Devil Moon

by Andrea Parnell

  “Assuming he hasn’t already dealt with Adams,” came her impudent reply. She glanced up at the second floor of the Diamond and saw a red curtain draw closed across one of the upper room windows. She needed no more than instinct to tell her that Rhys Delmar and the saloon girl sought privacy behind it. Totally discomfited, she concluded he was up there behaving like a man with no worries. She found new ones almost hourly heaped on her head. As if to confirm her assessment she spotted the sheriff moving at a fast pace down the walk toward them. “Hell!” she said. “Here comes Len Blalock running to Adams to pick up his orders for the day.”

  “Watch your mouth, Teddy, we got trouble enough,” Rope warned.

  The sheriff, about a hundred yards away, popped open his pocket watch and checked the time. He’d planned on getting to the Diamond right after Delmar had left his office. But Blalock had been delayed by trouble with a couple of drunks engaged in a fistfight at the Brass Bell. About the time he and his deputy had those two incarcerated, Justine had come in and reminded him of his promise to join her for lunch at Sprayberry’s boarding house. He’d just gotten away, but he didn’t suppose there had been any harm done by letting Adams wait. The man was too damned demanding anyway.

  Len Blalock’s dark mood wasn’t made any better by catching sight of Teddy and Rope outside the Diamond. They were sure to give him grief about his lack of success at finding the men who had been attacking the Gamble stages. He halfheartedly hoped they would want to avoid him as he did them and would have crossed the street before he reached the saloon. But as he got closer he saw that Teddy was standing there like her boots were nailed to the sidewalk. Putting up a stalwart front, he kept walking, giving a curt nod to the pair as he sought to pass. “Afternoon, Teddy. Rope.”

  “Afternoon, Sheriff,” Teddy said, swiftly forgetting Rope’s warning to rein herself in. “You catch those other road agents yet?”

  Reluctantly, he halted. “Not yet, but I will,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Like you caught all those others?” Teddy didn’t wait for an answer, and didn’t actually expect one. “Let me see, how many have you brought in?” With a studied look she counted on her fingers. “One...One, isn’t it? One a passenger turned over to you. Looks like, at the least, you could get a lead from the one you’ve got in jail.”

  “He won’t talk,” the sheriff countered uneasily, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Is that it?” she taunted. “Or is it that you’re not listening?”

  The blood drained from the sheriff’s face as, for a moment, he stood tightening and releasing his big, scarred fists. “I’m gonna pretend I don’t know what you mean by that,” he said at last.

  “It ought to be easy.” Teddy glared at him. “You’ve had plenty of practice pretending to be a sheriff.”

  One hand raised, he made a step toward her. “I’ve had about enough of you, Teddy.”

  “Yeah! Well—” A jerk on her arm stopped Teddy from shortening the distance between them.

  “She’s done,” Rope said. He dragged the protesting Teddy down the street, holding onto her until he felt the tight muscles in her arm relax.

  “Thanks a lot for backing me up,” she said grumpily.

  Rope shook his head in consternation. “One day I expect to see a fuse sprout out of your scalp.”

  Teddy craned her neck to confirm that Len Blalock had been about to enter the Diamond, saw she was right, then looked back at Rope. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re a hothead, Teddy. That you don’t know the difference between when to play a card and when to hold it.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said, her temper cooling off as quickly as it had flared. “Sorry, Rope. I didn’t mean to stir up any more trouble. Really.”

  “That’s all right,” he mumbled, momentarily forgetting that the time to be suspicious of Teddy was when she was too agreeable.

  A second later she’d left his side, hopped off the sidewalk and started briskly across the street.

  “Hold it! What in tarnation are you up to, Teddy?”

  “Nothing.” She pointed at Penrod’s Mercantile. “I told Felicity I’d pick up some things, thread and such, for her.” Smiling, she waved away his deepening concern. “Stop your worrying and go on,” she insisted. “I’ll catch up in a few minutes.” With that, she continued in a beeline across the dusty street toward Penrod’s. She glanced back just once to make sure Rope had bought her story and was continuing to the office.

