Chapter 20: Unstoppable

The next night, despite being dead on my feet, I was back at the saloon, over the strong protest of everyone at the station.

Rachel must have sent word I had it in my head to go to work and was getting ready to do just that, because when I came down the stairs in my dress, they were all milling about the foyer and sitting room.

I gave Rachel a look. She shrugged, unapologetic.

Lou, you shouldn't be thinking about going back to the saloon till we find Danny, now. That from Noah.

Sweetheart, I am sure Billy would understand if you just lay low a day or so until we are sure Danny ain't interested in taking any more shots at you. Teaspoon.

I could ride out that way in the morning, look for signs and try to track him. Buck.

You ain't serious about this are you? Cody.

I'm serious about eatin'. I had retorted. Sides we ain't even sure it was Danny, and even if it was, we ain't sure he is in Sweetwater.

Lou. Jimmy's single word was full of rebuke.

I had glared at him, freshly home from the doctor's. Immediately, I softened. His friendship for me was the reason he was pale-faced and wearing a sling.

Boys, he has already cost me one job. He ain't gonna cost me another, and I ain't gonna live under a rock till he decides he is ready to move on me. You can't stop him if you don't know where he is. Sooner or later, if he decides, he is coming for me. Might as well make it sooner. I'm tired of the waitin.

So I had come to work. As a compromise, Cody was occupying the stool at the end of the bar closest to the door. Noah and Ike would be back to join him when it was time for me to go home. Buck and Jimmy, over the latter's strong protests, had been left home to keep an eye on the station and Rachel. Teaspoon had looked in over the swinging saloon doors twice already and I hadn't been here very long.

At the moment, Cody was flirting with Angel, which made me feel considerably less guilty about him spending his evening off watching over me. He was completely infatuated with the curvy blonde, eating up every bit of the attention from her. She had smirked triumphantly at me over his shoulder, as if in some way she was winning, as if I would ever drape myself across Cody's lap in that way.

"Idiot," I growled under my breath, and wasn't sure if I was referring to Cody, Angel, or myself for being irked at both of them.

Isabelle gave me a knowing look as she passed me with a tray full of glasses. "Takes all kinds," she murmured, lips twitching.

"Idiots especially," I muttered again after she'd passed. I went on about my business, mood growing darker the longer Cody carried on with Angel. I made a concerted effort not to look towards them.

"Well hello Darlin'. Come here and let me see if I can wipe that scowl off your face."

Before I knew what was happening, hands had seized me around the waist and I was sitting in the lap of a man twice my age, and maybe three times my size. My feet didn't touch the floor.

I was never one to tolerate being manhandled, and tonight I certainly was in no mood for games.

"Let me up," I commanded flatly and struggled to get off his lap.

He laughed, hot breath in my face, making me nearly nauseous. "Keep squirming, Darlin and I'll be the one gettin' up. Heard you used to ride the express...I got something you can ride if you like."

I felt my entire face suffuse with blood, all the way to the top of my ears. Not with the embarrassment he likely took it for. This was fury.

"You got one second to let me go, or you're gonna start having a very bad day," I snapped and struggled again, but his grip on me only tightened. His fingers dug into my hip bones with enough pressure to leave a bruise as he held me harder to his lap.

I wondered where Atticus was, willed Cody, whose back was to me, to notice I might need assistance. Angel met my eyes squarely over his shoulder, assessed the situation, and deliberately turned back to her conversation with Cody, pouring over him with even more flirtation to distract him.

I spared a moment to think a very unkind thought about her.

"Heard you had lots of fight in you. Heard you liked to play like you didn't want no part of this, but that it was all part of your little game...Shorty. Why don't we just skip the part where you pretend to be too good to go upstairs with me?"

I stopped struggling, stopped talking, stopped breathing, and sat there on that stranger's lap dumbly. Shorty he had called me. The only person to ever call me that name was Danny.

"Where is he?" I growled, forcing myself to breathe deeply as he threaded his arms about my waist. I cast a frantic look around the room, but there was no sign of Danny.

