Cass folded his arms across his chest. "Trying once isn't good enough."
"Michelson was a decent father. I won't take that away from her."
"Michelson didn't know?"
"Not until the end."
Cass cursed. "So help me God, if you were one of those Terry's Rangers who lynched him—"
"I wasn't." Eyes like granite-colored ice collided with his. "A few years after the war, Meg figured out Michelson betrayed the Confederacy. That he was working as a Pinkerton. Knowing she would be ostracized if the secret leaked, she flew into a rage. She told Michelson he was despicable. She threw our affair in his face. The window was open, and one of their neighbors overheard the argument. That same night, the Klan went gunning for Michelson. Meg never forgave herself."
"Where were you?"
"Corsicana. Meg and I parted ways in '54—at her request. I never suspected she was pregnant. Not until the spring of '79, when Ranger business led me to work with Allan Pinkerton, did I learn about the lynching. When Pinkerton discovered I'd been assigned to patrol Grayson County for a spell, he asked if I'd ever met one of his operatives, a Roarke Michelson. I began piecing the story together then."
Cass's head was spinning. He sat heavily in the chair across from the man whom he'd hated for so long. A man who clearly thought he was doing the right thing by protecting Sadie from the truth. A man who didn't know his daughter at all.
"You can't keep sitting on this powder keg, Sterne. Sadie has the right to know you're her father. She'd want to know."
"Sadie has the right to be happy," Sterne corrected him. "That's why I'm counting on you to keep this matter a secret, William. You owe Sadie that much after riding out on her in Dodge. She never betrayed you. All my girl ever did was try to protect you—and mostly from me.
"That's why she asked me to accompany her to Chicago," Sterne continued in that same grim tone, "to get the restitution Pinkerton owed Michelson's heir. She figured if she got me on a northbound train, I couldn't track you. But once Pinkerton saw her grit and resourcefulness, he offered her a commission. It was Pinkerton who bought out her brothel contract. I didn't have that kind of money on a Ranger's pay."
Cass dropped his gaze from the lawman's. Now he felt lower than a snake's belly. Never once had he suspected these outlandish circumstances. Who would have? If he hadn't found Sadie's Pinkerton badge, he would have accused Sterne of telling whoppers!
Cass's hand shook as he reached for the scotch Sterne had poured him. It was the long-awaited dram of Glenmorangie he'd dreamed of sharing at his rival's expense. Only Sterne wasn't his rival. Not anymore.
But that wasn't the only reason Cass barely tasted the smooth, smoky flavor as it slid down his throat. He owed Sadie an apology of cosmic proportions! How was he supposed to make amends, if he wasn't allowed to spill the beans?
Sterne reached into the breast pocket of his vest. After rummaging around for a moment, he withdrew something metallic and tossed it Cass's way. The tin flashed in the lamplight before it landed on the table and skittered up against Cass's glass.
"What's that?" Cass bit out, staring at his lifelong dream.
"A vote of confidence."
Cass raised his eyes from that battered, old Ranger badge and locked stares with its wily owner. "I thought you were retired."
"That's what the governor wants folks to think."
Cass sucked in his breath. "Governor Ireland's been in on your charade? From the beginning?"
Sterne nodded.
Cass bit back an oath. Sterne's ruse was bigger than him and Sadie. It was bigger than Baron's election. It was even bigger than the legislature. Sterne's ruse was the whole damned state of Texas, with its fence-cutting cattlemen, vigilante sodbusters, and blood-soaked range lands!
"So why are you confiding in me?" Cass demanded warily.
"I may have misjudged you. And Sadie could use the help."
Cass's mouth salivated as he glanced once more at his tin-star dream. "You're offering me a commission?"
"That's the normal order of business when a Ranger goes undercover."
Cass's soaring spirits stalled, hitting the ground hard. He should have known there'd be a catch. "You want a man inside Baron's organization."
"Is that a problem?"
Cass's Coyote mind raced. Baron was his friend. Sadie was his woman. But no matter how many angles Cass considered, he couldn't find a way out of his predicament without betraying at least one of them.
He cursed silently. The only option he had at the moment was to play along. He knew too much. Sterne couldn't let him go running back to Baron, not without being thoroughly convinced Cass was serving the law. Cass needed time to find Collie and learn what had really transpired between Baron and Hank. He needed time to determine if Pendleton had masterminded the sniper attack on Baron.
