The Rustler's Bride (7 page)

Victoria put down her knife and fork. “Have you noticed how the men have started to follow Declan’s lead? He’s only been here a week but already Lenny looks up to him, and Hank has nothing but good to say about him, and…”

Sinclair held up his hand again. “I know what goes on around my property. Get to the point, girl.”

“I thought…well, I thought that maybe you could appoint him a foreman. Take some of weight off you. Leave you with more time to read those science stories you love, and for your work on the town council.” In her stride, she spoke in an eager rush now. “You could even run for the mayor. Go into politics. Heavens, a few years from now you could be the territorial governor.”

“God save me from that fate,” Sinclair muttered. His expression hardened. “What’s gotten into you, girl? I haven’t employed foreman since the last one left to marry that rancher’s daughter up near Flagstaff, soon after your mother passed away. I’m a working boss. I have no need for a foreman.”

Declan could see Victoria’s hands curl over the edge of the table, knuckles white. “Well,” she said carefully, “In that case, what about plowing some fields and planting corn? We could diversify. Declan grew up on a farm, didn’t you?” Her eyes implored at him. “He would know all about it, could oversee the enterprise.”

Sinclair made a sound of dismissal. “Girl, that’s a crazy notion. The land here’s not fertile enough. Next thing I know you’ll be talking about planting a field of tulips. What’s gone into you?”

Declan tried to ignore the almost painful swelling of emotion inside him. When Victoria kissed him—or tempted him into kissing her—he had assumed she was merely satisfying her feminine curiosity. Now it became clear to him that she harbored some romantic notion of making the marriage real, of finding a future that included him.

He knew it was no use to dream. He couldn’t become a part of her world. And yet, he couldn’t help the warmth that filled him at Victoria’s obvious efforts to create a place for him at Red Rock, to make sure that when his year was up there would be something that required him to stay.

As he watched her, Victoria lifted one hand to her mouth and gnawed at the pad of her forefinger, as if she had a splinter stuck in it. He’d noticed her do it several times already, and the odd gesture puzzled him.

“Don’t worry about me, Victoria,” he said, striving for a casual tone. “I’m satisfied with the chores you father has lined up for me.”

“Mucking out the stables and grooming the horses,” Victoria muttered.

“Better than stealing my cows,” Sinclair thundered.

Victoria had picked up her silverware again, but instead of taking another mouthful, she leaned eagerly toward her father. “Father, tell me more about that beef order. It’s good news, isn’t it?”

“We could use the cash.” Sinclair threw a sour look at Declan. “It will be nice for a change to get paid when the numbers of my heard dwindle.”

Victoria bit her lip and lowered her eyes to her plate. She toyed nervously with the food. On her face, Declan could see hurt and determination, and the effort as she racked her brain for something positive to say. It only took her a moment to regroup. Then she made another comment about the running of the ranch. Sinclair gave another gruff response.

And that was how the evening went until the fruit pie had been eaten and the coffee poured and drunk. Victoria did her best to diffuse the hostile mood, her father shot down every effort she made, and Declan listened in sullen silence.

“Thank you,” he said and stood as soon as it was polite to leave.

“Good night,” Victoria said.

“Good riddance, more like,” Sinclair grumbled.

“Father!”

Declan was already on his way out when he heard Sinclair’s insult and Victoria’s angry outburst. He closed the door behind him to seal their voices away. Unease coursed through him as he undressed and settled in the narrow brass bed. It was becoming vital reach the final stage of his revenge plan soon. Otherwise, Victoria might spoil things by bringing the situation to a head with her father before the pieces were properly in place.

****

All through the following day, Victoria continued her labors with the yellow cotton and thread and needle. Lunch was a piece of bread and cheese. By the time the shadows lengthened outside her window, her eyes were blurred, her fingers were bleeding, and her patience was in tatters. But she had a completed shirt. It had taken her three days. The finishing touches—collar and cuffs and buttons—had almost defeated her, but she was nothing if not determined.

Her head snapped upright when a ruckus flooded in through the open window. Gunshots. The clanking of tin cans. A chorus of riotous yells. The cowboys were at it again—shooting the place down, and scaring the birds from the trees and the prairie dogs in their burrows. She shoved the shirt aside and hurried out to the yard.

The two black cowboys were loitering outside the forge, waiting for the blacksmith to finish work and join them. Clyde, a muscular man in his thirties, was coaxing a tune from a mouthorgan. Johnston, a lanky youth in his teens, was dancing a jig of some kind, his feet shuffling on the dusty ground.

He called out a greeting. “Howdy, Miss Victoria.”

She jerked her head toward the noises. “What’s that about?”

Clyde lowered his mouthorgan. “Lenny has a new Colt forty-five.”

Victoria nodded and set off toward the piece of sandy ground beyond the corrals that had been set up for shooting practice. She could see them from fifty paces away. It was Declan, and the three Anglo cowboys, Hank and Stan and Lenny.

She could not see the two Mexicans. “Where are Juarez and Flaco?” she asked as she reached the men. They had never had any racial tension at Red Rock, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Hank pushed his hat back on his head. “Gone. Left this morning.” Hank was a big bull of a man, in his forties, as solid and dependable as the boulders that lined the riverside.

“What do you mean, gone?” she asked. They were shorthanded already.

Stan, a wizened old cowboy not a day under sixty, replied, “They quit. Went to work in one of them
ranchos
south of Tucson. So’s they can talk Spanish. They missed having other Mexican
vaqueros
around.”

