A Fire in the Blood

by Shirl Henke

  "He wasn't the only one to take a mud bath." Lissa looked to where Jess rode just ahead of the others. He had been even more distant than usual since the small group met at the corrals early that morning. Marcus had spent several days in Cheyenne tending to business and would join them later in the day. She had carried on a spirited conversation, laughing and joking with the rest of the hands, but Jess held himself aloof.

  She maneuvered her small pinto alongside his big stallion. "That white-faced devil of yours looks fast. Yancy Brewster's white won the past three years in a row, but this fellow could give him a run for his money. Are you going to race him?" She waited, but he didn't answer her.

  "I won't go away, Jess, so you'll have to talk to me sooner or later," Lissa said in a low voice that only he could hear. "I'm sorry for what I said the other day. I didn't mean that I thought you were a savage. I... well, I have a sort of rotten temper at times."

  His lips quirked unwillingly, and he looked at her with a sardonic expression on his face. "Sort of rotten temper?" he echoed.

  Lissa blushed as she drew herself up, trying to appear affronted, yet pleased that she had finally succeeded in eliciting a response. "You were yelling perfectly awful things at me. Naturally I lost my temper, too."

  "Naturally."

  "Strange, I don't ever recall there being an echo out here on the open plains," she teased. "Are you going to race your black?"

  He sighed. "You never give up. No, I'm not risking my neck or Blaze's in a fool race."

  "Fool race!"

  "Now who's an echo?"

  "Surely you aren't afraid of taking a little tumble? All the boys join in the fun."

  "I'm not one of the boys, in case you hadn't noticed," he said drily.

  "No, you certainly aren't," she replied crossly. "Don't you ever have fun, Jess?"

  Thoughts flashed into his mind of the preceding night, which he had spent with Cammie, and he coughed discreetly, hiding his smile behind his hand. "Yeah, every time I get a chance."

  A rider on a showy white stallion appeared on the horizon. As he approached them, he doffed his expensive, high-crowned hat and waved it with a flourish at Lissa.

  "It's Yancy!" Lissa waved excitedly, seeing a chance to make Jess jealous. Yancy Brewster was the foreman at Diamond E, a tall, rangy man with light brown hair and regular features. He was considered quite a charmer by the local females, and he had made no secret about courting Lissa at every opportunity. If forced to choose between Lemuel Mathis and Yancy, she would probably choose the older man, who was more amenable and indulgent. Yancy was full of himself and intent on running his women much as he ramroded Cy Evers's ranch hands.

  For the moment, Lissa ignored that and bestowed on him a dazzling smile as he reined in beside her. "Good morning, Yancy. I was just telling Jess about the rodeo. Oh, forgive my bad manners. Jesse Robbins is the new stock detective Papa hired—from Texas. Jess, meet Yancy Brewster, ramrod of the Diamond E."

  Brewster appraised Jess as he skillfully maneuvered his horse between Jess and Lissa. "Heard all about you, Robbins. The baddest fellow west of anyplace east," he said. His hazel eyes had a hard glint to them.

  Jess only nodded and would have pulled away. Brewster's question brought him up short.

  "You're a Texan. Secesh?"

  "My father was Union Army during the war." Jess did not elaborate.

  "I never heard of Federals from Texas," Lissa said curiously.

  "There weren't very many of us," he replied grimly.

  “It must have been hard on your family." She was dying to know more but did not want to seem overeager.

  "That why you took up guns?" Brewster asked.

  Jess stiffened but did not reply. Tension hung in the air as heavy as clouds before a thunderstorm until Lissa changed the subject back to the upcoming rodeo. "I was trying to get Jess to enter some of the contests. His black might just give you some competition, Yancy."

  Brewster appraised Blaze dismissively, then patted his white's thickly muscled neck. "Thunderbolt's never been beat. Course, I never raced against an Indian. Hear you boys are good," Brewster said with a cool grin that dared Jess. "I might just make you a side bet—if you think you got a chance."

  Jess sensed that the animosity from Brewster was because of Lissa. The foreman was the sort most white women thought handsome, and he was used to winning. How the hell was he going to defuse this mess? Jess cursed as he observed Brewster's smirk. No matter what he did, the bastard would be laying for him until they settled matters. He did not need the grief he would inherit if he killed the troublemaker.

