Nate, the big bartender, came running. “All right, break it up, you’ll have the boss out here.” He tried to pull the girls apart, but Lark poked him in the eye as she drew back on Dixie again. Oh, her sister Lacey would be mortified if she could see her tomboy sister in such an unladylike battle—but then, her twin was always so correct and Lark could never do anything right.
“Here comes the boss!” Someone yelled a warning, but Lark was on top, yanking the tart’s yellow hair.
Joe strode up, grabbed both girls by the arms, and hauled them to their feet. “What’s goin’ on out here?”
“She started it,” Dixie wailed.
“I was just giving as good as I got!”
“She was, too,” the crowd assured him.
Joe took the cigar out of his mouth and frowned. “Lark, damn it, I warned you.”
“I know you did, but I’m a Texan and that poor Texas cowboy was being cheated—”
“So what?” Joe shrugged. “If he ain’t a big boy, he don’t belong in a tough town like Buck Shot.”
“But he was almost broke,” Lark protested.
He looked at her and sighed as if speaking to a small child. “That’s what we do here at the Last Chance, we take their money. Now, Texas, I warned you, so you’re fired. Be out of here by morning.” He turned on his heel and stalked back toward his office.
Land’s sake, what had she done? Got herself fired over a drunken, penniless cowboy. Chin still high and defiant, Lark headed up to her cramped room to pack. What was she going to do now?
She’d gotten some satisfaction out of giving Dixie’s yellow hair a good yank, but that wouldn’t pay the bills. She could always wire home to Uncle Trace for money, but she was too proud to do that. Besides, Aunt Cimarron would come after her and take her back to the ranch. They had raised her ever since her parents had been killed and her rich grandfather had decided he couldn’t deal with the twins. She’d just be on the run again as she had been for the last couple of years. She wondered where Dixie had run across Lacey. Last she had heard, Lacey was scheduled to marry that perfect paragon of virtue, Homer Something-or-other. By now, Lacey probably had a perfect baby while her twin made a mess of her life. Well, Lark would just drift on like she always did. It was easier than facing up to her own imperfections.
She sat down on her bed and listened to the music and laughter from downstairs. Where was she going to go now? Her prominent ranching family would be upset if they knew she was working in a saloon. Of course, ever since she’d dropped out of Miss Priddy’s fancy academy in Boston while Lacey graduated with honors, they’d been upset with her. They said they weren’t, but Lark knew better. If she ever did anything to make them proud, she’d contact them, but it was tough being the twin who always messed up.
She thought of the Texan. The nerve of him slapping her on the bottom so familiarly! And to think he’d wanted to buy a night in her bed with a gold watch. No man had ever bedded her, and a penniless, drunken cowpoke wasn’t going to be the first. Oh my, what did she expect him to think? He wouldn’t have believed the truth, that the niece of one of the biggest ranchers in Texas would be slinging drinks in a wild whiskey town along the border between Oklahoma and Indian Territories. The whiskey towns were the roughest in the West, existing to sell liquor and other brands of sin to the Indians and outlaws who hid out in Indian Territory, where whiskey was forbidden.
Lark blew out her lamp and went to bed with a defeated sigh. Tomorrow, she’d drift on. She was homesick but she couldn’t go home. Lark was certain her relatives felt sorry for her because she couldn’t seem to measure up. It was easier to run. As she drifted off to sleep, she wondered what had happened to the drunken cowboy. Damn him, he’d gotten her into a mess.
Larado stumbled out to a tree on a prairie where he’d left his horse and bedroll. “Hey, hoss, you doin’ okay?” The bay stallion raised his head and nickered as Larado scratched his neck, then returned to grazing on the dried grass. “Maybe you are, but I ain’t.” Larado shivered in the raw wind, squinted, and looked back toward the long, muddy street of saloons. He could hear the off-key music and the laughter from here. Had the other man been cheating? Should he have called him out?
“Now, pard, that would have been a damn fool thing to do, and you know why,” he muttered to himself as he spread his blankets and lay down. “You ain’t that good a shot without…Well, you ain’t no gunfighter.”
It was a raw night for early April, and he shivered and pulled his blanket closer, thinking about the girl in the blue skimpy dress. She’d have been warm, all right, and he wished he had her in his blankets with him. What was her name? Lark. Like the bird. He remembered the feel of her as he’d pulled her toward him. He didn’t have any money to spend on her, and she must have known it, but she’d come out anyway. He hadn’t been nearly as drunk as she thought he was, it was only…Well, that didn’t make no never mind.
Working at the Last Chance, she had to be experienced and really know how to please men. In his mind, he imagined pulling her close and feeling that curvy body all the way down his. Her legs under the short, skimpy blue dress had looked long enough to go all the way to her neck. “Oh, sweetie,” he groaned, trying to get comfortable as his manhood stirred. “If I win a couple of hands next time, I’m gonna see how much you cost. The first night I spent a dollar on that Dixie, and she was okay, but I’ll wager you’re better.”
Money. He was flat broke. The ranches around here all seemed to have plenty of cowboys. Larado had been trying to win enough to grubstake supplies to get back to Texas. Just what the hell was he gonna do now?
At daylight the next morning Larado sat before a small campfire, sipping the last of his little stash of coffee and nursing a hangover. He’d drift south now and maybe find a temporary job punching cattle somewhere where it was warm. What he really dreamed of was owning his own spread, but he couldn’t see any way he could ever do that.
A sound. He turned his head and squinted. In the early dawn light, he wasn’t sure for a moment who the rider was, then he recognized Snake.
“Kin I get down?” Snake yelled.
“Sure.” Larado nodded. He had a bad headache from last night, and he felt as low-down as a rattlesnake’s belly, but a Texan was always hospitable. He stood up. “Want some coffee?”
“You got an extra cup?”
He nodded, pouring the man a cup. Snake sat down on a rock, taking the tin cup in both hands.
“Damn, that hot coffee feels good on a cold morning.” Snake took a sip and shuddered. “Don’t you Texans make coffee any way but strong?”
Larado laughed. “If it won’t float a horseshoe, we throw it out and make another pot.” He studied the other man’s ugly face with its jagged red scar on the forehead.
Snake touched the scar. “You’re wondering how I got this, right?”
Larado felt his face burn. “Naw, I wasn’t.”
“I don’t mind.” The other man sipped his coffee. “Looks like a snake, don’t it? A long time ago, I got into a whip fight with another fella. Since then, I’ve learned to use a pistol—safer for me.”
Larado laughed but the other man didn’t.
“Listen.” Snake took another sip of coffee. “I felt bad about last night, realizin’ you was pretty broke when you left the table.”
“That happens when you play poker.” Larado rolled a cigarette and shrugged. “I don’t begrudge you