Outlaw Hearts(83)

God, how he wished he could just stay away, stick to his first idea that maybe she should get rid of him right now and find some other man. But life without Randy would be the worst hell of all, worse than what he had suffered as a child, worse than taking a bullet or being cornered by Kennedy and his bunch. He couldn’t live without her, and that was that. He’d have to face this father thing and own up to his responsibilities; but if he ever hit that kid, ever found himself even wanting to hit him, hell, he wouldn’t want to live.

He walked up to the bar and asked for a whiskey, and a pretty blond prostitute sauntered his way, her breasts almost fully revealed by the low bodice of her purple satin dress. Her diamond earrings dangled nearly to her shoulders, and she was a little more pleasant to look at than most whores. He thought how at one time he would have grabbed this one up and enjoyed her for the night. Now she didn’t interest him in the least. She wasn’t Randy. There was nobody like Randy. He’d never gotten such pleasure from being with a woman as he got from his wife, and he supposed it was because he was really making love.

“Buy you a drink, mister?”

Jake allowed himself a look at the low neckline. “No, thanks,” he answered. “I’m just looking for someone.”

She smiled, rubbing up against him and moving her hand to his rear. “If you’re looking for a good lay, you’ve just found her. My name is Mellie.”

Jake picked up his shot of whiskey and downed it. Yes, it would be so easy to go back to this. He’d played a few hands of poker at one of the other saloons, as a way of getting to know the men better, finding out about the different mines and trying to determine where Wes might be. But all the while he had been unable to get his mind off of Randy.

“You’re a big man, right handsome too,” Mellie purred. “I like those big guns you wear.” She moved her hand to his privates. “You got another one in there?”

Jake took hold of her wrist and pulled her hand away. “That’s for my wife to know.” He gave her a wink and she looked disappointed.

“She must be some woman. Not many married men turn me away.”

Jake let go of her wrist. “I don’t expect they do. And if I wasn’t married, I’d be whipping out my money right now.” He swallowed the second shot of whiskey, then turned to scan the room, always wary of walking into a saloon in a town like this, where there wasn’t much law. Some men who regularly frequented favorite taverns had a kind of possessive feeling about the place, didn’t like newcomers.

A few glanced his way, looked him over. One in particular looked awfully interested. He was young, maybe eighteen or twenty. His blond hair hung nearly to his shoulders, and he sported a poor semblance of a beard and mustache. Jake pegged him as a boy who thought he was a man. He even wore a gun on his hip and he was giving Jake a challenging look. Jake hoped the kid wasn’t stupid enough to try to start something.

He looked back at Mellie and pulled out Wes’s picture for what seemed the hundredth time that day. “There is one thing you can do for me,” he told her, handing her the picture. “His name is Wes Baker, and he’s about twenty-two. He’s my wife’s brother. We came here to find him. His last letter was from Virginia City. You know him?”

Mellie’s mouth fell open as she studied the picture for several seconds. When she looked up at Jake, he was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “Yes. He used to come in here a lot.” She looked back at the picture. “He was a nice kid. He used to say I was his favorite and we, I don’t know, we got to be pretty good friends. He was sweet, liked to drink and gamble a little too much, never had any money because he gambled away his earnings every weekend.” She looked back up at Jake. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but Wes Baker is dead. He was killed in a mining accident last year.”

Jake felt like someone had hit him in the chest. Dead! How the hell was he supposed to go back to Randy with news like that? “Maybe you’re mistaken. A lot of men hang out in these places. Maybe you’ve got him mixed up with somebody else.”

She studied the picture again. “No. That’s my Wes, all right. There’s no mistaking it. I mean, that was his name, and this is his face. He even used to tell me about a sister he had back in Kansas City. I expect I knew more about him than anybody. In a place like this, men don’t generally share too much about where they came from and all.” She wiped at her eyes. “I’m the one who made sure he had a decent burial. The men where he worked told me his body had been brought down to town, so I went and saw it for myself. There were five or six mine workers at the funeral, and me.” She handed back the picture. “I guess I should have maybe tried to find his sister, maybe sent a letter to a Miss Baker in Kansas City or something. He never even told me her name. I wasn’t sure she’d get the letter and I sure as hell knew she wouldn’t want to know he’d been hanging around with the likes of me.”