Renegades And Revenge: Daughters 0f HBH (Half Breed Haven Book 8)

by A. M. Van Dorn

  "Hey, hold up a second. If that place is closing up shop maybe I can get a good deal on some shotgun shells for Pop!" she said as her eyes lit up at the possibility. Whip's birthday would soon be upon the family, and he enjoyed hunting with his shotgun deep in the heart of Cedar Ledge.

  "Well, hurry it up, golden girl! There could be a trout with my name on it in that there pond!" Lijuan prodded as she was up on her haunches in the wagon bed tying down a bag of coffee grounds. Suddenly she looked up and shouted for Cassie to stop. Cassandra watched as Lijuan reached inside her coat and removed a billfold and removed several bills and waved them at Cassandra.

  "See if you can get a good size can of black powder. The last time our brother was at the ranch, he was going to indulge himself in his hobby making bullets with all of his molds, but he was out of black powder. Being distracted by Bright Feather probably made him forget. It'll be my gift to him.”

  Cassandra silently accepted the money thinking it was nice that Lijuan wanted to do something for Dutch, but she also noted her sister never seemed to let an opportunity go by without putting down the Indian woman who was now so intertwined in their lives. After all, she was not only Dutch's girlfriend, but she was the half-sister of their other brother Blue River as well as being Cattie's best friend. No good was ever going to come of this friction, but she had to resolve that it was a matter to worry about on a different day.

  "Do hurry, Cassandra. I will admit I too am much eager to end our journey.” Honor urged disrupting Cassandra’s ruminations on the situation.

  "You'll never even know I was gone!" Cassie's voice trailed off behind her as she was hurrying in the direction of the store. Just before she entered out of the corner of her eye she saw a crowd starting to gather around a storefront, that upon closer inspection was no storefront at all. It was the sheriff's office according to a wooden sign with peeling yellow and black paint, the black for the print and the yellow being the shape of a sheriff’s badge someone had creatively painted long ago. Curiosity nearly got the better of her, but she glanced back at the wagon and saw her sisters watching her, anxious to be on their way, underscored by Honor Elizabeth tapping her left foot.

  Ducking inside the store, she immediately began to sift through a shelf filled with different types of ammunition intent on being in and out as soon as possible. That had been her best intentions of course, but those had gone out the window when she dropped the wooden box of shotgun shells, and the generous can of black powder on the well-worn countertop and a clerk appeared from behind a green curtain that separated the store from the back room.

  The man had a look of surprise on his face and Cassie was sure that she knew why. They were like the male and female version of the same person or two sides of the same coin. The clerk had the same goldenrod hair as Cassie that the man wore down to his shoulders, the pair of green eyes were a match for a match, and each had the same well-drawn dimples as they smiled at each other. Where Cassie was beautiful, the man was handsome. The one noticeable difference in her eyes though was she was thirty-two, and he had to be at least five years younger than she was.

  “Welcome!” the man called out warmly. “How may I be of service to you ma’am?”

  Cassie realized that he wasn't going to remark on their similarities and neither was she…what could one really say after all? It amused her, but at the same time, she felt a familiar tingle of heat began to blossom inside her. Cassandra Wilde and her three sisters had long ago vowed that they would not wind up like their mothers. All four of those women in their father's lives had never lived past a young age to enjoy life as theirs had been cut short for various tragic reasons. The Wilde sisters were determined to live life to the fullest and that included their casual escapades with whatever man, or sometimes women in Catalina's case, that struck their fancy.

  Her eyes fell on him again. His shoulders were wide and his chest broad, and he was a big man and pretty damn solid looking from what she could tell. The sleeves of his shirt bulged with his muscled arms. In short, he looked like an Adonis out of those Greek myths Honor's mother Miss Lizzie use to read to young Cassandra as bedtime stories in those years before her death. Cassie shook her head thinking if she was calling him an Adonis…. what did that make her if she so closely resembled him? That sounds damn conceited Cassandra! She thought to herself when suddenly the sound of his voice began cutting through her inner thoughts to bring her back to the cramped and dusty little shop in Clayton’s Hollow.

