rumbling thunder, building in volume.
To his surprise, a small but unstoppable herd of Black Angus rushed down the
thoroughfare. The traffic parted like the Red Sea. Logan kneed Flint off to the
side to give the animals room. The roiling river of beef was controlled by a
handful of cowboys yipping and slapping ropes to keep things flowing.

They passed Logan by
and he resumed his trek. Ranching had moved into the valley. That was new.

He drew his horse up in
front of the Iron Horse Saloon, puzzled by the silence from within. It sure
didn’t
sound
like the West’s most wide-open saloon and brothel any more.
The red, white, and blue sign over the door explained everything and nothing.
It proudly proclaimed “Town Hall”.

Town Hall, huh?
Though, to Logan’s way of thinking, there wasn’t much difference between the
kind of man who frequented a public house, a cathouse, or a courthouse.

He scratched his head,
resettled his dusty Stetson. Maybe Defiance had changed some. Two minutes in
town and he hadn’t seen a fight or a prostitute yet.

He caught a heavily bearded
miner passing by on a mule. “Excuse me, friend, I’m looking for the Broken
Spoke.”

The man pulled up on
the reins. “Broken Spoke ain’t there no more, son. It closed. You could try—”

“I’m actually looking
for the building itself.”

The man’s bushy
eyebrows scrunched together and he rubbed his chin. “Well, it’s still there,
such as it is.” He chucked a thumb over his shoulder. “Turn left at the assayer’s
office. Follow the street straight into Tent Town. You can’t miss it. It’s in
pretty rough shape. Say,” he grinned with the possibility of an idea, “you
gonna open another saloon in its place?”

Logan grinned back. “Not
exactly.” He tapped the brim of his hat. “Much obliged for the information.”

“Well, hold on,” the
man urged his mule closer. “Seein’ as you’re new in town, I reckon I’d be doing
you a favor to warn you about Delilah.”

“Delilah?”

“She bought all five saloons
in town. Closed four of ’em. She’s openin’ a new Iron Horse of sorts. You know
it?”

The good mood Logan had
thought to entertain faded some. “Yes, I know the Iron Horse.”

“But bigger and bawdier
than that place she had down in Austin. And she don’t want no competition. She’s
made that more than clear, especially to the saloon owners who didn’t want to
sell.”

“I see.” Logan was not
surprised by the woman’s goal, only at the timing of her
arrival . . . and his. “Well, I thank you, friend, for the
information.” He nudged Flint and headed for Tent Town. Logan already missed
his flock of amateur sinners. He surveyed the street and its mud-encrusted citizens.
He’d vowed never to come back to this place.

And in a way, maybe he
hadn’t. Certainly, the old Logan had not returned. The old Logan was dead and
buried.

Only problem was, he
feared this town was capable of resurrecting him.

Logan jerked the
warped, dilapidated door nearly off its hinges to get inside the Broken Spoke.
The door’s resistance was a harbinger. The inside sucked the wind out of his
soul.

No part of the saloon
had gone untouched by the elements. The canvas walls, anchored to waist-high pine
knee walls, were ripped in a dozen places and flapped lazily in the late summer
breeze. The roof, all but gone, hung in mildewed tatters. The back wall of
warped, graying pine still stood, but leaned inward at a sharp angle. If it fell,
it would crash onto the sagging, rough-sawed plank bar. Broken chairs, dead
leaves, and shards of glass littered the floor. He wandered in and brushed his
hand over a rusty heap of a buck stove crumbling in the center of the room.

Disheartened, Logan exhaled
and rubbed his neck. “Lord, I’ll need an army to fix up this place.”

“So why bother?” The
sultry feminine voice from behind him made Logan whirl.

A woman stood in the
doorway, beautiful, curvaceous . . . dangerous. She had her
lovely auburn hair swept up and back in a bun while jaunty little curls ran
down her neck. The unusual olive tint to her skin fascinated him. Her red silk
dress clung to her tightly, almost like a second skin, and ample breasts fought
their restraint. Her eyes, the color of polished amber, glittered like a cat
eying easy prey.

Logan removed his hat.
He could appreciate her beauty. He could also appreciate the way she wielded it
like a sword. “Can I help you?”

She strolled in slowly,
smoothly, each movement of her body calculated to entice and mesmerize her
prey. “I’m Delilah. You the owner of this place?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Her
method of hunting to him was, however, an old, worn-out strategy. 

