She’d whipped back around at the words “take his place,” her eyes incredulous, but she had her belligerent expression back on by the time he finished. “I beg your pardon.”
“You heard me plain enough.”
“I know I heard you,” she gritted out, giving every indication of a woman about to lose her temper. “I just don’t believe it. What could Mr. Pickens have been thinking of to send you, you of all people? I need a peacemaker, not a gunfighter. You’d only make the situation worse.”
“Just what is the situation?”
She waved a hand impatiently. “There’s no point in my discussing that with you when you can’t help. If a gun was the answer, I’d use my own.”
He couldn’t help it. He grinned at the image her words brought to mind, of hats flying through the air. But he turned aside before she noticed. There were very few people he allowed close enough to glimpse his sense of humor. She wasn’t going to be one of them.
“You got a bunkhouse?”
“Yes, but — wait a minute!” she cried when he started toward the back of the house. “You can’t stay here. Weren’t you listening?”
He stopped long enough to say, “Yeah, but you weren’t. I’m here to see to your problem as a favor to Pickens. I owe him, so I won’t be leaving until my debt’s paid.”
She hurried to catch up with him as he rounded the side of the house. “Whatever debt you owe has nothing to do with me, mister.”
“It does now.”
“That’s unacceptable. I’m only going to say this once more. You can’t—”
The roar coming from inside the house stopped them both. Angel turned to see the large cat sitting in front of a window looking out at them. Fortunately, the window wasn’t open, but that fact didn’t settle his nerves as fast as it should have. Knowing the cat was a pet didn’t make it look any less dangerous.
“What is that thing?” he finally asked.
“A black panther.”
“Didn’t know they had such things in Texas.”
“They don’t. Marabelle came over from Africa.”
He wasn’t going to ask how. “Just keep it away from me as long as I’m here.”
She visibly bristled at that. “If you were staying, which you’re not, I would insist you get along with Marabelle. And you’d have to introduce your horse to her for obvious reasons— but you’re not staying. The stable is there.” She pointed to a long building next to a barn. “Go find your horse and go back where you came from.”
She must have thought that settled the matter. In a way, it did. His slow drawl told her so as she started to turn away from him for the second time. “Then I guess I’ll have to take care of your problem in my own way.”
Her eyes flared wide in understanding. “You wouldn’t.” He was silent. “All right!” she snapped. “You can stay, but you can’t kill anyone. No shooting. No dead bodies. Is that clear?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She stomped away this time, leaving no doubt that she had conceded under protest. Irritating woman. If he didn’t figure he’d need her input to fix her trouble, this would be the last he’d see of her. He’d still handle it his own way. But as he heard her carriage leaving for town, it occurred to him that he still didn’t know what the trouble was. Damned irritating woman.
Chapter 4
It wasn’t going to work. Cassie had had enough time to consider all the repercussions on the way to town, including the worst, that the Catlins and the MacKauleys would think she intended to fight back. What could a gunman do anyway, except issue threats? And if the threats were ignored, then the shooting would begin. Just what her father needed to come home to — a war.
She should have been firmer with that man. She should have called his bluff and stuck to the “no-thank-you.” She didn’t have the kind of problem that a hired gun was needed for. Well, maybe she did, but that wasn’t the answer — at least, it wasn’t an acceptable answer for her, and she’d have to tell him so as soon as she returned to the ranch.
She wasn’t looking forward to that. She had known he was a gunfighter before she’d heard his name to prove it. But then she’d also known him, or of him. For half her life she’d heard his name, because he came from the same part of the country she did, and he’d been in and around Cheyenne for the past eleven years. But she’d never seen him, even from afar, never met him until today. Because he stayed in Cheyenne between jobs folks around there were quick to brag that Cheyenne was his home. If he had a real home somewhere, no one knew about it.
