The Widow’s Guardian (Preview)

Chapter One

John “Trooper” Clark spread out the cards of his hand, a pair of aces over a pair of eights. He surveyed the players sitting around the poker table, cluttered with chips, shot glasses, overflowing ashtrays.

Smoke hung heavy in the air, the piano jangling in the corner. Around them, women laughed and men belched and farted, the High Roller Saloon becoming a museum of different human smells, none of them appealing.

Things at the poker table were tense. Trooper’s adversaries were reading one another as much as they were their own cards. They were men like many others Trooper had come across, no different in Boulder than anywhere else. Not yet a state in eighteen hundred and seventy, the Colorado Territory was already showing signs of civility, but just barely.

The men at that poker table were hardened killers, Trooper had little doubt. They looked like travelers, probably road agents who spent days or even weeks at a time out in the open. They wore worn wool jackets, ratty hats beaten down by the elements, faces hairy and unclean.

Men of the sort would be capable of the gravest depravities and wouldn’t be bashful about them. Men, women, even children would be fair game for any number of horrific rituals. Trooper had seen the remains of such atrocities, for the meager pay of whatever goods that could be stolen and whatever vicious joys the killers could indulge. It would likely put them in the service of the saloon’s owner, even then watching the game from behind the bar, or perhaps even the local sheriff.

Trooper had noted the other player’s habits, their strengths and weaknesses. One of them kept rolling his shoulder, as though from some recent injury. Another kept scratching the back of his neck under a tangled mane of red hair.

One of them, a tall, brown-haired fellow, was hiding cards in his sleeve. His eyes shifted from one man to the other, and he coughed whenever he switched one card for another.

Trooper played a card and tossed in two chips. “See your dollar and raise a dollar.” The other men shared a glance, each clearly calculating his best odds.

The brown-haired man coughed and Trooper made his move. He grabbed the man’s arms and slammed them down onto the card table in front of him. At the same time, he drew a Colt pistol and aimed it at the other men.

“The man’s a cheat,” Trooper said, “pulling cards out of his sleeve!”

The man pulled away from the table and rose to his feet. He moved fast, grabbing the pistol in Trooper’s hand. It was as if the man thought his sheer bravado would win the day, that size and speed would overcome a better man’s sharper instincts.

Bang!

The man fell back, a black hole in his forehead, a cloud of red mist hanging above his head as he fell to the wooden planks of the saloon floor. Trooper spun around and aimed at the man sitting across the table. He’d already drawn and was a split-second away from a kill-shot from only a few feet away.

B-bang!

Too late. The man lurched forward, the Colt falling out of his hand as he fell slowly back into his seat. The dealer and the other man sat, hands empty and near their shoulders. Their wide eyes and quivering jowls told Trooper that they were frightened into silence and stillness. It was a good survival tactic, the only one available to them.

Another gunshot rang out, drawing everyone’s attention to the bar. Saloon owner Robert Fulkes stood with one foot on the bar, knee up, shotgun in his hand. The room went dead quiet as the aging saloon owner, boxy and graying, surveyed the room.

He said to Trooper, “The next one is to your head, stranger.”

“The man was cheating me,” Trooper said, “cheating your other customers. Lord knows what else he was getting up to around here.”

“But he was in my joint,” Fulkes said. “That makes it my business to deal with!”

“Then you should have,” Trooper answered. “I had to.” He looked around the room, men and women transfixed by his position, one man against an entire room. “I don’t suppose these people want to spend time in such a lawless joint as the High Roller. But if they do, and they try to cheat me, they will be revealed. If they try to undo me, as these men did, I’ll put them in the ground.”

Trooper surveyed the room. “Let every man… and woman… be aware. My name is John Clark. Some call me Trooper. If you see me coming, you have two choices: be on your peaceable way, or pay the price.”

“Those are the rules we all live by,” Fulkes said. “But that still doesn’t give you license to shoot up my joint.”

“I didn’t,” Trooper said. “I shot up a few of your customers. Or… were they your employees? Are you running the road agents outside of Boulder, robbing the very same people out there whom you are fleecing in here?”

Fulkes said, “Don’t push your luck, stranger!”