  “You’re looking to get that box of shells and the powder? You are in luck. Everything is half off. We have to sell it all.” He said, still smiling as she blinked and locked her attention onto his words and off his body.

  “That would be wonderful. The shells will be making a great gift for my Pop. He likes to hunt bear and other game on our ranch.”

  The handsome clerk placed his palms on the counter and leaned forward with interest. “Where you from?”

  “Oh, way down from here. Alamieda to be exact.”

  “Alamieda? I was down in that area once. That’s one hell of- pardon me. I was going to say that is quite the location, surrounded by mountains, all that cattle land, rolling hills and even borders on a desert.”

  “The Los Mochis Flats.”

  “Right. So, what brings you way up here?”

  Forgetting about three likely to be impatient sisters, Cassie explained it was their family’s annual vacation. Once a year for three weeks they brought all but the most essential of their operations to a halt in both their cattle business and their timber operations and gave everyone who could be spared time off. Those that had to stay were given extra compensation.

  She continued telling the clerk how usually she and her five siblings, as well as their father and their brother's girlfriend, always went away together. This year, however, circumstances did not make that possible. Her father was a circuit judge involved in a significant trial, so his presence was out. Cassie said her brother Dutch and his love Bright Feather, the troop's interpreter, had been called away with their regiment from Fort McCallister to attend to matters on the New Mexico border. Finally, she told him that her youngest brother was a half Yavapai, who ran the timber operation and with that shut down he had gone back to his mother's tribe to spend time with the other braves and perhaps even a young Yavapai woman who seemed to come up frequently in his conversations with the family.

  "So, it's just the four of us. A girl's get together if you will. We are staying up at my friend Jim Mitchell's cabin up on Topaz Peak." She finished as his face broke into a smile.

  “Sure, I know Jim. Good man! He’s missed around here. How do you know him?” He wanted to know.

  Cassie paused for only a moment thinking about how she had finally managed to get Catalina to stop snickering every time she called him her friend in front of her. Two years ago, while on assignment she had saved the man's life from a lynch mob after he had been falsely accused of a crime he didn't' commit. After Cassie had managed to uncover the real culprit, what had started out as a thank you ended up as one of her trysts…one that she recalled with relish went from sun up to sun down. To this day he remained a friend…a friend with…her mind fought for an appropriate word…benefits! A friend with benefits. Now that sounded right she silently mused.

  “We met when he moved his surveying business to Palomino Springs.” She answered leaving out the whole business with the lynch mob. “When he came back here for a visit last year he invited me along. He told me I could use the cabin whenever I wanted to since he still owned it even though he’s staying in Palomino for good.’”

  The man’s eyes danced with interest as he stuck out his hand. “Well, if you’ve been here before then I guess this is actually welcome back to Clayton’s Hollow. The name is Sampson Stone by the way.”

  Cassandra shook the hand that he extended to her and held onto it for an extra-long time before saying. “Cassandra Wilde and it’s a pleasure.”

  ***

  Upon o
n Topaz Peak, a short distance from Jim Mitchell’s cabin, on the side of a narrow ravine that lead directly into the open cliff face where the cabin rested along the edge, Matt Cafferty wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of one hand and momentarily turned his face to the sun. A miserable rain had dogged the area for two straight days prior but now that the sun had reappeared it had done so with a vengeance leaving him a sweaty mess from the work on the holes that he and the man next to him had drilled into the rock.

  Cafferty threw down the auger and accepted the canteen held out to him by Jack Jefferies. He took a long pull from it before using the opposite hand this time to wipe his lips.

  “I thank you.” He said with a nod to Jefferies before he turned his attention to the two men directly opposite from their position. The two brothers Cord and Bull Stevens had just finished completing their drilling activities. He saw one of them resting propped up on the auger similar to their own.

