One of the men dismounted. When his feet hit the ground, her first bullet struck the earth only a foot away from his boots. He jumped and froze all in one motion as she yelled out, “Get back on your horse!”
“Crazy woman! You could have shot me!”
“I could’ve killed you, but I don’t want your dead carcass poisoning my land.”
The silently watching Griff was impressed. Her offensive tactics had obviously caught them off guard. The men seemed confused and angry. It was quite obvious she didn’t need his help; at least, not for the moment.
One of the men still mounted yelled up, “Mr. Darcy just sent us out here to make sure you were all right, Miss Jessi. Everybody knows about the problems you been having, with your cows being butchered and all. He’s just being neighborly.”
“And my name is Sam Houston,” she called down sarcastically. “Tell Darcy I don’t need his help, and tell him the next time he sends you boys over to be neighborly, I won’t be so hospitable. Now, get!”
A rider replied cockily, “If we wanted to, we could burn this place to the ground.”
“Not before I send you to hell you won’t.”
Griff wondered what in life had made this woman so rawhide tough.
She then declared, “I’m counting to ten. Either be gone or be dead.”
She started counting real slow. “One!”
The angry man stood his ground for a while, but as the number reached five, he took hold of his horse’s reins and mounted up.
Her voice chimed out eight, accompanied by the sound of her rifle being primed.
Darcy’s men reined their horses around. “We’ll be back,” one threatened.
“I’ll be waiting,” she promised.
They rode off toward the horizon and disappeared into the night.
Griff stepped away from his hiding spot and looked up to the roof, where she stood against the moon. It bothered him that he still couldn’t make out her fetures. As if assessing him too, she said nothing for a moment, then told him, “You can bunk on the porch. Pump’s out back.”
Griff nodded and went to his mount to fetch his gear.
When he awakened the next morning, the sun was already up, and there was a young light-skinned boy of about ten bent over him, staring down curiously through a pair of spectacles. Griffin held the watching pale brown eyes for a moment, then asked gruffly, “Can I help you, son?”
“You’re Kansas Red!!”
Griff’s eyes widened hearing the declaration. Shit! So much for anonymity. “No, I’m not,” he denied, getting out from beneath the blanket. Dressed in his Union suit, he began a search for his pants.
“You are, too. Texas Red, Kansas Red, Oklahoma Red. You’ve got a lot of names.”
“No, I don’t.” Griff dragged on his pants and wondered if anybody would miss this tall, thin kid if he suddenly disappeared.
The boy disagreed. “I’d know your face anywhere. Seen it a million times in Wanted bulletins.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
The kid folded his arms and stated flatly, “I am not.”
Griff didn’t see the lady of the house standing behind the screened front door until just then. He held her unreadable eyes, wondering how much she’d heard. As she stepped outside onto the porch, he got his first good look at her.
The fierce-talking woman on the roof last night had a face so uncommonly beautiful it was jaw dropping: rich chocolate skin, a lush, full mouth. She was of average height and Texas slim. She dressed like a ranch hand, though—a man’s shirt, denims, worn boots. Her dark hair was cropped short like a young boy’s and there were small gold circlets in her ears. Like most women of the race, it was impossible to gauge her age, but if the lines beneath her serious dark eyes were a true indication, she hadn’t slept in weeks.
As if she’d let Griff look long enough, she turned her attention to Griff’s tormentor and asked, “Have you finished your breakfast?”
The kid, still staring Griff’s way, shook his head no.
She told him gently, “Then you need to do that and get to school.”
Griff could almost touch the affection in her voice. After last night’s encounter, he’d not thought her capable of such softness.
The boy looked up at her and said, “Okay, but I’m not wrong about him.”
He gave Griff one last look, then went on inside.
After they were alone, she asked, “Is my nephew correct?”
“About what?” The minute the words came out of his mouth he wanted to take them back. She was smarter than that and so was he.
“Your identity,” she replied.
Griff knelt to reroll his bedding. “Does it matter?”
“Yes. I like to know with whom I’m dealing.”
“I served my time,” he said, by way of explanation.
As if that was all she wanted to know, she stuck out her hand like a man. “Name’s Jessi Clayton. Thanks for backing me last night.”
“Griffin Blake.” He shook her hand.
“There’s coffee and food on the stove.”
He found her dark beauty a fascinating contrast to her manner, and her handshake as firm as any man’s.
“Where are you headed?” she asked then.
“Nowhere in particular. Looking to make my way down to Mexico eventually.”
“Good luck then,” she stated, in a voice that imparted both dismissal and departure, then went back into the house. She didn’t ask at all about Bob’s possessions.
Griff shook his head. He sensed it was not going to be as easy to infiltrate her life as Dix and Judge Parker assumed it would be. He also wondered what a beautiful woman like her had been doing with a murderer like Calico Bob.
Griff went inside. As he wondered where she’d gone, he followed the smell of bacon to the back of the house and found the kitchen. At the table sat the boy.
Griff didn’t say anything as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
The boy said, “My name’s Jotham. Everybody calls me Joth.”
Griff offered a small smile. “Pleased to meet you, Joth. I’m Griffin Blake.”
