shooting me and they wouldn’t waste but one bullet. They’d shoot me, dig it out, load up, and shoot me again.”
“Come on, Duck.” Lewt used Duncan’s nickname as he grinned.
“Forget it, Lewt. You’d be the last man in Texas I’d send home to meet my cousins.” Duncan looked down at the gambler. “One look at you and the girls would have you run off the ranch. They may be home alone without any of the McMurray men around, but don’t think they’re helpless.”
Lewt looked down at his tailored white suit, his colorful vest, his diamond ring. He dressed exactly like what he was, a successful gambler. He knew most of the powerful men in the state capital by their first names and they trusted him to arrange high-stakes games for them where the dealing would be honest, but not one of these rich and powerful men would take him home to meet their daughters or sisters. Duncan wouldn’t even let him meet his cousins. The young McMurray women, heirs to one of the biggest, richest ranches in Texas, probably wouldn’t speak to him anyway. Most of the good folks in this state thought the government should pay a bounty on gambler pelts.
Lewt waved farewell to Duncan McMurray and the other rangers, realizing no one thought he was good enough to be in any family. If they knew his roots, they’d be positive. His pedigree was so bad he was surprised the dogcatcher didn’t try to cage him. Still, it would be interesting to get an inside look at a real family.
As the rangers rode south, Lewt walked back toward Crystal’s place. It was probably too late to get in on a high-stakes game, but he didn’t feel sleepy. Duncan might not want to take him home to meet the family, but they were still good friends and Lewt would worry about him until he saw the dust-covered ranger step back into the bar and demand beer.
He smiled and lifted his hand to wave at the trail of vanishing riders. Some would say the backstreets of any Texas small town were as dangerous as fighting outlaws, but for Lewt, this was home. The drunks and the beggars were as much his family as the gamblers and the dealers.
If he had been allowed to go home to meet the ladies, Duncan might have been surprised. One or more of them might have found him more than tolerable. After all, he wasn’t as bad a choice as Duncan seemed to think. He’d never hit a woman. A few of the ladies at Crystal’s claimed he was a grand lover, and he had money stashed in half the banks in Texas. Every saloon girl he’d ever met had mooned over him, so he couldn’t be bad looking.
Lewt grinned. He wouldn’t have cared if Duncan’s cousin was homely as sin and toothless, he might have married her just so he could have a good family; he’d just insist the lights go out when he came home at night.
A family, he laughed. There was no use dreaming. It wasn’t something that he’d ever have, and marrying a woman just in the hopes of getting one would be cruel.
CHAPTER 2
LEWT PATERSON WALKED INTO CRYSTAL’S NOT INTERESTED in gambling tonight, or drinking. He needed to think, and a noisy bar felt more like home than anywhere on earth. He ordered a beer and looked around for an empty table near the back. Duncan had gotten him dreaming about getting married and living a respectable life. He needed to wash such thoughts out of his head and accept reality. Wives and children didn’t belong in his world, and he had no idea how to step out of it into another.
His gaze came to rest on a stranger dressed in black, sitting alone at a table with fine leather luggage piled around him. A tall man about Lewt’s size with glasses perched on a nose that must have taken generations of money to breed. His clothes were expensive, but conservatively tailored, his pale skin Boston light. Boredom seemed permanently tattooed across his face.
Lewt knew without a doubt that he was looking at one of Duncan’s picks to go north at dawn and court his cousins. The stranger might as well have had old money pinned all over his chest.
Lewt ordered a second beer and wound his way toward the potential bridegroom for the cousins. Duncan had said he’d picked only from the finest families and insisted they all be well