The hotel clerk eyed Jace askance until he spun register around to read the name his demanding had written there. The bony little man practically saluted him. “Yessir, Mr. Rankin. The bath is at the end of the hall upstairs, and I’ll send someone to order your steak over at Connor’s. They have the best food in—“
“Twenty minutes,” Jace reiterated and plucked room key from the counter. Then he turned trudged up the stairs to the second floor.
“Yessir, Mr. Rank—“
Jesus Christ, Jace thought, disgusted with all bowing and scraping his reputation had earned him. More and more often these days, he wished for anonymity. He wondered what it would be like to walk through a town without being called out by an unknown enemy or having men pull their wives and children aside when they saw him on the street, or fawned over by some cringing bootlicker.
After a boy brought up buckets of water, Jace sank into the wooden tub in a closet at the end of the hall. The hot water closed over him, and he scrubbed with bar of white soap and a brush. He wished he could wash off everything that had happened to him today. He had taken Tom Hardesty’s body to the undertaker, and had instructed the man to personally deliver the bill to Luke Jory. That would definitely bring matters to a head. Jory wouldn’t be able to ignore such an insulting challenge, and Jace had no idea when or where the response might come.
His revolver lay on a stool within easy reach. The most vulnerable moments of a man’s life were when he took a bath, sat in the outhouse, or made love.
Making love. Even now, despite everything that had happened, Jace had only to envision Kyla, beautiful, delicate, finely spun steel, and his body responded instantly. He lay back and closed his eyes. His mind took him on a journey over her ripe smooth-stopping briefly at her breasts, then moved along hips and her legs, and the slick moist heat that between them.
He groaned and sat up impatiently, splashing over the edge of the tub. He loved her, he wanted her, but fate had decreed that he could not have her. A deep sigh escaped him, and he felt as if a stone sat on his chest.
His regrets were mounting up.
* * *
Kyla slept very little that night. She had never minded her own company, but she felt miserably alone at the ranch house. She was almost sorry she had insisted upon staying here.
Although no ghost rose to haunt her conscience, Tom Hardesty seemed to have left his mark on everything in her house. Feeling as if there were no place to lie down, at first she tried sleeping on the floor in the parlor. But when that didn’t work, she gave up and began cleaning.
Late into the night she scrubbed and mopped and washed. The man had lived like a pig, and the kitchen alone took her hours to finish.
But the work didn’t take her mind off Jace. All while, her heart ached for him, as much as her anger him simmered. Ultimately, she blamed herself for falling in love with him. He was right, she told self—what kind of life could she have with him? Who would want a man who was smart and capable, so handsome that women on the street cast subtle sidelong glances at him? Why should she yearn for man who summoned such intense pleasure from her body that he could make her forget she had ever felt otherwise? And lastly, what woman would desire a man whose heart was an empty jar, just waiting to filled with love, if only he would allow it? But he wouldn’t allow it and she had to decide how to go on with her life.
She continued working through the night, her back and hands aching with the task.
Scrubbing Tom Hardesty out of her house.
Hoping to scrub Jace Rankin out of her heart.
Finally, just before sunup, with only a crescent moon and blue stars for company, Kyla stood in the yard, soaking the heap of Hardesty’s belongings with kerosene. Lighting a match, she tossed it onto the pile watched with grim satisfaction as flames engulfed every trace the man had left behind.
Jace would not be so easily banished.
* * *
“Mr. Jory?” Harvey Sewell approached Luke Jory’s table in the Pine Cone Saloon.
“Harvey,” Jory returned over the top of his paper. It gave him the creeps to have an undertaker around. He continued to sip his coffee and hoped that the man would go away.
Jory did not make a habit of frequenting saloons before noon, but he was looking for Tom Hardesty, and he knew the man was inclined to drop by here as soon as the doors opened. Tom’s drinking and immoderate habits were becoming a serious liability to the Union. He had his value, just as a vicious, snapping dog could discourage trespassers. And as with a wild dog allowed to run loose, accidents were bound to occur. The rape of that Cathcart girl was a good example. Tom had handled the emergency with the bounty hunter and the Bailey woman well enough, but he’d created the problem to begin with, and Jory believed it might be time to rein Tom in.
