The Halsey Brothers Series

by Paty Jager

  “What would I have to talk to you about?” she asked, hoping Charles didn’t see them wandering off alone. She would rather not find out the relationship between this man and Gil than face the wrath of the gang leader.

  When they were out of sight of the cabin, he stopped and looked around.

  “Are you spying on me for Gil?” he asked, letting her go and leaning against a large pine tree.

  “Gil? Why would I be spying on you for him?” She stepped closer to him. His lips were curved in a smile, but his eyes fixed on her like two hot daggers.

  “He’s here to take me back to my Pa. I don’t want to go back.” He leaned forward and cupped her chin in his hand. “If you have any notions of getting away and telling him where I’m at you better get them out of that pretty head of yours.” He bent forward and kissed her.

  Darcy pulled back and sputtered as she wiped her arm across her mouth. “Don’t you ever do anything like that to me again!”

  He laughed. “You don’t act like no prostitute to me. I figured you wasn’t, ’cuz he don’t hang around that type of woman. Where’d Gil find you?” He stepped close again.

  She backed up and found herself against a tree. He smiled and moved toward her.

  “Pete? Pete where’d you and that girl go?” Red called from a short distance away.

  “We’re over here, but stay back she ain’t through relieving herself yet.”

  Darcy felt her face heat from embarrassment. She still needed to use the bushes, but with this randy man watching there was no way she’d lift her skirts. And now Red thought Pete was getting an eye full.

  She turned and headed in the direction she’d heard Red’s voice. Fighting her dress as it caught on the underbrush and wrapped around her legs, she realized she needed different clothes when her chance came to get away from these men.

  The first problem was finding someone she trusted to watch out for her while she did what she came to the woods to do. She found Charles over by the horses.

  “I can’t do my business with these two sniffing after me like male dogs,” she said, pointing to Pete and Red who followed her all the way to the boss.

  Charles growled and looked at her. After they stared at one another for a few minutes he waved his arm. “You go out there. I’ll keep these two busy.”

  She headed into the trees.

  “But if you ain’t back in a reasonable time, I’m letting them come looking for you.” The glint in his eyes told her they would be allowed to do anything they wanted if she wasn’t back in good time.

  Darcy gulped and hurried out into the woods. After relieving herself, she hurried back to the cabin, plotting to get her hands on some clothes and get out of there by the same time the following day.

  *****

  Gil hadn’t felt so wound up and eaten with guilt since his parent’s death. He’d let his desire take over and not talked to Darcy about what she’d planned. Now she was missing and possibly a captive of robbers.

  I should have stopped her.

  He looked over at Jeremy. The boy had chattered nonstop since they’d left town the following day. Gil had wondered if the boy would shut up long enough for them to both sleep when they bedded down.

  He smiled when Jeremy glanced over at him.

  “Don’t worry, she’s alright. You don’t know Darcy like I know her. She’s tough and she’s smart.” Jeremy smiled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she jumps right out of the trees at us.”

  Gil smiled. “I wish I had your confidence. These men find out she’s the marshal, there’s no telling what they might do to her.” The color faded from Jeremy’s face, and Gil mentally slapped himself.

  “She’d know better than to tell them if they didn’t know.” He looked over at Gil. “Was she wearing her badge last night?”

  Gil thought of the dress that barely covered her shoulders and breasts and groaned. “No, she was dressed like a saloon girl.”

  Jeremy grimaced then smiled. “She was playing a part, wasn’t she? She’s done that before. They won’t know she’s the marshal unless she wants them to. She’ll be a saloon girl until she can get away.” He laughed.

  “She played the part of a preacher’s daughter in Astoria. We didn’t have nothing to eat and no money to buy anything. Darce took a dress off a clothesline and went up to this church. She said how she was so and so’s daughter from the Baptist church in a small town we’d just passed through and that she’d found me hungry and hurt alongside the road and wondered if they could spare some food for both her and me.

