CHAPTER 23
That night in the Thousand Delights, Jay set a labeled whiskey bottle on a green baize gambling table in the Wolf Den gambling room and said, “Gentlemen—a bottle of my best bourbon on the house!”
A low roar of appreciation rose from the table of seven poker-playing horse buyers from Omaha. The rotund one with the pinky ring and nicely tailored cream suit, said, “Why, Miss Breckenridge, to what do we owe the honor?”
Thick smoke from his Cuban stogie obscured his large, immaculately coifed and bearded head.
“Your patronage, of course,” Jay said, flashing her best winning smile, though the man’s eyes, she could tell, were mostly on her corset. “You gentlemen have been visiting here in Camp Collins for a week now, and I wanted to show my appreciation for your business. I do hope that on your next horse-buying expedition to these parts, you’ll again consider allowing me and the Thousand Delights to offer you shelter, food, drink, and . . .”
She glanced at the young doxie, Bernadette, who was sitting on the knee of one of the other gamblers—a tall, thin man named Schultz who was just then dealing out another hand of Jackpots.
“And anything else you need to keep you happy, warm, and well satisfied.”
The men roared their drunken laughter, exhaled their cigar smoke, and broke into the labeled bottle as they continued their game. Jay glanced once more at the doxie. Her long, creamy arms wrapped around Schultz’s thin neck, Bernadette grinned and flashed her all-is-well signal with a single, slow blink of her pretty blue eyes.
Jay nodded, then turned and wended her way through the rollicking Saturday night crowd to the bar and to the coffee cup she’d left there. Her place at the bar was well established, and the clientele always left that gap free halfway down the bar’s east side from the stairway at the back of the room, as though it were the throne of a well-regarded—possibly even a little feared?—queen.
After all, Jaycee Breckenridge was, indeed, the queen of her domain.
As she plucked her long, slender black Spanish cheroot from the cut glass ashtray and brought it to her lips, the night barman glanced her way and then walked down the bar to her. He plucked a piece of folded notepaper from the pocket of his red silk vest and set in on the bar between Jay’s coffee cup and the ashtray.
“Someone slipped me this note for you earlier, Miss Breckenridge.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Jay took a drag off the cheroot, sent the plume out high against the backbar, then picked up the notepaper and opened it.
Jay,
Please visit me at the freight yard when you can break free. I need to talk to you. I will be up all night. I would go to the Thousand Delights, but I don’t think we should be seen together.
Urgently,
Myra
“Oh, no,” Jay heard herself say, quickly folding the note closed.
“Trouble?”
Jay gave a start as she turned to see Cisco Walsh standing beside her, on her right. Her heart hiccupped, raced. She closed her hand over the note and stared in shock to see the town marshal standing just inches away from her. She’d done such a good job of avoiding him for the past three days that for some silly reason she’d thought she’d continue to do so. Her not running into him here had been due in no smart part to sheer luck, she did not doubt.
But now here he was in his fine clothes and neatly trimmed and oiled hair and mustache, smiling handsomely down at her, his eyes on her hand clenching the note. He furled his brows as he returned his brown-eyed gaze to her eyes and said, “I hope it’s not bad news. From your expression, however, I’m judging it could be better . . . ?”
“Cisco.”
Walsh smiled broadly. “How’ve you been, Jay? It’s been a while. If I didn’t know better, I’d wager you were avoiding ole Cisco.” He smiled again, his eyes burning holes through her own. She flushed, trying to keep her composure. No wilting lily, however, she summoned back her outrage at the man and said, “You won’t get away with it, Cisco. I won’t let you.”
His smile in place, he said, “Buy you a drink?”
“Go to hell. Let me buy you one.” She looked at the barman, the only one still working now after midnight though the place was still doing a hopping business, it being Saturday night. “Burt, a brandy for the marshal. That Spanish one.”
“Ah, the Spanish one,” Walsh said. “You and I have a history with that brandy—don’t we, Jay?”
