Bandit's Embrace (The Durango Family) Read Online Free

The Kid was bluffing. He couldn’t make a winning hand without the queen of spades and Bandit had it.
    One of the trio at the bar behind Bandit guffawed. “If you really want to play for high stakes, boss, bet that pinto stud! Anybody’d play for him!”
    The Kid shook his head. “Hell, no! That’s the finest stallion in the whole West, maybe in the world! I only owned him a couple of months myself. I call you and raise you all I got on me.” He reached in his vest, threw a handful of new twenty-dollar gold pieces onto the table along with a broken strand of pink and purple beads. “These pearls is supposed to be worth a couple of hundred dollars.”
    The rancher, watching, whistled low. The other men’s eyes widened. People began to gather around the table. The stranger had to have the queen in the hole to bet so much.
    “Never saw beads like that before,” the drummer said.
    “Them beads? . . .” The mill owner didn’t finish his question.
    Bandit looked at the beads a long moment. He knew this state like his own scarred kuckles. There were only a few places in the world where freshwater pearls came in shades of pink and purple. And one of them was the Concho River running though San Angelo. In his mind, he saw a sweet old lady, her skull crashing against a hitching block as a robber pushed her, tore away her necklace.
    He leaned on his elbows, looked into the Kid’s eyes without blinking. “I haven’t got that much.” He silently counted the pile of silver before him. “Will you take my marker?”
    The Kid grinned as he tipped his chair back on two legs, the big chandelier reflecting off his whiskey glass. “Nope.” He shook his head.
    “I got a bay gelding I can bet.” Bandit had the winning cards, he knew it. He wasn’t going to be bluffed out of this pot, but he couldn’t cover the bet.
    “That hunk of buzzard bait I saw at the hitching rail when I tied up my pinto? Nothin’ doin’! ” The outlaw brought his chair down, with a thump, on all four legs, looked around at the people ringing the table, looked into Bandit’s eyes. “I want you as part of my gang, Bandit. What you can bet is a promise to ride with me at least a year.”
    Bandit paused, looking into cocksure eyes as blue as his own. He wouldn’t even spit on men who’d murder a little old lady. But he had the winning cards. “Ride with you one year, huh? I’ll see you.”
    “Done!” The Kid tipped his hat back on his blond hair, reached very slowly to turn over his hole card. A queen of spades. “Royal Flush!” He smiled triumphantly, reached to rake in the pot.
    In that split-second, Bandit felt his belly lurch with fear. Sweat plastered his light hair against his forehead as he glanced over at the trio at the bar, leering back at him. The smart thing to do now was say, You’re right, Kid, you got me beat, and toss his cards in, hole card unseen, without making an issue of it. All he had to do was tuck in his tail like a scared hound and let the Kid take that pot he was reaching for. There’d be plenty of money for him, riding with the Kid.
    His life or his honor. A mart’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do . Bandit made a halting gesture. “Hold it! There’s five ladies in this deck! I say you been dealing seconds and slipping extra cards in!”
    The Kid’s hands froze in midair.
    With murmurs of dismay, the crowd edged away from the table, grew quiet. When you call a man a cheat in Texas, you’d better be ready to fight. There was an abrupt silence as someone nudged the bald piano player and he stopped in midnote. The girl moved away from the piano, which was almost directly behind the Kid. Laughing whores, perched on chair arms, hushed and turned around to look.
    In that split second, Bandit turned his head ever so slightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the renegades at the bar come as alert as three starved wolves ready to feed off their leader’s kill. He knew what fear tasted like then, like a copper