Last Chance

by Jill Marie Landis

Castor stared at him a moment longer. "You know Mrs. McKenna, too?"

  "What's it to you?"

  "Saw her dance with you, is all. She's a friend of ours, too. Wouldn't like to see her hurt." Tom Castor folded his massive arms over his chest.

  Lane glanced down the street and then back up at Castor, glad to know there was at least one person looking out for Rachel's interests.

  "Yeah, I know her. We're old friends."

  Tom Castor walked away, intent on taking a lantern off a shelf along the front wall. "Our house is just around back. Come on up in the mornin'. There'll be more than enough breakfast. Always is."

  Lane could count on one hand the times someone had extended him a friendly invitation. Uncomfortable with the offer, as well as the thought of breakfasting with Castor's wife and children, Lane frowned momentarily and concentrated on the dark interior of the barn. He handed over the money and told Castor, "I'll pay in advance. Most likely I'll be up and out early."

  He watched the man fiddle with the lantern wick and was once again reminded of a bear as Castor stood hunched over the lantern, which was dwarfed in his meaty hands.

  "No need for that lamp if it's for me. There's enough moonlight to see by," Lane told him. "I'd feel better if I didn't have to worry about hauling it up into the loft."

  Castor put the lamp back in its place. "Suits me. I'll put your horse in the last stall on the right."

  Lane unfastened his saddlebags and slung them over his shoulder, then pulled his Winchester rifle out of the scabbard hanging alongside his saddle and headed for the ladder to the loft as Tom Castor led his horse to the back of the barn. As he climbed the rungs, the pungent aromas of hay and horses reminded him of the adolescent years he had spent wrangling at his foster home and then at his uncle's ranch, the Trail's End. He'd used up more hours than he liked to remember shoveling horse manure out of the barn.

  Pulling himself up and over the floor of the loft, Lane tossed down his saddlebags and then settled down in the clean hay and took off his hat. Where moonlight filled the open doors at the end of the loft, the skeletal silhouette of the hook and rope pulley used to swing the hay inside haunted the opening. Lane laced his fingers together and shoved them under his head, content to stare up at the peaked roof of the huge barn and sort out his thoughts until he fell asleep. If he fell asleep.

  Coming back to Last Chance was an unavoidable mistake. He could feel it in his bones. The encounter with Rachel Albright McKenna and his disturbing reaction to her bothered him more than he liked to admit. Until tonight he'd thought he had put his past behind him, convinced himself that he was strong enough to ride into Last Chance and face his demons should they rear their ugly heads, but now he had his doubts.

  He had thought it would be simple enough to ride in, ask a few questions, follow up on what information he had about his uncle Chase and what the man had been up to in the last months. He thought the past six years working as a Pinkerton operative would have given him time to let go of his resentment toward his uncle and the inhabitants of this narrow-minded little town. He thought time would surely have given him the confidence he needed to face his uncle again.

  But he had thought wrong. Arriving in the midst of the Independence Day festivities, recognizing the familiar faces on the dance floor, meeting Rachel again after all these years had him feeling as if he had been thrust back in time without warning. Lane felt like he was no more than the illegitimate, illiterate sixteen-year-old he had been the day he rode out—a troublemaker with nothing to his name but a chip on his shoulder the size of Montana and the gun that his mother had used to kill herself.

  Loosing his fingers, Lane reached out for a piece of straw and stuck it in his mouth. As he worked it with his teeth and tongue, he forced himself to forget his years in Last Chance and concentrate on the task at hand. He had not ridden into town on a whim. No matter how much the past tried to claim him, he had a job to do. The fact that he was on suspension from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency wasn't about to stop him. He had never been one to let formality stand in his way.

  Boyd Johnson, his mentor and an administrator assigned to the Denver division, knew that when he'd hired him. Hell, Lane thought with a sigh, Boyd knew exactly the way he operated—it was one of the things that had brought him to the Pinkertons' attention. It was his reputation as one of the most unpredictable, if not deadliest, gunslingers in the West that had led Johnson to recruit him.

