by Maren Smith
Shifting slightly, a leap of irritation tic-ing along his jawline, Captain Everson came to a formal and unrequired attention. “Crystal. Sir.”
“Splendid. Seeing as you have delivered your warrants and they are now being dispatched, I suppose you’ll want to be on your way.”
Garrett’s smile thinned in time with Everson’s. “No,” the captain demurred. “I believe I’ll stay long enough to make sure the warrants don’t mysteriously vanish the minute I ride out of town.”
Judge Johnson smiled now too. He did not take his eyes off the captain. “Sheriff Justice?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I want Stone and Paquah brought before me within the hour, if you would. Oh, and arrest Millicent Crankshaw. I want her high-falutin’ ass parked in one of my jail cells before nightfall.”
“For what?” Captain Everson demanded.
Judge Johnson held up both warrants. “Material witness,” he informed the man. “She started this brouhaha. By God, she’s going to be here—and as inconvenienced as I can possibly make her—for every minute of it!”
“I think I saw her and her husband at the mercantile.” Deputy Slade looked to his boss. “Oh, please. Please let me do it.”
“Sorry,” Sheriff Justice said, without the slightest hint of apology. He dropped his hat onto his head and tapped the badge on his chest. “With great responsibility comes those rare few moments when the performance of one’s job can be a real pleasure. For me, this is it, and I’m taking it.”
A light tap at his arm was all the notice Gabe gave Garrett before he turned and started back around the jail. His long-legged steps were much quicker now than they had been when he’d been trailing in Garrett’s shadow. Now it was Garrett who had to jog to catch up.
“We’ve got problems,” Garrett told him, as softly as he could, painstakingly aware of all the people drifting curiously out of their homes and businesses to watch the cavalry dismounting in front of the jail.
“They’re bigger than you know,” Gabe replied.
“Bigger than a military captain with delusions of grandeur?” Garrett shot back, eyebrows arching. “Because I’ve seen enough of those to recognize an overstuffed peacock when he starts to puff out his uniform. And that—” He pointed behind them. “—was one hell of a peacock.”
“Yeah? How’s your experience with a brothel full of women about to take matters into their own hands?” Gabe indicated with a nod ahead of them, which was when Garrett suddenly noticed that both the street in front of the Red Petticoat and the entire upper balcony which had, just a few minutes before been chock-a-block full of laughing, flirting, and cheering ladies of the night was now completely void of anybody at all. The windows were closed, the curtains and shutters drawn, and there was now a closed sign hanging on the swinging saloon doors.
“Oh…” Garrett said. “Oh hell.”
Gabe nodded grimly. “You have no idea.”
But he was about to, and they both knew it.
Chapter Seven
“Does Lydia know?” Gabe demanded as he pushed past the closed sign hanging on the main doors, but one look at the situation unfolding along the bar and Garrett knew she had to know. Neither John nor Charlie could be seen, but of the five gems who were present, the women were in such a state of frenzy that it was obvious everybody knew.
“Ain’t nobody taking my baby’s babies,” Nettie said hotly, loading shots into one of the oldest rifles Garrett had ever seen. The way she cocked it gave him no reason to believe it wasn’t every bit as lethal as it sounded. Three very somber gems spread out along the bar to either side of her. They were also loading rifles.
“The windows and doors are already locked,” one told Gabe.
“This is horse shit!” another declared.
“Forget shooting soldiers,” the only red-head among them suggested. “We ought to shoot Millicent.” She looked to her sisters for support. “This whole thing’ll blow over then, right?”
“Put the rifles down,” Gabe told all of them. He snapped his fingers at the now frowning red-head. “I mean it, Ruby. If any of you fires so much as a warning shot, no one will be sitting before Christmas. That’s a promise!”
The faint creak of a floorboard above them caught Garrett’s ear. He barely glimpsed the curl of a few stray chestnut wisps curling around a familiar pale face and the widening of startled green eyes before Lydia ducked back behind the upper-floor railing, into the shadows and out of sight.