"I don't much wanna talk about him right now. He's around, I guess. Ran into him earlier at the cat house on the edge of town...told me I was wasting my money on the whores there...when you were right here. Said you were the best he ever had."

"Well he's a liar and a fool. Take your hands off me. Ain't asking again."

"Darlin, he told me that you'd play it this way, that you liked a man that just took what he wanted. Ain't no use in pretending we both don't know your game."

And with that, he took the back of my neck in his large hand and stilled my head long enough to bring his lips sloppily over mine, as if he was trying to ingest me.

I screeched as I pulled back, not out of fear but with rage and the saloon went still in the moment between my cry and the sound of my fist connecting with the man's nose.

I didn't have the leverage to have broken it, but it was a hard enough blow for him to loosen his hold on me and make a tent of both hands over his face as he cursed, eyes watering.

I began scrambling off his lap, not mindful of the way my elbows and heels dug into various soft parts of him as I tried to get away. Before I could, he reached out and grabbed a fistful of my hair, holding me, back bowed, at his mercy. I cried out in pain as he yanked and my back arched even further.

And then I heard the click of a gun's hammer and swiveled my eyes, since I couldn't move my head, to see Cody standing behind the man. He'd apparently extracted himself from Angel long enough to come to my defense; the barrel of his gun was digging into my captor's temple.

"You let her go or I put a bullet through your skull. Now."

A ripple of chills ran along the curve of my spine at the deadly tone of voice. I had never heard Cody sound that way, had never seen those sky blue eyes so cold.

The pressure on my hair and neck released and I lurched forward, would have cracked my skull on the table in front of me had a hand not caught me under my arm and pulled me upright.

I stumbled into a body, looked up to see Tom. For the first time since I'd met him, Tom spared no smile for me, he was looking at my attacker, his eyes afire. I looked back at the stranger too.

Blood was pouring from his nose over his unkempt mustache, right over the lips that he had put on mine. I shuddered hard enough for Tom to put a reassuring arm around my shoulder.

"What the hell do you think you're doing handling one of my girls like that?" Billy had arrived, Atticus at his elbow. Cody still did not take his gun from the man's temple. The saloon was at a stand still, people watching the scene with slack-jawed curiosity.

"It ain't what you think. I was just asking her upstairs. I didn't know she was such a cold bitch or I wouldn't have wasted my breath."

"Cody!" I warned when I saw him press his gun harder into the man's head.

"Say one more thing about her," Cody tempted him.

His eyes passed over me. "Ain't worth it."

"Atticus will show you the door. Don't come back in," Billy snapped.

"I can find the door my-" the stranger started but was cut off when Atticus, bigger even than my would-be customer, grabbed him by his unruly hair and wrenched him to his feet.

It gave me immense satisfaction to see him squirm in pain at being grabbed as he had grabbed me, and marched on the tips of his toes through the door. I heard some unpleasant sounding thumps of fists on flesh once they were outside and before the saloon picked back up as if nothing had happened.

"Lou, you alright?" Cody asked for himself, Tom and Billy.

"Fine," I said and was surprised my voice didn't tremble.

"He didn't hurt you?" Tom persisted. "He yanked you around pretty good from what I saw walking in…I came in right before you hit him."

Cody shook his head. "I'm sorry Lou. I should have been keeping an eye on you."

"I know what your eye was on," I snipped unkindly, and instantly regretted it. My quarrel was not with him. I shook my head, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Thanks for your help, Cody. You too, Tom."

"What happened?" Cody wondered. "One minute you're fine, the next time I look over you are punching a man in the nose. It was a good hit by the way, especially for your angle."

"Had a good teacher," I admitted with a sheepish smile he returned, though his eyes were still shadowed with worry.

"You know who he was, Louise?" Tom asked me.

"Never seen him before tonight." I murmured, and for some reason decided against telling them about his connection to Danny, at least for the moment until I had time to process it myself.

"Sometimes customers get it in their head that saloon girls are theirs for the takin' so long as they got the money," Billy explained, to me more than the men.

"Sometimes they are," I reminded him, thinking again of Willow Creek and Cole Lambert.

