She had more important matters that demanded her attention now. She took a deep breath and faced him. “Uncle Mark, I know this parade is important to you, but…” The deceptively merry look in his eyes faded, but she plunged ahead; “…but I feel strongly advised against it.”
“Nonsense!” he said, anger turning his small eyes the color of bright jade. “Of course you will!” His face had turned red with rising anger, and Annette’s warning look cautioned her not to enrage him further, but she was loath to back down.
“I fail to see what difference my riding in a parade will make,” she said reasonably.
Her uncle, who was a scant three inches taller than her five feet five inches, puffed up like an angry adder, and Leslie braced herself, but before either of them could reply, Younger stepped between them.
“Hey! Enough of this here yellin’ and carryin’ on.” He took Leslie’s hand in his and spun her around, ignoring her cry of surprise and protest. “It’s about time you wore something that shows off that pretty little shape of yours, sweet thing,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “This sure beats those high-necked, high-falutin schoolteacher duds you been wearin’.”
“Let me go!” she hissed, struggling with all her strength against Younger’s steely hands, which were around her waist. She felt his fingers groping her spine and the flare of her hips. Enraged, she kicked him. “Get your hands off me!”
“Owww!” Dallas yelped.
“Heah!” Powers scolded. “Ain’t no call to get rough.”
Leslie glared first at Younger, who had loosed his hold on her, and then at her uncle. “Aren’t you going to do anything?” she demanded of her uncle.
“Dallas don’t mean no harm,” he said, “do you, boy?”
“None atall,” Dallas agreed, grimacing. “I like my women feisty.” His ruddy, sun-darkened face glistened above her. A lock of his crisp black hair had fallen forward, and he looked like some evil, smiling wolf, waiting for the right moment to continue the attack.
Leslie checked her temper with an effort. “You presume far too much, Mr. Younger,” she said, controlling her voice as best she could.
“City women!” Younger said, winking at her uncle and feigning injury, spreading his hands as if appealing to Mark Powers for vindication.
“He…mauled me!” she protested. “He mauled me and you just watched him!”
“Now, simmer down, Leslie. Nobody mauled you. Dallas is a fine young man who just happens to like you, and you should be grateful that he does.”
“Likes me!” Leslie gasped. She was too much a lady to mention aloud that Dallas Younger had panted after her like a dog in heat since the day she arrived.
“Don’t reckon you understand our ways here, Leslie. Dallas means no harm. I only want what’s best for you…”
“Then buy me out and send me home,” she said, taking the chance that had presented itself.
A scowl knit his brows, reminding her how irritable he could become when she tried to force him into negotiating with her. “At the right time, we’ll talk about that, but in the meantime, as long as you’re living under my roof, you’ll do as I say. And I say you are going to ride in that parade,” he growled, his small mouth pursed into a look of such angry impatience that Leslie had to force herself not to flinch visibly.
“Or what?” she asked quietly, her heart pounding.
“Don’t get uppity with me, young lady. You will do as I say. Dammit, you’re just a woman! You don’t know or care how hard I’ve worked to get this ranch to the point it’s at now. You don’t understand anything I try to tell you! What the hell do you know about building a ranch? You’re here to tear it apart. I’ve worked and sweated half my life for this ranch, and by God I’m not going to sell it just so some snot-nosed city filly can trot back to her ritzy friends with a pocket full of money she didn’t earn.”
Leslie paled. The import of his words frightened her. Did he mean that there was absolutely no chance of his ever buying her out? Her money was almost gone. How would she get back home? And how would she live after she got there? Trying to ignore her fear, she spoke firmly. “I respect your love for what you consider to be your ranch, but my father worked just as hard as you did. He earned it for me. As his rightful heir, part of it belongs to me…”
Her uncle’s salt-and-pepper brows pulled down into a heavy ledge of disapproval. Thrown off guard by the correctness of her logic, he cleared his throat. “I said we’ll talk about it. In the meantime, you’ll do as I say, and I say you are going to ride in that parade!”
