Free A Heart So Wild by Johanna Lindsey Page B

knees and clutching his injured area, his face sickly pale. As the cowboy fell, Chandos drew his gun.
    Another man might have fired, but Chandos did not kill for the sake of killing. He merely aimed the gun, prepared to shoot if he had to.
    Town Marshal McCluskie, who had gotten to his feet at the start of trouble, made no move to interfere. He was not in the same league as his predecessor, who had tried to tame Newton. For a brief moment the stranger’s blue eyes looked at the marshal. The message was clear. He was not a man to trifle with. Besides, you didn’t confront a stranger who already had his gun drawn.
    The other two cowboys inched forward from the stairs to collect their friend, hands outstretched in a conciliatory gesture. “Easy, mister. Bucky’s got an empty basket when it comes to sense. He’s not tied too tight, but he won’t be causin’ any more trouble.”
    â€œLike hell I—”
    The cowboy jabbed an elbow in Bucky’s side as he hauled him to his feet. “Dumb shit! Shut your trap while you still got one. You’re lucky he didn’t blow your head off!”
    â€œI’ll be in town a few more hours,” Chandos told them, “if your friend wants to resume.”
    â€œNo sir! We’ll just take Bucky back to camp, and if he still ain’t got no sense, then we’ll beat some into him. You won’t be seein’ him again.”
    That was questionable, but Chandos let it pass. He would just have to be on his guard until he left Newton.
    The moment Chandos’s gun slipped back into its holster, the noise in the room picked up again. The marshal sat down with a relieved sigh, and the card game continued. Altercations of this type weren’t even worth discussing. It took some bloodshed to stir excitement in Newton.
    Chandos left Tuttle’s saloon a few minutes later. He still had the other saloons to cover in his search for Trask, as well as the dance halls and bordellos. The latter might just claim some of his time too, for he hadn’t been with a woman since before leaving Texas, and his unexpected run-ins with Courtney Harte in her goddamn nightgown hadn’t helped.
    As he thought of her, he saw the ball of hair in the dirt a few yards from where he had tossed it. As he watched, a light breeze rolled it back toward him. It stopped a few inches from his feet. His impulse was to step on it before it blew away again. Chandos picked it up and put it back in his vest pocket.

Chapter 11
    W HILE the good folks were off to church that Sunday morning, Reed Taylor was sitting in his parlor-office, one of the two rooms he kept for himself above his saloon. He had a chair pulled up to the window and a stack of dime novels beside the chair.
    He was a fanatic for tales of high adventure. Ned Buntline had once been his favorite writer, but tales about Buffalo Bill by Bill’s friend Prentiss Ingraham had taken the top spot recently. Reed loved Buffalo Bill’s own novels, too, but his all-time favorite was still Seth Jones, or The Captive of the Frontier , by Edward Sylvester Ellis. That one was Beadle and Adams’s first dime novel to feature a Wild West background.
    Reed was thoroughly engrossed in his fifth reading of Bowie Knife Ben, The Little Hunter of the Nor’west by Oll Coomes when Ellie May sauntered out of his bedroom, purposely distracting him with a loud yawn. But that was the extent of his distraction. Her scantily clad body held no interest for him that morning because he had used it so well the night before.
    â€œYou shoulda woke me, sugar,” Ellie May said throatily as she came up behind Reed,draping her arms around his neck. “I thought we was gonna spend the whole day in bed.”
    â€œYou thought wrong,” Reed murmured absently. “Now run along to your own room—that’s a good girl.”
    He patted her hand, not even bothering to look up at her. Ellie May’s mouth screwed