McCrory's Lady (43 page)

      
Once they were out on Cortez Street, Wolf turned to Torres. “Be careful riding back to the reservation. It'd probably be best if you took Rufus with you. It's too far for him to come with us to Tucson.”

      
The physician reached down and patted the dog that had waited patiently for them outside the courthouse. “I'd be glad of his company. I assume you're going to send a wire to Colin informing him of the developments here before you set out?”

      
“Right away. Then I'm riding out. I really wish this stubborn woman would return to Crown Verde,” Wolf replied, turning to Eden.

      
Shaking her head, she took his arm firmly. “I'm going with you. Now let's send that wire.”

      
“You may ride with me, but no way in hell is a lady like you walking into Kearney's Saloon on Whiskey Row.”

      
Eden huffed. “It was a stupid place to put the telegraph office. I'll wait outside.”

      
Torres hid a smile behind his hand as the small girl faced off against the tall, menacing gunman.

      
“You'll wait for me at the Wells Fargo office down the street,” Wolf said with such a set expression on his face that Eden decided not to push her luck any further lest he pack her off to the ranch.

      
As he watched them head toward the Wells Fargo office, the doctor remembered the tender scene between the fierce half-breed and a newly alive Eden at the reservation. Wolf Blake was a good man for her. Eden was beginning to recover her resilient spirit even after all she had endured. Colin and Maggie would not have to fear for her future any longer. But then, after his strange interview with Maggie McCrory, the physician wondered if Colin and his wife were not the ones he should be worrying about.

      
“Come on, Rufus, old friend. Let's you and I head back to White Mountain.”

Chapter Nineteen

      
Kearney's Saloon was doing a brisk business when Wolf walked in, his terse message to Colin carefully composed. By the time he and McCrory put all the evidence together, those bloodsuckers in Tucson would be sweating bullets. Smiling grimly, he walked down the long plank floor past the scarred walnut bar, heading to the small door at the back of the room. A crudely hand-lettered sign above it proclaimed: “Telegraphs Sent. Cash Only.”

      
The door was ajar so Wolf slipped inside the dingy room, which had previously been a storage area. The floor was hard-packed earth, and chinks had fallen from the log walls. Bright hot sunlight streamed in, casting the room and its sole occupant in yellow and gray stripes. “Morning. I need to send a wire to Colin McCrory, care of the Palace Hotel in Tucson.” Wolf handed the message to a small hunchbacked man with wire-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of his broken nose.

      
Hector Spoede perused the message through the heavy lenses of his spectacles, then raised his weasel-like face to Wolf's. “This'll cost ya one dollar and fifty cents.”

      
Wolf raised his eyebrows at the price, which seemed steep, but Spoede quickly said, “It's a long message. Ya want it sent or not?”

      
Blake extracted the money from his pocket and tossed it onto the grimy table beside the telegrapher's key. The feral little man tapped out the message with Blake watching. Then, Wolf left the office and headed back to pick up Eden. They had a long ride ahead and she had been pushing herself too hard. They would take it easy on the trip to Tucson.

      
As soon as the gunman was gone, Hector Spoede jumped up from his chair. A crafty smile revealed small, crooked teeth. That big shot politician would pay plenty this time, yessir, plenty. Hector had fooled the dumb breed by sending out a meaningless signal to a local relay station at the Whipple Barracks. He was certain that neither his employer here in Prescott nor the merchants in Tucson would want this message delivered to Colin McCrory. He hung a closed sign on the telegrapher's key and headed out the back door of the saloon.

      
Within half an hour he had returned, a hundred dollars richer for his trouble, with a new message to deliver, this time to Win Barker in Tucson:

      
Blake and McCrory's daughter on way to Tucson Stop Intercept and take ledger from them Stop You know what to do Stop

* * * *

      
Scattered clouds scudded past the dull glow from the moon, casting eerie shadows through the basement window into the already gloomy jail cell where Caleb Lamp lay. The night was chilly and the blankets he had been given by Briggs were as thin as the hen skins he handed out on the reservation. Maybe, Barker had a contract with the Yavapai County Sheriff's office, too.