An aging beauty slid up to Trooper, wrinkles around her green eyes, strands of gray in her red hair. “Mister Clark, is it? I can show you a real good time, Mr. Clark, just right up them stairs.”

Trooper looked her over. It was easy to be sympathetic to the sad-eyed woman, not quite as easy to be attracted.

“Thank you,” he said, “but no.”

She asked him, “What’d you say your nickname was?”

“My friends call me Trooper. Used to scout for the cavalry.”

“Former soldier,” Bob Fulkes said. “Explains a lot. Buy you a drink, Mr. Clark, or will the lovely miss April Mae here have your… full attention?”

“Neither, I’m afraid.”

Trooper looked over; the voice wasn’t his own.

The man wore a sheriff’s badge on the left side of his chest. Trooper recognized him from his few days in Boulder. He’d heard of the man’s name.

“Sheriff Rodney Harrington,” the lawman announced, a Colt pistol already drawn and aimed dead-center at Trooper’s torso. “I don’t tolerate killings in Boulder. You can come with me.”

Trooper took the measure of the man. His body was tall and lean, his bald head shaved to a shine. He had the look of a skeleton, toothy grin replaced by a solemn frown.

The sheriff pointed at the poker dealer and the remaining player. “You two come along as well.” He turned to the saloon owner, Bob Fulkes. “Get these bodies to the doc’s. Then we’ll have a little chat, just us two.”

“You’re always welcome,” Fulkes said. “The High Roller’s doors are always open to you.”

Chapter Two

Trooper joined the two other men and Sheriff Harrington on the short walk back to the sheriff’s office. A four-way conversation ensued, the simple truth rising quickly to the fore. They claimed no knowledge of one another, at least according to the one survivor among the three. The dealer claimed knowledge of one, not the survivor but the tall, brown-haired man who’d met his end in the High Roller Saloon.

The survivor, a one-eyed man who went by Melvin Mott, wasn’t found to have committed any crime along with the two dead men. The dealer had no position, which surprised Trooper no more than it seemed to surprise the sheriff.

So they were sent back to the saloon or set free to do whatever they were going to do, go wherever they wished. The sheriff asked that Trooper stay behind, and he poured them two shot glasses of whiskey, leaving the bottle on the desk.

“They call you Trooper?”

Trooper nodded as the two men sat down on opposite sides of the desk. “Scouted for the cavalry,” he said. “Union side.” The sheriff nodded. “You?”

“Infantry, under U.S. Grant.”

Both had seen the horrors of the brothers’ war, as it was called by some, a Civil War by others. Trooper could see the echo of those visions reflected in the eyes of the sheriff. The office was quiet, no screams of men as hacksaws removed their shattered limbs. There were no bloody bodies, no dead eyes staring out of the mud. There hardly needed to be. Neither man could close his eyes without reliving the horrors of that terrible class of state against state.

The sheriff downed his shot and poured himself another. “What’s yer business in Boulder, Mr. Clark?”

“Don’t have any.” Trooper shrugged, downing his own shot and clacking the empty glass onto the wooden desk. “Maybe I’m lookin’ fer somethin’ honest.”

“You call gamblin’ honest work?”

“It’s honest the way I do it,” Trooper said. “Can’t say that fer some of these others. But I wouldn’t call it work.”

“Then what pays the livery? Bounties? Murder?”

“I’ve never killed anybody who didn’t need killing,” Trooper said, “nor any man didn’t try to kill me first.” The sherif stared him down, and Trooper went on. “I’ve hunted bounty, sure, which I also hold as honest work… at least the way I do it.”

“Aren’t you a saintly type,” Sheriff Harrington said. “Killer with a conscience?”

“Nothing of the kind,” Trooper said. “No man’s conscience would be trifled by the killings I’ve had to do, nor of the things a bounty or two might have paid for. The territory’s a better place without such men—the whole nation is.”

“Whole world, too,” the sheriff said. “But that ain’t our problem.”

“Our problem?”

Sheriff Harrington poured another two drinks. “I could use a good deputy. Man like you, skilled with a gun, good in a fight—bet you throw a helluva punch.”

