Dying Wish Read online

  “Here,” she said as she pulled her skirts up and gathered them behind her back. “Now can you see a little better?”

  Peeling off her boot and tossing it next to the first one, Clint said, “I sure can.”

  Olivia leaned back onto the bed, propped her heels against the edge of the mattress, and spread her legs. “Now start making good on what you owe me.”

  As Clint unbuttoned his shirt, he said, “You are a bossy lady, you know that?”

  “You love it,” she replied with a warm smile.

  “I don’t know about that, but I may be able to work with it.”

  “You’d better. I didn’t say you could take your shirt off,” she snapped.

  Clint couldn’t help but flinch at the sudden shift in her tone, but his reaction had nothing to do with being intimidated. In fact, he was feeling something quite the opposite. Settling on the bed, Clint forced Olivia to back up a bit. Once she had her shoulders against the headboard, she smiled and rubbed her bent knees impatiently.

  Then Clint made her wait just a bit too long, watching for her to glare at him before making his move. Just as Olivia was about to scold him again, Clint pushed her legs apart a bit more and then ran his tongue along the smooth curve of her pussy.

  That single move took Olivia’s breath away and caused her to grab a handful of Clint’s hair. She hung onto him tightly so he wouldn’t take his mouth from where it was.

  “That’s it,” she groaned. “Oh, yes. Right there.”

  Clint slid his hands along her stomach and then reached up even higher. The neckline of Olivia’s dress was low, but not low enough. Rather than rip the fabric of her blouse, he rubbed her pert little breasts through the material.

  His tongue slipped inside her, driving Olivia to a shuddering climax. She pumped her hips against Clint’s face before finally letting out an exhausted breath. When he shed his jeans and climbed on top of her, Olivia pressed her hands against Clint’s chest as if to hold him back.

  “What are you doing?” she asked playfully. “I didn’t tell you to do this.”

  Clint wouldn’t allow himself to be directed so easily this time. Instead, he grinned at her and shifted his hips until he felt the tip of his erection rub against her wet vagina. With one easy push, he slid inside her.

  Olivia’s eyes widened and she arched her back. Wrapping her arms around him, she closed her eyes and said, “You may proceed.”

  THREE

  Two and a half hours later, Clint made his way across the street and back into Rick’s Place. The moment Rick saw his friend stumble through the door, he poured a beer and chuckled.

  “I told you she’d clean you out,” Hartman said.

  Clint stepped up to the bar and rubbed his neck. “I only wish every game I lost wound up like that one.”

  “She seemed like a handful.”

  “She sure is.” After taking a long drink from his beer, Clint raised his glass and added, “Bless her heart.”

  Both of them shared a laugh and soon, Hartman had poured a beer for himself. The big Texan leaned against his bar and surveyed the saloon. “Looks like your game was all the excitement this place’ll see for a while,” he said. “At least for tonight anyway.”

  “There’s a big tournament being held in Dallas,” Clint told him. “All the gamblers will be headed there.”

  “Really? How do you know about that?”

  “I heard about it in New Mexico just before I left to come here,” Clint explained. “Everyone was talking about it, saying how there was supposed to be more money there than in the national treasury. Hell, even the side games could make or break a man.”

  Staring at his door as if willing customers to walk through it, Hartman grumbled, “Damn.” He then shifted his eyes back to Clint. “I thought you loved poker. How come you’re not at that tournament? Is it too late for you to enter?”

  “Nah,” Clint replied. “When I heard about it, everyone was still planning on what train they needed to take to get to Dallas. I believe the first games start tomorrow. Besides, it’s not like they’ll turn away my money if I decided to show up a little late.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Leaning forward a bit more and lowering his voice even though hardly anyone else was in the saloon, Hartman asked, “That sassy little lady caught your eye that much?”

  “Let’s just say I was genuinely trying to win that game,” Clint replied.

  Hartman was laughing as he leaned back again. “I’d hardly call that losing, but I see your point. A smart man knows his limits.”

  “Hear, hear,” Clint announced as he raised his glass for a toast.

  Never one to leave his friend hanging, Rick raised his glass as well and took a drink. When he placed the glass down again, Hartman wiped some of the foam from his upper lip using the back of his hand. “So tell me, how’d you wind up getting on that lady’s good side so quickly? There ain’t a lot of men around here anyways—thanks to that damn tournament, I suppose—but every last one of ’em was eyeing Olivia.”

  Clint shrugged. “Eyeing a lady isn’t usually enough to cut it. None of them stepped up to talk with her.”

  “That’s it? You talked to her?”

  “And I gave her a run for her money at cards. That seemed to hold more water with her than anything else. Of course, she may have been trying to divert my attention.”

  “From what?” Hartman asked.

  “You recall that game she sat in on yesterday?”

  “The one with those four cowboys from the Double Dutch Ranch?”

  Clint nodded. “That’s the one.”

  “What about it?”

  “I caught her palming a few cards before I bought into the game for myself.”

  Hartman’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “She’s a cheater? Damn it, Clint, why didn’t you say so? I don’t take to crooked games being held at my place. You know that!”

