“You don’t belong in this race,” the third jockey insisted.
Eden didn’t know many of them by name, but she recognized some of their mounts. The first jockey, a cowhand named Murray, was riding a good horse, but only extraordinary luck could enable him to win. The second jockey was riding a horse called Ulysses who was primarily a short-distance runner. Apparently his owner was hoping he could build up a big lead at the start, and hang on the last half mile. The third jockey—his name was Ramon, and he was the one who insisted she didn’t belong in the race—was riding a horse called Little Chickadee who was anything but small and birdlike. He wasn’t a fast horse, but he had size and plenty of stamina. Eden thought he was the only horse with a chance to beat Crusader.
“You’d better drop out now,” Ramon advised. “You never know what can happen in a race.”
“I know what shouldn’t happen.” Eden held his gaze. She was determined he would know she knew he’d issued a threat and she wasn’t backing down. There was a starter to make sure the horses lined up properly at the beginning of the race and a finish-line judge to call the order of finish if the race was close at the end. Other than that, she would be on her own for most of the two miles.
“That’s a mighty pretty-looking horse,” the rider of Ulysses said. “It would be a shame if anything happened to him.”
“It certainly would since he belongs to a member of the Maxwell family.” Okay, that was a lie, but she hoped it wouldn’t be in the very near future.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“Jake Maxwell’s daughter,” Eden replied. “He’d be very unhappy if anything happened to this horse or his daughter.”
Eden didn’t like to use her family’s reputation like that, but she wanted the men to understand that any foolhardy action would have serious consequences for them. She felt better when she saw caution in their gazes, but she wasn’t happy when they turned away and formed a group a little distance off. She was certain they were trying to come up with a way to beat her. She’d expected that. She just wanted a fair race.
For the last several minutes Edward had scanned the milling crowd in the Alamo Plaza without seeing anyone who looked vaguely like Finn. People were in constant motion as they waited anxiously for the pistol shot that would tell them the race had begun. He didn’t know how he could possibly find one individual in this tightly packed throng. Men hoisted children on their shoulders so they could see better. Others stood on boxes, climbed trees, stood on tiptoes for a better view. How was he to find a man who was of medium height who didn’t want to be singled out from the crowd?
He stepped back through the window into Jake and Isabelle’s hotel room. “I’m going down to the plaza. If I did spot him from up here, he’d be gone before I could reach him.”
Isabelle greeted Edward’s decision with a nod of approval. “I’ll watch from up here. Even if you don’t see him, your presence might scare him off.”
Edward doubted his mere presence would have any effect on Finn. The man didn’t care for any opinion but his own. If the brothers had planned this scheme in such detail that they’d taught themselves how to be cowhands, Edward was certain Finn would press ahead with his plan despite opposition, expected or unexpected.
That was what scared him, made him so fearful for Eden. These men had spent years planning their revenge. Maybe the attacks on the ranch had been a warning. Maybe they had enjoyed being able to taunt the Maxwells and get away with it. They had to know they couldn’t kill any Maxwell without having the entire family on their trail. No doubt they’d been aiming for one big score, after which they would disappear.
He tried to take some comfort in the fact that no one had proof Finn was trying to hurt Eden, but the conclusion fitted too well with the few facts they did have.
Frustrated with being unable to do anything except watch and wait, Edward worked his way through the throngs, being careful not to cause a disturbance. He didn’t want to give Finn any warning of his presence. As he mingled with the crowd, he kept looking for places Finn could use to fire on the riders as they approached the finish line. He could discount the Menger Hotel, but there were several other buildings with windows offering a view of the race. It was impossible to keep all of them under surveillance. Even if he could, he might never see the barrel of the rifle before Finn pulled the trigger.
He wanted to shout to everyone in the plaza that a man calling himself Finn Haswell was about to attempt to commit a murder, that everybody in the plaza had a responsibility as law-abiding citizens to help him stop Finn. But he knew that would only cause a panic. No matter how nearly impossible the task, it was up to him to stop Eden’s would-be killer.