      
Lamp was too worried to sleep anyway. Once Blake took that ledger to McCrory, all hell would break loose and he would be caught square in the middle. Bad enough that the truth about his deal using reservation Apaches to work the coal mines was out, but once the chain of graft unraveled from White Mountain down to Tucson, he was going to have some very powerful enemies. Win Barker had hired Judd Lazlo to kill McCrory, and when that failed, he had sent others. How much easier would it be for them to kill him, trapped like a rat in this jail cell? He rolled off the hard, lumpy mattress and began to pace back and forth.

      
The sheriff had gone home for the night to his soft bed, leaving his old geezer of a deputy to guard the office. What a joke. Clement was dead drunk, snoring away in the swivel chair behind Briggs's desk with his feet propped up. “Probably sleep through Fourth of July fireworks,” he muttered to himself.

      
Then the steady cadence of Clement's snores was broken when the hall door screeched softly. The hairs on the back of Lamp's neck began to prickle in warning as he strained to see what had caused the noise. The wick had burned out on the kerosene lamp by the desk and the office was lit only by briefly passing shafts of moonlight. Then, a shadow materialized out of the blackness and its owner said, “Clement
will
be sleeping through some fireworks.”

      
The dark figure raised his pistol and cracked the deputy on the skull, knocking him from his rickety perch. Lamp stood clutching the bars of the cell, too frozen with terror to move. His throat had collapsed like a mine-shaft cave-in, feeling every bit as clogged with dust and debris when he tried to yell. But he knew it was no use, even if he could have cried for help.

      
The shadow man raised the gun, and moonlight glinted off the barrel as the clouds cleared, driven away by a sudden gust of wind. When he stepped forward and leveled his weapon at Lamp's chest, his face was clearly visible beneath the brim of his hat.

      
“You!” the agent said in such amazement that he did not even feel the impact of the slug that knocked him across the cell. His lifeless body hit the cold stone wall below the narrow window and slid slowly to the floor.

      
With the shot still echoing in the small room, the killer walked silently out the door and up the steps. No one would find Lamp's body until morning. By then he would be well on his way to Tucson.

* * * *

      
The sun was gilding the eastern sky, casting the low peaks of the Superstition Mountains in deep shades of lavender on the distant horizon. Fuchsia and orange light gripped the skyline with jagged fingers as the two riders held a steady pace. Already the heat hit the desert floor of the vast low basin known as the Valley of the Sun. They had not pushed the horses too hard yesterday; and by late afternoon, Wolf had insisted they stop, not only to rest his big roan and her mare, but also to keep his fragile-looking woman from pushing herself until she fell from Sunglow's back.

      
“We should take another rest in an hour or so,” he said, eyeing a jackrabbit making a dash across an open rocky stretch above which a sharp-eyed hawk soared, looking for breakfast.

      
“I'm fine, Wolf. You don't have to stop for me. I may be small, but Dr. Torres told you I'm tough as an old Army boot.”

      
His liquid black eyes glided appreciatively over her body. “I'm glad to say you sure don't look like one.” When her cheeks flushed, he smiled, reveling in the sheer pleasure of having her here by his side. “We don't have to burn up the road. Lamp's cooling his heels in jail, and your father knows we're on our way with the evidence to finish Barker.”

      
“We have ridden since moonrise...and the valley will get awfully hot,” she said, then added with a shy grin, “I seem to recall a place a few miles to the south where the stage stops. The Salt River runs above ground through there. When I was a girl, Father and I would stop by some secluded pools we found in the rocks. That's where I learned to swim.”

      
“You did, did you?” His thoughts flashed back to the first time he had seen her in the water. “When we were in Sonora, I caught that scum Beau Price spying on you while you bathed.”

