But Levander had greater expectations than could be realized from the pittance the land had rendered up. All his plans of future wealth depended on the upheaval he and his gang had created in the valley. He had no intention of letting the nesters make peace overtures to the ranchers. It served his purpose very well to have one side distrustful of the other. The current state of affairs he and his gang had created offered them the chance to take from both sides with neither being the wiser.
“You cain't knuckle under to your wives,” Levander cajoled, “or you risk losin' everythin'.”
“My wife can make me so miserable I don't care if I lose everything,” Ollie Carson muttered.
“Levander's right, Ollie,” Big Ben said. “We can't let our wives get away with this. They don't realize what we stand to lose.”
“I ain't never spent the night apart from my wife—till last night,” Ollie admitted. “I honestly don't think I kin stand it for another night.”
“You'll have to,” Big Ben said, giving Ollie a stern look. “But I agree we gotta find a way to end this foolishness, and fast. I vote we do some investigating of our own to find out who's been doing the rustling that's got the Association so riled up. That oughtta go a long way toward bringing peace to the valley.”
“That's a great idea!” Bevis agreed. “If we can catch the rustlers the 'Sociation'll be happy and we'll get our wives back.”
“Don't know 'bout that,” Levander said with a frown. “How're we gonna catch the rustlers when neither the sheriff nor the 'Sociation can? And it ain't only the rustlin',” Levander reminded. “Them cattlemen have got their eyes on that water we fenced off last summer.”
“I been thinking about that too,” Big Ben said. “Maybe we were a bit hasty there.”
“Never say it!” Levander cried in a horrified voice. “If we hadn't fenced off that water there'd've been steers crossin' our land all summer to get to it.”
“I'm not so sure about that,” Big Ben said.
Levander could see all his fine ambitions about to bite the dust. “Hell, 'fore we make plans to go chasin' rustlers, maybe we better give the idea some more considerin'.”
“I don't need to do any more considering,” Bevis said. “I say we do something.”
“Like what?” Big Ben asked.
“Start patrolling for the rustlers.”
Levander snorted in disgust. “More'n likely the 'Sociation is gonna think your patrols is the rustlers. And that gunslinger from Texas the 'Sociation hired is liable to shoot somebody right through the gizzard—purely by mistake, o' course.”
Levander was pleased to see from the leery faces around him that his words had struck home. “I heard tell this Kerrigan fellow has killed more'n a dozen men. No sense any of us takin' one of his bullets.”
“But we can't just do nothing!” Ollie protested.
“That's true enough,” Big Ben said. “But Levander may be right. We need to think a little more about the right thing to do. We'll just have to do the best we can to outlast our wives for a while.”
Big Ben was sure that wasn't going to be as easy as it sounded out loud. He and Persia had always had a good time between the sheets, or under a tree, or beside a stream. It hadn't mattered where they were. He always wanted her and she was always willing . . . until last night.
He had thought maybe she had arranged a special welcome home after his release from jail, she had looked so beautiful at the supper table. Her face, surrounded by honey-brown curls, had been lit up with excitement, making her gre eyes sparkle, and her lips had twitched into a stunning smile whenever he had managed to catch her eye. When she had shooed Bliss and Sally to bed early, he had known it was going to be a special evening. And it had been, but not at all in the way he had hoped.
Big Ben hadn't known his wife could be so alluring. In the entire sixteen years they had been married he could never remember a night when she had taken her clothes off one piece at a time, keeping him at arm's length and forbidding him to touch. She had unbuttoned her dress one button at a time, revealing the soft white flesh that was so different from the sun-browned skin exposed to the harsh frontier sun. That was enough by itself to make him hard, but as she unbuttoned her dress she ran her hands across her small breasts, touching herself in the way he wanted to touch her, making her nipples peak. It was exquisite torture.
He would have been inside her an instant later, except she held up a hand and said breathlessly, “Wait. It'll be better if you wait.”
Big Ben hurt, he wanted Persia so bad, but as much as he wanted her, he liked the feeling of wanting her more. So he had obliged her. He watched her strip to nothing more than her pantalettes. She had shoved them down in front, exposing her navel, and her hands were lost deep inside them. His heart was pounding so hard it was all he could do to hear. His mouth was so dry he couldn't swallow.
“Come here, Ben,” Persia had said in a husky voice.
He was on her in an instant, his hands surrounding her breasts, his lips latched onto hers, his tongue deep inside her mouth claiming the siren who was his wife.
A second later he was bereft of the woman who had been in his arms. Persia had backed up against the bedroom wall panting hard, holding a shotgun in her trembling hands that was aimed right at his belly. Flushed and quivering, it was hard for her to speak. But speak she did, in words so unbelievable, his ears had burned.
