The Untamed Heart. Kit Gardner

so damned foolishly. Virgins couldn’t afford to.

      “Leave him be, Reuben,” a leathered old man wheezed from one table nearby. “He ain’t even got a gun.”

      A chorus of jeers went up. Two men began shoving at each other. Several others exchanged heated words. Someone stuck the old man’s nose into a glass of whiskey.

      “My wife run away last year with one of them fancy railroad gents came through after the mine blew,” Reuben snarled. “Left me with four kids an’ her own ma who cain’t even cook. I been lookin’ fer revenge ever since.”

      “A bath might have served you better,” Sloan replied, attempting to shoulder past. Reuben shoved him in the chest. Sloan stood his ground and met the man’s bleary but antagonistic gaze. Sloth, filth and a marked penchant for fighting. Nothing encouraging to be found so far in. Prosperity Gulch, save for Gertie. A peculiar, almost overwhelming desire to talk to her took hold of him.

      “I don’t want any trouble,” Sloan said. “Let me pass.”

      Reuben stepped from his path with a travesty of a bow. “Whatever you say, fancy gent.”

      Sloan took two steps and realized his mistake an instant too late. He’d allowed distraction to get the better of him only once before, and a bullet meant for him had found his father. He thought he’d learned that lesson well. Apparently not. Reuben put all his weight behind a punch that caught Sloan in his ribs and drove the breath from him. Sloan doubled over, spun to the left and swung his left leg in a blinding arc into the side of Reuben’s thick skull. Like a mighty oak felled by the single stroke of an ax, Reuben toppled to the floor.

      “I didn’t want to do that,” Sloan muttered, stepping past the man’s motionless body, one arm pressed to his ribs. It was then that Sloan realized every man in the place was engaged in a fistfight. He stepped over one fallen cowboy, ducked as a chair flew past, and narrowly missed being crashed over the head with a whiskey bottle. Fists met flesh everywhere he looked. Blood spurted. Curses spewed. And above it all the piano belched out its gay tune as if playing to a room full of civilized people.

      He made his way to the bar. Gertie had disappeared. His eyes flickered to the stairs. She wouldn’t have gone up there with that young cowboy…or had she?

      The shiny-headed barkeep met him in front of the bar, hamlike hands braced on his hips. He was a formidable-looking man, powerfully built, but the glint in his eyes revealed far more than a lust for a bloody fight. There was something distinctly possessive in the man’s stance, a protectiveness that extended beyond the tables and chairs in the place. Sloan was fairly certain the man didn’t easily lose his temper.

      “Where is she?” Sloan asked.

      “You’re goin’ nowhere but out that door, mister. And you can take your fancy fightin’ with you. It won’t do you any good against a Smith and Wesson.”

      “We’ve no quarrel between us. Where is she?”

      “You leavin’ or do I get my rifle?”

      “I want to talk to her.”

      “I’m going to start counting, mister.”

      “Sloan Devlin’s the name, late of—”

      The man moved one step closer. “If you don’t leave my place, I’ll kill you.”

      “Yes,” Sloan said, looking deep into the man’s eyes. “I believe you would.” Again his eyes shot to the stairs. “I’m leaving. Just tell me, is she up there alone?”

      A growl came up from the man’s broad chest, bursting from his lips in a bellow of rage. And then Sloan knew beyond a doubt that this giant was deeply in love with the reckless Miss Gertie. A part of him must have understood that, must have forgiven him his vulnerability, because he didn’t strike out when the man clamped his fists onto Sloan’s shirtfront and shoved his face close.

      “She’s never been up those stairs with a man, mister,” he snarled. “And she never will, least of all with another finelooking, smooth-talking gent who’ll give her nothing but empty promises and another broken heart.” The man released Sloan and rubbed an unsteady hand over his brow. The creases around his eyes seemed to deepen and the glitter of rage faded as he glanced around his saloon. “Now get the hell out of my place.”

      With a curt incline of his head, Sloan tugged his topcoat smooth, turned on his heel and maneuvered his way to the saloon’s double-doored entrance, retrieving his valise along the way. As he stepped into the late-afternoon sunlight he passed the bandy-legged wagon driver who’d pressed his face up against the saloon’s front window and worked his jaw in a circular motion.

      Sloan had just stepped onto the wooden boardwalk opposite the saloon when gunfire exploded through the Silver Spur. A moment later two cowboys crashed through the beveled glass front door, spraying the street with tiny shards.

      An odd hush fell over the saloon and the street. Even the piano fell silent. One by one the cowboys crept out into the street, some rubbing bruised jaws, others limping, most with blood streaming from flesh newly laid open. Sloan leaned a shoulder against the corner of one building, drew his journal from his valise and flipped it open. He squinted out into the street as the saloon owner emerged from the Silver Spur with a long-barreled rifle.

      Sloan’s gaze ventured up, drawn to the rooms above the saloon. At the windows, white lace curtains stirred in the soft breeze. The curtains hung motionless now, like the dust hanging heavy and still over the street. There was no breeze to be found. Lace at a window would stir if someone moved past them.

      He glanced down at the journal and wrote, Women allow themselves the privilege of a broken heart only once. After that, they never fully part with it again.

       Chapter Two

      You from the Independent?”

      Sloan snapped his journal closed and glanced over his spectacles at the man standing at his elbow. The fellow jerked his eyes from Sloan’s journal but there was no apology in his gaze, no chagrin in the set of his jaw beneath his sweeping black mustache. There was also no gun belt around his waist, just a black walking stick in one hand. He wore a starched white shirt and black trousers common to men of decidedly civilized occupations. Sloan found himself taking an immediate liking to him despite his palpable animosity.

      “No news in Deadwood Run today, eh?” The fellow eyed Sloan with increasing suspicion, particularly the stickpin at his throat. “Or you fellas run out of all those epithets and insults you’ve been hurling at us? I’ve been called a loathsome creature one time too many by that louse you call an editor over there.” The man jerked his chin at Sloan’s journal. “I’ll tell you right now, mister, there’s room in this town for only one newspaper and that’s the Lucky Miner.”

      “They’ve been lucky then,” Sloan said, folding his spectacles into his pocket and tucking his journal under his arm.

      The man snorted and waved an arm at the motley collection of men lingering on the street. “Where’d you hear that? The miners of this town do nothing night and day except drink fiery liquids and indulge in profane language. Sure, the miner you see today loves whiskey, cards and women, just like the cowboys. But compared to the forty-niner of California, or the fifty-niner of Colorado, he’s a hollow mockery.” The man frowned at Sloan. “And you can quote me on that. It’d be the first time fancy didn’t get the upper hand of fact in the Independent.”

      “A common malady when there’s a dearth of news.” Sloan watched the color creep from the man’s wing collar. “Truthfulness is not the hallmark of frontier journalism, no matter the paper.”

      The newspaperman puffed up his chest. “You give folks what they want to read if you don’t intend to close up shop. Let’s just say most editors in these parts have become masters of the