“Mr. Jory, um, Mr. Rankin said that you would probably like to know about this.”
Jory’s head came up sharply, and he lowered the newspaper, crumpling it beneath his hands. “Jace Rankin?”
Harvey held out a document. “Yes.”
All conversation in the saloon ceased.
Jory snapped the paper out of Harvey’s damp grip. It was a bill for five dollars. “What is this, Sewell?”
Harvey laced his hands in a show of deferential respect for the dead. “Well, Tom Hardesty is dead, Mr. Jory. Shot in the forehead. Jace Rankin brought him in last night.” He brightened then. “But don’t you worry—he’ll look all right for the funeral.”
Jory felt the blood leave his face. Rankin in Blakely. He was not supposed to have gotten this far. Hardesty had assured him that everything was under control and now he was laid out in Harvey Sewell’s back room. He shoved his chair away from the table and stood.
“What time would you like to begin Mr. Hardesty’s funeral?” Harvey inquired.
“Goddamn it, man!” Jory whirled on the cringing undertaker, fury boiling in him. “I don’t give a damn what you do with Hardesty, or what time you do it!”
Clenching his fists, Jory stormed through swinging doors. He jerked his horse’s reins from hitching post, and climbing into the saddle, wheeled the animal about.
By God, he would not let this pass without retaliation. One way or another, Rankin would answer for this.
* * *
Shortly after sundown that night, Jace sat on a hay bale in Jim Porter’s barn. He had called for a meeting with some of the Midnighters to let them know about Hardesty. He didn’t tell them that Kyla had shot him. If she wanted them to know, he figured it was her business.
“How many men does Jory have?”
“About twenny-five or thirty, I guess,” Ivan Kluss offered glumly. “And they’ll be on us like ants on a sugar loaf now that Hardesty is dead.”
“And how many Midnighters are there?”
“About the same,” Jim Porter said, absently twirling straw between his fingers. “Maybe a few less.”
This wasn’t good news, Jace thought. Most of these men were farmers and ranchers, not hired killers with nothing better to do all day than target practice.
“We need to raise more men, even ten or fifteen more. Can we do that?”
“Well, I dunno,” Jim said. “Everyone’s so scared of the Vigilance Union it’s been hard to get most of ’em to help out. They’re afraid of rilin’ up Luke Jory.”
A sense of futility washed over Jace. Damn, why had he let himself get talked into this? If these people wouldn’t even help themselves— In order to succeed, he had to think of a way to rouse these people, to make them see beyond their fear to an ultimate goal. They were counting on him to make everything right, as if he could fell ten men with each bullet he fired and they need do nothing. Yet for all that they seemed to expect of him, he sensed their lack of trust.
He sighed with mounting impatience. “If you people want to get rid of Jory and his thieves, you’re going to have to—”
Just then a loud banging sounded on the barn door. Although it was in code, two short and two long, it reverberated through the caverno
us building, and brought everyone to their feet and their weapons.
Jim opened the door and on the other side, Ivan Kluss’s young son panted, "Everyone . . . come quick . . . the—the Springer place . . . is on fire! I saw the flames . . . from our kitchen window!"
Jace felt as if his heart had stopped. He took deep breaths but didn’t seem to be getting any air. “God . . . Kyla.” He turned to them. “Kyla is out there by herself!” He charged through the group and ran his horse, fear gripping his chest with a cruel fist. The crescent moon provided little light, but a lurid glow lit the southern sky and he cut across Porter’s field and rode toward it.
As he spurred his horse, he cursed himself from there to Sunday and back. He never should have walked away from her and left her at that ranch alone She was stubborn and willful, but he should have gone back after he delivered Hardesty and stayed with her, whether she wanted him there or not. Now, Jory and the vigilantes could have stolen her again or set fire to the house, too.
