Texas Lucky

by Maggie James

  “Mrs. Thorpe, you have a caller.”

  Tess did not lift her head at the sound of Jeremiah’s droning voice. She had heard it so many times in the past nights when he announced guests. Wendell had hired him as a houseboy to see to his needs when he was home, but because those times became so rare she had made Jeremiah a sort of butler instead. He was not a necessity, but he was a good boy, and she hated to let him go.

  “Show the person in, Jeremiah,” she said politely, hoping all the while whoever it was would not stay long. Mostly callers would take her hand, murmur condolences, then move to the coffin to stare down at Wendell and say idiotic things about how well he looked, making her want to scream and ask how he could look good when he was dead, for heavens sake. Only she kept silent, and they would finally leave.

  Her head was still lowered when a man stepped in front of her at the same instant Jeremiah further droned, “Mr. Curt Hammond calling, ma’am.”

  With a great roaring in her ears, Tess forced her eyes from his boots to stare up at him.

  He was wearing a light brown suit, white shirt, string tie, and self-consciously holding the hat in his hands that he had obviously refused to give over to Jeremiah.

  His hair was combed, his mustache neatly trimmed, and he looked, and sounded, quite sincere as he said, “Tess, I want you to know I’m real sorry…about a lot of things.”

  There was a vase of flowers sitting on the table on the other side of her, and for one insane moment Tess actually thought about picking it up to slam over his head.

  The nerve of him.

  But then a little voice deep inside whispered, Whoa there, Tess. He’s a neighbor. Next range to the east. It would look real funny if he didn’t show up. So just act natural. Act like a grieving widow, for God’s sake, and then let him move on to the coffin and declare how good Wendell looks and then get the hell out.

  “Thank you,” she was finally able to say.

  He bent slightly from the waist to reach for her hand which she still had hidden in the folds of her skirt and clenched in a fist.

  They were alone. Jeremiah had returned to wherever he took up position to wait for someone else to knock.

  “Tess, I don’t know what to say,” Curt floundered. “I know it happened that day…that day that I…”

  “The day I found out what a low-down dirty polecat you are, Curt Hammond,” she hissed from beneath the veil. “Now get out of here, and if I ever see you on my land again, I swear I’ll send you to keep Wendell company—except he’s probably not in the same place you’d go—hell.”

  He dropped her hand.

  “If you’d only listen, I can explain—”

  “We could have a double funeral tomorrow if you like,” she warned.

  “Tess, I—”

  “I’m going to count to three.”

  He sighed and moved to the coffin, head bowed. Suddenly Tess could stand no more and leaped to her feet to slam the coffin lid closed with a loud bang.

  “I want you out of here now, and I mean it,” she whispered fiercely. “And don’t you dare show your face at the funeral tomorrow. I never want to see you again. Can’t you understand that?”

  Misery was etched in every line of his face as he implored, “If you’ll only give me a chance, Tess, to tell you why it happened. I never meant to hurt you. God knows, I was dying myself. I had to do something, because it couldn’t go on. We might have got caught. The risk was too great.”

  Tess began to back away from the coffin, wishing she had her guns. At the same time she was glad she didn’t, or, God forbid, she might have lost control and actually blown him away.

  “You’ve made a fool of me for the last time, Curt.”

  “I didn’t mean to. Don’t you see? Sanchina had been throwing herself at me for months, but I didn’t want her. Can’t you understand that? I only wanted you, but I couldn’t have you, and it had to end, so I let you think—”

  “Have you no respect?” Her words were like bullets, sharp, quick. “You dare to come here and stand beside my husband’s corpse and tell your lies in hopes of worming your way back into my life now that he’s gone?”

  Curt defended himself, “Wait a minute, Tess. I’m not showing disrespect, because we both know what kind of marriage you two had. The fact is, I couldn’t wait any longer to talk to you, because I couldn’t stand having you believe I was really involved with Sanchina. Don’t you see? I staged it so you’d hate me, so that no matter how tempted I was to come back to you, you wouldn’t want me. But the minute I did it, I knew it was wrong, only it was too late.”

