Roaring, he lashed out and again, but she wasn’t quick enough, and the man who she guessed easily weighed in the neighborhood between two hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds seemed to throw all that weight into a roundhouse blow that clipped her on her bicep, spinning her around. Lijuan came to a stop just in time to see the man grabbing a six-inch knife that she had not seen lying on a workbench. The normal reaction from most would have been a stab of fear suddenly coursing through their bodies, but not Lijuan Wilde. Her reaction was to smile! At last, he did what criminals always do—he was planning to cheat. It was what they did by nature, she knew. When others worked hard like she and her sisters, low down jaspers cheated and tried to take the easy way out to enrich themselves. Now that he'd put a lethal weapon in his hand, all bets were off, and she would see him on his way to the boneyard.
With surprising speed for a man of his size, he lunged bringing the blade in a sweeping arc in an angry attempt to slash her throat. In one of the closest calls of her life, she just managed to dodge out the way and pivot her body, but still, the very tip of the blade drew blood from the side of her neck. Using the pain and her fury at her brush with death, she reacted as her right hand went down and scooped up her hammer. The feel of it in her hand always felt so right. The man parried as she swung it at him, and she missed landing her blow.
As he came back at her with the knife, she knew she wouldn’t miss this time, and the shattering of the man’s wrist could be heard by all in the few seconds before he let out a roar of agony as her hammer landed a direct hit on his wrist. The knife fell to the floor as he turned his back to her trying to get out of range, but she landed another blow directly between his shoulder blades sending him sprawling towards the table where the silver plates were being disguised as china.
Holt spun around landing on his back across the table, sending one of the two real china plates crashing to the floor as Lijuan bolted towards the man and the table. He was trying to use his one remaining hand to bring himself back up to a standing position when Lijuan grasped the remaining china plate in its bracket and tore it free. Smashing it on the side of the table, she held the semi-circle with the jagged edges in her hand. He had tried to cut her throat, so it was only fair she show him how it was done.
The man’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head as she brought it up in a savage, sweeping motion across his throat. His one working hand went up in a vain attempt to cover the gaping slit she’d left across it, but it was useless. Blood bubbled between his fingers, and he staggered forward like a punch-drunk fighter. The animalistic sounds he was making ended as he blundered to the edge of the open trap door and pitched forward into the hole. By the time Lijuan had sauntered up to peer down, the bleeding, crumpled form at the base of the stairs had just enough life left in him to let loose a muted death rattle on his journey to stand before the gates of hell.
CHAPTER 8
Cassandra’s hunch had paid off. When she had raced out of the house with the familiar and welcome weight of her Colts on her hips, she had instantly tried to guess where Coltrane would be. The bandit believed her to be on the run, and he would likely figure he could cover more ground a hell of a lot quicker on horseback. Recalling the stable she had seen earlier behind the structure, she had threaded her way through the grove of trees running past the side of the house and had come to a stop near the back corner.
For a moment both of her hands floated over the pearl handles of her guns, as a vision of the man lying dead on the ground perforated by a score of her bullets danced in front of her eyes. Cassandra shook the notion off and reached for only one of her guns, sparing her tender fingers that climbing the rope had done no favors for. One gun would do anyway as she wasn’t out to kill the man, preferring to see him stand trial for his numerous crimes, but at the same time, she was quite ready to ventilate him if he left her no choice. There was no need to, but it was ingrained in her to check her weapon. Upon opening the cylinder, she confirmed the six shots in place and ready for action. She spun it before snapping it shut into place and cautiously whirled around the corner of the building.
The stables lay at an angle from where she stood, and now through the open door, she heard the jangle of a saddle being thrown over the back of a horse accompanied by a low grunt. Now was the time to take him by surprise, and she dug the heels of her boots into the dirt and sprinted towards the doorway, her Colt stretched out before her. To her dismay, she saw Coltrane had not been saddling up inside one of the stalls but had brought the horse out into the center between the rows of stalls on each side. He was on the far side of the animal whose several hundred pounds of horseflesh made an effective barrier for any lead she wanted to fling his way save for a head shot, but she preferred to take the man alive.
The man’s eyes grew large, but there was no panic on his face. Instead, his lips parted in a grin that he cast in her direction. She could see his eyes had locked on her, scrutinizing her, measuring her worth. Finally, he spoke.
“Who the hell are you, woman? I wanted to believe you were just some hungry vagrant up there on that roof looking for a meal, but I know for sure now that ain’t the case. No drifter female or otherwise would pull off that escape you did and get the drop on me just now.”
“If you must know, my name is Cassandra Wilde. I work for the Arizona Territorial governor upholding the law. Royce Coltrane, I am placing you under arrest for the robbery of the San Francisco Mint and the murder of one of its guards,” she said, her voice even and authoritative.
“Weren’t nobody supposed to get hurt. Not the way we planned it. It was that old fool guard’s fault that he forgot some old book he was reading and came back to the Mint when he did. Anyway, bitch, that’s water under the bridge. If you know who I am, then you know there is no way you’re taking me to jail.”