Garrett ran for the stairs even as the stampede of her footsteps tore across the ceiling and down the hall. “Lydia!”
He took the stairs two at a time, noting which door Lydia ducked behind just before the blonde madam slammed it shut.
“Aw, Gabe…” whined one of the women in the saloon below.
“Guns on the bar, Dottie,” Gabe ordered. His voice promptly dropped to a deeper level of authority as he warned, “Nettie, I swear to God. Amy, pistols too. Where’s Jewel?”
“Upstairs. Helping Lydia pack. We have to get her out of here before the soldiers arrest Paquah!”
“What good will that do?” Gabe countered, just before erupting into a long string of spat out Spanish, followed by, “Nobody bolts faster than a gem, I swear!”
Very much aware that behind any of these bedroom doors there might lurk a well-meaning dove packing iron, Garrett made his way cautiously down the hall.
“Jewel!” Gabe called as he came up the stairs, also two at a time. “Querida…” But his dark eyes were flashing and that endearment held all kinds of warning.
Garrett flattened himself against the wall to let the fuming Mexican pass by, but the door at the end of the hall did not open. Quite the opposite. They both heard the very distinctive clatter of the bolt lock being shoved into place.
Gabe stalked the length of the hallway, swearing under his breath as he went, and he didn’t stop until he reached that bolted bedroom door. He braced his hands to either side of the jamb, leaning heavily against it, the heat of his stare boring into the unyielding wood. The air in the hall grew heavy and in the strained silence that followed, Garrett heard two things. He heard the knuckles in Gabe’s thumb pop as he flexed one hand, and on the other side of the door, he heard a nervous young woman whisper, “Is th-that Mr. Gabriel? D-Did Mr. Gabriel come upstairs?”
When Gabe turned to look back at him over his shoulder, Garrett made sure he wasn’t smiling. He nodded instead. This was a matter of man-to-man solidarity. He was all about that sort of thing. He gestured for Gabe to proceed.
“I’m not going to count to three,” Gabe warned as he fixed his dark gaze once more on the door, “I’m not even going to count to one…”
A scramble of shadows blocked the light from under the threshold as three different women jumped for the lock. As soon as it opened, Gabe pushed inside and Garrett followed, a quirk of amusement pulling at his lips.
“I like this place,” he told Jewel as he slipped past her. “Amazing, the things you can learn just by watching other people.”
Jewel blushed, her blue eyes sparking just a bit. That faint trace of anger vanished, however, the instant Gabe turned on her.
“Guns?” he growled. “Really?”
Jewel’s eyes sparked all over again, this time locking full on Gabe. “Nobody hurts my girls,” she said, soft but fierce.
“Who are you going to point those guns at?” he demanded, closing the distance far enough to loom over her. “The soldiers? What happens then, eh?” All dark skin and dark eyes and the kind of rapidly darkening temper that made his hands close fast on her arms, he gave her a stern shake. Jewel gasped, her eyes widening, and she was definitely paying attention when he spat an answer to his own question. “They point guns back at you, that’s what happens! And maybe then they shoot, did you think of that? This isn’t a game! Those aren’t let’s pretend cavalrymen! Those are the real thing and they will pull the triggers!”
“They’re going to take my son,” Lydia said, for the fir
st time since the men had come into the room.
She was huddled near the window, an open carpetbag on a short table, already hurriedly half packed. Stockings hung out of one end, while the leg trouser of a small boy’s pants hung over the other. She’d emptied her chest of drawers and she’d done it in a panic. That much was evident in the way three of the four drawers now lay scattered and empty on the floor all around her. Her ladies’ trousseau was also empty, the hairbrush and handkerchief now absent from the dressing table where they had been earlier. A bottle of perfume lay broken on the floor under the stool where he had brushed her hair.
Lydia herself wasn’t much more put together. Her voice was deep, falsely calm with a faint tremble underlying her words as she said, “You heard them. You heard what they said. Over my dead body, Gabriel. Over my dead body.”
