 PALE MOON STALKER
November 2008
Leisure Books
ISBN
978-0-8439-6112-6
Order from:
Amazon.com
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Dorchester Publishing
She needs a killer…
Sky Brewster swore to her dying husband that she would not kill his
murderer. But her heart cries out for justice, and she will not be
satisfied until she sees the gunman dead at her feet. To get the job
done, she’ll leave her Sioux people to make a devil’s bargain with a
man whose talent as an assassin is surpassed only by his skills at
seduction.
He needs a wife…
Max Stanhope is an infamous English bounty hunter who always
delivers—dead or alive. But now he must take a wife to claim his
birthright. When his newest client turns out to be as delectable as
she is passionate, he figures he’ll mix business with pleasure.
The beautiful widow and the Limey make a deal: her hand in marriage
for his special skills. But an old Cheyenne medicine man has seen
the Great Spirit’s grand design, and True Dreamer knows Sky Eyes of
the Sioux is destined to love the…
PALE MOON STALKER
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After
their short trip across the dusty street, Sky Eyes Brewster and her
charge entered the lobby of the Angel’s Rest. The scruffy old
hotel’s small lobby was devoid of any furnishings except for a
scarred desk, unmanned. Behind it on the wall keys hung from pegs.
“Grab number seven,” she instructed Max.
In
spite of his obscene protests, he stretched one long arm across the
desk and retrieved his key, squinting through blood-shot eyes. “Now
what?” he asked in an Arctic voice.
“We
go to your room and have our private talk, what else? Do you think
I find you so irresistible I’ll molest you at rifle point?” He
shook his head. She wasn’t certain if it was to disagree with her,
or simply to clear out the cobwebs.
“At
the moment, I am so limp…from fatigue, you could not ‘molest’ me at
cannon point, dear lady.”
“Your
virtue is safe with me, Mr. Stanhope,” she said tersely, motioning
with her rifle toward the stairs.
Max
climbed the creaking wooden steps and fumbled with the key until he
got the door open. Once inside, he made a flourishing bow,
gesturing with his hand, as if to welcome her. “My humble hovel,
ma’am.” Sky stepped inside, backing him over to a straight-backed
chair in the corner.
“Sit
down,” she commanded, much relieved that he complied. In truth, he
looked ready to drop to the floor with exhaustion if not allowed to
sit. She quickly surveyed the shabby quarters—besides the chair, a
bed with a lumpy mattress, a wash stand, chipped pitcher and a bowl
were the only furnishings. In one corner a Winchester ’76 with a
checkered pistol grip and special target sights leaned over
carelessly tossed saddlebags, his only personal possessions on the
premises. If he made a fraction of the reward money reported in the
newspapers, he certainly wasn’t spending it in Bismarck.
“Why do
you stay in a dump like this?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“Central
location, close to Rosie’s…oh, yes, and my friend Mort Hersh runs
the place. He’ll be along shortly, I rather imagine, so you’d
better make this ‘conversation’ quick,” he said dryly.
“All
right.” She whipped off her hat and tossed it on the bed, then
moved over to the door, holding her rifle on him as she slipped the
lock. “At least I’ll have some warning before anyone intrudes.”
“I
could use some water,” he said with a cough.
“After all that whiskey, I imagine you could. And probably a
chamber pot as well,” she said tartly. Filling the basin with
brackish water, she turned suddenly and threw the contents into his
very surprised face.
Max gasped
and choked. Sky calmly looked on as he shook his head like a dog
emerging from a river. “Now, you should be alert enough to
comprehend what I have to say.”
Max was
indeed alert. He was also coldly furious. “Look, miss….”
“Misses…Mrs. Sky Brewster. I’m a widow.”
“Well,
Mrs. Brewster, I’m sorry for you loss—”
“I didn’t
come for condolences, Mr. Stanhope. I’m here to hire your skills
with a gun. I want you to track down and kill the man who murdered
my husband.”
Max
sighed. Damn, the woman had a head as thick as a brick. Best to
hear her out, then get rid of her so he could collapse on the
bed—that was if Hersh didn’t arrive first. Rosie probably had Ben
out looking for him now. One way or the other, he needed to lie
down and sleep, preferably for about a week.
“Why
should I be interested in taking this ‘employment’?” he asked,
leaning back in his chair. “So far the only inducements you’ve
offered have been indignities.” He detected a faint flush in the
widow’s cheeks.
