From the small office window Teddy watched the stage roll in right on schedule. Another run with no trouble. She supposed it was too much to hope they had seen the last of the holdup attempts. Whatever was responsible for the bandits backing off, she was grateful. She’d had a telegram from Cabe Northrop saying Wells Fargo was pleased her company had brought in one of the bandits. That had come the day after Joe Luther broke out of jail and got himself killed over at Adams’s place.
Real peculiar that the fellow went there when he could have ridden out of town. She had her suspicions that there was more to the story of his breaking out than Len Blalock had told. But the sheriff was sporting a shiner and had lost his gun and keys to Luther. Not for long, though. Blalock had both back within a few hours. And folks around town were spouting off about Adams being a hero and keeping the streets safe for decent people.
Couldn’t anybody besides her see that Adams was a snake in the grass, that his charitable acts and bravado were false? No, she supposed they couldn’t. People got cloudy vision when someone donated a new bell to the church and offered to pay half the new schoolteacher’s salary for the year. Adams was making himself awful popular. She wondered why. What did he want in addition to the Gamble Line’s contracts? Something—she knew. His true nature was about as benevolent as a badger’s. She knew that firsthand.
And if she had any takers she would bet Joe Luther didn’t wind up at the Diamond just to get drunk. He had business there, or thought he did. Luther could have told plenty if he’d been brought to trial. Plenty. But he wouldn’t be talking now.
She got up and went out when the stage pulled to a halt in front of the office. Strong Bill was back on shotgun and he had ridden this run. She was waiting when he jumped down from the driver’s box.
“Any trouble?” she asked.
“We had an easy run,” he said, shaking the dust off his long railroad coat. “And there’s been no problem with the wagons coming down from the mines either,” he added. “Things are goin’ so good we ought to—”
“Worry,” Teddy said, then wished she’d held her tongue. Her pessimistic reply meant she didn’t believe this streak would last. The trouble had only quieted down. With Adams after her contracts, bandits after her payloads, and the Frenchman after her money, she was destined for more problems. She had the uneasy feeling that all her adversaries had merely dropped back to regroup and that soon they would be moving in for another assault.
She wondered if she could survive another one.
“I was going to say ‘rejoice.’” Strong Bill was never off duty. His Winchester rested in his arms and his eyes were alert for any person or movement out of the ordinary. He wouldn’t relax his watch until the payload the coach carried was safely in the Wells Fargo vault in Yuma. “That Frenchman did us a good turn, Teddy,” he said. “We owe him.”
“I reckon you and Rope would hand the company to him out of gratitude,” Teddy snapped. “Me, I’m glad not to have seen hide nor hair of him for a while.”
Strong Bill ignored Teddy’s grumpiness. Like Rope he was endlessly patient with her. “I been wonderin’ where he is. You don’t reckon anything’s happened to him?” He stepped aside to make room for the spent team to be led off. The horses snorted and stomped, impatient to get to the grain and hay in the Gamble stable. “Mind you, we don’t know what Luther did before he showed up at the Diamond,” Strong Bill continued. “He might have wanted to settle a score with Delmar.”
“I’m not that lucky,” Teddy retorted.
The new team was hitched and Strong Bill had a leg up climbing to the box. The driver was in place and adjusting the lengths of rein in his gloved hands. “He could be more trouble to you dead than alive,” Strong Bill called down to her. “If you know what I mean.”
Teddy swore softly. “All right,” she said. “I’ll find out where he is.”
“Good.”
“Now you be careful out there,” she implored Strong Bill with the same words she said nearly every time he rode messenger. “Don’t let anybody shoot you.”
“Aww, don’t you worry about me.” Strong Bill winked and gave his trusty rifle a pat. “The only way they’ll kill me is to cut my head off and hide it where I can’t find it. Now get on and do what you said you would.”
“All right,” Teddy said. She did not have to look far for Rhys Delmar. He was walking up the sidewalk when the stage rolled out. His black, flat-brimmed hat was pulled low on his forehead. His shoulders were squared.
“Speak of the devil,” she said.
“Teddy!” He stepped up close.
