“We buried Port back of the station.”
Rope, Teddy, Rhys and the search party sat gathered around a small fire, heating beans and coffee for a meal. They had met on the trail before noon. Rhys and Teddy had taken to the rocks at the first sound of hoofbeats, fearing Rennie had defied their expectations and followed after all. The tension and dread had flown away like a soaring eagle when they recognized familiar, friendly faces.
“Adams is responsible,” Teddy said. “Those bastards admitted they were taking orders from him.” She wore Rope’s striped cotton shirt. The big loose garment hung well over her hips and she’d needed to make thick rolls on the sleeves to uncover her hands, but it was decent cover and made it possible for her to sit and eat with the men.
“Then we have to press on ’til we find them,” Rope said grimly. “Let one of them see a noose swing over his head and he’ll tell whoever’ll listen that Adams is behind all these holdups and murders.”
“I’ll go too,” Teddy said, and got a chorus of no from the entire party, Rhys’s voice sounding out the loudest objection of all.
“Take care how you come up on that Rennie,” Rhys warned. He put his tin plate aside and cradled a scarred coffee cup in both hands. “He’s a sure marksman and he could pick off most of you with the rifle should he see you coming.”
“We’ll chase him to hell,” one of the men spoke out. He’d been a messenger since Teddy’s father had started the line. He’d also been a close friend of Port’s and took the station manager’s death as personally as anyone.
“We left a man at Port’s,” Rope said, absently stirring a stick in the fire’s embers. “He’s well armed and he’ll stay and run the station as long as he’s needed. ’Course all of us bein’ out here means we had to pull the extra guards off the runs.”
Rhys spoke up again. “I think Rennie is—as you say here—high-tailing. He has a wounded man with him. We can hope, at least, he will not consider holding up a stage soon.”
Rope nodded his agreement. “You and Teddy get on into town and see what you can do about Adams. He ain’t gonna be expectin’ you and seein’ you two ride in just might shake a showdown out of him. Mind you it ain’t one with any shootin’. He’s still got hired guns around him and we got no law on our side until we can get word to Cabe and get help from Wells Fargo.”
Teddy reluctantly agreed not to get into any gunplay with Adams. Rhys agreed to the same and, privately to Rope, to keep Teddy from losing her head when she saw the man.
“I don’t want to lose any more men,” Teddy said as they cleared the camp and mounted up. “You fellows come back with your boots in the stirrups.”
The men galloped off. Rope hung back a moment longer. “Almost forgot,” he said, holding his horse steady. “That pal of yours, Bourget, was lookin’ for you when we rode out. Acted like he had a bug in his britches about somethin’.”
***
A mile outside of town Rhys and Teddy parted ways. Teddy, on one of the spare horses the search party had brought along, went riding on to the Gamble ranch to let Felicity know she had come to no permanent harm. Rhys rode the “borrowed” roan into Wishbone, knowing he looked a sorry sight with his shredded shirt wrapped around him as a bandage over the worst of the cuts he’d suffered in the fight with Taviz.
His appearance raised a lot of curious stares and several queries about what happened. Rhys told them he was trying to figure that out himself and rode on to Mae’s boarding house. If Adams wasn’t watching the street he would soon have word that Rhys Delmar, very much alive, had ridden in.
He ought to be thinking more about Adams. He’d misjudged the man. He’d dismissed Teddy’s accusation as hot-headed and unfounded. But Teddy consumed his thoughts. He ought to have said something to her after making love. He ought to have told her who he was and why he was there and why she had no business giving herself to a man who was accused of murder, a man who had sworn he would bed her to take her down a notch. It wasn’t much consolation to his conscience that now he was the one humbled, taken down a notch. He had to tell her the truth about him. Soon.
“Land sakes! Rhys Delmar! What got after you?” Mae came running from the boarding house. Justine Blalock stood on the porch, twisting her apron in her hands. Her eyes were wide and frightened.