“The
Limey” examined her carefully now that his head was starting to
clear and she was fully visible in the light pouring like
butterscotch from the room’s lone window. Mrs. Brewster was one of
the most stunningly beautiful women he had ever met. She was tall,
with a mass of very long, glossy black hair done in a braid as thick
as a man’s wrist. Judging by the faintest dusky hue of her
complexion, he would assume she had some native blood, but damn
little.
Her
features were cameo delicate, with a mouth that had slightly puffed
lips as if swollen by kisses, a small straight nose, pointed chin
and arched black eyebrows that framed the bluest eyes he’d ever
seen. He’d been right about her body, too. It was slender with
high, pert breasts that pushed against her loose shirt, and
legs—lord, what legs—long and shapely in fitted buckskin breeches.
She wore moccasins instead of boots. She also wore a gun belt
strapped around those shapely hips and in the holster rested a
Merwin & Hulbert, ivory-gripped revolver, likely a .38 caliber
piece. This was a formidable female.
Sky
watched his cool green eyes sweep over her, head to toe. Those eyes
had seen a lot of death. “Do I pass muster?” she asked dryly.
He
nodded. “I’ve always suspected beautiful women know they do.”
“The same
could be said of beautiful men,” she snapped, then bit her tongue as
his eyebrows raised slightly at the backhanded compliment she had
not intended to blurt out.
Stanhope
chuckled. “A beautiful bounty hunter? A most novel oxymoron. It
even alliterates.”
Sky
bristled. “Let’s focus on a not-so-novel idea—you killing a
murderer.”
“Look,
Mrs. Brewster, if a man killed your husband, get the courts to try
him. See him hanged. You shouldn’t require my services.”
“Unfortunately for both of us, I do. You can see I have mixed
blood. I’m Ehanktonwon—Yankton Sioux. My husband was a missionary,
an Episcopal priest, who championed the rights of Indians. He was a
thorn in the side of every sleazy Indian agent and local bureaucrat
in the region. Are you so naïve as to expect justice for “a
psalm-singin’ preacher who didn’t understand ‘all Injuns is
semi-human, murderin’ trash’?” she asked, emphasizing the last words
with a nasal twang.
Max could
hear the roughening in her voice and recognized that she was
suppressing tears. She was right. Any white who took their side,
much less married a mixed blood, was fair game. “I’ve lived out
West long enough to know how people here feel about the native
population, but I don’t go after men unless the law’s on my side. I
take it that the authorities don’t agree that your husband was
murdered.”
“No,”
she said coldly, “they don’t, and it isn’t because I didn’t try to
use the courts for the past year. It all began when Will and I were
on the northern border of Yankton lands. We came across a man
flogging a young girl from our parish with a riding quirt. My
husband never carried a gun in his life, but he was a big man. He
jumped off his horse and grabbed the quirt away from the little
bastard.”
She
paused to compose herself, then continued. “The coward tried to
pull his six-gun but my husband grabbed it and tossed in away. Then
he took the man by scruff of his collar and used his own whip on him
until he’d cut through the fellow’s pants and blistered his ass.”
Sky swallowed, then said in a low, flat voice. “Will made two
mistakes. He turned his back on the snake and he never let me carry
my weapons. I could have stopped what happened next...”
Max
finished for her. “And this child-beater had a hideout gun? He
shot your husband from behind?”
She
nodded. “Then the girl he’d hurt started screaming. We…we both
went for him barehanded, but he’d emptied his gun into Will. He
jumped on his horse and rode away. The sheriff and the courts
concluded it was self-defense,” she said bitterly. “Even though
everyone knew Will never owned a gun and he was shot in the back.
The only ones to protest the verdict had the wrong color skin.”
He looked
at the Merwin & Hulbert .38 in her holster, then to the Winchester
Yellow Boy. “Why don’t you kill him yourself? You look capable
enough.”
Sky bit
her lip. “Before he died…Will made me swear I wouldn’t kill his
murderer. He was a priest…and a far better Christian than I’ll ever
be.”
“I assume
he didn’t specify that you could not hire it done?”
“I
suppose, in a way, I’m still breaking my oath, but when I learned
more about what kind of animal his murderer was, I couldn’t let it
rest. I want that killer dead.”
Max
sighed. “Hell, I’d like to help you, but there was a letter waiting
for me when I returned this morning.” He glanced over to the
drawer beneath the wash stand. “I have some very pressing business
that must be resolved back in England. I truly am sorry, Mrs.
Brewster. I hunt men, but I don’t set out to kill them.”