“What good will that do?” Garrett softly countered. “Would you really leave your son without a father and a mother?”
She locked her burning gaze on him next. When he took a step towards her, she instantly took a step back. It wasn’t until he saw her skirts moving that he noticed the small hands that clutched her from behind. Paquah peeked at him from around her hip, his too-young face somber rather than scared. She quickly shifted to block him from Garrett’s view. Her head was lowered now. A matador’s bull, angry and wounded, pricked by one too many swords, and he was the only red cape in view. Painting on a smile, Garrett stepped forward far enough to let her know he would be her willing target, if that was what she needed.
She retreated, pressing her son protectively into the corner between herself and her table. She remained angry, though. She remained wary too.
His heart ached to see it. If only she’d let him close enough to touch her, perhaps even hold her. Soon. She would warm to him soon. His smile gentled, and it was not lost on him that gentleness seemed to unnerve her. Her wariness intensified.
“I want everyone downstairs,” Gabe said, releasing his grip on Jewel. “Where’s Charlie?”
Subdued, not quite sullen but not far from it either, Jewel said, “He caught Silver loading rifles with us. He didn’t like it. They’re having… a word.”
“He should have had a ‘word’ with every one of you,” Gabe told all the women. Only a few had the grace to look chastened by the threat. “When he gets back, I want you to give him all the guns. If it can fire a bullet, it better not be in the Red Petticoat by the time Deputy Slade gets here. Also, I expect every single gem to be on her best behavior or I’ll know the reason why! Now, move!”
The women jumped to obey, all but Lydia, who retreated another half a step, backing her son all the way up against the wall and the window, with its fluttering drapes reaching out to catch at them and all the sounds of the soldiers being ordered to dismount, put up the horses, and locate suitable lodgings filtering inside. By nightfall, the hotel would be full and so would the Bentley’s Inn.
“They can’t have him,” Lydia said fiercely.
“We’re not going to let them take him, either,” Gabe replied.
“Not without a fight,” Garrett added. “But when you’re fighting soldiers, you have to do it in a very specific way if you want to win with your life. Crawling out a back window with a suitcase in one hand and your boy in the other, that ain’t the smartest way.”
“How would you know?” she countered, lifting her chin. “If I’m gone before the deputy gets here…”
“They will follow you,” Garrett finished for her.
“I’ll disappear!”
“They’ll find you.”
“How could you possibly know—”
“Because I was one of them once,” Garrett told her, the sharpness of his tone cutting off her objection just as fast as it seized her attention. “I was a soldier for more years than I’m proud to admit. I know exactly what they’re going to do.”
“Get out,” she hissed and snapped around, picking up Paquah and clutching him fiercely close. Her eyes shone as she spun to the window, clinging to her child as she stared helplessly out through the fluttering drapes. “Just get out.”
Garrett advanced on her. Gabe did as well, but Garrett’s attention was focused entirely on her and the trembling he could see in her hands as she ran them up and down Paquah’s back, alternately soothing and clinging. “You can’t run from this, Lydia.”
“I said, get out!”
“Not until you listen to—”
She rounded on him so fast, he actually took a step back. He expected her attack, but he wasn’t prepared for her to do it with her son still in her arms. She flung her bag, spilling its contents in a wide arc all over the room and sending the bag itself flying into the far wall. It bounced off and hit a lamp, sending both tumbling to the floor. The lamp broke, spilling oil everywhere, but that didn’t stop her from swinging at Gabe next.
“I don’t have to listen!” she spat. “I don’t have to—”
She stopped with a squeak when Gabe caught her wrist. Gabe stopped just as fast when Garrett clamped his large hand onto the Mexican’s wrist. The two men looked at one another.
“Nobody hurts my girls,” Gabe warned, echoing his partner’s earlier sentiment, but this time for different reasons.
“I was just starting to like you, too,” Garrett warned back, and smiled. “I won’t hurt her if I don’t have to. If I do have to, it’ll be only what she asks for and only as much as I know for a fact you yourself have already done. Chin lives with me, remember.”