  "Everything go okay over there Cord?!" It would be hard to screw up drilling a simple hole, but the two brothers were both half-wits as evidenced by them failing to buy enough nails as they had been tasked to do before coming up from town. The front window to the cabin, as a result, had been left un-boarded unlike all the others but Cafferty conceded that should not be a problem. In the end, the brothers were good for muscle when he needed them whenever they had a job to pull off, like the one they were now being paid handsomely for.

  The thought of the money made Cafferty turn his pockmarked face down to the pair sitting on horseback watching the Cafferty gang's activities. Cafferty's cool and weary blue eyes assessed the man and woman. There was something he didn't like about the man who watched them go about their work silently. It shouldn't matter, of course, he was paying well, and there had even been talk of a bonus if everything went off without a hitch.

  Still…The woman, however, was a different matter. Cafferty surely liked the look of her. The curly shoulder length ebony hair framing a face with beautiful big brown eyes, the large breasts thrusting forward from her dress and then there was that voice. He'd never heard an accent like that. She was some type of immigrant alright but where she hailed from he had no clue not having much experience with foreigners. The furthest he'd ever traveled was to St. Louis and the only thing he remembered about that was being drunk every night bedding a different whore after he had successfully knocked over the Dunkirk Savings and Loan.

  Cafferty shook off thoughts of the girl. She was their benefactor's woman, and with what he was paying he might just head on up to Tucson and get himself one of those whores at The Texas Tornado saloon which many tongues had told him featured the finest whores in the whole Arizona territory. Hell, they were even called "Ladies of the Evening" in that place as opposed to soiled doves.

  From above, he could see the man looking up at him expectantly, so he figured he best give him a little assurance. Cupping his hands to the sides of his mouth he called down to the waiting pair.

  “The holes are all drilled. All we got to do now is plant the dynamite and run the cable to the detonation box!”

  The benefactor in his black suit and black hat said nothing but merely nodded his head and turned to his woman to have some private conversation they could not hear from their position. The gang leader turned as he felt a tug on his elbow from Jefferies.

  “Matt, I know they are payin’ us a shit load of money but…”

  Cafferty's jaw clenched, and he nodded curtly, as the two had the same concerns as his partner. "I hear ya J.J. but hell; we both know we couldn't turn down that kind of money."

  Jefferies kicked at the auger on the ground and fixed a look at his old friend.

  “We’re talking the Omegas here! Not just your run of the mill renegades. I mean we’re talkin’ Black Hawk’s Omegas! Aint wise to mix it up with those savages.”

  Cafferty turned away and looked down again at the couple. Jefferies wasn’t telling him anything that he hadn’t already thought to himself a hundred times since taking this job. Long ago the followers of the ferocious Yavapai warrior Black Hawk had been given the name of The Omegas for their vow to fight to the last of their men to rid the last white man from the territory. Black Hawk had surprised everyone when he had embraced the name given to his band even if it had come from the hated white man himself. Upon learning what it meant, many of his braves in order to strike fear into the hearts of whites everywhere had even gone so far as to have the Omega symbol- the last letter of the Greek alphabet tattooed on their chests.

  Now this man below had struck some deal with the Omegas. Despite the heat Cafferty momentarily shuddered. If everything went according to the plan before the day was over four women would be in the clutches of the Omegas. Once in them, they would suffer unspeakable horrors at their hands for according to their patron, Black Hawk himself had some sort of personal grudge against that family that only their brutal deaths could satisfy. No, he would not want to be these Wilde sisters.

  CHAPTER 7

  By the time Cassandra emerged from the gun shop upon her approach she had found all three sisters had lined up in the order of their height from Honor down to Lijuan at her just over five-foot stature leaning against the back of the buckboard with their arms all crossed. As was her nature only Catalina had a look of good humor on her face.