“I don’t
believe you’d have any qualms about killing this one—if you’re the
man called ‘The Limey’.”
She
seemed so sure of herself. “You know I am. But what would make me
agree to your offer? Surely not your delightful interviewing
skills,” he could not resist adding.
Those
huge blue eyes flashed triumphantly. “A few weeks ago, you were in
a card game with a man, cleaned him out. He was a bad loser and
tried to draw on you. You had him beat by a mile, but like a damned
fool, you didn’t squeeze the trigger. The man left the bar, got on
his horse, rode sixty or seventy paces down the street, unbooted his
rifle, and shot your horse tied at the hitching rack. Shot him in
the belly.”
Max paled
under his sun-tanned skin. “Johnny Deuce shot Rembrandt…my Remy,
the bravest, most intelligent, most beautiful paint pony I ever
saw. If he’s the son-of-a-bitch who killed your husband, you’ll get
what you want. Sooner or later our paths will cross again. I
assure you that he’ll be as dead as you could wish him.”
Sky shook
her head, “That’s not good enough. I want him dead at my feet, and
I want him dead now! I’ve already waited for over a year fighting
for justice in courts that don’t know the meaning of the word. I
can pay you seven hundred dollars to do what both of us want. Kill
Johnny Deuce.”
Max stared
at Sky intently while thinking about the news he’d received that
morning. A crazy idea flashed into his brain. Wildly improbable,
but it just might work. She could be the solution to his dilemma…if
he handled it deftly. The shock of learning about his uncle Harry’s
death had not yet worn off. Hell, it probably never would. That
was why he’d sought the oblivion of liquor. Harold Stanhope, Baron
Ruxton, was the only family he’d ever cared about…and now he was
gone.
He
absently gazed at the drawer in which he had placed the letter from
his uncle’s London solicitor. He had to return…and soon. “What if
I make you a counter proposal?” His mouth curved ever so slightly
at the double entendre only he understood.
One
of Sky’s finely arched black eyebrows rose. Heaven above, when the
man smiled that way, she didn’t have any idea what to expect. “What
kind of proposal?” she asked suspiciously.
“Why,
of marriage, of course,” he said with a perfectly straight face.
Sky
almost dropped her rifle. She did lean it, barrel down in front of
her, using the stock to support her suddenly unsteady legs. “How
much did you have to drink?” was all she could manage to say.
“I am
quite perfectly sober, thanks to you—and deadly serious, I assure
you.”
“Why
would an Englishman want to marry a mixed blood woman, much less one
he’s just met—and not under the most ideal circumstances, as you’ve
repeatedly reminded me?”
He
made a dismissive gesture with one elegant hand. “Back in England,
your Sioux blood, what little there is of it, wouldn’t signify. I
have just come into an inheritance, but to claim all of it, I must
present to my solicitor in London a suitable wife. The intent, I
believe, is for me to wed and fertilize a delicate ‘English Rose’.”
He spit out the phrase as if it were a slice of lemon. “But there
may be another option…with no fertilization required. You’re
educated, Church of England, and to make it believable, attractive.
You fit the requirements admirably,” he added, amused at her stunned
expression. She looked as if she had just seen George Armstrong
Custer leap out of his grave, yanking arrows from his body.
Sky
finally gathered her wits. “You’re rather crudely proposing what I
believe the English call a marriage of convenience. Is that
right?” At his nod, she attempted to gather her wits, unable to
believe such a bizarre bargain. “I assist you in claiming your
inheritance and you kill Deuce for me in return?”
“Precisely so. We can have the marriage annulled once we return to
America. Then I’ll track down Deuce and—”
“No!
First you kill him, then I marry you and sail to jolly old England,”
she countered stubbornly.
Max
rubbed his burning eyes, cradling his head in his hands. This
wasn’t going to be easy. She wasn’t going to be easy. “It
can’t work that way. It might take weeks, even months, to track
him. I haven’t the luxury of time. I have inherited my uncle’s
title. If I don’t return immediately, I’ll not only lose his
unentailed fortune, but my gutless little bastard of a cousin will
receive it in my stead. Cletus allowed my elder brother to die when
we were children. If not for that…I doubt I’d go back.”
“You
don’t want the money? The title?” she asked amazed.
“I
don’t give a damn for any of it. I am not unlike what some would
unflatteringly call a remittance man. My uncle has sent me money,
which has been piling up in a New York bank for the past five
years. Couldn’t talk the old boy out of it, so…” He shrugged, then
looked away, staring with those cold green eyes into a time and
place far away.
