This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Connie Brockway.

Chapter One

Far Enough,

Texas, 1883

Jim Coyne balanced his chair on its back legs and hooked his ankles over the top of the hitching rail outside the Cattleman’s Saloon. It was as good a place as any to keep an eye out for “news.” Although after four weeks Jim had concluded that “news”, at least, as Jim knew it, was about as likely to show up in Far Enough, Texas, as Queen Victoria.

A week ago the first of the cattle drives had started drifting north on their way to the market. The huge herds passed on either side of town, a river of beef parting to flow past an island of human habitation. Instead of dumping fish on the town’s shores, this particular river had the unfortunate tendency to dump teenage cowboys. After weeks on the range the boys were always surly, always ready for trouble, and always looking to establish their manhood. In other words, they were just like testy adolescents anywhere, which meant that though entirely dislikable, they were not—much to Jim’s annoyance—desperadoes.

Depressed, Jim squinted up at the sky. Blue. Endless, vacant expanses of bright blue rolling off in every direction. Even after nearly a month here, he still hadn’t gotten used to so much unfilled sky. It was eerie. Like the canvas of a landscape artist with only one color on his palette.

Jim tipped his hat over his eyes to shade his face and stared disconsolately down the street. On either side of the main thoroughfare, second-story false fronts leaned across the street toward one another like tipsy neighbors nodding hello. The low horizon should have held some charm for someone used to measuring a building’s height in hundreds of feet. Should have, but didn’t.

In New York, brownstones and steel filled the sky with something to look at. Evenings there were illuminated by sulfurous gaslight, not silver moonlight, and the stink of river sewage, not cows, scented the air.

God, he missed it.

“You don’t look too happy, Mr. Coyne.”

Jim had almost forgotten his companion, the local newspaper’s twenty-year-old editor, a lad with a fearsome case of hero worship and the unlikely name of Mortimer James. It sometimes seemed to Jim that the Wild West was populated solely by children and broken-down relics. At thirty-four, Jim feared he was quickly joining the brotherhood of the latter.

“I’m gonna die here, Mort. You’ll find me tomorrow, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed, just sitting here. You’ll knock me over and you’ll hear this odd sound—like a pea rattling around in a soup kettle, and you’ll know my brain simply dried up overnight, having atrophied like any unused limb.”

Mort grinned and slapped a folded copy of what Jim assumed was the latest issue of the Far Enough Guardian against his thigh. “Ah, Mr. Coyne. It isn’t that bad. You’ve already been here a month. Eleven more and you’ll be back in New York.”

“Eleven. Jesus. I hope this isn’t supposed to be a pep talk, Mort.”

“Make the best of the situation, Mr. Coyne. You told me the story comes first, that a reporter makes sacrifices for his craft.”

“Yeah, and I stand by my words,” Jim said. “But you gotta be alive to write the damn story, and much more of this town and I’m going to die of boredom.”

“You really hate it that much?” Mort asked, his voice roughening.

Jim shook his head, giving up. He just couldn’t hurt the kid’s feelings. “It’s not here I hate so much, Mort. It’s
being
here. I’m a political reporter. I report political events, not how many cows pass through town on a given day.”

“Steers,” Mort corrected.

“Whatever. The point is, I don’t belong here. I belong in New York, wading through the graft of Tammany Hall.” His mouth curved with tender nostalgia.

“I have a friend who works for the New York Daily and telegraphs me stuff,” Mort began, and Jim closed his eyes. He’d heard this before. It appeared young Mort had compiled a veritable dossier on his life. “I asked about that sewage scandal, and he said if you hadn’t insisted your paper print your story without hard evidence to back it up, you’d still be in New York.”

Jim snorted. “I wrote the truth.”

As any self-respecting newsman would have, Mort ignored this piece of nonsense. “He also said you used real suspect methods in getting your information. Like blackmail.”

Jim shrugged. He hadn’t blackmailed anyone. Intimated consequences, perhaps, but then, the people he’d been intimating things to weren’t exactly pure as the driven snow.

“You’ve got a reputation for being one of the most unapologetic, single-minded, ruthless reporters ever to hit the streets. My friend says that’s what got you in trouble.”

Mort’s eyes, Jim noted, were gleaming with adulation. The kid was all right.

“Nah,” Jim said, unhooking his ankles and coming down on the front legs of his chair with a bang. “The reason I’m here is simple, Mort. This is what happens to dumb-ass crusading reporters who piss off their publisher by getting said publisher’s paper sued for libel. They get a trumped-up assignment as ‘field correspondent’ and a one-way ticket to purgatory on the Union Pacific. Or, considering the heat, maybe it’s hell.”

“Having trouble with the heat, Jim?” a voice boomed as a meaty paw smacked Jim between the shoulder blades.

Had to be Vance Calhoun, the local bank president. He was the only man in town who took every opportunity to intimidate other men, even under the pretense of bonhomie. Jim knew a lot of politicians in New York who clapped backs just like Vance. And a lot of police captains. He rubbed his jaw in memory.

“You on your way in?” Vance jerked his big, florid face toward the saloon doors. “Let me buy you a drink.” He glanced at Mort. “I’d even buy you a sarsaparilla, boy.” He sauntered through the doors without bothering to wait for an answer. Who wouldn’t want to share bar space with the town’s richest citizen?

“What a horse’s ass.”