  Sighing, he looked Brewster in the eye and replied, "You want a race, ramrod. You got a race." Maybe it would be a way to observe the hands and listen to their casual banter without having any of them suspect he was there looking for rustlers.

  "How much you want to bet, Robbins?"

  Jess shrugged negligently. "Let's make it interesting. Say, a month's pay—two hundred fifty dollars." He knew even a top ramrod only made around a hundred and fifty a month.

  Brewster blanched imperceptibly, then grinned at Lissa and replied, "Done. Miss Lissa, you hold our markers."

  The Diamond E was a big spread. Not as big as J Bar, but impressive nonetheless, with a wide, low ranch house made of dressed lumber weathered to the color of rich tobacco. The bunkhouses were almost identical to J Bar's, but the corrals were not as well laid-out or numerous. The mid-roundup break was traditionally celebrated by a rodeo alternating between the two largest ranches in the southeast part of the territory.

  As this year's host, old Cy Evers and his daughter Cridellia presided over the festivities, welcoming the cowboys from all the surrounding spreads. A festive air pervaded the gathering, and the spicy, mouth-watering aroma of several whole barbecued steers wafted on the warm summer breeze. Vinegar Joe worked with the Everses' cook, Sourdough Charlie, stirring a huge iron kettle of beans. The two cooks had drafted a number of the junior hands to assist, pitting cherries for pies and scrubbing the mountains of pots and pans dirtied in preparing for the feast.

  Cy greeted the arrivals heartily, then ushered them to the cook's big tent set up between the mess hall and bunk house, where they drank scalding, inky coffee, talked, and joked as they waited for the contests to begin.

  Cridellia Evers was a mousy little woman with prim lips that rarely smiled and slightly popping eyes. She blinked her pale lashes nervously as she watched the crude men assemble for their rough-and-tumble exhibitions. She was dressed in a paisley blouse and heavy twill skirt with a bustle. The dark purple shade did not flatter her sallow complexion and light brown hair.

  Beside the fiery Lissa, clad in a butternut brown riding skirt and clear yellow blouse, poor Cridellia looked like a molting purple wren. The young women were the only daughters of the two wealthiest ranchers in the basin, and as such had been continually thrown together since early childhood. When Lissa had been sent East to school, Cy had kept Cridellia at home, where her mother Ethel had educated her as best she could before passing to her reward several years earlier. If Dellia and Lissa were not friends, they at least held their rivalry at bay in front of their doting fathers.

  "The bustle on your skirt is all the rage back East, Dellia," Lissa said as they sat together on a small bench placed just in front of the big corral where the first contests would be held. Lissa forbore mentioning how uncomfortable and inappropriate the drawing room outfit looked at a dusty corral.

  Dellia smoothed her skirts and wriggled her bottom discreetly, trying to seat herself more comfortably with the bustle shoved over the backside of the bench. "Papa almost had a seizure when he got Charlene Durbin's bill for making the skirt," she replied smugly. Her eyes rolled like a calf's at a branding fire when she talked, an unfortunate habit she had never been able to break. Searching the crowd, she fastened on Yancy Brewster, watching him exchange some bawdy joke with two other hands. "Yancy rode out to meet you," she observed. "I imagine he wanted to get a look at y
our pa's half-breed gunman," she added more casually.

  "Jess and Yancy made a bet on the horse race. I think Yancy might lose this year."

  "No, sir! Yancy always wins," Dellia declared. She looked over at the gleaming black stallion with the blaze face and his owner standing next to him. "Emmaline Wattson told me you were taken with the gunman." Her eyes protruded even further from her thin, sallow face as she studied Jesse Robbins.

  "I'm not taken with him." Lissa smiled puckishly, then added, "But he is sinfully beautiful, isn't he?" She loved giving Dellia apoplexy.

  Her companion almost swallowed her tongue. "I hope your pa doesn't hear you talking this way. He'd marry you off to Lemuel Mathis so fast everyone in Cheyenne would be counting on their fingers."

  Lissa laughed to cover her revulsion at the thought of Lemuel's thick blunt hands touching her intimately. "I'm not going to marry Lemuel."