Trooper reached for the second drink and reclined, wooden chair creaking beneath him. “Sorry.”

“Thought you were lookin’ fer honest work.”

Trooper held his glass to his lips. “Maybe I’m wondering what kind of honest law there is in a town where gambling cheats are allowed to try their hand at gunning down honest men in a… a fair game of chance.”

“Bring that question to Robert Fulkes, owner and proprietor of that… that palace of decadence. He’s the law in that joint, far as it goes.”

“So those road agents were his hires, not your own?”

“I don’t think they were road agents,” Sheriff Harrington said in a sterner tone, leaning forward with his eyes fixed on Trooper’s. “And I don’t appreciate the inference. I do not run road agents against my own people.”

“Then you simply allow others to do it?”

“Maybe that’s why we’re talkin’ now. I’d rather have you on my side than his.”

“You think that’s what I’m after?”

Sheriff Harrington sighed and set his empty glass down. “I can’t say I quite know what yer doin’ here. And if you won’t leave, I’m hopin’ you’ll be more interested in working my side of the street.”

“Assuming I work the street at all.”

“Yer a lone wolf then,” Sheriff Harrington said. “Drifter, leaving a trail of bodies, picking up bounties here an’ there. That’s not the kind of person we welcome here in Boulder.”

“I can see the kind of person you welcome here in Boulder,” Trooper said. “I don’t think of myself as their type at all.”

“As to what type then, you still won’t say?”

“I wouldn’t take a man’s word about himself as being worth a tinker’s damn,” Trooper said. “It’s what a man does speaks for him, not what he says.”

The sheriff seemed to give it some thought. “All right, Mr. Clark. You can have your secrets, play your little games. But you’ve already killed two men here in Boulder. So you’ve got my attention. Go on with that, you may wind up laid low yourself.”

“That’s what you call law?”

“It’s what I call order,” the sheriff snapped back. “And I will have order in Boulder! If you choose to work for Fulkes, to menace the good people of the Colorado Territory, you will secure my wrath… and it will be terrible.”

Trooper gave it some thought. It wasn’t an unreasonable proposition for a lawman, particularly in the wake of two killings after three days in Boulder. Trooper had little doubt about the man’s efficacy at being a hindrance to those he did not like, perhaps even a danger to them. But which side of the law they would stand on, where the sheriff would take his position, Trooper still could not say.

But he was keen to find out.

Chapter Three

Trooper stepped out of the sheriff’s office and surveyed the busy street. The night was busy in Boulder, horses and cartmen on the muddy streets, whale oil lamps flickering atop tall pine poles.

Men and women strolled up and down the elevated wooden sidewalks, the spring night air chilly even with the warm smells of venison cracking on a spit over an open fire. A small booth sold whiskey shots for a nickel each, though there would be little telling what was in those bottles.

Trooper had seen such places before, more than he could count. And he’d seen much better. Even in the years before the great brothers’ war, he’d followed his youthful pursuits in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, even as far west as Chicago and as far south as Florida. Trooper had known men of the greatest corruption, and others of the purest nature. He knew women along the same spectrum. In only thirty-five years, Trooper felt as if he’d lived three or four lives and seen three separate worlds, each different and each depraved.

“There he is!” Trooper turned to see the familiar woman from the High Roller Saloon, called April Mae by her employer and probably her lover. “The scourge of the Boulder bullies!”

Trooper cracked a little smile. “You’re off work?”

“In a way,” she said, flashing a yellow-toothed smile, wrinkles forming around her red-painted lips. “Boss wants to see you.”

Trooper was hardly surprised, and he was even less interested. “Your boss can want what he wants,” he said. “That’s of no concern to me.”

“What is of concern to you… Trooper?” She leaned closer to him, her hand pushing up along his thigh. “Won’t you just come inside for a drink and maybe… maybe a bit more?”

Trooper had known such women, his only solace and succor from a hard life between one new town or camp and the next. Like the men he met, they seemed to blur into one another, an endless stream of faces and bodies, leading any hapless fool to the grave.

