Tin-Stars and Troublemakers Box Set (Four Complete Historical Western Romance Novels in One)

by Rice, Patricia

  Cord let that wisecrack slide by too. With the train leaving in twenty minutes, he had precious little time to verify the names of Santana's contacts in the Mexican underground. Fancy had told him what she could, but her information had been sketchy—no doubt due to Santana's plan to double-cross her.

  Although there were few men in Mexico with the kind of money necessary to purchase all four minting plates, Cord knew he wouldn't have time to track them all if his plan to infiltrate the Wilkerson gang backfired.

  "Wilkerson's in Texas," he said to Santana. "I thought you might have an idea where."

  Santana cocked his head, as if trying to fathom Cord's reasoning. "Tejas? The bowels of el diablo? My condolences to Senor Wilkerson."

  Cord frowned. Slurs against his homeland never failed to fry his patience. He thought of Fancy, though, and how her freedom could depend on the information he gleaned.

  Somehow, he reined in his temper once more.

  "Who will Wilkerson try to sell those plates to?"

  Santana laid his cane across the table. "Ah yes. The plates."

  Leaning back in his chair, he steepled long, aristocratic fingers—fingers that looked too soft to dig a fence-post hole or plow a field. Cord had seen fingers like that before: They often belonged to men who destroyed what others built.

  "These plates are a popular topic among you federales." Santana wore the trace of a sneer. "It is the reward money, no? Three thousand dollars would seem like a fortune to a man who earns two hundred dollars a month."

  Cord felt his own lip curl. "I reckon you would think it's the money, seeing as how you'd sell your best friend." He couldn't quite stop there. "Or kill her," he added in a low, gravelly voice.

  Santana chuckled as if Cord's accusation were the most amusing of sallies.

  "Now we get to the heart of the matter. I must confess, mi amigo, I thought you a man of more discerning tastes, a man of loftier standards. But you have developed a weakness for my fancy little whore."

  "You sonuva—"

  Something inside Cord snapped. He sprang forward, and Santana leaped upright, his chair crashing to the floor. As agile as a viper, he grabbed his cane, but Cord ducked, blocking the blow that would have smashed his skull.

  "It's not the same when your victim fights back, eh, amigo?" Cord wrenched Santana's arm back. The cane went flying.

  "Guard!" the outlaw shrieked, his eyes dilating as Cord's fists closed over his collar.

  Santana was tall and rangy, but fury was pumping through Cord's veins. He heaved, dragging the writhing felon across the table.

  The door crashed open. "Cord!"

  He hardly heard Fancy's cry. He was too busy readying a fist to smash Santana's face in. He'd borne insults to his manhood, his profession, and Texas. But he would not stand by and let Fancy be used.

  "Marshal!" Two guards hurried into the room.

  "Madre de Dios, get Rawlins off me!"

  Burly arms wrapped around Cord's chest. "Back off, Marshal. Back off I say!"

  It took both guards to drag Cord from Santana, who rolled to his feet, crimson and wheezing. Determined to rearrange the outlaw's face, Cord strained for a moment longer, until he felt the stab of violet eyes from across the room. They cut through the fog in his brain like a hot knife through butter.

  "Diego! Diego, are you hurt?" Fancy rushed to Santana's side, her hands anxious and shaking as they searched for bruises.

  "No, my little dove," he panted, steadying himself against the table. "Shh, now. I am not in danger," he murmured in Spanish. He caught her fingers and pressed them to his heart.

  "It is you I worry for while you are in the custody of this mad-dog policeman."

  "Hell, Rawlins," one of the guards boomed behind him, "you trying to cheat the hangman of Santana's neck?"

  Cord shook the man off. His pulse was crashing in his temples, and his breaths were harsh and ragged.

  What the devil was wrong with him? He didn't beat prisoners. He didn't even call them names, most times. Yet he suspected that if he'd been given a second chance, he would have bypassed the collar and gone straight for Santana's throat.

  "Take him to his cell," he bit out.

  Santana staggered away from the table. He made up for his earlier show of fitness by letting his left knee buckle. The guards braced him. Sucking in her breath, Fancy hurried to retrieve the walking stick.