"Count me in," Cass said grimly. "But count Sadie out. I don't want her getting caught in the crossfire when The Ventilator starts gunning for Baron again."
Sterne stiffened. "Sharpe broke out of Huntsville?"
"Looks that way. Sadie spotted him at Aquacia."
Something dark and foreboding flickered through the Ranger's eyes. "You keep that bastard away from my daughter."
"Nothing would please me more." Cass shoved back his chair.
"One other thing," Sterne said coolly. "Sadie answers to Allan Pinkerton, not the Rangers. She has her own mission. Stay out of her way."
A muscle ticked in Cass's jaw. Abruptly, he reached for Sterne's tin-star and did something he'd never once conceived of doing in his whole life: he pocketed a Ranger badge under false pretenses.
In the final analysis, Cass didn't give a rat's ass about Pinkerton or his secret army of nameless, faceless minions. If Cass had to use his Ranger badge to keep Baron alive and Sadie safe, then by God, he would.
Chapter 16
Devil's Eve was the time when ghosts and goblins went bump in the night.
Or so the scaredy-cats said.
Collie snickered at his humor and took another swig from his half-empty bourbon bottle. He was more than a little roostered. After escorting Baron to his hotel suite—where Poppy had been busily tying orange and black ribbons to a basket full of soul cakes—Collie had been only too happy to let the Harpy Queen shoo him out the door. The thought of spending Devil's Eve with the Westerfields had given him the heebie-jeebies. He'd seen for himself what kind of vermin Baron rendezvoused with in lonesome bathhouses.
Collie wasn't eager to continue his employment with Baron. He hoped Sadie would convince Cass to quit, too. Ever since Collie had learned Cass wanted revenge against Sterne, Collie had had a bad feeling. The kind of feeling a fella got when he was staring down the wrong end of a loaded gun. Collie wasn't worried so much about his own safety; he could disappear faster than a six-legged jackrabbit. But it did occur to him that Sadie and Wilma were vulnerable. If anything happened to either of them, Cass was just hotheaded enough to turn vigilante again.
And that worried Collie.
Nobody knew better than Collie what Cass was capable of doing with a gun. Two summers ago, Collie had watched in astonishment as a half-dead Cass had managed to fire off one shot—one shot!—with a Winchester rifle to saw through the rope lynching his Injun friend, Lynx.
At other times, Collie had seen Cass cock his .45 with his heel and drill a knothole at 50 paces while aiming over his shoulder! Whether Cass was firing his guns stupid-drunk, blinded by rain, or shaking with cold, he never missed.
The trouble was, even Cass couldn't survive a bullet in the back.
"Dead is dead," Collie explained to his furry sidekick. "It doesn't matter whether you're a Ranger, a vigilante, or an outlaw."
Vandy ignored him. The coon was busy gorging himself on the sugar skulls some Mexican family had arranged beside potted chrysanthemums and a colorful skeleton doll, draped in a sombrero and serape.
With nothing better to do than wait for Cass and Sadie to get tired rutting, Collie had
gone prowling. He'd sneaked inside Wilma's so-called "secret" cave and helped himself to his favorite Halloween spirits. He'd found the cave several days ago, along with the Wild Turkey Wilma had hidden inside a crate marked, "Ripy Brothers Distillery, Tyrone, Kentucky."
Which just proves that reading leads to drink. And sin. And that anybody who forces book-learning on a boy is an unholy influence.
"If I didn't know how to read, I wouldn't have been tempted to jimmy open that liquor crate with a crowbar," he told Vandy righteously.
The coon whuffed. He was sniffing a papier-mâché coffin at the Garcias' gravesite.
In this part of the world, Devil's Eve, Halloween, and the Mexican Day of the Dead all collided at the Witching Hour. After chugging enough bourbon, Collie had gotten the bright idea to ride out to the boneyard to see what all the Día de los Muertes hoopla was about. To the best of his knowledge, folks in Kentucky didn't paint sugar skulls or go singing for soul cakes. At least, not in Blue Thunder Valley.
That's why Collie was crouching behind a Lampasas tombstone on the spookiest night of the year. About 20 yards away, a band of shrieking, ash-smeared urchins was dancing, singing, and feeding the bonfire they'd rigged in the granite belly of a dried-up water fountain.