  When she saw him round the corner, she spun about in her tracks and headed back the way she had come before the dust had drifted off behind her. She quickly crossed the sidewalk and ducked into the narrow, shadowed alley that ran alongside the Diamond. Stepping lightly, she started up the weathered treads of an outdoor staircase that led to the narrow stretch of porch on the second floor and on to the window of the room where she’d seen the curtain drawn.

  The sash was up. The room was quiet. Except for the rhythmic squeak of bedsprings and an occasional feminine squeal. Teddy grimaced and eased the curtain aside only to find the unexpected. Rhys Delmar, coatless but otherwise fully clothed, had one booted foot on the edge of the bed and was jostling the mattress up and down. On the foot of the bed enjoying the bouncing ride and clothed as fully as she’d been when she’d led Rhys from the barroom, sat the red-haired saloon girl. She was responsible for the squeals.

  “Your reputation is spared, chérie,” Rhys said cheerily to the laughing girl, then whirled about, having gotten a startling surprise from a glimpse of the mirror. “Yours, my dear,” he looked toward the window where Teddy was half hidden behind the red curtain, “I fear will suffer from being named a Peeping Tom.”

  “Looks like I missed the good part,” Teddy retorted, feeling her ever-ready temper starting to simmer.

  Motioning to Honor to stay put, Rhys eased away from the bed and walked a few steps toward the window. “No, Teddy.” He spoke her name so softly, so enticingly that, in spite of her anger she felt an unanticipated shiver of response sweep her. She disguised her chagrin with a frown as he drew near. And she left the obedient but curious Honor to stare in disbelief at Rhys’s familiarity with Teddy. When he was close enough that only Teddy could hear him, though Honor was holding her breath to catch the words, he whispered, “I’m saving the good part for you.”

  “Assuming there is a good part,” Teddy came back. “Something that’s not worn down to a nub from overuse.”

  “Curious?” The corners of his sensual lips turned up in a taunting grin.

  Teddy felt her face and ears burning but wasn’t about to be outdone. She put her hands on her hips and gave her hat-clad head a toss. “Not a bit,” she said. “But if I cared, I’d ask why you were jiggling that bed with your foot instead of tossing in it with that redhead. Seems like a waste of good money to me.

  He stood framed in the window with the sunlight washing over his face, highlighting the fine strong lines of it, setting his pale, unsettling eyes aglow. She had tried so hard to view Rhys Delmar as an adversary, someone to be outwitted and weeded out of her life. Now she could not stop herself from seeing the man.

  She could understand why the saloon girl had stuck to him like a burr. He was all polish and charm right down to his dandified clothes. His vest of ice blue silk, like his eyes, shimmered blindingly in the sunlight. Buff riding breeches hugged his sinewy legs, and there was, Teddy could see, nothing about him worn to a nub. As she looked up, her thoughts were all too clear. She saw that his face had the detached and amused look that had so infuriated her at breakfast.

  “I’m happy you’ve taken such a personal interest in my welfare,” he said smoothly.

  She removed her hat, gave the dusty crown a thump, then repositioned it on her head. “I’m interested in the part of your welfare that’s related to my welfare,” she said looking past him. The saloon girl had wiggled down to a corner of the bed, where she sat perched like a hungry bird leani
ng forward and seriously straining her tightly laced corselet as she tried harder to hear what was being said at the window. The girl had looks, Teddy conceded, and didn’t mind showing her assets. She was also probably a direct pipeline to Parrish Adams, which annoyed Teddy no end. “If you can tear yourself away from that trussed-up trollop,” she said caustically, “come on out here. I’ve got a business to run and I’ve decided that as long as you’re claiming to own part of it you ought to be pitching in.”

  “Hay?”

  “No. Hell.” Her eyes flashed. “Not hay. You can do what I do provided you can keep up.”

  Rhys smiled, turned to Honor, and made a gallant bow. “Chérie,” he said. “Your pardon, please. I must leave.”

  “What about the lunch we ordered?” Honor protested, but not too loudly. She knew about Teddy Gamble’s temper and the Colt the other woman sometimes wore strapped to her side.

