The Forbidden Ranch: Honor Elizabeth Wilde Tale 0f Suspense (Half Breed Haven Book 5)

by A. M. Van Dorn

  “It sounds like you have a large family,” she said with a smile.

  “That’s just half of them. I got three more,” he said, laughing.

  There was a short silence as Marisol tried to raise herself to a sitting position, her voice reducing to a soft whisper. “Again, I wish to thank you. I am glad you were there, Mister …” she trailed off.

  “William Henry Wilde, at your service. My friends call me Whip.” While he was introducing himself, he couldn’t help noticing her resemblance to his late wife, Catalina’s mother. Had the younger Mercedes Corderro lived, she would have now been around this woman’s age and would surely have aged into a similar beauty as he now saw before him.

  “So where are all these daughters now?” the woman asked.

  “Funny, you came from Mexico and three of them have gone there to the Verde Abundante valley. As for Honor, you will be glad to hear …”

  “I have sleeping medication mixed into this tea.” Judge Whip was unable to finish as the doctor came into the room and sauntered towards Marisol with a small cup of tea, interrupting him.

  “Drink up, good lady. It will also do wonders for how your head must be feeling,” the doctor, Nelson Duncan, implored with his kindly voice.

  “I have to admit this bruise does hurt,” Marisol groaned, swallowing a healthy amount of the tea after speaking.

  “Very good, very good,” the doctor said cheerfully, apparently pleased with patients that didn’t grouse much about medicine.

  Marisol sat back and smiled at them.

  “And you were saying about your daughter, Honor?” she asked the judge.

  “Yes, well, against my wishes, Honor Elizabeth went to Triple W to advise your hosts of your accident,” he informed her.

  A smiling Miss San Cristobel stiffened a moment at the statement, her eyes going wide as her smile faded away.

  “What!” She gasped out, her voice sounding groggy as if the medicine was taking effect.

  “We found your letter of introduction when we were helping you. Is something wrong?” Whip asked, concerned.

  Marisol blinked a few times, trying to focus. “That’s right. You used my name earlier and I didn’t think to ask how you knew it,” she forced herself to sit straighter and stared at the judge. “Did you read the contents?” she asked.

  Before he could answer though, her strength left her and she slid back down flat and began to speak in Spanish.

  “Certainly not, madam. It was a private correspondence after all,” he told her straightforwardly.

  “What is she saying?” the doctor asked.

  “Not much is coherent, but she is talking about a letter.”

  Before the doctor could ask about the letter, Marisol suddenly revived for a moment and sat back up.

  “Spy on the place! Winters is a fake. Real Jeb Winters died in prison. He must be killed!” She gasped out and then collapsed back down again saying a few more words in Spanish before she fell sound asleep.

  “Jehoshaphat! What was all that about, Judge?” the doctor asked, startled and concerned.

  “I don’t know, Nelson, but I don’t like the sound of that. I knew that secretive bunch on that ranch were up to something and I just stood there and let my bull-headed daughter ride into a snake’s nest!” Now he was truly worried.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  “This letter to Sampson … the jig is nearly up and we’ve got to work fast,” the man said, holding his gun steady on his captive, and pocketing the letter he had just read with the other.

  Honor stiffened and tried to find a way out of her new-found trouble. She had told the man about the accident, the injured woman, and showed him the letter, yet she was still his prisoner and he was staring down at her with a worried look.

  “You can feel free to holster that firearm at your convenience,” she said to him. “As I said before I am simply delivering a message to the ranch.”

  He leaned towards her urgently now, his brown eyes looking clear and honest. Despite being Honor being the one with a gun trained on her, he had a case of nerves that seemed to rival Josiah’s after she had skewered Branch with the camera tripod.

  “You’ve got to trust me, do what I say. Take my gun and hit me with it. Hit me as hard as you can!” he said urgently, glancing around as if he was scared that they would be caught.

  “Quick! It may save both of our lives. Hit hard and ride, woman! Hurry before Ramone and the others get back!” he said almost in a panic. “They are very close! It’s the only way to explain how you got away!”

