"Nope." He took a bite of fruit. "No more beans in the wheel."
Pendleton was sputtering, his cheeks florid, his chest heaving. "Mr. Cassidy, you have an intellect rivaled only by doorknobs!"
Turning on his heel, Pendleton grabbed the mare's reins from Collie, booted Vandy out of the driver's seat, and "geed" the horse into the yard. Cass chuckled, watching the carriage round the corner of the Big House.
"What's the matter with you?" Collie growled, stomping across the straw like a rooster ready for a cock fight. "Pendleton was right! You could have blown off somebody's head!"
Cass took another bite of apple to swallow a fresh wave of guilt. "I was practicing a new trick shot. What's the big deal?"
"Me and Vandy don't have a hankering to meet the devil, that's what!"
Cass snorted. "As I recall, I had to wrestle a seven-foot gator to save your varmint from becoming a gulp and a memory."
"Oh, so now it's Vandy's fault Sadie's dead?"
"What does Sadie have to do with anything?"
"Everything, you lying sack of cow turds. 'Cause when you jumped into the bayou that day, and leaped onto that runaway stage coach a week later, and turned a cattle stampede all by your lonesome yesterday evening, you weren't doing it to save anybody's life. You were doing it to throw away your own!"
Cass scowled. Collie's insight was unsettling. It held a ring of truth.
"What would you know?"
"I know plenty!" Collie retorted. "You yak my ear off day and night. So if you don't quit bawling like a lost dogie and find yourself another redhead to fire up your pecker, I'm gonna wire Sera and tell her to sic the Thunderbolt Angels on your ass!"
Amusement vied with Cass's irritation. Sera, who'd been named after the Seraphim, had a warm personal relationship with angels. It came in handy when she was cussing out her exploded jars of blackberry preserves or sneaking out her bedroom window to rendezvous with Lynx. Sera was a preacher's daughter, but she'd married the Cherokee half-breed in a secret Indian ceremony in the woods long before her folks could host the official one in a church. Cass was expecting to hear any day now he was a godfather.
"You made up those Thunderbolt Angels."
"Did not." Collie hiked his chin.
"Now who's the lyin' sack of cow turds?"
Cass tossed his half-eaten apple to Vandy. The coon gleefully chased it into the sunshine, until a callous black boot crushed it under his snout.
"Hey!" Collie cried as Tito thumped into the carriage house on oversized feet. "Watch where you're walking!"
"Coons ain't got no business here."
"Says who? At least Vandy was born in this country!"
Tito dismissed the threat of Collie's fist with a baleful blink of his one good eye. But then, Collie weighed 20 pounds less than Cass, and the pirate had already proved he could deck a gunslinger.
Thanks to Tito's red kerchief, which peeked out from his Stetson, and the gold ring in his earlobe, which winked amidst wisps of coal-black hair, he didn't look anything like a cowpoke. Outfitting the whale-sized, Italian sailor with a horse had proven an amusing challenge for Baron's trail boss, partly because of Tito's size, and partly because Tito knew as much about prodding cattle as Cass knew about netting tuna.
But then, Baron hadn't hired Tito for his cutting and roping skills.
"Baron wants you," Tito said with a grunt. Most of Tito's conversations were a series of grunts. "Now."
Cass bit his tongue, damming a flood of trash talk. He was still sore about Tito flattening him in front of Baron and the rest of The Line. Cass didn't share Baron's optimism that Tito's size and demeanor would scare off assassins. As far as Cass was concerned, Tito's bulk made him a bigger bullseye for any man who could handle a gun.
"What's Baron want with us?" Collie demanded.
"Not you," Tito said with his trademark sneer. "Cassidy."
Collie bristled. "Baron hired me as his regulator too!"
"This ain't regulator business."
"So what business is it?"
"It's none-of-your-business business."
"Yeah? Well, I'll ask Baron myself."
"He don't want you. Take a hike, Squirt."
"You're not the boss of me!"
Cass intervened, grabbing the kid's arm before Collie's tongue could dig his grave. "You sure you don't have a hankering to meet the devil? Go split some logs until you cool off."
Collie's chest heaved. He knew as well as Cass did that Tito could pulverize him. Maybe that's why the boy finally muzzled his mouth. Snapping his fingers at Vandy, he stomped off with his coon, ignoring the wood pile as he stalked past.