Collie watched wistfully. His boy's heart yearned to join in the fun, to wear a mask, smash pumpkins, and spread creepy gossip about evil property owners, who liked to turn their scatterguns on stray dogs and trespassing kids. God knew, he could share plenty of hair-raising tales on that subject.
But Collie had never been much good at making friends.
At least, not Human friends.
His brow furrowed with his effort to understand the sing-song taunts. Ring-leaders, who were dressed like tramps in patched gingham and garish skull masks, were ribbing the younger boys. Although the Tejanos spoke in Spanish, Collie intuited that the shortest gang member was supposed to earn his stripes by tugging the bell pull of the eerie old caretaker's cottage, huddling in the shadow of a lightning-sheared oak. The tree's leafless limbs resembled giant claws, whose twig talons kept rubbing together, scratching and grasping at the wind.
The shack itself was supposed to be haunted by the soul of an outlaw, who'd been lynched from that oak. No one lived in the house anymore. The limestone ruins sported jagged panes of glass, which glittered like fangs each time a lightning spear flashed. Even Collie's heart skipped a beat to think of pranking La Bestia—or The Beast—with nothing but rotten eggs and flour pellets as defense.
His hand edged toward his six-shooter as the sky growled at the noisy mortals, cavorting below.
"Why is it," he muttered to Vandy, "that no storms have threatened this region for six months, and yet one is brewing on Devil's Eve?"
The coon flopped on his back and kicked up his paws.
"Oh, so now you're calling me a yellow belly?"
Grunting with pleasure, Vandy rolled across the gravesite, his ringed tail upsetting the skeleton doll.
"You want whupped?" Collie threatened in an exasperated undertone. "'Cause that's what Seňor Garcia's going to do when he wakes from the dead!"
The cheeky coon whickered, a sound reminiscent of Human snickering. Then his beady eyes—or maybe his twitching nose—noticed how Collie was unfolding an orange linen napkin. Vandy heaved himself to his paws with interest.
"Don't bring any angry ghosts over here," Collie scolded. "I got enough problems with the live folks."
Vandy ignored this order, trampling skeleton dolls and paper coffins in his eagerness to sniff the treat up close.
Collie scowled, imagining some angry spook's retribution. It was a good thing he had so many dead kin watching over him, thanks to those trigger-happy Hatfields from Virginia. Of course, whenever folks back home got suspicious about his family origins, he'd swear up and down on Bibles, crosses, rosaries, and a couple of other sacred relics, too, that he wasn't related to any Kentucky-born McCoys. He'd even fooled Sera, and that was saying a lot. Sera had a spooky way of knowing the events of the past, by touching something metallic, like a brass button, Peacemaker, or whittling knife.
"You can't be too careful when you've got the wrong blood in a blood feud," Collie told Vandy with all the amassed wisdom of his 17 years. "Luckily for you, my ghosts could probably wallop any ghosts in this cemetery. Ghouls, too. And that includes Mrs. Westerfield."
Collie snickered at his churlish humor. "I mean, something scared that woman into being nice tonight. And it wasn't you, Fur Face."
Collie suspected that to Poppy, Devil's Eve must be like Christmas to nice folks. After all, he'd found her humming and decorating a Halloween basket. At the time, she'd described the soul cakes as a "token of appreciation" for certain hotel staff, who'd gone "beyond the call of duty to serve my husband's needs."
Collie figured he'd gone way beyond the call of duty to serve Senator Rat-fink Scum-bucket, so he'd helped himself to a couple of tasty treats. Caching food was an old habit; even when his Pa had been alive, Collie had never known where the next meal would come from. But all his city living must have dulled his instincts, because Poppy had caught him thieving.
"Take another cake, dear boy," she'd encouraged with a beatific smile. "I have plenty more."
"To tell the truth," Collie confided to his coon, "she kind of freaked me out. I kept expecting her head to spin around. Or her eyes to pop out. Or black spiders to crawl out of her nose. Every time I pinched myself, I never woke up. So I reckon there really must be gingerbread inside this napkin."
As Collie unfolded the linen corners from his loot, Vandy frisked with all his rascally charm. He wuffed. He reared up on his hind legs. He put a little black hand on Collie's heart.