“Yup. But a rich ass. And an ass with the only private stash of honest-to-God whiskey behind the bar counter.” Jim glanced up at the sky and considered his options. A drink with Vance—albeit a free drink—or more staring at all that blue nothing. It was a toss-up.

The doors to the saloon suddenly banged open. A kid no more than fifteen years old, acne-scarred and skinny as a Seven Dials whore, and dripping blood, stumbled out. He pitched into the hitching rail and somersaulted over it, landing in a crumpled heap.

A pair of bandanna-sporting boys followed him out, boot heels aggressively drilling the raised plank walk as they stalked toward the stairs at the end of the promenade.

“We ain’t done with you yet!” one of them shouted at the limp figure. Jim didn’t like the odds and he didn’t like the look in the red-shot eyes of the truculent-looking boys bearing down on the skinny kid. The kid moaned. Blood dribbled down his chin. Jim swore under his breath.

The boys were nearly to him. With a sense of weary resignation, Jim stood up and stepped in front of them, blocking their way. He was a relatively large man, broad in the shoulders. He made a good block. The duo stumbled to a stop.

“He looks sorry,” Jim said.

“You say somethin’, old man?” the boy nearest Jim asked. Jim winced at the unfair appellation. Thirty-four wasn’t that old.

The boy snickered. He was so blond his hair looked white, and Jim would have bet money he’d yet to make his first acquaintance with a razor. Which only meant he would be itching to prove his manhood in other ways. Like stomping unconscious boys, or “old men,”into bloody messes.

“Your friend down there looks like he’s sorry for whatever he’s done,” Jim explained patiently, pointing at the kid who had begun a slow crawl across the rut-riven street.

“Not half as sorry as he’s gonna be.” The other boy shouldered his way in front of his pal. He was short, plug-shaped, and grimy. “And what the hell business is it of yours anyway?”

“Lookee these duds, will ya, Tom?” The blonde flicked the edge of Jim’s coat with a grubby forefinger.

“Where the hell did you come from, greenhorn? Though a feller your age ain’t so much green as moldy.”

The blonde broke into uproarious laughter and Jim smiled weakly. A wit.

“Man comes from New York, Tommy,” Mort supplied helpfully, peeling a splinter off the rail and popping it into his mouth.

“I told you not to call me ‘Tommy,’ you pencil-necked grebe,” the squat boy said. Mort raised his hands in surrender and Tommy-Boy returned his attention to Jim. “New York, huh? Well, Mr. New York,” he reached up both hands, “you better learn to mind your own business,” he placed both hands on Jim’s shoulders, “if you’re thinking to live long in these parts.” He shoved.

Jim didn’t budge. The boy scowled, broke into a pathetically sly grin, and scrunched down, telegraphing his intention way ahead of the act of sending a round, wind-milling blow at Jim’s head. Jim ducked it with a lazy bend of his head.

Cowboys, he thought pityingly, had no idea of how a real brawl went. On a Saturday night in the Bowery, this pair would last five minutes. Ten, tops.

Straightening, Jim caught Tommy’s arm on its return flight and spun him around, shoving him heavily into the saloon’s exterior wall. The boy’s breath came out in an audible—and rancid—whoosh, and Jim stepped back, hoping that would be the end of it. He’d no desire to bruise any knuckles or loosen any teeth. Particularly his own. He
was
getting old, and Tommy looked like the type who, once encouraged, would have the tenacity and brains of a punch-drunk bare-knuckle brawler.

“You better watch it, mister!” The blonde’s hands curled into fists at his side, but his eyes betrayed hesitation and he didn’t come any farther. “You don’t wanna mess with us. You’ll end up like . . . like . . .”

“Like?” Mort prompted innocently, rolling the wood splinter to the corner of his mouth.

Jim looked around. The kid in the street had vanished.

“Where the hell’d he go?” The blonde demanded, hanging over the edge of the rail. “Mister, you got a powerful lot of hurt comin’—”

“You boys better come back inside and have a drink,” a feminine voice advised as plump breasts cushioned up against Jim’s arms on either side.

The boys’ eyes glazed over. In a split second their aggression cartwheeled into pure adolescent lust as Merry and Terry, the Carmichael twins, postured within arm’s reach. No bigger than circus ponies, and covered in just about the same amount of stained satin and limp feathers, they were pretty and plump, like bread dough on the rise, all fragrant and moist. Right now their eyes, most of the time as empty as a politician’s promise, were hinting things no boy had the right to expect and very few men ever got.

“Go on,” Merry purred. “Don’t disappoint me. I’ll be right in and . . . we’ll get acquainted.”

“Skedaddle, boys.”

The pair hesitated.

“You can keep my seat warm,” Terry encouraged huskily. They just about tripped over each other in their hurry to comply.

“Thanks,” Jim said, dividing his smile between the women.

“I don’t know why you came to my rescue, but I appreciate it.”

Merry patted his arm. Terry snorted in amusement.

“You’re a big, fine-looking man, Mr. Coyne,” Merry said—at least, Jim thought it was Merry. He never had figured out which was which. “And I knows you’re a fancy journalist and have smarts that make Terry there look like a cracker barrel next to a feast, but you don’t know jack about some things, do y’all?”

“No, ma’am,” he agreed earnestly.

“You poor man, you must not have any womenfolk in your family,” Terry said.

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