  “They took us in and fed us and gave us a place to sleep for a week. We helped them with chores and were eating good until one day the lady said I looked like a boy she’d heard had run away.” Jeremy’s gaze hardened. “We knew if we hung around any longer he’d find us. So we lit out that night after Darcy put the dress back on the clothesline where she’d found it.”

  “Who would find you?” This wasn’t the first time Gil had wondered at their past.

  Jeremy looked straight at him. “Our uncle.” His voice seethed with hatred.

  “Darcy said you didn’t have any living kin.” Gil wondered what other things she’d lied about.

  “We don’t. Kin don’t sell their own to a whore house or treat children like rabid animals,” he spate the words like venom.

  “Your uncle did this to you and Darcy?” Gil had run into some downright ugly people in his life, but not one so low as to do that to kin. “Why?”

  “He told our dying parents he’d take care of us, so they wrote up a paper giving him all their money and belongings to care for us.” His face reddened as he relived the ordeal. “The first thing he did was sell Darcy to a whore house.”

  She’d been an innocent last night. He cringed. She’d made it away from a whore house only to have a drifter with nothing to give her take her innocence.

  “She knocked a man over the head and ran away. She stole into our uncle’s house and took me. I was so hungry, I could barely walk.” His eyes lit with pride. “She carried me till we found a wagon that took us far from there. She said nothin’ would keep us apart ever again. Nothin’”

  Gil looked away. He saw the accusations in the boy’s young eyes. Jeremy hadn’t said anything, but he knew Darcy and Gil had spent time together the night before. What Jeremy didn’t know, were the feelings his sister stirred.

  He didn’t even know himself what those feelings were. It was something he’d never experienced. He’d bedded a few women, but never had he wanted to make love to them as he had with Darcy. There was something about her that set his whole body on fire when he looked at her, or heard her voice. His groin ached just thinking about her. With luck, this aching he had for her would run its course, and he could move on without yearning for her touch.

  He sighed and Jeremy looked at him. His face heated. If the boy knew the thoughts he had about his sister, Jeremy’d have every right to deck him. Looking into a face so much like Darcy’s, Gil’s heart squeezed. He wanted to be a part of their lives. To be a part of the inseparable feelings they shared. It was something he’d never missed until he witnessed it between the brother and sister.

  Since meeting the two, he’d done a lot of thinking about his brothers. What they were like. If they still lived at the mine. If any were married and had kids. He shook his head. No sense thinking about family. They’d made it pretty clear the day he left they didn’t care what he did. His stomach knotted. He didn’t blame them. They wouldn’t want to have a reminder of what had happened to their parents hanging around.

  “What you thinking about?” Jeremy broke into his ruminations. The concern in his young voice nearly choked Gil.

  “Nothing important.” Gil reached over and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. He liked spending time with the boy. And the sister.

  He thought of holding Darcy and waking up every morning with her in his arms. It was a pleasant thought. One he’d tried to ignore since he found out she was a girl. If he brought back a wi
fe instead of Pete, he wondered if Pete’s father would still consider him for the foreman’s job. It would make him more root-bound. He ran a hand over his face and blew air out between his lips.

  If the other hands knew what he was thinking they’d be hootin’ and hollerin’ like a bunch of liquored Indians. Whenever they raised hell in town, he stayed at the ranch and helped them to bed when they came in too drunk to take off their boots. He’d sworn to the whole lot of them he would never get tied up by a woman.

  He was still a little shy of the idea. In theory it sounded darn good, but could he actually stay true to one woman and one place?

  A flash of gray and red in the trees to his left caught his attention. He stopped his horse and tapped Jeremy on the arm, motioning for him to be quiet. Listening, he heard the sound of two horses picking their way through the underbrush. Gil turned his horse that direction.

  Cautiously, they moved through the trees and brush. At a small clearing, he spotted Craven on a bay gelding. The crook led a black horse with a packsaddle into the trees on the far side.

