by Craig, Emma
“Wh-what are you doing?” She was annoyed that her voice squeaked so badly. She wanted to sound brave and wild-westish and knew she’d failed utterly.
“You got somethin’ I want, lady.”
Her maidenhood! The virginity she’d been saving—God alone knew why. Tacita already knew she was too boring to attract the attention of any man who’d want to marry her. Except, perhaps, for that pantywaist Englishman waiting for her in San Francisco.
She shut her eyes and prayed fiercely that she wouldn’t faint. Or throw up. Good Lord, she’d read about people like this awful man. Oh, she knew Jed would save her if he could, but she feared he was no match for a loaded gun. She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone too dry.
“P-please, sir, if you don’t hurt me, I’ll give you money.”
“Yeah?” Boskins sneered. “I’ll take your money, lady, but first I’ll take what I come after.”
Tacita started to tremble uncontrollably.
# # #
Well, this was just too much for one Yorkshire terrier to take with equanimity. How much hardship was she expected to endure in a single day, anyway? Rosamunda pulled her head out of Tacita’s armpit, eyed the menacing man who was now reaching for Mistress’s throat, and decided she’d been through enough already today.
So she bit him on the thumb. It was the thumb resting on the hammer of his gun, which he dropped immediately even as he let out with a pained howl. As Jed Hardcastle sprang for the gun, Rosamunda, snarling like a fury, worked her way up from there.
# # #
“You sure you’re all right, ma’am?”
Tacita had screamed in terror when she feared that awful man was going to hurt her beloved Rosamunda. Shivers still rattled her and Jed was pretty sure she was crying again. Shoot, he’d never known a female to cry so much. She had her head buried in Rosamunda’s ruffled fur and she sat in the dirt, having slithered into a heap at the foot of the oak tree after her legs gave out on her.
The gunman had fled, sans gun, leaving behind a string of vile curses and more than a few drops of blood. Jed had raced after him as far as he could, but he didn’t dare leave Tacita alone for long enough to track the black-hearted bastard down and shoot him dead. Now he stood over her, still furious and feeling helpless.
What he wanted to do was kneel beside her, gather her to his broad chest and comfort her. The urge surprised him, as he wasn’t used to harboring soft emotions in his Texas-sized breast. He kept feeling them for Tacita, though, and he was dreadfully confused by them.
“Y-yes,” she whimpered. “I th-th-think so.”
Her wretchedness pierced Jed to the bone. Although he didn’t quite dare touch her, he did squat down beside her.
“You sure, ma’am? Maybe we’d better rest here for a little while longer.”
She looked up at him, her blue eyes swimming in tears, and he had to fist his hands in order to keep them from grabbing her.
“Th-thank you, Mr. Hardcastle. I was s-s-so frightened. I thought he was going to hurt Rosamunda.”
Rosamunda gave a little whine and licked her mistress’s hand. It seemed to give her comfort, and for the first time, Jed approved of the little rat. He even went so far as to say, “Rosie’s a real scrapper, Miss Grantham. Even though she’s small, she has the heart of a lion.” There. That ought to earn him a bit of credit, anyway.
“Oh, yes!” Tacita cried, ignoring his use of her dog’s diminutive name, and appreciative of his sentiments. “Yes, she does.”
Although Rosamunda wanted to bite Jed for calling her Rosie again, she supposed it would do. She didn’t relish being likened to a cat, however; even one as large and ferocious as a lion.
She did not, however, appreciate the look in Jedediah Hardcastle’s eyes as he watched Mistress. It was an affectionate look if she’d ever seen one. She was surprised to find it in such an unlikely place, disapproved of it, and what’s more, she didn’t trust it. Not one tiny bit. That expression boded ill for Rosamunda’s future health and happiness, and it worried her.
# # #
“Good day to you, sir!”
Farley Boskins was mad as a cougar with a coyote hanging onto its tail when he met up with a strange-looking Gypsy fellow and his flamboyant wagon about five miles away from the scene of his humiliation. He couldn’t believe he’d been bested by a five-pound dog. A fancy, five-pound, female dog. Boskins could hardly stand it.
