That's why Jesse knew that Cass wouldn't stand a fighting chance if the manhunter caught up with Cass in Ellerbe's jail.
Preparing to save his hotheaded friend, Jesse readied his peashooter and gauged the angle to Ellerbe's glass. Another advantage to the bursage seed, he mused, was that its color resembled sipping whiskey. With any luck, Ellerbe wouldn't notice the missile until it pricked the inside of his mouth. At that point, the sedative would already be working.
Jesse fired his first shot. It struck Ellerbe in the hollow behind his ear, causing him to swat at his neck—a reflex that only embedded the seed's spines further into his skin. Ellerbe muttered about biting flies, then pricked his fingers yet again to pluck the missile from his neck. Jesse waited for the usual oath of surprise when the seed was discovered, clinging to a fingertip.
Thus, while Ellerbe was distracted, cursing the "cockleburr," Jesse fired his second shot into the whiskey glass.
Cass raised his eyebrows. After riding with Jesse for 11 years, Cass was well acquainted with "Injun tricks," as he liked to call them. Wiping the smirk from his face, the outlaw distracted the lawman from the seed that was floating just below the surface of the whiskey in his glass.
"Aw, quit being such a crybaby, Ellerbe. I got half my wardrobe riding on his hand. The least you could do is man-up about a cockleburr. Drink your girly whiskey and throw down a card."
Ellerbe snorted, reaching for his glass. "You're little better than a savage, Cassidy. It doesn't surprise me that you lack the wit to appreciate the finer things in life."
Ellerbe tipped the whiskey and swallowed.
His face reddened. He began to sputter. Fishing around his mouth with his forefinger, he eventually produced the seed that had jabbed his tender gums.
"Where the devil are all these cockleburrs coming from?"
Jesse smiled to himself and leaped down from his horse. Now all he had to do was wait.
After a judicious 15 minutes, Jesse tried the handle of the jail's front door. Ellerbe had locked it. Glancing once over his shoulder to make sure the street was still deserted, Jesse drew the widdy that he'd stashed in the heel of his boot. Within seconds, he'd picked the lock.
He found Ellerbe's six-shooter and rifle still hanging on the wall. The marshal himself was sprawled beside his barrel, snoring.
Cass barely glanced up as Jesse retrieved the keys from Ellerbe's hip. The Texican had been passing the time, sipping Ellerbe's whiskey and studying the backs of the pasteboards. When Jesse finally stepped over Ellerbe to unlock the cell's door, Cass shoved aside the cards with a grimace of disgust.
"I think that bastard marks his cards, Lynx."
"A tarnished tinstar?" Jesse said dryly. "Imagine that."
"A Texas Ranger wouldn't cheat," Cass insisted, plunking his Stetson on his head and gathering up the rest of his belongings.
"Did that sipping whiskey go straight to your head?"
Cass snorted.
"By the way. You took your sweet time getting here."
"You're welcome," Jesse told the younger man dryly.
They rode southeast through the night, heading for the hills. Cass wanted to continue onward to Tennessee, because Ellerbe had spun some yarn about the border town, Whiskey Bend, which was notorious for running off every lawman who had ever tried to civilize it.
Cass wanted to see what was so "jo-fired terrible" about those "Tennessee hooligans" that made tinstars tuck their tails and run. In the back of his mind, Cass still nurtured his childhood dream of becoming a law unto himself as a Texas Ranger. The trouble was, certain circumstances from Cass's youth had conspired to keep him out of Texas, and thus, the Ranger force.
Eventually, as the sun was beginning to tint the horizon a dusky rose, Cass and Jesse stopped to water their horses at some backwoods stream, shaded by black willows and cottonwood trees, and teeming with breakfast—which proved to be trout.
As Cass brushed down his horse, Jesse stripped naked for his daily Go-to-Water ritual. Although he'd been raised as a Christian in his Irish father's house, Jesse kept the ways of his grandmother's people close to his heart. He honored his elders. He believed in the kinship of All Things. He honored the spirit of the land and the creatures that dwelled within it.
Wading waist deep, he dunked himself beneath the current seven times, before chanting his morning prayer in praise of the sun. He gave thanks to the Great Spirit that had let him survive another night, helping him elude poison ivy, rabid coyotes, and tenacious bounty hunters.