Gabe studied him, silent, eyes narrowing.
Lydia twisted to free her arm, but neither man let go. They stared one another down, entire conversations passing between them without a single spoken word. Eventually, the hard line of his mouth thinning, Gabe switched his grip from Lydia’s wrist to Paquah.
Her eyes widened and she tightened her hold. “No!” She shook her head, a whole new kind of desperation taking hold of her. “No, no!”
“Come on,” Gabe said to the little boy rather than to her, refusing to use him as a tug-o-war toy but gently drawing upward until she reluctantly allowed him to be lifted away. “I’ll bet Nettie has some molasses cake hidden in the kitchen somewhere. Let’s go see if we can snag a piece while your mama talks to this nice man.”
The look Paquah shot Garrett as he was carried out the door said he clearly harbored doubts regarding Gabe’s assessment of Garrett’s character. It was a look Lydia echoed. Still, Garrett couldn’t resist.
“He must be warming to me too,” he said with a grin. “He called me nice.”
Lydia didn’t even crack a smile. “He said the same thing about me once.”
“Aw, now you’re just fishing for compliments.” He narrowed the distance between them, although there wasn’t much space to begin with. “If only you’d started out that way instead of throwing things, then I could right now be making an absolute fool of myself telling you how pretty you are. How your eyes are green as sweet clover and new spring grass. How I wake up every morning wondering if today’ll be the day you let me run my fingers through all that long, beautiful hair of yours.”
The mounds of her breasts rose high above the constraining line of her tightly corseted dress as she breathed in. Hiking her chin, she took a defiant step back. “You had your chance.”
“I reckon you think I wasted it.” He followed, matching her step with a slightly longer one of his own. She had to retreat two more to get the same measure of distance back between them.
Her chin rose higher, as high as she dared let it go without looking ridiculous. “You could have done anything you wanted, and what did you do? You paid me twenty dollars and played with a silly hairbrush.”
“You keep throwing tantrums and I might just have to play with it some more.”
Nearly tripping over a discarded shoe, Lydia maneuvered to the other side of the small table and promptly put a chair between them. “Lay one hand on me and I swear I’ll gnaw it off at the shoulder.”
“Sweetheart—” Taking hold
of the chair, he removed the obstacle from between them, spinning it from back to front, and thunked it firmly down beside him. “—anything you chose to give me, I will treasure forever. Including love-battle scars.”
Her jaw dropped. “I don’t love you!”
“Ah, but you are warming to me. I’ll take my successes where I can get them.”
Her whole body stiffened. She wasn’t aware that he’d closed those last few inches between them until his fingers glided over her hand to fasten firmly upon her wrist. She jerked her arm up, but he didn’t let her pull away very far.
“What are you doing?”
“Talking to you.” He pulled her to him as if her arm were a ribbon and she, the most expensive and fragile porcelain doll that ribbon was attached to.
She tried to pull back, but it was a feeble effort. All the anger she had swaddled herself in just moments before, she could feel it draining out of her and that scared her. Nobody ever thought of women as strong and that was what she most needed to be. She had to be strong, because if she wasn’t—if she weakened—they would take Paquah and who knew what would happen to him then! So why couldn’t she stay angry when she needed to be most? Why couldn’t she lash out—physically or verbally—at least enough to knock him back and break free?
“I don’t have time for this.” Her voice shook.
“No, we don’t,” he agreed. “We’d get a lot more accomplished if you were willing to cooperate.”
She had no trouble getting mad then.
“Get your hand off me!” She wrenched her wrist out of his grip and then struck. Her fist bounced back off his shoulder with all the effectiveness of a pillow punching a bed. Only this particular “bed” damn near broke her “pillow.” The pain made her leap back more than it did him. She jerked sideways, trying her best to shake out her smarting hand behind her skirts so he wouldn’t notice. That split second of distraction was all he needed to reclose the distance. This time, he wasn’t smiling.