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“Yep, mission,” Sam said, combing his fingers through his hair to remove the tangles. “Before that gambler died, I forced the truth outta him about where his daughter, Nicole, was. She openly snubbed me back in St. Louie one time too many. The bitch. I swore to myself that I would get even with her for that. Well, I now know that she is on her way to Tyler City. She could arrive any day. I plan to be nearby when she arrives. Soon as I get my belly filled with deer, I’m leavin’, and so are all of you, to find that smart-breeches of a daughter.”
“We got away without bein’ caught and now you plan to go back to Tyler City because of a mere woman?” Tom asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Not a mere woman,” Sam grumbled. “Walter Tyler’s daughter. She’s the last piece of the revenge I planned to make Walter pay for makin’ a fool out of me with his cheatin’.”
“She ain’t worth us all gettin’ caught and taken to jail and hanged for the crimes we done,” Ace said tightly. “Sam, you’d best rethink your plan. We’re well off now. Let’s just hightail it outta this area and find someone else to challenge with a game of poker.”
Sam jumped to his feet.
He grabbed Ace by the throat and yanked him to his own feet.
Sam spoke tightly into Ace’s face. “Now, you look here,” he growled. “I’m the one who makes the plans. You are the one who helps me carry ‘em out. If you want to challenge my right to lead this gang, well, all you have to do is say so. I’ll beat you with pistols, not cards, or words.”
“No, no,” Ace choked out, trying to yank Sam’s hand away from his throat. “I’m with you, Sam, whatever you say. All the way.”
“Well, that’s more like it,” Sam said, yanking his hand away from Ace’s throat.
He laughed good-naturedly as Ace fell clumsily to the ground, his face red. Ace rubbed at his neck, gasping for air.
Sam sat down again beside the fire. “One of you gents cut off a piece of that meat for me,” he said, smiling at each in turn. “And then after my belly is full, we’ll head out and find us a pretty little thing named Nicole. Yep, we’ll take turns with ‘er. How does that sound, gents?”
They all laughed crudely and nodded.
“I have to have her,” Sam said as Tom handed him a nice chunk of meat. “I’m going to teach her what it’s like to be taken by a true man. I truly won’t rest until I have her, the daughter of the man who again shamed me in front of a whole saloon of people by beating me at that game of poker today.”
As Sam chewed the meat, its juice rolling from the corners of his mouth, he smiled as he thought about how he had made that idiot gambler pay for what he’d done to Sam Partain.
Yep, he’d made his enemy pay by killing him and his wife and all of the people who’d been ignorant enough to take up residence in the small town of Tyler City.
Now? Once he found Nicole Tyler, he’d amuse himself with her for several days, then kill her.
He waited until all of his men were comfortably full, then stood up quickly and placed his doubled fists on his hips.
“It’s time to go and find us a certain pretty lady,” Sam said, his voice tight with lust.
He ignored the looks that said none of them wanted to go with him. They knew they must, or be shot.
He owned them all, body and soul.
Chapter Seven
Exhausted, both mentally and physically, Nicole rode onward. At least now she was no longer on flat land where she felt like an easy target for Sam Partain, should he be looking for her.
She still found it hard to believe that her mother and father were dead. If only her father had kept his word about not gambling anymore, perhaps they would still be alive.
Yet when she stopped to think about it, she realized a few hours of poker today could not have caused the fury that must have been festering inside Sam Partain for a long time. His rage was such that he had not settled for killing only the man he obviously hated, but also everyone else that could identify him as the killer.
The whole town of Tyler City was wiped off the map before it was even really known outside the circle of people who lived there.
It gave Nicole the shivers to think that Sam Partain had gone to such lengths to find her father, tracking him to this new town that had sprung up out of nowhere in only a matter of months.
If Sam had been so determined to find her father, would he not be as determined to find her?
She hoped that she was wrong about his continuing need for revenge. She prayed that he was satisfied with having rid the world of the man who had obviously become a thorn in his side long ago.
Her face chapped from the tears she had shed and wiped away so often with the back of her hand, her eyes stinging from crying, Nicole kept riding up the mountain pass she had only recently discovered.
She was so glad there were many miles between herself and the massacre behind her.
