Chapter 13

His head was dying from the inside out!

Clint’s eyes slid open and he felt the full impact of a splitting headache. He closed his eyes against the sunlight pouring through the window and winced.

What had happened to him?

He tried to pull himself into a sitting position, but it only made his headache worse. His hands ached and when he looked down, he saw his bruised knuckles.

Had he got into a fight? Looking down at his hip, he saw his empty holster and a surge of panic rushed through him. Had he lost the gun? Had he lost it in some poker game? What had possibly gone wrong?

Forcing himself into a sitting position and trying to ignore the pain, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and tried to stand. The pain in his head became too much to bear and he fell back down onto the bed with a groan. Just then, a wall-rattling growl echoed throughout the room and Clint jumped.

What was making that awful noise?

Taking in his surroundings, Clint found himself in a hotel room.

How did he end up in a hotel room?

It wasn’t fancy, with only the necessary furnishings and walls that didn’t block any sound from outside.

The loud noise came again and Clint looked around, his head throbbing from the sound. He found Damian lying in the bed across the room from him, his mouth wide open and eyes closed shut. That loud racket was a snore coming from that man. Clint would have rolled his eyes if his head wasn’t hurting so much.

Instead, he reached for the book on the bedside table and threw it at him. Damian let out a whine that rivaled a child’s.

“Ah, my head!” he exclaimed as he rubbed his temples.

Clint rubbed his forehead and was finally able to stand up. He needed to find his gun and Miss Cooper. He had no idea what had happened to him yesterday, but he wasn’t planning on stopping long enough to find out until he found his gun. Glancing toward the chest-of-drawers on the wall in front of him, Clint took a few staggering steps toward it. His foot caught on a heap in the floor and he looked down. A groan came from the heap, and Clint recognized Colt’s shaggy dark hair.

“What’s going on?” Colt asked.

“What are you doing in the floor?” Clint snapped.

“The beds were taken,” Colt mumbled.

Clint approached the desired piece of furniture and searched every drawer. No sign of his gun.

“Where’s my gun? Where’s Miss Cooper?” He asked Colt.

Colt shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Stop talking!” Damian complained, stuffing a pillow over his face. “You’re making my head worse.”

Clint stepped back over Colt. “How did I end up here? Is Miss Cooper in this hotel? I need to find her.”

“I don’t know where she is. I came in late last night. I found you two sleeping and figured you wouldn’t mind if I bunked with ya’ll,” Colt explained.

A loud rap sounded at the door and Damian whined.

Wimp.

“Come in,” Colt said.

Clint scowled at him. Never let just anyone enter your room unannounced, especially when you didn’t have a gun. Did these people possess any common sense?

The door cracked open, and those familiar brown eyes peeked in.

Clint let out a sigh of relief.

“Do you know where my gun is?” he asked Miss Cooper before she had completely entered the room.

Miss Cooper looked around the cluttered room in disgust. Pillows were scattered here and there and Damian had thrown his blanket across the room sometime during the night. Boots were sitting in pairs in the middle of the room.

“Good morning to you too, Mr. Slade,” she mumbled.

“Where is it?” Clint felt of his empty holster once more.

“I have it. You two were as drunk as all get out last night and I took it from you to prevent any injuries.”

“Drunk?” Clint never lost his control with drinking.

What had he told?

“Colt, when did you get here?” Miss Cooper asked the man, who was pulling on his boots.

“Well,” Colt began. “I got sidetracked out on my walk and forgot all about the time until it started getting dark. I rushed back to town but it was already nightfall when I got here. I searched all over town for you three but I couldn’t find you. So I asked around. These two old coots told me that they saw you helping two drunk men across to the hotel. I came inside and the clerk directed me to this room. I’ve bunked here on the floor ever since.”

Miss Cooper nodded. “Pay attention next time. I had a hard time controlling these two.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Give me my gun back,” he demanded.

“Be quiet,” Damian whimpered.

They ignored him.

“I might do it if you ask nicely,” Miss Cooper crossed her arms.

“It’s my gun, I shouldn’t have to ask nicely,” Clint quipped.