Cass shook his head. One of these days, Collie was going to sass the wrong bully.
Cass followed Tito across the rain-parched grasses, over the cedar wood veranda, and into the bacon-and-cinnamon-scented kitchen of the Big House. For what amounted to a two-story cabin made of logs, Baron's home was bright and airy. He'd built the sprawling structure with dozens of windows, every one of which had been thrown open to catch the morning breeze. Bees hummed in the rafters. An occasional fly buzzed by.
Mrs. Westerfield, a prickly socialite from Galveston, had decorated the parlors with the finest crystal chandeliers, the plushest Persian rugs, and the fanciest French furnishings. However, Poppy's influence ended at the door to her husband's study. Here, the stench of cigar smoke hung heavy in the air. Spur marks gouged the pine planks of the floor. Before a massive limestone fireplace, a pair of cowhide chairs, with antler frames, circled a puma pelt. On the opposite wall, a longhorn steer head, with seven-foot horns, guarded Baron's well-stocked liquor cabinet.
The center of this male sanctuary was dominated by a desk made from white oak trees that had once grown on the property. Behind it, Baron sat puffing a stogie. A swarm of official-looking papers littered the desktop.
As Tito and Cass cleaved the smoke, Baron tugged off his reading spectacles and hiked a bushy eyebrow. "You look like hell," he told Cass.
"Thanks."
"When's the last time you had a wink of shut-eye?"
"Church."
"So you're saying never?"
Cass shot his boss a withering glare. "If this place got any quieter, it'd be a graveyard."
"Things always get quiet before the storm." Baron waved him toward the liquor cabinet. "Pour yourself some O-Be-Joyful."
"I'll be joyful when I'm flushing out killers."
"How about tarnished tin-stars?"
Cass's ears pricked with interest. "Anyone I know?"
"Maybe." Baron darted a furtive glance at Tito. "So where's the kid?"
Cass shrugged. "I sent him to chop wood."
Baron gestured at Tito. "Go keep an eye on that kid."
The pirate nodded, lumbering out the door.
Repositioning the spectacles on his nose, Baron waved Cass to a seat. "Tell Collie no hard feelings. He's under age, is all. I need you to witness my will."
Cass hiked an eyebrow as Baron produced a freshly inked legal document. Ever since Galveston, Baron had gotten it into his head that somebody wanted him dead. Although he'd been a tad vague about the motive, he seemed to think vigilante sodbusters were gunning for him. In any event, Baron believed that he'd been the intended victim at the Satin Siren.
Privately, Cass disagreed. As a murder weapon, arson was unreliable. As a cover for murder, it was perfect. But Cass wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Baron had offered him a job as bodyguard and the opportunity to clear his name. So nowadays, Cass—or Collie or Tito—rode with Baron wherever he went.
"A new will, huh?" Cass folded his arms across his chest. "So you've lost faith in me as your regulator?"
"If that were true, I'd have hired Hank."
"That's not very reassuring, considering how Hank's still incarcerated in Huntsville."
Cass recollected that Rexford Sterne had been the tin-star who finally put Henry "Hank" Sharpe in the state penitentiary. About eight years before Hank had earne
d his reputation as "The Ventilator," he'd worked for Baron as a ranch hand. However, the scum-sucking weasel had spent more time picking fights with the Rocking W's cowboys—especially Lynx—than he'd spent prodding steers. Eventually, Baron had sent Hank packing, but not before Lynx had been arrested for one of Hank's thefts, and Cass had been forced to bust his best friend out of jail.
"Buck up, grasshopper." Baron handed him a stylus. "I got bigger plans for you."
"Like what?"
"Like proving to the legislature that Rexford Sterne's as crooked as a dog's hind leg. You game?"
"Hell yeah." Cass glanced at the document he was supposed to sign. He hadn't meant to read it, but for some reason, his gaze was drawn to the name, Miss Reynolds. "You're including Randie in your will?"
A deep flush rolled up the senator's neck. "Don't make me gouge out your eyeballs, boy."
Cass shrugged, locating the signature line. He scrawled William A. Cassidy next to the bold "X" above the words, Tito Salvatore Ferraro.
"That's better." Baron winked. "By the way. No need to alarm Poppy or Pendleton about my health. The will's a private matter."
"I gathered that," Cass said dryly. "What about Sterne?"
