by Judith Pella
“But I am, Mr. Carlton,” Lucie said softly and without apology, keeping ire from her tone as well.
“Only half,” put in Grant. “And you seem as American as anyone here.”
Lucie pasted a gracious smile on her face. “But I am Texan, Grant, both halves of me. Not American, if the truth were told.”
“Of course. We’re all Texan,” Grant replied, “but not for long if a good portion of our citizens have their way.”
“Unfortunately, we have little to give the States right now to entice them into offering statehood to us,” Reid said.
Lucie knew that her father was one who would prefer for Texas to remain independent.
“And that brings me back to my lost cattle,” Axel groused. “I do not mean to offend anyone present, but those Mexican banditos are wreaking havoc on local ranches. Something must be done.”
“I have reason to believe there are gangs of gringo rustlers operating as well,” Reid said. He paused as Juana entered the parlor with a tray of lemonade and coffee and an assortment of sweets.
“Thank you, Juana,” Lucie said as the housekeeper set the tray before her.
Lucie poured coffee for Axel and her father and glasses of cool lemonade for Grant, Violet, and herself. Then she offered cookies and such to all. Juana had stood back to allow Lucie the place of hostess; however, the housekeeper did wait a moment to observe before exiting. Lucie smiled to herself. Juana was making sure Lucie had not forgotten her manners during her absence.
“So what is this about white outlaws?” Axel asked between sips of his coffee. “I know we have them, but as long as they keep clear of whites, I don’t see the problem.”
“I believe it is a problem no matter who they steal from,” Reid answered dryly. “But they stole a good portion of the mustangs I had just purchased in Mexico. I figure they have certainly crossed the line.”
“I am still more concerned about the Mexican banditos.”
“Are you certain it was they and not the gringos who stole your cattle?”
“One of my men saw him. He was certain it was that blackguard Joaquin Viegas. I’m gonna personally attend his hanging when they catch him.” Axel snatched up a cookie and popped it into his mouth as if this sealed the gruesome matter.
Lucie glanced at her father. His jaw was taut with repressed anger or pain, she couldn’t tell exactly which. He lifted his gaze to briefly meet hers, then looked away. In that brief moment, Lucie knew it was mostly pain assailing her father, and not from his illness, but rather from a deep emotional wound. She wanted to go to him and hold him tight. She was feeling some of his pain as well. But they both sat still and politely entertained their guests, who were becoming more objectionable as the visit wore on.
“Mr. Carlton, please, this is mixed company,” Violet scolded.
Dear Violet. She was an absolute saint to put up with a man like Axel Carlton, Lucie thought.
“Sorry again,” the man said tightly, obviously not one bit regretful of his words but only of the fact that he might have overstepped etiquette a little.
The visit droned on, interminably it seemed to Lucie. Her only relief was when she and Violet retreated to her room, where she showed off her new gowns and trinkets from Mexico. Violet clapped gaily like a little girl, her pale ringlets bobbing around her head as Lucie paraded out each item. It was almost like having a girlfriend. Lucie hardly believed the woman was a matron of forty.
They returned to the men, and soon after the Carltons departed. As everyone was exiting the parlor, Grant Carlton contrived to detain Lucie alone in the room while the others made their way outside.
“Lucie, I must tell you I’m delighted to see you again,” he said as he turned just the right way to block her exit from the parlor.
“I am glad to be home,” she replied shortly. He stood within inches of her, and there was no way to escape without being rude.
“You look absolutely fetching in that gown.”
She nearly replied, “This old thing?” in the coquettish manner such things were said, then remembered it was an old dress and looked horrid. Grant was just plying her with false flattery. And she didn’t much like it.
“Grant, if I weren’t around,” she said mockingly, “I declare you’d make eyes at Juana.”
He momentarily appeared affronted, then suddenly smiled. “There isn’t that much of a dearth of women around here. There are, in fact, several young gals in San Antonio who might catch a man’s eye. But you, Lucie, are the most beautiful—” He held up a hand to forestall her attempt to protest. “It is true, ask anyone. And it doesn’t bother me much that you are half Mexican.”