“I’ve been waiting for
you.”

In more ways than one
,
Logan supposed. He sensed his first battle in Defiance had walked right through
his door. He scratched the thick stubble on his jaw. “I suppose you want to buy
me out?”

Her eyebrows rose
almost imperceptibly.

“I’ve heard you’re
trying to shut out the competition.”

“Hmmm.” She pondered
that a moment before sauntering over to the bar. “Doesn’t that make me a smart
businesswoman?”

“I suppose so.”

She turned to him and
leaned back on the bar, striking a seductive pose. “I’d rather be friends than
enemies, mister. This place is a wreck. It’ll cost you more to fix it up than
you’ll make in a year. I’ll give you what you paid for it.”

“Long as I leave?”

“Or at least don’t open
another saloon.”

“Well,” he rubbed his
eyebrow and meandered over to the bar to stand beside her. “You don’t have to
worry about that. I’m not opening a saloon.” He fought to hold back a smile. “But
I can honestly say I hope my business will be in direct competition with yours.”

She scowled and stood
up to him, her pink lips forming a tight, unhappy line. “What is your business?”

“I’m going to open a
church.”

It took a moment, but
when his meaning registered Delilah’s mouth fell open. “A church?”

“A church.”

“So, that means you’re
a . . .?”

“Preacher. I’m here to
share the Gospel with all the sinners in Defiance—professional and otherwise. I
hope to win souls for the Lord . . . help make this town a place
for decent folk to live.”

“Oh,” she chuckled,
backing away from him, “oh, if this don’t beat all.” Delilah shook her head as
if she either couldn’t believe her luck or his foolishness. “Preacher, have you
got your work cut out for you.”

“So my Boss tells me.”

She rested her hands on
her hips and looked up at him through long, dark lashes.

She sure has pretty skin.
My, if I was a weaker man . . .

“I’ve come here to put
Defiance back on the map, Preacher. I’m gonna turn this town back into one
hell-raising, hard-drinking boomtown.” Her eyes flickered with heat. Licking
her lips, she dragged dainty, manicured hands slowly across the tops of her
breasts. “If I were you, I wouldn’t stand in my way.”

“Two Spears?” Naomi
strode to the edge of the yard and peered into the forest of pines. “Two
Spears, come back to the house this instant!”

A stubborn silence
greeted her command. “Two Spears?” she called again, her frustration growing. She
hated sounding annoyed. Charles’s son from a previous relationship, somehow he wound
up spending more time with Naomi than his father. Time that was tense and
unpleasant.

Two Spears watched
everything she did with dark eyes full of hate. She couldn’t blame him. His Indian
mother had been murdered by white soldiers, his renegade stepfather had been
shot dead by Charles. Not a recipe for raising a happy child.

Lord, reaching this boy
is going to take love and compassion I’m not sure I have. Fill me up with Yours.
Shaking her bangs out of her eyes, she yelled again but tried to sound more
concerned than angry. “Two Spears, where are you?”

Hoofbeats, muffled by
the forest, reached her ears and she turned toward the road. A moment later,
Charles emerged from the trees, coming in at an easy lope. In spite of her
stress, she took a moment to enjoy the sight of her handsome husband, dark hair
blowing beneath his Stetson, body moving as one with the horse, riding as
effortlessly as she breathed. He’d gone out to survey timber. She was relieved
he hadn’t taken all day to do it.

He saw her and waved,
but something of her turmoil must have showed. His light expression faded as he
rode up, his narrow beard and mustache framing a mouth tense with concern. He dismounted
quickly and wrapped the reins around the hitching post in front of their cabin.

“What’s the matter?” Striding
to her, he surveyed the yard. “Where’s Two Spears?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you
don’t know?”

She raised her hands to
her hips and tried to let that be her only expression of annoyance. “Exactly
that. I asked him to catch some fish for supper while I pulled weeds in the
garden. When I went to check on him, he was nowhere in sight.”

Charles lifted his hat
and ran a hand through dark wavy hair as he searched the yard again. Dropping
the hat back in place, he fluttered his lips in exasperation.

Naomi and Charles had
inherited
Two Spears the day after their wedding, not even two weeks ago. His
grandfather, the great Ute chief, had dumped him on their doorstep. The
struggle to adapt to marriage
and
a child was wearing on them both.