A silence followed as the man’s words seemed to echo through the barn. Just for a moment, she took her eyes away from him, they swept the interior of the barn, and then she saw something that made her smile inside.
“Now, I’m wearing a gun, and I’m mighty fast with it. If I step around this here horse, I reckon I’ll plug you so fast you won’t even have time to squeeze the trigger on that gun you already got raised.” He boasted.
Another silence followed until a slow smile built across Cassandra’s face. “Then I guess I best not let you come out from behind that horse!”
Her hand shot upward above Coltrane’s head. A metal bar attached to a hand crank that ran down one of the support pillars to the stable held a bale of hay at the end of a leather strap. She’s instantly recognized it as a Jurgen’s Arm used to swing bales of hay over each individual stall that could be lowered by the crank into the stall. It was like a small-scale version of the one used to stack bales in the large hay barn back at Cedar Ledge. Two quick blasts from her six-gun and she handily parted the strap.
Coltrane only had an instant to realize what she was doing when he looked up to see what her first shot had been directed to. It wasn’t quite enough to make a full escape as he leaped away. Instead of striking him directly on the head, rendering him unconscious as she’d hoped, the hay bale struck him on his shoulder, knocking him off balance. Cassandra’s face reddened as she saw him make a dash towards the rear open door with his gun now out and slung over his shoulder. A squeeze of the man’s trigger hurled a slug backward that came nowhere close to hitting her, but it tore through one of the horse’s ears. In pain and anger, the bay reared upward on two legs kicking out with its front legs preventing Cassandra from immediately give chase.
Once it had all fours back on the floorboards, she darted around the snorting, bleeding mount and charged out the back door in time to see Coltrane running past some of Holt’s livestock pens charging towards a narrow arroyo that ran parallel to the river. He turned partially around, and the hum of bullets filled the air around her as he fired wildly. Shooting while in a desperate flight did nothing for accuracy, but she knew all it took would be one lucky shot
to wound her or put her six feet under. It was time to end this she knew, especially before he reached the arroyo. Places like that often had nooks and crannies in them where a man could conceal himself and shoot a pursuer in the back after they ran by.
Cassandra brought her boots to a dead stop and latched onto the other Colt, raising them both out in front of her. Her arms were as steady as if they had cables supporting them as she leveled each of the heavy weapons, and her smoky eyes narrowed as she trained them on the escaping bank robber. Cassandra tuned it all out, the sound of a pair of pigs in the pen squealing over some feed, the gentle mooing of Holt’s milk cow, and the crowing and fluttering of a rooster’s wings as he pursued one of the hens about their enclosure, and she focused. For a thunder-filled moment, both Colts roared as one, and the acrid smell of gunsmoke roiled up into the air, the scent to Cassandra Wilde as sweet as any of the myriad of flowers that Honor Elizabeth grew in her flower boxes that peppered the hill in front of the grand Cedar Ledge ranch house.
The first shot from the gun that had bucked in her right hand caught the man in his shoulder spinning him around just in time for the weapon that spoke from her left caught him in his other shoulder. The man staggered backward, wide-eyed as both arms drooped to his side now useless, his gun tumbling earthward as all feeling went out of the fingers that had held it. Now the man lurched forward, still with enough wherewithal to hurtle oaths at her vowing how he would kill her despite all evidence to the contrary. He pivoted once before crashing down to the ground on his back; his inoperable arms splayed out behind his head.
Slowly, Cassandra dropped her guns back into the dual holsters that had adorned her hips for so many years. For a moment she ran her fingers through the sweaty tangle that was her hair. Outwardly, she appeared the picture of calm, but inside her, the adrenaline that had spiked was working its way out of her system. She had fought hard to overcome the rush inside her that could have easily allowed her to drop the man, but the sense of justice that had always governed her had won out over the rash actions in the heat of the moment. So it had been that she had lined up her precision shots to wound but not to kill. As if she didn’t have a care in the world, she ambled over to him, dropped down on her haunches, and looked into a face that was twisted with hate.
“Can’t move my arms, you whore!” he croaked out through his dry and cracking lips. “You fixing to finish me now, are you?”
“Coltrane, if I wanted you dead, then I would have put a bullet straight through your forehead when you were cowering behind that horse. Lord knows a man like you would surely have earned a chunk of lead being planted into your noggin.”
He stirred slightly, and she watched as he rolled his head to the side to look at his gun that lay nearby, but then he looked back up at her. The gun might as well have been all the way on the silver moon that hung in the Arizona skies most nights for all the good that it would do him. She knew it, and she could tell that he knew it too.
“Then, why didn’t you?”
As she tore off both of her sleeves preparing to make tourniquets for each of his arms, she smiled. "Simple. I've always enjoyed the courtroom. My father was a lawyer before he became a judge, and I would go and watch him work and still do. What I like most about courtrooms is the moment a jasper like you is sentenced to stretch rope. I like to see the moment when all hope goes out of a broomtail's eyes when he realizes he's going to know what it feels like when that coarse hemp noose is placed around his throat. That he's going to know what it's like to be swinging at the end of that rope, legs kicking, eyes bulging, all because they couldn't walk the path of the righteous. I look forward to seeing the gavel come down on you, Coltrane. I surely do."
