Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) (25 page)

The creak of the porch boards betrayed movement. “I don’t talk to the back of any man’s head,” Keegan said.

One corner of Rane’s lips twitched.
Arrogant bastard.
He made one final adjustment to his saddle, and then took his slow, sweet time turning around.

Keegan stood at the top of the steps, leaning against a support post with his arms crossed over his chest. A shaft of lamplight from the parlor window bathed the left side of his body in pale yellow. But there was nothing soft about the expression he wore as he looked down at him. Pure, hard-edged hatred blazed in his eyes.

Rane expected no less. “You have my attention,” he said. “So talk.”

Will’s harsh breath grated through the stillness. His arms lifted and fell with the agitated movement of his chest. “I want you to stay away from this ranch. Angel’s name is mud since you drug her off to Mexico, and folks ain’t likely to forget if you keep comin’ around. So stay away from her!”

Cold realization sank into Rane’s gut. He had accurately gauged the situation. The big blond bastard was staking his claim and betraying a streak of jealousy a mile wide.

With a firm grip on the anger surging through him, Rane curved his lips in a satiric smile. “It seems you and the old man are at cross purposes. He asked me here tonight.”

A muscle in Keegan’s cheek twitched. “Why are you tryin’ to get on the old man’s good side? You did him a favor, but only a fool expects nothin’ for his trouble. What’re you after?”

Rane shrugged. “I ask for nothing. I expect nothing.”

“That’s horse shit,” Keegan spat.

Never had Rane wanted so badly to knock a man’s teeth down his throat. Keegan guessed too closely to the truth. Rane did want something here. Thoughts of returning to the Flying C had gnawed at him since he surrendered Angel to her father. He wanted her, but he couldn’t have her. She was now as far beyond his reach as the justice he sought from Horace Lundy. Bitter frustration dogged him like an unwanted companion.

“I have no quarrel with you, Keegan.”

“Good. Then we have no problem.”

“Only one.” Rane paused, aware that his next words would gain him yet another enemy, but he had to say them anyway. “The old man asked me here tonight. If he wants me to stay clear of the Flying C, he’ll have to tell me himself. I don’t take orders from hired hands.”

Will dropped his arms from his chest and glared down at him. “Somebody needs to teach you your place.”

“Perhaps,” Rane agreed, “but I’m almost certain it won’t be you.”

Rane forced a benign smile to his face, pulled his reins from the porch rail, and again turned his back on the angry man. He stepped into the saddle and turned the eager horse onto the long lane. Easing up on the leather, he gave the horse his head and sped away from the house. His secreted camp next to the river was a good thirty-minute ride, and he was eager to get there. To be alone, to think, and hopefully to dull the sharp, aching need he felt for Angel. He remembered the bottle of whiskey he’d stashed with his belongings. What better way to dull his senses? But the thought of drinking himself into oblivion, with only a cold, empty bottle to hold onto made him feel emptier than ever.

Chapter Sixteen

As Angel browsed the shelves lining the narrow aisles of Dowling’s General Mercantile, a buzz of whispers trailed her. Pretending indifference, she paused next to a table piled high with sewing notions and trimmings and absently ran a fingertip along a length of pale pink ribbon. Several of the store patrons were just rude enough to stop and stare at her before they continued about their business.

Her face burned from more than the stifling heat within the close quarters. She’d been the subject of gossip before. In former days she would have thrust out her chin and told them all to go to hell. Now the rumors stung. She knew some of the things they were saying about her were probably true.

Damn her father anyway for insisting she accompany him into town. He thought it important for her to make an appearance to try and squelch the gossip making the rounds about her and Rane. He’d left her no choice and even ordered her to “gussie up” for the occasion.

Their arrival on Clayton Station’s main thoroughfare had been nothing short of a spectacle. Will Keegan had ridden at the head of the procession as stony-faced and menacing as some ancient warrior knight. Three of the six men Rane had sent to the ranch flanked the buggy she and her father occupied. All of them had come armed to the hilt. With bandoleers slung across their chests, they looked more like border bandits than guards. Dressed to the teeth in the latest Paris fashion, Angel felt like a tarnished trophy on display.

Even her thick-skinned father was not immune to the stir their arrival caused. “I hate what this place has become,” he’d said as he ran a critical eye along the crowded walkway. “The primary reason I settled here was because there was nobody around. Now, a man can’t even spit without it hittin’ somebody.”

Roy had continued to speak, but Angel hardly heard him. She knew his story by rote. How he’d been the first white man to settle in the area, and how the mapmakers had eventually penned his name onto the tiny settlement.

“¡Soldados! Soldados!”

The voice snapped Angel back to attention. She looked up. The other store patrons rushed for the door as though the place had caught fire. Alarm leaped across her nerve endings.

Beyond the dust-grimed windows, a dark-skinned boy stood in the street and fairly danced with excitement as he shouted and gestured southward.

Angel dropped the satin ribbon and hurried for the door with the others. Outside on the walk, a growing crush of bodies caught her up in the middle of it. The mood of the crowd seemed infectious, nervous and uneasy, like a herd of milling cattle on the verge of stampeding. Dust clogged her nose, and she could hardly breathe. Cheap perfume and pomade tainted the air around her and did little to rarefy an underlying stink of stale human sweat.

“Looks like they got some renegades,” one man said.

The scalp beneath Angel’s carefully styled coif prickled as though the devil himself had breathed his ill breath against her nape. Driven by some sixth sense, she elbowed and shoved through the tightly packed bodies to reach the edge of the walk. Once there, she clutched one of the uprights supporting Dowling’s narrow awning to keep from being shoved the rest of the way into the street.