Then, as he did every morning, Jesse prayed that he might be forgiven by anyone whom he'd wronged.
As usual, an unsettling vision of Bedroom #2 swam before his eyes. Wincing with guilt, he dunked his head to wash away the scene. He hated that he couldn't remember what had transpired between him and Polly Coltrane on that fateful night, three months ago, in Wichita's Golden Galleon Casino and Saloon.
But now he had a plan. A plan sent straight to him by Great Spirit. If he wanted to befriend Seraphina Jones—and more importantly, if he wanted to convince her to use her half-sight to help him—he had to ditch Cass.
Ever since the idea of training Tempest had occurred to Jesse, he'd known that Cass would be a liability. He had considered all the honest rationales and all the truthful entreaties that he might use to keep Cass away from Sera. But by the time Jesse had left the apothecary's shop the afternoon before, he'd realized that Sera was too important to his plan. He simply couldn't announce to Cass that he was riding off to Blue Thunder to woo a White woman who might be able to clear his name. Cass's fanciful nature would dream up a goddess and conspire to meet her.
Cass possessed what the Cherokees called, "Coyote Medicine." In matters of the heart, that meant Cass could chat up any female over the age of 12 and make her beg to be tumbled: wealthy spinsters, lawmen's wives, Catholic novices... Hell. Cass could seduce a bride on her wedding night (and if the wager was right, he would.)
No, Jesse would be wasting his breath, warning his whoredog of a friend away from a tempting little lamb, like Seraphina Jones. The only sensible solution was to keep Cass out of Blue Thunder. That's why Jesse had been wracking his brain all night long for some plausible excuse to ditch Cass. At least through the summer.
Dragging a burning stick from the campfire, Jesse lit his cigarette and waited for Cass to finish currying his gelding, which he'd dubbed Abilene, because that's where he'd stolen the bay two months earlier.
"Hey, Lynx. You wanna know what Irma told me?"
Not particularly.
But Jesse humored his friend. Irma ran one of Stanford's less reputable "boardinghouses," where Cass had gotten himself arrested.
"Are we talking about before or after you jumped up on the faro table to challenge Ellerbe's deputy to mumblety-peg?"
Cass had the decency to redden. "How was I supposed to know that McFarland was a deputy? He wasn't wearing a star. 'Sides. There oughta be a law against stretching green fuzzy stuff on top of faro tables. It looks too much like grass."
"That baize didn't look anything like grass."
Cass was carrying his bedroll toward the campfire. Spreading his blankets across from Jesse, Cass sat and propped his back against his saddle. "What the hell is baize?"
"The green stuff stretched on top of faro tables."
"Yeah?" Cass stripped off his duster and started patting his vest pockets for a cigarette. "How do you know a thing like that?"
"I know a lot of things. Like, when your vision starts to turn fuzzy, and you see grass growing where there isn't any, you shouldn't be throwing knives."
Cass snorted at this reference to the mumblety-peg incident.
He reached his hand over the campfire, and Jesse passed him his cigarette. Cass took a long draw, then exhaled with a satisfied sigh. "You always did roll a smoke better than anybody I know."
"You always did bum more smokes than anybody I know."
Cass flashed his winsome smile. "That's 'cause I like you."
"Now doesn't that make me luckier than a man who dropped a basket full of mirrors?"
Cass chuckled, tapping the ash into the fire. "I reckon I could always change my mind about liking you."
"Uh-huh."
Jesse hid his smile, watching Cass balance his pitch-colored Stetson on his knee and critically inspect the felt for damage. Cass, who had never had more than $20 to his name, took special care to overcome his White Trash heritage by dressing with a gentleman's flair. He was sheathed from head to toe in articles of black clothing, all of which he'd deliberately set out to win in a game of chance or a shooting contest. The effect was to make his sun-bleached, collar-length hair look whiter than snow, and his fancy, hand-tooled spurs look brighter than silver flames.
"So what did Irma tell you?"
"Oh, yeah. Irma."
Cass's cagey blue eyes shifted back to the fire—which was Jesse's first clue that Cass was contemplating mischief. A man couldn't ride beside another man day in and day out, year after year, and not know the meaning of every twitch, blink, and Poker tell.
