Read Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) for Free Online Page B

No, I don’t doubt her capabilities or her desire.” How could she, when she too had quietly fed and encouraged it all these years?
    “And yet you question my decision?”
    Marie leaned past him, picking up the paperwork, buying herself time. She looked at the cream-colored paper, reading the words inked there with an odd expression, part resignation, part hope, and then handed the sheet back. “I suppose I’m too fond of the girl,” she said. “I may have hoped that she’d find a nice farmer, or maybe the blacksmith’s boy, and settle down somewhere nearby.”
    The boss laughed. “Our Izzy? Woman, get out of my office; stop wasting my time. And if that boy is still around, the northern cardsharp from last night? Find him for me.”
    She knew better than to ask what he had in mind. Whatever it was, they’d all learn soon enough.

    When the young boy knocked on the door of his hired room about midmorning, Gabriel was already packed and ready to ride out.
    “Sir? The boss would like to see you. Right now, if’n it’s convenient.”
    “The boss?” Even as he asked, Gabriel knew. The master of the saloon. The master of this town. The Master of the Territory, some said.
    Gabriel hadn’t moved to the main table the night before, although that had been his intention when he arrived. Every man jack thought, in his heart of hearts, that he could face the devil across the green felt and come out the winner, or at least hold his own long enough for bragging rights. Gabriel had played out his hands and waited for the tables to shift, for his turn to come along, but somewhere midway through the evening, he’d discovered that it was enough to be there, to see the way the man worked, to feel the power that shimmered around him, steady as the wind and old as the stone.
    Gabriel had questions; there wasn’t a man alive as didn’t. But he’d realized the last night that he could find the answers on his own or he’d never know, and that would have to do. The devil, it turned out, had nothing he would bargain for.
    So, to be summoned now, when he was preparing to leave? That was . . . disturbing.
    “Give me a minute,” he told the boy, and got his hat and coat from the rack, leaving his bags on the bed.
    The boardinghouse was only a few steps down from the saloon, and in that time, Gabriel considered and rejected half a dozen reasons why he might have been summoned. The only one that held water was his conversation with the girl the night before; what had been her name? Isobel, that was it. A cheeky smile and a serious eye, and he’d made the offer without thinking, but surely that wouldn’t be enough to bring him to such notice? If the girl was thinking of ridingout, there was no reason she shouldn’t, unless she’d made a Bargain preventing it. He couldn’t have given offense just for offering, if he hadn’t known. Could he?
    His blood chilled, but he kept his hat at a jaunty angle, the brim shading his eyes from the sun but also keeping them from view. The weight of the knife in his boot was no comfort, for once. Weapons of steel and bone couldn’t defend him here. Still, he’d noted that the devil kept an honest house, and he had no reason to doubt that yet.
    Gabriel had never been in a saloon or gambling house before opening hours. To his surprise, it was busy even in the daylight, as innocuous as a storefront, with a handful of youngsters underfoot sweeping the floor and washing glassware, carrying linens and laundry to and from, and generally keeping busy. An older woman, dressed in her night-wrapper, was seated at the bar, swinging her legs gently, a hint of bare flesh showing as she moved. She winked at him, and Gabriel felt himself blush like a schoolboy, but he touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgment and was rewarded with a laugh.
    The boy didn’t pause but led him across the main floor to a door in the back and knocked once on the frame.
    “Send him in, Aaron,” a voice called.
    The door