He wasn’t what she might have imagined the Angel to look like, if she had bothered to try to put a face to the many tales she’d heard of him. He wasn’t that tall, not like the MacKauley men were, at a little over six feet, but you didn’t notice that about Angel unless you were standing right next to him. Of course, Cassie was on the short side herself, so he was still a half foot taller than she was. But height wasn’t what you noticed about Angel.
From a distance you saw a man dressed all in black, except for the yellow mackintosh slicker that framed his sleekly muscled body. You saw the exposed gun on his hip, the silver spurs that flashed in the sunlight, the wide-brimmed hat pulled down low, and the easy way he sat his horse that belied his keen alertness, the quickness he was capable of, the blurring speed Cassie had witnessed firsthand.
But up close, the first thing you noticed was his eyes. You sensed the ruthlessness there, the violence he was capable of. What he was was all in those eyes, black as pitch, soulless, conscienceless, fearless. They were so mesmerizing, it was a while before you saw that he had a starkly masculine face to go with them, a square, clean-shaven jaw, a sharply chiseled nose, and prominent cheekbones. It took even longer to realize his face was ruggedly handsome. Cassie hadn’t realized that fact until she was halfway to town.
But it was a moot point; all that mattered was the kind of man he was, and he wasn’t the kind she wanted anything to do with, for help or any other reason. The plain truth was, he frightened her. There was simply no getting around the fact that he killed people in his line of work, and he was quite good at it.
She could only hope her neighbors wouldn’t find out that the man known as the Angel of Death had paid her a visit. There was the possibility that his notoriety hadn’t reached this far south, but that wouldn’t matter because just the look of him told what he was, if not who, and that was just as bad. So she had to hope no one would learn he’d even been out to the Double C, and to hope he’d be gone before the end of the day.
To that end, she was going to send off another telegram to Lewis Pickens before she left town. She would thank him for his concern— and lie. She’d tell him she no longer had a problem, so his Angel of Mercy wasn’t needed here. Then she’d tell Angel exactly what she’d done and that he no longer had a reason to stick around. He’d go — and she’d be back where she was six weeks ago, only with hardly any time left to figure out what to do about it.
Cassie left the gunsmith’s, where she’d dropped off her gun, her last stop before heading for the stage depot to send her telegram. Today she was forced to carry the rifle that was kept in the boot of the carriage for emergencies. She knew how to use it as well as her Colt, but it was unwieldy, not to mention heavy, to carry around. She should have retrieved her matching six-shooter before leaving the ranch, but she’d left angry and hadn’t even been thinking about it.
Carrying no weapon at all was out of the question, however. Though she hadn’t seen any MacKauleys or Catlins about, nor any of their loyal hired hands, she hadn’t left town yet, and it was rare that she came to town and didn’t run into one or more of them. But it was Rafferty Slater and Sam Hadley who really worried her, the reason she wasn’t going to be found unarmed again.
Those two hadn’t worked for the Catlins all that long, and they�d already gotten into some trouble in town because of their rowdiness. They weren’t the type that Dorothy Catlin usually hired, drifters who never stayed in one place for long, and
worked just to have enough money to raise hell on a Saturday night in town. They’d no doubt get themselves fired eventually, but in the meantime they’d taken sides, and Cassie happened to be on the wrong side.
She got nervous just thinking about that day in the livery when they’d cornered her between them, blocking her from escaping, Sam shoving her, Rafferty holding her and touching her in places he had no right to. And there’d been a look in his eyes that said she’d be getting more of the same if he found her alone again. Sam had just been trying to frighten her. Rafferty had enjoyed it.
Nothing like that had ever happened to her before, and it wasn’t going to happen again. If she saw Rafferty Slater in town and he even looked like he was going to approach her, she’d shoot first and ask what he wanted later. That man was not going to get a chance to put his hands on her body again.
The incident even had her leery of using either of the two livery stables anymore. Today she’d left her carriage in front of Caully’s mercantile store, where she’d posted the letter to her mother. She had walked to accomplish the rest of her errands, but as she headed back that way to get to the stage depot, which doubled as the telegraph office, she saw that her carriage was still where she’d left it but now had two horses tied to the back of it.