He wasn’t at all interested in her company or in the recreations of the High Roller Saloon. But he was curious about what her boss wanted. It could be a job offer or it could be murder, but Trooper was prepared for either one. If a man like Bob Fulkes wanted to come after a man like Trooper Clark, it was best to get the conflict over with and as quickly as possible. It was easiest, most direct, and it would be most effective.

But things did not have to wind up that way. As Trooper walked back into the High Roller with April Mae on his arm, he knew he wouldn’t be gunned down simply walking through the door.

Eyes rose up to him. The bodies were gone. But fresh bloodstains remained, an unhappy employee on his hands and knees to scrub out the wooden floorboards. Bob Fulkes approached from behind the bar, a smile on his face and a whiskey bottle in his hand.

“I see April has managed to coax you back.”

Trooper said nothing as the aging woman clung to him, both standing on the opposite side of the bar.

“Drink? On the house.”

Trooper just nodded and Fulkes poured the drink.

Fulkes asked Trooper, “How’d things go with the sheriff? You’re… out and about, I see.”

“Any reason you think I shouldn’t be?”

A tense silence passed before Fulkes answered, “Not as far as I’m concerned, and I’m the aggrieved party.”

“Not as aggrieved as those men I left on your floor.”

The three shared a tense moment before April said, “I can show you a party, Mr. Trooper Clark.”

Fulkes looked from Trooper to April and back, clearly opting for another tack. “The sheriff, he’s a real stalwart, runs this place with an iron fist.”

“Not this place,” Trooper said, glancing around the saloon.

“No,” Fulkes said, “not here. But out there, yes. And he’s quite a… a fly in the ointment, at times.”

“Is that so?”

“As I’m sure you can imagine.” Trooper turned his head and let the saloon owner continue. “Knowing as you must the tyranny of a military hierarchy, the way the power of a badge or a blade can go to some men’s heads. He struts around here like the Lord of Death, all of us his demon henchmen.”

“But… not you,” Trooper surmised.

Fulkes smiled. “Quite the opposite. This place, this saloon is a haven for those who seek to escape from the tyranny of a corrupt government. Isn’t that why we’re all here, so far from the homes of our ancestors? Aren’t we all trying just to… to get out from under, eh? Take yourself as an example. Clearly, you stepped away from the military after the war, as so many did. You blanched at command, but you still did what was necessary. Now, after so many years on your own, you want to find your way back into modern society.”

“You don’t know what I want,” Trooper said.

April smiled and pulled herself closer to his side. “I do, honey.”

Fulkes shrugged from behind the bar. “What do any of us want but a comfortable place to lay our heads, perhaps somebody to lay next to, share our thoughts, our feelings, rest knowing we’re likely to survive until the dawn? And all that can be yours, Trooper, all that and more.”

Trooper surveyed the saloon. “In what capacity?”

“We all do whatever is required here,” Fulkes said, “there are… stations. But when it’s all-hands-on-deck, whatever the moment calls for…”

“Hired gun, then,” Trooper said, “enforcer, road agent, assassin, maybe… kidnapper and murderer.”

“Bartender,” Fulkes said, “bouncer, pick your position and name your price.”

The terms were clear, and Trooper’s own feelings on the offer were just as clear, but to himself only. He offered a nod and had his drink. “I’m at the Boulder Central Hotel down the thoroughfare, for anyone who wants to know.”

It was more than a forestalling of the answer. It was also a threat, a warning that nobody who came against him would come away from it unscathed. And nobody in the High Roller Saloon seemed to doubt it.

Chapter Four

Sheriff Harrington took little joy in his visits to the High Roller. They weren’t infrequent, as neither he nor Bob Fulkes had much concern about what others thought of their private business. Boulder only functioned as a result of their combined efforts; most people seemed to silently understand the fact. So Rodney was treated like any welcomed guest. Fulkes would usher him upstairs and into the corner office for private negotiations and other matters.

Sitting on the other side of Fulkes’s desk, a shot glass in front of him, the sheriff faced the only man in Boulder who matched his power and stature. He was ready to overlook some things in favor of greater control of others. There were other benefits of each to the other, and one of them would raise its ugly head at the first rash showing of trouble.

