The next morning, with one of Mae’s hearty breakfasts in his stomach, Rhys made up his mind he was going to see Teddy and have it out with her no matter what. This he decided as he stood on Mae’s front porch looking up at a silvery moon which still hung in the brilliant blue sky long after sunrise. That moon didn’t belong up there, not in the bright light of day. And he didn’t belong in Arizona, no matter that he liked the clear air and bare, red mountains and the spare desert floors that stretched endlessly toward the ragged, high peaks of distant ranges.
It was a beautiful land but it made a man too introspective. It made him spend too much time wondering who he was and what he was about and if he couldn’t answer those questions then it proved a hard place to be. And that’s how he found it, because he definitely couldn’t answer all the questions spinning through his mind. And he was definitely thinking too much about Teddy. That was campaigning for trouble.
Teddy was a rose in a sea of brambles, sweet-looking but dangerous. He wanted her even though getting near her was a risk to his hide and, more significantly for a man, his pride. The enigmatic Teddy cared nothing about pleasing a man, yet thoughts of her kept him awake at night. Visions of her haunted his days. Logic told him he ought to sell out to Adams so he could get away from her. Deep in his mind he feared that it was too late for that. He was helplessly drawn to her, bent on proving to himself that Teddy Gamble was, at the core, like any other woman, conquerable, compliant, leavable.
Angry that she had taken control of his thoughts, suspicious that she was responsible for his trouble in Wishbone, he marched out of the boarding house with the intention of telling her he was done with her. Rhys Delmar was leaving Wishbone, and he hoped she liked her new partner, Parrish Adams, better.
He never told her that. He arrived at the office long after the stage should have come in. Through the office window he got a glimpse of Teddy’s face before she saw him. He was touched in a way he could not have expected. She sat behind a paper-strewn desk, her head in her hands. The corners of her mouth quivered like those of a child on the verge of tears. Her lovely eyes were half-closed and sad. She looked vulnerable—the rose without the thorns. Her anguish was palatable and appealed to an inherent protective quality Rhys did not even know he had.
He stepped through the open door. “Something is wrong?”
As if a gate had swung shut between them, Teddy’s expression changed. The face that had, a moment before, shown such need was now a mask of defiance.
“Could be,” she said, getting to her feet and coming briskly around the desk. “The nine o’clock’s two hours overdue and—”
“And what?”
Teddy made no attempt to hide her hesitancy. Only at his insistence did she make a reply. “Both Rope and Strong Bill made that run. It’s carrying a payload out of the mines. They wouldn’t be late unless there was—somebody to stop them.”
“Another holdup,” Rhys surmised. “You must alert the sheriff—”
Teddy crossed her arms over her chest and swore. “What you don’t know would fill a canyon. Len Blalock won’t help. Leastaways not me. He belongs to Adams.”
“Adams?” Rhys asked, recalling with some remorse that it was Adams’s offer that had prompted him to come to her today. But that could wait. This wasn’t the time to tell her that Adams had sounded like a shrewd but sensible man to him and that maybe she wouldn’t be so bad off if someone with a good supply of capital did buy into the Gamble Line.
“Aww hell!” she said. “Don’t act like you don’t know who he is and what he’s after. You’ve been living in that den of iniquity he owns. I wouldn’t put a lizard’s tooth on the odds that you’ve come over here to tell me you’ve sold out to him too.”
Her accusation cut to the quick. He pretended indignation. “Are you always so quick to conclusions, Teddy Gamble? Are you so sure you are the only person with principles? And honor?”
“Let’s just say it’s quicker to count those that haven’t sold out than those that have.” She glanced back at the clock behind the desk. Another five minutes had ticked by while she talked with Rhys. “Why did you come over here?” she demanded.
“You seem to have forgotten I have business with you. I thought, perhaps, you had heard from your inquiry to London and hadn’t had the time to notify me.”
“The deuce!” she said accusingly. “You know as well as I do there hasn’t been time.” While she berated him, she grabbed her hat from a wall peg and slung it on her head. “But don’t worry yourself, when I find out you’ll be the first to know. Now git! I’ve got things to do.”
She was backing him out the door as she talked. He stopped in the doorway, stubbornly blocking her exit. “You are leaving? I thought you were worried about the stage.”
“I am.” She paused and inhaled sharply. “That’s why I’m riding out to look for it.”
