Head down, she walked away from the camp. Rhys got up and followed. His footsteps were silent, but his words echoed from the big boulders strung out across the desert. “You couldn’t have known there would be another holdup,” he said.
She spun around. Her expression was as anguished as a hurt child’s. Her eyes were burning brightly in the pale moonlight as she stared in dismay at him. “I knew,” she said. “Bill knew, too. Somebody wants to put me out of business. Including you, I reckon.”
He stepped up close. Her hands were balled at her sides and she was trembling as if she were about to cry. “Wrong,” he said. “You’re entirely wrong about me, Teddy,” Gently he placed his hands on her shoulders and lifted her quivering chin with his thumbs. “I want the Gamble Line to flourish until you get your verification from London and I get my money. Beyond that I wish only that we could be friends.” Gently his thumbs stroked her jawbones, feeling the tension in her, the jolt of stifled sobs. “You need a friend.”
“I had a friend,” she said bitterly. “He’s dead.”
Rhys wrapped his arms around her. She would not permit herself to open up and cry. But now and then her body shuddered softly against him. Her held-back sobs knocked at his heart, making him forget that she was an intemperate, willful woman. He sensed he was seeing the other side of Teddy, finding the softness in her, the woman, an experience as uncommon as glimpsing the hidden side of the moon. She allowed him to hold her for a long while—not, he regretted to think, because he was Rhys Delmar but because he was there in a rare, vulnerable moment.
He did not plan to do more than merely offer Teddy solace. But in time the slow-burning heat of her, the soft sounds she made, the enthralling feel of her ripe breasts pressed into him, proved more than he could withstand. Desire, hot as an inferno, surged within him, quickening his loins, stirring his passion. His arms involuntarily tightened around her, his lips strayed to her temple and rained soft kisses on silky skin rendered pale as silver in the moonlight.
“I could hold you through the night, Teddy,” he whispered hoarsely. “Make the pain go away, if you let me. You would not be sad in my arms.”
His mouth moved over her face, a soft, tempting breeze that made her quiver and moan. His hands plucked away the plaited leather cord that held her hair in a long, tight braid. His agile fingers combed through the sun-lightened strands until her hair hung loose and free and shimmered around her like quicksilver loosed from a bottle. He wove his fingers into the flowing tresses, amazed at the fluid, silky feel of them. Lavender. A trace of the heady scent abided since the last washing—enough to make him imagine her naked lying in a bed of the fragrant blue flowers, her arms outstretched. Teddy. Loving him. Wanting him.
Teddy burrowed into him. She was hurt through—fraught with guilt that it was her stubbornness, her determination not to let go of her father’s dream, which had cost Strong Bill his life. Part of her wanted to throw up her hands and say, enough. Enough dying. Another part of her could not give up, could not let her father’s dream be forgotten or Bill’s death be in vain. Still another part remembered a truth she had been unwilling to admit. She had, despite her protestations, once felt brief but overwhelming pleasure in Rhys’s arms.
That part of her wanted to forget all the painful happenings of the day. That part, so long denied, so secretive, so unfamiliar, wanted to cling to Rhys Delmar, to seek a woman’s solace in his arms, to leave behind sadness and sorrow for a time, however short. That budding part, seizing upon the weakness that brought it forth, would not be denied, would not be shut out. It demanded to be heard, to be satisfied.
With a soft, throaty moan she gave in to it, so easy when he held her, when his kisses offered comfort and refuge. Slowly, she wrapped her arms around him, and plied her fingers into the rippling muscles in his back. He felt strong as the mountains, sure as the wind, warm as the heat of a roaring fire on a chill night.
Whispering his name, she lifted her face to his. “Hold me,” she said.
“Ahh, Teddy.” Her eyes shone out of the darkness, sparkling blue-green as a mountain pool. Her face reflected the iridescence of the stars—showcasing her finely etched features, her long shadowy lashes that brushed her cheeks, her lips as full and inviting as ripe red berries that begged to be tasted. Again.
He took the bounty offered, relishing what had been forbidden fruit—the sweetness of her, the nectar of her mouth—as his tongue stabbed past her lips and drank her in. He could not get enough of her, though he tried, his mouth plundering, assaulting, stealing what she was not quick enough to give.