“How long has it been going on, Cisco?”
“How long has what been going on?”
“How long have you been straddling both sides of the law? Here you showed so much disdain for Slash and Pecos. At least they were honest about who they were!”
“Oh, I don’t know. A few years.” Walsh raised the glass of brandy Burt had just poured for him. He sniffed the rim, took a sip, then licked the end of his damp mustache.
“Where did it start? Here? Abilene? Surely not as far back as Hayes . . . ?”
“Hayes, Kansas.”
“That early?” Jay asked with an incredulous chuff. “That was almost twenty years ago.”
“Oh, it was just little things. A little graft here and there. A few dollars now and then to look the other way when the cowhand of some wealthy rancher didn’t want to spare him from roundup after he’d busted up a saloon. Maybe fifty bucks on occasion to forget to check the roulette wheel for a gaff. That sort of thing.” Walsh sipped the brandy again. “Everybody does it, Jay. Sooner or later.”
“You know, Cisco, I guess I’d have a little more understanding if you hadn’t been such an insufferable hypocrite about it. You always made me feel so low for running, as you called it, with Pete Johnson and Slash and Pecos. You made me feel like some kind of . . . of . . . ten-cent whore or cheaper. You acted as though if I’d thrown in with you, you’d have reformed me, made me respectable, shown me a better, more upstanding way to live. And now I find it was all bull—”
“Easy, Jay,” Cisco said, reaching over and wrapping his left hand around her right wrist and squeezing. He kept smiling, though the smile had grown stiff. “Your voice is rising, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
She looked down at his hand wrapped around her wrist. The dream . . . nightmare . . . came back to her. Her anger was tempered by apprehension.
Was he, as in her dream, capable of killing her?
“Let go of me, Cisco,” she ordered him, trying to keep the fear from her voice.
Still smiling, he pulled his hand away from hers. “Here.” He reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope about one-half inch thick. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a small, gilt-trimmed, red-velvet box. He set the box atop the envelope.
Jay arched a questioning brow at the man.
“Take a look,” he said with feigned casualness, taking another sip of his brandy.
Jay picked up the box. She knew it housed a ring, but she was still flabbergasted to see the ring inside, nestled on a bed of cream taffeta sprinkled with gold dust. The ring, a diamond surrounded by four small rubies, was almost an exact copy of the ring she now wore on her right hand. Slash’s ring. Only,the diamond was three times larger and obviously, even to her untrained eyes, of much better quality than the one Slash had given her.
Chuckling and shaking her head, Jay closed the box, set it aside, and peeked into the envelope. Again, she knew what she would find but was still shocked at the crisp fifty-dollar bills peeking out at her and sending their crisp, leathery aroma pushing up around her.
“My God,” she said, brushing two fingers across her temple. “You’re actually trying to buy me.”
“Take it, Jay.” Cisco wrapped his hand around her wrist again, but this time the squeeze he gave it was more beseeching than threatening. “Marry me. We’ll go to Mexico. I have a half interest in a gold mine down there. A very lucrative endeavor, I assure you. You wouldn’t believe how much gold those bean-eaters are pulling out of the ground every day for me. We can forget about all this.” He glanced around as though at some squalid, back-alley crib. “Down there, we’ll start over. We’ll start over together—two brand-new people . . . married and very much in love.”
Jay stared at him, having to remind herself over and over again that, unlike a few mornings ago, she was not dreaming. Or was she? She kept half expecting to blink her eyes and wake up in her bed upstairs with the morning light shining into the room.
Walsh continued. “We’ll never have to worry about money again. We’ll take care of each other in our old age. We’ll be together, Jay. You have no idea how badly I want that. It’s all I’ve ever wanted—since Hayes. I’ve been in love with you for years. You ruined me for every other woman. Have you never wondered why I’ve never asked for one of your girls?”
“I . . . I guess . . . I always thought you went elsewhere,” she said uncertainly.