  "I see a lot of myself in you, Lane," the balding, mustachioed Johnson had said the day they met. "If you can just learn to control that hotheaded temper of yours, you'll make one hell of an agent."

  Lane could still remember their first conversation as clearly as if it had just happened. He had been sitting at a table in a corner of a crowded barroom in Albuquerque, his back pressed against the cool adobe wall as he eyed the crowd. There wasn't a man in the room who didn't know who he was and that he was no man to cross. At nineteen, Lane had considered that the highest compliment anyone could pay him.

  He sat watching the door, a habit of long standing, one that had kept him alive. There were plenty of young gunmen out to make a reputation for themselves, and killing a man with the kind of name Lane had made for himself was the quickest route to fame—or to Boot Hill. When Boyd Johnson walked in the room, Lane had taken one glance at the fiftyish, portly man in the natty wool suit and bowler hat and dismissed him out of hand.

  Lane hadn't looked Johnson's way again until one of the barmaids sidled up to him and told him the gent at the bar with the white mustache and muttonchops wanted to talk to him.

  If the stranger was wearing a gun, Lane couldn't see it, but that didn't mean the gentleman didn't carry a concealed weapon or two. The well-dressed dandy definitely looked uncomfortable in such seedy surroundings. Lane agreed to meet him behind the saloon, stood up and went out through the back door. He waited in the alley—in the shadows of the building across the way—poised once again with his back against the wall, one foot braced behind him. He gave the appearance of nonchalance. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  It was a good quarter hour before Johnson appeared, crossed the alley and introduced himself to Lane. The two men eyed each other like wary tomcats, Lane certain the older, shorter man was no match for him. Boyd Johnson spoke softly, quickly stating his business.

  "Mr. Cassidy, have you ever heard of the Pinkerton Detective Agency?"

  Few men called him mister. Lane eyed Johnson carefully.

  "I'm not wanted for anything."

  "I'm not saying you are."

  "Then who's looking for me?"

  "We are, but not for the reasons you might think."

  Both men glanced down the alley as a boisterous group moved along the street a few yards away. "Go on," Lane urged after a moment.

  "You're headed for an early grave, Cassidy—"

  "That's your opinion."

  "How would you like an opportunity to put your skills to work and make money doing it? You can't tell me drifting from town to town, picking up a poker game here and there, gunning down all comers who challenge you is the type of life you plan on leading forever."

  Lane shoved his hands in his pockets as a gentle breeze blew down the narrow alleyway, lifting the fine sandy soil to create a miniature dust devil. "I'm used to it."

  "It's a dead-end road, believe me."

  From an upstairs window across the way a woman laughed, the sound warm and throaty on the cool night air. Lane glanced in the direction of the whorehouse next to the bar and then shifted impatiently. "Say your piece and get it over with."

  "I'm Boyd Johnson, a Pinkerton administrator out of Denver. We're looking for someone like you, someone with your skills who we can train as an agent."

  "Why?"

  "Mr. Cassidy, we have operations in all walks of life. You're highly visible, a man with an established reputation. You'd never be suspected of working for us, and could move where none of us can go. If need be, you have the ta
lent with a gun to get yourself out of almost any situation."

  The old man had one thing right: After three years on the move Lane was sick and tired of aimless drifting. While settling down was still abhorrent to him, the idea of drifting with a purpose definitely intrigued him.

  As if Johnson was aware of his budding interest, he continued to outline details. "You would have to come to Denver and be under my tutelage for over a year, learn the ins and outs of the operation. As a general operative, you would occasionally assume some undercover roles, but a man with a high profile like yours can be quite useful without even changing identity."

  Uneasy with lingering in the alley for so long, Lane suggested, "Let's walk."

  Boyd nodded and they moved away from the street end of the narrow alleyway. When they reached a low wooden door in a tired one-story adobe building, Lane paused, reached into his pocket for a key and fit it into the lock. Both men were forced to duck as they entered the room Lane had rented in the old casa. He motioned to Boyd Johnson to have a seat on the sagging, narrow bed against one wall. The room was of whitewashed adobe, devoid of color except for a fringed, red wool blanket with a native pattern woven in it thrown over the bed.

