Way with a Gun Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  Keeping Up Appearances

  “Of course I’ve had sex,” she told him. “But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about your reputation with the ladies.”

  “I didn’t know I had a reputation with the ladies,” he said.

  “You think all people talk about is how fast the Gunsmith is with a gun?” she asked. “Then you haven’t heard your own stories, have you?”

  “To tell you the truth, I try not to listen to them,” he told her.

  “Well, believe me,” she said, “that reputation is considerable.” She leaned forward, placed her elbows on the table, and lowered her voice. “In fact, that’s the one I’m interested in right now.”

  “Are you telling me that’s what you want to interview me about?” he asked.

  “Actually,” she said, touching the back of his hand, “I was thinking about . . . research.”

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  THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts

  Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him . . . the Gunsmith.

  LONGARM by Tabor Evans

  The popular long-running series about Deputy U.S. Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

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  Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

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  An action-packed series by the creators of Longarm! The rousing adventures of the most brutal gang of cutthroats ever assembled—Quantrill’s Raiders.

  DIAMONDBACK by Guy Brewer

  Dex Yancey is Diamondback, a Southern gentleman turned con man when his brother cheats him out of the family fortune. Ladies love him. Gamblers hate him. But nobody pulls one over on Dex . . .

  WILDGUN by Jack Hanson

  The blazing adventures of mountain man Will Barlow—from the creators of Longarm!

  TEXAS TRACKER by Tom Calhoun

  Meet J.T. Law: the most relentless—and dangerous— manhunter in all Texas. Where sheriffs and posses fail, he’s the best man to bring in the most vicious outlaws—for a price.

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  WAY WITH A GUN

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / October 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by Robert J. Randisi.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-0-515-14361-4

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  ONE

  Tell Barlow stared across the table at his two colleagues. Jerry Corbett was in his early thirties, the youngest of the three men. He somehow always managed to look like he was fresh-shaven. Newly Yates was the oldest, in his early forties, and always had a dark stubble growing around a toothpick.

  Tell was thirty-five, dressed better than the other two, who always seemed to be in trail clothes—Corbett’s clean, Newly’s dirty. The other two were like night and day, with Tell somewhere in the middle. The one thing they all had in common was that they made their way with a gun. There were no two ways about it, these men were killers. They did it well, and for money.

  But they had something else in common too.

  They were bored with their lives.

  They were in the Five Aces saloon in Selkirk, Arizona. There was no one else in the place except for the bartender. That was because these three men, just by their presence, scared away other patrons, who preferred to drink somewhere else while they were in town.

  Tell, Newly, and Corbett were playing poker and talking about how bored they were.

  “Let’s raise the stakes,” Newly said.

  “What for?” Tell asked. “We all charge a lot for our services. We should all have enough money put away that we wouldn’t even have to work if we didn’t want to.”

  Newly and Corbett looked at each other.

  “Well, I do,” Tell said. “Raising the stakes of a god-damned poker game ain’t gonna make no differ
ence to me.”

  “Then what will?” Corbett asked.

  “I don’t know.” Tell threw his cards down on the table. “Somethin’ that’ll make a difference.”

  “Like what?” Newly asked.

  Tell slid his chair back angrily and said, “Jesus, can’t you fellas come up with anything but questions? I’m gettin’ another beer.”

  “Can I get one?” Newly asked.

  “Me too,” Corbett said.

  “Jesus . . .”

  Tell went to the bar and told the bartender to let him have three more beers.

  “And make these cold ones,” he added.

  “Yessir.”

  Tell was disgusted with his life. His last half-dozen jobs had been so easy it was laughable. He wanted to feel challenged. All he had to do was figure out how.

  When he got back to the table, Newly was cackling, have just taken a hand from Corbett. Tell pushed their beers at them, spilling some of each on the table.

  “Hey!” Newly said. He grabbed the cards before they could get soaked with beer.

  “Think of somethin’, damn it!” Tell said.

  “Jesus, Tell,” Corbett said, “what the hell . . .”

  “How good are you with a gun, Newly?”

  “Damned good.”

  “Fast?”

  “Not fast, but I hit what I aim at.”

  “I’m fast,” Corbett said.

  “How fast?” Tell asked.

  “Faster than you.”

  “You sure?”

  Corbett hesitated, then said, “Yeah,” in a less-than-confident voice.

  “Sure enough to bet?”

  “Bet what?”

  “That you can outdraw me.”

  “I mean, what are we bettin’?”

  “Whatever,” Tell said. “Money? Horses? How about your life?”

  “My life?” Corbett asked.

  “Our lives,” Tell said. “You against me. Winner takes all. Loser dies.”

  “That’s crazy, Tell,” Newly said.

  “It’d be interestin’,” Tell said.

  “Crazy interestin’,” Newly said. “Why don’t you find some other way to find out who’s faster?”

  “Like what?” Tell asked. “What other way?”

  “Pick somebody else,” Newly said. “Somebody you can both face. No, wait, you still die if you lose—”

  “Wait,” Tell said. “Wait, wait, you’ve got a good idea here.”

  “What’d I say?”

  “Here’s what we do,” Tell said. “We pick somebody and make a bet. Whoever kills him wins the money.”

  “How much money?” Newly asked, interested now.

  “Yeah, how much?” Corbett echoed.

  “I don’t know,” Tell said. “We can come up with a figure.”

  “If it’s enough,” Newly said, “I’ll want in—as long as we ain’t facin’ each other.”

  “No,” Tell said, “not each other. Somebody else.”

  “Who?” Corbett asked.