  Now, Clint was the one who glanced around at the other customers. At the moment, there were just a couple of drunks scattered about and a single game of gin being played at a table near the window. “Better keep your voice down, or you’ll drive away your customers.”

  “Oh, they’re not going anywhere,” Hartman said. “I still got a bone to pick with you. If word gets out that I’ve started to allow crooked games…”

  “There was no way you could have known what she was doing,” Clint said.

  “That makes me look even worse.”

  “She was playing for a pot that hadn’t even reached ten dollars yet,” Clint said earnestly.

  Although Hartman relaxed a bit, he furrowed his brow in confusion. “She cheated at a friendly game? What’s the purpose of that?”

  “Who knows? She could have been practicing. She didn’t even win the hands when she’d palmed those cards. Otherwise, I would have let you know all about it.”

  After contemplating that for a few more seconds, Hartman shook his head as though he had a bee in his ear. “I never did understand gamblers. Anyone who’d put their livelihood on the line in a game of chance has got a damn screw loose in their head.”

  “You play poker every now and then,” Clint pointed out.

  “Sure, but only in friendly games. Now, I’m not even sure about that. I hope you at least got that lady to stop what she was doing.”

  “I let her know she’d been spotted,” Clint replied. “That seemed to be enough to get her to stop. After that, she tried to feel me out as to how I’d spotted her. Then, things sort of picked up from there.”

  Hartman laughed under his breath and refilled Clint’s beer. “I’ll say they did. How about you tell me all about her sweet little—”

  “Excuse me,” a young man with a dirty face said as he walked through the front door. “Which one of you is Rick Hartman?”

  “That’d be me,” Rick said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for the fellow who was playing cards over there,” the young man said as he pointed to the tabl
e where Clint had been sitting a few hours ago.

  As Clint squared his shoulders to the young man, he had no trouble spotting the gun hanging at the man’s hip. Judging by the worn leather of the holster, Clint knew the pistol wasn’t hanging there for show.

  “That’d be me,” Clint said.

  FOUR

  The young man narrowed his eyes and stared at Clint. His feet were already planted, and didn’t budge as he reached for the gun at his side.

  Clint could feel the muscles in his arms tensing reflexively as he waited for the man’s hand to touch the holstered pistol. At the first hint the young man was about to draw, Clint knew he could clear leather and fire his own modified Colt. After that, the only question in Clint’s mind was where he wanted the bullet to go.

  Judging by the look on the young man’s face, Clint didn’t know how close he’d come to one hell of a surprise as the man swung his arm past his gun and to the satchel hanging from his shoulder. The bag was strapped diagonally across his torso so the satchel hung just behind his gun.

  The young man brought his arm up to show Clint the envelope he’d removed from the satchel. “Are you Oliver?”

  At the least, Clint had been expecting the kid to spout off some tough talk about how he thought he could take down the Gunsmith. At the most, he’d been expecting to get a shot fired at him. When he heard that question, Clint’s only response was, “Huh?”

  “Is your name Oliver?” the young man asked.

  “No.”

  “Dammit. I was told this person was here playing cards.” Suddenly, the young man turned his envelope around so he could get a look at it for himself. He then slapped it against his knee, sending a cloud of dust into the air from the dirty paper. When he looked at the envelope again, he rolled his eyes. “It’s Olivia. I don’t suppose that’s either one of you?”

  Rick let out a bellowing laugh. “Don’t you ever look at what you’re delivering, boy?”

  “I’m not supposed to look at things too closely.” With an embarrassed shrug, the young man added, “I just go where I’m supposed to go and drop off what I need to drop off. This is only my third ride.”

  Still eyeing the gun at the young man’s side, Clint said, “Olivia stepped out for a bit. You can leave what you need to deliver right here.”

  “Are you her kin? I’m only supposed to leave something with—”

  “Yeah,” Clint said before the young man could rattle off too many objections. “I’m her cousin.”

  “Kissing cousin is more like it,” Hartman muttered.

  But the young man just seemed relieved to have heard Clint’s answer. “Just be sure she gets this, all right?”

  “Of course,” Clint said in his most convincing tone.

  The young man handed over the envelope so quickly that Clint wondered if he’d even needed to say he was her cousin.

  “Thanks, mister,” the young man said with a quick tip of his hat. He then turned and headed out the door.

  “Good thing you weren’t out to steal that,” Hartman said.

  “Yeah. It sure makes me think twice about sending anything through the mail again.”

  “Why?” Olivia asked as she walked into the saloon. “Are you afraid someone might say they’re your cousin so they can steal your letters?”

  “How long were you standing there?” Clint asked.

  Walking up to the bar, Olivia replied, “Long enough. Now hand that over.”

  Clint had reached out to hand the envelope to her when he heard a gunshot from the street. “Good God,” he said as he rushed to the window.

  Rick hurried from behind the bar so he could get a look through the front window. Olivia was beside him, but stayed closer to Clint since he was armed with the Colt while Hartman had grabbed an old piece of lumber that had been chipped and dented on the heads of dozens of rowdy drunks who’d tried their luck against the saloon’s owner.