Isabelle appeared. "Lord, Louise, he did a number on your hair. Billy, maybe give the poor girl a minute in back to put herself back together?"

I sighed in relief, met Isabelle's gaze with gratitude.

"Of course. Take whatever time you need, Louise."

I nodded and turned to walk to the private rooms behind the bar.

Cody put a hand on my shoulder to stop me as I passed him. "Want me to come? Stand guard?"

"I'm fine," I dismissed him and walked away, feeling increasingly trapped as people watched me on all sides. In the mirror over the bar, I saw Angel sidle up to Cody again, and the small part of me found pleasure in watching him disentangling himself from her with a serious word that I imagined was to do with him telling her he needed to keep watch better than he had been.

I passed into the privacy of the rooms behind the bar. I made it to a long counter used for preparing food and leaned heavily on it, my weight resting on my splayed fingers and arms rather than my suddenly trembling legs.

It wasn't that I had been manhandled...or not entirely anyway. It wasn't that the man could have easily snapped my neck had Cody been a second later to my aid.

It was Danny. Danny who had promised me I would either be with him or with anyone with the money to leave on my nightstand. Yesterday had been a warning that he could take someone I loved from me if he chose, or rather if I didn't choose him. Today, he had reminded me of the ultimatum he had set before I had gotten fired. He would have me, or he would haunt me.

I wondered how many other men he had spoken to at the brothel, how many more would come after me with his promise that I liked the chase, that I would play coy or pretend to fight them but that I was willing to serve them.

I shuddered violently.

I had made an enemy of the wrong man. His obsession with hurting me, getting even with me, of making my life a living hell was terrifying. It was not over between us, even with all he had cost me. What more did he want from me? How much would he try to take before he was satisfied? Before he felt he had won? I was afraid the only end would be his or mine.

I had lived in fear of one man for most of my adult life. Still lived in fear of Wicks. I refused to run from Danny too.

"How'd you do it?" a voice startled me out of my thoughts and I turned my head towards Angel as she walked in on my privacy. I did not straighten up from where I was still bracing myself upright on the counter.

"Do what, Angel?" I asked wearily. I considered calling her out for seeing me in trouble and purposefully not telling Cody. However, there were only so many fronts I could fight battles on, and my energy was needed elsewhere.

"Wrap all those boys so completely around your finger. Are you that good in bed?"

I blinked. Then the absurdity of that question and my life at this moment in time bubbled in my throat and a bark of laughter escaped me before I could think to stop it.

She blushed bright red, assuming I was making fun of her when I wasn't. I was laughing at myself.

Defensive, her tone was nasty. "I don't understand why they all fall over themselves to protect you. I saw them at the Marshal's office the day that man fired you, looking fit to kill even though it was you in the wrong. See how they all show up every night to see you home safe. Saw that one called Kid come crawling back to you even after you bit his head off for trying to take you outta here...and that Hickok fella has hearts in his eyes when he watches you…and Cody out there...practically giving myself away and he's not interested because he has gotta watch you mope about."

I blinked in surprise at the bitterness in her voice. "Even lonely old Tom is under your spell. Before you came along I could occasionally talk him into a bounce upstairs but now he just wants to talk to you. What power do you have over them? Is it sex? Is it witchcraft? What the hell is so special about you? It ain't your looks. Ain't your personality either that I can tell that is so damned noteworthy. So what the hell is it? I give up."

I sighed, tired, and told her the truth. "It's not me...it's that they are my family. All right? That's it."

She snorted. "It had a family too, including an uncle who helped himself to touching me and worse from the time I was ten."

I flinched. "I'm sorry," I nearly whispered, pity heavy on my heart.

"I don't need the likes of you taking pity on me. You think you are so high and mighty...so Goddamned pure…"

"Angel, I ain't-"

"Oh yes you are! You think you are above this work, above having the men touch you, and you're making more in tips than I am, even accounting for everything I am offering them…"

"If that's true, it's because I am new. It will wear off," I tried.

"I hoped that man would drag you upstairs by your hair, have his way, and then they'd all see you for what you are, for what I see...a whore who thinks she is worth more than she is."