Upon seeing the horses, Cassie stopped instantly and started searching the area for the gunfighter. She didn’t doubt for a minute that it was Angel’s horse and the one he’d borrowed, even though she was still too far away to get a good look at them. She located him easily enough. It wasn’t hard to spot that yellow slicker.
He was leaning against the wall of the Second Chance Saloon, across the street. With his hat tipped down so low, she couldn’t tell whom he was watching, but she had a feeling he was watching her.
It made her uneasy, that feeling. She didn’t know why he’d followed her to town. And he didn’t come forward now to say why, didn’t move at all from his relaxed position. But just about everyone on the street knew he was there. Caully was a small town, after all, and Angel was a stranger. It would be natural for folks to wonder about him even if he didn’t look like a gunfighter.
Cassie ground her teeth in frustration. So much for keeping his business with her a secret. There was no way she could leave town without speaking to him, not with his horse attached to her carriage. Even if the direction in which he had headed this morning could have gone unnoticed, this wouldn’t. By the end of the day everyone in town would have asked the question: what was the Stuart girl doing with a gunfighter? But her currently hostile neighbors wouldn’t merely wonder about it, they’d be out to the ranch by tonight to demand an explanation, and unless Angel was gone by then, all hell could break loose.
It was her own fault. She shouldn’t have let that man rattle her like she did. She should have called his bluff. But no, she had to go and give him permission to stay, which in turn gave him permission to stick his nose in her affairs. And his following her to town and keeping a close eye on her, as if he had elected himself her personal guardian, said he was going to do things his own way after all, no matter what she had to say about it.
She didn’t look his way again as she continued down the street. But she hurried now, afraid that she would be stopped before she could send off that telegram. And she was stopped. Only it wasn’t by Angel.
Morgan MacKauley stepped out of Wilson’s Saddle Shop right into Cassie’s path. She almost ran into him. And seeing who it was, she tried slipping past him before she was noticed. No such luck.
Morgan considered himself something of a ladies’ man. Whether that was true or not, his eye was drawn to anything in skirts, and it didn’t take him but a second to catch sight of Cassie’s and turn toward her — and step back to block her path. She tried going around him the other way, but he made it dear she wasn’t passing at all by moving into her path again. She finally stepped back to give him a baleful glare, which had no effect whatsoever coming from her.
It galled her that no one down here in Texas took her seriously. They laughed when she wore a gun. They ignored her when she got mad. She was like a ladybug, easily flicked out of the way — unless she had her black panther sitting right next to her. Even the fearless. MacKauleys were wary of Marabelle.
But Cassie never brought her cat to town, and the frown Morgan cast down on her right now was much more effective than hers had been. It was downright intimidating.
Of R. J.‘s four sons, Morgan was the second youngest at twenty-one, but they were all big men, all over six feet tall and hefty for their size. All took after their father with their reddish-brown hair and dark green eyes. Cassie didn’t think for a moment that any of them would actually do her physical harm, but that didn’t stop the fear their animosity engendered. They were hot-tempered, and a hot-tempered man in a fury was capable of doing stupid things he wouldn’t ordinarily do.
“Didn’t think to see you in town this week, Miss Stuart,” Morgan said nonchalantly.
Just two months ago, he had called her Cassie, as most of her friends and family did, rather than Miss Stuart He’d also invited her to Will Bates’s barn dance on a Saturday night, and a Sunday picnic up on Willow Ridge a week later. His intentions had been clear. He’d actually been courting her. And she’d been terribly flattered — and interested. After all, the MacKauley brothers were exceptionally handsome men, every one of them, and as she’d been discovering in recent years, it was hard to find a man willing to marry her and Marabelle.
