Devil Moon

by Andrea Parnell

  “You two get out on the street and learn what you can about that foreigner who downed Luther,” he said irritably. “Then get over to the jail and tell Luther not to worry.” Boyd was on his feet, Pete at the door when another order came. “And tell the sheriff I want to see him immediately.”

  When they were gone he grabbed the woman and pulled her to him, but when she lifted her face for the expected kiss he roughly twisted her arm behind her back and snarled at her. “Don’t do that again, Norine,” he warned. “Having my wife spying on me makes me look like a fool.”

  The pain of his manhandling excited Norine. She purred with pleasure as she slowly and sweetly answered him. “I wasn’t spying, darling. I came to tell you something important and didn’t want to interrupt at the wrong moment.”

  Adams let go of her arm. “What is it?”

  Freed, Norine wrapped herself around him, pressing against all the places she knew were sensitive to her charms. “That detective you hired,” she said breathlessly. “He sent a letter.”

  Clearly moved by his wife’s antics, Adams, nevertheless, kept his hands at his sides. “Don’t take all day to tell me, Norine.”

  She stepped back, putting distance between them as she smiled up at her husband’s intent face. “He found that gambler you wanted him to find, the one who won part of the Gamble Line off old Zack Gamble.”

  “And—”

  She sighed. “The man already sold out to somebody else.”

  A jerk shook Adams’s lean frame. “Who?” he demanded.

  Norine stretched, curling her spine backward and thrusting her nearly exposed breasts even further out of the tight red bodice. An unconscious malice lay behind her action. She liked her husband’s full attention at all times, no matter how pressing a distraction might come along. When she was sure he was completely focused on her, with both mind and body, she told him what he wanted to know. “Horace Roper bought it off him about a month ago.”

  Adams clinched his fists and sucked in a breath that didn’t come out for several long and painful seconds. In the interim his face turned red as flame. He looked as if he would explode. “For that bitch,” he said at last.

  “For himself, apparently,” Norine continued, wiggling a step closer. “Ten percent of the company is registered in Roper’s name. The other forty still belongs to old Zack.”

  Adams, outraged, made the unsettling move of turning his back on Norine. “She thinks she’s outsmarted me,” he said. His voice was low and held a threatening note.

  “No, darling,” came with strained sweetness from Norine. “Teddy Gamble doesn’t know you’re behind the attacks on the Gamble Line. How could she?”

  Adams turned. Sometimes, often, Norine tried his patience. “She knows. She can’t prove it’s me, but she knows. If you’d heard her yesterday after Northrop left our meeting you wouldn’t doubt what I’m telling you.”

  “So what?” Norine lifted her dainty ring-clad hands. She stretched them out and slid them down her husband’s hard chest. “It’s only a matter of time before she’s out of business, and it won’t matter who has the shares.”

  Adams caught her marauding hands and held them tightly between their two bodies. “It matters because I could have enjoyed taking down the Gamble Line from the inside out. Not to mention the great waste of destroying something that will eventually belong to me. I wanted that ten percent,” he said hotly. “With an interest in the company, even a small one, I’d have been well on the way to getting full control. I’d have known about everything—assets, schedules, deals with the miners. Now, my dear, everything must continue to be done the hard way.”

  “Nothing wrong with the hard way,” Norine said suggestively. “It always turns out right for me. Besides,” she went on, delighted with the harsh glare Adams gave her, “you’ll win.” She inevitably found Parrish Adams most exciting when he was angry. At the moment he was seething and she intended to take advantage of his fury. With little resistance from him she tugged their hands down to groin level and began slowly stroking her husband.

  “You’re damned right, I’ll win,” he growled at her, though he made no effort to stop her assault. “I’m taking over this territory.” He began to rock against her. “From here to California. And when I do, nothing will move in or out unless Parrish Adams gets a cut. No ore, no payrolls, no supplies, nobody. I’m building an empire here and no chit who can’t make up her mind if she’s a rooster or a hen is going to stop me.”