  “Damn you to hell, Curt, I’m telling you for the last time to get out of here.”

  “Tess, please. You need me now. And I need you.”

  Her laugh was cold and brittle. Did he think she was so desperate for love that she had no pride? “Well, I don’t need you.”

  “But you don’t have anybody else, and—”

  “I have…” She paused to think.

  Who did she have?

  And then she heard the sound of voices.

  The hired hands were coming to pay their respects. Granger had told her they would do so the last night of the wake.

  And that was when the idea struck her to get back at Curt and make him think she did have someone.

  “I have Granger.”

  He reeled slightly and gripped his hat tighter as he asked in a tight voice, “Did I hear you right?”

  “You did.”

  His eyes narrowed with anger. “You’re telling me that you and Granger are—”

  “Lovers,” she finished for him as she managed a sly smile. “Now will you please go? I hear him coming in now.”

  Curt worked his lips silently, furiously, for a few seconds before scathingly saying, “You didn’t wait long, did you? But I guess the kind of woman who’d marry a man just for his money has no scruples, anyhow.”

  He turned on his heel and walked out, nearly bumping into Jeremiah as he appeared in the doorway to announce Granger and the hands.

  Granger, glancing from Curt’s stiff, retreating back to Tess’s stricken face, asked, “Is anything wrong?”

  “No. Nothing,” she lied, glad that a heart made no sound when it finally broke.

  She managed to go on and make polite small talk with all of them but soon excused herself, saying she was tired.

  Upstairs in her room, with the door closed and locked, Tess ripped off the black garments of mourning and threw herself across the bed to cry until there were no tears left…because despite how much she told herself to hate Curt, she knew she loved him.

  And always would.

  “Mrs. Thorpe, thank you for coming.” Maxwell Jernigan leaped to his feet as Tess entered his office.

  She was puzzled to see another man there whom she had never met.

  Maxwell indicated a chair. “Please sit down. Can I get you anything? Tea, perhaps?”

  “No. Nothing.” She was made uncomfortable by the way the stranger was looking at her, with—what? Pity? “I don’t believe I know you,” she addressed him coolly.

  Maxwell rushed to say, “Forgive me. I should have made introductions. This is John Burkette. He’s the bank’s attorney.”

  He sat back down behind his desk before continuing, “I’m afraid there wasn’t time at the funeral day before yesterday to explain why we needed to have this talk, Mrs. Thorpe, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your coming in to see me so promptly. I know this has to be a very difficult time for you, and—”

  “And I would appreciate it if you would just get to the point,” Tess said, pleasantly but firmly. Ever since Maxwell had come up to her after the funeral to ask her how soon she could come to his office, she had been perplexed as to why. She knew there would be business to take care of concerning Wendell’s estate but did not understand the sense of urgency.

  She also disliked wearing mourning clothes because everyone stared at her when she walked down the street, so she did not want
to be out in public.

  And now she was even more disconcerted by how Maxwell and John Burkette were exchanging glances, as though each challenging the other to go first.

  Tess sighed with impatience. “Please, will one of you tell me what this is about?”

  John Burkette cleared his throat and, with another uncomfortable look at Maxwell, said, “Well, it’s about your husband’s estate, Mrs. Thorpe.”

  “I thought as much,” she said, “but why the urgency? Wendell made sure I had access to his accounts, and he maintained one strictly for me to manage the ranch, anyway. I haven’t had a chance to go over them, but I plan to this week, so I don’t see why this couldn’t have waited.”

  She smiled.

  They did not smile back.

  And hers quickly faded upon hearing what Mr. Burkette had to say next.

  “Actually, Mrs. Thorpe, the only account you have access to now is your own. I’m afraid upon hearing of your husband’s tragic death, the Cattleman’s Club he belonged to instructed me to immediately freeze the funds in his other accounts.”

