That was Mallory’s way, Nola thought as she stood at the end of the bar. He ruled Galena City through a combination of largess and sheer terror. He was like an old-time king or emperor whose word was law, who might be generous one minute and the next minute might order someone’s head cut off.

  She put a smile on her face. The bruises were still there, but they had been covered up with cosmetics today. She moved toward him, and when he noticed her, he threw his arms wide and grinned at her. “Nola! My favorite saloon-keeper!”

  She allowed him to embrace her and willed her muscles to relax, rather than tensing in the revulsion that she really felt. “Hello, Ben,” she murmured.

  “No hard feelin’s about what happened yesterday, are there?” he asked.

  “Of course not. You were right, and I was wrong.”

  He kissed her, then said, “That’s what I like to hear.”

  She could feel the eyes of her bartenders and the women who worked for her watching her to see how she was going to handle Mallory. They would take their cues from her. But she knew that they would be at least a little disappointed to see her knuckling under to him.

  That couldn’t be helped. When the time was right, they would know how she really felt about him. Everyone would know, including Ben Mallory himself. It would be quite a surprise, and she hoped he would take that surprise with him to hell.

  “Have a drink with me?” asked Mallory.

  “Of course. I’d be glad to.” Nola signaled to one of the bartenders, and he put a bottle on the bar in front of her. The whiskey wasn’t the usual Who-hit-John, either. It was the good stuff, the stuff that actually matched the label on the bottle. Nola smiled at Mallory and suggested, “Why don’t we go over to a table and sit down?”

  “That sounds mighty fine to me.” He put his arm around her shoulders as she picked up the bottle and a couple of glasses and headed for a table in the corner. As they walked, he reached down and brazenly fondled her breast through her dress.

  Nola hoped he couldn’t hear her teeth grating together.

  They sat down, Mallory hooking one of the chairs with his foot so that he could pull it over close to the one where Nola sat. She eased the cork from the neck of the bottle and poured drinks for them. Mallory picked up his and looked at her expectantly, and she realized he was waiting for her to join him in a toast. She lifted her glass.

  Mallory clinked them together. “To good times,” he said.

  “To good times,” echoed Nola. Let’s see ... that would be looking down at your sorry corpse.

  He could see none of that thought on her face. She’d had years of experience at hiding what she was really feeling, going all the way back to the time when she was a child and—

  No, she told herself, she had enough to worry about now without going back that far in her memory. She smiled, sipped the whiskey, and asked, “What have you been doing lately, Ben? We haven’t seen as much of you around here as usual.”

  “I’m a busy man, you know that. Always got plenty to do.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  He frowned, and for a second she worried that she had gone too far. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

  “Just that everyone talks about what a clever man you are, and how strong, too, the way you keep those men of yours in line.”

  That was laying it on awfully thick, but Mallory had always been susceptible to flattery. It worked this time, too, as he grinned and said, “Yep, I reckon I’m pretty smart, and I don’t let anybody get away with crossin’ me. That’s why I had to rough you up a little. People got to show me the proper respect.”

  Nola nodded and said, “That’s right. And the stronger you are, the more money you have, the more people respect you.”

  Mallory tossed off the rest of the drink and poured himself another one. “Damn right. I reckon you’ve heard the old saying about the golden rule.”

  Nola arched her eyebrows curiously.

  “Him that has the gold, rules!” Mallory cackled and slapped the table with an open hand. The slap sounded almost like a gunshot. He was clearly delighted with himself. He leaned back in his chair and tilted the glass to his lips again, and when he lowered it, he said, “Only in my case, it’s silver I got plenty of, not gold.”

  “What did you do, buy a mine?”

  “Hell, you ought to know better’n that, Nola! Do you really think I’m goin’ to grub around in a hole in the ground to dig the stuff up when I can wait for somebody else to do it for me?”

  Nola allowed a worried look to appear on her face. She didn’t want to seem too curious about his business. “Maybe you’d better not tell me any more, Ben. I might be better off not knowing.”

