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  “Well, sweetie?” the toothless one said when he noticed her staring at him and his companion. “You gonna make me rich or you gonna make me happy?” Taking his hat off, he rested it over his heart and sent her a lecherously forlorn look. “Either way, I’ll surely die a happy man.”

  A round of laughter exploded at the off-color remark, but Hope refused to dignify the slimy toad with a response. Instead, she turned her attention to the rest of the room, her gaze searching for any man who would fit Drake Frazier’s description. There were a few, but the smoke was so thick and the men so many that she was quickly losing hope of ever finding the gunslinger without some measure of help.

  “Don’t think she likes ya too well, Hank,” the other one said to his toothless companion. The hat he plucked off his head revealed a bald, leathery scalp that glowed dull in the lamplight. “Maybe she cottons more to a man with some meat on his bones.” The slurred voice rose with a confidence born from the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. “Hey there, little filly, if Hank here don’t suit ya, why not give me a try? Old Mel here really knows how to please a gal.” His busy brows rose in lewd suggestion. “Ya won’t be disappointed—and that’s a promise.” Leaning back in his chair, the man hooked his thumbs in his belt loops as his vulgar gaze ran up and down Hope’s body.

  A hush fell over the room as she slowly turned to the man in question. She fixed her gaze on the one named Mel, and there was no stopping the shimmer of distaste in her large brown eyes as her gaze traveled over the pudgy man.

  The toothless one shifted restlessly in his chair as she took a step toward the table. He sent his friend a nervous glance, not at all liking the angry color on the young woman’s face. It was a belated thought, but he wondered if any relatives of hers were here to witness his friend’s crude remark. If there was a father or brother around, they were keeping their peace. That settled the small man’s nerves—a little.

  Hope stopped as soon as her thigh was an inch away from the table side. She was careful not to let the folds of her cloak brush against it, so greasy did the wooden surface appear. Her gaze hardened as it shifted from one man to the other, then down to the two gold nuggets on the table. They hadn’t been to the stamp mill yet, she noted, but even a rank amateur could see that both were of fine quality, with hardly a trace of quartz running through the shimmering surfaces.

  “A bet?” she drawled, eying the gold. The silence that enveloped her was so acute that even those on the far side of the room could hear the softly spoken words. She batted a thick fringe of ebony lashes and regarded the pair with mock innocence. “Over little ol’ me? Why, gentlemen, ah surely am flattered.”

  The small man ran the tip of his tongue over the disgusting pucker of his lips and nodded. His gaze ran greedily over the curvaceous body, only hinted at by the loose cloak. The eyes were beady and filled with a perversely nervous sort of hunger. It was plain to see he didn’t much care what lay beneath the coarse wool. The fact that she was a bona fide, honest-to-God woman was good enough for him. And if she was ugly or disfigured beneath those billowing folds? Well, he could always close his eyes and pretend, now couldn’t he?

  “Care to settle it, honey?” the bald man asked, his voice a cold, hard challenge. Unlike his friend, he was not as easily intimidated, nor was he as drunk.

  “Why, ah’d be truly honored,” she replied, her voice a soft, sweet, deadly purr as she purposely thickened her accent. “Why don’t y’all tell me what yer little bet here’s about first.”

  The one named Mel grinned. “Why, honey, it’s so simple even you can understand it.” Hope’s lips thinned to an angry white line at the insult, but the man was too busy preening to notice. “Whoever gets lucky ‘nough to bed you first gets the gold—if’n he remembers to take it.”

  “Well now, isn’t that just tha sweetest thing?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Finely arched brows rose high on her forehead as she resisted the urge to slap his ugly face. But there were better ways to deal with his sort. Lightning quick, she reached out and scooped up the two nuggets. After testing their weight in her palm, she slipped the gold into her pocket, much to the shock of the two men. “Neither of you will be—ahem—bedding me tonight. Looks to me like you’ve both lost, gentlemen.” Batting her lashed again for good measure, she sent them her most charming smile. “Mind you, ah use the word lightly.”