  As she swept past him, Cord felt her gaze knife through him once more. Her concern for Santana hurt—really hurt—and he was hard-pressed not to grab the cane from her hands and break it over his knee.

  Santana's using you, he wanted to shout. He doesn't love you, can't you see?

  He restrained himself, knowing he wasn't likely to change her opinion of him, much less of Santana, after what she'd just witnessed.

  So he stood there fuming, feeling cheated, monstrous and confused.

  That's when it hit him. It hit him harder than a cannon ball in the gut.

  I'm the one who's in love with Fancy!

  "Gracias, mi amada." Santana gave her an unctuous smile, but he didn't waste additional time by wooing what he clearly thought he'd won. He turned his back on Fancy.

  "I shall remember this night, Mr. Rawlins," he said in Spanish, his words made even more ominous by his deceptively pleasant tone. "And you will remember it also on the day I send you to hell."

  Cord snorted. He didn't put much stock in threats made by a man in stripes and chains.

  As Santana clanked down the hall, Cord picked up his hat and dusted it off. He used the moment to gather the nerve to face Fancy and her certain tirade.

  When he did, he was surprised by what he saw. She didn't look angry. She looked whiter than death.

  Chapter 15

  During the long ride back to Texas, Cord didn't say much about the fist fight. Fancy tried a couple of times to pry the full story out of him, but the best she ever got was a fierce glare and a snappish "Nothing happened that he didn't deserve."

  So what had happened? She had no illusions about Diego's part in the scuffle. Doubtless he had thrown cruel words one after the other like dueling knives until he'd hit Cord dead center in the heart.

  Part of her was angry with Cord for letting himself get bled. Another part was afraid for him. Diego was like a bulldog when he got vengeance between his teeth.

  Dear God, she thought. Didn't Cord know better than to betray his secret weakness to his enemies?

  Cord would be in dire danger it Diego ever got out of prison. A twenty-year sentence might be the most likely outcome of the trial, but a shorter punishment was also possible. Acquittal was too. What if she couldn't stop Diego from going after Cord?

  The idea frightened her. The fact that it frightened her scared her even more.

  Why was she so worried about Cord? Why was she being so disloyal to Diego? For heaven's sake, Diego was the man who had asked her to marry him.

  In truth, after seven years of waiting and hoping, she had secretly begun to despair. But after their four-month separation, Diego had realized how much he loved her. Prison had made him a new man—that's what he claimed.

  Well, she wasn't so sure, especially after the way he had threatened Cord. She supposed a man couldn't completely reform in four months—particularly a man who had as much reforming to do as Diego. But at least he had asked her to marry him. That was a good sign. Becoming Mrs. Diego Santana had always been her most cherished dream. She should be deliriously happy now that it might finally come true.

  So why did the prospect of spending her whole life with Diego suddenly seem so... ominous?

  She pondered that question a great deal on the journey back to Texas. She had little else to do, since Cord was so untalkative. He seemed to be concentrating on his strategy to locate Wilkerson and the plates. He'd made a hasty stop at the telegraph office just minutes before boarding the train in Carson, and he'd disembarked to visit the wiring stations in Abilene, Kansas, and in Dallas. Fancy had assumed he was hoping one of
the prison guards would have better luck interrogating Diego than he, and had followed his last-minute orders to wire the names of Diego's buyers.

  But Fancy didn't finally glean the full purpose behind Cord's errands until they arrived by stage at Fort Graham. Wes and Lally were waiting for them at the livery stable with horses.

  "Got your wanted poster just like you asked, Cord, hot off the press yesterday," Wes said cheerfully, although he still looked a shade too pale to be out of his sickbed. He tossed Fancy an uncharacteristically shy smile.

  "Reckon that poster was your idea, ma'am. And a darn fine one it was too."

  Fancy frowned. A poster would set Cord up as a target for every bounty hunter in Texas. Why would he risk his life like that when she could easily have vouched for him to Wilkerson? Uneasily, she sought Cord's eyes, but he was quick to avoid her gaze.

  "What in tarnation are you doing out of bed, boy?" he demanded, glaring up at Wes. "I can see clear to Kansas through that hole in your shoulder. Aunt Lally?" He turned to his bonnetted relative, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and scowled down into her sun-crinkled face. "Why isn't the boy back home healing, where he belongs?"

