Double Eagle by Dean Owen

Author:Dean Owen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: elmore leonard, gunfighters, zane grey, louis lamour, western ebooks, ebook westerns, piccadilly publishing westerns, ralph compton
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Sixteen

DUKE SATEEN, FORMER Confederate lieutenant, whose neck had been saved by Cole Cantrell on the final day of the war, had also headed north. Sateen had grown tired of New Sodom and El Dorado Gulch and Scalplock and the other mountain communities and decided to find new fields.

With his earnings as a gambler he bought himself a rundown saloon called the Palace. A little paint here and there, a scrubbed floor, bullet-riddled window glass replaced, and he was open for business. Bullet holes in the front of the hardwood bar he didn’t bother to cover. There would be more. Rimfire was that kind of a town.

Sateen in his butternut cape and beaver hat, with a cheroot usually tilted from a corner of his bearded mouth, became a familiar sight on Rimfire streets. It was a country of flatlands, of sodbusters and far-flung cattle ranches. A place to fry the eyeballs in summer, as one cowhand put it, and freeze the other end of a man in winter. The coming of Centurion-Pacific Railroad tracks last year seemed to assure Rimfire’s future.

As a professional gambler, Sateen dealt honest cards until some slicker tried to deal three from the top or the bottom of the deck. Such a challenge amused Sateen. His face with mustache and trimmed chin beard would lose its usual mask and reflect delight in the battle.

One day Aspen Grove arrived on the noon train with carpetbag and the same portmanteau she’d had when she and Duke Sateen had gone off to Frisco together two years ago. Their love affair had been short-lived.

Aspen said, “I heard you were up here, Duke. By any chance do you have a job for an old friend?”

Sateen removed his hat, made an exaggerated bow, and kissed her fingertips. “Ma’am, ah welcome you to Rimfire.”

They both laughed. Over a midday meal at the Cattleman’s Cafe she told him what had prompted her to leave New Sodom. Sam Bishop, owner of the Four Aces, had begun to pressure her.

“Sam even asked me to marry him,” Aspen said, spooning a rich soup. “I also got tired of the killings.”

Sateen shrugged slightly at that, then produced a Rimfire miracle, a bottle of French wine. He studied her as he poured for them. She was pretty as ever, probably twenty-four by now. The same light hair and gray eyes that sparkled. She had an easy laugh. He liked her but would never become deeply attached again. He was like Cole in one respect; he would tolerate no female’s putting a ring in his nose.

“I’m sure this will be a pleasant change from New Sodom,” Aspen said with a smile.

“And ah believe you singing for the rough element we have hereabouts might soothe the troubled waters, so to speak,” he drawled in his deep voice.

Sateen explained about the cattle ranches and the wild cowhands. “However, nobody will bother you at the Palace, Aspen. Rufus Cain of M-Cross wouldn’t dare harm a lady. Which you are.”

“Don’t you have any law here?”

Sateen smiled.

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