Holt's Gamble (2 page)

Kierin took a deep breath and swept an out-of-place strand of coppery hair from her eyes with the back of her wrist. She glanced warily over at John Talbot's table.

"Losing?" The very idea of Talbot getting his comeuppance at his own poker table satisfied her sense of justice, but she carefully squelched the smile that rose at the thought.

"Yes, ma'am. Some feller in buckskins over there's beatin' the pants off him an' everbody else who sits down at the table."

"Is he cheating?"

"If he is, he ain't been caught at it," Jeb replied, chuckling. "Cleaned my cayuse and that's a fact. Just a lucky so-and-so, I guess."

"Thanks, Jeb." She held up her bandaged hand. "For everything." Jeb nodded with an understanding smile and then turned, almost reluctantly, back to his drink.

The Independence was unusually crowded considering the lateness of the hour. The discordant notes that rose relentlessly from the tinny piano in the corner created a constant backdrop of noise as Kierin shouldered her way past the crowds to Talbot's table. She had an uneasy feeling as she approached, seeing the malevolent smile on Talbot's face. She knew that look. It was the one he wore when he hit her. Absently touching the still-tender bruise on her left cheek with the back of her hand, Kierin straightened her shoulders and pushed back that errant wisp of hair again. She'd be damned if she'd let him see the fear in her eyes. It had simply become a matter of pride.

"What kept you, my dear?" Talbot asked with a lascivious smile. He slipped his fingers around her wrist, tightening them in a viselike grip. His dark eyes traveled the length of her immodest red satin gown and back up again.

Kierin had no doubt Talbot's look was aimed at embarrassing her and she found she was, indeed, unable to stop the blush that crept into her cheeks as his dark brown eyes raked her. She lifted her chin, painfully aware of the pressure he was exerting upon her arm. Her green eyes locked with his in a silent struggle of wills.

"I came as quickly as I could," she told him evenly, ignoring the stares of the other men.

"Good. Good. Well, down to business then, gentlemen." In an impatient gesture, Talbot smoothed down his sandy-blond mustache with his fingertips. "I'm about to make the stakes in this game a bit more interesting."

A prickle of fear ran through Kierin. What did
she
have to do with their game? She looked back at Talbot, trying to guess what he had in mind for her. He was as unpredictable as a rattlesnake and just as dangerous.

John Talbot was a deceptively handsome man with clean even features which, she knew, turned many a young woman's head on the streets of Independence. His vanity was reflected in the fit of his perfectly tailored clothes, always cut in the latest Eastern fashions. Everything about him, down to the small silver derringer she knew he kept hidden in a vest pocket, was aimed at keeping up the pretense of refinement. He appeared to the world to be a man who had everything. Everything, Kierin amended silently, but a conscience.

The saloon owner slipped his cigar between his teeth and reached into his coat pocket. Withdrawing a sheath of papers, he laid them open upon the pile of wagers at the center of the table. "I believe that most of you know Kierin, my indentured girl," Talbot began, giving her a familiar pat on the behind.

She flinched at his touch and squeezed her eyes shut as a blue cloud of smoke from his cigar circled her head, stinging her nostrils.

"All save you, Mr.—?" His questioning look was directed at the stranger in buckskins whom Jeb had mentioned.

For the first time Kierin noticed him. He was indeed a rough-hewn man of the frontier. His appearance was not far different from any of thousands who drifted through Independence on their way to or from the West except that he was unusually clean and well kempt. He was tall—towering over the other men at the table even though he was seated. His skin was a golden, tawny brown—from the sun, she imagined. Dark, wavy hair spilled rakishly over straight dark eyebrows which hooded startlingly blue eyes.
Eyes the color of the Missouri sky after an April shower.

One ebony eyebrow cocked in arrogant acknowledgment of her perusal of him and she quickly averted her eyes, shamed that he had caught her looking.

"The name's Holt," the stranger answered finally. "Clay Holt."