“Do I also have to put up with Dallas Younger?” she demanded, flashing a look of scorn at the man who was grinning his enjoyment of the ruckus.
“You could do worse. He knows how to take care of a woman—not like those panty-waist do-nothings you’re used to.”
“I’ve never needed the questionable protection of a gunfighter,” she said quietly, allowing her eyes to reflect a measure of her disgust as they swept down Younger’s tall, sturdy form. Dallas threw back his dark head and laughed, supremely unaffected by what he considered her prissy fastidiousness. Leslie could see Annette’s plump form behind him, her face pinched with concern for her mistress.
“You may be glad to have him around someday,” Powers said vehemently.
“I find that difficult to imagine.”
“You gonna ride in that parade?” he asked, his tone both final and threatening.
“Are we going to seriously discuss settling my father’s estate?” she shot back at him.
“All right! You ride in that parade,” he said more calmly, “and we’ll talk about your share of the ranch when we get home tonight. Fair enough?”
Leslie nodded. “I’ll ride if you promise.”
“Out here a man’s word is his bond,” he said gruffly.
Chapter Six
“Oh!” Leslie gasped when the door had closed behind her uncle and Dallas Younger. “They sorely try my patience!”
“Oui, mademoiselle,” Annette breathed, stepping forward to smooth the skirt of the voluminous gown where Leslie’s fingers had crumpled the shiny gold cloth.
“Sorry,” Leslie muttered. She covered her face with her hands for a moment and then straightened. “I will not let them turn me into a whimpering wreck,” she said to herself, turning. She walked to the window, lifted it, and leaned out as far as she could. Heat enveloped her, making her realize her mistake at once, but she had felt so stifled by the exchange with her uncle and Younger that she didn’t care.
The hotel faced south, and from the third floor she had a view of every rooftop in Phoenix except those lying behind the hotel. She shrugged off her anger and irritation and breathed deeply of the hot, dusty air that was rising from the street below. The sidewalks were crowded with holiday revelers. Sounds of music, tinny and exuberant, floated above the raucous laughter and the babble of voices. Horses standing in the streets occasionally whinnied and stamped. The sharp smell of their urine caused her to wrinkle her nose, but it was not enough to drive her back inside.
A cowboy and a young girl left the crowd and turned down the alley across the street from where she watched. The man was dressed in the rough garb of a seasoned cowpuncher. Leslie could see very little of his face, which was sheltered from view by a tan-colored Stetson, but somehow his overall appearance seemed familiar. He was taller than average, with narrow hips and broad shoulders, and he moved with lithe purposefulness. The young woman was small and voluptuous and wore the casual dress of the peones in the settlements they had passed through on the train. The girl was giggling, but the young man’s actions were more urgent than frolicsome. They stopped beside a covered wagon that was tied up against the outside wall of the livery stable. The man took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He was strikingly handsome—darkly sun-tanned with blond hair that had no red—like pale wheat against the warm teak of his face.
They paused there only a moment and then he lifted her up into the wagon
and followed her inside. Leslie smiled. She watched as they embraced and then crawled on hands and knees to the center of the wagon out of her range of vision.
“Annette, come here,” she whispered excitedly.
“What?” she asked softly, responding to the urgency in her mistress’s tone.
“Look at that wagon. A cowboy and a young woman crawled inside. I think they are going to…you know.”
A mischievous light dawned in Annette’s eyes. “Oui?”
“Yes,” Leslie said, giggling in response to Annette’s obvious delight.
Annette leaned out the window to get a better look, almost lost her balance, and squealed. Leslie grabbed her and pulled her back in. “Not so far!” Leslie gasped, breathless.
“Pardon, mademoiselle,” she whispered, giggling. She righted herself, and they watched in silence for a few moments. Leslie Powers frequently surprised Annette. This time because she was not a simpering ninny the way so many of her gently reared contemporaries were. Thanks to her mother’s excellent common sense and careful preparations, Leslie knew far more than most young ladies her age about what went on between grown men and their women, and far more about all of life’s experiences than her sheltered peers.