The smell of smoke drifted to him on the breeze. Pushing his horse faster than he should in the darkness, he splashed through a creek, hoping that the animal wouldn’t step in a chuckhole and snap a leg. Behind him, he became aware of hooves thundering after him, and he turned to see some of the Midnighters drawing close.
By the time they had galloped into Kyla’s bright yard, the barn was a yellow-white skeleton, engulfed in flames that seemed to brush the belly of heaven. Waves of heat carried on the wind, and cinders floated on the hot drafts. There was nothing that anyone could do but watch the fire consume the building. At least the ranch house had been spared.
Jace circled the house twice looking for Kyla before dismounting to search inside. He bounded up the steps and grasped the knob to turn it. “Kyla!” he called, walking through the parlor. Fear licked through him like the fire outside. No lamp was lit, but the barn provided plenty of illumination.
Just when he began to fear the worst, that she had been taken, he heard her voice, thin and scared, from a darkened corner of the kitchen.
“Jace?”
“I’m here, honey,” he said and groped for a match inside his pocket. When he lit it, he found her huddled beside the stove, white and scared, with her revolver in her lap. Their eyes connected, and with a cry she sprang from the corner into his arms. She felt so small and fragile, especially now that she was dressed in women’s clothes.
“Oh, Jace—they came just after sunset. I saw them,” said, her voice muffled against his neck. “It was Jory and some of his men. I was so scared they’d take me again, I hid by the stove.” He heard the disgust in her words, as if she had failed somehow. God, she had more courage than the twenty grown men who met in Porter’s barn.
“Was there any shooting?” he asked.
She shook her head. “But I was afraid they would fire the house, too. I don’t know if Jory ever saw me, he yelled up this way, saying that the Vigilance Union would destroy the Midnighters. And that no one, not even Jace Rankin, could do anything about it.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. But for now, we’re going to the hotel. We can’t stay here.”
Grateful for his strength and protection, Kyla didn’t argue. It had been foolish, she realized now, to stay out here alone. She had assumed that her only threat had been Hardesty and that Luke Jory would have no interest in her.
He gave her a moment to get some clothes together. Then with an escort of Jace and the Midnighters, Kyla set out for town.
Among the men who rode with them through the dark night, she detected a new energy, an anger that had not been there before.
“Damnation, if those bastards are goin’ to start burnin’ houses and barns, we won’t have nothin’ left!”
“It’s time they was stopped.”
“Don’t you worry, Kyla,” Jim Porter assured her. “When this is over, we’ll build you a new barn.” To Jace he added, “This is somethin’ that affects everyone—I’m thinkin’ you won’t have much trouble getting people to help you now. Barn burnin’ is as bad as horse theft in these parts.”
Kyla was also assured that some of the boys the neighboring ranches would see to her cattle until this trouble was behind them.
The streets were quiet when they reached town, there was a vague feeling hanging over Blakely, as everyone held a collective breath, waiting to see what might happen next.
Staring down the disapproving glare from the desk clerk, Jace took Kyla directly upstairs to his room. Though more concealing, her soft skirt and blouse did not offer as much camouflage as had the jeans and work shirt he had expected her to wear.
“I’m not going to put you in another room and then spend my time worrying about someone breaking in,” he said, opening the door. “Your safety is a hell of a lot important than a desk clerk’s opinion of your reputation.”
Strange that the bed loomed so large in here, she thought, and glanced away from it. She had spent weeks alone with him, in circumstances even more intimate than this, so her own shyness baffled her. As if reading her thoughts, his eyes connected with hers, deepening to blue smoke before he broke the contact.
“It’s late, so you, um, you take the bed and I’ll just, uh, bunk here,” he said, gesturing at a settee against wall.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he should sleep here on the bed next to her, as he had in Misfortune. But that would probably be a mistake, given the sudden awkward desire that had vibrated between them. He waited in the hallway while she stripped to her camisole and drawers, and climbed beneath the covers. When he came back in, she had already turned down the lamp. Then she lay stiffly in the darkness, listening as he searched for a comfortable place on the settee.
