for many years up in the high and rocky.
None other than Chief Marshal Luther T. Bledsoe had sicced those bounty hunters on Slash and Pecos, intending to assassinate them. When Slash, Pecos, and Jay got the better of the dozen, after they’d used an escape tunnel to work their way around the ragged group of killers, and killed them all save Penny and one other man, Bledsoe was so impressed by Slash and Pecos’s gun work, even at the pair’s advanced age, that he put the two cutthroats on his payroll and gave Penny the shaft.
“Still, I can see how he was a mite chafed,” Pecos put in, glancing down at the dead bounty hunter with the roaming eye. “He was known to hold a grudge, Jack was. A prideful man. I’m sure Bledsoe givin’ us the job instead of him burned him good, put him on our trail. He’s probably been stokin’ that fire in his belly for a whole year.”
“Yeah, well, there he lies for his trouble.”
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Most of the crowd outside the door had dispersed, and it sounded like there was only one man out there now, heading this way.
“Here comes the law,” Pecos said, dreadfully.
“Just what we need,” Slash complained. “More law.”
“It’s all right, fellas,” Jay said. “The marshal here in Fort Collins is a good, fair man. He’s new, and I know him personally.” A slight flush rose into her cheeks. Slash didn’t like seeing that flush there at all. Not at all.
He arched a brow at her. “You know him, do you?”
“Knock-knock,” said a man’s deep, resonant voice.
Slash, Pecos, and Jaycee swung their heads around to see a tall, handsome man poke his head through the remains of the door, then smile and wink when his eyes landed on Jay.
CHAPTER 6
The handsome gent looked around the room, frowning, then turned to Jaycee again with concern. “You all right, Jay?” He stepped into the room, doffing his hat, the look of concern deepening the frown lines cutting into his broad forehead.
He was a tall, handsome man in a handsome three-piece suit. A suit that didn’t look like it was long from the tailor’s dummy. A dark-brown suit of fine tweed and broadcloth, with a white silk shirt matched with a paisley vest and string tie. A gold-washed chain dangled from a gilt-edged pocket of the vest.
The man wearing the suit had been in turn tailored to wear such a finely sewn piece of duds. He was tall, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, and long-legged. He appeared to be in his early forties. Thick, curly, cinnamon hair was combed into neat waves upon his regal head, just touching his ears and the back of his collar. His face was finely structured, handsome, even if the eyes were a tad on the oily side, the beard and mustache a little too finely and too regularly trimmed.
Slash could see this gent folding himself into a barber’s chair every morning of the week, as though he fancied himself some frontier version of Jay Gould, likely right at eight a.m., as soon as the barber had finished sweeping off his boardwalk, tossed his cigar stub into the street, and turned the placard in his window to OPEN.
No man should be that intimate with a barber’s chair. No real man, anyway.
This one wore a well-polished, brightly nickeled town marshal’s badge on his vest, positioned so that it subtly showed itself peeking out from beneath the fancy Dan’s left coat lapel. A big, black Colt .44, with ivory grips in which a horse’s head was carved, adorned a black leather holster residing high on his right hip. The holster bore the initials CW.
“Oh, hello, Cisco. Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Jay said. Slash didn’t like how a soft, feminine flush rose into the nubs of Jay’s cheeks, nor how her green eyes seemed to at once soften and brighten as she stared up at the tall newcomer.
Cisco? Slash thought. She knows the badge-toter by his first name?
He tried to ignore the slight, uneasy churning of his innards, but there it was.
Slash rose from the bed. “You, uh . . . you two know each other, do you?”
“Jay an’ me?” the marshal she’d called Cisco said, showing a full set of marble white teeth in a charming grin. “Sure, sure. Miss Breckenridge and I go back a ways—don’t we, Miss Breckenridge?”
“Cisco . . . er, Marshal Walsh and I,” Jay corrected with a smile and an ironic dip of her chin, “met in Dodge City some time ago. Before I tumbled for that old hornswoggler Pistol Pete.”
The marshal and Jaycee shared a warm smile, which made Slash’s guts churn and grow a little warmer, as though he’d eaten something he shouldn’t have. The lawman turned to the business at hand, frowning at the dead men. “Trouble, I see.” He glanced at the door. “Three dead men and a ruined door.”
“As well as a good bit of blood on my rug,” Jay added, sourly. “Rest assured, however, Cisco, that the three dead men had it coming. They held me here to set a trap for Slash an’ Pe—”
“Uh, that’s Jimmy and Melvin,” Pecos corrected with a toothy, sheepish grin.
“Oh, don’t worry about that nonsense,” Jay said. “Cisco here knows all about Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid. Cisco himself once rode the wrong side of the straight an’ narrow.” She beamed again at the tall, handsome marshal, adding, “Didn’t you, Cisco?”
“That I did, that I did.” The lawman slid his gaze from Slash to Pecos. “Until I, just like I’ve heard you fellas have done, mended my ways.”
Slash turned to Jay. “You told him?”
She nodded. “I saw no reason to keep your past a secret from Cisco. I’m sure he’d have figured out who you were sooner or later. He’s not as soft in his thinker box as Sheriff Decker or the man’s cork-headed deputies.”
“Not to worry, fellas,” Marshal Walsh said, raising his hands, palms out. “Your secret is safe with me. Especially since you’re making good on the sundry sins of your past by riding for—”
“Oh, my gosh!” Jay slapped a hand to her mouth, lowering her jaw and widening her eyes in shock. “In all the commotion, I forgot that Bledsoe sent word earlier.”
“Bledsoe did?” both Slash and Pecos said at the same time.
“Yes, yes. One of his deputies came in to speak to me earlier. The chief marshal wants you boys to ride out to the old Cormorant Saloon. For a powwow, as the deputy put it. I assume Bledsoe has some trouble he needs his former cutthroats to iron out for him. I told the deputy when you two were due back, so he’s likely been waiting for you.”
Slash cursed and looked at Pecos, who glowered and shrugged. “So much for lettin’ our hair down.” He glanced from Slash to Jay, adding, “And for . . .” He let his voice trail off, dropping his sheepish gaze to the floor.
“For what?” Jay asked, frowning at Slash.
Slash’s cheeks burned with both embarrassment and anger. The anger was directed at his partner. Pecos always seemed to get a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease at the most inopportune time.
“Nothin’,” Slash said quickly,
