Brave are the Lonely Page 4

  Their laughter boomed over the others, fists thumping one another on the shoulder.

  “Whiskeys all around,” the tallest of the three announced, dropping a heavy pouch on the bar top. “And the lovely Delilah for me.”

  More brutish laughter erupted, scraping down the length of Cody’s nerves. Whiskey and whores, what more could a man want? Cody ignored the irritation. It was their gold.

  The bartender poured three glasses of whiskey and set the bottle down, but his next words pulled Cody away from more self-flagellation about Scarlett’s choices.

  “Delilah’s done been spoken for tonight, gentlemen. But Vanessa and Jenny are both free.” The bartender snapped his fingers and the remaining two girls at the back table rose to hurry over to the bar, wrapping themselves around the newcomers like trained pets.

  A fist crashed down against the wooden bar top, the vibration carrying all the way down to shudder the water in Cody’s glass. He spared a look at the men, they carried the scents of male, snow and gun oil beneath a layer of grime and sweat.

  “I told you I was paying for Delilah tonight.”

  “Sorry Macky,” the bartender took a discreet step backwards, shoulders shrugging, but he didn’t move fast enough because ‘Macky’ seized his shirtfront and half dragged him across the bar.

  “The hell you say. You said a solid gold piece for her virgin cunt and I got your gold right here. Now where the hell is she?”

  Cody’s gaze skated skyward to the rooms overhead.

  He knew exactly where that virgin cunt was. Or where it had gone, he seriously doubted it was a virgin anymore.

  Goddammit Kid.

  Nudging the glass away with one finger, Cody sidled away from the bar. The action at the other end was getting louder. The harsher scent of anger coated every word. Guns would be drawn if fists didn’t fly first. Restlessness invaded the saloon, coiling around the patrons as every gaze was drawn towards the impending violence.

  The perfect storm.

  Cody moved slowly but confidently, careful to avoid blocking anyone’s view and drawing attention to himself. At the foot of the stairs the woman from earlier bumped right up to him, her breasts pressing unwelcomingly to his side. Swallowing a snarl he glared down at her, but she merely lifted her brows.

  “You want to keep it quiet why you’re going up there, I’ll help.” Her lips barely moved, but Cody heard her clearly beneath the din. ‘Macky’ had shoved the bartender back and shouted his fury at having been denied some promised prize, a prize he’d waited two weeks to claim apparently.

  Considering the whore plastering herself to him, Cody tasted no lie in her words. He nodded once and she pressed a cold, empty kiss to his mouth. He barely managed to not spit the taste of her and whatever other man she’d been kissing earlier away.

  That would draw attention.

  Up the stairs they went, her hand dragging his arm around her and planting his fingers against her too small breast. He’d never thought much about breasts being large or small, but hers were damn near boyish and if not for the nipples peeking out over the top of her tight chemise, he’d have had his doubts.

  To her credit, the whore put on a great show, rubbing against him, stroking his disinterested cock through the buckskin of his britches. The wolf snapped inside his skin. It was ready to bite those fingers if she didn’t stop touching him, but Cody seized the urge by the throat and shoved the wolf back.

  The first punch flew and the saloon floor erupted in chaos. Blood joined the cadence of marching scents slapping at him. Around the corner and out of sight of the patrons below, Cody peeled the woman off him. She gave him a wicked, hard grin and walked down the hall on nimble feet to room five.

  The upstairs reeked of women, men and sex. Cody sneezed and caught the smell of Kid as well as the sound of movement behind the door. He wasn’t remotely surprised when the bare-assed boy opened the door. Kid’s eyes widened and his mouth opened faintly in surprised.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Not yet,” Cody growled. “But the night’s young.”

  His whore escort pushed at the door and Kid opened it wider. Cody caught sight of one woman, nude on the bed lazy with satisfaction and stinking of Kid, and a second woman sitting huddled on the far side still dressed. She smelled of terror, not sex.

  Kid followed his look and scowled. “Leave her alone. She’s terrified enough as it is.”