Rhys threw his leg over the roan’s haunches and dismounted. “Teddy and I were ambushed out at the first station,” he explained. “And we were taken prisoner by the bushwhackers.”
“What happened to Teddy?” Mae’s voice had a hollow sound. Like most of Wishbone she’d been swayed by Parrish Adams’s magnanimous contributions to the town. And like most, she’d thought Teddy’s refusal to sell out to him had been stubborn and foolish, and a detriment to progress.
“Teddy’s at the ranch,” Rhys told Mae as she led him to her kitchen and began tearing away his makeshift bandages. He recounted most of what had happened but was careful not to mention Adams. “She’s fine now,” he added.
After hearing what Rhys and Teddy had endured, Mae’s sympathy began to swing in the opposite direction. “Where’s your pa, Justine?” she demanded. “It’s his job to raise a posse and search out these bushwhackers. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.” Justine’s head hung down. There had been a time when her father would have been the first one outraged over any crime. But now he hid in the face of trouble, and he never acted on anything without first paying a visit to the Diamond Saloon.
He wasn’t the same man she had loved and been proud of and she was afraid she knew why.
***
Patched up, cleaned up, Rhys went by the Gamble office to confirm that the runs, if off schedule by a few hours, were getting through. Afterwards he walked over to the Brass Bell, making a point to stroll boldly down the sidewalk past the Diamond, tipping his hat and saying a how-do-you-do to everyone he met.
In the Brass Bell’s busy, smoke-clouded bar he was surprised to find Lucien’s faro game closed for the night. At the bar he asked for his friend and was told Lucien had been under the weather and was presently upstairs resting.
Had he not anticipated being watched he might have noticed that one man’s curiosity was especially great, that of a red-haired, bushy-bearded man who peered from behind a newspaper.
Derby Seward waited until Rhys had climbed the steps then discreetly followed, stepping lightly on the treads so that he would not be heard. Seward had experienced no luck finding Bourget again since the chance meeting on the sidewalk, an outcome he did not take as a good sign. There had been that glint of remembrance in the valet’s eyes and it was highly possible that the man was not ill but was staying out of sight to avoid him. He had not worried so much over that while Delmar was out of town. But now the man was back, and, Seward was sure, on his way to talk to Bourget.
Stepping softly on the carpeted floor as he turned into a hallway, Seward saw Rhys at the far end of the dark hall knocking on a door. To avoid being seen, the Englishman hastily backed into an alcove and accidentally thudded his shoe heel softly against the wooden panels of a door within the alcove. He had not thought the sound could be heard by any ears but his, but momentarily the knob turned and the door slowly opened. Lucien Bourget stood within, a look of fear frozen on his face.
Lucien came out of his shock slowly, too slowly to block Seward’s entry into the room, too slowly to shove the Englishman out before he had pulled the door to behind him. “You know me,” came Seward’s soft, menacing voice. “I see it in your eyes. You remember.”
“No! I—” Lucien stumbled back, hampered by his lameness and his fear. He did remember, now as clearly as if he were reliving the instant he’d opened the door, seen Jenny slumped at his feet, the red-haired man across the street, a handkerchief in his hand. The man had been cleaning something with the handkerchief.
The stiletto blade slid between Lucien’s ribs piercing his heart. When Seward was sure the deadly knife had done its work he released the ebony hilt. Lucien did not live long enough to gasp before he sagged to the floor.
Seward smiled. The killing had been clean and quiet. He felt a sense of power, a heightening of all his senses. He was, as ever, at his best when the risk was highest. And even as he drove the blade into Lucien, he had planned his alibi. Without delay he stepped over Lucien and hurried into the adjoining room to seek his escape. He had the devil’s luck that day. The room was a corner one and the door opened into a different hallway. He saw a back stair across the way and eased out, silent as a shadow, in time to hear Rhys Delmar at the door he had entered, calling for Bourget.
“Lucien! Luce!” Rhys had mistaken the room and, after convincing the disappointed female occupant that he was not there for her services, had asked where he might find his friend.