  “I know what I am,” Norine purred. Her hands had unfastened his trousers and closed around his hardness, making brisk strokes that had begun to take effect.

  A throaty groan emanated from his throat as he jerked free of her, whirled her around, threw her face down over his desk and snatched her billowing silk skirts up over her head. “You’re a whore,” he said, and drove into her.

  ***

  The room smelled of perfume and sex. Norine, purring like a satisfied cat, lay across the desk as he’d left her. Adams had adjusted his clothes and was washing his hands when a knock came at the door that opened to the saloon. Cursing, he pulled his wife’s wrinkled skirt over her naked bottom and pulled her to her feet. “Get out,” he said.

  “Adams? You there?” Len Blalock’s hesitant voice came behind the sound of Norine’s scurrying footsteps.

  “Come on in,” Adams replied to the sheriff as he ran his hands over his tousled hair and smoothed it to his head. Coatless but presentable, he was in the leather chair behind his desk when the lawman stepped in.

  A silver star shone from the gray serge vest Len Blalock wore over his white shirt. His face was wide, his skin weathered. The combination of sun and worry made him look older than his forty-seven years. He was a heavily built man but much of his weight had turned from muscle to fat with the years. A good portion of it had settled around his middle where it all but obscured his gun belt. He hadn’t, though, quite lost all the instincts that had once made him a good lawman. He caught the faint essence of Norine’s perfume and looked for her. “Thought I heard your wife,” he said.

  “You didn’t,” Adams retorted. “Have a seat.” While the sheriff pulled up a chair Adams relit his cigar. He puffed heavily, filling the room with pungent smoke and quickly ridding it of telltale odors. He did offer a cigar to the sheriff but the lawman declined, citing a breakfast that had not set well with him.

  Len Blalock was the kind of lawman Adams liked, a man who had been at his job a decade or more and come to the conclusion that the price of honesty and keeping order had been too high. Adams had observed those traits in Sheriff Blalock when he’d come to Wishbone and opened the Diamond Saloon. He’d made a point of doing the sheriff a few favors, had helped him settle a debt on his house and loaned him money for his daughter’s schooling. And then he’d owned him. All of that had taken place just far enough back for the sheriff now to start having second thoughts about selling out. “Been avoiding me?” Adams asked the man.

  “No. Being careful, that’s all,” the sheriff said too quickly to be convincing. “Got your man locked up. Didn’t want anybody making a connection before he goes to trial.”

  Since yesterday Blalock had worried himself sick wondering what would happen when Joe Luther did go to trial. He was fairly certain Luther would be convicted. All those witnesses on the stage, including his daughter, had seen his face. Once he was convicted and looking at prison, what was to keep Luther from revealing who he worked for or that Len Blalock had played a role in the attacks on the Gamble Line?

  Feeling dry-mouthed, the sheriff waited for enlightenment from Adams, hoping against hope that the man had a solution that would spare them both being named conspirators to the crime. At the same time he was wishing he’d never met Adams. And he was acknowledging to himself that, much as he wanted to, he’d never dare break with him.

  His efforts to hide his feelings from Adams had his stomach feeling full of rocks. His head felt as if it were split. Seeing Justine and Joe Luther in his offic
e yesterday at the same time had brought home to him an inkling of what he had bargained away. He hadn’t thought of his association with Adams as selling out until then. He’d realized how close Justine had come to being mauled and killed by men he’d been helping protect.

  The trouble was, he couldn’t see any way out of the predicament now. He’d agreed to look the other way while Adams harassed the Gamble Line until Teddy Gamble was willing to sell out or had lost her Wells Fargo contracts. In return Adams had promised there would be no killing. Now he doubted if Adams would keep his word.

  He was ashamed of what he’d become—for the promise of a few dollars—but afraid to buck Adams. He put a hand to his brow as if to still his throbbing head. He’d been a fool to throw his hat in with the businessman, but he’d be a bigger one to try and get it back.

  Adams, black brows drawn together, sat and watched Len Blalock stew. He could as good as guess what was going on in the sheriff’s mind. Smiling perversely, he rocked back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his neck. “Don’t worry about Luther,” he said. “He’s not going to trial.”