  Biting back a scathing comment, Cody lifted his brows. “Get dressed.”

  “Fine, but we need to take her with us.”

  “What?” Cody’s wasn’t the only one to give voice to that question. The girl that had to be Delilah went pale. Kid jerked away from him and did the damndest thing, bare ass naked, his cock hanging damp and used between his thighs, he walked over to kneel in front of the woman.

  The whore on the bed and Cody’s escort turned, like little moths following a candle, to watch him. Kid gathered Delilah’s hands in his, careful to keep his nude body from touching her anywhere else.

  Though his voice was pitched low, Cody had no trouble hearing him. The violence below was escalating, bottles smashed, tables were being overturned and the steady thump of fist on flesh. Across the hall, a door opened but Cody shook his head at the woman peeking out and she shut the door quickly.

  “Delilah,” Kid’s low voice was smooth, silky and relaxed. “You don’t belong here. You don’t want to trade yourself for gold and you don’t have to. Let me help you. I can send you somewhere you can be safe.”

  Was the Kane boy serious? Cody sighed, but the wolf’s rage seemed to quiet under Kid’s words. Delilah relaxed, color flushing her pale cheeks.

  “I promise you, no one will touch you. I’ll get you out of here and you’ll be safe. You can start fresh, no questions.”

  A clomp on the stairs jolted Cody into the room. He shut the door and glared at Kid. Whatever spell he was working on the girl worked because she was nodding her head. Kid rose and grabbed his clothes.

  “How many are coming?” That question he threw at Cody.

  “Three, maybe more. Some trapper wants her virginity and since it’s still intact and you just told her it would stay that way, we’re going to have to get her out without being seen.”

  “We can do that.” The whore on the bed scooted off and grabbed her own clothes. She dressed faster than Kid did. “Simone, can you hold them off?”

  As fast as the first whore dressed, Simone shrugged off her own clothes. “Yes.”

  Nudity wasn’t something that fascinated Cody, but the shucking of clothes on and off verged on the absurd. Until ‘Simone’ pointed at him.

  “Strip.”

  “Excuse me?” The wolf rallied at the command.

  “She wants them to think you two have the room,” Kid explained jerking on his boots, before securing his gun belt.

  “I’m not fucking her.” Cody spit the words out.

  “You’re damn right you’re not fucking me,” Simone snapped back. “You haven’t paid for it, but you have to have some clothes off or it won’t work.”

  Cody scowled.

  “Cody,” Kid stepped between him and the lean built whore with her too small breasts and their erect little nipples. She stank of another man. It had been bad enough that she rubbed that stench on him in the first place, now they wanted him to get naked with her.

  Show or no show, he’d rather go join the brawl.

  “Please. Help me help the girl.” The request cooled the anger raging in the wolf. He looked at the terrified girl with her exotically dark eyes and thick black hair. She was innocent. She smelled of female. Hurt, scared and lonely female.

  The wolf relented.

  “Fine.” Cody jerked the ties loose on his shirt and pulled it over his head. The first whore gave a pull on the nightstand next to the bed and a door opened behind it. She grinned when she caught Cody’s gaping look, but Kid was nudging her through it, one hand on the stumbling Delilah.

  “I owe yo
u,” Kid said even as a fist slammed into the door behind him. Cody spared it a black look and jerked his head at Kid.

  “Go. Meet me outside the gates in an hour.” Cody loosened the ties to his britches and dropped the shirt to toss Kid his saddlebags. “And this time be there. Whore or no whore.”

  The fists slammed the door again. Cody waited until the secret door closed before jerking the room door open.

  “What?” And this time, he did growl.

  The tall man from the bar filled the doorway. His lip bled from a cut, but he seemed to have come out on top of the brawl he started.

  “You stole my whore.” Spittle flew from the man’s mouth, punctuating each word. The wolf roared through him when the first drop slapped Cody’s face.

  “That whore?” Cody jerked his thumb at the naked Simone. The tall man scowled and shoved Cody back to enter the room. Or at least he tried too.

  That time it was a challenge.