He took her breath, left her giddy, reeling, anxious for more of his devouring kisses. Euphoric kisses. How they intoxicated. How they made her forget that she had wanted only to be held and comforted enough to dull the pain of loss. But she did not understand that emotions denied so long, so completely, once aroused would not be hers to command.
It was as if he had taken possession of them, whipping up a fierce, intense yearning that ran through her like a gale, a tempest in her veins.
She felt herself swept up in the storm. The earth was falling away beneath her feet. She saw the stars spinning brightly in the inky sky above. In a moment she was stretched out on a shadowed mountain peak, Rhys was alongside her, his hands cradling, caressing as the wind tugged at her clothes and fire lapped at her skin.
Incredible sensations sped through her. She felt weightless as a bird in flight, soaring too high, too fast. Terrified, tantalized, she wound her hands around his neck—holding on, guiding his mouth to her bared breasts, crying out as his lips brushed across her nipples, inflaming them. What was this power he had, this magic that awakened a woman she did not know, could not understand, a woman she feared would yield all to him?
“You will not be sorry, chérie, I promise you that,” he whispered, his breath warm and soft on her skin.
Chérie. Chérie. The word lashed like a whip. He had called that whore chérie and now he would make a whore of her. She cried out, a sudden, violent sound as if she had been awakened abruptly from a runaway dream that had been too real and terrible.
“Back off! Back off!”
Teddy drew her gun and swung the butt of it at him but he was not as passion-dazed as she. He ducked the blow and let her go, watched her scurry off from where he had lain her on the desert floor.
Cursing him, calling into question his ancestry, she punched her arms into the shirt he had stripped from her moments before, and viciously pulled the garment over her head.
Hair flying around her, she bounded back another step and kicked a cloud of dust toward him. Haloed in moonlight, she stood above him, an angry vengeful goddess with a hand clenched on the handle of her pistol.
“One day,” she said, threateningly.
Wanting her still, he lay where she had left him, counting himself a doomed man. He would have her or die. But he did not tell her so.
“One day, Teddy,” he said taunting, “you will not have that gun.”
Chapter 25
Taviz, with a cigar gripped in his teeth, sat on the plush leather seat of the Gamble stage reading letters from a ripped canvas bag containing U.S. mail.
“Ehh, listen to this one, Juan,” he said, tossing away an envelope postmarked Philadelphia:
Dearest Thomas,
The twenty dollars you sent were sorely needed. Young Thomas had been ill and the doctor has carried us on credit for months. I trust your prospecting will yield greater rewards in the future than it has thus far. We miss you dearest. You have been gone so long. The children ask for you daily.
Your loving wife, Martha
Laughing, Taviz threw the letter out the window of the stage. “This Thomas, I bet he spends his gold dust on whiskey and easy women while his wife scrapes by at home. Ehh, what do you think, Juan?”
“Sí, that is what I would do.” Juan, short and bow-legged and spiteful as a snake when angered, agreed.
“No,” Taviz said solemnly. “You would have y
our woman dig for gold while you waited at home.”
“Sí! Sí!” Guffawing, Juan grabbed a handful of the stolen letters and thrust them at Taviz. “These make me laugh. Read more to me, señor.”
Taviz pitched the entire bunch away. “No more,” he said, then bellowed out the window. “Ehh, Rennie! Stop the coach! I am tired of this seesaw ride. I want my horse.”
Rennie was the most heartless of Taviz’s gang and the second of the men Taviz had brought with him. Rennie pulled the team to a halt long enough for Taviz to climb out and mount the showy black stallion with white stockings. He had been tied by a lead to the stage’s boot. Juan climbed out after Taviz, bringing with him the iron-bound green treasure box. Taviz had shot the lock off shortly after taking possession of the stage. With Boyd Smith looking over his shoulder he had counted the loot it held. Taviz had agreed to a fifty-fifty split of any booty. In return for his half Adams had promised to keep the sheriff off the trail of the outlaws.