  Lane walked over to the kiva fireplace in the corner. Later, when the man left, he would burn just enough wood to take the chill off the room. Even in late spring the thick adobe walls held in the cool evening air.

  "You haven't said anything yet, Cassidy. What do you think?"

  "What does it pay?"

  "Fifteen dollars a week. Room and board and other expenses are covered, too. You'll need to turn in weekly expense accounts and file case reports."

  Johnson had just asked the impossible.

  "Forget it. I don't need the job."

  Boyd Johnson stood up and crossed the room until he stood directly in front of Lane, who refused to meet his eyes. "Look, Cassidy, I know why you're balking. I know you can't read or write, but we're willing to remedy that for you."

  "How do you know that?"

  "You don't have to glower at me, son. I told you, we've been watching you for quite some time. We know all there is to know about you. In fact, I'd be willing to bet we know more about you than you know about yourself. You're practically illiterate, you gamble some when you need cash and drink only when it serves your purpose. Your uncle served nine years in the Wyoming Territorial Prison in the late seventies and early eighties as an accomplice to a rash of robberies in three states. Your mother died when you were five and we suspect your uncle was hoping to track down her killers and was riding with the wrong gang when he was caught."

  "What don't you know about me?" Lane asked, puzzling over how the Pinkertons had learned all about him without his knowledge.

  "For the life of me, I don't know why you would turn down this offer."

  They talked long into the night, Lane asking question after question, Boyd Johnson patiently answering them. By the time the Pinkerton man walked out of the rented room, Lane was fairly certain he was going to take him up on his offer. Three days later he contacted the agent through an operative posing as a telegraph operator in Albuquerque, and he boarded a train for Denver that afternoon.

  It had been the beginning of a new life. There was no way he could have known that a little over six years later he'd be reminiscing in a hayloft in Last Chance, battling off the ghosts of his past.

  When he rolled over, his shoulder pressed uncomfortably through the straw against the hard floor. Lane sat up and with a wide sweep of his arm gathered more straw in an attempt to pad his makeshift bed.

  He closed his eyes, hoping to sleep. Instead a clear, pure vision of Rachel's striking features stared back at him. His eyes snapped open. Moonlight bathed the straw around him, reminding him that he always found it hard to sleep when the moon was full.

  When he'd told her he had always wanted to kiss her, he hadn't lied. Years ago, seated in the back row of the schoolhouse, he had paid little attention to his lessons, but he had spent plenty of time wondering what it would be like to touch her.

  But touching her, kissing her, attempting to hold Miss Rachel had been as out of the question back then as it should have been now. Back then, the difference in their ages had seemed like a hundred years instead of four. She was an upstanding member of the community—his teacher, for God's sake.

  Still, no matter how he had behaved, she had always been kind to him, patient and forgiving when he skipped school or became disruptive. One night, after he ran away from home, she had fed him and let him sleep in the parlor of her house on Main Street.

  Lane sighed and rolled onto his opposite shoulder. He liked to think he had changed, but if he had, he would have never accosted her. Besides, facts were facts. She was the sheriff's widow and because his identity as an operative was secret, he was—to all outward appearances—a drifter with no right to even darken her door. Then again, she was a close friend of Eva Cassidy's and he needed to find out everything about his uncle's activities of late.

  Tomorrow he would go back to Rachel's and apologize. For now, all he could do was lie in the dark and wonder if the suspicion and contempt he had seen on so many faces tonight would be on hers when he saw her in the morning.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Rachel's garden mirrored her own loveliness. As Lane opened the low picket gate and stepped into the yard, he couldn't put names to many of the flowers, but he did recognize the roses. It was impossible not to take note of the profusion of blooms and greenery that spilled over one another in the garden. He felt as out of place as a snowflake on a griddle as he moved up the stone walk to the porch. The heady scent of a rainbow of roses in full bloom drifted around him, the aroma just short of cloying in the summer heat. It was not more than a little past ten o'clock in the morning, but the sun was already beating down without mercy.