It had come to Boulder, and it wore a handsome face and long blond hair. He called himself Trooper Clark.

“Sure, I made an offer,” Fulkes said. “Man like that, s’better to have him on yer side than against it.”

“Unless he works his way from the inside,” Rodney said. “But I made him an offer, too.”

“I should think you would have! A man like that, you can’t let him run around loose. Deputy?”

“Well, I’m not giving him my job!”

“Maybe I’ll give him your job.” They shared a tense silence before Fulkes went on. “What if he’s set against us both?”

“Then he best not stay in Boulder,” Rodney said. “I won’t have some troublemaker running around.”

“You won’t? This man falls into the fold, or he’s as good as dead, I promise you that.”

Rodney couldn’t ignore the icy chill running through his veins. “I won’t have you stepping out of line like that, Fulkes.” The saloon owner was flustered, but the sheriff went on, “Whatever… arrangements have to be made now and then to keep the peace, I will not allow idle killings in Boulder, not by you or anybody.”

“And what about the two men he shot up in my joint?”

“The cheater and the cheap shot? No real crime there. And why don’t you keep a tighter rein on what goes on down there? Lord knows how many bodies get shipped out through that back alley.”

“Let His ways remain mysterious,” Fulkes said, more a threat than a sermon.

“And let mine be clear,” Rodney answered. “If the man becomes a problem, I’ll take care of it.”

Fulkes broke out in a smile. “A feather in your cap, Sheriff? The man just a little too dashing for your taste? Don’t tell me he’s a threat to your standing.”

“It’s for the law to handle such matters,” Rodney said, trying to suppress his rising ire. “You can cooperate, but do not act on your own accord.”

“Do not tell me what to do,” Fulkes said, “not in my own joint or anywhere… not now and not ever!”

“Your place is still in Boulder,” Rodney said. “I am the power here, not drunken Mayor Dean, not you or anybody else. Take note of the difference and respect it, live by it… or die by it.”

Fulkes extended his hands to his sides. “I am—as you see, Sheriff—eager to do my part to keep Boulder running smoothly.”

“Keep doing it then,” Rodney said. “Report to me what you learn, what you know. Hide nothing from me on the matter, Fulkes.”

“How could I, when dealing with the most powerful man in Boulder?”

Rodney turned to exit the little room, slamming the door behind him. He knew the risks of dealing with a man like Fulkes. He was a man who wouldn’t stop short of murder, not even of the sheriff of Boulder. The men had lived in the dangerous balance between law and criminality. It often seemed that Boulder or any American town or city or camp would only survive somewhere in the breach between those extremes.

But a man like Trooper Clark threatened the delicate balance. Such a man was sure to make his own choices, go his own way. That was unlikely to parallel the interests of either Sheriff Harrington or saloon owner Bob Fulkes. And those interests were close to coming to blows.

War was coming to Boulder, it seemed certain to Sheriff Rodney Harrington. It had been a long time coming, perhaps it had been inevitable. But that was a war he was determined to win at any price.

Chapter Five

The next morning, Trooper had a breakfast at one of the many cafés in Boulder, just part of a clearly expanding citizenry. Boulder was on the come, bound to be a bright spot on the map of the State of Colorado, when and if the United States government ever got around to properly annexing it.

Until then, the place was rife with possibilities. Trooper had stake enough to make a move, but he was genuinely unsure what that move should be. He’d had enough of hunting bounties, and gambling was indeed becoming a less honorable and riskier pastime. It was certainly no way to make a decent living.

There were other ways too; the town was filled with miners, farmers, ranches, shopkeepers. There were lawyers, a newspaper. There were opportunities of all sorts, leaving Trooper to survey the thoroughfare and imagine where he might fit in. Tired of traveling, he felt the Colorado Territory would be a good place to settle. It had a bounty of gorgeous woodland that teemed with animals, predators and prey alike. New arrivals seemed to be a staple, bringing in new people and new opportunities every day.

Trooper considered the two options he already had on his table. They were basically the same position, a gun for hire. One job included a badge and an excuse to be violent, the other required neither. But both were basically extensions of the life he’d known, a violent and difficult life that provided too few chances for rest and too many ways to die.