“Not much, eh?” she said sharply, then whirled away from his near ness, not caring a whit if she was rude. “If my father heard you say such things, he’d challenge you to a duel.” That, of course, was not true, since Reid deplored such senseless violence as dueling, but she didn’t know how else to vent her ire. She’d had just about enough backhanded slurs from the Carlton clan in one day.
“Please forgive me.” Grant followed her around until he was near again, then put his hands on her shoulders. “When I am around you, I get positively senseless. You make my head spin, Lucie. I don’t—”
She glanced at his hands reprovingly. “Please, Grant, you are indeed forgetting yourself.”
He dropped his hands, a flash of shock in his dark eyes indicating his realization that he had indeed gone beyond his carefully honed Virginia chivalry.
“Lucie, there is to be a ball in San Antonio next week. Will you do me the honor of accompanying me there?”
“That is really too much, even for you.” She attempted to affect her father’s stern gaze. Failing at that, she let a slight smile slip on to her lips. “I believe my father will escort me to the ball, but I shall certainly give you a dance or two.”
He smiled. “Two! More than I could have hoped for. Thank you, Lucie. I will look forward to it!”
She watched him go, bemused by the entire scene. For all of Grant’s past attempts at wooing her, this was the most forward he had ever been. Perhaps he had spent her absence fearing she would find a husband in Mexico, and now that she had returned still unattached, he decided he must take more affirmative action. It was almost enough to turn her head.
Almost.
Grant was a nice-looking man. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a trim waist, fine features on his clean-shaven face, neat brown hair. Even his teeth were straight and fairly white. But she simply felt nothing for him, except when he was boorish, as he had been this afternoon. Then she felt sheer distaste. But he wasn’t always a bigoted boor. He could be charming, and he did say the sweetest things. She knew better than to be enticed by flattery, but at times he did sound so very sincere. What girl didn’t like to hear she was beautiful?
Maybe Juana was right. Her choices were limited. Grant Carlton might be the best of the lot.
“Ugh!” she groaned disdainfully.
She was starting to sound like a rancher choosing horses from a herd. It was disgusting. Sound body, good teeth, gentle ride! That was no way to choose a husband, a mate for life. She refused to fall into that trap. She knew it distressed Juana, maybe even her father, but she was going to look for something else. What exactly that something else was she wasn’t sure, but she hoped and prayed she would know it when it came along.
“Oh, Lord, please help me to know. Help me to find the right man.” Then Lucie stamped her foot in frustration. She wasn’t looking for a husband! So she added to her prayer, “Or better still, Lord, help everyone else just to leave me be. I only want a husband if that’s what you want for me. And if you find him, I know he will be as perfect as all your wonderful gifts.”
Vaguely she thought of the other recent prayer she had prayed, the one for the outlaw. Then she laughed. Even God is not that ironic, she thought ruefully. Then remembering her place as hostess, she hurried out in time to wave good-bye to her guests.
CHAPTER
&nb
sp; 5
MICAH TOOK OFF HIS HAT and wiped a sleeve across his sweaty brow, then coughed when a cloud of dust caught him just as he inhaled a miscalculated breath. Who said stealing was easy money? He hadn’t worked so hard in months.
When he had finally caught up to his cohorts, half a day after rustling the mustangs, he’d had to work along with the others to drive the small herd to Harvey’s box canyon. After two days of swallowing dust and eating dirt on the trail, the work of changing the brands had come. There were only thirty-five head, but they were wild, not cooperative at all.
Then Harvey had the hairbrained idea of partially breaking the animals. Said they’d fetch a better price that way. All in all, it was nearly a week before they started on the way to Laredo.
“Hey, Micah!” Jed edged his mount near enough so he could be heard. “I been thinking—”
“Tell me later, Jed. This dust’ll choke us if we talk.” He and Jed were riding drag on the herd, and even with bandannas pulled up over their mouths, it was miserable.
“I gotta tell you now, in case something happens.” Jed’s voice was muffled under the red cloth. “Micah, I feel powerful bad I didn’t come back for you when them Injuns attacked.”