  Rhys flipped her twenty dollars. “Enjoy it and have yourself a deserved rest, on me,” he said.

  Honor blew him a kiss. “I’ll see you later—darlin’.”

  Rhys nodded, grabbed his coat from the back of a nearby chair and lightly swung through the window.

  “Did you tell that gal why you’re in Wishbone?” Teddy demanded as they traversed the weathered planks of the upper porch.

  Rhys stepped to one side and allowed Teddy to start down the roughly made stairs before him. “Are you asking if I told Honor that I am here to redeem my shares of the Gamble Line?”

  Teddy’s frown cut lines in her forehead. “That’s what I mean. Did you?”

  “No, our conversation ran along a more personal line.”

  “I’ll bet.” Teddy retorted. “Did you tell anyone else?”

  She had aroused his curiosity with her questions. Evidently she wanted the situation kept quiet. But why should acknowledging his involvement in the company be a cause of concern? He supposed he’d need to find out. He also supposed, quite correctly, that she wasn’t going to like what he told her next. “Only the sheriff,” he said.

  She drew up short and he nearly bumped into her. “Well, hell! Might as well have taken the headlines in the Wishbone Gazette.” Scowling, she started walking again.

  Rhys followed. “Do you always speak in that way?”

  She tossed her head back and made a face at him. “Like what? You mean do I always cuss? Hell, yes, I do. My father believed in speaking his mind and I do too. You don’t have many misunderstandings when you speak your mind.”

  “I recall that your Uncle Zack spoke his mind,” Rhys said. “Were they much alike, your father and Zack?”

  “Like opposite sides of the same coin,” Teddy replied, then paused, getting an unbidden image of her father and Uncle Zack the last time they had been together, each man red-faced with anger and shouting accusations at the other. She’d feared there would be bloodshed before they were done, but Zack had ridden out of their lives. Felicity had been heartbroken over the rift. Her father hadn’t been fit company for months afterwards. Zack and Theodor Gamble had been a paradox, any strength in one countered by a weakness in the other. “Both were blunt and stubborn and ambitious,” she continued as if there had been no lapse in her reply. “The difference was, my father used those traits to build things. Things that would last. Uncle Zack’s plans never got past the talking stage. The two didn’t get along.”

  The tip of her tongue showed as she moistened her lips, a nervous but girlish gesture that made Rhys aware that Teddy Gamble knew what hurt and pain were about. He stopped himself from speaking up and saying everything would be all right. That was preemptive and even if she did have a vulnerable side to her that made him want to nestle her in his arms, she was also a woman who would run right over anyone who got in her way.

  Chapter 13

  Parrish Adams rolled out across his desk a well-used map of the Arizona territory and ran his lean finger across a section he had outlined in red. The irregularly shaped area stretched from Yuma up to Wickenburg and swung south past Tucson and toward the border. His territory. Or soon it would be. He might not hold deeds to all of it, but he would control all freight and passengers that moved across it. When he did he would control access to the rail lines that were scheduled to be built across southern Arizona.

  He would be the most powerful man in the territory. And the richest. That alone, though, was not enough. He wanted to be admired and respected. He wanted his name mentioned in the same breath with those of men like Bill Cody and George Custer. That was the only reason he’d shown any restraint in bringing about the demise of the Gamble Line. He’d managed to get where he was by being smart, and not allowing too much tarnish to attach to his name. Theodor Gamble’s friends still kept an eye out for Teddy. He couldn’t allow the trouble she was having to be traced to him. As a safeguard he’d only sent men whose loyalty he could count on to make attacks on the stage, damned incompetents that they were.

  Frowning, Adams rolled the map and angrily slid it into a lower desk drawer. The time had come for sterner measures. Luther’s capture had shown that he was only trading one risk for another by using men who were known to work, at times, for him. Loyal or not, there was the chance that someone would make the connection. Should Teddy Gamble get killed in one of the holdups—the thought appealed to him, but the complication of such an event did not—Adams couldn’t afford having the killers traced to him.