  Although it went against his better judgment to stick his head out where there had just been gunfire, Clint took a look through the doorway. The front window kept him from seeing too far in the direction from which the shot had come, but once he got a look through the doorway, he could make out the shapes of two men close to forty paces away from the saloon.

  Smoke still hung in the air around the men’s heads. Their arms were extended toward the saloon and their feet were planted in typical shooters’ stances.

  “Get back in here!” Clint said as he roughly pulled Olivia inside. He tossed her toward Hartman as he sighted down the barrel of his Colt and pulled the trigger.

  More shots crackled through the air, but now one of the men outside at the corner was staggering back and sending his bullets straight over his own head.

  Clint started to duck back into the saloon, but realized the young courier was still standing on the boardwalk. Apparently, the man was rooted to his spot and too petrified to even draw the gun at his hip. Since Clint didn’t have much time to talk sense to the guy, he took hold of the young man’s arm and nearly pulled it from its socket as he jerked him through the door.

  As lead hissed past him and drilled through the front wall of Rick’s Place, Clint dropped to one knee and squeezed his trigger a few more times. His own shots must have been getting close to the mark because the two men at the comer were running for cover.

  One of the men didn’t make it.

  Clint couldn’t be certain if one of his later shots had hit the man or if his first one had finally dropped him, but the man dropped all the same. At first, it looked as if the man had simply lost his balance. Then, he fell over onto his side and hit without even trying to break his fall. Once he landed, the man didn’t move.

  “Damn,” Clint said as he fired his last round at the remaining man at the corner. “I need to reload.”

  Clint felt a solid pat on his shoulder and heard a familiar voice from behind.

  “I’ve got you covered, Clint,” Hartman said.

  Clint trusted the big Texan more than enough to take him at his word. Without looking over his shoulder to check, Clint jumped back into the saloon and emptied the spent casings from his Colt’s cylinder.

  When he looked over to check on the courier, he saw the young man’s empty eyes just before he started to fall over. Clint might have been quick enough to catch the young man, but he was too late to save him. The bullet wound in the courier’s back had already done its dirty work. As gently as he could, Clint lowered the young man to the floor.

  Rick Hartman could have filled most of the doorway, but he only leaned out enough to bring his shotgun to his shoulder and take aim. The man who was still on his feet was too far away to be threatened by the shotgun, but Rick aimed higher and pulled his triggers anyway. The roar of the shotgun blasted like a cannon down the street, and Hartman stepped inside to dump the empty shells.

  “That sent him running,” Rick said with a smirk.

  “Where’d he go?” Clint asked.

  “He rounded that corner like a jackrabbit with his tail on fire. The other one’s still laying in the street.”

  “Keep an eye on her,” Clint said as he pointed to Olivia. “I’ll be right back.”

  Without another word, Clint bolted through the front door and ran down the street. When Olivia started to go after him, she was stopped in her tracks when Hartman took hold of her arm. Tightening his grip just enough to keep her from moving, Hartman eased her back inside.

  “We’re staying right here, just like he asked,” Hartman said.

  “And what about him?” Olivia asked.

  “He’ll be back soon. He always is.”

  FIVE

  Clint ran down the street with his gun drawn. It wasn’t the most subtle way of getting from one spot to another, but it sure got the locals out of his way. The few people who weren’t already ducking from the sound of the gunshots practically ran for the hills when they saw Clint coming.

  Once he got to the spot where the body was lying on its side, Clint ducked down low and
placed one hand on the fallen man’s shoulder. He didn’t want to be surprised if the man was just hurt and waiting for a clear shot, so he kept him within arm’s length.

  There was no trace of the one who’d gotten away. Clint kept his Colt ready to fire as he turned in all directions to search for any sign of where the man went. Although he couldn’t see a trace of that fellow, Clint did spot a young boy wearing short pants crouched behind a water trough.

  When the boy saw Clint looking at him, he pointed a small finger toward a nearby alley.

  Trusting the kid on a gut level, Clint ran toward the alley. He made it there just quickly enough to catch sight of the gunman at the other end of the alley. Before Clint could fire a shot, the gunman whipped around and fired three of his own.

  Clint used his momentum to rush past the mouth of the alley and slam his shoulders against the wall beside it. Once the gunfire had died down, Clint leaned out to get a look down the alley. All he saw was a brief flicker of motion as the gunman bolted away and to the left.

  Before he took off after the gunman, Clint took a quick look at the water trough. Sure enough, the little boy was still behind it and was peeking around the trough at him.

  “Thanks,” Clint said.

  The kid smiled and pulled his head back into safety.

  Rather than run down the alley, Clint stuck to his end of the street and ran in the same direction the gunman had gone. Hoping the gunman hadn’t taken too many unseen turns, Clint thought he might catch sight of him once he reached an empty lot between two stores.

  Not only did Clint get the glimpse he was after, but he was almost trampled by the fleeing gunman.

  Having taken a shortcut through the same lot, the gunman looked at Clint with wide eyes and swung at him out of pure reflex. If the gunman had only swung his fist, Clint might have leaned back enough to dodge the blow altogether. As it was, the pistol in the gunman’s fist cracked against Clint’s cheek and snapped his head to one side.