“Forget it, Jed.” Jed had been apologizing for this all week. It was wearing thin in Micah’s ears.
“I shoulda. But I was mighty scarit, though I’m ashamed to admit it. I was so scarit!”
“Listen here!” Micah said sharply, with impatience. “I’m telling you for the last time, you would have been a fool to come back. You hear? It would have been a dumb, stupid, crazy thing to do. And I don’t ever want to hear such foolishness from you again.”
“You mean you forgive me?”
Micah rolled his eyes again. “You got the thickest skull I ever seen, Jed! I want you to give me your word you’ll never even think of doing something like that again.”
“Well . . .”
“Do it. Now!”
“All right. I’d swear on a stack of Bibles, if I had ’em.”
Micah snorted, then coughed as he inhaled grit up his nose and into the back of his throat. “If you’re gonna swear, do it on something useful—like your gun.”
“If it makes you feel better, Micah.” Jed let go of his rein with his right hand and laid it on the butt of his pistol. “I swear by this here gun that you yourself gave me!” Jed grinned, or at least there was a gap in his bandanna where his lips were.
Micah grinned, too, then his lips tensed as Jed added, “What you got against the Bible, Micah? I remember my ma and pa set much store by it.”
“Nothing,” Micah answered shortly. “Now get back to work before Harvey chews you out.”
He purposefully edged his mount several feet away from Jed to discourage further conversation. But Jed was obviously bored with driving horses, especially when there were so few it hardly took four men to do the job. He maneuvered within earshot again.
“Can I ask one more thing?” Jed asked.
Micah shrugged. He supposed he was bored, too. “Just as long as it ain’t got nothing to do with Bibles and such truck.”
“Nah, ain’t nothing like that. I was wondering if you’d tell me again about that gal you rescued?”
All the men had been interested in that. They had wanted detailed descriptions, too, almost as if he’d done more with her than catch her as she fainted. Micah pitied the poor women in Laredo when these outlaws arrived.
“Well, she was a pretty little thing.” Micah supposed he, too, liked remembering that soft, smiling female creature. “Even if she was dressed nigh like a man.”
“Did she have on trousers?”
Though Jed well knew the answer, Micah provided it anyway. “No, course not! But she had on a leather vest and flat-brimmed sombrero, just like a vaquero. She mounted a horse like an expert.”
“Astride?”
“She was a lady, you fool!” Micah surprised himself with his quick defense of the girl’s honor. He knew nothing at all about her, not even her name. No, wait, someone had called her Miss Maccallum. He just realized it. She was a gringo, further establishing his fear they had raided a Texan herd. Anyway, he had no idea if she was a true lady. For all he knew she might be some camp follower.
No. Not that one. Tender innocence had glowed from her, along with a strength that even now made his breath catch in his throat. Instinctively he knew she was not the kind of woman they would be hunting in Laredo. She was the kind of woman men like him could not even dream of.
But they did. He guessed that’s really where Jed and the others’ interest had sprung from. They weren’t just starved for women. They hungered for the kind of gentility, even civility, women represented. Good women, decent women—not the bawdy house kind. They craved the mere sight of a woman in calico stirring a pot of stew in a humble log cabin. A woman of soft-spoken delicacy, tender-eyed, just the kind of woman who would probably faint dead away at the sight of a bunch of grubby outlaws.
He smiled. The gal on the drive had fainted upon sight of him, though he figured it was more due to the ordeal of almost becoming a Comanche captive.
“I ain’t so bad, am I, Jed?” Micah asked suddenly.
“What’d you mean?”
“You think a real lady might take a fancy to a man like me?”
Jed laughed his usual snorting croak, oddly dulled by the bandanna.
“Thinking of settling down, Micah?” he taunted.
“No! Last thing in the world I want.”
“But you gotta settle down for a lady.”
“What do you know?” Micah derided his friend harshly to cover his own discomfiture at his idiotic words. “You ain’t nothing but an addlepated kid. Ya ain’t got the brains you was born with.”
“I know that.”