In sixteen years he had never forced his wife to share herself with him, and he wasn't about to start now, no matter what the provocation. He had left his bedroom and spent the night in the smelly barn. On the itchy hay. In the bitter cold. By himself.
If there was any way he could get this business with the ranchers settled, he wanted it settled. He wanted his wife back. And soon. Because Persia had promised that once there was peace in the valley . . .
Big Ben shook himself from his reverie. “There's no reason why we can't all be on the lookout for rustlers,” he said.
“All right,” Levander reluctantly agreed. “If anyone sees anythin' s'picious, report to me, and I'll see that Bud and Hogg and Doanie and Stick gets the word to the rest of y'all. Agreed?”
Big Ben looked around the room of nodding heads before he said, “Agreed.”
Levander hadn't been completely successful keeping things under control, but at least he would be able to silence any suspi before they got voiced. It was too bad he had to share the spoils from rustling with the gang of men in cahoots with him. But then, there was a lot to share. And having help made everything so much easier. Nobody even suspected the real source of all their troubles in Sweetwater.
Kerrigan was angry with himself. He had done a lot of dirty jobs in his lifetime—rustled cattle and horses, intimidated weaker men, even killed some who had given him no other choice—but he had never sunk to seducing an innocent woman for pay. And while he had often acted outside the law, he had always been able to argue that he was administering his own peculiar brand of justice. But where was the justice in what he had just agreed to do?
The men who'd hired him had to be blind if all they saw in Eden Devlin was a “plain-faced spinster schoolteacher.” Behind her old-maid spectacles, Kerrigan had watched her gray eyes flash with defiance. She might keep her hair bound up in a bun, but he had seen her rich titian curls escaping from that silly nightcap. And they might think her “tall as a pine,” but as far as he was concerned, that just meant she would fit him better in all the right places. So maybe, he realized, the reason he felt so upset was because the money tainted his enjoyment of something he would have found pleasure in doing for nothing.
The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that if he went about it the right way, a proper seduction would be good for Miss Devlin. Once he co
nvinced her to leave off all those educated airs, and the barbed words that stung worse than a red ant bite that she used to keep a man away, she would find herself with more suitors than she could handle.
Which reminded him that Felton had a prior claim to the lady.
Kerrigan took off his hat and forked a hand through his black hair. It wouldn't be the first time he and Felton had gone after the same woman. He remembered a time down in Laredo . . . Kerrigan chuckled when he thought how Felton had won the girl with a half pound of chocolates in a heart-shaped box. Then there was the time in Lubbock . . . A hair ribbon had done the trick for Kerrigan that time. Of course, this was the first time either of them had had a notion of marrying the woman in question. But he hardly thought Miss Devlin was going to succumb to a box of chocolates or a pink hair ribbon. With her it was going to take . . .
Kerrigan tilted his face up and scratched the itchy growth of whiskers under his chin. Just what would it take to coax Miss Devlin to let down her fences? He was going to have to find out why she had put them up in the first place. Had some man hurt her in the past? She seemed too ignorant of her reaction to him for that to be the case. But he could be wrong. He had to admit his curiosity was piqued. He was looking forward to the challenge of finding out why Miss Devlin had shunned the male of the species for long enough to become an old maid.
Kerrigan grinned, creating two deep slashes on either side of his mouth. He had to hand it to Miss Devlin. Her bold plan to have the wives withhold sex from their husbands in order to force peace was a masterpiece of deviltry. Such genius deserved a compliment. Accordingly, he turned his horse in the direction of the schoolmarm's home. There was no time like the present to begin the seduction of Miss Devlin.
Chapter 5
If you fall in a cactus patch,
you can expect to pick sticke
rs.
MISS DEVLIN FELT LIKE THE LOSER IN A GREASED-PIG contest—worn out, frustrated, and darned foolish. And she had no one to blame but herself.
Her students had picked up on the tension between their parents caused by the silent sexual warfare she had instigated, and today they had been even more irascible than usual. For reasons she chose not to examine too closely, her own mood had been little better. She couldn't seem to keep her mind on teaching. The school day had started out badly and gone steadily downhill.
Sally Davis had dipped Henry Westbrook's blond braids in an inkwell. The twins, Glynne and Gerald Falkner, had put a frog in Emmaline Carson's lunch box. Wade Ives had tripped Daniel Wyatt so he fell into a pile of horse flop. Things were decidedly out of control. At thirty minutes before the school day officially ended, Miss Devlin was at the end of her rope.
She checked the top button of her dress to make sure it was secure, shoved a straggling curl out of her face (not even her hair was cooperating today), and said in a carefully controlled voice, “Please take out your McGuffey's Readers.”
“Somebody stole my book,” Felicity Falkner complained.