“Bring your horses up to the line.”
The jockeys broke from their circle and brought their horses toward a line in the dirt that stretched across the road. A couple glanced at Eden, but the others pretended she wasn’t there. That suited her fine. She wanted to concentrate on the race, not on what they thought of her or what attempts they might make to keep her from winning.
She moved Crusader toward the line, keeping to the left of the other riders. The start of a race was nearly always the most difficult and dangerous part. Despite the best efforts of the jockeys, not all of the horses would approach the line, nor would they turn in the right direction when the starting signal was given. Pandemonium could reign for a few hundred yards, and she didn’t want to get caught up in it.
A shout went up when the starting gun sounded, and fourteen jockeys started driving their horses forward with curses and slashes of their whips. Crusader moved smoothly into a gallop but not before several riders had moved to box him in. They intended to keep her from moving to the lead, but she had planned to keep Crusader at the back of the field for the first mile anyway. Then, using his superior stamina, she would work her way forward and outrun everyone else at the end. Only one thing bothered her. Ulysses had been allowed to take the lead at a moderate pace. If the race was run this slowly, even a sprinter would be hard to catch. Had the jockeys decided to sacrifice their chances of winning to keep Eden from victory?
The sound of the starting gun set a clock ticking in Edward’s head. He had less than four minutes before the first riders would reach the plaza. Immediately after the sound of the starting gun, the windows around the plaza had filled with spectators anxious for the best possible view of the race. It was unlikely Finn would be able to force his way to a place at one of those windows, impossible to do so without revealing he was carrying a rifle. As the seconds ticked away, Edward grew more desperate to find Finn.
He returned his attention to the crowd gathered in the plaza and almost at once caught sight of Finn—he was sure it was Finn—moving purposefully around a large group of Mexicans in festival dress who were enthusiastically chanting the name of their favorite horse. Setting off at a run that caused him to bump into and anger several people, Edward tried to keep the never fully visible figure in view. By the time he’d worked his way more than a hundred feet down the plaza, the figure had disappeared and twenty more precious seconds had been used up.
Struggling to keep a cool head, Edward stopped and used his superior height to scan the crowd. Finn was here, he was sure of it. He had to find him, and he had less time than ever. He could almost hear the dull thud of dozens of horses’ hooves as they pounded into the packed dirt of the road, carrying their riders closer and closer to the city and the end of the race. Their cadence became the cadence of his heartbeat, their efforts to fill their lungs with life-giving oxygen his effort to keep his breath steady, his brain clear and alert. They were all in a race, but his was the one most likely to end in tragedy.
The jockeys’ gazes rarely left Eden. Some appeared puzzled by her calm acceptance of being blocked in. Others seemed to believe she’d given up trying to break out of the box formed by a wall of horses in front of her and several on either side, but a couple of the riders apparently couldn’t convince themselves she didn’t hav
e a strategy for outmaneuvering them.
“Stay closer,” one of them kept shouting.
“If we get any closer, we’ll stumble over each other,” another replied. “I don’t intend to be thrown and trampled just to keep some woman from winning the race.”
“She’s not going to win. She’s not even trying.”
“Maybe the horse is fast enough to win on his own.”
“Then you have to make sure he doesn’t.”
Their exchanges grew steadily more heated until Eden decided they weren’t paying much attention to her. She leaned forward over Crusader’s withers, took a stout hold on the reins, and pulled back hard. Crusader slowed so abruptly, the other jockeys didn’t have time to slow their mounts. He was in the clear before they knew what was happening.
Angling to the far side of the road, Eden loosened the reins, squeezed her knees, and shouted to Crusader that it was now time to run like he’d never run before. Eden dodged attempts to bump Crusader off stride, to box him in again, to get close enough to push her out of the saddle. She and the horse were repeatedly struck with whips, but that only drove Crusader to run the fastest half mile of his life until he outdistanced all but Ulysses, who had been running a dozen lengths ahead.