"She said no one likes a whore who acts like a whore. I reckon she'd know."
Jesse tensed. He knew precisely whom Cass was talking about, and he didn't want to encourage the topic.
But Cass took Jesse's silence as an invitation to jump into dangerous waters with both feet. "There were some real nice Injun gals at Irma's. A couple China Dolls, too. They could have petted you, and rubbed you, and made you purr like good ol' Lynx again. The fact is, when you took your own sweet time breaking me out of jail, I was hoping you'd been holed up at Irma's place."
Jesse's jaw twitched. Yanking his red bandanna from his neck, he wrapped it around the handle of the steaming, iron pot that perched on the coals. His poor-man's substitute for coffee—dandelion root mixed with chicory—was beginning to boil over.
Cass waited expectantly.
Jesse maintained his stubborn silence.
"It ain't natural for a man to go without for as long as you have," Cass prompted.
"Compared with you? Sure. I reckon ten minutes of alone time would seem unnatural to the 'Rebel Rutter.'"
Cass smirked. "Can I help it if the Dodge City Messenger started writing that rubbish about me? Those gals at Wicked Wilma's have a twisted sense of humor."
"Uh-huh."
"Look. All I'm saying is, you ain't been yourself since Wichita and... well..." Cass lowered his voice, glancing furtively over his shoulder for the law. It was a habit that renegades didn't easily break. "That woman sold her soul to the devil long before she rolled you."
Jesse steeled himself against the familiar, sick feeling whenever he thought of Wichita. Or more precisely, of Polly Coltrane.
There was no denying that he'd been angry when Polly had rolled him for his craps winnings; or that rotgut had dulled his natural instinct for circumspection; or that he'd climbed upstairs to her bedroom to demand the return of his stolen purse.
But had the rotgut made him angry enough to strangle her?
That was the question that still plagued Jesse's mind three months later. He couldn't remember what had happened after he'd entered Bedroom #2 at the Galleon. All he could remember was a lump the size of a quarter on the back of his head. That, and the icy shock of water that had roused him the next morning from the bedroom floor. Aass's frantic face had swum above his.
"Polly got herself killed. We gotta run!"
As if guessing his train of thought, Cass slid him a sidelong glance.
"You need to stop pitying some thieving whore and get pissed about Taggart," Cass insisted, tugging a tin cup from his saddle bag and filling it with the dandelion brew. "Really pissed. You know, like old times. The way you used to get about the Klan. Otherwise, you're gonna walk straight into one of Taggart's bullets."
Jesse fidgeted. He was loath to admit it, but he did have a rage burning in his belly. He'd faced enough injustice in his life, thanks to the Ku Klux Klan and all the atrocities that he'd suffered as "an Injun mixed-blood," that he'd become a powder keg, ready to explode.
But Cass's unspoken assumptions about Polly's death troubled Jesse. They troubled him more than his blackout. Self-doubt had rattled the very foundations of his soul. He needed more from his best friend than a false alibi. He needed Cass to believe in his innocence.
He avoided Cass's searching gaze.
"You know how I feel about clearing my name," Jesse said.
"Reckon I do."
The silence lengthened between them.
Jesse cleared his throat.
"There's some land east of here that's sacred to the Cherokees. I'm going to visit it. Go on a Vision Quest."
Cass grimaced into his cup of bellywash. "How long will it take this time?" he grumbled.
"Probably the whole summer."
Cass coughed and sputtered, spraying dandelion juice into the campfire.
"Too much chicory?" Jesse asked dryly.
"Four months!" Cass finally wheezed.
"I reckon you can't rush Great Spirit."
"Great Spirit, my ass. You saw Taggart back in Stanford."
"Nope."
"You know I always know when you're telling a windy."
"That may be. But you're barking up the wrong tree this time."
Cass shook his head in exasperation. "If I told you once, I told you a hundred times, Jess. I'm not letting you face that bastard alone."
"I appreciate the sentiment. But I'm going on a spiritual retreat to purify my soul. I'm not going on a manhunt."
Cass glared at him for a good, long minute. Jesse returned his gaze evenly.
Finally, Cass grunted and turned back to his cup.