  Lane crossed the wide shady porch, stood beside the door so that he could survey the street and then knocked. In less than a second the door opened. Prepared to see Rachel, he was caught speechless as he stared into the snapping dark eyes of a middle-aged mulatto woman dressed in a simple black gown. She was watching him closely, almost expectantly.

  "Can I help you?" she finally asked.

  Lane doffed his hat, none too thrilled with the realization that he was suddenly nervous as a colt. "Is Miss… Mrs. McKenna here?"

  "She's out in back, fussing with her houseplants, Mr… ?"

  "Cassidy. Lane Cassidy."

  The woman smiled up at him and nodded in acknowledgment as the skin around her deep chocolate eyes crinkled into laugh lines.

  "Come in, Mr. Cassidy. I'm Delphie, Mrs. McKenna's housekeeper. She mentioned seeing you at the dance last night. If you'll follow me…"

  He wondered what else she had mentioned as he stepped into the entry and found the house much as he recalled it. Today it was dark and cool, a welcome oasis of relief from the heat outside. All the shades were pulled low on the east side of the house to prevent the morning sun from overheating the rooms. As Lane started through the entry with his hat in his hand, his spurs echoed loudly in the hall.

  As Rachel's housekeeper led him toward the kitchen at the back of the house, Lane glanced into the parlor as they passed the open double doors. The place was still decorated with mixed touches of elegance and homey-ness, foreign territory to the likes of him. Compared with the ramshackle house at the Trail's End, Rachel's home was a palace.

  Before they were halfway to the kitchen, footsteps echoed along the hallway directly overhead and then pounded down the stairway. A high, childish voice called out, "Delphie? Who is it?"

  The housekeeper paused. Lane stopped directly behind her, then turned around in time to watch a slightly built, auburn-haired boy jump the last two steps and execute a wobbly landing in the entry. His legs looked like matchsticks poking out of the navy knickers of a sailor suit trimmed in white.

  "Howdy, mister," he said, hurrying forward, his head tipped back so that he could lo
ok up at Lane. "I'm Ty McKenna." The youngster held out his hand.

  Lane hid his shock. It was only natural that Rachel would have a child by her husband, but she had not mentioned her son last night.

  Even in the dim hallway Lane could see that the boy inherited his looks from Rachel and not Stuart McKenna. His hair was auburn, his eyes crystal blue and so full of life that they fairly sparkled. In a face so clean it looked as if it had been shined, a smattering of freckles dusted the bridge of his nose. Lane, never in the company of children, found himself awkwardly reaching down to shake the boy's hand.

  "I'm Lane Cassidy."

  Ty McKenna inspected him from head to toe, his curious stare quickly coming to rest on the gun riding Lane's hip. As if he were spellbound, the boy did not take his eyes off the Smith & Wesson.

  "You ever use that gun, mister?"

  "I do."

  "That's some pumpkins. Can I touch it?"

  Delphie smoothly interrupted, "Why don't you take Mr. Cassidy on out to the lath house and show him where he can find your mama." She smiled an apology above Ty's head and nodded in the general direction of the back of the house.

  "Go on through the kitchen, Mr. Cassidy, then along the porch down the side of the house—"

  "Grandma says we're to call it a piazza," Ty informed the adults. "Not a porch."

  Delphie sighed and shook her head. "Yes, Mr. Too-Big-in-the-Britches, that may be, but it's a porch to me."

  Lane nodded his thanks to the housekeeper and began to follow Ty through the kitchen, riot quite sure how to act. As he trailed along behind Rachel's son, he realized he was seldom, if ever, around children and that he felt awkward in the company of someone just over three feet tall.

  They stepped out the kitchen door and walked across the wide porch, heading toward the backyard. Once again, Ty jumped the steps. Lane took them at a slower pace as he shoved his hat back on in order to shade his face from the hot sun.

  The boy easily zigzagged through the lush garden toward a lattice-covered structure near the carriage house and back gate. Lane looked down the block and saw that Rachel's house was the only one along Main with such an extensive garden behind it. Like the garden in front of the house, flowers bloomed in wild profusion all over the yard. Here and there lay a pile of cuttings she had pruned off some of the plants, but for the most part, the yard was as riotous as a crazy quilt.