“You think he’s run off
again?” he asked, staring into the trees.

She sighed. “I should
have been watching him more closely, but it’s been over a week since the last
time. I thought he was finally settled.”

“More likely, he’s just
patient. Like his grandfather.” Charles turned, unwound the reins, and swung up
into his saddle. His Southern drawl, which normally poured off his tongue like Tupelo
honey, couldn’t mask his regret. “I’m sorry, Naomi.” Leather squeaked as he
sighed deeply. “It seems my past—”

“May never stop
haunting us.” She shook her head and laid her hand on his knee. “I said I was
in this for the long haul. I won’t back away, but
you
can’t keep avoiding
that boy. Try to find it in your heart to treat him like a son.”

“Can
you
? He’s
an Indian.”

The statement shocked
her. “He’s a child.”

“Naomi, out here, he’s
the enemy. Trying to raise an Indian boy as a son in Colorado will be harder
than raising a Negro as a son in Alabama.”

Offended, and a little
surprised at Charles, she stepped back. “Are you worried what people will
think?”

He snorted in disgust. “The
naiveté of that question, princess, shows you don’t understand what we—
I
—have
gotten us into.”

“Then explain it.”

He reached into his
saddle bag and withdrew a newspaper. “This will.” He handed it to her. “Read
it. Emilio’s working on the bunkhouse. I’ll have him find the boy. I have a
meeting in town.” Naomi shot him a scowl and he raised his hand to ward it off.
“It’ll only take a few minutes and then I’ll join the search.”

She unfolded the
newspaper as he galloped away. The front page of
The Chieftain
was
crammed with stories, many of them about the Utes and the trouble the renegades
were stirring up. Two Spears’s stepfather, One-Who-Cries, had truly been a
bloodthirsty savage who attacked without mercy, but in typical fashion, the
newspaper was littered with hateful references to all the Utes—lumping good and
bad together.

“No peace commission until
the Utes are well-whipped
[1]
,”
she whispered, scanning the lengthy article. “Ten dollars a head would be a
fair price to offer for the
ears
of every dead Ute . . .”
Repulsed, she flinched over the sentiment. “ . . .prompt and
vigorous action against the savages . . .what these savages want
is plunder and scalps . . . the first and essential thing is to
punish these redskins promptly and so terribly as to make them feel that they
can no longer . . .ravish white women with impunity.”

Disgusted, she folded the
newspaper closed with a snap and glared at the cloudless blue sky.
They call
that journalism?
It sickened her, the slanted, narrow-minded rants. The
vast majority of Indians were peaceful. Most of the tribes had surrendered and
moved to reservations. Granted, they were starving and at the mercy of the
federal government there, but they were peaceful. Their leaders often spoke out
against the renegades, well aware violence only earned more of the white man’s
contempt.  

Two Spears—when he wasn’t
scowling—had a sweet, handsome face. Long dark lashes, shoulder-length black
hair that shimmered like a raven’s feathers, and skin the color of coffee
touched with cream. But life on the reservation had made the ten-year-old hard
and suspicious, and that broke her heart.

As far as she was
concerned, the hard times were behind him now. He was in a good home, with
people who cared about him, who would come to love him. Here he could learn
about Jesus, find forgiveness, discover a life of peace. He had a future and it
was bright with hope and opportunity.

God had brought the boy
into their lives, and Naomi resolved to show him compassion, his father an
abundance of grace, and both of them patience.

If it killed her.

She could do all things
through Christ, after all, including love two stubborn men from different
worlds.

McIntyre crushed his
cigar out in Davis Ferrell’s ash tray and squinted at the lawyer. “What do you
mean, you don’t know?” He frowned, aggravated the question had leapt from his
mouth for a second time that day.

A skinny man, dapper to
a fault and as brave as a mouse, Davis shook his head. He leaned forward,
nervously tapping short, clean fingernails on the desk. “I’m sorry. I’ll have
to dig deeper, Mr. McIntyre. Whoever is buying up the saloons is using a
company to hide his name. But I do know where to look. The company is based in
San Francisco.”

McIntyre thought what
he’d asked of Davis was a simple request.
Apparently not.
“Well, in the
meantime, I’ll find out who’s pushing these deals through here in town.”