  “I’ll tell you anything I want,” he snapped. He wasn’t happy about her trying to stop his boasting. “The same way as I take anything I want. The fellas who run those mines thought they were so damned smart, hidin’ their silver in mailbags and shippin’ it out on the stagecoaches. Well, I showed ’em how smart they really are! That silver they worked so hard for is mine now, and I got it stashed where they’ll never find it!”

  He polished off the second drink, tipped the bottle and splashed more whiskey into the glass. Nola had never seen him really drunk, but whiskey did loosen his tongue to a certain extent. She had been counting on that tendency, and it was holding true so far. If she could keep him drinking, that and his sheer arrogance might be enough to make him reveal the things she wanted to know.

  She nodded and said, “I figured you might have a hideout somewhere up in the mountains.”

  “Yeah, it’s a place where nobody can bother us. Not the whites, not the Paiutes, not anybody alive. And I never been afraid of dead folks!”

  Nola wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but at least it was a start. He had admitted that he and his gang were responsible for the silver robberies, and he had given her a hint as to where the stolen loot was hidden. When she reported this conversation to Custis, maybe he could figure out what Mallory meant.

  Mallory threw back his third drink, then surprised her by reaching over and grasping her wrist. “I’m tired of talkin’,” he said. “Why don’t we go upstairs?”

  Despite her brave words to Custis about being bedded by worse men than Mallory, Nola’s skin crawled at the thought of letting him have her again after what he had done. She forced a bright smile onto her face and used her free hand to nudge the bottle closer to Mallory.

  “I thought we’d finish this off,” she said. “No use leaving a soldier only wounded.”

  Mallory kept one hand on Nola’s wrist and used the other to pick up the cork and jam it back into the neck of the bottle. “Nope,” he declared. “I’ve had enough panther piss for now. What I ain’t had enough of lately is you, darlin’.”

  Nola didn’t see any way out of this predicament short of going to bed with him. She didn’t want to make him angry again. The success of the plans she and Custis had begun to hatch depended on keeping Mallory feeling friendly toward her for a while longer.

  Determinedly, she kept smiling and said, “All right.”

  “That’s more like it.” Mallory came to his feet and pulled her up with him, his grip tightening on her wrist. “Come on.”

  He led her toward the stairs. Nola felt empty inside, knowing that the bartenders and her girls and all the customers in the Silver Slipper were watching. They all knew where Mallory was taking her, too, and why.

  The life she had led, whether it was truly her choice or not, had never really bothered her before. Things were the way they were, and it was up to her to make the best of them.

  But now, after meeting Custis Long and getting to know him, her attitude had subtly changed. Custis had his rough edges, but he was a good man, an honest man. She knew, as well, that he would never judge her for the things she had done in her life in order to survive.

  No, Custis wouldn’t judge her ... but that didn’t stop Nola from judging herself, and for the first time in years, she was starting to find herself lacking.

  When she and Mallory reached the top of the stairs, Nola turned to the left, rather than the right. There was an empty room down the corridor in this direction that they could use.

  She was hoping that Mallory wouldn’t notice the change, but he tugged at her wrist and said, “Hey, where are we goin’? Your room’s the other way.”

  “I’ve had to move out of that room for now,” she said. “There are, ah, rats in it.”

  Mallory grinned, pulled his Colt from its holster, and twirled it on one finger like some kid from a Wild West Show. “Just show me them rats, and I’ll blow their damned heads off!”

  “No, that’s all right.” Nola tried to steer him the other direction. “I already have traps set. You wouldn’t want to accidentally step on one of them.”

  “I reckon not.” Mallory holstered his gun. “Well, let’s go. I don’t really care where it is, long as I get to poke you when we get there.”

  Somehow, Nola kept smiling ...

