Merline Lovelace (14 page)

Wishing in no way to pander to the man’s vanity, Suzanne returned a noncommittal answer and asked to see her living quarters.

The small, cramped storage room was little more than a cupboard cut into the wall. A row of shelves contained sacks of dried beans and flour, as well as tins of fruit and boiled beef. Stacked against the walls were cans of lamp oil, sacks of potatoes sprouting long roots through the burlap and a wooden box with Union Pacific Railroad stenciled on its sides. A thin straw mattress covered most of the floor, and a three-legged wooden stool had been pressed into duty to serve as both chair and table.

At least the small room had a door. With a latch on the outside.

“I shall need some rope or other means of securing the door on the inside,” Suzanne said firmly, tossing her hat and canvas coat onto one of the potato sacks.

Parrott rubbed his nose. “Well, I guess a bit of rope won’t do no harm. We kin shoot through it quick enough if we had to.”

His glance slid to Jack. The outlaw looked as if
he intended to say more, but shrugged and sent one of his men out to cut the rope.

A short time later, Suzanne sincerely regretted her decision to refuse cooking duties.

She was offered a plate of watery, grayish-brown soup with what looked like chunks of innards floating in it. Jack spooned down his stew without comment, but the best Suzanne could manage was to soak a rock-hard biscuit in the juice and nibble on the softened edge. At least the coffee was palatable. Thick and hot, it packed a mule-size kick.

It also kept her nerves jumping like Nebraska grasshoppers. She made a visit to the primitive latrine facilities, then performed a quick wash with water hauled from the stream in a bucket and placed on a stump outside the cabin for her use. Since she was escorted to the privy and remained an object of considerable interest while bent over the bucket, Suzanne finished quickly.

Jack flicked her an unreadable glance when she returned and indicated the lean-to with a little jerk of his head. Suzanne took that as a signal she should retire. She was only too happy to comply.

“Good night, gentlemen.”

A half dozen pairs of avid eyes followed her across the dirt floor. Appropriating one of the oil lamps hanging from nails pounded into the over
head beams, Jack escorted her to her cramped quarters.

The lamp cast the small, windowless addition in a dismal light. Someone—Jack, she guessed—had brought in her bedroll and spread a blanket atop the straw mattress. The sack containing her few possessions rested beside her hat and canvas duster.

Wrinkling her nose at the moldy smell of sprouting potatoes and old burlap, Suzanne turned to face the man standing ominously silent beside her. It was the first moment they’d had alone together since Big Nose Parrott had caught up with them. She guessed he’d have some words to say to her, and fully expected him to unleash the fury she’d glimpsed in his eyes when she’d broken cover and ridden out of the pines.

He didn’t disappoint her. Shouldering the door shut behind him, he took hold of her braid and wrapped it once around his fist, pulling her face to within inches of his.

“When we get out of here, you’ll be lucky if I don’t use my belt on you.”

“When we get out of here, you’re certainly welcome to try.”

The tart reply locked his jaw. “I told you to stay hidden and let me handle things, dammit.”

“They would have killed you to get to me, Jack.”

“I still had some talking to do. You forced my hand.”

“Yes, well…”

“That’s the last time, Suzanne. Do you hear me? The last time.”

“I hear you. Have you finished?”

“Not quite.” He gave her hair a sharp tug. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re Andrew Garrett’s daughter?”

“I did!”

“No,
Miss
Bonneaux, you didn’t. All you said was that your stepfather is a cavalry officer.”

“If you’d displayed the least bit of curiosity about me or my background, I’m sure it would have come out in conversation. What’s the matter?” she asked nastily. “Are you worried about the colonel’s reputation?”

“I’d be a fool if I wasn’t. From all I’ve heard of him, Andrew Garrett’s not a man to cross lightly.”

“Well, you needn’t be concerned. You haven’t done anything that would cause him to string you up and gut you, as Big Nose suggested.”

“Not yet, I haven’t. That’s about to change.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Releasing her, he reached for the length of rope Big Nose had supplied at Suzanne’s request and secured the door on the inside with a few quick
loops. His expression was unreadable when he turned back to her.

“Jack…”

“You heard what Parrott told his men. As long as I’m claiming you, you don’t have to worry.”

Her heart stopped dead, then started again with a painful kick. “Are you claiming me?”

He tossed his hat down to join hers atop the burlap sacks. “For the time being.”

“I…see.”