  Flabbergasted into silence, the two men watched her pick up one of the glasses of whiskey a buxom barmaid was about to set on their table. She held the glass up to the light, noting its dull, spotted rim. It looked partly clean, Hope decided, which would probably be the cleanest she was going to get in a place like this. As she tipped the glass to her lips, the hood of her cloak fell to her shoulders, freeing a waterfall of chestnut curls that swayed to below the gentle taper of her waist. She downed the contents in one fiery gulp, gasping as the stuff burned a path down her throat.

  Feeling suddenly warm, she wondered why she’d even bothered with the cloak. Had she really thought the shadowy hood would conceal her identity? How foolish of her. She stood eye to eye with most of the men in Thirsty Gulch, and even a head taller than a few. Certainly, if her height didn’t give her away, her soft, husky voice would. Ah well, there was precious little to be done about it now, and she was quickly finding that she really didn’t care if the patrons of The Brass Button Tavern knew who she was.

  Drinking the whiskey had been a pretty good idea, she decided as she felt her nervousness fading, replaced by a calm numbness that felt almost natural. Liking the feel, if not the taste of the liquor itself, she set the first glass in front of a stunned Mel, and plucked up the second. This drink slid down nice and easy, hardly burning her throat at all as the liquor gathered in a warm pool in her stomach.

  She slammed the empty glass on the table with a little more force than was necessary, as her fingers fumbled in her pocket. A silver coin was procured and duly tossed on the surprised barmaid’s tray.

  “Next round’s on me, fellas,” she announced, her voice louder and huskier than normal. “Hope y’all enjoy it.”

  With that, she spun on her heel to face the rest of the tavern. Squinting, she continued her examination of the amused, ragged faces, ignoring the guffaws of laughter that erupted around her. Pursing her lips, she noted that only a few of the men fit the description of the one she was looking for, and gut instinct told her that not a one of them was Drake Frazier.

  Scowling in frustration, Hope headed for the bar. Few of the patrons had taken seats there, and she carefully placed herself far away from the ones who had. She settled on the only stool that looked seatworthy. The wooden seat was hard on the posterior and offered no back on which to recline. Still, she perched on its edge in the most graceful way a woman could possibly sit on a barstool. She kept her back to the portly barkeep who was eying her intently as he swabbed down the counter with a dirty scrap of rag.

  Except for the ribald jokes tossed at the fellows whose gold now lined her pocket, the majority of attention was still focused on Hope. Good, she thought. It would make her chore that much easier.

  With slow deliberation, she pulled the two gold nuggets from her pocket. The smile that played on her full, sensuous lips was enough to jolt more than one poor soul into sudden sobriety.

  “I'm looking for a man by the name of Drake Frazier,” Hope said, pausing long enough for her gaze to scan the crowd, and her honey-sweet words to sink into the men’s alcohol-dulled senses. “I don’t suppose any a you, um, kind gentlemen can help me?”

  “Depends on what you want ‘im for, sweet thing,” a voice called out from the back. Hope focused her eyes on a tall, lanky fellow who could not possibly be the man she was looking for.

  “That, sir, is my business,” she replied with a coy little smile.

  A soft murmur spread through the crowd as she gave them a chance to weigh her words. All the while her fingers played with the two pieces of gold, careful to hold them conspicuously, so all the patrons ha
d an ample view. One at a time, she dropped the nuggets into her lap, then picked them up again, rubbing them together before repeating the process. When no one burst forth with the information she sought, the crowd instead drifting back into conversation, she held one of the nuggets up to the lamplight. Her expression was a mask of feigned ignorance as she pretended to examine its quality. She wasn’t surprised to find the room had fallen silent again.

  “What’d you say the guy’s name was?” another voice asked.

  She glanced at the speaker, a young boy with a crop of sandy brown hair, and smiled. “Frazier,” she repeated. “Drake Frazier. Have you seen him?”

  The boy shrugged, eying the gold that was nestled snugly in her lap. Or was it the lap he was eying, Hope wondered? “I might’ve.” He scratched a smooth, round chin that had yet to sprout its first whisker. “The name sounds a mite familiar, but I can’t rightly say where I heard it b’fore.”