  Chapter 13

  Longarm was cleaning his gun when Nola came into the room. He hadn’t used the Colt in a week, and cleaning it made him feel as if he was at least accomplishing something. Ever since he had awakened that morning, impatience had been growing inside him. Yes, he was still a little weak, he supposed, and if he moved too quickly or turned in the wrong way, his side hurt where the bullet had ripped through it.

  But despite all that, damn it, it was time for him to get back to work! He had been laid up before, and he had always hated every minute of it whenever a job was left undone. The only times he could truly relax were between assignments from Billy Vail.

  So he supposed he looked a little eager when Nola came in and said, “Mallory was here.”

  Longarm snapped the revolver’s cylinder closed. “Is he still around?”

  She shook her head and looked away from him. “No, he left a few minutes ago.”

  “Blast it,” said Longarm as he got to his feet, “you should’ve got word to me somehow—”

  “Why?” she broke in as she turned sharply back toward him. “So you could have come busting in while he actually had me in bed with him?”

  Longarm frowned. Despite what Nola had said the day before, obviously she didn’t like the part she was now being forced to play with Mallory. He couldn’t blame her for that. He had never liked the idea from the start, in fact.

  “Listen,” he said, “you don’t have to do that again. Mallory’s my job—”

  She stopped him again, this time with a sigh and a wave of her hand. “I’m sorry, Custis. I didn’t mean for you to see how upset I am. Anyway, I found out some of the things we wanted to know. Mallory and his gang are definitely behind the silver robberies. He practically admitted as much to me.”

  Longarm slid the Colt back into its holster and set the coiled gunbelt on the small table next to the chair where he had been sitting. He stepped over to Nola and drew her into his arms. “That’s what we figured,” he said. “You didn’t have to play up to him just to find that out.”

  “There’s more,” said Nola as she looked up at him. “He told me that his hideout is in the mountains somewhere. He said that the whites don’t bother him there, or the Paiutes, and that he isn’t afraid of dead people. What do you think he meant by that?”

  It took a few moments of thinking, of casting his mind back over the trails he had ridden in the past, before Longarm had the answer. Nola had never been in these parts until she came to Galena City to open the Silver Slipper. If she had spent more time in this corner of Nevada, she might have come up with the same thought as Longarm.

  “There’s a place up toward Virginia Peak where the Paiutes used to bury their dead,” Longarm said. “They won’t come near the place, and there’s no silver thereabouts, so the whites don’t have any reason to be there, either. That sure sounds to me like it might be where Mallory is talking about.”

  Nola cocked her head. “An Indian burial ground? You must be right, Custis. No one would think of looking for Mallory there.”

  “Is that where he’s got the loot from the other robberies stashed?”

  She nodded and said, “I think so.”

  Longarm rasped a thumbnail along his jaw as he frowned in thought. “Mallory probably leaves some of his men up there all the time, even when he comes into town,” he mused. “He wouldn’t want to ride off and leave all that silver unguarded.” He shrugged. “Well, we’ll chew that bite of the apple when we come to it. For now, I reckon we have to concentrate on dabbing a loop on Mallory himself.”

  “You mean setting a trap for him.”

  “That’s right,” said Longarm. “I did some cowboying for a few years after the Late Unpleasantness, and sometimes the way we talked then still comes out in me. A trap is exactly what I’ve got in mind, and I’ve already been doing some thinking about how to set it. One thing’s for sure—we know the best bait for Mallory. Silver.”

  Nola was thinking, too. She said, “If Mallory thought that a big shipment was about to go out—”

  “He’d be there waiting for it,” Longarm finished for her.

  “So all we have to do—”

  “Me,” Longarm broke in. “Not you, Nola, just me. I have to be waiting for Mallory when he tries to hit the stagecoach the silver is supposed to be on. But it’ll be your job to plant the idea in his head and make sure he comes after the right coach.”

  “I can do that,” she said confidently, “but it worries me, Custis, the idea of you trying to capture Mallory by yourself. You’re just starting to recover from that gunshot wound.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Longarm assured her. He drew her into his arms again and kissed her lightly on the lips. “After the way you’ve taken care of me for the past week, I feel like a whole new man.”

