The Duchess and Desperado

by Laurie Grant

  “You reckon that’s his business partner?” Morgan said, pointing at the two. Sharpton had seen the man and, wearing a big smile, had gone forward to him. “He sure wasn’t what I was picturing.”

  “Nor I,” agreed Sarah as they watched the little man mount the horse the other held for him, then gather up the reins with surprising agility. “Who’d have thought his ‘business partner’ would look more the outlaw than you?”

  Morgan grinned at the gentle gibe. “Very funny, Duchess, but let me tell you how much I won for us,” he said as the Englishman and his odd associate began to trot away from the station. “Thanks to my ‘superior skill’ at poker, we are now fifty dollars richer,” he said proudly, patting the side pocket where he kept the little leather drawstring bag of money—and going cold when he realized it wasn’t there anymore.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sarah saw the blood drain from Morgan’s face right along with the cocky pride that had been there. Now apprehension skittered along her spine as he jumped up and, leaning over her, stared out the window.

  “Morgan, what’s wrong? What happened?”

  “Why, that damn bastard,” he breathed. “That damn, cheating bastard!” And then he was running for the door.

  It was clearly already too late to stop Sharpton, Sarah could see with the aid of her spectacles as she reached Morgan’s side. Sharpton and his partner were already out of range, galloping away from the train.

  By this time the other passengers were spilling out of the train around them, and the stationmaster had approached.

  “Something wrong, mister?”

  “The damned English bastard who just left your tram picked my pocket, and it wasn’t chicken feed he got, either!” Morgan exclaimed. “He saw which pocket I was putting my winnings in—just ask the rest of those fellows who were playing with us, back on the train!”

  “Sounds like you’ve been a victim of ol’ English John,” the stationmaster commented.

  “Yeah, sounds like English John, all right,” agreed the engineer, who had gotten off the train and heard the conversation. “He does this all the time, mister—acts like a green-as-grass tenderfoot, makes friends with some fellers, proposes a game, then as he’s leavin’ picks the pocket o’ whoever wins the most. I throw him off if I spy him gettin’ on the train, but I didn’t see him this time, and Asa here—” he nodded toward the conductor, who had also joined the group “—is new, so he didn’t know him.”

  The conductor nodded, his expression apologetic.

  “I’m right sorry this happened to ya,” the engineer added, “but I got a schedule to keep. What’s it gonna be—you want your horses so you can go chase that feller, or you gonna get back on the train?”

  Sarah watched the conflicting emotions chase one another across the pale, lean features of Morgan Calhoun. He could probably get Rio off-loaded and saddled and still catch the Englishman and his partner, but the train wouldn’t wait. And what would become of Sarah if the two thieves got the drop on him?

  His shoulders were slumping and his green eyes were dull with impotent fury as he stomped back up the steps and trudged down the aisle to slouch beside her, ignoring the commiserating looks and remarks aimed at him by the other men who’d been in the poker game.

  “You might as well shoot me, for all the good I am, Sarah,” he said. “We don’t have much now. After letting me win it for him, that bastard took it all, plus most of the money we had left from buying supplies back at Cherry Creek—and I didn’t even feel him do it. Damn me for a fool!”

  Sarah’s heart was wrenched at the bleak self-reproach she saw in his face. Knowing Morgan, it had to sting all the more that the foreigner who had robbed them looked as if he couldn’t survive a strong blast of wind.

  She laid a gentle hand on Morgan’s wrist. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, M—Jake. We’ll be all right. You paid for tickets to take us all the way to Pueblo, didn’t you? We still have some supplies left, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, we’re set all the way to Pueblo, but those supplies won’t last forever. We’re gonna need to buy more before long. And the last I looked, you don’t have any jewels left to sell,” he reminded her bitterly, his eyes raking her earlobes, her neckline and ringless fingers.

  “I could always put on another concert,” she observed, then realized there was nothing in that plan to salvage his wounded pride. “I have it! While I distract the men as ‘The French Nightingale,’ you can win all their money ”

  He gave her a twisted half smile, then said in a soft, wry drawl, “I sure hope your Frenchman knows how much backbone you’ve got, Duchess.”