  “Hmmm,” she sighed thoughtfully, shifting her gaze from the boy to the men behind him. Absently, she noticed that the table where the first two men had sat—the ones who’d grudgingly parted with their gold—was now occupied by three new faces. There wasn’t a sight of the two idiots to be had in the smoke-filled saloon.

  “Pity,” she said with a wistful smile. “And here I was thinkin’ I might part with one of these perty little things if’n it’d lead me to my Drake.”

  Again she held one of the nuggets up to the light. This time, she knew with a certainty that she had captured the attention of every eye in the place, and that all were examining the chunk of gold right along with her.

  Lowering the nugget back to her lap, she puckered her lips and asked the room in general, “Don’t suppose any of you know what these are worth...?”

  The sheer gullibility of the question went undisputed, and not only because she was a woman. It was common knowledge the woman’s family had been in Thirsty Gulch little better than a week, and settled down in the Simpsons’ old cabin for even less. How could any of these prospectors guess the vast number of camps the Bennetts had traveled though before settling down in this one? For all they knew, Hope Bennett was a simpering female straight off a boat from San Francisco. Besides, only a few women knew much about staking claims, working a cradle, or assessing a nugget’s value. By most of these miners’ standards, she was ripe pickin’s.

  She watched as one of the men disengaged himself from the crowd and stepped up to the bar. He was of medium height and build, with jet black hair that was painstakingly swept back from his face. His beady eyes shimmered with greed as they flickered between Hope and the gold in her palm.

  She had a feeling she had just found the man who would lead her to Drake Frazier.

  “Why don’t you let me take a look at those, sweet thing?” he asked, extending a hand that was too soft and smooth ever to have seen the long end of a shovel. “I make my living doing this.”

  “You mean you’re a bona fide assayer?” she gasped, with false delight. Hope turned the full effect of her velvet brown gaze on him in what she prayed resembled admiration. She didn’t trust this man for a minute. He had the look and smell of a weasel of the worst sort. Still, she was careful to keep her suspicion from showing, in either her eyes or her expression, as she placed the piece of gold in his hand. “Well, sir?” she asked with forced eagerness, as he held it up to the light. “Is this my lucky day? Did I strike it rich?”

  The man sent her an annoyed glance as he turned the nugget this way and that, rubbing his fingers over the coarse surface, even going so far as to take a sniff of it. One of the most difficult things Hope had ever done in her life was to hide her amusement at that maneuver. Sniffing gold! she thought. Her father and Old Joe would certainly get a week’s worth of chuckles when she told them about it later.

  Sending a quick glance over the rest of the room, she was glad to see that most of the men had gone back to their business of drinking, gambling, and raising holy hell. She watched as a giggling, brassy redhead was pulled into a drunken miner’s lap. Even the piano player had struck up another chord. Relieved, she turned her gaze back to her companion.

  Shaking his head, the man sent her a helpless look as he handed her back the gold. “Sorry, ma’am, but they ain’t worth much.”

  “No?” she sighed, her features melting into sadness as she let her shoulders slump forward. Keeping up her thickened, down-home accent was not as difficult as she would have thought. “No, huh?” she pouted, slapping a palm on her lap. “Dern it all! And here I thought for sure this was gonna be my lucky day.” Another sigh, this one heavy and dejected. “Oh well, Drake’n I weren’t never meant to be t’gether, nohow. Paw told me so, but I didn’t b’lieve him.” She smiled sweetly at the weasel, adding a touch of sadness to her forlorn gaze. “Guess I shoulda listened, huh?”

  Taking the gold, she slipped it back in her pocket and began to slide off the barstool. As she suspected, the weasel had no intention of letting her go so easily.

  “Now, hold your horses there, sweet thing,” the man said smoothly as he put a restraining hand on her arm. “I didn’t say the gold was totally worthless.”

  “Gold?” she squealed, clapping her hands in delight. “You mean this is real gold? Why, who woulda thought? And you say it is worth somethin’?” Hope turned trusting eyes on him, and at the same time tried to control the impulse to spit in his stinking, conniving little face. The place where his hand touched her arm felt as though a thousand slimy things were crawling over it. She repressed a shudder, knowing she was too close to her main objective to pull away now.

  “Like I said, not much,” he shrugged. “Maybe fifty dollars between the two of them, but that’s stretching it.”