“That, at least, I can
help you with.”

McIntyre tilted his
head, pleased. “I’m listening.”

“Each time the saloon
owners have come here this week to sign the paperwork, a woman has accompanied
them, signing for MLM Company. She goes by the name of Delilah Goodnight.”

The blood in McIntyre’s
veins ran cold and he mentally kicked himself. He should’ve known closing the
Iron Horse would create an opportunity. Like nature, Delilah abhorred a vacuum.

He’d seen the woman
convert small, grimy, hardscrabble mining towns into shameless, godless meccas
that would make Lucifer blush. Men rode for miles to experience her unique
forms of entertainment. The worst kind of men.

So she was here to
capitalize on the Iron Horse’s demise, as well as the ready supply of lonely
miners. Then today’s business was of the utmost importance. He pulled his
pocket watch out and checked the time. Five after two. Where was this buyer for
the Broken Spoke?

As if in answer to the
question, a man slowly pushed open Davis’s office door. He dragged his hat from
his head as McIntyre acknowledged him with a nod.

The stranger stepped
into the room, moving confidently like a tiger in command of his environment, although
this animal wore a Colt .45. The room shrank under the gentleman’s impressive
height and a build so solid it could make a big man feel small. McIntyre was
not intimidated, but neither did he like being towered over.

He rose to meet the man
nearly at eye-level. Shoulder-length ash-blond hair, stubbly, dimpled chin, and
intense blue eyes struck a jarringly familiar chord. “I know you,” McIntyre
whispered.

The stranger nodded. “Yes,
we’ve met.”

When McIntyre heard the
slightly raspy voice, the memories rushed back.

The stranger seemed to
know it and crushed his hat to his chest. “I wondered if you’d remember me.” He
hooked a thumb into his cartridge belt. “You took everything I had a few years
back. My money, my stake, everything . . .”

Tension thick as cigar
smoke filled the room.

“Yes. I recall.”
McIntyre had the urge to apologize, but quelled it, and tried to read the man’s
face, which was as forthcoming as granite.

“That card game was the
best thing that ever happened to me.”

McIntyre tilted his
head in surprise. “That is . . .magnanimous of you. We had harsh
words . . .to say the least.”

“You were fair. You
warned me. You told me to either quit playing or quit drinking.”

“You did neither, and
when the cards turned, you lost your temper.”

A glaring
understatement. The man had started a brawl in the Iron Horse still talked
about today. He had at first refrained from using the well-worn gun on his hip.
Instead, he’d thrown punches like a sledgehammer, sending men tumbling and furniture
flying. When McIntyre finally intervened, the young firecracker had drawn his
revolver with uncanny speed.

But McIntyre had been
faster.

Barely.

A draw.

McIntyre hadn’t had a
closer match before or since. The slightest drag on his holster and this
stranger could have put a bullet in him. Instead, even though the other man had
cleared leather, something had stopped them both from firing. Fingers on their
triggers, revolvers at identical heights, they’d merely stared for a moment,
then nodded and holstered their weapons. Both would live to fight another day.

The truce had not been
born of fear . . .but of respect.

“Well, I don’t act like
that no more.” The man extended his hand. McIntyre didn’t hesitate. They shook,
burying the hatchet. “Logan Tillane, in case you forgot.”

McIntyre smiled
ruefully. “I did not.” He sat as Logan and Davis exchanged pleasantries.

“So, I’ve looked the
building over,” Logan said to both men as he took the only other seat in the
small office. “It’s rough, all right.” He shifted to McIntyre. “I don’t reckon
you have a nicer one for the same money?”

“Unfortunately, no.”
McIntyre sucked on his teeth, noting the differences in Tillane versus the last
time he’d seen the man. A mere boy then, but lean and mean, he’d crawled out of
Defiance, bloody, bruised, and penniless. He’d gone on to harness the rage,
becoming a gunhand the toughest men feared, and wealthy men hired.

McIntyre couldn’t
reconcile that boy with the man before him. Logan exuded quiet confidence
instead of barely-controlled rage. He was dressed modestly, and dirty from
traveling, yet his clothes were not threadbare. He had packed on several more
pounds of muscle, evidence the man was living well. His hair had been trimmed
sometime in recent memory by a real barber, although it needed a healthy trim
now. Not to mention a shave.