Baron sanded the document and folded it into an inner frockcoat pocket. "Poppy and Pendleton aren't due back from Burnet for a week. That should give us plenty of time to hatch our plan."
Baron flashed his horsey grin. "I figured it's high time you met my attorney—the man who's going to clear your name of murder and make Rexford Sterne a permanent resident of Huntsville."
Chapter 4
Lampasas, Texas
October, 1883
The whole town was abuzz. You couldn't walk through the business district of the so-called "Saratoga of the South" without getting your ears blistered by the news. It floated past the batwings of the Commercial Saloon; it poured through the windows of Hamon's Drug Store and Odd Fellow Hall. Heck, you couldn't sit in an outhouse as far west as Hancock Park without some jackanapes bellowing through a knothole:
"Did you hear? Baron's got his dander up! He went and challenged the General!"
The General, of course, was none other than local hero, Rexford Sterne. Sadie scratched her beard as she skimmed the front page of a dog-eared, tobacco-stained Lampasas Dispatch. Her copy had already been read by a traveling preacher, a one-eyed sheepherder, and the illustrious town marshal, Sid Wright, as the gents had parked their boots for a buff at Boomer's Barbershop. Sadie wasn't all that keen on getting her shoes shined—or her face shaved, for that matter—but the special edition was in short supply, so she'd chosen the lesser of two evils to get her hands on a Dispatch.
The article read:
"...When asked about his affiliation with the railroad, which has been covertly surveying farmland west of Lampasas, Senator Westerfield described himself as 'eager' to set the record straight during next week's assembly of the Southern Farmers Alliance."
I'll bet, Sadie thought snidely.
"'My record in Lampasas County speaks for itself,' Senator Westerfield said, 'and I don't take kindly to some bully with a Big Iron coming along to piss on it. Rexford Sterne has had a bad case of sour grapes, ever since he got himself winged and the senate had to force him to take a desk job—for his own good, I might add. That mean-spirited campaign slogan of his ("Want Justice? Get Sterne.") just proves my point. And you can quote me on that, boy. You tell the citizens of Lampasas: 'Got a beef? Vote for Baron!'"
Sadie smirked.
My, my. The bull's on a rampage.
Despite this new opportunity to crack her case, Sadie had mixed feelings about the Farmers Alliance meeting at the Grand Park Hotel next week. Fence-cutting cattlemen were only half of the range-war story. Vigilante grangers were on the rise in Texas, and certain whispers in certain saloons placed the vengeance-minded ring-leaders in Lampasas.
As a Pinkerton, Sadie had been ordered to collaborate with her old ally, Rexford Sterne—mostly to prevent Baron from getting assassinated before she could get him to trial. Ever since the Satin Siren had burned to the ground, he'd been holed up on his 190,000-acre, Rocking W Ranch, where she couldn't touch him. His public announcement that he would address the farmers' meeting was the break she'd been waiting for.
And speaking of meetings...
Dragging a pocket watch from her vest, Sadie muttered an oath to see the hour was well past 10 a.m. She tossed a nickel to her shoeshine boy.
Joaquin couldn't have been more than 11 years old. He grinned, a flash of pearlescence in a sun-blackened face. "Gracias, seňor! You will see Madam LeBeau now? And maybe under her skirts?" he added slyly, pointing to his reflection in Sadie's boots.
She coughed to hide her amusement. To wear a beard and a mustache had made her part of a previously inaccessible club, whose membership bandied all kinds of interesting dialogue that would never have been broached over embroidery hoops and baby cradles.
"Hope springs eternal, niňo," she said with a wink.
Abandoning the Dispatch to Joaquin's next customer, Sadie hopped a mule-drawn trolley and headed west on Third Street. Her destination was the "boardinghouse" that strategically straddled the boundary between the commercial district and Silk Stocking Row, where Lampasas's wealthiest residents had erected turrets on castle-sized homes.
From the outside, Wilhelmine "Wilma" LeBeau's brothel looked like any other charming, limestone cottage on Third Street. The three-story construction had a wrought iron gate, forest-green shutters, and a sprawling porch, whose pillars were festooned with drought-resistant climbers, like blue plumbago and sunny Lady Banks Roses. Thanks to the season, Wilma's porch also had enough leering jack-o-lanterns to qualify as a pumpkin patch.
