The Untamed Heart

“According to your verbiage, gentlemen, if I remember correctly, the frontiersman is an idealized figure, his plow a sacred symbol, your railroad a harbinger of progress. Gold and silver were the thematic notes sounded endlessly in this brochure with land, open space and freedom tinkling in counterpoint. That sounds like a vision of the new Eden and promise enough for a man to abandon his share of a family farm in the East and pack up his family and head west.”

Hyde jerked his head at the window. “Look out there, Devlin. All you’ll see is an endless bonanza. The Union Pacific firmly believes in the natural process of individual enterprise. Any determined man can share in the good things if he works hard enough. And the railroad’s going to be there to provide it for him. If he’s smart.”

“Damned right,” Strobridge said. “I’m not saying you’ll find fools everywhere, Devlin. Most enterprising folks wouldn’t dare come up against the power of a company like the Union Pacific.” He punctuated this by shoving one finger skyward.

“You’ll find all the crazies you want in Prosperity Gulch,” Hyde added, chomping on his cigar. “Most damned impertinent bunch of poor cusses you’ll ever meet. Eking out a living from the South Platte on less than twenty cents a day. After the big mine exploded last year and killed a handful of them, you’d think they’d all just pack up, head back east, and give it up. And yet nothing short of the cavalry will get them out of our path.”

“They’ll move,” Strobridge snorted. “Our line needs to go through that land if we’re going to get track around the mountains to the rich mining towns in the deeper valleys. This time, they’ll move. They’ll have no choice.”

“Threats never moved pride,” Sloan said, remembering all too clearly the beleaguered tinners in Cornwall standing firm with their demands in the face of threats from the mine owners. All threats had accomplished was bloodshed.

“Money should move pride, Devlin, and it hasn’t. I’ll be damned if I return to my boss in Boston when this month is out without clearing the way for our line.”

“By driving the people from Prosperity Gulch.”

“After our business in Denver I’m sure as hellfire going to try, even if it means calling in the cavalry to do it. We’ll just have to convince those folks that when their town collapses, as it surely will, their lots will have no more market value than town lots on the moon.”

“Where is this worthless town?”

“Ten miles straight north of Deadwood Run.” Hyde jerked his chin at the gambler who dozed in his chair. “Our gambling friend can’t abide smooth liquor, Devlin. I wonder if it’s the same with smooth women.”

Gathering up his winnings, Sloan bid Hyde and Strobridge good-afternoon and left their railcar for his own some three cars back. Curiosity had drawn him from the overcrowded heat of his car several hours before and had delivered him to the railroad men’s poker table. He was glad it had. He now had an idea where he might be getting off the line.

Dare to make a difference…. His father’s words seemed to echo from the rhythmic click of the rails as he moved briskly through the cars. He’d dared once to champion a cause for the beleaguered against the mighty and had failed. Opportunity was again here. Was it a cause worth championing? Perhaps. The mighty couldn’t get mightier than the Union Pacific Railroad, and the people any more beleaguered. Were they worth closer scrutiny? Absolutely. It was all waiting for him ten miles north of Deadwood Run. He could turn on his heel anytime and leave that town and those people. He had no ties to bind him there.

Just as he stepped between the last two cars, something jabbed him in the back.

“I’ll take what’s mine now, gent” The gambler’s snarl rose above the roar of the train.

Sloan went still. Heat billowed up from the train’s belly. “Is this how you show thanks in the American West, stealing from the man who covered your cheating hide?”

“You’re right about that, gent I’m going to steal from you what I should have won. But in the West we go one step farther with English gents we don’t like.”

Sloan felt the gun nudge deeper against his back. “I didn’t take you for a coward.”

“Turn around then,” the gambler growled. “I’d rather look into your eyes when the bullet finds your liver. Slow and easy. Just turn around.”

With hands hanging loosely at his sides, Sloan turned in the cramped space.

“You’re a queer bird, gent,” the gambler muttered as he rid Sloan of his sack of coins and the folded bills in his pocket. Tucking these into his topcoat, he squinted at Sloan’s embroidered plum waistcoat and starched cravat made of the finest French linen. His eyes hardened on the ruby stickpin nestled in the linen folds.

Sloan flicked his eyes over the gambler’s shoulder into the railcar, where several passengers loitered. “You’d best shoot me now before the passengers begin to suspect foul play. You’ll have the small matter of my body to dispose of, you know.”

Profuse color climbed from the gambler’s collar. “The prairie’s as good a place as any for you, gent. The crows and buzzards will pick your bones clean before anyone knows you’re there. A wagon might not come by for a week or longer.”

Sloan allowed a hint of a curve to soften his mouth. “Then what are you waiting for?”

The gambler’s eyes narrowed. Doubt, suspicion, chagrin swept over his handsome features, but not a fierce desire for blood. Sloan had suspected as much. This man was no killer. To Sloan’s way of thinking, the gambler needed a small push over the edge of his rage. And he was betting the man would resort to fists first over his gun.

Sloan’s voice rumbled low and distinctly ominous even to his own ear. “You’re as soft as you look, sir.”