  Sarah wanted to say she was merely showing the legendary British stiff upper lip, but she couldn’t manage a word as she drowned in the admiration-filled green pools of his eyes.

  “Sarah, wake up. We’re here,” Morgan said the next morning, rousing the woman who’d been sleeping against his shoulder most of the night.

  “Huh? Wha—?” Blinking like a sleepy owl, she stared up at him as she tried to focus, then sat bolt upright, blushing. “Sorry,” she muttered, looking away as she tried in vain to set her hair to rights, then started digging into the pockets of her skirt.

  “Quite all right, ma‘am,” he said, amused, then handed her her spectacles. “Lookin’ for these, were you? I took them off you when you fell asleep, so they wouldn’t get bent.” He hadn’t slept much himself. Truth be told, he’d spent a good bit of the night just staring down at her in the pale light furnished by the moon that seemed to be following their railroad car. He’d been wishing she could fall asleep against him every night—but in a bed, lying down, and not wearing all these clothes, either. He didn’t tell her that, though

  They decided it was probably best to try to remain in Pueblo that night. Trafalgar was no longer favoring one leg, but it was wiser to rest her for another day. And while they had enough supplies to ride on for a couple of days, what few towns lay between Pueblo and the New Mexican border were even smaller and rougher than Pueblo, certainly not the sort of places he’d want to linger with the duchess—especially not with the duchess playing “Fifi” in that dazzling gold gown.

  The owner of the Arkansas River Saloon was more than willing to let “Mam’selle Fifi” sing at his establishment that night, and charge a dollar a customer, provided she and Morgan would split the profits fifty-fifty with him. They agreed, then, buoyed by their success, went on to the hotel.

  They had no difficulty in obtaining a room after “Fifi” began batting her eyelashes at the manager and promising him, in thickly French-accented English, a seat up front at her concert that night. They were able to secure box stalls at the livery for the horses the same way, and even managed to get in some target practice before it was time to get ready for the concert.

  After replenishing their supplies at the general store, they left Pueblo the next morning.

  “Now, Duchess,” Morgan began after they’d left the town behind them and trotted over the rolling plains with its dry buffalo grass, “I don’t want to alarm you or nothin’, but it’s possible we’ll see some Apaches between here and when we hit the Santa Fe Trail.”

  “Apaches?” she said, her face alarmed. “You mean... Indians?”

  “Yeah, we’re in Jicarilla Apache country now,” he told her. “I’ve met some of ‘em before and gotten along with them—it didn’t hurt that none of us liked ’the Federals,’ but there’s different bands of Apaches, and you never know. I can speak their lingo, but if I had my druthers, I’d just as soon not meet up with them, since you’re along. From here on out, Duchess, you keep those spectacles on, your pistol handy, and don’t even think of lettin’ that braid out from under your hat, you hear?” He hated frightening her, but it was better that she know the truth. At least he’d taught her to shoot, but he wished they’d had more time to practice.

  After that first flash of apprehension on her face had vanished, though, Sarah appeared unperturbed, giving him a jaunty imitation o
f a British sailor’s salute, saying, “Aye aye, Captain.”

  He chuckled. “You’re in a mighty good mood, Duchess. Still pleased with yourself for havin’ every man in that saloon swoonin’ at your feet?”

  “While you took their money at cards? I notice you sat and played with your back to the stage,” Sarah teased.

  “Why do you think I did so well?” he retorted. “I didn’t have the distraction.” He hadn’t had any relief, either, from his constant desire for her, but it felt good to laugh with her again, almost as good as it would feel to kiss and hold her—No! He couldn’t allow himself to think about that.

  “Speaking of moods, Trafalgar’s in a strange one this morning,” she said, just after her mare gave Rio a playful nip and curvetted away from him, then paused to water the ground.

  Rio responded with interest, trumpeting at the thoroughbred, and Morgan reined him farther away from Sarah’s mare.

  “Your mare’s comin’ into season, Duchess,” he said, watching as the dawn revealed a blush suffusing her face under the floppy-brimmed hat.

