Free This Fierce Splendor by Iris Johansen Page B

her.
    Her footsteps sounded firm and confident on the rough wooden boards that formed the sidewalk. Her words to Mr. Judkins had rung with confidence too. How she wished she felt as confident as the sounds of her words and steps. Her palms were moist with nervousness beneath her cotton gloves, and she had a sudden urge to turn around and run back into the hotel and up the stairs to the safety of her room. She didn’t want to be out here alone.
    She had become very accustomed to the tiny town of Hell’s Bluff in the past few days, yet tonight this street appeared strange and unfamiliar in the darkness. The store and the bank on her side of the street were dark and she presumed deserted. The only establishment ablaze with lights and noise was the saloon on the corner across the street. The Nugget had a sign in huge red letters above its swinging oak doors, and no one could be more familiar than she with that sign. She had stood staring at it for three days in a row until dusk had fallen on the town. It had been a very important part of her plan for Dominic Delaney to know she was there and that he couldn’t escape her presence no matter where he chose to spend his time.
    But standing safely outside on the opposite side of the street and entering the rowdy brightly lit Nugget were two entirely different things. She knew Dominic might regard her appearance there as deliberate defiance of the warning he had given her. And there was no question in her mind that she must go into the Nugget tonight.
    She was growing desperate. No matter how chary she was with her small hoard of funds, they wouldn’t last for very much longer. She must at least persuade Dominic to talk to her. Surely he was softening just a little in his attitude. He had sent the Chinese boy with the chair and the water this afternoon. She was aware the small courtesy was far from a capitulation; it might represent a tiny yet significiant break in the wall of his resistance, however.
    But tonight she would be launching a further assault, invading another forbidden territory he regarded as his own. After tonight he would realize she would dare to go anywhere necessary to pursue him. Oh, merciful heavens, she was frightened, but it was a risk she simply had to take.
    She picked her way carefully across the hard-packed dirt of the street. Several horses were tied at the hitching rail in front of the Nugget, and she caught a pungent whiff of liniment and manure as she passed. She was closer now, and the laughter and conversation pouring from beyond those swinging doors was much louder. Suddenly she heard a cascade of words that caused her eyes to widen in surprised recognition. It had to be Ben Travis. No one but the stage driver had both that volume and that raucous a vocabulary.
    She paused outside the swinging doors. Panic was rising within her. If saloons were forbidden to ladies, surely there must be a good reason.
    She took a deep breath and drew up to her full height. She mustn’t be such a coward. This was old thinking in a new world. She pushed open the swinging doors and stepped inside. The sights and the sounds of the room instantly struck her with such force, it momentarily banished her nervousness.
    Smoke. Eddies of smoke curled around her and infiltrated her lungs. Scent. The sour odor of beer and whiskey and sweat mixed with the kerosene of the lamps in the circular chandelier hanging from a chain in the center of the room. Sound. The tinkle of a Chickering upright piano in the corner of the room and the roar of voices that had overflowed into the street. Men. So many men. The majority appeared to be unshaven miners in shirt-sleeves and coarse rough trousers crowding up to the long bar at the opposite side of the room and sitting at crudely crafted tables scattered around the room. She could see an occasional cowboy who was dressed in the same tight denim pants and boots as Patrick Delaney had worn. A veryfew men wore the elegant longer coats and