  Cody drove him back with a hard fist to the chest and a second that caught him under the jaw. The man toppled like a well-cut tree, slamming into the floor with a bone rattling impact. Cody and his wolf both grinned as the man’s compadres swarmed up behind him.

  He loved a good fight.

  Exactly one hour later, Cody found Kid and three others waiting for him at the trail head a mile south of the fort. His jaw ached from a couple of well-hit punches and his fists were bloody from delivering a beating, but their three would be assailants would be lucky to be walking in the morning, much less giving them chase.

  His nose identified the Kid’s bedmate and Delilah, but not the third swarthy-skinned Mexican Indian and five horses, not just the one Kid rode into the Fort with. Were they supposed to take all three of them along?

  “Alfonse. Cody. Cody, this is Alfonse Guerrero, he’s going to take the ladies to Texas for us.”

  Us.

  Like it was Cody that offered to help. The wolf could care less, the women were safe, the challenge met and defeated, blood had been spilled. Altogether, he was very satisfied at the moment.

  “They’re not going with us.” He accepted that fact.

  “No, señor. Señor Kane, he pay me take the women to Dorado, or at least to the closest coach that can take them to Dorado. I give him my word of honor that I will do that. I have two brothers in Natchez. They will ride with us. We will see the ladies safely away.”

  “Thank you Alfonse.” Kid shook the man’s hand. “It’s a cold night, but you should ride anyway.”

  “Sí, señor. The Fort’s men will be angry that Señorita Delilah is gone. She was much coveted by the men.”

  “You won’t touch her.” Cody surprised himself with the words, but the man’s rapid nod assuaged that concern.

  “No, Señor. I am a man of honor. I would not do such a thing, not when Señor Kane has paid for his lady’s safe passage. We have an understanding.”

  Cody wanted to laugh. His lady. Kid had a lot of ladies, but whatever he had to tell the man. The women seemed satisfied with the arrangement, even the whore who didn’t seem to object to being a whore.

  Kid helped the women mount and then handed a small envelope up to Delilah. “Remember what I said, when you get to Dorado see the marshal. Tell him you have word for Jebidiah Kane from his son William. Give that letter to my father, not to Sam. If Sam wants to read it, tell him that Pa will skin him for reading his mail.”

  Delilah spared Kid a shy smile. “Thank you, I will remember…will you come home soon?”

  Wondering the same thing, Cody kept an eye on the Fort. He’d been the only one to leave. Well, the only one escorted out after the brawl. Night closed around them, the air cold and sharp with the promise of snow.

  They needed to not linger though.

  “Just go be safe. You can get started again at the Flying K and on your feet without being on your back.” Kid squeezed her hand and completely avoided answering her question.

  With a few waves, the three turned their horses, the women following Alfonse into the night.

  “You sure that Alfonse will do what he promised?”

  “Yes. He’s a good man and I just paid him with what remained of my coin. He likes Delilah, but he’s not interested. Antonia can distract him if he wants a bedmate; she likes doing it. He’ll get them to Dorado.” Kid glanced away from the trail to Cody. “Thanks for your help back there.”

  “Hmm.” Cody grunted and swung, his fist catching Kid square in the jaw and throwing the boy on the ground. He spared a half smile when Kid groaned and rubbed his face. “Next time you say an hour, be an hour.”

  Chapter 5

  Cody shifted his weight. Soreness shared the saddle with him. His ass and legs cramped from riding through the night. He just wasn’t used to it. They kept the horses to a trot for the first hour, then a ground-eating walk to conserve energy. The mountain air was thinner, colder and burned his lungs when he inhaled. They’d begun ascending before the first rays of sunshine crested the eastern sky, Fort Courage a distant memory behind them.

  Populated with thick blue spruce, fat grasses and flowers, the mountain was alive with possibilities even as snow swirled ahead of them on the white caps. “How far up to the pass?”

  In Kid’s bags he’d found a Stetson, it wasn’t Cody’s but it would do. It rode low over his eyes providing shelter from the brightening sun and kept the top of his head warm. The beard on his cheeks itched but, unlike Kid, he didn’t need to handkerchief the lower half of his face to keep the frost off.