But Collie kept his snack well out of the reach of those clever paws.
Vandy whined.
"What, you want one?"
The coon licked his chops, his black eyes bright with hope as he stared at the prize. The cakes looked like little round cookies, except they were plumper and decorated with raisins in the shape of a cross.
"Too bad," Collie taunted, shoving a cake into his mouth.
The coon whimpered.
Collie grimaced.
"A little heavy on the molasses," he choked, reaching for his bourbon. He washed down the confection with a hearty swig. "Reminds me of something Sera used to bake, before her sister-in-law gave her cooking lessons."
Vandy pricked his ears. He knew all about Sera. She was the preacher's daughter, whom Collie had worshiped from afar. Before the coon grew too fat, he used to hide out in the copper kettle hanging over Sera's kitchen sink. He would wait there for his chance to steal the hickory nuts—better known as "hiccurs" to Kentucky folk—that Sera liked to chop for her bake-off recipes.
Sera Jones (now Mrs. Jesse "Lynx" Quaid, Collie thought a tad enviously) had been aptly named Seraphina, after angels. She and her doctor brother had taken Collie in, treated him like kin, and made him feel like being born hadn't been the revenge of a vindictive God. Until he'd met the Jones family, Collie had been a wild thing. He'd spent most of his childhood hiding in the woods outside of Blue Thunder—at first to elude the heavy-fisted moonshiner who'd been his Pa, and then to avoid the Orphanage Committee.
Of course, he'd also had to disappear for weeks on end from lazy-ass tin-stars, who'd preferred to blame him for every runaway dog and broken window in the town, rather than conduct a real investigation into the complaints.
"It's better to wear a tin star than to be arrested by one," Collie advised Vandy. "Or in your case, it's better to be a coon than a hat. So I reckon I should stop letting you steal food. Even from dead folks," he added grudgingly. "Here."
He offered the gingerbread to the coon.
Eagerly, Vandy rose on his haunches. He wrapped a paw around Collie's forefinger. His whiskers twitched. He sniffed the confection.
Then the strangest thing happened. Vandy, who ate everything from tarantulas and rattle snakes, to scented soap and rotting melons, turned up his
nose at Poppy's soul cake.
Collie hiked an eyebrow. "The cake wasn't that bad, churnhead."
Vandy shuffled over to Seňor Garcia's burned-out luminarias. Hunkering down, the coon began to gnaw a candle in a saucer of sand.
"Seriously? You'd rather eat wax?" Collie frowned. "Hey. You aren't sick from all those sugar skulls, are you?"
Shouts rose from the revelers, distracting Collie. Apparently, the ring-leaders had bullied three of the youngest boys into pranking The Beast. Clutching their sacks of flour in one hand and their eggs in the other, the trio was creeping with great trepidation onto the porch of the house. Lightning sizzled over the chimney in great, purple spears. The oak tree moaned like some wounded soul. In the filtered moonlight, Collie recognized Joaquin, the shoeshine boy, leading his companions to their ultimate goal: the bell pull by the door.
Five feet.
Three feet.
An arm's length away.
Joaquin stretched shaking fingers.
A sudden light flashed behind the house's jagged windows. A deafening boom shook the panes even as splinters spewed from the hole that materialized in the door's rotted wood.
Holy crap!
Miraculously, Joaquin wasn't hit by the rifle blast. Bleating like a lamb, the kid dropped his flour and eggs and bolted off the porch. His companions followed in hot pursuit, shrieking, "La Bestia!" The rest of the revelers took up the cry. Soon all the Tejano children were bounding around like moonstruck jackrabbits, while rifle cartridges chipped tombstones, splintered fence rails, and cracked through tree branches. When a rotted old oak bough tumbled from the sky, it nearly crushed Collie's skull.
Sonuvabitch!
"Beggarticks!" he hissed at his well-trained coon, and Vandy dived under the bush where Collie had stashed his Winchester and saddlebag. But when Collie tried to grab his rifle, he nearly got his hand blown off.
Grabbing his bourbon, Collie ran in the opposite direction. Bullets were whining over his head. He felt like a metal duck in a shooting gallery. When he dodged right, the sniper drilled a cartridge into the dirt by his boots. When he ran left, a potshot zoomed past his shoulder.
Devil in Texas (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 1) Page 21
