The boy released the chamois cloth just long enough to sketch a quick cross over his heart. “I swear,” he said. “Honest I do.”
Marcus sighed and closed his eyes again. I swear. Honest. It wouldn’t surprise him one bit if, ten years from now, he was tracking this kid, once he graduated from watches to payrolls, from petty larceny to felony or worse. Now that was a depressing thought—Marcus Quicksilver still in the saddle riding down lowlifes a decade hence, at the ripe old age of forty-four. God almighty. He’d probably need spectacles to read the Wanted posters.
Not that his keen eyesight was doing him any good at the present. His last three bounties had been pure busts. He’d gotten to El Paso on the heels of Elmer Sweet, a rival manhunter, who’d had himself a great guffaw when he led his thousand-dollar prisoner right past Marcus’s nose. A month after that, he’d had the hell kicked out of him by a horse thief named Charlie Clay, who turned out of be the wrong Charlie Clay, one with no bounty on his head. And damned if three days ago Marcus hadn’t arrived in Rosebud just in time to watch his quarry take a long drop from a short rope in the town square.
He never used to lose bounties before, Marcus thought. Every man he set out to catch, he caught. Over the past decade or so, he’d earned himself a fearsome reputation. Often as not, if a man heard that Marcus Quicksilver was on his trail, he’d know he was as good as done for and just turn himself in to the nearest available lawman.
Ten years. Twelve. How long had it been? Marcus stared at the yellow-headed kid now, thinking the boy hadn’t even been born when he collected that first bounty. Suddenly it seemed like the criminals were getting younger and faster with each passing year, while he was getting older and slower and…
“That’s not true, dammit.” Marcus said it out loud as he jerked his leg and pushed himself straighter in the chair.
“Hey, watch it,” the kid snapped. “Who’re you talking to, anyway?”
“Nobody. Mind your own business.” Marcus settled back in the chair again, attempting to relax his leg and to clear his aching head of such dismal thoughts.
Hell. If he wasn’t getting any younger, he certainly wasn’t getting any richer, either. It kept getting harder and harder to save that last few thousand dollars toward the land he’d hoped to buy. Even when he did collect a bounty these days, by the time he got back to Denver he’d be honestly surprised that most of it had slipped through his fingers.
Since they’d hanged Doc Gibbons in Rosebud, there wasn’t even sand to slip through Marcus’s fingers this time out. Still, here he was sitting in the sunshine at a train depot in Nebraska, getting his boots shined for a nickel when his pockets were very nearly empty. That realization made his head ache all the worse.
“Psst.”
He opened a single eye at the sound of the nearby hiss but didn’t see anyone, so he settled deeper in the chair.
“Psst. Yoo-hoo. Little boy.”
The brisk cloth stopped moving across Marcus’s boot when the boy said, “You calling to me, lady?”
Marcus hadn’t seen anybody—lady or otherwise—but when he opened both eyes now he caught a glimpse of a little female in fine traveling clothes peeking around a corner of the depot.
“Yes, I am calling to you.” She smiled and crooked a gloved finger. “I’d like to speak with you. Would you come here a moment?”
The kid dropped his chamois rag and tore off in her direction, leaving Marcus with one boot shined and the other still covered with trail dust. He started to curse, but then he laughed instead. It wasn’t the first time a young entrepreneur had let his business go all to hell when beckoned by a pretty smile. He, himself, had lost a bounty or two when distracted by other, softer pursuits.
He leaned forward, picked up the rag, and went to work on the dusty boot, thinking maybe he’d keep the nickel—Lord knew he could use it—but knowing he wouldn’t deduct even a penny from the scrawny little hustler’s pay.
“There you go frittering away money again, Marcus,” he murmured to himself, shaking his head with dismay more than disgust. “When are you going to learn?”
Both boots looked pretty good, in Marcus’s opinion, by the time the kid reappeared a few minutes later. But instead of returning to finish the job he had started, the boy walked right past Marcus’s chair, toward the door of the depot.
“Whoa. Wait a minute,” Marcus called after him. “You started something here, pal. For a nickel, remember? Here’s your shine cloth.” Marcus waved it at him.
The scrawny boy stopped for a second, his hand on the door, and then he shrugged. “Aw, that’s all right, mister. You keep ‘em. The nickel and the rag both. I don’t need either one of ‘em now.” He flashed a lopsided grin before he disappeared inside the depot.
Marcus sat there a minute, shaking his head in bafflement while staring at the dirty and now abandoned rag in his hand. Then, just at his shoulder, a throat was cleared with polite insistence.
“Excuse me, sir. Could you possibly tell me what time it is and how soon the train is due?”
Marcus looked up into a pair of eyes the color of money, the shade of greenbacks fresh from the press. They were bright and clear and rich with promise. Below those was perched a delicate nose, and somewhere in his field of vision there was a mouth that struck him as sensual and eminently kissable, for all its primness. It was only when that mouth twitched with impatience at each corner that he realized he hadn’t answered the question it had posed.
He balled up the boot rag, tossed it onto the planking, then tugged his watch from his pocket. “It’s five past eleven, miss. The westbound’s due any minute now, if it’s running on time.”
“Good. I certainly hope so.” Saying that, she whisked her skirt around and walked back to the edge of the depot, where she’d been standing earlier.
Well, not standing, exactly. It was more like skulking, Marcus thought now, vaguely aware of a little flicker of disappointment in his gut. He was used to women making advances toward him, some shyly asking the time, despite the watches pinned to their breasts, others coming right out and telling him they’d never seen a more handsome devil in all their born days and was he married or promised or going to be in town long? None of them, however, ever skittered away to skulk once the connection had been made. Ever.
He didn’t consider himself a ladies’ man, exactly, but he wasn’t a rock by the side of the road, either, dammit. This little lady’s obvious disinterest had definitely taken a chunk out of his male pride. He scowled at his boots a minute and rubbed his jaw before getting up, stretching and sauntering her way.
“Nice day.”
He might as well have been a rock, the way she ignored him.
Marcus nudged his hat back a fraction. “You headed west, miss?”
Her pretty face tipped up to his, and those green eyes regarded him with cool disdain, less like a rock now than like something that had crawled out from under one.
The hell with her. Marcus would have turned on his heel and bidden her good-day and good riddance then, if he hadn’t noticed the tiny trembling of her lips and the way her fingers shook when she reached up to brush a stray wisp of blond hair off her forehead. She was nervous. No. More like frightened. Scared to death. Only you couldn’t tell it by her voice.
“I’m not in the habit of talking with strangers,” she told him in clipped, cool tones, then added an icy “Go away,” just to make sure he got the point.
He got it, all right, and—scared or not—he was about to give her a view of his departing back when she muttered, almost under her breath, “Where the devil is that little boy? What in the world could be taking him so long?”
“Pardon?”
She sighed and spoke as much to the clapboards