Gamble prologue

“Love’s Gamble”
A Cowboys and Werewolves Novella

Prologue
Wyoming 1881


Sadie shuffled the well-handled deck of cards on her lap. The rat-tat-tat echoed up against the massive boulders on the canyon walls. “Pa catches you with those cards you’re going to be sorry. You know he thinks gambling’s from the Devil,” Samantha said from beside her. Sadie glanced at her sister. Though a year divided them, they were very similar in their dirt-smeared calico dresses and braided red hair. Sadie’s was perhaps a touch darker with auburn strands streaking the underside, but she didn’t have Sam’s amazingly green eyes.

She sighed and wiggled her bare toes on the rock where they perched. From their viewpoint they could see the entire clearing, the ramshackle cabin made of dark, patchy logs, and their lone grazing cow.

“I wish he’d think drinking was from the Devil,” Sadie muttered, shuffling the cards again. She thought of them as her birthday present, since she had found them on the day she turned fourteen. What the cards had been doing hidden in her mother’s trunk, she didn’t know, but her mother would certainly not complain. Her mother had stopped talking months ago.

Sadness formed a lump in her throat, but she shook it off. The bright end of summer sunlight fell through the pines that clung to the rocky valley walls where they lived, sparkling on the granite and heating her arms and face. Below them in the yard, her youngest sister Caroline scattered a few desiccated kernels of corn for the chickens, while inside the cabin came the intermittent howling of baby John.

Samantha lowered her voice. “Ma says its cause Pa’s has a lot of disappointments. Plus, he ain’t been feeling so good. Those wounds he took last month—”

“I don’t care.” The last thing she wanted to do was feel sympathy for the man. He had knocked her around too much for that. She had not quite hoped that he die of the wolf attack last month, but in the night she had wondered what their life would be like without him. And then a week ago he had miraculously recovered. He had gotten out of his sick bed, stretched his healed body, and growled for supper. Since then, he had been meaner then ever.

She shook her head. “I’ve had enough of this place. I don’t see him doing much to feed us, anyhow. You and I keep the kitchen garden, and Ma… she’s darn near useless too. I want to run away.” She reached over and grabbed Sam’s arm. “And you can come with me! Let’s run away and join a Wild West Show. We can be a horse riding team! Or shooting. You know I’m a good shot.”

Sam smiled, green eyes sparkling. “We’d be famous all over the world I bet. They’d write stories about us to sell in the mercantile. The Foster Twins…”

Sadie grabbed her sister’s hand and intertwined their fingers. “We’d be together forever.”

Caroline fell in the yard, sending the chickens scattering, and as she pushed herself up tears tracked down her dust-covered face. Sam slid down the side of the boulder and gathered their baby sister in her skinny arms. Sadie came slower, slipping her precious deck of cards into the pocket of her worn, smudged apron before lifting a few rocks from the yard. With a grin, she started to juggle. Her quick hands tossed and caught each little pebble.

“Watch this, Caroline. Do you think I can do four? Throw in four. I bet I can do it.”

Caroline immediately laughed and bent her tousled blonde head to find a small rock. She was nine and small for her age, delicate too and sometimes sickly. Her pale, fragile beauty seemed to bring out a fierce need in Sam to shelter the girl from the casual cruelties of their daily life. Sadie was more practical. “Just teach her to survive. That’s what we all got to know.”

Soon night fell over the world in a gentle shadow, the twilight quickening too darn fast now as summer was fading. Inside the cabin, Sam and Sadie went about their chores while Caroline worked on her numbers with a charcoal stick. Their mother rocked baby John by the hearth in the squeaky chair Pa had built long ago. He must have loved us all once, Sadie thought, eyeing the simple carpentry.

They were setting the rough-hewn table when their father stumbled in through the door, a cold, mountain-chilled breeze sparking the fire. He smelled of whiskey and he favored his leg.

All of them froze, if only for a moment, until he slammed the door and set his rifle by on the bench. Sam seemed to shrivel, curling up inside herself, her eyes lowered and her shoulders hunched.

Sadie glared. She might have only been fourteen, but she thought she had never seen such a useless man. What good had he ever done them? And here he came looking like he was king of this poor man’s excuse of a castle. She bit her lip to keep her smart mouth in line.