  "If your pa takes a notion, you will. My pa's already talking about giving Diamond E to Yancy someday—when he marries me, of course," she added hastily. "Men decide those things. We don't."

  "I'll choose my own husband. And it won't be a man who wants me just for my papa's ranch either."

  Dellia stiffened at the implied insult, but before she could respond, Cy signaled one of his hands to bang on the cook's big wash pot. Everyone quieted when Evers began to speak.

  "I'm happy as a spotted pup in a new red wagon to see all you boys here for some fun afore we head on back to finish up this here roundup. First event is calf ropin'. All you top hands, come on 'n bring yer best ketches with you."

  The morning progressed through calf roping, wild bronc riding, even a contest between the intrepid hands and a very large ornery mule named Jake Ass, who unseated every rider. Dust billowed while the men cheered and bet openly, and cussed and sneaked liquor covertly so as not to offend the two females. By the time the midday meal was announced, Marcus had arrived. Lissa was relieved to see Lemuel had not returned with him.

  Her eyes scanned the crowd of rumpled hands in their dusty denims, scuffed boots, and sweaty cotton shirts. Jess stood out among the sea of homely faces and unruly cowlicks. His elegant face was beginning to show just a hint of virile black whiskers, adding to his appeal. Straight thick hair fell against a snowy white shirt of soft lawn that fit indecently well across his muscular shoulders. Unlike the callused hands of the rest of the men with their blackened and broken nails, his were smooth, with long, tapered fingers and clean nails. Everything about him was graceful, quiet, and charged with a dangerous sort of sensuality that drew her like wind plucking rich pollen from

  the heart of a high plains wildflower.

  "There you are, Lissa. I've been looking all over for you. I thought we could share our meal. I fetched you a plate." Yancy held aloft two heaping plates filled with slices of juicy brown beef, rich beans in spicy molasses, and high, fluffy sourdough biscuits.

  Her first impulse, sensing the murderous look Dellia was casting at her, was to suggest they join their host and hostess and her father, but then she saw Jess watching her and changed her mind. With a blinding smile, she took the ramrod's arm and led them toward the shade of a big cotton-wood tree. "How gallant of you, Yancy." Eating with Dellia always gave her indigestion anyway.

  Jess saw Lissa's bright curls bounce as she tossed back her head and laughed at some remark by the foreman. He also observed Marcus's scowl and the malevolent expression on the face of that plain little daughter of Cy Evers. "God save me from your scheming, Lissa," he muttered as he sipped some of the bitter black coffee. Too bad Mathis was not here.

  The next event was the rooster ketch, a sport much loved by Mexicans and Californios, which had spread across the high plains. A large mean old rooster was buried up to his neck in soft sand near one side of the corral. The contestants all took turns riding a full circle around the hapless bird. As they approached, they bent down low, hanging precariously from their saddles, and attempted to pull the snapping, squawking rooster from the sand by his neck, while avoiding getting bitten. Some wore buckskin gloves to protect themselves, which handicapped them when they tried to pluck up the prize. Others went after it bare-handed and came away bloodied.

  After over two dozen passes, the terrorized rooster was still embedded in the sand when Yancy Brewster prepared for his turn.

  "Yancy will win," Dellia said smugly, now over her pique with Brewster, who had come solicitously to the family's table after Lissa insisted on sharing dessert with her father.

  While she and Marcus had talked, the smooth-tongued foreman had quickly brought Dellia out of her sulk, plying her with compliments in a feckless attempt to make Lissa jealous and regain her wandering attention. Once Jess disappeared in the crowd, Lissa had lost interest in the vain, oily Brewster.

  "Maybe Yancy will win." Lissa shrugged indifferently as the foreman mounted up on one of his cawy, a small fleet gray with a steady gait.

  "Yancy'll take that cock—I got me five dollars says so," one hand wagered.

  "Done. I say he'll end up with his fingers bit jist like the rest," another hand countered.

  All around the corral, men exchanged bets and cheered or harangued the ramrod. He spurred the sleek little filly into a canter and circled the track, increasing his speed until he drew a roar from the assembly. Just as he approached the prize, he swung one long arm down and seized the rooster, yanking the flapping, squawking bird cleanly from the wet sand, which went flying every direction as he reined in the gray.