His hands went to his gun belt. Deliberately, he unhooked the buckle and laid the heavy belt beside his hat, positioning the Colt’s grip within easy reach.

The most ridiculous nervousness attacked Suzanne. They’d played this game of cat and mouse before, she reminded herself sternly. After the holdup, when she’d shoved her Remington between his ribs. At Rawhide Buttes, when they’d faced each other across a poker table. Later, in Mother Featherlegs’s carved bed. Each time, the stakes had risen higher and higher.

They couldn’t go any higher, she admitted with a sudden, searing rush of heat. All the irritation, all the arguing, all the sparks they’d struck off each other had led to this moment, in this small, musty storeroom.

H
e didn’t touch her.

Suzanne’s pulse pounded. Every muscle in her body quivered. She stood locked in a cage of raw, screaming nerves, and the damned fool didn’t so much as touch her.

When he lifted the glass on the oil lamp and blew it out, plunging them both into darkness, she fully expected him to reach for her. Then she heard the rustle of straw and braced herself for a brusque order to take off her clothes and join him.

None came. She had no idea how long she stood in the darkness, fists clenched at her side, heart hammering. Only gradually did her singing, searing anticipation give way to doubt, then to indignation, until she had to exercise considerable restraint to keep from delivering a swift, hard kick in the general direction of the mattress.

“You do know, don’t you, that you’re quite the most irritating man I’ve ever met?”

When he didn’t respond, she gave a little huff and put the matter square before him.

“Do you really intend to just…just lie there?”

The answer came out of the darkness, dry as the desert. “I don’t intend to put on a sideshow for Big Nose and his men, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She didn’t harbor any particular desire to put on a sideshow for the road agents, either. They were probably listening avidly for any sounds of activity, their tongues hanging out. The fact that her own tongue had been doing the same thing a few moments ago made her decidedly snappish.

“You might have said as much, instead of making me think you were going to…to…”

“Take what you’ve been offering me these past days?” he drawled. “That’ll come, Suzanne.”

“Indeed?” she said icily. “May I inquire when?”

“Feeling the heat, are you?”

“Damn you!”

Giving in to her frustration, she drew back her foot. Before her boot could connect, Jack whipped out a hand, caught her ankle and gave it a hard tug. Off balance, she tumbled down.

He rolled over, pinning her under him. His face
was a pale blur above her, his body hard and unyielding atop hers.

“It’ll come, Suzanne. I’m promising you that.”

“If I don’t shoot you between the eyes first!”

She heaved upward, trying to dislodge him. He wouldn’t be moved.

“I’m not going to share you with Big Nose and his men, which is what could happen if we roll around in here, grunting and groaning, and get them all pokered up.”

He was right. She knew he was right. But that didn’t ease the sharp bite of her hunger.

“It’ll happen,” he promised again, his face a mask of shadows. “I’ve given up telling myself it won’t. But not until I get you out of here and I don’t have to keep one ear cocked or my Colt within easy reach.”

“Jack…”

He stopped her protest with a swift, punishing kiss. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that he wanted her as much as she wanted him before he roughly shifted positions. She lay in his arms, her face turned to the wall, and felt him hard against her hip.

“We’ll take a look around tomorrow, get the lay of the land. Now, for God’s sake, Suzanne, go to sleep.”

They couldn’t escape.

That much became clear the next day. Although Big Nose acted the genial host, he made sure Suzanne and Jack stayed in sight at all times. He also kept a guard at the narrow entrance to the canyon night and day. Even if they had been able to make a break for it, Jack didn’t place a lot of confidence in Suzanne’s revelation that she’d traced their route through the maze with her boot heel.

“Chances are the wind’s already eroding the marks,” he said during a moment together in the barn.

Working a currycomb through the roan’s mane, he flicked a quick look at Alejandro. Hat tipped back, swarthy face raised to the sun, the Mexican sat on an upturned barrel just outside the barn.

“Even if the marks are still visible,” Jack muttered, working the comb, “we’d have to go slow, search each one out. We couldn’t do that with Big Nose riding hard on our tail.”

“I’ve considered that. We’d have to create a diversion of some sort.”

“A diversion. Right.” His sardonic glance met Suzanne’s over the roan’s back. “You have something in mind?”

“Not at the moment. I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

“What I’m thinking is that it’s safest for you to sit right where you are until your stepfather pays your ransom.”

“He won’t do it,” she stated without hesitation. “If the colonel gets his hands on the men Big Nose sent with the ransom demand, he might smoke them over a slow fire until they agree to lead him through The Wall, but he won’t pay blood money to a murdering stage robber.”

