PINNACLE BOOKS

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      For Verna, Vic, Cody, and Ma

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      CHAPTER NINETEEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY

      CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

      CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

      CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

      CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

      CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

      CHAPTER THIRTY

      CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

      CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

      CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

      CHAPTER ONE

      That morning found him bleeding more than usual.

      “You gotta keep your head back, Jimmy,” Three-Fingers Lacy coaxed him in her nasal, whiskey-rotted drawl. “Keep your head back, honey, till the bleedin’ stops.”

      “I keep looking into that sun,” he told her, “I’ll go blind.”

      “Close your eyes, sweetie,” she said, and pressed the dirty, blood-soaked handkerchief tighter against his nose. “Close ’em tight.”

      Reluctantly, Jim Pardo obeyed, but it didn’t help. Ten in the morning, and the sun blasted like a furnace. Of course, she could have suggested that they turn around, so they weren’t facing the sun, but Lacy didn’t have the brains to figure that out. It didn’t matter. His neck hurt. Keep this up, and he’d get a crick. Blind, with a bent neck, and a bitch of a nosebleed. Wouldn’t Wade Chaucer and the other members of his gang love that? He’d be deader than dirt.

      “I’m gonna need another rag or somethin’,” Three-Fingers Lacy said. “This one’s soaked through.” She pulled the handkerchief away. Her tone changed. “I’m worried about you, Jimmy. It ain’t never bled this much before.”

      She reached for him, but he shoved her arm away and slid off the boulder.

      “Jimmy—”

      “Shut up,” he told her. “Where’s Ma?”

      He pinched his nose, looked at the blood on his fingertips, then wiped them on his vest. Three-Fingers Lacy dropped the bloody rag onto the dirt. The ants would love that. He scratched the palm of his hand against the hammer of his holstered Colt, looked around, tasting the blood as it dripped over his lips. He cursed his nose, loosened his bandana, and saw how his words had hurt Lacy.

      Hell of a thing, he thought, softening, and gave her a reassuring grin. “Don’t fret over me, Lacy,” he told her. “Nosebleed ain’t going to bury Bloody Jim Pardo. Thanks for looking after me.”

      “It wasn’t nothin’, Jimmy. Ain’t that what wives is supposed to do?”

      His smile turned crooked. Wife. Concubine. Whore. Whatever she was. He rolled up the bandana and placed it under his nose, holding it there with his left hand, keeping his right near the Colt.

      “Where’s Ma?” he asked again.

      “Up yonder with The Greek.” She pointed.

      He had to tilt his head back again, but the flow of blood seemed to be slowing. It wasn’t fair. Pardo never knew when his nose would start acting up. He had stopped six or seven bullets, plus a load of buckshot. He didn’t recollect how many men he had killed, and there were prices on his head here in Arizona Territory, plus in New Mexico Territory, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, even California. He led a gang of the toughest black-hearts he had ever known. Seven men, plus his mother and Lacy, not including Bloody Jim Pardo himself. But his nose, and those cursed weak veins, could stop him cold, damned near put him under.

      He checked his watch.

      “Running late,” he said, and swore.

      “What if it don’t come?” Lacy asked. “What if there was some accident?”

      “It’ll come,” he said. “The accident won’t happen.” With a wry chuckle, he pointed. “Till right there.”

      “But Jimmy—”

      “Why don’t you pour yourself a bracer?”

      “It’s nine in the morn, Jimmy. That ain’t proper.”

      The smile and friendliness vanished. “What the hell do you know about proper?” He walked down the hill toward the Southern Pacific tracks.

      They had never tried robbing a train. Banks, stagecoaches, mines, Army paymasters, regular citizens, and wagon caravans, sure—so many times, Pardo had lost count—but never a locomotive, yet Ritcher had told Pardo about the payload, even suggested the place to pull off the robbery, and the Army major had never led them astray yet. Number 18 would be hauling passengers and an express car loaded with green-backs for the soldier boys stationed at Bowie, Lowell, Huachuca, and every other post that stank of Yankee fools in the Sonoran Desert.

      She would come charging around that blind curve, and the boys would jerk the rail loose, sending the locomotive and her cars crashing down the embankment, likely killing everyone on board, and thus making it easy for Ma and the boys to collect the strongboxes full of money. They could take anything of value off the dead passengers and be back in their hideout in the Dragoons before the blue-bellies knew they wouldn’t be collecting their fifteen dollars that month and those fools waiting at the Tucson depot realized their loved ones were feeding buzzards.

      With dead eyes, Wade Chaucer watched Pardo slide down the hill. Despite the heat, Chaucer wore a coat of black wool, a fine silk shirt, and red necktie accented with a fancy diamond stickpin. The coat remained unbuttoned, and the slim fingers of his right hand drummed a tune on the holster he kept below his stomach. His left hand emptied a cup of coffee by his black boots, and slowly pushed back his wide-brimmed gray hat.

      “How’s your nose, Pardo?” he said easily.

      Smiling, Pardo slung the bloodstained bandana over his neck, but didn’t bother to tie the ends into a knot. That would take two hands, and Pardo wasn’t foolish enough to give Chaucer any notions, or chances.

      “I’ll live,” he said.

      Chaucer grinned back. “For how long?”

      “Longer than you.”

      With a shrug and a bow, Chaucer said in Spanish, “Vamos a ver.”

      They