According to her grandmother Eliza, Leslie’s mother’s liberal approach in raising Leslie constituted laxness. Letting Leslie run wild among museums and theaters and other worldly places showed “an unprecedented lack of parental vigilance.” In spite of grandmother Eliza’s howls of outrage, Leslie had grown into an inscrutable combination of audacity, intelligence, and innocence. Even Eliza had to admit that she appeared to be a well-conducted young lady for all her notions about ‘painting’ and artistic expression.
In reality, Leslie was dedicated to becoming an outstanding landscape painter. She had not chosen this goal lightly. She knew it would mean working long hours and studying for years to perfect her technique and learn the craft.
Leslie’s attention drifted back to the street beneath the window. Nothing was moving in the wagon in the alley. From the window she could see the round, platelike turntable where they turned the locomotives. Down on the railroad tracks, a boxcar with its doors gaping open waited to be filled with milling, noisy cargo. The shiny black locomotive breathed heavily, sending up wads of smoke so dense that they looked like puffs of blue-gray cotton above the stack.
Immediately below she could see the parade officials working at clearing the wagons, buggies, horses, and people off the dusty boulevard so that the parade could begin. Men shouted remarks—some good-natured, some lewd—but no one seemed to take offense. She decided that the women who lived here had given up trying to civilize the ruffians who came into town. There were parts of Boston that were rough and undisciplined like this—every big city had its slum and its slum dwellers. Unfortunately, it appeared that in Phoenix there was no separation between the ruffians and the more genteel citizens or between the saloons and the churches.
To the east she could see where fences cut the land into neat squares. To the south the streets of the town fell into a scattering of rude hovels. Beyond the last sparse cluster of square boxlike shacks was the inevitable desert, reaching away into infinity, it seemed, gray and brown and covered with what her uncle called chaparral or greasewood or mesquite. Phoenix was not really a city, merely a cluster of already dilapidated frame buildings surrounding a row of stores and saloons and one real building—the hotel she was in.
Annette giggled, and Leslie’s attention was drawn back to the wagon. “What did I miss?”
“See?” Annette whispered. “His pantalon!”
“His pants?” Leslie repeated, covering her mouth. This was the most excitement she had experienced since the train robbery. She felt like she was back in school participating in some delicious naughtiness. “He took off his pants?”
“See, zay are zere,” she said, pointing to one pant leg that was carelessly thrown over the tailgate of the wagon.
Leslie searched the crowd below, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to the wagon. She peered into it, but she could see nothing. Beyond the Bricewood West and the dirty rooftops of the town’s buildings there was nothing to look at that brought a sense of joy or exuberance to the eye. It was just a dirty little town in the middle of a hard, hot, flat desert with unbearably hot days and cold nights, but inside the hotel was another matter entirely. The Bricewood West was a small version of the Plaza in New York City. Its Garden Courtyard with vaulted ceiling of translucent glass was the equal of anything she had seen anywhere. Even in the short time she had been here, Leslie could tell that the hotel’s Garden Courtyard had become a cultural and social center for the town’s residents. People congregated beneath the large overhead fans to relax amid towering potted palms and graceful ferns. It was an oasis of civilization in the midst of filth and squalor.
There was still nothing to see in the wagon. She thought she detected a slight swaying motion and blushed to think what that might mean. Annette still leaned out the window. Sighing, Leslie straightened and scanned the horizon where she knew the river curved around Phoenix to the northeast. Younger had called it the Verde River. “Those red devils used to be thick as thieves along this stretch,” he had said as they had ridden past a thick stand of alfalfa that grew along the banks. She could imagine half-naked Indians reaping the wild grasses that grew in the rich loam along the river bottoms.