  The sheriff shook his aching head. “Don’t see how even you can prevent a trial—unless you’ve got the circuit judge in your pocket.”

  “Not yet,” Adams retorted.

  “Then how—”

  “Luther’s going to escape. You see to it.”

  “Me? Let a prisoner escape.” Momentarily disbelieving what he’d heard, the sheriff stared at the still smiling Adams.

  “Either that or shoot him. Makes no difference to me. But Luther doesn’t go to trial.”

  Some of the courage he’d once possessed filled Len Blalock. “I’ve got to draw the line here, Adams,” he said. “I’ve got a reputation for running a tight jail.” He pushed out of the chair and stood, legs wide apart, before Adams’s desk. “And I don’t shoot down an unarmed man.”

  Adams was unmoved by the sheriff’s protests. “You’ll find a way,” he insisted. “Incidentally, wasn’t that your daughter who came in on yesterday’s stage?”

  Uneasily, the sheriff nodded. Justine was the love of his life. He’d been both father and mother to her since his wife had died ten years back.

  “Pretty girl.” Adams’s face had a feral look that gave even the hardened sheriff a chill. “Too bad she didn’t stay in the East where it’s safer.”

  Defeated by the implied threat, Blalock dropped his head. He’d compromised all he’d once believed in, to provide for Justine, to get her out of Wishbone and in a place where she’d rub shoulders with finer people, maybe find a husband who’d give her the better life she deserved. Justine, though, had ideas of her own. She’d left her expensive school and come home unannounced; stating she’d missed her pa too much to stay away. He cringed at the thought of her ever finding out what he’d done.

  Grimly he nodded to Adams. “I’ll see that Luther gets away tonight.”

  Chapter 10

  The stock saddle with the high pommel and the flat-topped horn took some getting used to. But the dun gelding Rhys had borrowed from Felicity Gamble had a smooth gait and an easy mouth. Half a mile from the ranch, Rhys had abandoned the posting style he was accustomed to and adapted to moving his body with the horse.

  Even so, he would not have been mistaken for a cowboy, not in the close-fitting knee-high riding boots and snug buff-colored trousers topped by a superbly tailored black jacket. Had there been any doubt left, the black silk ascot Lucien had expertly tied inside his starched collar would have removed it.

  Lucien, outfitted in a hammertail frock coat and bowler hat looked even more the odd fellow. Unaccustomed to riding, he had adjusted to neither horse nor saddle. Staying astride his mount had proved to be a struggle, made all the more difficult because of his lameness. After the first few minutes he had abandoned the stirrups due to the discomfort they gave him, and put all his concentration into gripping the leather-clad horn. As a result he bounced loosely around the worn seat of the saddle and would surely have fallen to the ground had not the curve of the cantle served as a buffer to his slipping and sliding. Thankfully, too, the old mare he rode was slow and patient with her inexperienced rider.

  Patience, however, quickly deserted Lucien. “I tell you, Monsieur Rhys, I belong in the city, where there are cabs and drivers to be had. This place—” In a moment of despair he threw up his hands and nearly tilted himself off the horse. “This animal,” he said, abruptly seizing the horn and righting himself, “I cannot abide.”

  “I should have insisted you stay behind,” Rhys said, realizing that somewhere along the journey from London to Wishbone, Arizona, Lucien had ceased being the preemptive caregiving servant and had become an anxious and apprehensive friend. That being the case, he felt duty bound to make a change in the association they had. “But now that we are here,” he said “and because I do not think you would undertake the return journey alone, I feel I must make amends for having imposed my troubles on you.”

  “There is no imposition, monsieur.”

  Rhys did not know how his words would be received but he felt compelled to speak his mind. The open country of Arizona, the great sweeps of desert and towering bare-faced mountains made a man aware he need only have the limits he chose for himself. Rhys had begun to question the ones he had, more often than not, chosen by default. Of more concern was the worry that he had chosen for Lucien, too. He did not know how, or even if, he might rectify what was amiss in his life, but he knew wholeheartedly that Lucien must have the chance to pick his own way. Here and now, he was convinced, was the place to begin. “I think it is only right that I dismiss you from your duties,” he announced.