Sadie rang the bell. Less than a minute passed before a railroad spike in black broadcloth opened the door.
"Bonjour, m'sieu," Cottonmouth greeted with aplomb. The twinkle in the Cajun's dark eyes betrayed his mirth to see her swimming in a brown linen sack suit. "And whom shall I say has called this morning?"
Sadie bowed, sweeping off her bowler and furtively checking her chestnut-colored sideburns in the window. The damned whiskers were constantly threatening to peel off.
"Dusty Dudman's my name; sodbusting's my game," she announced in her brashest hick accent. "Madam Wilma is expecting me for brunch."
Cotton's lips twitched. Occasionally, her disguises fooled the big, bald lug, but not this morning.
Of course, there were only so many ways she could hide brandy-colored irises without being redundant. Her eyes had been her bane ever since she'd joined the Agency. Pinkerton had feared they would prove a liability in the field. In fact, he'd rejected her agent application on that basis. If Rex hadn't interceded, vouching for her street smarts and her cool head under fire...
She shuddered to think what her life might be like today.
"C'est bon," Cotton said gamely. "I shall show you to the solarium."
She followed his daunting six-feet, ten-inches past the parlor, with its orange dust covers and black-cat pillows; through the conservatory, where a massive arrangement of golden chrysanthemums topped a baby grand piano; to a lush jungle of potted palms. Above the frond spears, in the fluttering shadows of breeze-blown awnings, Sadie could just make out a shock of pewter hair, as thick as any wolf's pelt.
Rexford Sterne rose from the table as Cotton announced her. A handsome man in a harsh, sun-chiseled way, the Rangers' leader was lean, fit, and immaculately groomed in a suit of charcoal-colored pinstripes, complete with the obligatory Peacemaker and his beloved Justin boots.
Rex hiked a bristling eyebrow as she swaggered through the door. "You walk like a drunken sailor at sea."
"Nonsense," Wilma purred. "She walks like a cowpoke."
"I'm a sodbuster, for crying out loud."
Rex grunted. "Needs work."
Exasperated, Sadie elbowed Cotton, who was snickering because his twin brother, Gator, had schooled her for an hour in "the Cajun man strut."
&n
bsp; "I suspect one must be born to the role," Wilma said diplomatically. "Tea?"
"Somehow, I don't think my new, sodbuster alias would opt for rosehips," Sadie said drolly. "Jamoka. Black." She plopped into a chair like she'd been raised in a barn. "How'd I do that time?"
Rex sighed. Sadie grinned. There was something so endearing about a man who took exception to lewd conduct in a woman.
But Sadie knew from experience that the 50-year-old Ranger never let chivalry stand in the way of an arrest. When it came to his job, Rex couldn't be bribed by sex, money or power. Like the Alpha Wolf he so thoroughly resembled, he radiated command, even now, while engrossed in the most commonplace task, like slathering butter on jalapeno cornbread. The only woman whom Sadie had ever seen ruffle Rex's feathers was their wily hostess.
Dressed in an elegant, topaz-silk day dress, Wilma presided over a sumptuous table, set with crystal, sterling, and hand-painted china. The sloe-eyed, olive-skinned brunette was as mysterious as she was exotic, with a voluptuous torso and ageless face that rival bawds whispered was proof of dark magic. Only the identity of Wilma's grandmother, an octoroon Mambo, was a more closely guarded secret than Wilma's birth year.
Because Wilma used to manage a rival bordello in Dodge, Sadie knew the Mambo's richly embroidered gown and gracious manner disguised a barracuda's sense for business. Wilma's "business" was to ensure the success of her Pinkie protégés in a glittering circle of man-sharks. In fact, Sadie had been the one who'd convinced Pinkerton to recruit Wilma to train his up-and-coming agents in the finer points of seduction.
As Wilma waved Cotton from the solarium to fetch more coffee, Sadie wondered how three people were supposed to consume such a lavish, New Orleans-style feast. While Rex, the consummate Texican, poked suspiciously at a hush puppy with his fork, Sadie helped herself to a piping-hot square of gingerbread.
"Thanks to you, General Sterne," she chided with mock severity, "that poor editor at the Dispatch didn't sleep a wink again last night. He was too busy setting type." She smirked to imagine Baron's outrage as he'd spouted his tactless, front-page quote. "'Want Justice? Get Sterne.' That campaign slogan is priceless."
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