Chapter 1
Light in the Dark
Decker Belmont chose his next kill when a bullet ricocheted off the minute hand of the saloon clock.
Ticking against bent metal, the timepiece never reached ten. Cards spilled into grimy piles and chatter trickled away into stiff silence. Gunsmoke, metallic and bitter, hung heavy between the two men at the center of the saloon.
Decker straightened from where he’d been leaning behind his red chestnut bar. Hot lead seared his fingertips as he found the wayward bullet buried in the shined edge.
Always the gamblers causing a damn problem.
Decker swirled the whiskey in his glass, brushed away expensive splinters, and eyed the shooter across his saloon. “I’d appreciate you not blowing holes in my bar.”
“He cheated.” Smoke wafted from the short barrel of the revolver clutched in the man’s sweat-slick, meaty hands.
“I don’t know where you’ve come from, but ‘round here it’s not acceptable to shoot folks over a faro game,” Decker said in a tone that most would take as pleasantly warning.
Decker’s patience was in short supply after he hadn’t fed for a month, and the locals knew enough not to bother him when hehad a hungry, haggard look about him. His warm brown skin had turned ashen without blood, and the elegant, angled lines of his face were harsh under the wiry black of his trimmed beard.
Decker’s skin itched, and the man who fired the shot would be the bloody, calming, salve.
The stranger jammed his smoking revolver back in its holster and dragged his sleeve across his dripping red nose. A single bone faro token lay in front of him. The rest had scattered across the table when he’d leapt to his feet.
Trouble reared its head more often than Decker would like in his saloon—tonight’s trouble was courtesy of the young outlaw Cricket Conklin.
“This trigger-happy buzzard wanted me to meet the good Lord himself for no reason.” Cricket’s drawl drew attention like a one-penny Sunday paper. “Iwon and he knows it.”
The stranger bristled. “You’re a lying cheat.”
“Sit down or get outside,” Decker said more sharply than he intended. “And Cricket don’t usually miss, so better fix your aim if you want a shootout.”
Neither man moved.
Maybe the stranger was trying to figure out how he’d missed a point-blank shot, or maybe he realized aggravating a saloon-familiar local was never a wise decision. His chair shrieked as he yanked it under him and sat down, glowering at the cheerful outlaw.
“I reckon I can let you have this one. Seein’ as I won the last three.” Cricket grinned.
Kid never knows when tokeep his damn mouth shut.
If Decker left diplomacy up to Cricket, there’d be a wasted kill in front of the saloon after the stranger inevitably missed the lucky outlaw again and ended up with a ricocheted bullet in his own head.
“I have a cigar in the back room calling your name, kid. Leave him alone and be glad I didn’t have to get Safine.”
She’d cuss you out if she had to patch you up again because of your stupidity.
“She would agree I won.” Cricket bared his teeth in a smile and shook his hair away from his eyes. A few blond strands drifted loose by his ear, neatly clipped by the bullet. He must’ve run into more trouble with the law recently if his ragged, hunting-knife haircut was any indication.
Resuming chatter did nothing to mask the stranger’s thudding heartbeat in Decker’s skull and his irritation with the usual troublemaker.
He caught Cricket by the arm as he rounded the bar. “When are you gonna stop being hard-headed?”
“I got a whole life ahead of me. Not about to spend it doing soft-headed shit.” His grin took on a wicked edge. Cricket had experienced too much of life already with too little to show for it other than a sunburn across his nose and a hard glint to his blue eyes. Cricket yanked away.
Decker let him go.
You waste your luck, kid.
Unlike the creatures in Ender’s Ridge that were made or birthed, Cricket’s uncanny luck pulsed from the amulet hanging around his neck. He swore he’d won it at the age of ten while gambling at the finest saloon in Amaretto.