Miss Cooper looked him over. “You seem sober enough.”

She withdrew his gun from where she had no doubt hidden it in the folds of her skirt and held it out to him.

Clint took it from her and looked it over. It was still in the condition that he had last seen it in. Carefully placing it in his holster, he focused his gaze back on her.

“We need to get going. Daddy will be worried when we arrive a day late,” Miss Cooper said, looking around the room at the two other men.

Clint shook his head. “No one is leaving this room until they tell me how I got drunk last night.”

Miss Cooper looked over at Damian.

“You were there, Damian,” she said.

“I don’t remember anything,” Damian grumbled.

“You don’t remember me telling you anything?” Clint asked, holding his breath for the answer he wanted.

“I don’t remember if I knew my own name last night,” Damian said, his voice muffled against the pillow over his face.

Clint let out his breath. Sometimes a little too much of the bottled brew made him tell things he didn’t want people knowing. Luckily, the only person he had ever spouted the secrets off to was someone he was hired to kill.

He had completed that job with the most precision than he had any other job before.

Clint turned back to Miss Cooper. “Did I spout off any nonsense to you?”

Miss Cooper narrowed her eyes at him. She waited a moment before answering. “Not too much. Just the fact that you think you have a lovely singing voice like a canary bird.”

She ended her words with a smiled that stretched across her whole face. Clint felt heat stroll up the back of his neck.

Wonderful.

He had completely embarrassed himself last night and didn’t even remember it.

He slammed his hat down on his head. “Let’s get going.”

*****

“Would you stop breathing?”

Bliss choked back a smile at Damian’s testy tone of voice that accompanied his words.

“I can’t help you there, Jeremiah,” Clint grumbled.

The two had been stuck in the back of the wagon with four crates between them since they had left Plateau this morning and that still hadn’t kept them from arguing.

“Your breathing sounds like panting to me,” Damian complained.

“Your attitude sounds like a man who wants punched to me, so I guess we’re both in company we don’t wanna be in,” Clint shot back.

“You’d hate it if I had the urge to throw this claw hammer at your face,” Damian said threateningly.

“It’d be the second mistake you ever made.”

“Just shut up, will you?”

“I have a headache, too, Damian.”

“It’s your own fault.”

Bliss groaned. “Both of you shut up! You sound like two children who missed their nap!”

She turned around from her place in the front seat and found the men scowling at each other. Neither of them was pleasant to be around on a normal day when they were ailing, so both of them together were torturous.

They were no better than two children!

She expected as much out of Damian with the years she had known him, but she had expected much more from the serious Mr. Slade. Sure, he had been half fun to be around when he was drunk, but once he sobered he was as ornery as an old plow mule.

Bliss peeked over at Colt and envied his ability to block other people and their conversations out and get lost in his own little world. She often wondered what he thought about - what his daydreams were. She had never been the prying kind when it came to Colt, so she had never asked.

The two in the back had fallen silent, and Bliss looked back and hoped that they had fallen asleep.

That would not be the way of it, though.

Their eyes were avoiding each other at all costs, and they both had that determined look on their faces.

It would be interesting to read Damian’s article about Clint after this.

*****

Grace swept off the porch and hummed to herself. Bliss and the others would be back in two days if all went as expected. She didn’t like them being so far away without any way of getting in touch with them. Perhaps she was a wee bit protective of Bliss and Colt, but she had to be to practically raise the children as her own after Cassidy died. It had become her job to worry about them.

No, she wasn’t as bad as Sherman was. Grace wondered if the man would ever let his daughter go after what had happened with Seth.

Then again, what father in his right mind would trust men again after such a thing happened to his little girl. However, Grace knew deep down that he would have to give her away again eventually. Personally, she wouldn’t mind if Colt and Bliss ended up tying the knot and had a whole passel of kids. She had been expecting them to get together before Seth came along, but Bliss had other ideas. Maybe the whole debacle with Seth was a way that the Lord was trying to show Bliss that He had other plans for her, or that she needed to trust in Him more.

Suddenly, the sound of her name being called broke through her thoughts.

“Grace! We’ve got another note!”

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