Excerpt:
Katie was a two-bit dancehall girl in a no-account town called
Purgatory. Smiley Red was a gun-slinging saddle-tramp who moved from
town to town. Until he walked into the Crystal Slipper Saloon, that is,
and heard Katie singing “I’m only a Bird in a Gilded Cage.”
Trail dust covered his boots and Mexican spurs. Sand fell from his
breeches and mixed with the sawdust on the barroom floor as he moseyed
to the bar. He pushed back his hat and the broad grin he was famous for
carved his freckled face as he listened to the skylark.
He thought her to be the finest piece of womanhood he’d ever laid his
travel-weary eyes on.
After her song, he bought Katie a drink and asked her to share a table.
She was a sprightly young woman with dark eyes framed by long, sooty
lashes. Her raven hair was pinned up with a silver brooch as pretty as
you please.
She didn’t act like an ordinary dancehall whore. No attempt was made to
seduce him or ask for drinks. He felt a sense of companionship with her
right off.
Katie was equally attracted to the kid’s flaming red hair and lonely
blue eyes. But her company didn’t come without a price. There was
another man in the saloon that had invested time and money in Katie and
didn’t like the idea of this upstart, redheaded interloper occupying his
investment.
“Looky here, Bart. Some kid’s stealing your girl,” one of the cowpokes
leaning on the bar goaded.
Smiley Red glanced toward the voice. His blue eyes turned steely. “Best
tend to your own rat-killin’, feller.”
When his hand touched Katie’s, another voice boomed across the barroom.
“Before you wet your didy, I’ll thank you to unhand my paramour, unless
you want your arm separated from the rest of you,” said a man who rose
from a poker table, whiskey in his voice.
The piano music stopped. The clacking of dominoes came to a halt. A
barmaid’s hand went to her throat. Some men held a lump in their jaw for
even the tobacco chewing stopped and the spittoons fell silent. For a
moment, there was a quiet not heard in the saloon since the last
gunfight.
Smiley Red concentrated his attention on the man who’d spoken. His eyes
became icy and a savage darkness flickered across his face. “Don’t look
to me like Katie here belongs to anyone, least of all an old fossil with
skunk-grease in what’s left of his hair.”
Bart’s eyes became narrow slits of anger. He was known to have a
lightning-quick draw, drunk or sober. The heel of his hand rested on the
butt of his pistol. He shifted his weight, bringing his piston side
forward, the movement an obvious threat.
The bartender, called Beaut because he was uglier than Sunday and twice
as mean, backed away from the line of fire as did the barmaids and the
customers.
Red smiled crookedly and calmly stood. He might have been no more than a
kid, but he showed no fear of the man who’d challenged him. “You willin’
to die for a girl half your age?”
Katie moved away with the rest, but said to the kid, “Don’t get yourself
killed on account of me, Mister. I’m not worth it.”
“I think you are,” Red said with his cockeyed smile. “If this fossil
don’t like us having a drink, I guess he’s just gonna have to shoot me.”