  He was letting her go? What in the world had she got herself mixed up in? First, he captures her, and now he wanted her to escape? He could be crazy, but she wasn’t losing the chance. She took the gun from him and hesitated.

  “Do it! The only reason I captured you in the first place because I didn’t want Ramone to either kill you outright or be in control of you! I’m not whatever you might think I am!”

  Honor was now more curious than ever but she saw she had no option but to capitulate. She didn’t want to hit the man, but while she wasn’t sure what was going on, she did as he asked. His body hit the ground immediately, blood flowing from the wound from her blow.

  “My name is Honor Elizabeth Wilde. I reside at the Cedar Ledge Ranch. Come find me and tell me what the hell is going on!” she implored quickly, forgoing her usual ban on salty language, hoping that he was conscious enough to have heard her.

  She turned away immediately and headed towards the direction of the wall, glad when she heard him groan behind her as he murmured aloud to her. "Go home, sit tight, and say nothing until I come find you!" he told her.

  Wasting no time at all she fled for the wall, but along her journey, her feet came to a screeching halt as she raced around the base of one of the hills and spied a grizzly sight. Looking down she knew full well that she was staring at three freshly dug graves. Near them, the ground was soaked in three distinct pools of blood. Shuddering she resumed her mad dash towards where she had entered taking extra-long strides as she quickened her pace.

  Honor remerged on the other side of the wall and made her way to where she had hidden her horse and rode off, looking back only once. She was worried about him. She had hit him hard and his blood had flowed quite freely she fretted. Knowing that she had to get away quickly though, she forced her focus on getting home and rode as hard as she could.

  Finally, after riding for nearly an hour, she approached the Cedar Ledge Ranch, its large L-shaped house lit up at dusk against the backdrop of the ledges behind it. Everywhere had become slightly dark due to the descended sun and almost every part of the ranch dotted with the dark shapes of trees and distant hills.

  Her father was on the porch to welcome her immediately as she rode up to the front of the large house.

  "Oh, Honor! My little Buttercup! I'm so glad to see you. Are you alright?" He asked as she ran up the steps and embraced him tightly.

  “I am fine, Daddy, but something very strange is going on,” she said to him as they parted after a good long hug. She didn’t want to say anything. The man, Jeb, as Ramone had called him, had warned her not to, but she just couldn’t keep it from her father.

  “What is it, Honor Elizabeth? We have had a strange happening here as well," her father returned and she was startled but nodded when she remembered it was the note from the injured woman that had set the man on the ranch off.

  “Well, I bet you have, Daddy. I shall tell you mine if you will tell me yours,” she said, and that got a smile out of her father as he put an arm around her and led her inside to the fireplace, pouring her a brandy.

  Honor sipped it appreciatively; glad that it could calm her before she launched into her story. When she finished her account, her father also told her what he had learned from the injured woman. They compared notes, but couldn't decide what they thought was going on. It seemed that Jeb, the man that had let her escape, was working under an assumed name and Marisol had been sen
t to stop it. But who was he working for? Honor wondered to herself.

  “Well, in either case, I think we need to send for Sheriff Knox over in Gillespie first thing tomorrow,” her father said thoughtfully.

  Honor shook her head. "No, Daddy. We cannot. Not yet. We do not know who he works for. We could cause all kinds of trouble if he is doing something undercover like Cassandra does for Uncle Nate," she pointed out, referring to oldest sister's undercover work for the governor. The judge opened his mouth to say something and then shut it thoughtfully, considering what she had said.

  “Please, Daddy. Until we know what is really going on, anything we do, we could cause issues. He said he would come here, so why do we not wait and see. Maybe we will know what to do for sure then,” Honor pleaded.

  She didn’t know why, but she trusted the man. Maybe it had to do with him having her hit him as she had. Not many people would ask for that no matter what their plan was. Maybe it was the honesty she had seen in his beautiful eyes or perhaps, his strong features that had enthralled her well enough to have him capture her. Either way, she felt they should wait to see before making any decisions. She also watched as her father think about it while he silently sipped his own brandy.