John Talbot blanched, then choked on the last puff of his imported Cuban cigar, seized by a coughing fit.

"I say there, John," sputtered Percy Thrumball, the overweight banker who sat opposite Talbot at the table, "are you all right? Jessup—" Thrumball ordered. "Get your boss a whiskey."

Kyle Jessup, the hard-looking henchman who worked for Talbot, had not strayed far from his boss's side all night and now hesitated uncertainly at the fat man's request.

Talbot waved his hand as his coughing abated. Clearing his throat, he laughed with uncharacteristic nervousness.

"I think I'm going to have to change my brand of cigar. Damn Cubans never could make a decent smoke." He crushed the tip into his spent whiskey glass. "But Mr. Thrumball's right. We could all use a drink, couldn't we, gentlemen?"

Jessup snapped his fingers at a short, plump girl who scurried off for a tray full of drinks.

"Now then, as I was saying," Talbot continued, pulling Kierin closer to him, "I have a contract here that makes this girl worth a considerable sum to me, say—five hundred dollars. But I'm willing to add her contract to the pot if any of you think you can meet my wager. Winner takes all."

Kierin sucked in her breath and bit the inside of her lip to keep from crying out.
No!
He couldn't do this to her. Her father's debt had been nowhere near five hundred dollars. What about the ten months she had already worked for him? Didn't they amount to anything?

There was an uneasy silence at the table as the men stared at the girl, considering Talbot's words.

"You—you mean to wager with the girl?" Calvin Bennett asked incredulously. The young man swept his hand through his straight blond hair in agitation. "This is a free state, man. If it's slave trade you're looking for, it's done south of here."

Talbot chuckled at the youth's insolence. "Hardly slave trade, this. No, I own her papers of indenture, as you can see by my signature. She is my property to sell, trade, or wager as I wish. It's the law, Calvin, like it or not. Let's not bring your Freesoiler arguments into a friendly poker game. All we're doing here is separating the men from the boys."

"Friendly?" blurted Calvin, outraged by Talbot's cavalier attitude and stung by the slur on his age. "Well, being a man has nothing to do with what's going on here tonight, Talbot. I dare say that you're a—"

His brother Micah, who had been sitting next to him, laid a firm hand on Calvin's shoulder, silencing the words the young man would have surely lived to regret.

"I think what my brother Calvin here is trying to say," Micah interrupted, "is that the stakes in this game have just gone a bit too high for us. Ain't that right, Calvin?" Micah Bennett's question to his younger brother was punctuated by a dark, warning look.

Calvin shrugged his brother's arm angrily from his shoulder, but wisely kept his mouth shut as Micah bent to retrieve what was left of their stakes.

"We'll just be callin' it a night then," Micah mumbled. "Evenin', gents." He retreated from the table with his brother firmly in tow.

Kierin watched them go, grateful to Calvin for trying to stand up against the man who held her future in his hands. She had gone to school with the Bennett brothers during those few years she had been able to attend—when her mother had been alive. She and Calvin had been friends once. As she watched him walk away, she decided they still were.

A sense of unreality descended upon her, and she wondered if this could truly be happening. In its way, Talbot's scheme to humiliate her here was no more astonishing than the fact that her father had left her here in the first place and taken her younger brother to California. She wished impulsively that Calvin could have taken her with him. Bitterly, she wished that her worthless father could see what she had come to, and in the same moment, she was grateful that her mother never would.

As the Bennetts disappeared through the louvered saloon doors, Talbot turned once again to the men still seated. His expression said that he was pleased to have narrowed the competition so easily.

"My bid stands, gentlemen. Shall we get on with it?"

God knew, the time she had worked for John Talbot had not been easy, but at least she had Lily—Lily who had become her protector, and more importantly, her friend. But this—to be wagered away like an unwanted pocket watch—was one last humiliation she wasn't sure she could bear.

"Please don't do this," Kierin begged him in a choked whisper.

"It's done, my dear," Talbot returned.