Miss Devlin's gaze shifted to the guilty face of the freckle-nosed girl sitting next to Felicity. “Enid, do you have any idea where Felicity's book might be?”
“No, Miss Devlin.”
“Then I guess you and Felicity will have to share a book.”
“But Miss Devlin—”
“Don't say another word!” The sharpness of Miss Devlin's voice surprised her as much as it did her students.
“But Miss Devlin—”
“I said—” Miss Devlin shut her mouth abruptly when she followed Enid's pointing finger to the door of the schoolhouse and found herself staring into the questioning eyes of the gunslinger from Texas. It was the final straw.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped.
“I came to see you.”
“We were going to read from our McGuffey's,” she said, struggling to rein her flaring temper. “Perhaps you would like to join us?”
The gunslinger grinned as he walked past her and slipped onto a bench at the back of the room. “Be glad to.”
Nettled that the gunslinger had accepted her sarcastic offer, Miss Devlin turned her attention back to the class—in time to catch Keefe Wyatt throwing a punch at Jett Ives. Jett was quick to return the insult. The boys launched themselves at one another and a free-for-all erupted in the middle of the schoolroom floor.
“Keefe! Jett! Stop that this instant!”
Neither boy had a chance to react to her command before they were each grabbed by their collars and hauled onto their feet—their toes, to be exact. Each boy hung like a sack of potatoes from one of Burke Kerrigan's powerful hands.
“You want to kill each other?” he said in a quiet voice. “I can give you a hand with that.”
The gunslinger dropped the two gangly teens, who barely managed to stand on their shaky legs.
“Here.” He handed one of the startled youths his Colt .45 and the other a small pearl-handled derringer from his boot.
“Now,” Kerrigan drawled, “all you have to do is cock your gun and pull the trigger. Don't worry,” he said to Jett, who held the smaller gun. “That derringer'll do the job at this distance. Now you two can settle your differences once and for all.”
Both boys were white-faced, but with all their friends looking on, neither wanted to be the one to cry quits.
Keefe cocked his gun.
Jett cocked his.
Miss Devlin was shocked to her core. This couldn't be happening in her schoolroom. “This has gone far enough. I want you both to—”
“Be still.” The gunslinger's quiet command startled Miss Devlin into silence. He never took his eyes off the two boys and kept up an easy banter. “You see, boys, when a man makes up his mind to do a thing, he should do it. The fellow who straddles the fence just gets a sore—” He stopped, as though suddenly aware of all the eager young ears listening, and finished “—tailbone.”
A film of perspiration had built on Keefe's brow. Jett swallowed so hard his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. Neither boy's hands were steady. The tension built until it seemed like the room and everything in it might explode.
Miss Devlin's heart was in her throat, her pulse pounding in her temple. One—or both—of these innocent young boys was going to die. And that gunslinger was to blame. She balled her trembling hands into fighting fists. Burke Kerrigan would pay for this. She wouldn't let him get away with murder—for that's what this was, even though he might not be the one pulling the trigger. He was a man of violence. He didn't belong here. She should never have invited him to stay“I guess you don't want to kill each other as much as you thought,” Kerrigan said in a calm voice. “Real easy, now, let your hands drop to your sides. Slow and easy. Let 'em go.”
For a moment it seemed they wouldn't comply. But ever so slowly Keefe's hand dropped to his side. Jett's hand wobbled as he lowered it.
Kerrigan quickly retrieved his weapons, uncocking them, holstering one and slipping the other into his boot in a surprisingly graceful motion.
Then all hell broke loose.
“You idiot! You crazy lunatic! How dare you give guns to children? You asinine—”
“Hadn't you better send these kids out of here before you get wound up and say any more?”
The grim smile on Kerrigan's face brought Miss Devlin back to her surroundings, and she realized she was nose to nose with the gunslinger, her hands holding fistfuls of his dark wool shirt. She turned to find fifteen wide-eyed pupils staring at her.
“School is dismissed.”
When no one moved, Miss Devlin whirled, her pleated skirt flaring, and put her fists on her hips. “I said school is dismissed!”
“I'll be glad to stay if you think—” Keefe began.
“I'll stay if you—” Jett interrupted.
Keefe and Jett glared at each other until they realized what they were doing
, then turned sheepish faces toward Miss Devlin.
“We'll both stay if you think you need us,” Keefe said, warily eyeing the gunslinger.
“I'll be perfectly fine,” Miss Devlin assured them. “Right now I want some privacy to speak with Mr. Kerrigan.”
Reluctantly the boys trailed out of the room at the tail end of the departing pupils.
Miss Devlin slowly turned back to face the gunslinger. “I don't know what you were trying to prove, but you chose a deadly way of making your point.”
“In a few years, those boys'll be grown. Better to let them see now what it means to consider killing a man.”
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