“That your true name?”
“Yep. How’d you know about my other names?”
“I collect Wanted posters. Got maybe three of you.”
“Why do you collect them?”
“My pa’s Calico Bob, and it’s the only way I know what he’s been doing. I don’t see him much. I heard you say last night that he was dead.” He paused. “Is he really?”
Griff observed the boy. Had Joth been the person Jessi Clayton had called down to alert last night when Darcy’s men had come calling? Since Griff had yet to meet anyone else in the household he could only assume it to be true. A boy had no business in the middle of this, but then, Joth had been the one to write to Dixon for help in the first place.
“Yes, son, he is.”
He didn’t think it was his place to be discussing something like this, but the boy had asked and Griff had been eleven once too—he wouldn’t have wanted to be lied to.
“You ever met my pa?” the boy asked softly.
Griff studied Joth and wondered how the boy felt about the death. He sensed a sadness behind the spectacled eyes. “A couple of times, yeah, I did.”
Evidently Joth had no intentions of revealing his true feelings, at least not to Griffin because he then changed the subject. “You planning on staying around here a while?”
Griff took a sip of the strong coffee and found it good. “Maybe. I’m looking for a job.”
“You could work for us, except we can’t pay you. Aunt Jessi and I don’t have a lot of money. We could sure use the help, though.”
“With what?”
“Reed Darcy. He wants to take our land.”
Jessi Clayton entered the kitchen then. Once again Griff noticed how beautiful she was. “Jotham, finish your breakfast. School’s waiting. Please excuse my nephew, Mr. Blake, but he needs to get going.”
Joth fin
ished the last of his meal and took his plate to the sink. “Hope I’ll see you later, Mr. Blake.”
Griff looked over at Joth and into young eyes he’d seen before in a dream. He shook off the odd sensation even as he wondered how this boy figured into his life’s path. “Same here, Joth.”
Joth gathered up his slate and left the kitchen, and his aunt followed. While she was gone, Griff looked around. He saw only the bare essentials: table, chairs, a few lamps. There were no frilly curtains, no throw rugs on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, none of the knickknacks women seemed to collect, but beneath each window stood a well-oiled rifle and a box of cartridges. The two kitchen windows that looked out on the front of the house were framed with heavy shutter doors. The back door had been outfitted the same way. Other windows had been boarded shut. There was a ladder leading to a hole in the roof and a big bucket beside it which he assumed had been positioned to catch the elements. The interior looked as if it had been stripped down and prepared for war. The place resembled more of a hideout than a home. He could almost feel the strength of the battle the woman and the boy were waging. According to Dix, Darcy’s power and his hired guns had forced many of the people around here to sell him their land; he probably wasn’t pleased about being defied by Joth’s rawhide aunt.
She returned to the kitchen pulling on a pair of gloves. “I’ve fences to mend, Mr. Blake. I trust you won’t rob me after I’m gone, and can see yourself out when you’re done here?”
What a woman, he thought to himself. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Again, good luck wherever you’re headed.”
“Thanks.”
After she rode off, Griff washed up his dishes and the boy’s too, and placed them on the sideboard to dry. He’d been on his own a long time and he always left the trail behind him clean. When he was done, he poured himself another cup of coffee and sat down to wait.
Jessi came back two hours later, smelling of horses and cattle, and hauling a mess of freshly caught fish. As soon as she saw him sitting in the kitchen, she asked, “Why’re you still here?”
He shrugged. “Coffee’s good.”
“Did you drink it all?”
“Yep, but made more.”
She dropped the fish in a barrel of water by the sink, then poured herself a cup. She took a wary sip, knowing very few men who could make a brew decent enough to drink. “Not as good as mine, but it’ll do.”
In response he gave her a smile that seemed to bring sunshine into the dreary light of the kitchen. That he was a handsome man of the race there was no denying. He had dark auburn hair, which he wore long and tied back with a piece of rawhide, reddish gold skin, and light topaz eyes. The red gold beard and mustache added a dangerous edge to his already arresting looks. He looked younger than Jessi’s own thirty-two years but was a man who could probably pick and choose his women whenever he had a mind to. She also guessed that that magnificent smile probably fluttered female hearts whenever and wherever it appeared, but Jessi considered herself far past the age of fluttering. “You haven’t answered my question.”
He shrugged his lean shoulders. Griff instinctively knew he was going to have to tell her the truth. She was not your standard female; there’d be no pulling the wool over her eyes. “I was sent here.”
Jessi stilled. “By whom?”
“Hanging Judge Parker and Deputy Marshal Dixon Wildhorse.”
“Judge Parker up at Fort Smith?”
Griff nodded.
“Why on earth would Judge Parker send you here?”
“To help you with Darcy.”
Jessi didn’t understand. “Why?”
“Because you need it, and because Parker wants to put Darcy in jail.”
“Then why doesn’t he just send someone down here to arrest him?”
“The judge needs more evidence.”
“And that’s why you’re here, to gather more evidence?”
“And to help protect you and the boy.”