He had a savage look in his eye. She saw a dark bruise beneath a pronounced cheekbone and a not-quite-healed cut on his lower lip. She thought of Strong Bill’s warning about Joe Luther. She wondered if the outlaw had hunted Delmar down before he got himself shot. A pang of guilt hit her because if that was the case, all other differences aside, Rhys had come to harm as a result of being a passenger on the Gamble Line. The pang lasted only until another emotion came into play. His cocky walk, the perfect fit of his clothes, the way his gaze was leveled on her—all triggered desire. She felt it but didn’t recognize it for what it was. “Been tangling with that hussy again?” she asked.
He snarled at her. He’d spent five days practically a prisoner of Mae Sprayberry’s. The landlady had taken a motherly interest in him while he was recovering from the beating he’d been given. He was still sore, tired of being cooped up, and guilty of spending too much time deliberating on who was responsible. “I think,” he said bluntly, “I am victim to a conniving she-cat who’s too underhanded to fight her own battles.”
Teddy didn’t like the implication, which—as near as she could tell—was that she was somehow responsible for his getting in a fistfight. “What are you hinting at, Delmar?” she asked hotly. “If you mean me, I’d say whoever punched you rattled some spokes loose.”
He stepped so close the lapels of his jacket brushed against the fringe of her shirt. People on the street paused to stare before going on about their business. Neither Teddy nor Rhys noticed. Teddy was only conscious of his fiery breath on her face. Rhys was convinced she was the most exasperating woman he’d ever known.
Beneath the bruises, his face flushed with anger. “Are you saying you know nothing about the three men who five days ago ambushed me and warned me to leave town?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” she shot back.
“No thanks to you.”
Teddy doubled her fist and waved it at him. “Mister, I do my own fighting and shooting and it’s face to face. So don’t blame me for a scrape you got in on your own. Sure I wish you weren’t here but I’m not low enough to hire thugs because of that. You and I have business together whether we like it or not and that business will be settled fair. Understand?”
“I understand. But if I find out that you were in any way responsible—”
“You ought to soak your head,” she said scornfully. “By the way, where have you been since you got that licking?”
“At Madame Sprayberry’s,” he replied, beginning to concede that Teddy might not have arranged the assault, but indignant that she assumed he had not given as good as he got. “It might surprise you to know there are some people in this town who treat a stranger with kindness.”
“It might surprise you to know there are some strangers who deserve it,” she spat back.
Rhys drew himself up taller and stared harshly down at her. “Madame Sprayberry is a fine, charitable lady.”
“That old hen.” Teddy reared back and laughed so hard her hat fell off. It dangled on her back, held there by the thin leather lanyard tied beneath her chin. “She’ll coddle you to death if you don’t watch out. But I reckon that’s the kind of looking-after a tenderfoot needs.”
Teddy’s eyes glittered with her poorly concealed contempt. Rhys’s mouth compressed into a tight and unpleasant line. Teddy’s mockery had come too close to the truth. Mae Sprayberry had nearly smothered him with kindness. And when she wasn’t sitting at his bedside or pouring hot broth down him, Justine had been there dutifully watching and working her embroidery. Today he’d had to slip out while they were both in the kitchen. Women liked an invalid, he supposed—except Teddy, who more likely preferred making one.
“I can take care of myself,” he said stiffly. “I think I’ve proven that.”
“Ha!” Teddy jeered, her voice cold, her tone condescending. “Any boy in knee britches can make a lucky throw with a rock. Around here you’ve got to shoot straight and ride hard to prove yourself.” Her next words cut like a rusty razor. “And the rule is, a man’s not a man unless he’s still standing after a fight.”
His body went rigid, his nostrils flared, and, for a moment the muscles convulsed in his cheeks. He wanted to shake her, but that wouldn’t have been a safe thing to do—not with his temper raging—not when he wasn’t sure whether or not he would break her neck. He might regret it if he did. It was a pretty neck, long and slender. He needed to do something about that mouth, though. She talked like a saddle tramp and she always went too far.
For an instant he toyed with the idea of grabbing her there on the street and kissing her so soundly she would regret her caustic words and beg his forgiveness for saying them. He’d make her swoon like any of the dozens of other women he had held in his arms. But then none of them had been wearing a gun—and liable to use it should he be wrong this once about his powers of seduction. Damn her! She had begun to make him question what he had always taken for granted, his manhood.