"You've never been on a Vision Quest that long before."
"I never thought I might have killed a woman before."
"Smoking peyote and chanting at the moon is supposed to help you remember what happened in Polly's bedroom?"
Jesse refused to be baited. "I reckon."
Cass scowled. "Well, I don't like it. 'Sides. There ain't any women in the mountains."
"You don't have to like it. And you don't have to come. Go find yourself a nice boardinghouse. I reckon Tennessee has a couple of those. Just do me a favor. Keep your ornery hide out of jail."
Cass's lips quirked with a glimmer of amusement as he stared into the fire. He blew the steam off his bellywash. Jesse could almost see the greased wheels of Cass's Coyote mind working.
"The thing is, Lynx... I wasn't entirely honest with you about Whiskey Bend."
"Is that a fact?" Jesse arched an eyebrow. Cass was never entirely honest about anything. But the fact that he would admit it, without provocation, set off alarm bells in Jesse's head.
"You remember Uncle Bartie?" Cass drawled.
Jesse's eyes narrowed. Black Bart had introduced them to their rustling career. He'd taken two teenage greenhorns under his wing, building their trust in him as a father figure, and then, a year later, had set them up to take the fall for the stage coach robbery in which Old Taggart had died.
To the best of Jesse's knowledge, the other three men in Bart's gang were dead, thanks to Thorn Taggart. Bart, however, had gone underground, disappearing with a strongbox full of $20,000—the payroll of an Arkansas mining company.
"What about him?" Jesse demanded.
"Ellerbe told me that Bart's something of a legend to the scoundrels who terrorize decent folks across the border, in the hills of Claiborne County."
Jesse's smile was mirthless. He knew what Cass driving at. "If Bart isn't living high on the hog in Tennessee, then he already spent the loot, or he got separated from it. Either way, it doesn't sound like he has that $20,000."
Cass shrugged, sipping his bellywash. "Maybe. Maybe not. The fact is, I have a mind to pay ol' Uncle Bartie a visit. Remind him of his obligations to his family."
"So you're going to ride into his hillbilly hideout, guns a-blazing, eh?"
"One riot, one Ranger."
"Bad idea, Cass."
"Did your Great Spirit tell you that?" Cass arched an insolent eyebrow.
Jesse scowled at Cass's smug, Coyote look. Not only had Cass called his bluff, he'd backed him into a corner.
"Wait until September," Jesse urged.
"Sure. 'Cause tracking renegades through the mountains during a blizzard is such a good idea."
"You're chapping my hide, Bill."
"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."
Their eyes locked once more. Jesse had no doubt that Cass was in deadly earnest about confronting Bart. And while Cass drew faster and shot straighter than Jesse could, Cass was one man. Jesse couldn't let him face an entire gang of outlaws by himself.
"All right," Jesse relented grudgingly. "August."
A triumphant smile tugged the corners of Cass's mouth. He tossed the dregs of his bellywash into the fire and repositioned himself on his bedroll, stretching out his long legs. Then he tipped his hat over his nose for a snooze.
"You've got until June 1st, pardner," he drawled. "Tell your Great Spirit, 'Howdy,' for me."
Chapter 3
Ten Days Later
Whitley County
Kentucky
"The problem with Blue Thunder," Seraphina Jones confided to her new best friend, "is that it's so beastly boring."
Tempest snorted, tossing her head against Sera's tight grip on the reins. Sera imagined that the filly was nodding in agreement.
"Last month, a black bear wandered down from the mountain to run amok in the residential district. The Trumpeter ran headlines about that bear trampling clotheslines. Isn't that ridiculous? A savaged pair of bloomers might have been newsworthy. But a muddy quilt?" Sera blew a curl off her forehead. "I'm living in Prude Town!"
A squirrel dashed through the leaf litter beneath the hardwood canopy. Tempest's ears flattened, and she skittered sideways, crashing into a gooseberry bush. Sera gritted her teeth as twigs snapped, jabbing her calf through the spring-weight tweed of her split riding skirt.
"Squirrels," she chided Tempest, "do not eat fillies. Not even the silly fillies. Present company included."
Seduced by an Angel (Velvet Lies, Book 3) Page 3