At some distance behind her, she suddenly heard a familiar voice cutting through the air. “You know, sometimes I think Cattie is right about you Cassandra. You enjoy your long-winded speeches almost as much as your gunplay.” Cassandra straightened up, and with a smile on her face, she turned to see Lijuan walking past the animal pens in her direction. She couldn't help but notice there was almost a swagger to her walk.
“Ah, I was wondering when you might show up,” she said as Lijuan drew up next to her. “One down, one to go. You didn’t happen to see any sign of Holt, did you?”
A smirk formed on Lijuan’s face as she looked down at the prostrate form of Holt’s partner. “Oh, I saw him all right.” Looking down, she addressed the wounded Coltrane. “You think you’re hurting down there, well let me tell you that you made out a lot better than your partner in crime.”
Cassandra’s eyes grew almost into slits as she appraised her sister and the air of boastfulness around her. She didn’t need to ask because she already guessed, but she did anyway.
“What happened to Holt?”
“He got his bell rung.”
CHAPTER 9
TELEGRAPH HILL
San Francisco, California
With Coltrane and Drew tried together as a package deal, Cassandra's satisfaction had been two-fold earlier in the afternoon. With pleasure, she had borne witness to the disbelieving, crestfallen looks on both the men's faces at the verdict. The trial had started three days ago and had quickly become one of the most talked-about events in the city, and the spectator's gallery had been jam-packed. The onlookers ranged from Drew's stunned former co-workers, city officials, to the rank and file members of the public, and then there were the breathless members of the city's press eating up every detail about a cadre of Civil War veterans out for some payback orchestrating the inside job heist.
On this the final day of the trial, there had been murmurs and gasps from men and woman alike when a busty, green-eyed beauty in a hundred-dollar dress, with her hair done up in elegant style, strode with her head held high up to the witness box and had been sworn in. As Cassandra had taken the oath, she was amused to look out and see men leaning forward, a few of them having to be slapped back into position by jealous wives who had accompanied their men to the trial.
When she had been putting together her glamorous look that morning, she couldn’t help but think of Honor Elizabeth. Her mulatto sister thrived on her dresses and making her mass of curly black hair as fetching as possible. Honor, she knew, always embraced being a lady, and Cassandra suspected her sister felt she had to prove that a colored woman could be every bit the lady as full white one. Cassandra didn’t think Honor had to prove anything, but she knew better than to try and convince her otherwise.
For the trial, however, taking a page from Honor’s book had been done for a very sensible reason. She knew there would be a disconnect between everyone in the court as they tried to reconcile the tale of a gun-toting female with the high-society-looking woman before them. Cassandra was very much aware the trial would make news back in Arizona where she often worked undercover. Any sketches of her that might make it into the papers she wished to feature an appearance as far removed from her usual look with a flat-brimmed hat on her head and form-fitting Levis. She could almost hear the ever-exuberant Catalina laughing, saying something like, “You can gussy up a pig all you want, but it sure as sugar don’t work the other way around!” Cassandra had sighed, knowing it didn’t matter what her clothing was like, there would be no disguising the beauty she had been gifted with, but she had to do something. She also took comfort that she still believed that many of the drygulching jaspers she tangled with were ignorant illiterates unable to read a newspaper if they happened to pick one up between whatever criminal acts they were currently engaged in.
As she had given her riveting testimony, accompanied by gasps as she’d shown the scar on her wrist from her escape, she had fixated hard eyes on the pair of defendants. They made for an odd couple for sure. One of Coltrane’s arms had wound up having to be amputated from Cassandra’s gunshot wound. It hadn’t been what she had intended, of course, but she had shrugged knowing it was the way of the world. So there sat Coltrane with his left arm missing and the other defendant Drew sitting side by side with him lacking
his right arm, the loss of which had been his impetus to get back at the nation that had put him in harm’s way.
From the stand, she had also verified points presented by the prosecutor Owen Christian who had read for the court a deposition of the events from Lijuan Wilde. Her sister had been unable to attend due to her responsibilities overseeing the five-hundred-square-mile ranch that was the Wilde family's legacy. She had, however, given her sworn statement to their father Judge Wilde who had sent it along with Cassandra.
She had been the last witness and was almost sorry that the trial was coming to an end. Not that she wasn't happy that justice would soon be served, but she had enjoyed watching not only Christian work but even Blake, the defense attorney for the men. Both men were highly skilled attorneys in the vein of her father and watching them do battle in court had left her just as entertained as the rest of the trial watchers. It didn't hurt that she found both men to be incredibly handsome. That was just a bonus as had been the previous night when she had been in the company of one of them, Christian, who had asked her out to dinner, nominally to go over her testimony.
River 0f Death: Cassandra Wilde Adult Western (Half Breed Haven Book 13) Page 6