  "I'm sorry." She said hefting the box filled with the shotgun shells and large can of black powder over the side of the wagon into the bed.

  Honor Elizabeth extended her hand in a theatrical gesture towards the gun shop. “Sister, perhaps we should indulge in our curiosity to see just what sort of gentleman it was that kept you within those walls for an ungodly amount of time.”

  She launched herself out of her leaning position and began to step in the direction Cassie had just come from when her sister caught her by the elbow.

  "Point taken. I'm sorry girls. You got me. See that hill over there?" she said pointing to a hill that overlooked the town. The top of it had apparently been leveled off, and a great flagpole rose from the center of it displaying the stars and stripes. Surrounding the hilltop were waist high berry bushes.

  “What about it?’

  "My new acquaintance invited me to a picnic up there when we pass through on our way out of town. It's called Wildberry Hill, and that's where a lot of the townspeople do their courting up there. He says it's quite nice as is he and he was cute…in a strange sort of way."

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lijuan began to question when she heard the shriek of a woman in the crowd that had grown larger outside the sheriff’s office.

  “What is going on down there?” Cassie asked her sisters.

  “We don’t know.”

  Cassie’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, “None of you went down to find out?”

  Catalina was laughing now as she pulled herself away from the wagon. “We talked about it but figured why bother. We all knew you was goin’ to want to go find out so we thought we’d just wait!” Cassie put one hand on her hip and cocked her head. Was she really that predictable? Yes, I suppose I am she thought.

  "C'mon Cass! I double dog dare you to tell me that you wouldn't!"

  “You’ve got me again! I admit it! Come on girls let’s go.”

  “Fine, let my fish swim away!” Lijuan said under her breath as she fell in behind the trio of sisters that were already approaching the crowd.

  Upon arriving at the edge of the crowd the clutch of miners, merchants and other sorts of town people, despite whatever the consternation was, parted in wonder at the sight of the multiracial women. Before they knew it, they were standing at the inner circle where an elderly sheriff was holding his palms out before him apparently attempting to calm everyone. A genteel-looking man that Cassie had a hunch was the undertaker, judging by his garb, was gently fanning a woman that he held in his arms.

  “Anyone want to bet that’s the shrieker?” Lijuan said from the comer of her mouth as even the sheriff halted at the sight of the four strange women
. A low murmur swept through the crowd bringing a grin to Catalina’s face who always found amusement at people’s reactions to perhaps the most unique family in the West.

  "Forgive us please," Cassandra said hoping to bring the focus off them and back onto whatever was afoot. "We just stopped off in town on the way to Topaz Peak and saw the commotion and was wondering what's occurring?"

  "I don't know who ya ladies are, but ya stay out of them mountain! Ya hear!" the sheriff demanded to the surprise of the quartet of sisters.

  “Sorry, I don’t take orders…unless I feel like it.” Lijuan snapped as Cassie’s hand shot up to silence her as she was one of the few that could actually give the feisty Asian commands.

  “It’s for your own good!” the old sheriff said in a gentler tone.

  “If you were to kindly enlighten us perhaps we could be the judge of that.” Honor propositioned even as she heard a voice or two in the crowd saying, “She don’t talk like no colored girl I ever heard.” And “Who’s that darkie think she’s talkin’ to?” Honor Elizabeth ignored them all, being used to such comments. Even she was aware how unusual her voice was, a strange mix of a cultured speech coupled with a touch of a southern bell and her original southwestern twang. All the result of having grown up in Arizona and being schooled back east at a school for privileged Negroes, taught by an ex-southern belle of all people.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s all about! It’s those god damn Omegas!” a man a few feet away from Catalina shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “Watch your mouth Nate Carbury! There are ladies present!” a stern looking woman in the crowd shouted back. The Wildes didn’t even hear that…all they heard was the word Omegas.

  “What’s this about Omegas?!” Cassie demanded as the bodies of all her sister tensed and stiffened around her.