The sour look on Jack’s face suggested he was remembering Parrott’s prediction that Garrett would do the same to anyone who messed with his daughter.

“We’ll think of something,” she said again, with a good deal more confidence than she felt at the moment.

She was still thinking a few days later when two rifle shots cracked through the air.

She was at the stream, wringing out her just-washed petticoat, trying not to think about the unappetizing midday meal waiting for her back at the cabin. Jack leaned against a cottonwood a few yards away. The short, scraggly bearded outlaw named O’Reilly loitered nearby.

The first shot sent Suzanne’s heart into her throat. The three that followed a few moments later plunged it back down to her boots. Whoever had arrived at the tunnel entrance was a friend, or the sentry wouldn’t have signaled safe passage.

Jack had reached the same conclusion. His face tight, he shoved away from the cottonwood and
watched while Parrott and his men spilled out of the cabin. The outlaws were waiting when a lone rider broke clear of the rocks.

Spurring his horse into a gallop, the newcomer raced across the canyon. He pulled up mere yards from Big Nose, vaulted out of the saddle and left the panting animal with its sides heaving and the reins dragging dirt.

“Do you recognize him?” Suzanne asked Jack. “Is it one of the men Big Nose sent to deliver the ransom demand?”

“No.”

“What do you think all the excitement’s about, then?”

He shushed her with a quick slice of one hand and joined the group clustered around the new arrival.

“…full shipment of gold dust,” the man was saying excitedly.

“You sure it’s a full shipment?” Parrott wanted to know.

“That’s what Dawes heared.”

“Dawes!”

Jack’s exclamation knifed through the air. Startled, the outlaws spun around. He shouldered his way through their ranks and confronted the sweating rider.

“Are you talking about Charlie Dawes?”

“What business is it of yours if I am? For that matter, who the hell
are
you?”

“Sloan, Jack Sloan.”

The man’s eyes popped. “Black Jack Sloan?”

He dropped his gaze to the Colt holstered low on Jack’s hip, then darted to Big Nose. “What’s he doin’ here?”

Parrott hooked a thumb toward Suzanne. “He come along when we took her.”

“So you got her, did you?”

“Yeah, we got her. Now we’re jest waitin’ for Garrett to pay up. But maybe we kin get us a little bonus while we’re waitin’.” Gleefully, he rubbed the side of his nose. “When did you say that stage is leavin’ Deadwood?”

“Tomorrow morning. Dawes done bought himself a ticket, thinking we might need an inside man for this one.”

“Good. All right, boys, get saddled up. Alejandro, you ’n O’Reilly stay here with Miss Bonneaux and Sloan. You kin trade off keepin’ watch at the tunnel with Jacobs. Unless…”

He cocked his head, studying Jack through shrewd black eyes. “You seemed powerful interested in Charlie Dawes.”

“I am. I didn’t know that he’s riding with you these days, Big Nose.”

“Well, he is ’n he isn’t. Since he drifted down to Deadwood he’s mostly jest been markin’
coaches for us, like he done this one. What’s between you ’n him?”

“We have some unfinished business to settle.”

“It’s like that, is it?”

“It’s like that.”

Parrott chuckled. “You want to ride along with us and finish it?”

He wanted to go, Suzanne saw with a lurch. Desperately. The fierce, primal gleam of a hunter closing in on his prey flared in his eyes. His right hand fisted, flexed, then fisted again, as if he was already mentally preparing to draw down on Charlie Dawes.

Suzanne stood rooted to the dirt. She couldn’t force even a squeak through her tight-closed throat, had no idea what would come out if she did, but inside she was screaming.

No, Jack! No!

The idea that he’d ride off and leave her with O’Reilly and Alejandro didn’t frighten her nearly as much as the distinct possibility that he might not ride back again. If one of Parrott’s men decided to side with Dawes and took aim at Jack from behind… If Big Nose himself decided to eliminate the added risk Sloan represented in the matter of collecting Suzanne’s ransom…

“I’m staying.”

The reply came out so hard and flat it might have been chipped from solid granite.

“But you can tell Dawes that I’m coming after him as soon as I leave here.”

“I’ll pass along the message,” Parrott promised. His amiable grin intact, he swung up his rifle and aimed it square at Jack’s chest. “You know I gotta have yer gun, Sloan. I can’t leave you here with jest two men between you ’n that Colt.”