If she squinted and blocked out the encroaching cluster of houses, the desert was almost pretty. It had a sort of sparse elegance about it, an immenseness of its own that was awesome, almost grand, but it could never equal for her the cool green beauty of precise landscaping and sparkling white houses, so perfect with their pitched roofs and their cavernous front porches. She loved big Gothic houses with turrets, gables, cornices, and flying buttresses. There were mysteries in houses like that, sometimes a secret cellar off the back porch with its two wooden doors opening onto damp, dark, blackness that could go down and down indefinitely.
Annette squealed, and Leslie’s attention was drawn instantly back to Phoenix, only to find that Annette’s excited squeak was occasioned by her almost losing her footing again.
So much for adventure, Leslie thought ruefully. The only hint of that had been the train robbery she’d witnessed. The only man in Phoenix who even looked interesting so far was in that wagon making love to someone else. She scolded herself for even thinking about such things, but with men like Dallas Younger around, who would blame her for looking? There was little opportunity for romance in a town that looked like it could have been built in three days by an inexperienced box maker. Unless, of course, you were a peasant girl who would cavort in broad daylight with strangers. Leslie smiled at herself. Was she jealous?
Annette nudged her and giggled. “Zey are coming out,” she whispered, her voice breathless.
Leslie leaned out the window to see. The young man helped the girl down. She was clinging to him, her face dewy and adoring. She snuggled close against him; he kissed her on the forehead briefly, placed his hat on his head, and they walked toward the crowded street.
Leslie didn’t stop to think about decorum. She leaned out the window and yelled. The man looked up, and they waved at him, then burst into giggles. The girl on the street turned bright red. The man grinned and waved back at them.
Gasping and giggling, Annette and Leslie collapsed across the bed. “Do you think he will recognize us if he sees us again?” Leslie asked when their laughter had subsided.
Annette clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes round and mischievously questioning. She shrugged.
“Did you ever see that young man you were so interested in? What was his name, John?”
Annette sighed. “Non.”
Leslie grinned. “Still hoping?”
Annette shrugged and wiggled her body in an unconsciously provocative way. “Oui…but of course.”
“Well, why don’t you walk down to the railroad offices and see if you can stumble onto h
im?”
Annette looked horrified. “Mademoiselle! I am a lady!”
Leslie snorted. “Ladies don’t almost fall out of windows to watch things they shouldn’t even be aware of. Besides, if you don’t ever take matters into your own hands, you may be an old maid. He looked too shy to ever approach you…”
There was faint horror in Annette’s eyes as she contemplated becoming the aggressor. “Then I shall be. But I don’t think so…He will come to me…”
Leslie sighed. “I hope you’re right.”
Chapter Seven
The Bull Whiskey Saloon was crowded to overflowing with the gay holiday crowd. “Parade’s coming!” someone yelled.
“Yahoo! Let’s see them purty girls!”
The boisterous crowd surged out the double swinging doors. Ward and Doug were hanging back, taking their time. When they finally took their places at the edge of the wide street the first participants were at the north end of town.
Raucous yells greeted two pretty Mexican señoritas who rode in all their finery, supporting a red and white banner twelve feet in length that announced the Fiesta Days Parade. They were followed by a dozen colorfully dressed señoritas: walking, swinging their wide skirts, smiling gaily. The girls on the outside, near the crowd, were throwing flowers that must have been imported from eastern nurseries.
Next came an open carriage with four local politicians waving their hats, smiling widely; then three ornately dressed vaqueros looking like Spanish conquistadores, their heavy, silver-studded chaps and saddle skirts shimmering in the late afternoon sun.
The vaqueros were followed by a choir of young girls and boys dressed in long white robes, singing a song that gringos wouldn’t recognize. Their angelic faces were lifted heavenward in shining piety, which wrenched a chuckle and a ribald comment from Doug Paggett.
“Hey, Ward, how would you like to have those three chinchillas in the front row—all at once? Wouldn’t that be something?”
The Lady and the Outlaw Page 5