The race hadn’t been run according to plan. Crusader had been forced to expend an incredible amount of energy to get clear of the field. There wouldn’t be any chance to take a breather because, having had an easy lead for most of the race, Ulysses would have plenty of energy for the last half mile. Only an all-out run to the finish line would enable Crusader to catch him. She knew Crusader could run at top speed for half a mile, but he’d never been asked to do more than that. If he couldn’t, they wouldn’t win the race, Edward wouldn’t get his money, and he wouldn’t ask Eden to marry him. The race would last about another thirty seconds. That was all the time she had to make her dream come true.
“You’ve got a choice,” she said to the horse. “Win this race and you get to live a life of luxury with all the mares a young stallion could want. Lose, and you could end up gelded and in Arizona running from Indians and chasing cows.”
She knew Crusader couldn’t understand her words, but he was responding to her urging, cutting into the distance between him and Ulysses with every stride. As fast as he was, she didn’t know if he could do it before they reached the finish line.
A feeling of desperation threatened to swamp Edward. He could tell from the cheers of the crowd in the distance that the horses had reached the outskirts of the city. Within a few seconds, they would be racing toward the finish line in the plaza. Somewhere in this crowd lurked a man who was intent upon killing the woman Edward loved. He hoped the reason he couldn’t find Finn was that one of the others had already caught him, but he couldn’t afford to take that chance. His future hung in the balance, and he had the power to determine its course.
If he could find Finn in time.
He would never have found the gunman if he hadn’t heard a child’s cry, and looked up to see Finn pushing a young boy from his perch in a tree at the edge of the plaza. No one attempted to stop him, maybe because they were more concerned with making sure the boy wasn’t hurt, and also because Finn had a rifle that he raised to his shoulder.
Edward was moving before his mind had finished assimilating what he had seen. He could hear the sound of horses approaching the plaza. They were only seconds away. He didn’t have time to wonder whether Crusader was in the lead with Eden exposed to Finn’s rifle. Even though it would mean he wouldn’t win the race, he hoped she was back in the pack, at least partially protected by the bodies of the other jockeys.
He ran without awareness of the people in his path. He saw nothing but Finn up in the tree, the rifle to his shoulder, the sound of cheering telling him the horses would burst into the plaza at any moment. He had to reach Finn before the first rider came into view.
At the moment he caught a glimpse of the first horses exploding into the plaza, he launched himself at Finn. He grasped the branch at the same moment Finn fired.
Ulysses’s jockey didn’t waste any words on Eden when he looked over his shoulder and saw Crusader fast approaching. He tore into his exhausted mount with a punishing tattoo of slashing blows that caused the rapidly tiring horse to drift so dramatically, he nearly ran off the course. The jockey jerked him back onto the road so hard, he veered into Crusader, nearly knocking him off stride. Eden held Crusader together and drove him harder to pass Ulysses and his enraged jockey, who was expressing his fury with a string of impressive curses.
Eden ignored the jockey until he leaned out of the saddle and slashed Crusader across the neck with his whip. Crusader veered so abruptly, Eden nearly lost her balance. The jockey swung Ulysses back toward Crusader and raised his whip for another blow. Equally enraged, Eden brought her whip down across the jockey’s shoulder so hard he cried out in pain.
“Hit my horse again, and I’ll lay it across your face,” she shouted at him.
Instead of trying to hit Crusader again, the jockey grabbed Crusader’s bridle to slow him down. Eden tried to shove him off, but he was too strong. Crusader couldn’t pass Ulysses as long as the jockey held on to his bridle.
They had entered the city by now, and the spectators could see what Ulysses’s jockey was doing. Some shouted curses, some shouted encouragement. All knew the finish of the race was in doubt. The two riders burst into the plaza with the finish line looming a hundred yards away. Eden knew Crusader would never win as long as the jockey kept his hold on Crusader’s reins. She also knew she wasn’t strong enough to break his hold. Unable to think of anything else, she balled her hand into a fist and swung it back ward, brought it into contact with the jockey’s nose. Once, twice, three times before the beleaguered jockey let go of the reins.