  His expression clouded as he thought of Teddy. Damn her! She was trouble. She had him way behind schedule. He’d thought that a few holdups would scare her into selling out. But she was too stubborn for her own good. Making sure both doors were locked, he went to the safe concealed behind a wall panel. As was his custom, he made a check of the contents when the door swung open, found it met his satisfaction, then removed a bag of gold coins. He locked the safe then poured the coins into his hand and counted them. His backup plan for acquiring the Gamble Line would not come cheap.

  The gold coins warmed in his hands before he returned them to the leather bag. Five hundred dollars. Enough to tempt Taviz and his gang of banditos out of the hills if they knew more was waiting for them. Taviz was Mexican, as were two of his gang. The other was a half-breed Apache who collected scalps. The four of them and their women lived up in the hills like a pack of animals.

  Adams tossed the bag of gold in the air and caught it. He smiled to himself. Boyd could start off tomorrow to find Taviz. The money would bring him running, that and knowing he’d get to take a few Wells Fargo strongboxes. Taviz hated Wells Fargo. One of their agents had sent the Mexican to prison for several years. Since his escape he took his revenge on the company whenever the opportunity arose. Adams had used him a time or two before, when he needed help acquiring a piece of property from a reluctant seller, but there was no one alive who could say the Mexican was in his employ.

  Yes. Adams laughed briefly. Taviz would enjoy this job. Short of killing Teddy, Adams meant to give him free rein to do whatever was necessary to bring the Gamble Line to a halt. When they were done, Wells Fargo would be pulling their contract from Teddy and she would be begging him to buy her out. But he wouldn’t have to then. All he’d need to do was pick up the pieces.

  With the gold tucked in his pocket, Adams crossed to the saloon door and turned a brass key in the lock. Teddy Gamble had no business trying to run a stage company. But she had let her last chance for a buyout pass, and she had stood in his way far too long. Too bad she had never learned what a woman was good for, but maybe Taviz would teach her that. Adams pushed the door open and looked out in the saloon for someone to fetch Boyd. He was smiling, thinking just maybe he might get the chance to teach Teddy that lesson himself.

  “Have one on the house, Sheriff,” he said, surprised to find that Blalock had stopped at the bar for a shot of whiskey. Usually the man was conscientious about not drinking on duty.

  “Thanks,” the sheriff said, picking up his glass after Harley the bartender refilled it. While Adams barked an order to the old man w
ho swept up the place, the sheriff ambled toward him, hoping Harley wouldn’t think to mention how long he had been standing at the bar or how many shots of whiskey he’d already had. He’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to dull the sting of Teddy’s words. He had only succeeded in making himself feel worse, but maybe being a little drunk would make the meeting with Adams more bearable. “I’ve got some news for you,” he said, trying to keep the distaste out of his voice.

  Adams shut the door behind him. “About Luther?”

  “No,” Blalock said. “About that stranger that came in on the stage. Justine kind of took a shine to him after that...experience. So I made a point of looking him up to thank him for what he did for her.” The irony of what the sheriff said didn’t seem to have registered with him but it did with Adams. He listened in stone-faced silence as Len Blalock continued. “Like I usually do of any stranger, I asked him what his business was in Wishbone.”

  “He’s a gambler,” Adams said impatiently. He wasn’t interested in a rundown on the stranger. Gamblers came and went in Wishbone. He expected this one would too. “As good a one as I’ve seen,” he continued. “He was in here all morning. Right now he’s upstairs with one of my girls.”

  “You’ll be glad of that,” Blalock said. “He’s got something you want.”

  “I doubt that,” Adams came back, beginning to wonder if Blalock wasn’t getting soft in the head.

  The sheriff gulped down the shot of whiskey he’d been holding, then looked Adams straight in the eye. Having had time to think about it, he had come to the conclusion that Adams’s buying into the Gamble Line was the best solution for everyone, except maybe Teddy. She would be ruined for sure, but there would be no more holdups and he wouldn’t find himself in the position of turning his head to the law anymore. Wanting his words to have all the meaning with Adams that they had for him, he spoke slowly and carefully. “He’s got Zack Gamble’s shares of the stage line.”