The door wasn’t shut completely. Rhys pushed it open a few inches and called for Lucien again, then saw there was no need.
***
“Sheriff’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe.” Pavy Tucker, Len Blalock’s deputy, sat in with the prisoners whenever duty called the sheriff away. He wasn’t qualified or willing to find a killer. He hastily pointed out that with a steady stream of customers up and down the stairs and everyone minding their own business, anyone could have come and gone without raising suspicion.
Rhys was the only one out of the ordinary that any of the girls could remember.
“I’ll see he gets a fine burying.” Carmen Bell wept into her lace hankie. “He was good to me. Always a gentleman. Treated me like I was a queen. I’m going to miss him.” She sobbed then, looked up at Rhys with red-rimmed eyes. “He’d been wanting to see you bad,” she said. “Wanted to tell you something.” Her sobs grew louder and she began to shake so violently that one of the girls who worked for her led her away to bed. But she called back over her shoulder to Rhys as she left the room. “I think he would want you to have his things.”
Rhys told her he would come back for Lucien’s valise when she’d had time to pack it. Downstairs, shaken, he stopped for a whiskey but ended up getting a bottle to take to Mae’s. Teddy wouldn’t be in town before morning. He was going to drink until then, drink and think about Lucien.
Mae was out at a ladies’ social and for once he got into his room without giving her an accounting of himself. He let his clothes fall where they dropped and climbed into bed the bottle in his hand. He did not bother with a glass.
Lucien would have been scandalized. Poor Lucien. He’d gotten Lucien killed. Never should have brought him to Arizona kept pounding in Rhys’s brain. He kept trying to wash the thought away with another drink from the bottle. Gentle, loyal Lucien was dead. Like Jenny. A blade in the heart. Like Jenny.
Unsteadily Rhys placed the half-empty bottle on the stand by the bed. As he slid down on the pillows and into an unconsciousness brought on by fatigue and the quantity of whiskey he’d consumed he wondered what Lucien had wanted to tell him. Maybe Carmen Bell would have the answer to that. Tomorrow.
***
Felicity had rubbed Teddy with a pleasantly scented liniment, fed her an enormous supper and sent her to bed. Teddy lay atop a stack of pillows and looked out the open window at the night sky. The moon had turned a shimmering silver, round and full as a gourd. It hung in a sky of midnight blue, a beautiful, tranquil sky. Not at all the way Teddy was.
She’d been so busy lately. She’d had so many fires to put out she hadn’t had time to think of the days and weeks that had passed since Rhys had saved her from the floodwaters. They had made love on the hillside above the raging waters. But she knew the moon had been full at least once since then. And now it was full again.
Her hands slid tentatively down over her abdomen and, as she feared, found it gently rounded between her hipbones where it had once been flat as a frying pan. She’d been around enough stock animals to know the other signs were there, too. She was pregnant, carrying Rhys Delmar’s child. As if she didn’t have enough problems.
“Dammit. Damn everything,” she mumbled into the quiet of her room. She didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. Didn’t have time for a baby. She’d look ridiculous carrying one. A belly out over her boots. Teats like a milk cow’s.
It wasn’t fair. Nothing was. Teddy plopped a pillow over her face and smothered an anguished groan. She should have followed her instinct and shot Rhys Delmar the first time he kissed her. That would have been easier to handle than this.
Her hand slid over her belly again and rested there.
A baby. She wondered if she ought to tell him. Why the devil should she? Scowling, she pitched a pillow across the room, saw it hit the wall and split and fill the room with floating goose feathers. Hell no. Why should she? He’d had his fun. Damned fancy Frenchman.
Bemoaning her fate, she rolled over. Well, he was a good-looking son of a bitch. Briefly she remembered how she had felt in his arms, the feverish way they had come together, the hardness of him, the sleekness of his back beneath her hands, the softness of his words in her ear. It had been beautiful. It had been right. And they would have a beautiful baby.