He was certainly in no mood to exchange pleasantries with the voluble drummer who’d called out the friendly greeting. Reaching for the gun no longer resting on his hip and coming away with an empty hand, he uttered a blistering curse. After consigning all canines to the fires of hell, he managed to grab the rifle from his saddle scabbard and aim it at the bearded gentleman with the white bandage wrapped around his neck and the piece of sticking plaster on his ear.
“Get ‘em up,” he growled, pleased that his voice at least still sounded ferocious.
Cesare Cacciatore Picinisco, whose day had been ruined already, stared down the barrel of that gun and knew he couldn’t take any more. This was it for him; he couldn’t take any more. He burst into tears. Raising his hands in the air, he blubbered, “Shoot me, sir. Shoot me. What good is life to me?”
Boskins was unused to his victims going meekly to their dooms. He didn’t like it. He preferred to savor their terror before he dispatched him. It gave him a thrill. This fellow’s attitude was no fun at all.
It did, however, give him pause. If he were to follow long-established practice, he’d oblige this strange man, shoot him dead, and then have to root through his wagon to see what, if anything, was worth taking.
Since, however, the fellow’s weepy plea had caused him to think before he acted for once in his misspent career, Boskins realized his hand hurt where that damned dog had bitten it. He also realized that if he refrained from shooting this man a little while longer, he might not have to do so much hard work himself with his sore hand. Although it was slow in coming, a decision to spare this victim emerged within Boskins’s brain.
Frowning heavily, he said, “I ain’t gonna shoot you.”
Picinisco bowed his head. “Blast.”
Boskins decided the man was crazy, which sent his thoughts tumbling down yet another path. He understood many Indians considered crazy people somehow blessed by God. He wondered if they were right. Farley Boskins didn’t have much truck with God on a day-to-day basis himself, preferring to do business with representatives of a lower realm. All at once, however, he decided it might be a good idea not to bait God today. Although it grieved him, he guessed he’d just better let this nitwit live after he robbed him.
Grumpy about having his plans thwarted for a second time in the same day, he snarled, “What the hell you got in that wagon?”
“N-nothing, sir. Nothing at all.”
Boskins cocked his rifle and showed his teeth in a feral grin. People hated his grin; he knew it because they told him so. His teeth were broken from fights and discolored from chewing tobacco, and he enjoyed displaying them to people he didn’t like. He didn’t like most people. He especially didn’t like this colorful drummer.
“Like hell. What you got in that wagon?” He drew his horse up so that he was level with the fellow. “Or do I got to look for myself?”
His words were full of meaning, the import of which Picinisco caught in an instant. And, while he was possessed of a small felonious streak of his own, he was not a fool. He understood.
He also discovered, much to his dismay, that while initially he would have welcomed death as a release from life’s miseries, after having been granted a reprieve he wasn’t so sure anymore. That was the trouble with having time to think. His face bleached of color and he stammered, “I’ll look, sir. I’ll look. No need for you to bother yourself.”
“Damn right,” Boskins said, pleased to know he hadn’t lost his touch, even if he couldn’t kill the bastard.
Picinisco scrambled into the back of his wagon, leaving the
bandit chuckling evilly in the hot afternoon sunshine. As far as his own feelings about the matter went, he was both terrified and feeling mighty sorry for himself. If that miserable son of a sow, Jed Hardcastle, hadn’t taken his ammunition, he’d at least have been able to defend himself when this latest menace appeared. The fact that Jed had reacted so strongly to his borrowing a mere dog was particularly irritating.
As far as Cesare Picinisco was concerned, no dog should be worth two hundred dollars. And if it was and that woman could afford one of them, why couldn’t she just go out and purchase another one?
If Picinisco had two hundred dollars, he sure as the devil wouldn’t waste it on a dog. A dog, even an expensive one, was merely a dog, after all. He’d never understand some people.
His wounded throat, ear, and fingers took that opportunity to throb in unison, and he acknowledged perhaps Miss Grantham’s demented pet was a trifle different from most of the dogs he’d known in his life. Most dogs were man’s best friend. That abominable freak of nature most assuredly was not.