And into danger, Rhys thought, remembering the three road agents he had encountered. He slowly shook his head. She had to be a little crazy to even consider riding out alone.
“No,” he said. “Send some of your men.”
“I don’t have any men to spare. Now get out of my way.” Her hand went to the handle of the gun holstered at her side.
He stepped aside, not because of the threat but because he’d made an instant decision. “I am going with you.”
She pushed past him. “Oh no!” she proclaimed and bounded out onto the sidewalk. “You I don’t need.”
“No argument, Teddy,” he said. “I am going.”
She stalked off down the street. “Got a gun?”
“I’ll buy one.”
“Got a horse?”
“You’ll loan me one?”
She opened her mouth to rebut the assumption but instead quickened her pace toward the stable. “I’m not waiting while you get a gun,” she said.
Wondering how any one woman could have so much obstinacy, Rhys watched her head into the stable then hopped off the sidewalk and trotted up the street toward Penrod’s to make a selection from the case of guns in the store.
“I got all kinds,” Penrod said. “And I can sell you what you want.” He displayed a .44 army-pattern Colt with an ornately engraved barrel and a silver-plated handle. “Fancy if you want to impress the ladies.”
“No,” Rhys said, certain the lady in question would scoff at the weapon.
“Well, if it’s tried and true you want, this Colt Peacemaker is hard to beat.”
Rhys tried the walnut grip and checked the sighting on the blued-metal casing of the second revolver Penrod showed him. The feel was right, the gun was unpretentious and dependable, which was all he wanted. He knew how to use the weapon, and declined Penrod’s offer for a demonstration. As a youth he had learned to shoot with custom-made weapons from his master’s gun room. Rhys knew he could hold his own against any man should he have to.
“This one,” he said and quickly selected a holster. Penrod added a box of shells to the order and tallied up a total.
“I’ll buy it back if you decide you don’t need it.” The storekeeper dogged Rhys’s tracks all the way outside. “ ’Course I’ll have to knock off some. It being used—Well, durn!” he said as Rhys, ignoring him, sprinted off toward the Gamble stable.
***
Teddy was gone.
Two youths Rhys had not met were in the stable. One was tossing hay down from the loft, the other was unenthusiastically cleaning stalls. Both paused at their work when Rhys burst in. “I need a saddle horse,” he said.
The boy shoveling manure looked up at the lad in the loft. The boy above gave a consenting nod. “That’s him, can’t you tell?” He eyed the neat black suit Rhys wore, the rose-silk vest, silver-gray cravat and the nattily polished boots. “Teddy said he’d look like a dandy.”
The youngster below leaned on his shovel. “Don’t look so dandified to me. Got a gun.”
Rhys put a stop to the time-wasting conjecture. “Did Teddy say which horse to take?”
“You Delmar?” the lad demanded.
“Yes. Which horse?”
“That bay in the corral out back,” the boy said. “I slung a saddle and bridle on the fence and,” he smiled suspiciously wide, “you can catch him yourself.”
Cursing Teddy for not waiting and, at the least, for not having one of those boys saddle his horse, Rhys hurried out back. He saw at once why they hadn’t volunteered. The bay was a big spirited stallion who began tossing his head and pawing the ground when he saw Rhys approach. He was a fine animal and took a bridle surprisingly well, but the saddle was another matter. One look at it and the stallion hopped and bucked around the corral with Rhys attempting to hold onto him and the heavy saddle.
Not until Rhys threw the saddle down and looped his fine silk cravat over the stallion’s eyes did he get him to stand still. By then more precious minutes had passed and Teddy, he knew, would be harder to catch. Shortly, though, he had his mount saddled and out of the corral. He rode through the stable fostering two looks of disbelief.
“Which way?” Rhys shouted.
“West.” One of the boys tossed him a canteen as he rode through. “An’ Demon there can catch that paint of Teddy’s if any horse can.”
Demon’s hooves thundered through Wishbone. Rhys had a moment of doubt as he took the road west. If Teddy didn’t want him along she could have told the boys to send him on a false trail, but then he remembered the mines were northwest of Wishbone and rode on.
He pushed his mount. The stallion felt strong beneath him and eager to run. The day’s heat hadn’t yet come down. Until it did he would ride hard. He didn’t like the idea of Teddy running up on road agents alone.
On the other hand, God help the men who got in her way.