  Leaning forward and gripping the edge of Maxwell’s desk with black-gloved fingers, Tess icily demanded, “For what reason, Mr. Burkette?”

  He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “I’m afraid at the time your husband died he had amassed quite a gambling debt. The club’s board of directors had begun to take steps to collect, as he apparently was delaying settlement in hopes of winning to be able to pay it off. So, of course, when they heard about his death they put a lien against his estate.”

  Tess felt like she had been kicked by the hind leg of a bucking bronco as she managed to ask, “And how much was his debt?”

  “I’m afraid it will require all the funds in his personal account to satisfy it.” Mr. Burkette shuffled through some papers, found what he was looking for, and handed it to her. “We can save time if you’ll sign this now, and I can get everything taken care of with just a few minor details with the court.”

  She was bedazzled by the long, legal form but did not have to read it to understand she was signing away all claim to whatever money Wendell had in the bank.

  Mustering all her dignity, she turned to Maxwell Jernigan. “And what do I have left?”

  “The money now in your account is all yours, Mrs. Thorpe. No one can touch that.”

  That acknowledgment brought little comfort to Tess, for it was only enough to get her through the winter till the herd was driven to market. Then, if she got a good price, she would be all right. The scary part was, however, that there was little to fall back on should she have misfortune.

  And she could forget finishing the fence on the five hundred acres she had agreed to purchase from George Peterson, because she didn’t have enough money now to buy the land, anyway. Wendell had said he was going to deposit it in her account but had not gotten around to it before the accident.

  “Well,” she said finally, “at least they didn’t need that, too…or the money the bank has on deposit as a reward for information about my brother.”

  The two men exchanged distraught looks again, and Tess gasped, “Oh, no. Not that, too.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Maxwell said, sounding like he genuinely was. “But Mr. Thorpe dissolved that several weeks ago. That’s why the posters were taken down.”

  “I understand he took most of them down himself,” Mr. Burkette interjected. “You did notice they were no longer posted, didn’t you, Mrs. Thorpe?”

  She bit her lip and shook her head. Dear God, she’d had no idea Wendell had been in debt.

  Mr. Burkette gently prodded, “If you’ll sign, we can get this over with and not bother you anymore.”

  He was holding a pen out to her. She took it and scrawled her signature with shaking fingers.

  Then, once more struggling for dignity in the face of such an embarrassing situation, Tess got to her feet and both men jumped to do likewise.

  “Gentlemen, good day,” she said with a curt nod, and hurried out, head held high.

  As she passed through the bank, Tess felt as though everyone were staring at her, but not because she was dressed in black and wore a veil. In her humiliated mind she was sure they were all pitying her because her husband had died in debt, stripping her of the wealth she had become accustomed to, and wondering what she would do now.

  I could tell you what I’m going to do, she thought fiercely, angrily, as she quickened her step to rush out of the bank. I’m going to survive. I’m going to make it through the winter and get my steers to market and sell them for top dollar. Then I’m coming home to get ready to do it all over again, and nobody, by God, is going to take anything away from me, because it’s all I’ve got. I don’t have a man to love me and never did, and my brother is gone, probably forever, and…

  She stopped short to stare through misty eyes at the man standing by the post just outside the bank.

  He had a thick beard and long hair hanging down his back and was wearing dusty, tattered clothes, evidence he had been traipsing around in the wilderness for some time. Probably he was a trapper.

  But it was not his unkempt appearance that Tess found startling.

  It was how he was looking at the tattered corner of all that remained of one of Wendell’s posters offering a reward for information about Perry.

  The man touched a tiny shred of paper and mumbled to himself, “Well, I guess it won’t him after all.”

  Sure she had heard wrong, and with apprehension, Tess dared to approach him and ask, “I beg your pardon, but what did you just say?”

  He jumped, startled that anyone had overheard. “Oh, just that it won’t him I saw after all.”

