Sam Duncan was too young when he marched off to war and was brutally imprisoned. He's witnessed and experienced a lifetime of cruelty and he's lost too much to care about anything ever again. While he was captured, his entire family died, leaving him with the only person he cares about - his cellmate, Griff. As a result, his steely nerves have made Sam one of the most famous and feared hired guns in the west. Then Griff disappears inside the gates of Hamilton's fabulously profitable Silver Spur ranch. Sam figures that posing as a bodyguard of the Baron of Banking's daughter, who's come to visit, will be the simplest solution to finding his way in.Little did he expect that fighting a war would do so little to prepare him for an encounter with the very adventurous and alluring Laura.
A Wanted Man
By Law, Susan KayAvon Books
ISBN: 0060525193Chapter One
Hell's Pass, Wyoming
May 1884
It was a hard thing to lose a friend. It was harder yetwhen you could number your friends using lessthan one hand. When, if it came right down to it, it tookbut one finger.
The fact that Sam Duncan called no one else friendwas his own choice. It was a lesson he'd learned hard;when people around you dropped like flies in August itwas far easier to remain alone than to get to knowsomeone just to lose them.
But Griff ... Griff had been the one who, just likeSam, hadn't died. He didn't know if they'd been toolucky or too stubborn or just too damn stupid to give inwhen everybody else had. Though he had to admit"friend" didn't really cover it. When you'd spent nearlyhalf a year together in a hole too small for a grave andmanaged not to kill each other, you had a bond that most people -- the lucky ones who skipped through lifehappily unaware of the really vicious things peoplecould do to each other -- could never understand.
He winced, gingerly probing his jaw where itthrobbed to beat hell, despite the ice he'd slapped on itan hour ago when he'd finally stumbled into town andfound himself a saloon full of people who barelyblinked an eye when a fellow weaved in looking likeJohn L. Sullivan, the Boston Strongboy, had used himfor a sparring partner. Sooner or later he was going tohave to wash out the blood matting his beard, but hewas shooting for later.
When he'd crawled away from the Silver Spur, itwould have been closer to head to Salt Lake City. Butthat was a Mormon town, and he'd known he was goingto need a place where he could get some whiskey.
He downed another slug from the bottle on the tablebefore him, noting that his hand only quivered a bitwhen he lifted it. The room was small and rough, andthe saloon keeper had charged him too much for it becauseit usually rented by the hour. But Sam knew thatonce he dropped into bed he wasn't going to be able tohaul himself out again for a good twelve hours.
Outside the single grimy window, the sky had grayed,as if the sun were too tired to keep shining, not going outin a burst of flashy color, but simply fading away like aharlot's henna when her hair had gotten too gray to soakup the red anymore. A piano squawked from the mainroom below. It was probably supposed to sound gay andcheerful but instead it was brassy and off-tune, setting hisbrain to throbbing behind his eyes. Now and then a spurtof laughter?the nasty-edged laughter of people tryingtoo hard to convince themselves they were having fun -- burst through and clashed with the tune.
He was obviously getting too old to have the shitbeaten out of him. He felt every wound: the bruise thatspread over half his chest and made him groan everytime he moved, the kick that had caught him in the back,the swollen and split knuckles he'd earned trying to fightback. He couldn't open his left eye, and the fact that hisknees still worked was nothing short of a miracle.
He didn't recall it ever hurting so much. Maybe afellow was allotted only so much pain tolerance for hislife and he'd used his upbef ore he'd hit twenty, becausehe was doing a piss-poor job of tolerating the pain atthe moment.
He contemplated the whiskey for a while. He had towork up to another drink, because the stuff set his splitlip afire every time he touched it, a burn that was almostas bad as all the other aches combined. Maybe if he justdidn't move, didn't twitch, didn't breathe, it'd be okay.
Lord, if anybody could see him now ... ow, ow, ow.Chuckling was a really bad idea, he quickly discovered.But he'd spent all these years building up a reputationas a really ruthless piece of work, so much sothat the mere rumor that he'd been hired had snuffedmore than one strike and range war before they'd evergotten started. And right now he doubted he could defendhimself against a six-year-old.
Yeah, there'd been a lot of men coming at him.Maybe a dozen, he thought, though his vision hadblurred early on, and that just might be his pride talking.And they'd caught him by surprise -- but that wasthe whole point, wasn't it? Nobody had caught SamDuncan by surprise in a good fifteen years. But it hadall seemed routine. They'd answered his questions withsuch mild disinterest before cordially escorting him offthe Silver Spur that he'd been pretty close to assuming that they were telling him the truth and that Griff hadnever gotten there in the first place.
But Sam hadn't gotten to be the highest-paid hiredgun in seven states by taking anybody's word for anything.He'd nosed around the nearest town for a bit -- noinformation to be had, the most close-mouthed bunchof ostensibly "friendly" people he'd ever met, and thatdid make him suspicious -- before heading back towardthe Silver Spur. They were waiting for him before he'dever gotten close . . . and since there were at least fourother routes he could have taken back, he wonderedjust how many men Haw Crocker, the owner of the SilverSpur, had sent out to make sure that Sam Duncanregretted it if he didn't go quietly on his way.
It had gotten dark enough in the room that he couldno longer read the two papers he'd spread out on therickety pine table ...
Continues...Excerpted from A Wanted Manby Law, Susan Kay Excerpted by permission.
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