Those words hollowed me like a blow. Part of me feared she was right. The other was horrified at the depth of jealousy she felt for me.

"Can't imagine hating anyone enough to wish rape on them," I said quietly.

"Don't worry. Your worshipers would never allow that to happen to you. Not all of us have such protection."

"They wouldn't let anyone hurt you like that either, Angel, if they were there to stop it. It ain't got nothing to do with me and it has everything to do with them."

"Well they are about ten years too late," she snapped viciously. "Not everyone gets rescued."

I felt tears of empathy burn my eyes but fought them down, sure she would not receive them well. She was too bitter, to full of hate for what she thought I had and what she thought I was. "No...Not everyone does."

"Just once...I wish they could see you like I do...just once I wish you'd fall off that pedestal in front of them all. Let them see you cry and beg for mercy and get none. That would take some of the shine off you."

With that she turned and stormed from the room and my gut was cold with foreboding and my heart with pity for the girl who couldn't conceive of a man finding value in anything but her sexual favors.

But for a series of different choices and different people to cross my path, I could have been just like her.

I shuddered.

"Prairie dog dancing on your grave?"

"Ain't you got a town to protect?" I charged Teaspoon with a smile as I turned to see him standing in the room. I sighed and started twisting and repinning my hair, remembering I was supposed to be working.

"Heard a man grabbed one of my favorite citizens," Teaspoon responded.

"I'm fine."

"Good. Man's worse for the wear. I heard Atticus finished the job you started on his nose."

I was darkly glad to hear it, but insisted, "Really Teaspoon, no need for you to check up on me. I am not hurt. Just needed to put my hair back up and catch my breath."

"You didn't know him?"

"Never seen him before. You?" I asked.

"Still haven't seen him. I went to bring him and talk to him when Tom came to get me a few minutes ago, but he lit out fast after Atticus left him. Couldn't find him."

"Teaspoon...you can't arrest a man for pulling a saloon girl on his lap."

"It's my town," he disagreed. "I was more concerned with what he did after, namely grabbing you by the hair and refusing to let go."

I gave him a look. "I said I am fine."

"Well...that's good because Kid got back from his run. They had filled him in about what happened in the hills to you and Jimmy at the station. He came bursting into my office about the time Tom came running over to say you'd been grabbed. So you could say he is a might worked up."

I groaned.

He shrugged. "Why don't you go out there and let the poor boy see you still got all your limbs. He was picturin' the worst. Glad you are all right Sweetheart."

His eyes were troubled and he looked like he wanted to say more. I was still feeling raw after my exchange with Angel, and wasn't sure I could hold my emotions in check if he expressed any kindness or concern.

"Let's go see Kid before he explodes," I said more lightly than I felt and led the way back to the saloon.

I saw Kid before he saw me. He was standing with Cody, his head bent forward as he absorbed what Cody was telling him with his brow furrowed in concentration.

He looked up suddenly as if I had called him, though I had not. Abandoning Cody mid-sentence, he walked quickly toward me, but before reaching me seemed to remember we were on unsettled terms, and he slowed down. I walked to meet him.

We stood with more space between us than usual, the distance an echo of our mutual caution.

His eyes searched my face carefully, passed over me from head to toe for signs of injury. He looked pale with worry.

"Kid, truly, I am alright."

"They said you got hit in the leg yesterday with a shot," he argued.

"I've had briars do worse," I assured him.

"The others tried to talk you into laying low, I hear. You don't think they have a good point?" Kid asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.

"I think when Danny is coming, he is coming, wherever I am," I said, guarded.

"Lou, I just-"

Kid was cut off suddenly by a blood-curdling scream from outside the saloon porch. The sound filled every inch of empty space in the room, wrapped around all of us standing there frozen in shock for those first seconds.

The scream filled me with dread, so that I stood immobilized a moment longer while everyone else in the room surged forward as one to see what horror was beyond the saloon doorway.

I didn't want to know.

A/N: Turns out there's only so many projects a girl can grade before losing her sanity...so I wrote some.