The noonday sun glared white-hot. Angel lifted a hand and shielded her eyes. The end of the dusty, dun colored street shimmered beneath heat veils. Mounted U.S. Calvary troops plodded single-file into the settlement. From the looks of their dusty hides and the trail-weary slump of both men and horses, they’d covered some ground.

As the group approached, her gaze swept down the line, until she saw the three Indians who walked at the center of the procession.

The captives staggered, so exhausted their heads drooped to their chests. They wore nothing but dark blue cavalry britches and worn out moccasins. The uniform pants, obviously thrust on them, were covered in dust and filth. Dried blood caked their ankles and gleamed in the harsh light as it seeped from galls rubbed by shackles. Manacles also bound their hands and a connecting chain ensured that none could make a try for freedom without dragging the others with him. From the looks of them, they could barely stand, much less run.

Angel’s heart jerked against her ribs in an uneven rhythm. Even though his face was hidden behind his straggling hair, the sight of the tall, well-muscled Indian at the forefront of the trio brought back unsettling memories.

The sergeant at the head of the line called a halt in front of the cantina directly across the street. The soldiers dismounted. Three men took charge of the horses and led them toward the town well, farther up the street.

Clayton Station had no sheriff, marshal, nor anything resembling a jail. Angel had little time to wonder what the soldiers would do with their prisoners before they prodded them toward the hitching rail. After a short-lived scuffle, the Indians ended up shoved to the ground amid flyblown mounds of horse droppings. A soldier removed one cuff from each of the captives and laid the connecting chain over the top of the rail before he again locked them into place. The Indians were left sitting beneath the rail with their hands dangling in mid-air above their heads.

Another soldier, armed with a rifle and a pistol, remained behind to stand guard while the rest of the bluecoats filed into the cool interior of the adobe cantina.

One by one, the people around Angel wandered away, muttering among themselves about the “filthy Injuns” and pronouncing their capture a “good riddance.”

Her attention remained riveted on the tall Indian seated at the near end of the hitching rail. As she watched, he lifted his head and shook back his hair, revealing shrewd blue eyes that bore into her with frank directness.

Wolf. Angel’s heart galloped harder. She released her held breath. She had known, but how had he picked her out of the crowd so easily? The one time they’d met, she had looked vastly different than she did now. The loaded stare he gave her lasted a mere second before he lowered his gaze to the street.

What did he expect her to do? She aimed a scowl at the cantina’s open portal. Sounds of laughter echoed from inside. The soldiers were probably swilling cool beer and gorging on frijoles and tortillas. Even the horses had been taken to water and were on their way to the shed at the end of the street, where buckets of oats surely awaited them. For the lowly half-breed and his cousins, there was nothing. Not even the relief of shade or a sip of water after their long, harrowing walk.

Angel’s righteous anger shifted to outrage when a group of barefoot boys from the nearby village appeared from an alley and raced down the middle of the street. As they darted past the captives, they loosed a barrage of dirt balls.

One of the dry clods struck Wolf high on his chest and exploded into dust. The silty powder clung and dissolved into his sweat and formed streaks of mud. Though his expression remained stoic, his muscles tensed. She felt his humiliation as though it were her own, complete now at being set upon by children who saw him as no better than a stray cur.

The guard applauded the boy’s cruelty by shouting, “Good shot, chico!”

Angel turned a furious glare on the gang of miscreants, who stopped at the end of the street to arm themselves with more chunks of hardened mud. When they started back for another sally, she ground her teeth.
Oh, no, you don’t!
Hurrying into the street, she intercepted them.
“¡Alto!”
She clapped her hands.
“¡Vayase! Vayase!”

The boys veered off and scampered into the alley.

From the corner of her eye, Angel saw that several people had stopped along the walkway and stared at her. They probably thought she’d been in the sun too long. She no longer cared. Anger had already burned away caution. Thank God her father and Will “had business” on the other side of the settlement.

Forcing a display of composure she no longer felt, she retraced her steps toward the store. At the edge of the walk, her three Mexican guards stood waiting. They looked so ill at ease she almost felt sorry for them. After all, they’d been given orders to stick close and keep her safe. But their instructions hadn’t included how to protect her from making a fool of herself.

She breezed right past them and entered the store. Moments later, she again drew curious stares when she walked out the door with a shiny new bucket and dipper in her hands.

“You men stay here,” she ordered.

Angel walked into the street, her sights on the public well at the center of town. Once there, she hung the new bucket under the pump and worked the handle until clear, cool water gushed forth.

The weight of the full bucket strained at her arm muscles when she took it from the hook. She turned, and found two cowpokes blocking her path. The sour yeast smell of stale beer wafted from them, and they both had mischief written all over their grinning faces. It seemed trouble always traveled in pairs.

“Want me to carry that for you?” one of them asked.

He reached to take the bucket from her and she jerked it back. The water sloshed, darkening a large area on her brocade skirt. “No, thank you. I can manage quite well by myself.”

“What’cha fixin’ to do?” the other one piped up. “Give them dirty Injuns a bath?”

Angel turned a withering glare from one man to the other and the grins quickly slipped from both their faces. She crinkled her nose. “Judging from the smell around here, I’d say the two of you should join them.”

They both gaped at her.

“Now get the hell out of my way!” She set her jaw and waited.

Wide-eyed and speechless, the two men stepped aside.

She switched the bucket to the opposite hand and stepped past them. Wagging the sloshing water made walking with any dignity impossible. Still, she held her head at a proud angle and continued with a susurrus of whispers from both sides of the street beating against her ears like the drone of angry bees.

When she neared the hitching rail in front of the cantina, the soldier left on guard turned and stepped into the street.

“Hold up there, little lady. You’re gettin’ a mite too close to these prisoners for comfort’s sake. Why don’t you just take a step or two back."