  “You’re right, Buttercup. We should wait and see what we can see,” he finally decided and she sighed with relief.

  Having made a decision, they left the fireplace and went to the spare room where Marisol was still sleeping peacefully. Her father took a seat near the bed and sat back.

  “She is resting more comfortably. That’s good. She isn’t mumbling or worrying in Spanish anymore. She awoke briefly about an hour ago, but went right back out,” he said.

  Honor nodded mutely and stood at the window, looking out absentmindedly as her father picked up a book and began thumbing through it. She wondered what was taking Jeb so long. She hoped he wasn’t too wounded to travel. She cursed herself for hitting him as she had. Briefly, she had a picture in her head of the man being found dead by his comrades and shuddered, crossing her arms under her breasts.

  She still looked out the window, though, waiting.

  ***

  Sampson Dewitt rode with his men along the fence line of the Triple W Ranch. It was late in the evening and everyone was supposed to be back at their bunkhouses, but Ramone had told him Jeb had caught a trespasser. Ramone relayed how he and another patrol had found him wounded and alone. Jeb had sheepishly admitted he had attempted to have his way with her. While he was preoccupied attempting to remove her dress she had gotten the better of him and delivered a blow to his head with his own gun and escaped. Now it looked like Jeb had been fooling them with his bleeding head.

  At Ramone’s insistence, who had heard the woman say her arrival had been for that purpose, he had Jeb turn over the letter. The man had done so and told him he was going to go see Clate Jones, the closest thing the ranch had to a doctor, having been a medic in the Civil War. However, he had failed to materialize to see Jones, and DeWitt knew why once he read the contents of the letter. San Cristobel learned that one of the men he had sent to help the Arizona operations was an imposter and a spy and it was Jeb Winters!

  Now they were tracking him and would see him dead for his betrayal.

  “Hoofs cross here and they were traveling fast to the south,” Ramone told Sampson, after examining the tracks on the lonely road.

  “He won’t get away,” Sampson said grimly.

  “That gal; he must have let her escape on purpose, eh? You sure it was the Wilde daughter?” Ramone asked.

  “Of course, it was Honor Wilde, you damn fool! How many half-colored girls do you think there are running around Alamieda?! Now come on, we ride for Cedar Ledge. That bastard calling himself Winters is likely headed there. He’s going to want to get his hands on whatever San Cristobel sent here with his sister. We shoot on sight, and we shoot to kill!” Sampson declared angrily.

  "Now come on, let's get back to the ranch, get the wagon, some kerosene, and some more men and we will see Jeb Winters dead tonight!"

  With that DeWitt and his men rode off to the south swiftly, towards the Cedar Ledge Ranch, bitterly fearing that his operation would join the ranks of those who had crossed paths with the blasted pack of half breeds. Now somehow, they had become involved. Sampson swore he would not be the next one to become undone at the hands of a Wilde child!

  ***

  Honor sat in front of her mirror, brushing out her hair and getting ready for bed, her mind racked with concern. Through the reflection in the mirror, she noticed with a small smile, her small teddy bear on her large bed, which never spent a night without being in her clinching arms as she slept. Her fluffy pillows too—soft and warm—were neatly arranged on her bed, their bright cream color rhyming with her neat bed sheet. In fact, almost every item in her bedroom had the same creamy color, except for her lace curtain which only shared a brown hue with the wooden desk and her treasured brass telescope from Scotland, which had been carefully placed to look out to the stars from one of her windows.

  The distraction wasn’t enough however to take her mind of the fate of Jeb. Sighing she removed her always present choker necklace now, her eyes idly noticing but not really seeing her discarded stereoscope peeking out from under her bed. As she set the choker on her vanity table and glanced one last time at her mirror though, she noticed with a gasp, someone else in the room, his reflection in the mirror. He had just entered her room and it wasn’t through the window; it had been silently through her door. Honor leaped to her feet immediately and turned, moving towards him.