  Tell smiled. “That’s the part that’s gonna make it interestin’.”

  TWO

  Clint Adams slid his hands beneath the woman’s naked buttocks, lifted her up, and pressed her against the wall. She gasped as he pushed deeper into her, wrapping her legs around his waist, taking some of her weight out of his hands. Not that she was heavy. Angela Desmond was only about five feet four and, for the most part, slender, except for an impressive butt. Her breasts were small and round, like ripe peaches, and if anything her weight was pleasant.

  “Oh, God,” she said as he drove into her, pressing her flat against the wall, the hard surface giving him the maximum penetration that a mattress would not have offered.

  They had been in this room at the Blanchard Hotel in Virginia City, Montana, for two days, and had made love on every surface imaginable. This was the first time, however, that he had pinned her against the wall next to the window that overlooked the muddy main street. They had been taking their meals inside, going out only for short walks to stretch their legs, and then it was right back into the room again.

  They’d had a discussion the first night they had met, which had started out as simple, honest flirtation, and had developed into something of a challenge.

  A sexual challenge . . .

  Angela was a confident woman in her late twenties who had come to Virginia City to run the newspaper, The Madisonian. Clint was just passing through, and had gotten into a poker game at the Nugget Saloon. Word got around town that the Gunsmith was playing poker at the Nugget. That was all Angela had to hear. She made her way to the saloon to watch and wait, and Clint noticed her.

  When the game broke up, Clint had taken all the money at the table, plus a bag full of small gold nuggets from a miner. To show there were no hard feelings, he asked the other four players to drink with him. He was buying. Three of the players took him up on the offer, but the miner stormed out. Apparently, he’d had to work many hours for that small sack of nuggets, and had no desire to drink with the man who had taken them away from him.

  “Don’t mind him,” Angela said to Clint as the miner— a man named Pearce—stormed out. “He’s obviously just a sore loser.”

  Clint turned away from the other three men to face her. She had long brown hair and pale skin, a nose that tilted up just slightly, and a wide, generous mouth that made him think of the word “luscious.” He’d noticed her across the room, but was momentarily stunned at how truly lovely she was up close.

  She took immediate advantage of the situation.

  “My name is Angela Desmond, editor, writer, and sweeper at The Madisonian.”

  “The Madisonian?”

  “The local newspaper.”

  “Oh.” Clint knew instantly what she was going to ask. “Listen, Miss Desmond—”

  “Angela, please.”

  “Angela. I can’t really—”

  “You think I’m going to ask you for an interview, don’t you, Mr. Adams?” she asked.

  “Well, yes . . .” He felt momentarily embarrassed. Was that not her intention? Was he starting to believe in his own reputation? “And the name’s Clint.”

  “Well, Clint, you’re right,” she said. “I am going to ask for an interview. Now, I know you’ve probably been asked many times before. . . .”

  “Yes,” he said, “many times.”

  “This would be different,” she said. “I promise you.”

  “How?” he asked. “How would it be different?”

  She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped short, made a fist, and said to him, “Gimme a minute.”

  “Miss Desmond—”

  “Angela.”

  “Angela,” he said. “I really don’t give interviews. I’ve had bad experiences with the ones I have given—”

  “That’s because people ask you the wrong questions,” she said. “They ask about your reputation. About how and why you came to be called the Gunsmith.”

  He knew she was thinking fast on her feet, but he liked her for it.

  “And you wouldn’t?”

  “No,” she said. “I want to learn about the real you. Clint Adams, not the Gunsmith.”

  “And what would you ask?”

  “Well . . . has anyone ever asked you your favorite food?”

  “Well, no . . .”

  “What you like to drink?”

  “No . . .”

  “If you read? And if you do read, what you read?”

  “Well ...”

  “And what about women?” she asked.

  “What about them?”

  “What kinds do you like?”

  “Well, right about now,” he said, “pretty, brown-haired newspaper reporters are high on my list.”

  That stopped her. She flushed and looked down, momentarily embarrassed.

  “That was sweet,” she said, “but see, that’s the kind of thing I’d ask. How you talk to and interact with women . . .”

  “What about you?” he as
ked.

  “I—what about me?”

  “What kind of men do you like?”

  “Well, at the moment,” she said, “tall, handsome men who apparently don’t deserve the reputation they have are high in my list.”

  “Would you have supper with me?”

  The question stopped her.

  “Uh, well, it’s kind of late, I don’t think anyone is serving food right now. . . .”

  “I meant tomorrow,” he said. “Have supper with me tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know. . . .” she said hesitantly.

  “I need somebody to show me where to get a good steak in town.”

  “Um, well,” she said, pushing back a lock of her hair from her forehead, “will I be able to interview you while we eat?”

  “We can talk about it.”

  “Talk about the interview?”

  “We can talk about whether or not there should be an interview,” he said, then added, “and we can continue flirting.”

  “Flirting?” she asked, frowning. “Is that what we’re doing?”

  “Well,” he answered, “if we’re not, then I’m reading all of the signs wrong.”

  “And do you usually do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Read the signs right?”

  “Almost always.”

  “Well . . .” she said, “then I guess we can talk about that too.”

  “At supper tomorrow?”

  She nodded and said, “At supper tomorrow.”

  THREE

  At supper the next evening the flirtation continued. In fact, it progressed and became bolder and bolder.

  Angela took him to a restaurant called Goldy’s. She said the name came from the fact that the owner opened it with gold he took out of a mine.

  “He decided he had enough gold to open this place, and he sold the mine to someone else.”

  “Wasn’t that foolhardy?”