  That wasn’t completely true. Longarm knew he wasn’t back to full strength yet. But it would take a while to set up the trap for Ben Mallory, and by the time the trap was ready to close, Longarm was confident he would be there, waiting to see Mallory caught in it.

  Before the gunfight with Mallory’s men had left him wounded and lying low in the Silver Slipper, Longarm hadn’t had a chance to talk to the manager of the stage station in Galena City. He would have gotten around to it if a bullet hadn’t gotten in his way. Now it was time to have a long parley with the man.

  “His name is Claude Jessup,” Nola told Longarm as they discussed their plans. “He comes in occasionally for a drink, but he never goes upstairs with one of the girls.”

  “You reckon you could get him up here to talk to me?” asked Longarm. “If you could get word to him that I had a message from his boss, Bat Thompson, down in Carson City, that might do the trick.”

  Nola smiled. “Don’t worry, I can talk just about any man into doing what I want, Custis, without him even knowing I’m doing it. Not all men are as stubborn and hardheaded as you are.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment ... I think. I need to talk to Jessup as soon as you can manage it.”

  Nola nodded and said again, “Don’t worry about a thing.”

  She was as good as her word. Less than an hour after she’d gone back downstairs, she returned, opening the door of her bedroom and stepping in with a balding, burly, middle-aged man arm in arm with her. He was laughing, but he stopped short and the pleased expression vanished abruptly from his face as he saw Longarm standing up from an armchair. “What’s this?” he asked sharply. “Nola, you didn’t say anything about another man! If this is a robbery—”

  “Hold on, old son,” Longarm said as he held up a hand, palm out. “Nola didn’t bring you up here so that we could rob you. In fact, I’ m a lawman.”

  “A lawman!” exclaimed Jessup. “What’s this all about?”

  “If Nola will shut the door, I’ll tell you.” When Nola had closed the door to the corridor, Longarm went on quietly. “I thought you were going to tell Mr. Jessup here that I had a message from his boss.”

  She shrugged. “That wasn’t necessary. It seems that Mr. Jessup was more than willing to come upstairs. It was just that no one had ever asked him.” She frowned in mock severity. “I’m going to have to have a talk with those girls of mine.”

  Jessup looked totally confused. “What’s going on here?” he demanded. “If you’re a lawman, mister, where’s your badge?”

  Longarm held up the leather folder. “Right here,” he said as he tossed it to Jessup. “Have a look for yourself.”

  The manager of the stagecoach station seemed satisfied by the badge and the identification documents in the folder. He crossed the room and handed it back to Longarm. “All right, Marshal Long,” he said. “I suppose I believe you. But why all this secrecy?”

  “Ben Mallory thinks I’m dead,” Longarm said bluntly, “and I’d just as soon keep it that way.”

  Jessup’s eyes widened as a realization dawned on him. “You’re the man who shot that miner. You’re the one they say killed Mrs. Keegan!”

  Longarm shook his head vehemently. “They can say anything they want, but I never hurt that poor woman. Mallory’s men did that. And yeah, I shot that miner, but only after he took a shot at me and wounded that newspaper fella instead. He wanted to give up mining and join Mallory’s gang. Thought if he bushwhacked me, it would give him an in with Mallory.”

  “I reckon it could’ve happened that way,” Jessup said dubiously. “It doesn’t seem much like a U.S. marshal would really do the things you’ve been accused of.”

  “That’s right. I would have talked to you sooner, Mr. Jessup, but I caught a bullet from one of Mallory’s boys not long after I got into town, and I’ve been holed up here in the Silver Slipper ever since.”

  Jessup glanced at Nola, grunted, and said, “I suppose there’s plenty of worse places to hide out.”

  “That’s mighty true,” replied Longarm with a grin. “But I’m getting back on my feet, and I’m ready to go after Mallory again. That’s where you come in.”