  “Oh! Of course, how silly of me,” she murmured, staring down at the mare. “She does so every fourteen to twenty-one days from late winter through late spring, then less often in the summer, Ben says—said,” she corrected herself with a sad shake of her head, “and she hasn’t done so since...oh, Kansas City, I suppose....”

  “Sorry, I don’t reckon I’m supposed to be talkin’ about such things with a lady, especially a duchess,” Morgan said, though he loved it when she blushed.

  “I think that by proposing this madcap journey, I’ve lost the right to strict Victorian propriety, don’t you?” Sarah commented wryly “But Morgan, are we going to be able to keep them apart?” she asked as their mounts continued to eye each other and prance, their tails held high.

  He shrugged Of course his pinto stallion must not mate with the prized thoroughbred, any more than he could take the duchess in his arms and make her his. “I’ll do my best, Duchess. But it isn’t going to be easy, travelin’ together.” It isn’t going to be any easier than it is keeping my hands off you.

  “Still, it would be a darling foal, though, wouldn’t it?” she said musingly. “I wonder if it would be skewbald—that is, pinto—like his sire, or bay like Trafalgar....”

  They camped at dusk in another draw, carefully tethering Rio as far away from Trafalgar and the packhorse as they could. This time supper was antelope steaks, for there had been a pair of pronghorns drinking at the thin trickle of a stream in the draw, and Morgan had quickly pulled his Winchester out of its scabbard on his saddle and shot one of them. Sarah had been sad to see the graceful, large-eyed creature lying dead, but she had to admit its meat was delicious.

  “Morgan, tell me about the war,” Sarah said once their bellies were full and they were lying back against their blanket-padded saddles. She’d wanted to ask him about his time as a soldier for a long while, sensing his experiences in the war had somehow set the stage for the outlaw he had become

  “Well, I was only in the regular Confederate army for the early part of the war,” he began, crossing his booted legs at the ankles as he lay back, still chewing on the meat that clung to a leg bone. “I was servin’ with Jeb Stuart. Then John Mosby asked me to join his Virginia boys in a partisan raiding group. We stole horses, cattle and wagons from the enemy—whatever our army needed. We captured Yankee soldiers—even a brigadier general once—burned trains, destroyed track....”

  “It must have been tremendously dangerous,” Sarah commented.

  “It was, sometimes, but they never came real close to takin’ us. Mosby was too clever.”

  She could see him smiling at the memory. “You loved it, this guerrilla fighting, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah...have to admit I did,” he said with a sheepish grin, then his face turned serious in the light of the campfire. “We were always on the run, never stayin’ in the same place twice... but Mosby’s Rangers were the bravest, best men I ever knew,”

  His answer to the next question would be highly significant, she knew. “Morgan...your experience as a guerrilla fighter...did it make it hard for you to settle down, once you were back in Texas?”

  He met her gaze, but she couldn’t read his eyes. “You mean, is that why I turned outlaw, because I’d developed a taste for it?”

  “No, Morgan, I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did,” he argued, “but it’s all right. No, that isn’t why. I’d had a good time bein’ one of Mosby’s Rangers, but I sure was ready to get back to the peaceful life I’d known back in Texas before the war. Only they wouldn’t let me.”

  “‘They’?” she echoed softly.

  “The Federals, and their carpetbagger friends that descended on Texas like fire ants at a picnic—and the scalawags, the ones who lived in the South but were really Yankee sympathizers. One of them started the whispers—‘You say you’re missm’ some cattle? That Morgan Calhoun over at the Flying C, you know he was one of Mosby’s Rangers I reckon he stole your stock an’ ran ’em down to Mexico to sell ‘em.’ Soon as I’d leave the mercantile, he’d sidle up to the proprietor and whisper that they’d seen me stealin’ things off the shelves. ‘You know he’s used to livin’ off the land Reckon he’s still doin’ it,’ he’d say. He even told the sheriff once he’d been robbed ridin’ into town, and the robber looked like me, even though I’d supposedly had a bandanna over most of my face.”

  “And people in your town believed him?” she breathed, shocked.