He set his mind on some other option, having time and the chance to consider what his future would offer. It set his eyes to drift up and down the thoroughfare, looking for inspiration. A stagecoach rolled up from one of three trails leading into town from the Rocky Mountains.

It came in behind two big quarter horses, luggage piled up and tied to the top of the carriage. It stopped not far from where Trooper leaned against a support beam of the wooden awning constructed over the elevated wooden sidewalk.

The quarter horses huffed and glanced around, evidently unimpressed as the driver climbed down to open the doors. The first out was a mousey little fellow with eyeglasses and a tailored suit. He looked around the thoroughfare as the driver helped the other passengers out. Two were a man and women who came out together, though the man stepped out first to help the woman down. They looked in their forties or so, round and well dressed. The fourth passenger climbed out of the carriage with the driver’s assistance.

Trooper was struck by her beauty. She had pale skin, piercing blue eyes, and smooth black hair. Like the other passengers, she was well-dressed, with a narrow, tight waist and big, loose skirt, a bonnet blocking the early-day sun from her pretty face.

The little bespectacled man turned as the driver and his shotgun rider pulled down the bags. The young woman didn’t seem to have any connection to the other passengers, which meant she was alone in a strange and dangerous place.

Trooper’s next move was clear.

He stepped down and crossed the muddy thoroughfare to the stagecoach just as the driver handed the woman a large suitcase with a floral print.

“Hello,” Trooper said, tipping his hat to the woman. “John Clark. Welcome to Boulder.” She offered a little smile and looked around with evident discomfort. Getting no answer, he added, “My friends call me Trooper.”

She didn’t want to share her name, that seemed clear. And Trooper was ready accept that there could be any number of reasons for that. There was little question that she was wise to keep her head down and her mouth shut in a place like this one.

The little fellow extended his hand to Trooper and they shook. “Eugene Belle.”

“Trooper Clark. What’s your line, Mr. Belle?”

“Book dealer, looking to set up shop… publishing house too, maybe.”

“Well, that’s fine, Mr. Belle. Are you traveling with…?” Trooper gestured toward the pretty brunette, who was even then carrying two matching suitcases down the muddy street, ready to be swallowed up in the muck.

“I suppose not,” was all Eugene had to say, but Trooper was already following up behind the young woman.

“Can I help you with those bags, miss?”

She kept walking, not stopping or even looking back. “You may direct me to the Boulder Central Hotel.”

“I can escort you there, if you prefer.”

“I do not, thank you.”

They walked on, Trooper amazed at her abject refusal. “Those bags look heavy, and I’m sure you’ve had an arduous trip.”

Still walking, she said, “If I wanted an escort, I would have asked for one.”

“Very well.”

He kept walking behind her until the woman had to stop and spin around to face him.

“What do you mean, following me around? You’ve made your intentions clear, and so have I.”

“Perhaps you have,” Trooper said, “and made presumptions about mine.”

“Then you’re not following behind me, at a mere two steps removed? Don’t mistake me for stupid simply because I’m a woman!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She turned and kept walking, Trooper keeping up pace behind her. “Did you still need directions?”

“I can see the sign up ahead,” she said. “Thank you very much for… whatever services you imagine you’ve provided me.”

“None at all,” Trooper said. “Though the offer still stands. You came into Boulder alone?”

They arrived at the entry to the hotel. “I’ve wired ahead, so I am expected.”

“Very good,” Trooper said, tipping his had and holding his ground. A long, tense silence passed between them.

“Listen,” she said, “you… you’ve done your best to charm me, but I’m just not interested. So harass me no longer, and do not follow me into this hotel.”

Trooper couldn’t help but let a little chuckle leak out of his throat. “I’m sorry if you’re neither charmed nor interested. I’m sorry if you’re happy enough to be in a place like this without anyone at all to back your play, whatever that is. But it hardly gives you the right to order me about, certainly not to block my passage.”

“Block your—?”

She looked at the hotel entrance and Trooper shrugged. “I’ve been here for days, renting by the week.”

The young woman rolled her eyes and picked up her bags before shuffling into the hotel lobby, Trooper on her heels.