The box taken in this first holdup contained four thousand dollars in eight bags of gold nuggets being sent down to the Wells Fargo office in Yuma.
On Taviz’s orders Juan transferred the contents of four of the bags into the saddle packs of Taviz and his men. The other four went to Boyd Smith who had ridden along with Taviz and the stage after the holdup.
“This ought to make Adams feel good.” Boyd tied down the flaps on his saddle packs and made ready to mount and ride to Wishbone with the booty. He looked forward to getting his share, thought he might buy himself a new saddle or some of those hand-tooled boots over at Penrod’s.
Taviz grinned. “You tell Adams I send him another, better present soon.”
“Yeah?” Boyd was never sure what to say to Taviz. “What’s it gonna be?”
“The Gamble Line,” Taviz said proudly. “I give it to him soon.” He caught the reins of Boyd’s horse before the other man could mount and ride away. Though it was the hot part of the day, the look on Taviz’s fiendish face raised goose bumps on Boyd’s skin. “You wait a little while,” Taviz said, “so you can tell Adams what I do.”
“Sure,” Boyd answered, wanting more than anything to get away from the half-breed and his men. “I’m in no hurry.”
Motioning for Boyd to follow, Taviz spurred his horse to a gallop across a rocky stretch of ground that ended at the top of a high canyon wall. The stallion’s hooves grated and slid in the rocks when Taviz turned him. They were only inches from the steep drop to the dry valley below. Much more slowly, Boyd rode up a few minutes later and leaned out of the saddle to look over the edge. The ground fell away to the big rocks two hundred feet below. The view gave him a sick feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t like high places. He told Taviz so and backed his horse away a few yards.
“The high place scares you?” Taviz laughed and pointed to his man perched on the driver’s seat of the stage which still sat a quarter mile away. “Watch Rennie,” he said. “He will show you how to be brave, ehh.”
Taviz raised one arm above his head held it there a moment and let it fall. At the signal Rennie took the whip to the tired stage horses forcing them into a furious run toward the cliff. Across the plateau they came, lifting a tumultuous cloud of dust that swirled and twisted in their wake. Boyd’s heart pounded as furiously as the racing hooves, faster, faster.
Behind the coach Juan rode at a gallop, with Rennie’s saddle horse trailing him. Why Taviz and his men wanted to play a fool’s game was beyond Boyd Smith’s imagination. One thing he knew, though, Rennie hadn’t left himself room to stop that stage.
Rennie did not even try. When the lead horses were six feet from the edge he jumped from the driver’s box and rolled across the hard ground. The doomed horses tried to turn at the last moment but it was too late to stop the momentum of the coach. The entire outfit went thundering over the edge.
Boyd grimacing, couldn’t make himself look down at the wreckage. Taviz and his men looked and laughed and did a wild victory dance on the rim of the cliff.
“We could have made some money sellin’ them horses,” Boyd pointed out.
“Now we make stew, ehh?” The half-breed slapped Boyd’s horse hard on the rump sending him bolting across the plateau. Boyd let the animal run unchecked. He could not get away from the trio of outlaws fast enough. “You tell Adams how Taviz does business, my friend!” Taviz roared after him.
***
Hundreds of miles away the roar of train wheels went rolling over a lonely stretch of track, and kept Derby Seward awake. He was tired, and thirsty for a whiskey. His skin blackened by the coal dust blowing in the open windows of the train car, an irritable Seward picked up a discarded newspaper left behind by a former rail passenger.
His trip had been hard. He’d left London with little preparation. Avery Knox was anxious beyond reason for Seward to find and dispose of Rhys Delmar. In the frenzied weeks of travel, Seward had met with bad food, too little sleep and inferior whiskey. He was ready for the end of the line though he did not look forward to leaving the uncomfortable train car for the even less comfortable stage ride to Wishbone, Arizona.
He hoped Delmar had not left Wishbone. As if in answer to a prayer—though in Seward’s case it was more likely the favoring hand of the devil—the Englishman chanced to glance at a single story in the weeks-old newspaper, his eye drawn by the word Wishbone, the very location he sought.
