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Authors: Laurie Grant

Tags: #Romance, #Historical Romance, #Nineteenth Century, #American West, #Protector

The Duchess and Desperado (21 page)

BOOK: The Duchess and Desperado
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“And people in your town
believed
him?” she breathed, shocked.
He shook his head and threw the bone into the darkness beyond the campfire.
“Not most of ‘em, no, though the girl I'd been sweet on since before the war suddenly wouldn't have anything t'do with me—at least, out in the open. But the rest of ‘em, well, they'd known me and the rest of my family all my life, and they weren't about to listen to someone who was a traitor to his own state. But this scalawag wanted my ranch real bad. The Flying C was the best-watered ranch land for a hundred miles, y'see, and when I managed to pay the taxes on it in spite of the way they raised 'em, this fella decided he was gonna have to play rough.”
“What did he do?”
The fire snapped, sending a shower of sparks into the night sky. She saw his mouth tighten and his gaze narrow as be remembered.
“All the rumors didn't run me off, but he saw his chance in 1869, when the army moved its headquarters to Austin. Calhoun Crossing, my town, is about half a day's ride from there. One night the stage bringin' the army payroll was robbed and the driver shot to death. This fella who wanted my land claimed he saw me gallopin' away from the stage on Rio.”
“But it wasn't you,” she said with certainty. She knew with the same certainty that she knew her name that it hadn't been him.
“Nope.”
“Couldn't you prove it?” she asked.
“Nope.”
His eyes had become unreadable in the flickering light. She sensed there was more there that he wasn't telling her, so she took what he had told her and made a stab at guessing.
“You were with a woman, weren't you?”
He said nothing, but he didn't deny it, so she went on. “You said your sweetheart wouldn't be with you openly, but you were with her that night, weren't you?”
She thought he was going to remain silent again, and the idea maddened her. “Morgan, this is not the time to be chivalrous! I'm just trying to understand! Were you with her?”
He looked away. “Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
He shrugged. “The Federals came to arrest me, but I managed to get away. I figured as long as they were gonna steal my land and drive me away from home, I might as well be an outlaw. So I did some holdups when I had to to survive. But I've never killed anyone, and I've never stolen from my own people, Duchess. Just Yankees, and only the ones who could afford to lose it. Carpetbaggers who had grown fat on what they'd stolen, businessmen rich from profiteering during the war. And only when there wasn't any other way. I've mostly kept myself in beans and coffee by playin' poker.”
Now she knew what people meant when they said their hearts ached. It was a literal, physical pang. She wanted to reach out and take him into her arms, to hold his head against her breast and comfort him.
“I believe in you, Morgan Calhoun,” she said. “You're a good man. I...I want to help you—help you clear your name. I'll hire a solicitor... a lawyer,” she corrected herself. “I can pay to get you the best. He'll prove you didn't do that first robbery, and he'll get you your ranch back, too.”
His gaze pierced her. “Now, Duchess, why would you do that?”
Chapter Twenty-One
 
 
“W
hy? I—I've grown to...to respect you a great deal,” she managed at last. “To be absolutely honest with you, Morgan, I even—”
“Careful, Duchess,” he interrupted quickly, wanting more than anything to let her finish, and knowing he couldn't, for her own good. She was about to tell him she had feelings for him, and he couldn't let that happen. “I don't reckon your Frenchman would like it too much if you were spending your time and money worryin' over some worthless Texas bandit,” he reminded her.
“But you're not worthless!” she exclaimed. “As you said, you've only robbed people when you had no other choice! And as far as what Thierry thinks, I really don't—”
He interrupted her again. “That won't make a difference to your Thierry de-Whatever-His-Name-Is. No, Duchess, don't you worry about me once I've turned you over to him in Santa Fe. I'll be just fine. There ain't a lawman born who can catch me.”
He hoped it was true, hoped, too, that Sarah wasn't going to persist and declare her love for him. Because he didn't know if he was strong enough to resist, once she'd admitted it. Oh, he could see the truth of it shining in those beautiful eyes of hers, magnified behind the spectacles she mostly forgot she was wearing these days. The knowledge would have to comfort him in the days and years to come. He could not let the duchess commit herself to a penniless outlaw who might well end his days behind bars, or at the end of a rope.
“But Morgan, please listen to me. I have something to tell you, and I've been holding it inside for a long time—”
“Duchess, whatever it is, maybe we'd better save it for tomorrow,” he said, ruthlessly cutting her off “We've got a lotta ground t‘cover, an' it's time we got some shut-eye.” He slid his hat down over his eyes to shut out the firelight and the sight of her leaning over him, her face full of naked entreaty.
 