With the finish line practically overhead, Eden urged Crusader forward with all her strength. She felt the response of powerful and well-trained muscles, but the two horses swept under the finish line so close together she couldn’t tell who had won.
Chapter Twenty-six
Like a cat, Finn had landed on his feet when he fell out of the tree, his rifle pointed directly at Edward. It was deflected upward by someone in the crowd just as it discharged. Knowing he had only a second before Finn could aim and fire again, Edward lunged forward. He struck Finn in the chest, knocking him backward into the spectators. Being smaller and more nimble, Finn scrambled to his feet, his pale blue eyes searching for his rifle. Someone had kicked it away, where it was picked up by someone else in the crowd. Deprived of his weapon, Finn attempted to run away, but hands in the crowd pushed him toward Edward.
The fight was short and the conclusion foregone. Edward was bigger, stronger, and a natural fighter. Less than a minute later, Finn lay sprawled on the cobblestones.
Drawing a moderately deep breath, Edward turned to the crowd. “Does anyone have a rope?”
No one had a rope, but a rawhide lariat served the purpose just as well. With the help of a swarthy, mustachioed man who knew more about knots than Edward would ever have guessed was possible, Finn was bound to the very tree he’d climbed.
Desperate to find out what had happened to Eden, Edward asked, “Could someone watch him?”
“I watch him,” offered a handsome young man with shining black hair and a gaily colored vest. He held Finn’s rifle in his hand, pointing the weapon at its owner’s chest. “He not get away.”
Muttering thanks that he hoped could be understood despite each of their difficulties with the Texas version of the English language, Edward plunged into the crowd once more, headed to the other end of the plaza, where he hoped Eden would be waiting. He didn’t care if she’d won the race. He just wanted to know she was okay, that Finn’s bullet hadn’t hit her.
He arrived to find Eden, Ulysses’s jockey, and the finish-line judges engaged in a hot argument. The judges had disqualified Ulysses because of his jockey’s interference with Crusader. The jockey, furious at losing the race an
d second-place money, insisted Eden and Crusader be disqualified because she’d punched him.
“If she is, you won’t be the only one receiving a punch on the nose.”
Isabelle Maxwell had forced her way through the crowd to face the injured jockey. “After such a disgraceful display of poor sportsmanship, you should be thankful to get off with only a sore nose. Had you been my son, you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.”
“Mother!” Eden exclaimed.
“And as for you, young woman, I have more to say, but good manners prevent me from speaking before so many ears. I expect your father will have a few words for you as well.”
“Don’t forget me and Luke,” Chet said. “I can’t believe you’d do something like that after all the times you yelled at me, saying I was a fool to risk my life going up against gunmen. At least I had a gun.”
“I had a whip and the fastest horse,” Eden said. “I didn’t need anything else.”
Edward stepped out of the crowd. “You must have had a guardian angel who twice saved you from a bullet.”
Eden spun around to face him; the expression on her face was a mixture of pride, apprehension, obstinance, and a large chunk of love.
In the space of mere seconds, Edward had endured a wide range of emotions. The first was bone-melting relief that Eden was safe. He took his first unconstricted breath in nearly half an hour. That was followed by euphoria that she had won; and amazement she had had to fight with the jockey to do it. Nearly weakened by the force of his relief, he was swept up in a surge of anger that she had been so headstrong that she’d ridden Crusader after he’d told her it was too risky, after her whole family had supported his decision. Didn’t she understand the kind of danger she’d been in? Didn’t she have any idea how devastated her family would have been if anything had happened to her? How could he possibly want to marry a woman that willful? He might as well hitch his wagon to a loco steer.
Texas Loving (The Cowboys) Page 30