Speaking of freaks of nature, his heart was beating a terrified tattoo against his ribs when he thrust a wooden chest out onto the wagon seat and dared face his newest adversary. Since he’d been denied the pleasure of a quick, merciful death, the thought of being killed by the fiend no longer held much appeal. Unfortunately, he didn’t trust the man to spare him.
Wasn’t that the way things always worked? Now that he’d lost interest in dying, he wanted to live. The day thus far has been so bad, however, he wasn’t sure he would. Glumly, he decided he probably wouldn’t now that he wanted to. He wondered if he could file a complaint somewhere.
“Here, sir. Look, it’s all yours.” He lifted the chest’s lid and dipped his hands into it. When he withdrew them, they fairly dripped jewelry. Gold and silver, rubies and emeralds, all were souvenirs from the last several large towns he’d passed through. Long ago Picinisco had decided not to depend entirely on the fruits of his honest business for his livelihood, as the fruits of this dishonest one paid greater dividends.
His adversary smirked. “Now where in hell’d you get all them things?”
Picinisco shrugged. “I have my ways, sir.”
“Shit! You didn’t get them things honest.”
“Being a drummer on the prairie does not afford the best of livings, my dear sir. I occasionally have to supplement my income.”
“Yeah,” growled his foe. “Well, I aim to supplement my ink come today, too. Gimme them jewels. And I ain’t nobody’s dear.”
Picinisco wasn’t surprised to hear it. With a heavy sigh, he transferred his hard-burgled goods into a burlap sack. He did not realize it was the same one he’d used for Rosamunda’s prison, however, and they leaked out again. He discovered his mistake when the ominous click of Boskins’s rifle being cocked smote his ears once more. He looked down and saw with horror what he’d done.
“Oh, my good sir! I am so sorry! This isn’t the sack I meant to use.”
“Yeah. Right. One more mistake like that and you’re dead.”
Quivering like a jellied aspic, Picinisco stammered, “Really sir, there’s no need for violence. I shall give you anything I have. Anything.”
“I know.” Another oily chuckle issued from his foe.
Eventually, Boskins’ confidence proved to be well-founded. Not only did he ride away with almost all of Cesare Picinisco’s disposable cash and jewelry, but with almost everything else of any real value in his wagon. Some of the meat the drummer had been carrying to Fort Sumner remained, but not much. Boskins possessed a prodigious appetite.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, before Boskins left Picinisco to contemplate the wreckage of his life, he beat him up with his good hand.
Picinisco watched through swollen eyelids as the evil gunman trotted away across the desert, headed in the direction of El Paso. Boskins’s ugly laugh sounded a discordant accompaniment to the ringing in Picinisco’s battered ears.
“Thith ithn’t fair,” he murmured thickly to the uncaring desert and his mule, who didn’t care either. “Thith jutht ithn’t fair.”
Then he made a vow.
A coward he might be. But he was also sly and sneaky and well-versed in the art of burglary. He knew he could remove that wretched two-hundred-dollar dog from its present owners.
And he would.
# # #
“You were certainly not exaggerating about the evils to be found in the territory, Mr. Hardcastle. It’s a simply dreadful place.”
Jed decided not to push them on today’s leg of their journey. He figured neither Tacita nor her pet were up to being pushed. Nor was he, for that matter. He was mortally glad she’d stopped shaking and crying, however. He was also determined to be kind to her, no matter how unflattering she got.
Therefore, when she disparaged the home of his birth, he only remarked mildly, “It’s not always so bad, Miss Grantham. We met up with a couple of hard cases today, but most of the people who live here are honest, even if they aren’t real civilized.”
He saw her shudder and the same urge to comfort her that he’d fought earlier in the day trampled through him. Damn. These soft feelings of his were getting to be a real pain in the butt.
She drew the brush through Rosamunda’s silky fur again. She’d been brushing that stupid rat of hers off and on all day long. “I hope you’re right. This journey has been terrible so far.”
“Don’t reckon I’d argue with you on that score, ma’am.”