  “Forgive me for intruding like this into your room. I snuck in the back door of the house and made my way up here. I tried two other rooms before I found you in this one. You got a lot of sisters or something?” he asked and Honor smiled. He seemed physically in good shape.

  “Do I ever! But never mind that, you are alive and you came! I was so worried I had killed you!” she told him, stepping up in front of him. He laughed, peering down at her. His height put him a few inches taller than she was.

  “This old head has taken more than its share of lumps before. I figured one more couldn’t hurt too bad. I didn’t want you to fall into the hands of that den of vipers, not a lady as pretty as you are. What they would have done would have been horrible,” he told her with genuine caring in his eyes. Such beautiful brown eyes, she thought to herself.

  “A man of honor, living amongst such evil. How did you do it and why did you do it?” she asked reasonably.

  "My real name is Pat Nevers," she heard him whisper. "But if you want to keep calling me Jeb, feel free. I kinda got used to it myself. I've been undercover. I'm a U.S. Marshall, and I have been gathering information on Dewitt's cattle rustling operation. He's running it with a Mexican criminal by the name of Esteban San Cristobel," he explained.

  “My, but you are a brave man, and having to eat, sleep, and breathe with such evil men, even helping them,” she said. She had always been amazed at how her sister could do undercover work and this man had really gone deeply into the enemy’s layer.

  “Just doing my job. Lying with dogs means sometimes you get fleas,” he said jokingly. She laughed gaily at the joke, wondering how they had gotten so close in the span of a few minutes.

  “That sounds like something my sister, Cassie, would say,” she told him.

  “They will be after me. They’re ruthless about keeping their secrecy. Earlier Ramone murdered three men cutting across the ranch before I knew what was happening.” he said ruefully as Honor nodded remembering with a chill the three freshly dug graves. “Ramone heard you mention the letter and he insisted he get it to DeWitt. That’s when I fled telling him I was going to get my head looked at.” At the mention of that Honor flashed a pained expression and he smiled at her. “Lucky for me, it was written in code. A code I had cracked some weeks ago when I snuck into DeWitt’s office nightly and began studying his communiqués from San Cristobel.”

  Honor couldn’t help to ma
rvel at the bravery of this most dashing and handsome man. “I have no doubt Ramone looked at the letter when he was taking it to DeWitt. If he had, he would have known my cover was blown, and I never would have made it off the Triple W. DeWitt will have read it by now and be looking for me,” he told her.

  “You are safe here,” She said with a nod of determination. Gazing into his eyes, she stepped so close towards him that she could feel his warm breath on her face. She had been determined on several counts, she thought with a warm feeling in her deepest places. This wasn’t any different.

  “Safe. I’m not even sure of what that means. I spent six months undercover in a Mexican prison to build a relationship with one of San Cristobel’s men. It worked because he vouched for me. They always need men that are fluent in Spanish and English to make the transfers easier. The real Jeb Winters was just that. The whole time I’ve been working for DeWitt I certainly never felt safe then. Any moment something could blow my cover.”

  “I can assure you that you will be safe here,” she said with conviction, trying not to show how moved she was about the kind of hell he must have endured in the Mexican prison just for the sake of law and order. He was a fine man, that she knew.

  “I don’t know …” he began.

  “I do. The Wildes will make sure you are protected,” she whispered, her palm already reaching up to pat his hard chest. “It is the least we can do for such a brave and honorable man.”

  He wanted to mutter more words, but the determination in her eyes probably shut him up. She reached up with both palms now, unable to help herself, and placed them on his chest. He was a strong man, virile and handsome. And every part of his body had appealing edges and was rock solid. He gazed into her eyes too, her determination fueling his. When he bent forward to kiss her, Honor closed her eyes and parted her lips, letting him. To her delight she found him to be a good kisser as she thought he would be. It left her a little breathless as his tongue plunged into her mouth, clutching hers before moving on to taste the corners of her mouth. A burning heat was rising in her she felt unable to deny.