  “Who?” she pressed. “Who did you think it was?”

  “It don’t matter. The posters are all tore down. I saw ’em when I was here a while back, but there ain’t none nowhere in town, so that must mean they found the boy.”

  Tess’s heart was threatening to jump out of her chest. “And you think you saw him?”

  “Yes’m, but it wasn't him. Not if they found him,” he repeated.

  Tess willed herself to be calm lest she scare the man into clamming up. “Would you please tell me what you saw anyway?”

  “Well…” he tugged at his beard, looking her up and down, then said, “If you really want to know…”

  “I do. Please go on.”

  And he obliged.

  “It was when I was deep in Indian territory, on the other side of that river called the Canadian. Didn’t mean to go so danged far, but I was after beaver and my mule got untied one night and wandered off. When I went to look for him, the next thing I knew I’d crawled up on a ridge and found myself lookin’ down on an Indian camp hidden in a nest of boulders. Nobody lookin’ for it would’ve ever found it. It was hid too good. I just stumbled on it.

  “Anyhow,” he continued, “I knew I had to hightail it outta there before they saw me, but just as I was turnin’ to go, I saw a white boy. Looked to be twelve, thirteen years old.”

  “How…how far away was he?” Tess was having great difficulty speaking, for her throat was squeezed tight, with fear and hope knotting together.

  “Oh, maybe from here to the saloon.”

  Tess gasped to see how close it was. “But I thought you were up on a ridge looking down.”

  “I was,” he said firmly, “but the boy was up where I was. He saw me and froze where he stood.”

  “And what did you do?” she asked, all the while wanting to scream, Why didn’t you grab him and run, you idiot?

  “I got out of there fast. I was afraid he’d go to yellin’ and bring ’em all runnin’. He looked like one of ’em, anyway. Dressed just like an Apache.

  “He was holdin’ a bow in one hand,” he recalled, “and a dead rabbit in the other. Guess he’d been out huntin’ and was so stunned to see one of his own kind he didn’t think to yell—or maybe he wasn’t goin’ to. Maybe he didn’t want no harm to come to me. Anyhow, I headed back here as soon as I c
ould, hopin’ to claim the reward.

  “And now somebody else done did,” he finished, disappointed.

  “What…what color hair did he have?” Tess was praying to hear his next words.

  “Yellow. Like yours. Blue eyes like yours, too.”

  Though Tess’s hand was shaking so hard she feared it would fall off her wrist, she reached out to him and said, her heart full to bursting, “Would you be willing to lead a patrol there to try and find him?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “I mean, it’s not that I wouldn’t want to help a white boy escape the Indians. But the fact of the matter is, I’d be risking my life for nothin’, ’cause evidently that won’t the boy the reward was posted for, so I wouldn’t get nothin’ out of it.”

  “Yes, you will,” Tess determinedly assured him. “If you’ll lead the way to that Indian camp, I’ll see you get every bit of that reward, because that boy has not been found.”

  His brow furrowed with suspicion. “Then how come the posters all been tore down?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I promise you’ll be paid.” And she meant it…even if it took everything she had.

  Because somehow Tess knew that the boy he had seen was Perry.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Captain Lance Albritton was every inch an Army man. Standing over six feet tall, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, he was an imposing figure.

  And, as he stood to politely greet Tess with outstretched hand, she saw the set to his jaw and the hostile gleam in his steel-blue eyes and knew he would not be an easy man to sway once his mind was made up.

  As it turned out, she was right, for no amount of arguing could convince him to send out the Army to try and rescue Perry from the Apaches.

  “I am very sorry, Mrs. Thorpe,” he said with military crispness, “but there is no way I am going to send soldiers out on what will doubtless be a wild goose chase.”

  “How can you say that?” she argued, motioning to Homer Wilkes, who was sitting in the chair next to her. “This man saw my brother. He knows where the Indians are camped and can take you there.”