  The bird continued to flap and screech, twisting his thick neck and pecking with a sharp curved beak at the offending fingers choking him until he succeeded in biting Brewster's thumb. With an oath, the foreman dropped the reins, seized the bird in both hands, and wrung its neck with a vicious twist. Grinning, he tossed the dead rooster to the ground and dismounted to the cheers of the crowd.

  "Nice fellow," Jess said drily to Tate as they observed the uproar.

  "Brewster is purely mean," Tate said, sucking on a toothpick. "Watch him when you race—and them Spanish rowels he wears. Ain't afraid to use 'em on any rider or horse who gets near."

  "I'll remember that," Jess said as he headed toward the stable where Blaze waited for the race along with the favorite mounts of a dozen contestants. He had sized them all up earlier and decided that Moss's big sorrel, ridden by Rob Ostler, would be the only other competition besides Brewster's white.

  Lissa, sickened by Yancy's cruelty and eager to escape the aromatic press of sweaty cowhands on a hot day, slipped through the crowd and followed Jess into the stable. The air was heavy with dust motes dancing in the rays of golden sunlight filtering through the thin cracks between the boards. The nose-tickling smell of hay blended with the sweet musk of horse droppings. She let her eyes grow accustomed to the indirect light, then walked silently toward Jess, who was replacing his tack on Blaze.

  "Are you ready for the race?"

  He turned toward her with a look of irritation on his face. The subtle, clean scent of orange blossoms floated over the baser smells of the livery. His senses were humming with it, and he resented her for it. "Thought I warned you about sneaking up on me," he said, even though he had been aware of her presence.

  "I'll take my chances," she replied with a smile, drawing closer to pat the big black's nose. "If you win today, you'll make an enemy of Yancy. You bet him almost two months' pay."

  "It's a month's pay to me." He shrugged indifferently. "I just saw what a gracious winner your champion is. Wouldn't hurt him to lose for a change."

  "But it might hurt you. He rides rough, Jess," she said, placing one hand on his chest experimentally.

  He closed his hand over hers, planning to lift it away, but somehow, once he made contact with her silky pale skin, he couldn't let go. When she smiled, he knew she'd felt his heartbeat accelerate. "I consider myself duly warned," he said as he slowly removed her hand, "against both of you."

  She stuck out her lower lip in a mock pout and stepped closer. "For l
uck, Jess," she whispered, tiptoeing up to plant a kiss on his lips. She only meant it to be a swift, light peck, but when her breasts brushed against his chest and she felt the scrape of his whiskers on her fingertips, she sank forward, leaning into him.

  His arms closed around her involuntarily, crushing her against his body. She melted with a small, whimpering moan that opened her lips. His tongue responded by plunging into her mouth to taste her forbidden sweetness yet again. She met his invasion, letting her tongue touch his, sleek and hot, as their lips molded together, brushing, pressing, devouring.

  She traced the hard line of his jaw and touched his bearded cheek with the pads of her thumbs, then sank her fingers into the long shaggy hair touching the collar of his shirt. Jess lifted her up, pressing her hips firmly against his and rocking them slowly as reality faded and they lost themselves in each other.

  Tate's discreet cough brought back sanity. Jess broke off the kiss. Dazed, Lissa did not even notice the big black cowhand standing embarrassed in the stable door.

  "Brewster's a comin' for his horse," was all Shannon said. He touched the brim of his hat respectfully to Lissa, then cast his reproachful brown eyes on Jess before turning his back and walking out the door.

  "Get out of here before they find you," Jess gritted between clenched teeth as he shoved Lissa toward the smaller door on the opposite end of the stable. Once she was gone, he seized the rough boards of an empty stall and held on to them until he felt the splinters biting into his fingers.

  What the hell's wrong with me? I'm the one who's a complete idiot!

  Lissa raced from the stable with her fingers touching her bruised lips, looking neither left nor right. As she circled the outside of the building, she collided with Yancy Brewster, who took her shoulders and held her for a narrow-eyed inspection. He had just seen Shannon come from the stable, now Lissa, with her hair mussed and her breathing erratic. Then Jesse Robbins led his stallion through the front door, and the foreman understood.

  A look of furious incredulity flashed across Brewster's face. "You 'n that breed!" he gasped, his breath catching in his throat.