  He shook his head and threw the bone into the darkness beyond the campfire.

  “Not most of ‘em, no, though the girl I’d been sweet on since before the war suddenly wouldn’t have anything t’do with me—at least, out in the open. But the rest of ‘em, well, they’d known me and the rest of my family all my life, and they weren’t about to listen to someone who was a traitor to his own state. But this scalawag wanted my ranch real bad. The Flying C was the best-watered ranch land for a hundred miles, y’see, and when I managed to pay the taxes on it in spite of the way they raised ’em, this fella decided he was gonna have to play rough.”

  “What did he do?”

  The fire snapped, sending a shower of sparks into the night sky. She saw his mouth tighten and his gaze narrow as be remembered.

  “All the rumors didn’t run me off, but he saw his chance in 1869, when the army moved its headquarters to Austin. Calhoun Crossing, my town, is about half a day’s ride from there. One night the stage bringin’ the army payroll was robbed and the driver shot to death. This fella who wanted my land claimed he saw me gallopin’ away from the stage on Rio.”

  “But it wasn’t you,” she said with certainty. She knew with the same certainty that she knew her name that it hadn’t been him.

  “Nope.”

  “Couldn’t you prove it?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  His eyes had become unreadable in the flickering light. She sensed there was more there that he wasn’t telling her, so she took what he had told her and made a stab at guessing.

  “You were with a woman, weren’t you?”

  He said nothing, but he didn’t deny it, so she went on. “You said your sweetheart wouldn’t be with you openly, but you were with her that night, weren’t you?”

  She thought he was going to remain silent again, and the idea maddened her. “Morgan, this is not the time to be chivalrous! I’m just trying to understand! Were you with her?”

  He looked away. “Yes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  He shrugged. “The Federals came to arrest me, but I managed to get away. I figured as long as they were gonna steal my land and drive me away from home, I might as well be an outlaw. So I did some holdups when I had to to survive. But I’ve never killed anyone, and I’ve never stolen from my own people, Duchess. Just Yankees, and only the ones who could afford to lose it. Carpetbaggers who had grown fat on what they’d stolen, businessmen rich from profiteering during
the war. And only when there wasn’t any other way. I’ve mostly kept myself in beans and coffee by playin’ poker.”

  Now she knew what people meant when they said their hearts ached. It was a literal, physical pang. She wanted to reach out and take him into her arms, to hold his head against her breast and comfort him.

  “I believe in you, Morgan Calhoun,” she said. “You’re a good man. I...I want to help you—help you clear your name. I’ll hire a solicitor... a lawyer,” she corrected herself. “I can pay to get you the best. He’ll prove you didn’t do that first robbery, and he’ll get you your ranch back, too.”

  His gaze pierced her. “Now, Duchess, why would you do that?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Why? I—I’ve grown to...to respect you a great deal,” she managed at last. “To be absolutely honest with you, Morgan, I even—”

  “Careful, Duchess,” he interrupted quickly, wanting more than anything to let her finish, and knowing he couldn’t, for her own good. She was about to tell him she had feelings for him, and he couldn’t let that happen. “I don’t reckon your Frenchman would like it too much if you were spending your time and money worryin’ over some worthless Texas bandit,” he reminded her.

  “But you’re not worthless!” she exclaimed. “As you said, you’ve only robbed people when you had no other choice! And as far as what Thierry thinks, I really don’t—”

  He interrupted her again. “That won’t make a difference to your Thierry de-Whatever-His-Name-Is. No, Duchess, don’t you worry about me once I’ve turned you over to him in Santa Fe. I’ll be just fine. There ain’t a lawman born who can catch me.”

  He hoped it was true, hoped, too, that Sarah wasn’t going to persist and declare her love for him. Because he didn’t know if he was strong enough to resist, once she’d admitted it. Oh, he could see the truth of it shining in those beautiful eyes of hers, magnified behind the spectacles she mostly forgot she was wearing these days. The knowledge would have to comfort him in the days and years to come. He could not let the duchess commit herself to a penniless outlaw who might well end his days behind bars, or at the end of a rope.