  “Around five hundred feet it levels and we can ride around to the pass. We’ll descend into a meadowed valley and we’ll travel about fifty miles to the next mountain pass. According to Alfonse, we’ll avoid the worst of the snow in the upper reaches there, but it’s going to be cold.”

  Cody nodded, smothering a half growl when Kid pushed ahead, going upwind so the cool morning breeze pushed the stench of whore, ale and sweat like a dismal cloud to wrap around Cody.

  “You need a bath.” He grimaced.

  Kid glanced over his shoulder and startled the birds in one of the overhead trees with a barking laugh. “Have you smelled yourself lately?”

  “I smell like wolf, sweat and sun. You smell like dirty horse, bad sex and cheap whore. Too many whores, at that. I can still smell that woman from Natchez on you and the farmer’s wife from the day before that.” Cody grimaced. Kid’s habits were nauseating, whether the boy realized it or not.

  “I’ll bathe when we find water, if you do the same.”

  Cody snorted. He shifted one leg out of the stirrups to stretch the muscles. Too long on four feet made the long hours in the saddle a punishment. “What is it with you and the whores? Or any woman you come across for that matter?”

  “You got a problem with sex?” Kid’s gaze slid off him, focusing ahead at the purple mountain punching upwards, its shadow angled away from them with the sun rising at their backs. This high up the warmth was a memory, not a visceral thing.

  “No. I have a problem with the fact that your pants drop every time you come across a woman. You went into that Fort for a few things and end up in the saloon’s brothel with two whores, one you obviously fucked and one you left alone. Why?”

  “It’s not important.” Kid nudged his horse up to a trot.

  The evasion sent Cody’s hackles up. He scowled after the boy. “What are you running from, Kid?”

  “Who says I’m running from anything?”

  “I do. I followed you for a reason.”

  “Yeah?” Kid slowed his horse, glancing back. “I thought you were running from Scarlett.”

  A fine mist of red coated his vision, but Cody blinked it away. Kid’s mutinous expression revealed the diversion for what it was. “I could have stayed.” He worked the words around the rawness in his soul. “I chose to follow you because you were straying on your own. I didn’t mind because I didn’t want to be there. Not until I could be truly happy for her.”

  The honesty cracked the uneven scab
on his heart. Picked at it, pulling away the bloody and raw edges. The pain flowed freely from the wolf, but Cody knew it was only the wolf’s pain now, not his. A month in the wolf’s mind, mourning, sharing his viewpoint and Cody understood the wolf better than he ever had before. The wolf saw no other opportunities. It adored Scarlett and trusted her.

  Trust.

  It came slowly to the wolf and to the man.

  Around those bloody raw edges of wound, a faint pink showed where the scars around his ripped away heart were healing. Healing because of the boy.

  The boy the wolf trusted more than the man.

  “If you want to go back, head back.” The cool rejection didn’t sting, if anything, the casual words reeked with the lie.

  “You have a lot to learn about me, boy. Especially when it comes to lies.”

  Kid barked another laugh, this one emptier than the last. Cody’s ire receded further, even with his face turned away Kid’s posture was stiff and jerky.

  “Where are we riding?” Cody asked when the conversation lagged into uneasy silence.

  “I thought California.” Another hint of a lie, but this one was more indirect. Cody sighed, shifting to free his other foot from the stirrup and stretching it. They would need to make camp soon. The horses had been going for hours and they were going to lame on the uneven climb if they didn’t let them rest up.

  Kid must have been thinking the same thing because he stood in his stirrups and pointed. “There’s some caves ahead. If water is close enough we can hole up until tomorrow. Give the horses a full rest before we push higher and across.”

  “Agreed.” It took another couple of hours to reach the caves. They didn’t have to look far for water, a trickling waterfall filled a pool just around the bend from the cave opening. Cody dismounted, fighting the urge to fall on his face when his legs protested the change in position. He forced himself not to limp as he threw his reins to Kid.