  Fifty dollars, my ass! It’s more like three hundred fifty, if it’s worth a cent. And he knows it, too, the bastard.

  Wisely, Hope kept the opinion to herself as she forced her expression into the pantomime of a shocked-into-speechlessness female. Her hand fluttered to her throat as she feigned excitement. “Fifty dollars!” she exclaimed. “Why, that’s more’n I was hopin’ for. Tell me sir, if’n you’d be so kind, where ‘bouts can a little ol’ gal like m'self go to turn these perty little things in?”

  The man smiled the weasely smile of a person about to make himself a handsome profit for a minimal amount of work. “Please,” he said, cutting her a mock bow, “let me do the honor for you.”

  “You? Oh no, I couldn’t pos’bly ask a—ahem—gentleman like yerself to do that. You’ve done so much already, Mr.—er?”

  “Tubbs,” he readily supplied with what a completely desperate woman might consider a winning smile. “Tyrone Tubbs, at your service.”

  “Mr. Tubbs,” she said, returning his smile. A disgusting little name for a disgusting little man. ”I thank you so much for yer help, and I really would appreciate you turnin’ these little things in fer me. You know, savin’ me all that fuss and all, but—” Hope gave another sigh, and thought that if she kept sighing with such regularity she would certainly faint from hyperventilation.

  Tyrone Tubbs licked his lips and scowled as if searching his memory. “Frazier. Is that what you said his name was?”

  “Why, yes,” she exclaimed. This time the breathless excitement in her voice was not forced. Nor was the sudden racing of her heart. “Do you know him? I heard a rumor he was headin’ for these parts, but who knows how long ago that was.”

  “Quite recently,” Tubbs said, eying the pocket containing the gold. “In fact, he arrived yesterday. As coincidence would have it, your beloved is in one of the upstairs rooms as we speak.”

  “Here? Now?” Hope’s mouth went dry and she suddenly wished for another taste of that whiskey. It might be a poor substitute for courage, but she’d take it. Suddenly the prospect of coming face to face with the well-reputed gunman was enough to make her slightly numbed senses whirl. The wild trepidation struck her off guard. Although it lasted only a few brief seconds, the effect was severely unnerving.

>   “Is something wrong?” Tibbs asked when he saw her face drain of color, then flood a becoming shade of pink.

  “Wrong?” Hope echoed stupidly, then caught herself in check. “Why, no. ‘Course not. I just didn’t expect to be so lucky. You say my Drake is here? Now?”

  “That’s a fact. I saw him go up those stairs myself.” His frown deepened as he held up two fingers in the barkeep’s direction. “Are you sure you’re all right? You look a little pale.”

  “It’s just excitement, Mr. Tubbs,” Hope explained hastily, slipping her hand inside her pocket. The gold was still there, the nuggets warm from resting against her hip. Tubbs waited expectantly for Hope to hand over the gold, but, to his surprise, she made no attempt to do so.

  Two glasses of whiskey were set on the bar, the surface of which was crusted as if to express indignation at what he was quickly beginning to suspect had been a fruitless venture.

  She’d wasted enough time on the ninny as it was, and there was still plenty more to be done before she could call it a night. “Please, sir,” Hope rushed on. “You must let me repay you fer all yer help.” She fixed him with a wide-eyed, innocent stare. “Now ah know a fine gentlemen such as yerself wouldn’t dream a takin’ monetary payment from a poor gal like m'self, so I want you let me know if there’s ever anything ah can do to help you.” She took a sip of the whiskey and asked, “What room did you say he was in?”

  He hadn’t, and they both knew it. Still, Tubbs was hardly in a position to back down now, especially with so many witnesses. He eyed the burly barkeep, who had finished swabbing down the bar and was now leaning only a few feet away. The look on the barkeep’s face told Tubbs he’d heard every word that had passed between the woman and himself, and that she was the one who had the big man’s sympathy.

  Swallowing hard, Tubbs turned his attention back to the woman. “Up the stairs, second door on your right.” He sent her an evil sneer, the façade of helpfulness peeling away like the outer layer of an onion. “Better knock first, though. He may be—er—busy.”