A nearby scream woke him—how much later, he couldn't say as he grabbed for his Colt. His brain registered the fact that it was just light enough to see a dazed and sleepy-looking Sarah struggling out of her blanket roll, reaching for her spectacles and stumbling to her feet. It hadn't been Sarah that had screamed, then, but who?
“Who...wha—?” she muttered.
“I don't know...”
Then the sound came again from down the draw, and he realized that the scream hadn't been human, but equine. It was Rio, and it wasn't coming from the end of the draw where the stallion had been tethered. And then he heard the thoroughbred's answering whinny from the same direction, and the pounding of hooves.
“It's Rio, Duchess—he's broken loose, and he's going for your mare.”
“But he—he c-can't! We can't let this h-happen,” she stammered, and then she began to run down the draw in the direction of the horses, and he followed, afraid she would get hurt trying to prevent what was no longer preventable
Rio trumpeted again, and it was the sound of a fully aroused stallion announcing his impending conquest of a mare. Trafalgar, still tethered but pawing and stamping, nickered back at the pinto, lifted her tail and arched it proudly, then presented her hindquarters to Rio. The pinto reared up over her, clamping his teeth into her neck as he came down on her. They heard her squeal, saw her tremble as the stallion's hindquarters pumped frantically against her
It was a raw and primal sight, and yet somehow magnificent in its violence, too. Morgan felt the woman he was holding by the back of her shoulders shuddering beneath his hands.
“I'm sorry, Sarah,” he breathed into her hair. “I reckon Rio broke his tether. Normally he's the most biddable stallion I've ever seen, but around a mare in season...”
She turned and buried her face against his shirt just as Rio came off the mare with a thud of his front hooves and a shrill whinny.
“It's all right, Morgan. I suppose...it was meant to be,” she breathed, her breath coming in ragged pants. “And it's right, in a way.... Animals don't understand these distinctions we humans place upon them...about breeding, and class....” She gave an unsteady laugh and raised her head to meet his gaze. “Now I understand why Ben would never allow me near the breeding barn when a stallion was servicing a mare. It's a very...ah...unsettling sight, isn't it?”
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Trafalgar standing still, her head down, her flanks and withers still quivering, but he had eyes only for the woman who had turned in his arms so that his former restraint of her now became an embrace.
Yeah, he felt unsettled, all right, and from what he could see, she felt the same. Her eyes were gleaming; her breasts were heaving, creating little jolts of pleasure where they brushed his chest. As he watched, she licked her lips and pushed herself up on her toes, her arms stealing about his neck.
“Morgan,” she breathed, “I want you to kiss me....”
Lord, he was going to do it. He was going to lower his lips to hers, and then he was going to pick her up in his arms and carry her back to her bedroll by the campfire and make love to her until she screamed with the pleasure he was going to give her. To hell with her Frenchman and the fact that she was a duchess and he an outlaw...
Crack!
They both heard the gunshot, and hit the dirt simultaneously, even though it sounded as if it came from some distance.
“Are you all right?” they asked each other in unison, passion forgotten as the crack sounded again. By now Morgan's ears had located its direction. It was coming from some distance to the right of them beyond the draw.
“What is it? Who's shooting?” she asked. And then the sound came to them on the wind—a muffled,
human
cry of pain.
Of course he didn't know. “You stay right here, Sarah. I'm going to find out.”
“But—”
“I said
stay right here.
Don't worry about the horses—Rio will stay right near your mare. And if anything happens to me, you ride back to Pueblo as if the devil himself was at your heels.”
Leaving her in the draw with the horses, he crept over the plains until he found the source of the gunshots. He crawled the last few yards in the tall, concealing, dry buffalo grass. He knew that its rustling would alert an Indian, but he had a hunch the men causing the cries were white.
He was right Two white men stood over an Apache brave staked out on the ground. One of them was holding the reins of a swaybacked buckskin, the other a pistol.
The Indian's face gleamed with sweat and he clenched his teeth in his effort not to cry out. The rising sun revealed a red slash through his scalp, and his arms cratered with scarlet-centered sores—cigar burns, Morgan realized, seeing the half-consumed stogie clamped between the teeth of one of the white captors. The gunshots they had heard had each cost the brave a finger on his right hand. As Morgan watched, pondering the best thing to do, the other man raised his pistol again and aimed, shooting off one of the fingers on the Indian's left hand. Again the Apache was unable to suppress his moan of pain.
“C‘mon, now, Injun, tell us where you hid the horse you stole from us,” demanded the stogie-smoker, who was obviously the leader. “I'd purely despise havin' to leave you with no fingers a-tall.”
The Indian's obsidian eye blazed hatred and defiance, and he gave no answer.