Kyla had not expected to see Jace again. She knew she was safe from harm now. But her heart was once more in critical danger.
* * *
When Kyla awoke the next morning, Jace was already gone. She found a heavily laden breakfast tray and a note from him telling her that he might be gone for hours, but to admit no one except him. She would find her revolver on the bureau, cleaned, oiled, and loaded. And under no circumstances was she to leave this room.
She went to the window and looked at the street below. Saturdays were always busy in Blakely, particularly around harvest time. But on this morning the streets were empty. Still, a sense of expectation lingered, just as it had the night before. Some of the shades on the shop windows were pulled although the clock in the bank’s window read nine-forty. Even the Pine Cone Saloon was closed. At least it wasn’t serving the general public, although she saw members of the Vigilance Union straggle into the saloon and not come out again.
She gripped the windowsill. Something was coming—it was as vague yet as tangible as an approaching thunderstorm.
As the hours wore on and Jace did not return, Kyla felt her nerves being stretched to their limit. Was he safe? What was happening? She knew she could not defy his instructions and leave this room, but she began pacing.
At dusk, she was dozing on the settee by the window when the sound of horses’ hooves and the jingle of bit and bridle stirred her from her nap. She sat up straight and looked out the window, and her jaw dropped.
Below in the street she saw scores of mounted riders approaching. They rode calmly but fully armed down the main street of the dusty little cow town. Each carried a lighted pine knot torch and the street was lit as bright as day.
“What in the world . . .” Kyla began, and then she saw him. There was Jace Rankin at the head of the procession of what looked to be about eighty men. Eighty Midnighters! She recognized original members, but also saw many men who had previously hung back out of fear of reprisal. With her throat as dry as chalk and her heart pounding in her chest, she craned her neck to see. The riders halted across the street and amassed in a semicircle outside the Pine Cone Saloon.
“Jory, you murdering barn burner!” Jace’s voice ricocheted off the buildings like rolling thunder. “Bring out your cattle rustlers and fight!
The Midnighters are calling you out!”
A breathless thrill rippled through Kyla—she had never been so proud of anyone as she was of Jace at moment. Even though she watched from the second floor, he sat his horse as if he were ten feet tall. And with his strong leadership, the others had finally been galvanized into taking action.
No sound came from the saloon, although she saw a window shade move aside, as if the coward within were peeking at his conquerors.
“Come out, Jory!" Jace called again, and now the rest began to take up the chant. “Jory! Jory! Jory!”
Still no one emerged from the Pine Cone Saloon. After an hour, Kyla watched with a knot in her throat as Jace climbed down from his horse and mounted the steps the in front of the saloon. He faced the men he had brought here, his eyes gleaming like fire and ice.
“See what cowards the vigilantes are?” He gestured at closed doors behind him. “Are you men ready to take back your town from these egg-sucking weasels, and make it a decent place to live again?”
A cheer rolled through them, heartfelt and plainspoken.
He nodded and turned toward the saloon. “The Vigilance Union is dead!”
Then from the back, someone yelled, “They’re gettin’ away! They snuck out the back of the Pine Cone!” A few of the group broke ranks to chase after them.
“Let ’em go!” Jim Porter called, standing in stirrups. “Let ’em go! There’s no place in this county where those men will be able to show their faces again. Blakely will never let them come back.”
Kyla’s eyes welled up with tears as she watched from the window. The tyranny that had gripped this town for so long had at last been defeated.
And they had a bounty hunter with a killer’s reputation to thank for it.
* * *
It was decided that Kyla would linger awhile at Jim Porter’s place until she could hire hands to return to her ranch with her. Although Jory and many of men were seen riding out of town between sunrise and morning, there was no point in putting herself danger again.
In front of the hotel the next morning, Jace took Kyla’s hand in his. “Well, I guess this is good-bye,” he said.
Desperate Hearts Page 26