He raked a hand through his overlong and shaggy hair and stalked further into the fire-lit cabin. His shadow stretched black across the floor, and his leathery face twitched, deep lines of anger and frustration crinkling across his forehead. An amber light seemed to flicker in his eyes. Sadie blinked. It had to just be the fire reflecting in his eyes.

“Greens!” He glowered at the table. “Where’s that piece of beef I traded for? A man needs meat!”

Sadie knew now that someone was going to get pounded. And it couldn’t be Sam.

Or Ma. Ma was all skin and bones since John was born and her skin was parchment white. She barely glanced at her husband, though the chair rocked and squeaked.

Sadie took a step in front of her sisters. “It’s in the smokehouse, were it belongs. We’re going to need that meat this winter. Ma needs it. Caroline needs it.”

Pa’s face grew so red that Sadie thought it would explode.

He balled up one fist and swept it across the table, sending biscuits flying. He threw the bowl of greens across the room to hit the stone chimney. It clattered down on Caroline who cried out and crawled away, hiding behind her mother’s chair. Ma rocked, and her eyes closed.

“I am the master of this house!” Pa yelled. “I will get respect.” He came at Sadie then with his fists and Sam threw herself between them, shaking. She cried and grabbed at her father’s coat, which he hadn’t yet removed.

“God says that Man is the Master, the King of his home!” their father railed. “You whores! You sinful creatures. You brought man out of the Kingdom of Grace… You sinners. You whores.” A sheen crawled over his face, and then short, bristly hair sprouted. His nose grew longer, pointed.

For a moment, Sadie could do nothing but choke on her shock. His eyes flashed bright yellow and his nose became snouted and teeth grew before her eyes. She couldn’t breath. The back of his shirt ripped apart and his fingers curled with three-inch long nails.

Within moments, a massive wolf stood in the place of her father.

Sadie ran for the rifle. The wolf jumped onto the table, but it broke beneath his weight, shattering into kindling. Sam fell away, crying.

Caroline wailed from the corner and their mother fell to her knees by the fire, shaking her head if she could make the madness disappear. She clutched the baby and screamed silently. John was not so silent. His wailing cut through the room.

The wolf’s slavering snout turned toward the babe.

Sadie kicked open the door, and for a second she knew she could escape—flee into the night and leave the nightmare behind. The cold wind hit her hot, panicked face and chilled the tears that ran down her cheeks. Behind her the screaming started.

She grabbed up her father’s rifle, took aim at the massive monster, and with her teeth clenched in horror, she fired into his back. The butt of the gun hit her shoulder, but somehow she kept standing. Gun smoke burned her nose. Terror and a fierce rage like she had never felt washed through her like a sudden flood.

The creature whirled around, taking the bullet as if it were nothing but an annoyance. Snarling and drooling, it took a step toward her. She met those gold glowing eyes and watched as the lip curled back from black gums, inch long eyeteeth gleaming in the firelight.

A deep, resonating growl filled the room. The beast-man leaped toward her, and she ran out into the night, the monster right behind her. An idea formed in her head. She knew exactly where to take him, but she didn’t know if she would be fast enough. She dodged around the old cow pen, ducked past the leaning barn with a quick swerve. The monster crashed into the boards, knocking down the entire structure. Sadi kept running. She sprinted toward the back of the canyon. She was nearly there.

A massive force hit her from behind. It knocked the wind from her body. She collapsed and claws tore into her back through skin and muscle. Hot blood splattered on her cheeks and she could feel her flesh ripping—pain like searing fire burned through her, taking all other thoughts with it. Dirt and pine needles filled her mouth as she tried to crawl away, choking her as she sobbed and tried to scream.

“Here! Here! Come and get me!” Sam’s voice cut through the night. The beast jumped from Sadi, and she curled up on herself, every breath hard to take. She wanted to die. At least then the agony would be over. She heard a crash of wood and an animal’s wild cry of fear. It ended abruptly and then Sam was there, turning her over and whispering her name. “He’s dead. He’s dead,” she said softly. “But you hold on. Just hold on.” Her voice broke as she began to cry. Sadi closed her eyes and let the darkness of the night take her.