The gambler took an instant too long to throw his punch. With lightning deftness, Sloan deflected his fist with an upward slice of his forearm, smacked the pistol from his hand with the other, then brought both sides of his hands cleaving into each side of the gambler’s thick neck before he could draw another breath. The gambler went rigid, groaned, then fell back against the side of the railcar and slid to the floor. Sloan bent and retrieved his winnings. Twisting one fist into the gambler’s shirtfront, Sloan hauled him to his feet and shoved him against the railcar.

“In the future,” he said silkily, “you would do well to leave us queer birds to our business. Perhaps, then I will leave you to yours.” Sloan turned and, with one flex of his arm, tossed the gambler from the train. With grim satisfaction he watched the gambler land and roll into a thatch of bleached grass that lined the track in deep gullies on both sides and swept in unbroken, breathtaking beauty from horizon to horizon.

Straightening his cravat with a jerk of his chin, he smoothed his double-breasted frock coat, tugged at the velvet cuffs, drew a deep breath, flexed his massive hands and turned to enter the last car. As he did so, the polished tip of his pointed shoe nudged the gambler’s pistol. Bending, he retrieved the gun and, for several moments, stared at it, feeling the weight of the cool steel in his palm. His finger brushed over the ivory grip, curled around the trigger, traced the length of the scrollengraved silver barrel. And then he threw the gun over the side of the train and pushed open the door to his railcar.

Chapter One (#ulink_5b27ce7a-85ea-5b86-bb77-c2264134447b)

Prosperity Gulch, Colorado

April 1880

“Classin’ up the place again, Miss Wilhelmina?”

J. D. Harkness, owner of the Silver Spur saloon and dance hall, hoisted a crate of clean glasses onto the bar. Swiping a thick forearm over his brow, he dissolved like falling bread dough onto a bar stool and glanced around the deserted saloon. Midmorning sunlight slanted through the windows, capturing the dust that hung in the air. Deep in one corner, beside an upright piano, an old man dozed under his hat. Just outside the double doors two men perched on overturned barrels, taking turns spewing streams of brown goo at a cuspidor set in the middle of the street. A handful of folk drifted past the front windows. The day wasn’t looking promising for business, but today wasn’t any different than any other.

Harkness swung his weary gaze to the flame-haired young woman polishing glasses beside him. “What the hell are you doing here, Willie?”

Wilhelmina McKenna Thorne slanted eyes the color of summer leaves at Harkness. Several fingers slipped beneath her high lace collar, directly at the spot where the lace itched most.

With the other hand, she poked at the knot on top of her head and wished she hadn’t stuck the pins in so far. “Why, Uncle Jeremiah, I’ve come to help.”

“I was afraid of that No, don’t touch another glass. Just get on home, Willie, where you belong.” Harkness jerked his head to the corner. “And take Gramps with you.”

Willie grabbed an apron and swung it around her whippetnarrow waist. “There’s nothing to do at the house for me or Gramps. I haven’t had a boarder in over six months, not since—”

She bit off her words. A flush crept to her hairline and memory blossomed with relentless fury. She swung her face away from Harkness before she betrayed it right there—her secret, the one she intended to take to her grave.

She found herself staring at the portrait of a young woman, ripe and lush and naked, hanging above the bar in framed gilt Willie closed her eyes and tried her best not to think about the things men wanted to do when they looked at a woman’s naked breasts and round hips, the love words they whispered that made a girl forget that her mama had told her never to take off her clothes except for her husband, and then only in the haven of a shuttered bedroom. Certainly not on a grassy knoll at midday when the sun would heat bare skin with a fever.

Willie forced her eyes open. “Besides, Rosie had her baby last night”

“And a fine boy he is. Looks just like his pa did. A shame he didn’t live to see him born. Ah, hell, go home, Willie.”

Willie jerked the apron ties into a stiff bow. “Gertie left this morning to see her sick mother in Denver.”

Harkness grimaced. “Gertie’s got more sick relatives than any widow I know. And she always comes back to work wearing a sassy smile that doesn’t belong on a travel-weary woman. I ‘spect she’s got a gentleman friend in Denver.”

“She might not come back this time.”

Harkness snorted then levered himself over the bar and produced a bottle and two glasses. Splashing the brew into each glass, he slid one over to Willie, eyeing her as if he suspected she was up to mischief. “I can run the place without my girls and you damned well know it.”

Willie worked her glass between her fingers. “True. But without them, where’s your draw?” She jerked her chin at the portrait. “She’s not enough. Even for tired miners who can’t see and travel-weary folk who’ve lost their way. And if the cowboys come through town off the pass as I suspect they might today, all biting at the bit to spend their hard-earned pay, you wouldn’t want them to choose the Devil’s Gold Saloon in Deadwood Run over the Silver Spur just because they believe the whiskey tastes sweeter when it’s served by a woman.”

“They want more from the women at the Devil’s Gold than sweet whiskey. And they get it there.”

“Some, maybe. But not all want what the Devil’s Gold has to offer. Besides, Deadwood Run’s another ten miles further off the pass, a bit far to ride if a man only wants to look at a face that doesn’t grow whiskers.”