  “How come he ain’t with the posse no more?” Jeremy whispered.

  “Good question. Let’s see where he’s heading, especially since this isn’t the direction he led the posse.” Gil wanted to catch up, but didn’t want to be seen. They skirted the edge of the clearing, staying just inside the tree line.

  He stopped when he spotted the horse with the saddle standing alone near a thicket. Gil slid off his horse and handed the reins to Jeremy. He whispered, “Stay here while I take a look.”

  Crouching and using the brush to hide, Gil slipped silently through the underbrush. He approached the sound of digging. A man cursed just a few feet from him, and Gil dropped to the ground. He pushed a limb to the side.

  Craven wielded a shovel digging a hole. Sweat drizzled down his jowls as he worked. He wiped at the rivulets with his shirtsleeve and set to scooping more dirt from the hole.

  Gil remained on his stomach watching the overweight man slowly make a hole up to his knees and twice as big around as his body.

  Craven crawled out of the hole and walked over to the packhorse. He pulled out a canteen and tipped his head back. Water ran down his chin and jowls, darkening his clothing. When it appeared he’d swallowed nearly all the container could hold, he capped it and looped it over a tree branch.

  Craven pulled twenty white sacks about the size of a bread loaf out of the packsaddle and piled them on the ground. They appeared to be the kind used by assayers to hold gold. He carried two at a time over to the hole and dropped them in. The way the bags pulled on Craven’s arms, they had to be full of gold.

  When all the bags were in the hole, Craven covered them over with dirt and stopped to drink the rest of the water in his canteen.

  Jeremy had to be getting fidgety as long as Gil’d been gone, but Craven didn’t seem to feel he had any reason to hurry. As though he knew the whole town was miles the other direction. Craven finally rolled down his shirtsleeves and put his jacket on. Walking over to the packhorse, he grabbed the lead rope and headed to the saddled horse.

  Gil stayed on the ground until Craven mounted and headed through the trees. When the man was out of sight, he approached the hole and scanned the surrounding area. He broke limbs all around the hole, pointing them down to the freshly dug dirt. Then he pulled a small bush and planted it in the hole, to make sure either he or Jeremy could find the spot after they had Darcy safe.

  He returned to Jeremy. “Do you know how we got here?” he asked, mounting his horse.

  “Yeah.”

  “Craven buried gold sacks over here.” He led Jeremy to the spot and pointed out the bush and broken limbs. “One of us will need to come back and dig it up after we have Darcy safe and Craven is locked up. Look around good so you can find it if I’m unable to come.”

  The boy looked at him, but nodded solemnly and looked his surroundings over with a critical eye.

  Gil spurred his horse forward. He knew which way Craven headed. The man wasn’t getting out of their sight. He had to find Darcy. Bringing Pete back and securing the foreman’s job no longer was his single concern. He wanted the feisty woman that agitated him in all the right ways to be safe. It was imperative they find her before Craven saw through her disguise.

  Chapter 14

  Darcy made biscuits and salt pork for the robbers’ breakfast. The men became lively from the whiskey they drank with their food.

  “How about a little dance,” Red said, swatting her on the backside. She jumped and nearly hit him alongside the head with the frying pan in her hand before she remembered her disguise. Slowly, she turned and looked at him with a big smile stretched across her face. It was either that or scream.

  “There ain’t no music,” she said saucily.

  Skunk swaggered over to the pile of goods in the corner and pulled a fiddle with only three strings out of the mess. He dug a little deeper and came up with the bow to go with it.

  Darcy watched with fascination as he carefully tuned the three remaining strings. In her travels, she’d never had the opportunity to see a musician fine tune an instrument.

  “Skunk here’ll play, and we can dance,” Red said, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward him.

  She looked at Charles. “I’m afraid your boss said I can’t do anything to encourage you boys. So I better not dance with any of you.” She smiled what she hoped was a disappointed smile and turned back to the fire.