He did swear, loudly. Sacré bleu! “You are one heartless—”
Teddy huffed. “Don’t say it!”
He didn’t. He had noticed the way the sun was lighting streaks of gold in her hair and revealing, now that her hat was off and she was heated up, that it smelled faintly of summer flowers. He nearly, involuntarily, reached out and touched the glistening strands. But he did not. He let her get away with one more affront, contented that he’d found one more dent in Teddy’s tough facade. She might shout and swear, wear leather and spurs and case her legs in trousers. But she used a sweetly scented soap—this spitfire who brooked no recognition that she was a woman.
The facade held on another front, though. Teddy lacked even a shred of sympathy. She had obviously felt no concern for his apparent disappearance. She had in fact, counted his absence a blessing if her behavior today was any indication. She would like it ever so much if he went away and was never seen or heard from again. Oh yes, she would like to make him a “silent” partner. If she had not been responsible for the mishap which had left him battered and bruised and, admittedly, embarrassed, she certainly wasn’t respectably displeased it had happened.
He had endured all the taunts and all the temptation he could stand for one day. “Step aside!” he demanded.
Teddy braced herself. “Not for you.”
It was the final straw. Rhys gripped her stiffly set shoulders, lifted her and set her out of his way, surprised by her lightness. He’d half expected she’d be made of lead. Angrily, briskly, he walked off.
“Where are you going?” she shouted after him.
“For a drink.” He didn’t glance back. “Lots of them.”
“Oh hell,” Teddy grumbled out the words. “Now I’ve sold my saddle for sure. He’s heading to the Diamond.”
***
In his cozy back office, Parrish Adams sat like a monarch in his leather chair. He drank a blended whiskey, not the gut-burning redeye he served at the bar. His thin mustache was waxed to perfection. He was basking in the glow of a favorable editorial written about him in the Wishbone Gazette. He commended himself on the wisdom of ordering from a foundry a bell cast for the empty tower that had sat atop Wishbone’s only church.
“See this, Norine,” he said. “See how they praise my generosity.” He pushed the paper toward her, leaned back and drank of the expensive whiskey. “Money will buy anything,” he extolled. “Friends, respect, anything.”
She drummed her long nails on the soft newsprint. “I knew that. I’ve always had a fondness for money—and you.”
“You mean anybody with money.”
A knock interrupted them. “Adams,” Len Blalock’s baritone came from the bar side of the door.
“Get upstairs,” he said. “See if those girls are earning their keep.”
Norine, resplendent in a form-fitting gown of black, blew him a kiss and silently eased out the back door. Adams invited the sheriff inside when she was gone.
Blalock had his hat in his hand. “Wanted to tell you Delmar is up and about today.”
“It’s past time,” Adams said. “What’s it been? Nigh on a week?” He shook his head. “You disappoint me, Sheriff. I thought you were smarter than Boyd and Pete. That’s why I sent you along. I wanted Delmar roughed up and scared, not beaten senseless.”
“Wasn’t my doin’. Your boys got carried away.”
With both hands on the edge of his desk, Adams leaned hard against it. “And a lot of time got by. Time I didn’t want to wait.” Adams eased back in his chair, shrugged, then stood and took a handkerchief from his pocket. As if the sheriff were not there he folded the white cloth and took a moment to polish the two-carat diamond in his gold stickpin. “Now am I going to have to hunt for Delmar or are you going to see he pays me a visit?”
“I set that up already,” Blalock said, uneasily shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He’d looked in on Delmar after Justine told him about the assault. It hadn’t been one of his finer moments, pretending outrage and concern to his daughter for an act he was responsible for. But he had done it and Justine, mercifully, had not suspected his duplicity. “I told him you heard of his...misfortune and sent your regards and that you would stand him a drink when he was well enough to visit the Diamond.” He stared at Adams’s face looking for a sign of approval. “If he’s like most men he won’t waste much time getting here.”
“If so, you’ve done one thing right, but I suggest you get out on the street and make sure he doesn’t forget where that free drink is waiting.”
“Yes, sir.” The words slipped out. Blalock felt some of his lifeblood drain out with them. They lumped him in the same category as the Smith brothers and where the unfortunate Joe Luther had been. He was now one of Adams’s boys.