Jed’s solemnity cut like ire through Micah.
“I know I’m stupid. Can’t help it, Micah.”
“Aw!” Micah gave a disgruntled shake of his head. “Don’t mind me.” He smacked the side of his head with his hand. “I’m the fool. I know less than you about anything, especially women.”
“Naw, that ain’t—”
But Jed’s words were cut off by the sharp crack of a gunshot. Twisting in his saddle, Micah saw a half dozen or more riders in the distance, not within rifle range but closing the distance behind them. They weren’t Mexicans either. But why would they just start shooting? Could they be rustlers?
“What’ll we do, Harv?” Micah shouted up ahead.
“Outrun ’em!”
They’d lose the herd if they did that, but then again, Micah sure didn’t want to die protecting a measly thirty-five mustangs. There had to be a better way. Micah dug his heels into the flanks of the big chestnut until he was abreast of Harvey.
“We can’t outrun them,” he shouted after tearing off his bandanna. “And they outgun us. Maybe we can parlay with ’em.”
“Can’t. They’re rangers.”
“How can you tell that?”
“Joe recognized one of the mounts. He’s almost certain it’s Big Foot Wallace’s mule.”
Micah glanced back once more. If those riders were indeed rangers, then their only choice was to try to outrun them and forget the herd. Micah slowed to allow Jed to catch up, then relayed the news to him.
“Rangers! Oh, Micah—”
“Don’t worry, Jed. We’ll get away.”
But Micah had far less confidence than his words indicated. The riders—he could see now there were at least ten of them—were gaining fast. He spurred his mount into a full-out gallop. The chestnut was a very good animal and would have no difficulty getting away. Glancing back, he saw Jed’s mount was also striding at a gallop now. The herd was running, too, and scattering.
“Hah!” Micah lashed the chestnut’s flanks with the ends of his reins, his confidence growing by the minute, especially as there was no more shooting. The pursuers would not be able to shoot during the chase. That first shot must have just been a warning, as if t
he rangers—if they were rangers—thought that would stop the outlaws.
Harvey and Joe were well ahead. Jed was several lengths behind. Micah twisted his head. “Come on, Jed!”
At that moment Jed’s horse stumbled, and Jed was thrown over the top. Micah cursed, then slowed enough to turn the chestnut. He reached the place where Jed was sprawled over a low mesquite bush and leaped from his horse before it had come to a full stop.
“Jed! Jed!”
Micah dragged Jed’s body to solid ground, then dropped to his knees next to the boy and gave his shoulders a hard shake. Jed groaned, but Micah had no time to feel relief that his friend was at least alive. The riders were within gun range, and Micah quickly drew his pistol and fired, clipping one in the shoulder. Grabbing Jed’s pistol from his belt, Micah fired again. He missed, but he hadn’t been aiming to kill. The last thing he wanted was to kill rangers. Still, his gunfire had the hoped-for effect. It divided the force. Half continued in pursuit of Harvey and Joe, while the other half dismounted, taking cover behind rocks and brush, then returned fire. Micah also took cover behind a rock, tugging Jed along with him as best he could.
There were several volleys of shots after that, then one of the riders yelled across the distance.
“You best give it up!” The voice was vaguely familiar. “We’re rangers.”
“What’re you shooting at us for?” Micah called back, taking the defensive. Perhaps they would believe it if he claimed he ran because he’d thought they were rustlers.
“We just wanted to get your attention. No one asked you to run.”
“How were we supposed to know that?”
“Why don’t you surrender, then we’ll talk some ’bout it.”
Micah was considering what other options he might have when Jed groaned again. His arm was twisted grotesquely, and his head was bleeding. He was hurt, maybe badly, and needed help. Micah might have decided to shoot it out if he had been alone. He figured he could pick off half of those rangers, then maybe the remaining ones would think twice about capturing him and would retreat. But what about Jed? He might die if he didn’t get some doctoring. If he surrendered, the rangers would see to it that Jed got help—that is, if they didn’t decide to string them both up here and now. Glancing quickly around, Micah was gratified to note there were no hanging trees nearby.