  Lucien paled. “You are dismissing me? Monsieur!” Lucien sputtered. “What am I to do?”

  “I am dismissing you from service only,” Rhys explained. “You are free to stay with me if you wish, but as an equal, not as servant to his master.”

  “Monsieur!”

  “Lucien, I insist,” Rhys said. “Be your own man. You have the wit, find the will. Both of us know you are nearly as adept at the tables as I am. Find a game. You could make a decent living. Better yet, open an establishment of some kind. Here or elsewhere. Put your talents to use. I’ve no doubt you can do better for yourself than I have done for you.”

  A few minutes later, having recovered from his shock, Lucien, who had begun to find the prospect of freedom intriguing, put a question to Rhys. “And you, monsieur, what will you do? Surely you do not wish to stay here longer than is necessary.”

  Rhys smiled. Old habits held fast. “You forget yourself, Lucien,” he said. “I am Rhys to you now.”

  The former servant looked uncertain then broke into a big grin. “As you wish,” he said.

  “I stay as long as I must,” Rhys continued. “I mean to get what is mine.” He got a devilish gleam in his eye. Lucien had seen it when Rhys knew the table was rich and the players overrated. “And not to be toyed with in the process,” he added. The smile he gave then was off-center and Lucien knew he was thinking of Teddy Gamble. “I mean to return to London with my pockets full.” He straightened in the saddle as he spoke. “That dimwit who gave evidence against me was paid by someone. He might forget his lies for more gold. Whether he does or not, I am curious to know what act of mine has made an enemy who would take such pain to ruin me.” The smile was gone now. His eyes had grown shadowed, his expression grave. “I have had long nights to think on it,” he pronounced grimly. “What happened was planned long in advance. What’s more, Jenny knew why she was killed. She wanted to tell me but lacked the strength to say the words.”

  “Then you did not mean it when you told Mademoiselle Gamble you might keep your shares of the stage line?”

  A silence ensued as Rhys considered the question. He had not meant it when he said it, but, having put it to voice he had found the prospect of an entirely different life held some appeal, as did Teddy Gamble. Should he find the wagering high in the local saloons he might bankro
ll his defense in London solely with his winnings. After all, a stage company, if well run, would be worth more in the future than now. To Lucien he said, “My friend, when one is wishing there is the whole world at hand.”

  ***

  An hour later the pair rode into town and attracted more than a few stares when they paused in the middle of the street to flip a coin. “There are two saloons, Lucien. One for you. One for me. Take your pick.”

  Lucien looked about and decided the plainer front of the Brass Bell held more appeal for his simple tastes. “Heads,” Lucien called.

  Rhys tossed the coin. “Heads,” he said. “The beginning of your lucky streak,” Rhys told him.

  They left the horses at a hitching rail, agreeing to meet again at nightfall, the size of their winnings determining whether they would return to the ranch or find more comfortable lodgings in town. Rhys watched Lucien limp away, then, with what he swore was the last loan he would take from his former servant weighty in his pocket, turned down the board sidewalk toward the Diamond Saloon.

  He did not get far.

  “Mister! Delmar!” The summons came from the open doorway of an office that appeared to be a small and dark cubicle.

  Hearing the clank of spurs and the stomp of boots coming his way, Rhys stopped and turned. The man who had spoken to him wore a badge on his chest. For one damnable minute Rhys wondered if he’d already been traced and was about to be arrested, but then remembered that the young woman on the stage had said her father was the law officer in Wishbone.

  “Sheriff Blalock?” he ventured.

  “Right. Been looking for you,” the man said. His face showed the strain of a demanding day. Len Blalock pushed back his hat, revealing a line of white skin on his forehead that the sun had failed to reach. “Come on in the office,” he said. “Want to say a few words to you.”