The subject of the short article was a stage robbery foiled by a rock-wielding Frenchman, one Rhys Delmar. Seward’s flagging spirit leaped and a smile played on his wide lips as he silently applauded his detective work. Knox would be elated with a quick end to his problem.
The smile got away from Seward as he thought of the disgusting, would-be earl. He had to consider that he might have trouble collecting his due from Knox once the deed was done. Knox was unstable and growing more so by the day. Suppose he killed Delmar then got back to London and found that Knox had lost what was already a loose hold on his sanity. Then what would he, Seward, have for his trouble? Better think on that, he decided.
He needed safeguards for himself, ways to assure that he got his due whatever happened to Knox, and that he did not come under suspicion the moment he arrived in Wishbone. He was not foolish. He knew a portly, red-haired Englishman would stand out in the small territorial town, unless he had a convincing reason for being there. What was his reason to be? He could not very well present himself in Wishbone as an assassin come to murder Rhys Delmar.
With the discarded paper resting in his lap, Seward closed his eyes and massaged his temples and forced himself to think of all the obstacles he might encounter. Outside, the sun glared down on the roof of the racing train. The hills slipped by in the distance. After a time the sought-after safeguards began to occur to Derby Seward. Maybe, just maybe, he should not be too quick to kill Delmar. Maybe he should consider advising the Frenchman that a fortune was his for the claiming in London. Rhys Delmar might offer extremely generous compensation to the man who gave him that news. Especially if that man could also clear him of a charge of murder.
He might be more generous than Knox. On the other hand perhaps his best chance was to stick with Knox. Seward licked his dry lips and pondered the matter. Delmar or Knox. What a quandary.
“Excuse me,” a soft voice said. “Have you any objection to my taking this seat?”
Seward opened his weary eyes in time to see an expensively dressed but homely woman gesturing to the empty seat facing his.
“Please do,” he said, smiling warmly. “You’ll improve the view immensely.”
The woman’s cheeks reddened with delight as she slid onto the seat. “I’m sure that’s not at all true,” she said. “But watching the ground go by does get monotonous. I thought switching sides of the car would help break the boredom.”
“Perhaps,” Seward said. “Or perhaps this paper would offer a bit of respite.” He neatly refolded the paper he had been reading and passed it into the woman’s gloved hand. “It’s o
ld but you might find enough of interest to pass the time more pleasantly.”
The woman slipped off her cream-colored kid gloves and opened the paper for a glimpse at the headlines on the front page. Seward’s eyes were drawn to the large, sparkling ruby brooch the woman wore at her collar.
“Thank you, Mr.—”
“Seward. Derby Seward.”
“And I am Ada Penrod,” the woman said. “I’m making this trip to visit my brother in Wishbone, Arizona.”
“Wishbone?” Seward smiled. “How fortunate for me.”
“Oh?”
“Wishbone is on my list of destinations as well,” Seward explained.
“Have you family there?” Ada asked.
“No, no relations there. I’ll be a stranger in town,” he said instantly concocting a plausible reason for his being in Wishbone and for asking questions about Rhys Delmar should the man prove difficult to locate. “I’m a reporter, you see. I’ve come west to do a series of stories for my London paper.”
Ada leaned forward. “How exciting.”
“Yes, it is rather,” Seward continued, elaborating on his lie. “My topic is outlaws and lawmen of the territory and most certainly, any person who stands out from the ordinary.”
“That would be most everyone in Wishbone,” Ada Penrod declared. “Of course, I contend there is no civilized person west of St. Louis.” Her deep-set hazel eyes grew bright for an instant. “I should be delighted to speak with you again after a few weeks to learn if you agree.”
Seward stroked his beard. “An intriguing suggestion,” he said.
“Perhaps I could—no.” Ada’s narrow face spotted with red. A spinster and anxious to rectify the condition, she did not often meet a truly interesting man. “That would be presumptuous of me.”
“Please do go on as you began,” Seward pleaded.
“Well—that is—My brother has a mercantile business in Wishbone. For a time, before I moved back to our family home, I helped him in the store. So, of course, he and I know almost everyone in town. Perhaps we could introduce you to some of the more colorful residents.”
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