  "I'm no boy," Wes snapped before Lally could open her mouth. "And I am healed. I'm plenty healed. I'm not some no-account deputy who lollygags in bed while there're outlaws on the prowl. 'Sides. Someone had to keep Zack from turning vigilante. He's been madder than a rained-on rooster since we got twenty of our best steers rustled. He's laying odds the Wilkersons are to blame."

  Lally turned to Fancy and winked, raising her brows in mock despair. "I must apologize for my nephews, my dear. I really did try to raise them better."

  Planting her hands on her hips, she glared up at Wes and Cord both. "Where are your manners? Did it ever occur to you fine gentlemen that Miss Fancy could use a bit of help with her bags? Or that she might like a moment's peace after listening to clattering rails and galloping hooves for days on end?"

  "I just have my saddlebag," Fancy said, warming to Lally's thoughtfulness.

  "A saddlebag? Good gracious, child, you can hardly fit a change of shoes in that."

  "I'll get it," Wes volunteered, springing up onto the driver's box of the stagecoach.

  Lally glared at Cord again. "You mean to tell me you let this poor child travel across three states and a territory wearing nothing but an old beat-up shirt and a pair of patched jeans?"

  Cord pressed his lips together, and Fancy couldn't help but think he looked like a mutinous Wes.

  "It's not like I didn't offer to buy her some lady's clothes," he said.

  "Offered? Young man, you should have insisted."

  Retracting the finger she'd been wagging under Cord's nose, Lally caught Fancy's elbow and marched her toward the trading post. "Come along, Fancy. Looks like we womenfolk have some spending to do."

  Fancy wasn't given the chance to retreat. She wasn't even given the chance to protest. Lally haggled like a peddler, pointing at the store's only two skirts and shirtwaist blouses and barking orders to the blushing, bespectacled young man who scurried to find suitable drawers and stockings somewhere in the back room.

  Wes lounged against the counter. Grinning from ear to ear, he added his manly two-bits worth concerning the store's limited supply of unmentionables until Lally shooed him out the door.

  Cord had already made himself scarce.

  Fifteen minutes later, Fancy owned new clothes, thanks to Aunt Lally's generosity. The skirts, which turned out to be full-legged riding pants, had been tailor-made in Saint Louis for a Mrs. Montgomery, who had neglected to claim them when her husband was transferred to Fort Phantom Hill. Judging by the ample waists of the blouses, Fancy suspected she was about ten pounds lighter than the intended owner, but Lally assured her a quick needle could put the ensembles to rights.

  Cord was waiting for them by the family buckboard, which was loaded with bags of flour and other supplies for the ranch. Fancy hoped for a moment alone with him. She didn't want to alarm Lally, but she didn't like the sound of the plan he was hatching.

  Outlaw life was fraught with danger—not the least of which was a bullet in the back from another outlaw. Cord didn't need to bring the law down on his head as well. He was going to have enough trouble cheating and lying with the kind of conscienceless ingenuity that was necessary to keep himself alive.

  Fancy never got an opportunity to challenge him, though. Wes was too determined to play suitor. He found numerous reasons to hover at her side—carrying her armload of packages, assisting her across the quagmire that stretched before the livery, handing her up into the wagon. Lally winked as she settled beside her.

  "There isn't an unmarried girl within a hundred miles that Wes hasn't sweet-talked at one time or another," she said. "Best watch your heart, Fancy, or else that young skirtchaser will try and steal yours too."

  Fancy shifted uncomfortably. She wasn't exactly sure what Wes saw in her to make her worth his devotion—or to make him glare so fiercely at the brother he adored.

  If Cord sensed the challenge in Wes's manner, he didn't show any sign. Fancy sighed, chastising herself for her twinge of disappointment. What had she been expecting?

  Unlike Wes, Cord would never see anything in her worth fighting over. Not after she'd been so foolishly honest and told him she was a whore.

  Cord pressed the horses hard in his eagerness to make good time. Even so, the Barclay homestead was a good twelve hours away. Wes's gossip helped to pass the time, but his reminiscences of his brothers and their childhood scrapes made Fancy feel lonely. She began to realize just how much she had missed by being raised without a family.

