Ann Major - The Girl with the Golden Gun

Caesar hadn’t even bothered to read a single page. He’d said simply, “This don’t mean nothin’! Hell, you’re nothin’, kid.” Then he’d punched him in the jaw and knocked him out cold.

A girl’s screams had startled him back to consciousness. He’d been sprawled flat on his back under the table when he’d felt little bits of shredded papers raining down on him and the tenderness of soft cool fingers brushing his face.

He’d said, “Ouch!”

Then she’d been yanked away by her father.

“Mia! I’ll tan you, too, if you don’t get back upstairs with Lizzy where you belong!” Caesar had yelled at her.

“You’d better not kill him!” she’d whispered fiercely, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I don’t need your help, little girl. I’ll be just fine!” Shanghai had muttered, feeling shamed by her tenderness but most of all by the fact that she’d seen his sorry ass sprawled on her floor.

“Fine? That’s why you’re lying there flat on your backside all busted up?”

Her words had hit a nerve. He prided himself on being tough.

He’d stared at her through slitted lashes, pretending to ignore her ’cause Mia hated being ignored more than she hated anything. Even so, he saw the redheaded teenager place her hands on her hips as she hovered over him like a guardian angel. Tonight she’d worn skintight jeans, a T-shirt and red boots. When she’d sprinted back up the stairs, he’d noticed that she filled out her jeans and T-shirt with a woman’s shape now.

She was too young to look so grown-up. Mia had exasperated and charmed him for years by chasing him anytime she got the chance. He would have felt easier with the bean-pole shape, freckle-faced kid that she used to be.

Mia had made a habit of disappearing from the Golden Spurs Ranch for long stretches and wandering about the county on horseback. Anytime she’d gotten hurt, she’d come crying to Shanghai. Anytime she’d made a good grade or had won a prize at school, she’d had to tell him first even if it meant riding over to Black Oaks.

Once when her daddy had told her he was going to shoot a torn-up mongrel sheepdog she’d found bleeding to death on the highway, she’d carted the pup to Shanghai in her red wagon.

He’d told her her daddy was right for once, and it would be a kindness to shoot him. But when she’d left the mutt and her wagon, the beast had given him a baleful stare. Shanghai had taken the dog to the vet and nursed it back to health. He still remembered how her eyes had shone, when she’d come back for her wagon a month later and had seen the black-and-white mutt napping on his front porch.

“Don’t you dare tell anybody I saved him,” he’d warned her. “They’d think I was plum crazy.”

“Cross my heart.” She’d hesitated. “What do you call him?”

“Dog.”

She’d knelt and petted the animal. “Can I name him?”

“What’s wrong with Dog?”

“I—I’d call him Spot.”

“That’s as bad as Dog.”

“Not quite, is it, Spot?”

Spot had wagged his tail fit to be tied, and it was Spot from then on.

Shanghai put the memories of her childhood aside. She was a Kemble and all grown-up now.

No sooner had her door slammed upstairs tonight than Caesar had resumed tearing up the documents. Then he’d started pounding the table. Shanghai had found himself staring up at the underside of the table where the name, Mia, was scrawled dozens of times in bright red crayon alongside Lizzy’s name, and he’d imagined Mia a cute kid with red pigtails under the table up to mischief with her sister.

Then Caesar had distracted him by raking the last of the ruined documents he’d brought onto the floor beside Shanghai and shouting they were garbage just like he was.

“Get out, you lowdown, lying thief. You aren’t a damn bit better than your daddy. And we all know what he is—a lousy, no-good drunk. But at least he knows that he lives under my protection, which is more than I can say for you. You think you’re somethin’! Well, you’re nothin’! When I tell him what you tried to do tonight in my house, in front of my little girl…you’ll be lucky if he ever lets you set foot in his place again. He owes me. And so do you. So does this whole damn community. You Knights don’t have any friends around here unless I allow it. Don’t you ever forget it. Without me—you’re nothin’, boy. Nothin’!”

Suddenly Caesar’s red face had changed. “You’ve given me an idea, boy. A helluvan idea. A real winner. I know how I’ll get rid of all you Knights, once and for all.” He’d gone to a small cabinet, opened a drawer and pulled out a couple of fresh decks of cards. “I’ll hunt up that daddy of yours, and we’ll have us a friendly, little game of poker. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll have a few drinks. Then I’ll tell him what you did here tonight.”

“No….”

Caesar had laughed at him.

Shanghai despised himself because in the next breath he’d begged and apologized.

“Please—I’m sorry. Please—leave him alone!”

Caesar had guffawed again. “Everybody in three counties knows that cards and liquor are a fatal combination for your old man, boy. Kinky! Eli! Get him out of here!” Caesar turned back to Shanghai. “When I’m through with you, you’ll have nothing and be nothin’, boy! Mia will finally see you for the lowlife you are!”

“Don’t you go near my daddy!”

When Shanghai had fought Eli and Kinky, Caesar had called for more cowboys. It had taken five of the bastards to fling Shanghai down the stairs into the rain.

When Shanghai had pulled himself to his feet, the last thing he’d seen was pretty Mia Kemble leaning out of her upstairs window. When he’d looked up, she’d thrown something down to him and then banged her window shut.

Pretending not to give a damn about her, he’d rammed his dripping Stetson with his lucky turkey feather on his head even harder than she’d slammed her window. Curious, he’d picked up the object she’d thrown. When he’d realized it was a red rose, he’d pitched it back into the mud.

Now that he was at his hunting cabin, Shanghai dreaded his daddy finding out that he’d gotten in a fight with Caesar. He might never let Shanghai go home again. His father didn’t care if the Kembles had robbed the Knights of practically all their land. He just wanted to drink and gamble. Caesar kept offering to buy their last fifty thousand acres and his father kept refusing to sell, mainly because he and Cole begged him not to. The land was Shanghai’s heritage, Cole’s, too; part of their souls.

No use thinking about it. Shanghai knew he’d started something tonight that couldn’t be stopped.

As he got out of his truck, he stood in the rain for a moment to inspect the mangled bottom step he’d just smashed. Damn.

He sprang to the second step, which was still sound, just as the sky flashed livid white fire and then went black again. Every timber of the tiny hunting cabin shook when thunder exploded again.

He threw open the front door, ripped off his wet, Western shirt and hung it on the back of a tattered leather chair where it dripped water onto the scarred oak floor. Then he went to the fridge and grabbed a couple of beers. He downed the first beer and paced restlessly.

He was twenty-four. What the hell was he going to do with the rest of his life? Cowboying and rodeoing were all he really liked to do. Not that he could stay here when there was no future at Black Oaks. At least not in the business of cows and calves and horses. Livestock prices had collapsed too many times, and Daddy had borrowed way too much money. There was only his kid brother, Cole, to consider.

Hell, Cole was twenty-one, which meant he was all grownup…even if he was still in college. It was time for Cole to be on his own.