Chapter Six

Trooper followed the young woman into the lobby of the biggest hotel in Boulder. She was clearly irritated by his presence, something he found notable. Tall, with long blond hair and blue eyes, his body sculpted by hard years in the open, Trooper was used to women reacting the way April Mae at the High Roller Saloon had.

It was only more intriguing to him, however. This woman had higher standards than most, and that would likely reflect well on her. And she was wise to be on her guard, there was little doubt about that. The longer she remained in that defensive position, the longer she’d stay alive.

And it seemed readily apparent that her challenge would not abate any time soon. She attracted attention simply walking across the lobby to the registration desk. Perhaps it was the fact that such a fragile young woman was so overloaded with luggage while an able-bodied man followed behind her, empty-handed. It was more likely that it was her face, the shape of her body, a certain radiance that she had and clearly could not control. She was attractive to men, and that could be enough to mark her for death… or worse.

Trooper knew the hotelier, a fat little fellow with a smile that never seemed to relax. Harold Walters welcomed his pretty new guest, who revealed her name as Yvonne Owens. The clerk nodded and had her sign in, walking her through the hotel’s routine of accepting mail upon request, when the bills could be expected to be paid.

Yvonne was courteous with him. The young woman, whom Trooper took as Black Irish by her blue eyes and black hair, had all the pluck and grit of the Old World along with the determination that had established and settled the New World. Her name only confirmed his suspicions about her origins, but that was not so nearly in the front of his mind as the woman’s present and her immediate future.

She certainly seemed capable of handling herself, having the clerk instruct his bell captain to take the bags up to the room. She was ready to follow him for a private repose after her long trip.

But first, she turned to Trooper with, “I’m sorry if I have been rude. I’m quite uncomfortable after such a difficult journey, and I’ve little patience for scallywags.”

Trooper couldn’t help but repeat, “Scallywags?”

She looked him over. “If I’ve mistaken you, I’m sorry again. Assuming your good intentions, thank you for your assist. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Of course,” Trooper said, stepping back to let her turn and climb the stairs, her bags already nearing the second floor above her.

“You heard the lady,” a man’s voice growled from nearby.

Trooper and Yvonne both turned to see the man approach. Trooper knew him from his deformity, only one eye blinking out as he waddled across the lobby.

Trooper said, “You’re back for more?”

“You killed my friends,” Melvin said, a drunken slur in his voice even at that early hour of the day. “Now you maraud this young woman?”

“If you’re lookin’ for a fight,” Trooper said, “you’ll find one at the ready.”

“Leave the girl be,” Melvin said. He turned to Yvonne, who retreated two steps backward up the stairs. “Don’t you worry, li’l one… you’ll be under my protection.”

“Thank you, no,” Yvonne was quick to answer. “I… I’ve asked this man to look after my interests, as a matter of fact. And that applies to every particular.” Trooper gave her a doubting glance, and she answered with, “Were my terms not acceptable?”

Trooper thought fast. “No, they were… they were fine. I accept.” He turned to one-eyed Melvin. “You survived your night at the High Roller Saloon. Why not keep your lucky streak alive… and yourself as well?”

---

My new novel “The Widow’s Guardian” is coming soon! Stay tuned for the announcement!

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Michael Hilburn, a former newspaper writer, is hunting the Baltimore Butcher, the man who killed his sister. In the trail of revenge, he disguises himself as a priest. As he works to outwit his deadly opponent, innocent victims continue to die one after the other…

Can he uncover the killer’s identity before time runs out?

Clara Daniels came to Chicago with her father to build a church, but his death and a harsh winter slowed her progress. Desperate for help, she wired for a pastor and received a priest instead. This mysterious newcomer, skilled in both the pulpit and in a fight, stirs feelings she struggles to resist.

Will her growing attraction to him put her in danger?

Together, Michael and Clara face a deadly game of cat and mouse. As they draw closer, danger intensifies. Will their combined strength be enough to stop the Baltimore Butcher? Or will an unspeakable horror tear them apart?

“Vengeance Behind the Mask” is a historical adventure novel of approximately 60,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.

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