      
Eden met his eyes, but could not stop the flush that rose to color her cheeks. “I know—that is, Maggie figured out that was why you beat him so.” She shivered in revulsion. “Price was awful.”

      
“So was I,” he confessed. “Before I dragged him away to thrash him, I saw you, too. You were the most beautiful sight I'd ever imagined, Eden, all pink and pale gold.”

      
She felt the heat pooling deeply in her belly as she listened to the sensuous tone of his voice. “I'm glad my body pleased you. I always want to please you, Wolf.”

He reached out and clasped her hand, squeezing it. “You do. My God, when I think what Lamp could've done to you—or those Coyotero police of his—”

      
“But you saved me. Anyway, the danger's over now and all we have to do is convince my father to give us his blessing.”

      
Wolf chuckled softly. “Knowing Colin McCrory, I wouldn't say that means the danger's over. You're his only child and he won't give you over to a man like me all that easily.”

      
“Yes, he will—or I'd go without his permission, but Maggie will convince him to see reason. That's why she went after him to Tucson.”

      
“She always was my friend,” Wolf said thoughtfully.

      
“I only hope Father realizes what a treasure he has in her.”

      
“I know I have one in you,” he replied warmly. “How far did you say those pools are?”

      
Her face split in a dazzling smile. “I'll race you!” With that she kicked Sunglow and took off across the flat, dusty yellow earth, neatly dodging between two big saguaro cacti.

      
The pools were ice cold for the river ran for miles deep beneath the surface of the earth before bubbling up to rush swift and shallow across the valley floor. Situated between piles of big red and yellow boulders liberally sprinkled with the rich green of spruce and pine, the water was deep blue, the scene breathtakingly tranquil.

      
“Last one in has to rub down the horses!” Eden squealed as she leaped from Sunglow, who was already drinking at the water's edge. She began to strip off her clothes.

      
Wolf slung one long leg across the pommel of his saddle and watched his beautiful woman.
My woman.
A fine white lady with silver-gilt hair and pale soft skin. In his wildest fantasies he would never have dreamed that one day a creature so perfect would be his. Hell, even the pain of facing his father would be worth it, just to have Eden for his wife.

      
She tugged the last of her clothes off and leaped into the water, shrieking as the icy cold made goose bumps rise on her skin. Then, she looked back up the bank to Wolf. “What's the matter? Aren't you hot? Don't you want to cool off?” she asked, studying the bemused expression on his face.

      
“Oh, I'm hot, all right, but water isn't what will cool me off,” he replied in a low, silky growl as he dismounted and began to strip with smooth economic movements. In a minute he walked into the pool as she splashed water at him, laughing and teasing. When he splashed back, she let out a yelp and dove, disappearing beneath the surface.

      
She swam like a sleek little otter, with her hair flowing behind her in waves. He clasped his hands around her hips and raised her high up out of the water, as if offering her body to sun and sky for their worship. She shook her head and sent her hair flying in a bright cloud, spraying them both with iridescent droplets.

      
Eden put her hands on Wolf's shoulders. Her fingers glided across his flexing muscles, then moved up to run through his straight inky hair. Their eyes met and she whispered, “Make love to me, please.”

      
Wolf let her body slide slowly back into the water as her belly and breasts rubbed against him. His hands found every slick, sleek curve of her flesh, caressing with infinite patience and wonder. “You are so perfect it frightens me—I fear you'll disappear like a fairy from a storybook.”

      
“I'm no fairy. I'm a woman, Wolf—your woman.” She wrapped her knees around his hips as he held her by her buttocks. She could feel his erection, so hot even in the cold water, pressing between her legs, seeking the answering heat deep inside her softness.

      
Wolf positioned her hips and thrust into her as she dug her nails into the bunched muscles of his shoulders. A look of startled pleasure washed over her face. She writhed against him and they rocked back and forth in the waist-deep water.