Kierin curled her fist into a ball and tried to break free of his grasp. "If Lily were here, she wouldn't—"

"But she's
not
as you can see," he snapped in a low voice, tightening his steely grip on her. "Keep your counsel, my dear, or you shall certainly regret it when I win this hand."

John Talbot's words had been barely audible, but Clay Holt had not missed their tone. The son of a bitch was terrorizing the poor girl. He looked at her more closely. She was young—perhaps eighteen—and had the look of a frightened deer ready to bolt for higher ground. Somehow, she didn't seem to fit in here. The rouge on her cheeks looked utterly out of place against the natural blush of her fair complexion. Her thick auburn hair was swept up in a careless chignon and wispy curls framed her delicate oval face. Dark, thick lashes lined a pair of the most incredible green eyes he had ever seen.

His gaze was drawn to a purplish smudge on her left cheek—a nasty bruise, partially concealed by the flour she had evidently dabbed on it. Anger washed over him like a wave as he realized who had undoubtedly put it there. With an effort, he kept his expression blank. Yet he couldn't pull his hungry gaze away from the girl.

She was slender as a willow, with soft curves hidden beneath the ill-fitting red gown. Still, something in her expression defied the delicate look about her and triggered a feeling deep in his gut that he couldn't quite put a name to. Maybe it was the flash of anger in her stunning green eyes or the way she stood proudly with her chin tilted up that way—

Damn. What are you thinking about? There is no room for a woman in your life, you fool,
Holt thought, tearing his gaze from the girl.
Not now. Not ever again.
He cursed his own stupidity for getting involved in this game in the first place tonight. He should have listened to Jacob and gone back with him to the wagon. Daybreak would find them on the trail west to Oregon, with no room for this wisp of a girl who looked like she might blow away in a strong prairie wind.

Yet—his gaze found her again—Talbot meant to bid her whether he stayed in the game or not. He knew Talbot's type well enough to know that his goal was to humiliate the girl, not lose her in a small-stakes poker game. He guessed that Talbot must have a strong hand to have risked a girl like her here.

Holt ran a hand across the tight muscles at the back of his neck. He was a fool even to consider playing for her—though the logic of that line of reasoning, as Jacob would say, had never stopped him before. Still, the thought of leaving her to Talbot stirred up an unreasonable grinding anger in him.

The quiet voice of reason which niggled at Holt's impulsive nature like a worrisome pest told him to fold his hand. Fold and get out before he got tangled up in this. But another voice—the one which he admittedly listened to more often—dared him to stay. Holt picked up his hand and fanned his cards again. It was a long shot, but what the hell?

"I'll see your five hundred, Talbot," he announced, pushing a stack of coins toward the center of the table.

"I'm in, too," Thrumball gushed. He mopped his brow with a white handkerchief, his breath coming in short, rapid gasps of excitement.

Talbot smiled amicably as the plump girl returned to deliver the round of drinks Jessup had ordered. Talbot lifted his in a toast.

"To the best hand."

Thrumball clinked his glass with Talbot's, but Holt simply nodded and slugged down his drink.

"Cards, gentlemen?" Talbot asked, finally releasing Kierin's arm and picking up his role as dealer.

Thrumball looked nervously at his cards. Again, he wiped his sweaty palms on his waistcoat, staining the fine fabric with splotches of moisture. "Two," he requested.

Talbot dealt Thrumball the cards and looked expectantly at Holt.

"I'll take one."

Talbot flipped the card with a practiced gambler's hand onto the table in front of Holt and laid the deck down.

"Dealer stands pat."

Beads of sweat dribbled down the sides of Thrumball's face and he dabbed continuously at his face with the now limp hanky.

Kierin watched the game with growing trepidation, a knot of fear and anger twisting within her.
Damn you, John Talbot.
she swore silently.
Damn you all.

"Call," said Holt. His eyes flickered up to Kierin's, where he caught and held her angry gaze briefly, then looked away.

John Talbot grinned confidently and slowly laid down his hand, face-up.