“Well, you were wrong. I can’t imagine being with any other woman except you, Jay. You really and truly have my heart. I am pulling this job . . . this one last job . . . for you. I already have a sizable stake, but when this opportunity came up, I couldn’t refuse it. It will give us the extra cushion we’ll need for the trip. Extra security.”
“Cisco, I know very well why you’re taking advantage of that opportunity, as you call it.” She paused, stared up at him, blinked. “I heard that part of the conversation, too. Hall knows something about your past. Some dark secret. He’s using it against you.”
His hand came off her wrist. His face slackened, no trace of the former smile remaining. It was almost as though she’d slapped him across his face. He drew a breath, released it, sipped his brandy. He appeared suddenly so crestfallen that Jay almost found herself feeling sorry for him.
“Cisco, you can tell—”
He turned to her again quickly. “Just know that I love you, Jay. There’ll never be another woman for me.” He set the ring box atop the money again and slid it closer to her. “Take that. As a token of my love. Please, take it.”
“I already have a ring, Cisco.” She held up her hand. “Remember?”
He winced as though she’d struck him again. “He can’t love you as much as I do, Jay.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know who he is.”
“Yes, well, I thought I knew who you were.”
“I’m still the same person, Jay. This doesn’t change anything.”
“Of course, it does!” she said with a caustic laugh. “It changes everything. If I ever had feelings for you, which I think I did, I don’t anymore.”
“I’m no worse than him.”
“We’ve been through that. At least Slash doesn’t pretend to be anything than what he is, what he’s always been!” On the other hand, she thought with frustration, he’s never declared his love for me, opened his heart to me, with anything close to the fervor that Cisco just did. Jay shook her head as she gazed up into the lawman’s eyes. “Call it off, Cisco. If I really do mean something to you, call it off. Cancel the robbery.”
“I can’t. It’s out of my hands.”
“It can’t be!”
“It is.” Walsh paused, studied her closely, his focus shuttling between her eyes, as though desperately trying to plumb her depths. “Stay out of it, Jay. Forget what you heard outside the billiard room. Forget it for me, but most of all forget it for yourself.”
“I can’t.”
Again, his hand closed around hers. He squeezed again and the threat was back in his voice. Anger blazed in his eyes. “I love you, Jay. I would hate like hell for anything to happen to you!”
“How dare you threaten me here in my own establishment!” Jay jerked her hand from his and stepped back, returning his cold-blooded glare. “Get out. Now. Before I have the bouncers throw you out!”
She’d said that loudly enough for several men and the bartender to have overheard. Faces turned toward her and Walsh. The marshal flushed.
The barman said with concern, “Everything all right, Miss Breck—”
“Yes, it’s fine, Burt,” Jay said, keeping her gaze on Walsh. “The marshal was just leaving.”
“Keep it under your hat, Jay,” Walsh said warningly. He stuffed the ring and envelope into his pocket. He threw back the last of his brandy, set his hat on his head, wheeled, and strode out through the batwings. The doors clattered angrily into place behind him.
Jay flushed with embarrassment as several customers continued regarding her curiously. She turned to the bar, her gaze averted, and plucked her cheroot from the ashtray. The bartender set a goblet on the bar in front of her and splashed Spanish brandy into it. “You look like you could use a drink.”
Again, she flushed, smiled. “I do, indeed. Thank you.”
Burt returned the smile, shoved the cork back into the bottle, and returned the bottle to the backbar shelf. Jay took a deep drink of the brandy, then opened her left hand in which she’d been squeezing the note Myra had sent her. By now it was wrinkled and damp from the sweat of Jay’s palm. She opened it quickly, read it again, then refolded it, slipped it into her corset, and threw back the rest of her brandy.
She asked Burt to close up the saloon for her. They closed at two on Saturday, which was an hour away. Jay couldn’t wait that long. She had to get over to the freight yard and see Myra about the note.
Her visit with Cisco Walsh had made Myra’s note sound all the more urgent.