“So,
you let this money sit untouched and made your own way with a gun,”
she supplied. The man was an enigma. What would make him do such a
thing? Sky intuited that it would not be wise to ask. Then he
stood up and advanced a step toward her. Now he was grinning at her
like a lobo wolf...a very dangerous male animal. She did not back
away but stood her ground.
Will Sky agree to Max’s outrageous
proposition? If she does, will he have cause to regret his rash
proposal? What dark secret has driven him to become “The Limey?”
Read PALE MOON STALKER to find out. Coming in November from Leisure
Books.
-Chapter I
Bismarck, South Dakota, May, 1884
“You’re going to kill a man for me.”
A strident
female voice dragged him back to consciousness. For a blurry moment
Max forgot where in the hell he was. Rosie’s joint? He looked up,
eyelids feeling as if they’d been shaved with a dull razor, and
recognized the battered chairs and tables strewn like discarded dice
across the beer-soaked wood floor. Yes, Rosie’s. He was collapsed
on his own table in the farthest corner of the room where nobody
could get at his back. Her bartender Ben had a shotgun that would
keep off the jackals.
Then
who was the harpy standing next to him? Exhaustion combined with
whiskey made considering the question too difficult. With a
guttural grunt he dropped his head over his arms and returned to
oblivion.
“I said
you’re going to kill a man for me. Wake up, you drunken sot!”
Max looked
up and tried to focus on the source of the voice. Damn, he was bone
weary. Twenty hours of hard riding could do that to a man—and that
was after two weeks on the hunt with almost no sleep whatever. Once
more he lowered his head.
“I said
wake up, and this is the last time I’ll tell you.” There was a
tight desperation in her tone now.
He
should have paid attention to that. Ordinarily he would have, if
not for sleep-deprivation and whiskey. His head barely touched his
arms before he felt her hand seize a fistful of his hair and yank
backward until he thought she’d broken his neck. Why hadn’t Ben
blown her to hell with his twelve gauge? Because she was female,
Max guessed. Damn the soft-hearted bastard! He struggled to open
his swollen eyelids when she suddenly released her grip on his
hair.
“Put
your head down one more time and I’ll kick the bottom of this table
till your brains rattle like beans in a gourd.”
To make
her point, she gave one table leg a stout kick, nearly overturning
it. He rubbed his burning eyes and looked at her for the first
time. Yep, a female all right, even though she was dressed like a
man in buckskin pants and a shirt that laced up the front. The
generous curve of breasts strained against the lacing. No doubt she
was a she. His eyes swept down her body, which was a very good one
indeed.
A
narrow waist gave way to the gentle swell of hips followed by long
legs. She stood with her back to the door, silhouetted in the
morning sun so that he could not make out her facial features
beneath the low-crowned, flat-brimmed plainsman’s hat she wore Some
sort of old Winchester was clutched in her right hand, barrel to the
floor.
“Well,
Sleeping Beauty, looks as if you’re finally waking from your drunken
stupor.”
He
struggled to unglue his furry tongue from the roof of his mouth,
then said, “Look, lady, I’m not a hired gun. I don’t kill men for
money.”
“If you’re
the one called ‘The Limey’, reports say differently.”
“I
genuinely dislike that epithet. My name is Maxwell Stanhope. If
you must address me, call me Maxwell, Stanhope, even Max. And I
repeat, I am not a gun for hire.”
“Well,
Mr. Stanhope, I take issue with that. You hunt men for bounty,
specializing in murderers. I’ve heard you’ve brought back over
twenty men…and eight came back face down across a saddle. I call
that killing men for money.”
She
possessed a clear, deep voice for a woman—but it was beginning to
grate on his overtaxed nerves. “Lady, I don’t give a damn what you
call it. I’m not for hire.”
“I think
you’ll want this job,” she said, grabbing his ear in her left hand
and twisting it forward and down. At the same time she pulled him
out of his chair so quickly that the table almost tipped over. The
half empty bottle of Rosie’s best, which wasn’t all that good, and a
shot glass crashed to the floor.
“Ouch!” He cut loose with a string of oaths. “That’s not a damn
handle!” He was rapidly coming awake now. Her grip was strong as
steel and he could see the hard gleam in her brilliant blue eyes.
“Are you crazy?” Max reached down for the Smith & Wesson in his
holster.