Morgan saw that the other man was about to shoot off another finger. “That'll be enough of that, gents,” he said, standing and leveling his Colt at the one aiming the pistol at the Apache.
The two white men whirled to face him. “Mister, where'd you come from?” the one with the stogie asked. “This here red man stole one o' our horses. We was jest...questionin' him.”
The Apache was watching him with sullen eyes, probably thinking that he had just gained a third tormentor.
“Well, I reckon I don't like the way you were goin' about it,” Morgan responded. “Did it ever occur to you that he might not speak English?” Keeping his gaze fastened on the two white men, Morgan addressed the Indian in rusty Apache.
The Apache brave blinked in surprise, then warily answered.
“He says he doesn't have your horse,” Morgan told the other two men. “He said he wouldn't steal your horse if it was the last horse on the plains, because you've beaten it and starved it and its spirit is broken. He says he saw it wandering loose, but he didn't take it. He tells me you creased him with a bullet and knocked him off his horse, otherwise he would not be lying here at the mercy of such dogs as you.”
The two white men growled and bristled. “You believe the nonsense a red Injun'd spout, mister? He's jes' tryin' to play on yore sympathies, like—until he kin steal yore horse, an' mebbe yore hair, too.”
“Just the same, I'd be obliged if you'd turn him loose—
right now.”
To prove he was serious he cocked the gun he had leveled at them.
Behind him, a rustling in the grass told him Sarah had disobeyed and crept up behind. A click told him she had brought her pistol and had cocked it, as well. The sound made his blood run cold. He had not been afraid before, but now there was no more room for error. He could not afford to make a mistake, or let the other two men make one, for it might cost her life. He didn't even dare glance back to see if she had tucked her hair back up under her hat so they couldn't tell she was a female.
“So there's two of you,” the man who did not have a stogie said conversationally. “Ya must be campin' down in that draw yonder, right? I thought I heard horses over there, an' figured mine mighta found some mustangs, but we were havin' too much fun with the Injun, there.”
“You heard my friend,” Sarah said in a deep, husky voice that might just fool them into thinking she was a man. “Let the Indian go.”
“You some kinda furriner?” the one in charge asked her, and while Morgan was waiting and wondering whether she would answer, he saw the other man raise his pistol.
Morgan shot the man through the arm, causing him to drop the pistol with a yelp, sink to his knees and clutch his bleeding arm with his left hand.
“I'd purely despise havin' to shoot you, too, mister,” Morgan mocked. “Why don't you drop the pistol you've got in your belt? That's it, nice and easy in this direction, then you loose that Indian like I told you to. Cover the one on the ground, Challoner.”
The man with the cigar threw his Colt so that it landed a few feet from Morgan. Never taking his eyes off the man, he picked up the gun and stuck it in his belt, then motioned toward the Indian.
“You're makin' a mistake, mister,” the man protested. “This brave won't be grateful, if that's what you're hopin'. He'll call the rest of them Apaches down on ya and you'll lose yore hair jest the same.”
“I reckon that's our lookout, ain't it?” Morgan drawled as the man bent to comply with Morgan's order.
A quick flash of movement from the man on the ground warned Morgan he was going for his boot gun. Morgan shifted his pistol's direction, but Sarah was quicker. She fired, hitting the man in the hand. He screamed, then raised his hands in the air in surrender, one of them dripping with blood.
“See how it feels?” Morgan taunted him. “If this Apache wasn't already hurtin', I'd let him lift your hair if he was so inclined” He saw the leader finish loosing the Indian's bonds, and the Apache warily staggered to his feet, but his color, under the coppery tint of his skin, was ashen. He wasn't going to be able to make it back to his people without some help.
“I'm afraid we're gonna have to relieve you of your other horse, gents,” Morgan announced. “Looks like the Apache's gonna be needin' it.”
“What about us? We'll die out here on the plains without a horse!” screamed the wounded man.
“You shoulda thought of that before you started torturin' him,” Morgan retorted easily. “But you'll make it, if you're careful with your water. Pueblo's back that way just about thirty, forty miles. Oh, one more thing, fellows—you got any whiskey?”
“Yeah, we got some,” the leader snarled. “Ya gonna take that, too?”
“Yup,” Morgan replied. “Wouldn't want y‘all to be gettin' drunk when you should be walkin'.” He wasn't thirsty for spirits himself—it was for the Indian. By the looks of him, he was going to need something for the pain, and soon.
“Go ahead, but we'll catch up with you sons of bitches and you're gonna wish you'd never interfered, damn yore hides.”
Morgan shrugged. “Challoner, I'll cover you while you help our Indian friend onto that plug they call a horse and find that whiskey in their saddlebags. Then we'll let these fellows be on their way. I don't reckon they're gonna bother us again, but we'll be watchin' for it, won't we?”
BOOK: The Duchess and Desperado
2.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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