Morgan hadn’t exactly liked Marabelle, but that hadn’t kept him from courting Cassie— up until she’d meddled in his brother’s life in a way none of them were going to forgive, or forget. And after she’d become the focus of all their anger, he’d let her know that it was only her father’s ranch he’d been interested in.
Whether that was true, or if he’d only said it in anger, it had still hurt Cassie more than she cared to remember. She didn’t have much confidence to begin with when it came to men. Morgan MacKauley had made her confidence drop even lower. And the sorry fact was, she’d really liked him. She’d had such hopes there for a few weeks. Now… there was nothing left, not even the slightest stir of pleasure to be this close to him. Regret was what she felt— and a good deal of annoyance.
She wondered about his casual remark, which from recent experience she thought probably wasn’t casual at all. Warily she asked, “Why’s that?”
“Figured you’d be too busy packing.”
She should have known she couldn’t pass a MacKauley, or a Catlin for that matter, without some unpleasant reminder of her current predicament. It was the MacKauleys who’d set an actual date for her to vacate the area— and threatened, if she refused, to resort to mass destruction of the ranch with lit torches.
“So you figured wrong,” she said in a tight little voice, and attempted once more to step around him. Once more he moved so she couldn’t, prompting her to add, “You’re being obnoxious, Morgan. Let me pass.”
“First you tell me ‘bout that stranger directed out to your place this morning.”
Cassie groaned inwardly. She hadn’t had time to come up with an acceptable reason for Angel’s visit, and she needed time, because when it came to lying and avoiding issues, Cassie was hopelessly inadequate. Unless she devoted a lot of thought and rehearsal to getting it out right, anyone who knew her could spot a lie immediately.
She still had to try with Morgan. “That was nothing. He — he was just a drifter looking for work.”
“You should have sent him over to our place, then,” he replied easily. “You ain’t gonna have work for no one come the end of the week.”
Cassie stiffened at that second allusion to the deadline that had been set for her to depart the area. Somehow she had hoped that the threat to burn down her father’s ranch had been just anger talking, with no substance behind it.
These were people she had socialized with, been friends with; she’d even been courted by one of them. But all that was before she had meddled.
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She skipped the subject of Angel, since Morgan had given her another to address. “I need to talk to your pa, Morgan. Tell him I’ll ride over tomorrow—”
“He won’t see you. Fact is, Clayton’s got him madder than ever, and you want to know why, Miss Stuart?”
She started shaking her head as his tone got sharper. She really didn’t want to know, because whatever the reason, she knew the blame would be set at her door whether she was actually to blame or not.
But Morgan was determined to say it, and he did, scathingly. “That fool brother of mine hasn’t been right in the head since he come back from Austin. Can’t get a lick of work out of him these days. And now he’s talking ‘bout ’rights’ and how he’s got some where his ‘wife’ is concerned. He even mentioned that he might go over and collect the Catlin girl, seeing as how they ain’t divorced yet. ‘Course, Pa whipped that notion out of him.”
Cassie was incredulous and didn’t even think to contain her reaction. “Are you saying he wants to stay married to Jenny?”
Morgan flushed bright red at that question, denying it, or the very idea of it. “The hell he does,” he practically growled. “He’s just had a taste of her, thanks to you, and now he wants another. It ain’t no more’n that.”
Cassie was flushing now because of the subject matter, which was outrageously inappropriate for her innocent ears. Morgan knew he’d just stepped over propriety’s line, but he didn’t care. He was furious with her for what she’d done, since it had put an end to his hopes of marrying her, and furious with himself for not having the courage to defy his pa and stick up for her as he’d been inclined to do. The fact was, he still wanted her.
Morgan hadn’t noticed her very much the first time she’d come to visit her father. She had been eighteen then and nothing much to look at, could just barely be called pretty, and Caully had its fair share of pretty women, beautiful women even. And she was much too tiny and childlike for Morgan’s tastes. There was simply nothing passion-inspiring about her, or so he’d first thought.
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