  A rough hand swung her around. It was Charles.

  “Now you’re using my words to turn my boys against me,” he said through clenched teeth. “You dance, but you dance with everybody.” His glare bore two holes clear through her head. Darcy gulped and nodded.

  Skunk tapped his foot three times and slid the bow across the strings, starting a rollicking reel. Red grabbed her around the waist and started bouncing in a circle. The twirling and watching the man across from her bouncing up and down had her stomach churning. Her hands gripped his like a hawk trying not to lose its prey. The only thing she found good about the whole thing was the faster he swung her the farther away from her legs her skirt stayed, making it impossible for her skirt to trip her up.

  Red let go of her, and Al grabbed her around the middle picking her up off the floor. She didn’t liked being hugged against his body, but at least she didn’t have to worry about tripping over her feet or his. She closed her eyes and gulped down the lump creeping up her throat.

  Al dropped her unceremoniously on her feet and shoved her to the next partner. She opened her eyes and stared into the grinning face of Pete. He wrapped his arms tight around her, pulling her body up close to his. The music was still a fast paced reel, but Pete moved slow and deliberate around the floor. His leg pushed against her skirt, invading the space between her legs as they moved around the small confines of the cabin.

  She stiffened when his tongue touched her ear. The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and her stomach burned sour. His closeness made her uncomfortable. A different uncomfortable than Gil’s touches and caresses.

  When the song finished, Pete held onto her. She didn’t miss the look in his eyes or the feel of his maleness against her belly. This was exactly what Charles didn’t want to happen. Her feet were frozen in place, making Pete think she was enamored of him, when in fact she was scared that at any moment Charles would decide her usefulness had ended.

  Her throat constricted, and her chest felt on fire when Charles grabbed her.

  “Waltz,” he ordered both to her and Skunk. Her body nearly melted in his arms as relief flowed through her like a gentle mountain stream. The tempo of the music slowed, and she found her body floating in measured, rhythmic circles around the small cabin floor. She would have never guessed such a ruthless man could move so smooth and graceful. When the song finished he shoved her to Red, who started prancing around in fast circles again.

  “Whoa,” Darcy said, trying to keep her stomach still as her head twirled faster than the
y danced.

  “What’s the matter?” Red asked, releasing her.

  The momentum of the dance sent her twirling toward the fireplace. She grabbed the mantle and stood with her head resting on the wood shelf as her mind continued moving in circles. When her head cleared, she turned back to the room and smiled.

  “I’m sorry, all that dancing winded me.” She fanned her hand over her face; it was getting warm in the room. She barely had her bearings when Red grabbed her arms and started twirling her around the room once more. After two spins around the cabin, the men yelled, and Darcy smelled smoke.

  The pile of goods in the corner was on fire as well as the bed where she had slept. Pete swatted at her dress. Darcy twisted around and found the back hem of her skirt in flames. She screamed, and the men ran out of the burning cabin.

  *****

  Gil and Jeremy crouched behind a bush watching a cabin. Craven had circled it a couple of times then walked his horse to the back of the building. Gil tipped his head, listening. He could swear there was music coming from inside. His curiosity got the better of him. He started to move forward for a better look when the door burst open. Smoke billowed out followed by five men. They ran and jumped on horses tied to trees. Pete lagged behind. It was the perfect opportunity to separate him from the gang and tie him up to take back to the ranch.

  Gil jumped up to mount his horse when Jeremy grabbed his coat.

  “Look!”

  Flames shot up through the roof of the cabin and a woman stumbled out the door, falling to the ground.

  Gil knew that green dress going up in flames. He took a last look at Pete’s back as the horse raced through the trees. His heart pumped furiously as he pushed through the brush to get to Darcy.

  “Roll, baby, roll!” He shouted, hurrying to cover the distance between him and the woman who meant more to him than the ranch foreman job.

  He saw her roll, extinguishing the flames. Her eyes were filled with terror as she clutched something to her chest.