“This gun has ridden my thigh for close on to eighteen years.”

“You’ll git it back. Pull it out easy-like. Use yer left hand.”

Slowly, Jack reached down and drew the revolver from its leather nest. Suzanne’s heart hammered so hard her chest ached. She’d have to be blind as a tree stump not to see that parting with the Colt was the hardest thing Sloan had ever done.

Keeping his rifle trained on Jack, Parrott motioned for Alejandro to take the revolver.

“If we do this one right, we’ll be back tomorrow night,” he said with unimpaired good humor. “The day after at the latest. Meantime, I’m thinkin’ things will be easier on Alejandro and O’Reilly here if we lock you ’n the little lady up. It’s a tad small in that lean-to, but you might as well cuddle up close to her while you kin. Once Garrett pays up ’n has his girl back, he ain’t gonna let a gunslinger like you within a long, lonesome mile of her.”

Jack’s mood was so savage, Suzanne didn’t volunteer a word during the first half hour or so they spent locked in the small storage room. She sat on the mattress with her legs folded under her while he stood, arms crossed and jaw set, listening to the activity outside.

When at last he swung around to face her, she could see he wasn’t happy…and very much wanted her to know it.

“It doesn’t serve the least purpose for you to glare at me like that,” she said calmly. “It was your decision not to go after Dawes.”

“I should have left you at Rawhide Buttes, you and the kid.”

“Well, you didn’t.”

“You’d better give me your Remington.”

Obediently, she handed over the weapon she’d kept hidden in the folds of her skirt. Jack hefted the small piece in his palm. With its pearl-handled grip and decoratively engraved double barrel, the weapon looked like a child’s toy against his callused hand.

“It shoots a few inches to the left,” she said coolly.

He grunted in acknowledgement. “I don’t suppose you tucked a few spare rounds in your other pocket?”

“No, unfortunately. The box of bullets was in my bag aboard the stage.”

“That’s what I figured.”

Sliding the derringer into his vest pocket, Jack eyed the door. A hard kick would shatter the wooden latch on the other side. If he was the only one locked up in here, he’d bust open the door, dive through and take aim while still twisting in midair.

He could hear Alejandro and O’Reilly in the other room. They’d go out sooner or later, either singly or together, to feed the horses or get water. Or relieve the guard Big Nose had left posted in the rocks above the tunnel. Jack hadn’t forgotten him.

The third outlaw wouldn’t be a problem once he got his hands on a rifle or pistol. The problem was Suzanne.

His fists bunched. Dammit it all to hell! He couldn’t remember now a time when worry for the blasted woman didn’t hang like a millstone around his neck. Adding to his frustration was the fact that he couldn’t trust her to crouch behind the potato sacks and stay out of harm’s way.

If he’d had any doubts at all on that matter, she resolved them when she politely asked what he wanted her to do when they made their break.

“We’re not making a break.”

“Of course we are. We’ll never have a better chance than now, when Parrott’s away.”

“It’s too dangerous, Suzanne. You could get hurt.”

She didn’t dismiss the risk. “I know. So could you. But the alternative is to just sit here and do nothing while Big Nose holds up another stage. He killed our driver, Jack. He might kill another, or perhaps an innocent passenger. We have to get out of here, have to make it to Fort Meade. The commander can telegraph the Express Office in Deadwood and tell them Dawes marked tomorrow’s stage.”

Dawes! With a silent curse, Jack consigned the man’s murdering soul to the hottest reaches of hell.

“We’ve got to try,” she said quietly. “You know we do.”

She could tell from his face that he’d already weighed the odds, decided how he would handle matters.

“Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I don’t want you to do anything.”

“Hooah!”

He bent down and took her upper arms in a brutal grip. “Listen to me, woman. I can’t take aim on those two out there if I’m looking over my shoulder to make sure you’re not in their line of fire. I’ll get us out of here when the chance comes,” he said fiercely, “but only if you promise to stay where I put you this time.”

The chance came sooner rather than later.

And when Jack smashed his boot against the door, Suzanne stayed flattened against the wall, right where he’d put her.

Bursting into the other room, he fired before he hit the dirt floor. She heard a howl, the sound of a heavy object slamming against the wall, a string of curses in Spanish.

Rolling to his feet, Jack raced to the writhing, cursing Alejandro and snatched up his pistol. With the gun trained on the wounded man, he grabbed the rifle propped against the wall and yelled to Suzanne.