He couldn’t figure it out, either. Picinisco he’d already written off to a quirk of a devilish fate. But that other fellow, that Farley Boskins, didn’t sit so easily in Jed’s memory. Sipping his after-dinner coffee from his battered tin mug, he reviewed the encounter in his mind. No matter how often he did so, it remained an enigma.
After he’d thought for a while he asked, “I don’t suppose you ever met up with that last fellow before today, have you, ma’am? Farley Boskins?”
Her head jerked up and she stared at him as if he’d asked her if she wanted to feed poison to her dog. “That ghastly gunman? I should say not!”
Unfazed by her vehemence, Jed persisted. “You sure? You ain’t—haven’t ever met up with him in Galveston? San Antone? He never worked for your pa or anything?”
“Good gracious, no! Why, I imagine I’d remember such a despicable character as Farley Boskins, Mr. Hardcastle.”
“Yeah,” Jed agreed, discouraged. “Reckon you would.”
“I should say so. Besides, my father would never hire such a man. He only employed men of the highest character.”
“Glad to hear it.” Jed took another sip of his coffee and studied the fire. It had burned down low now and the branches he’d piled up earlier glowed red-hot in the dark night. Trees circled the clearing he’d chosen and gave it a comfy, secure feel. The trees smelled good, too, their piney fragrance mingling with wood smoke and the left-over aromas of their cooking. Jed had opened a can of Picinisco’s peaches and roasted another couple of Picinisco’s steaks, and they’d dined well this evening. Through the branches overhanging his head, Jed could make out about a million stars, bright in the night sky.
The campsite was right pretty, actually, although Jed seldom allowed himself to dwell on anything as unproductive as nature’s beauty, particularly when he had mysteries to resolve. “What about your uncle, ma’am? Do you suppose he might have hired Boskins?”
“No! Why are you even asking such questions? That man today was a—a thug. Neither my father nor my uncle would have anything to do with him.”
Jed eyed her in silence for some minutes, pondering. He savored the silence as conducive to heavy thinking.
Tacita Grantham, however, as he’d noticed before, didn’t take much to long stretches of quiet. She got twitchy and broke into them as if they made her uncomfortable.
Sure enough, she did it again this evening before he’d finished sorting through his thoughts.
“Why do you seem to be insistin
g that my father or my uncle employed that creature, Mr. Hardcastle?”
“I’m not insisting on anything, ma’am.”
She seemed to be puffing up, and Jed knew she was getting mad. He’d also noticed before that when she got huffy she took a bunch of little breaths and kind of expanded. If he wasn’t otherwise occupied, he might have taken time to think it was a cute characteristic. He guessed she wanted an explanation and sighed heavily, unused to having to explain everything; most people took him on faith—and for good reason.
“You see, ma’am, Boskins appeared to be after something in particular.”
She shuddered and hugged Rosamunda. “I should say he was.”
Jed rolled his eyes and tried again. “No. What I mean is, he seemed to be after something specific. You remember what he said when he first saw us?”
“No, thank heavens.”
“Well, he said something like, ‘I’ve found what I was looking for.’”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
Tacita pursed her lips, an activity that made ungentlemanly ideas caper into Jed’s head like a troupe of prancing dandies. He shook them off, annoyed, and stared into the fire again.
There was obviously something wrong with him. He’d never been plagued by irreverent thoughts about his employers before. Granted, he’d never had an employer who looked like Miss Tacita Grantham; still, he was sure he must have a tic or something.
He wished he were home; his mama would give him one of her evil-tasting tonics and he’d be right as rain come morning. Of course, she’d also begin to pester him about setting a date with Amalie Crunch. A shiver rattled him, and he hunched over his coffee cup. He jerked to attention when Tacita’s voice penetrated his black musings.
“I said,” she uttered, evidently not for the first time, “‘What do you suppose that means?’ What is the matter with you, Mr. Hardcastle? You seem to be lost in a fog this evening. I do wish you’d pay attention.”
Jed glanced across the fire. He saw both Tacita and her mean-tempered pet frowning at him. What a surprise. He sighed again and reminded himself that he was supposed to be feeling sorry for them.