“Tell the judge thanks, but Joth and I don’t have time to play Pinkertons.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Of course I have a choice,” she said over her cup.
“Not you don’t, because neither do I.”
She eyed him skeptically. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, if I don’t help you, I have to go back to the Kansas Penitentiary.”
Jessi stared. “What?”
So he explained it to her. Griff reasoned that if he confessed everything now, it would save them both a lot of arguing. He was wrong.
Jessi put down her cup. “They sent me a convicted criminal to help catch an unconvicted criminal?”
“That about sums it up.”
“What were you in jail for?”
“Train robbing. Mayhem.”
“Ever kill anyone?”
“Nope. Not real partial to guns.”
Jessi felt frustration rising. “Then if they were going to send me someone for protection, don’t you think it should’ve been a gunslinger?”
“I suppose, but you get me instead,” he replied, flashing that smile again in the hopes that it would melt her heart as easily as it did most women’s.
When she didn’t smile in return, he offered tersely, “Could be worse. They could’ve sent you a riverboat gambler.”
“This is not funny, Mr. Blake.”
“Never said it was, but looks like we’re stuck with one another.”
Not if she could help it. Because of her ties to Calico Bob she’d met more outlaws than she ever wanted to remember, and not one of them cared a horse’s shoe about life or property unless it was his own, and now she was being told by this stranger that she would have to bring another outlaw in home. “How do I know you’re really who you say you are?”
Griff reached inside his double-breasted shirt and handed over the letter from Judge Parker.
A skeptical Jessi took the missive and read it. It introduced Deputy Marshal Griffin Blake and asked for her cooperation. “Why didn’t you say this last night?”
“The judge and the marshal thought it might be better if you didn’t know who I was at first. Give you a chance to get used to me being around. They assumed you’d be grateful to me for bringing Bob’s things and give me a job.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that,” he echoed.
“Well, the only thing I’m grateful to you for is the news that he’s dead.” She handed the letter back to him. “I don’t need anything else from you.”
“Like I said before, you don’t have a choice. I am not going back to Kansas. So where do I bunk?”
Jessi wondered if he were deaf. “Listen to me,” she told him, speaking slowly, as if he were a child. “I do not want you here, I will not have you here. I do not need your help.”
“Sure you do. Look at this place. I’ve seen hideouts with more frills.”
“If you want frills, Mr. Blake, I’d advise you to look elsewhere. I run a ranch, not a fancy boardinghouse.”
“Then how about the boy? He shouldn’t be growing up like this.”
His words hit a nerve, making her reply coldly, “I don’t need you to tell me about my nephew’s life. I know how hard this is on him, and if I could change it, I would. Right now, we’re too busy surviving.”
“Then take the judge’s help, stubborn woman,” he said, his own frustration rising. “Even Joth can see you’re up to your neck in white water.”
“Meaning?”
“I’m here because Joth wrote Marshal Wildhorse and asked for help.”
Jessi stared.
That got her attention. “So, where do I bunk?”
“Joth wrote for help?”
“Smart boy, I would say.”
Jessi didn’t know what to do or say now. Parts of her desperately wanted to take the branch of hope being offered by Judge Parker, but the end of the stick was being held by a man who’d known Calico Bob, and Bob couldn’t’ve been trusted to bring water to a dying c
hild. Blake’s assessment of Joth’s life had touched a nerve though; she too, worried what effect this fight with Darcy might be having on him. Her nephew was at an age now where he should be out riding his pony, fishing, hunting lizards, and just enjoying life as she and her sister, Mildred, his mother, had done in their youth. But things were just too dangerous now, and with Darcy and his men always lurking, Jessi refused to let Joth out of her sight.
She would still be escorting him back and forth to school had he not begged her to stop treating him like a baby. But in a way, he was her baby. When her sister had died in childbirth, the recently widowed Jessi had given up her teaching position in New York to come home and raise him. When she was young, a severe case of the measles had left her sterile, so she would have no children of her own; Joth represented the only family she had left in this world, and she loved him as much as life.
“Look, Miss Clayton,” Griff said, interrupting her thoughts. “If we can get the goods on Darcy, I’ll be out of your hair and you’ll be out of mine. Personally, I don’t like these arrangements any more than you do. I rob trains. That’s what I do best. Even though I don’t like men who declare war on women with children, I’d much rather be in Mexico. But I can’t get there until this mess is settled. So why don’t we declare a truce for now and you tell me about Darcy?”
Jessi thought that a reasonable idea. Once he heard the story, maybe he’d hightail it on out of here.
She began with the town meeting Darcy had called to announce the railroad’s desire to buy land in the area.
Blake asked, “Was there much opposition?”
“Not at first, because we thought we had a choice to sell or not. Some folks signed on, most didn’t. A week or so later, Darcy announced that we all had to sell, or no one would get anything. That’s when the trouble started. He pitted neighbor against neighbor—those who wished to sell against those who didn’t. Many people still refused and were paid visits like the one I had last night. If that didn’t intimidate you, Darcy’s bank denied folks credit for seed and equipment and he called in mortgages. Most gave in. My pa didn’t.”
Taming of Jessi Rose Page 3