It
was not there. Then he saw it laying on the floor in a puddle of
whiskey beside the table. The damned female must’ve tossed it away
just as she grabbed his ear. Mortifying! That never would have
happened if he were not insensate with exhaustion. He swatted at
her hand and the pain in his ear intensified for an instant. Then
she released him and raised the Winchester to his gut.
“You’re going to listen to what I have to say…and we’re going to
talk in private. Do I make myself clear?” It was a rhetorical
question.
Sky Eyes
backed him stumbling across the floor of the empty saloon, heading
for the door. From the corner of her eye she caught the motion when
the barman started to raise a double-barreled shotgun. “I
wouldn’t,” she said coolly to the dapper little man. She prodded
Maxwell Stanhope’s midsection with the barrel of her modified
Winchester ’66 “Yellow Boy”.
“The
Limey” teetered, nearly falling backwards, then groaned, clutching
his gut. “Lady, unless you want me to christen those fancy
buckskins with the contents of my stomach, I wouldn’t do that
again.” His voice was raspy and he coughed as he righted his
balance.
With one
eye on the barkeep, Sky said to Max in a low emotionless voice, “Be
quiet.” To the man with the shotgun she said, “I mean to talk with
your friend.” When his thumb reluctantly slid back toward one of
its hammers, Sky cocked the hammer of the Yellow Boy. The metallic
click seemed loud in the large room. The bartender froze in nervous
confusion. Sky waited unblinking. Probably hates the thought of
shooting a woman...even one like me.
Their
standoff was interrupted by the creak of floorboards at the top of
the stairs leading to the second floor bordello. She watched the
barman’s eyes lift. Keeping her rifle trained on Stanhope, she
glanced quickly up, then back to her groggy target.
The
small, round woman dressed in a pink wrapper looked old enough to
make her coal-black hair improbable “You mean to hurt ‘em?” she
asked. Her voice seemed incongruously young coming from a decidedly
middle-aged female.
Sky
hesitated for a moment, then asked in a flat voice without
challenge, “Why do you care?”
“Max is my
friend, honey.”
“No, I
won’t hurt him,” Sky said. “I need him fully functional—to discuss
private business. He seems inclined to be stubborn.”
Rosie
chuckled. “Well, honey, Max is stubborn, or he’d spend most his
time conductin’ ‘private bidness’ with half the females west of the
Mississip. Still, ‘pears your bidness ain’t that kind.” She paused
for a moment, as if considering, then said, “He stays in room seven
in that flea bag ‘cross the street.” She shook her head at Ben, who
very slowly slid his shotgun back under the bar and carefully
brought up his empty hands to rest them on its scarred surface.
Sky
uncocked the Winchester. She pushed her quarry out the door while
he continued growling obscenities. After he turned around, they
crossed the street with her prodding him painfully in the kidney
with the rifle.
After they
had banged through her front doors, Rosie waddled down the stairs,
bursting into laughter. “Lordy, Max Stanhope, the darling of news
rags from Chicago to San Francisco, ‘The Limey,’ ‘Scourge of the Bad
Men,’ ‘The Hangman’s Hound,’ dragged out of a whorehouse with a
rifle in his gut—by a young gal, no less!” she chortled. “Damned,
if I wouldn’t like to be a fly on the wall fer that conversation.”
Outside,
Sky considered the Englishman who spoke with a perfectly clipped
accent indicating that he came from the aristocracy. Small wonder
he’d been dubbed a “Limey” by ordinary citizens out west. The irony
of an upper class Brit being given a pejorative name did not escape
her. Neither did his physically imposing appearance.
He
topped her own five-eight by four or five inches. She had no idea
her bounty hunter would turn out to be a perfect male specimen,
tall, lithe and sinuous with curly silver blond hair a London belle
would kill to have. Lord, it was pale as moonlight! Small wonder
so many women wanted to conduct “private bidness” with him. Even
filthy with sweat and trail dust, his sun-bronzed face was as
patrician as one of those old oil paintings she’d seen in museums
back East. The nose was long and slender, the mouth wide, jaw line
chiseled.
But
it was Stanhope’s eyes that would hold anyone’s attention. Even
after one brief confrontation with him in the bar, she would never
forget those eyes. Framed by arched silvery eyebrows, they were
dark green, slitted and ice cold. This was a dangerous man. She’d
been blessed lucky to get him this far. She imagined his trail
fatigue had more to do with it than her skill. He was killingly
angry at her, but somehow she would convince him to go for her
proposition. She absolutely had to…
Meanwhile Max has a
proposition of his own to put to Sky…once he has time to think it
over. Stay tuned to read about the bargain they strike in
September!
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