  Oh, she had had her mother to look out for her every now and then, when Mama hadn't been angry with her for getting under foot or jealous of her for growing up too pretty; and she had had the whores to act as her older sisters when they weren't nursing their own bruises. But every one of them had been too afraid of Barrows to stop him from beating her or locking her up—or forcing his way into her bed on the night of her twelfth birthday.

  "You're a woman now," the whoremonger had jeered, "and it's high time you started earning your keep."

  She shuddered, remembering his rum-soured breath and sweaty hands, and the pain that seemed to go on and on, not just between her legs but inside her soul, as if it had been fouled and blackened forever.

  "Ma'am?"

  She started, blinking rapidly, and noticed Wes leaning down from his saddle. He was peering at her under her hat brim.

  "You all right, ma'am?" Worry etched his freckled face.

  "Did I say something wrong? You aren't, er... crying, are you?"

  "Of course she's not crying," Lally said briskly, but the glance she slid Fancy's way was motherly and full of concern. "You boys are forgetting this here's a city girl who's not used to the prairie sun. Seems like we ought to find ourselves a watering hole and give Miss Fancy a rest."

  "I'm fine," Fancy said quickly. "Really," she added, her face heating beneath Cord's appraising stare.

  "Reckon Aunt Lally's right," he said, shifting in his saddle. "A rest would do us all a bit of good."

  "Honey Creek's not but a mile or so to the west," Wes said.

  "Good idea, son. We'll stop there."

  Wes made a face, despite Cord's compliment. Fancy guessed Wes was taking offense to being called "son," even though Cord had used the term as an endearment, as he always did.

  Honey Creek proved to be a gushing torrent after the recent bout of spring thunderstorms. Wes, never far from her elbow, was quick to advise her another storm was on its way.

  "Hear them bullfrogs croaking? They're singing to call down the rain."

  Cord chuckled as he filled his canteen. "Son, that's nothing but an old wives' tale. You know that."

  "Gnats are swarming low to the ground too," Wes retorted. "Gnats aren't ever wrong about rain. Right, Aunt Lally?"

  Lally nodded solemnly, but she couldn't hide the twinkle in her eyes.

&nb
sp; Wes's mouth tightened.

  Fancy thought she'd better change the subject.

  "So tell me, Wes, where's Zack today?"

  He flopped down by her side among the blue and scarlet wildflowers. "Hard to say. He took some of the hands up north two days ago just in case them Wilkersons are hiding out near Comanche Peak."

  Cord's head shot up, his face dripping with a handful of creek water. "I thought I wired you boys to stay put and let me worry about the Wilkersons."

  "Well, you know ol' Zack. He's about as tame as a tabby until somebody messes with his beeves. Then he kinda turns into a tiger. 'Sides, someone had to nail up your wanted posters in case them Wilkersons come back this way. I shipped the rest to Sheriff Applegate, like you said."

  Fancy cast a sharp look at Cord, who was quick to evade it again. So that was what the wanted posters were for. With Cord's face hanging from every tree in Tarrant County, Wilkerson was likely to see the "proof" of Cord's crimes before the two men ever met.

  Cord probably thought those wanted posters were enough to gain him entry into Wilkerson's hideout, wherever that might be. But Wilkerson was really looking for her and her plates. Cord wasn't likely to get past Wilkerson's sentries without her.

  "So who is this Frank Harris feller, Cord?" Aunt Lally asked. "Some name you made up for the wanted poster?"

  "Naw, he's a counterfeiter," Wes said, "and a gambler too. He ran a saloon as a front out in Houston. Now he's serving time in Huntsville. That's why I put 'escaped' so big on the wanted poster."

  Lally quirked a graying eyebrow. "And how do you know so much about Frank Harris, young man?"

  "'Cause it's my job as Cord's deputy," Wes replied loftily.

  He scooted closer to Fancy and leaned toward her. "Reckon we got our work cut out for us, huh, ma'am? I mean, passing Cord off as a sharper ain't gonna be easy. He's not any good at dice or poker, since he won't cheat."

  "Thanks, Wes," Cord said dryly. "I reckon I'll take that as a compliment."

  "Wes does have a point," Fancy said, wondering how best to voice her reservations without alarming Lally—or exciting Wes. "Can you palm cards? Or shave dice?"