“And pretty maids to flirt with,” Lenny put in. His tone grew petulant. “And they got fed up with busting their gut from sunup to sundown.”

Victoria frowned. She wanted to say she understood that everyone was under strain of overwork, and apologize for it, but Lenny had already turned away and was reloading a shiny new nickel plated Colt. In his middle twenties, Lenny had tousled brown hair and even features that made him popular with the ladies. He also had a combative streak, a need to prove his masculinity that got him embroiled in saloon fights.

Without another comment, Lenny whirled around and crouched. He pointed the gun and lifted his other hand to pull back the hammer.
Bang-bang-bang.
He fired six shots in rapid sequence. Five tin cans, perched on log stumps on the far side of the clearing, flew into the air and clattered back down again.

The smoking gun in his hand, Lenny turned around with a swagger. “Can you best that, Beaulieu?” he said, strutting over to Declan.

Declan had been leaning against a fence post, arms crossed across his chest. Victoria could feel him watching her from beneath the brim of his black Stetson. “The sheriff took my guns,” he said lazily, not moving from his easy pose.

Lenny made clucking chicken noises.

Declan pushed up from the post. “You have cartridges for that pea shooter?”

A flush rose on Lenny’s smooth skin. “I’ll load it for you. In case you don’t know how.”

Declan nodded. “You do that.”

Victoria waited uneasily while Lenny dug in his coat pocket for bullets and inserted them one by one. The sun had disappeared below the horizon. The daylight was fading rapidly. In the corral, the horses moved restlessly, but she knew they were—and needed to be—used to the sounds of gunfire.

“You want to make a wager?” Lenny said.

“Sure.” Declan cocked an eyebrow. “What can you afford to lose?”

Lenny hooted with confident laughter. “You can have my new boots.” He sent a sly glance toward Victoria. “And I’ll have a kiss from your wife.”

Declan took the gun and weighed it in his hand. “What is this?” he muttered. “A kid’s toy?”

The blush on Lenny’s cheeks darkened. He was not very tall, about five foot eight, and Victoria guessed he might have gone for the short barreled model because the longer barrel would have looked ungainly against his thigh.

“I’ll go and set up the tin cans for you,” Lenny said.

“Don’t bother,” Declan replied. “Your boots will be too small for me and my wife’s kisses are not mine to sell.”

Before he’d finished the sentence, he spun around and fired, all in a single motion, his left hand cocking the hammer for a new shot even before the sound of the previous one had faded. The last remaining tin can flew backwards and bounced like a panicked animal along the ground, each of the six bullets sending it farther into the distance.

“Not a bad little pea shooter,” Declan said as he casually turned back and handed the gun to Lenny, whose Adam’s apple was bobbing frantically up and down.

Victoria felt a frisson travel over her. An outlaw. Gunfighter. A criminal. That’s what Declan was, but somehow in all her romantic dreams she had managed to gloss over that detail. She bit her lip. Had Declan meant his actions to be a reminder? She glanced at him, but his expression as he studied her in the thickening dusk was unreadable.

“You ever hire out your gun, Beaulieu?” Hank asked.

“Never have, and never intend to,” Declan replied.

“Miss Ria, you show Lenny what you can do,” Stan said with an eager glint in his faded brown eyes. “It’s a good pair of boots he’s wagered. They might fit me real nice.” Most of his teeth were missing and his speech came out in a muffled hiss.

Stan and Hank had been at Red Rock while Victoria was growing up, and it was Stan who had taught her to shoot. Victoria glanced up at the sky. The twilight would last another fifteen minutes. The temptation to show off, just as Declan had, got the better of her.

“Sure,” she said, imitating Declan’s lazy drawl. She put out her hand to Lenny, who was digging in the pockets of his coat.

“Damn,” he said. “I’m out of bullets.” He looked up at her. “Miss Ria, can you run into the house and get a box of forty-five shells?”

She hesitated. The light was going. There was a chill in the air.

“Please, Miss Ria,” Lenny said, humor and cockiness mixing in his tone. “It scares me to walk around with an unloaded gun.”

Stan cackled with laughter. “You think one of them husband’s might come after you?”

Lenny got his swagger back. At least as a ladies’ man he was the undisputed champion. “It’s the women that frighten me more,” he said with a wink. “Some of them is greedier for me than pigs at a bucketful of corn.”

“All right,” Victoria said. “Don’t go anywhere.” She raced back to the house, into her father’s office. Beneath the gun rack mounted on the wall stood a locked cabinet. She fished out the key from a desk drawer, unlocked the cabinet—and stared. Instead of rows and rows of ammunition, there were barely a dozen boxes of rifle cartridges, and a handful of shotgun shells, and six boxes of bullets for a forty-five caliber revolver.

Alarmed, she locked the cabinet and rose. Her father must be getting absent minded. Until they got a new order in, they couldn’t afford to waste ammunition on amusement. Her movements were reluctant as she returned to the men in the clearing. How could she explain the situation without embarrassing her father?

“I...” she began.

Loud clanking sounds drowned out her hesitation. It was Cookie’s dinner gong. He’d suspended a row of tin plates from the beams that formed the flat roof of the cookhouse. To announce the meals, he beat on them with a big iron ladle.

“Sorry, Miss Ria, we’ll do it another time.” Lenny was already headed toward the cookhouse where the glow of lanterns cut vertical stripes into the twilight. “I’m starving.”

“Me too,” Hank said, and touched the brim of his hat. “Good night, Miss Ria.”

Victoria turned to Declan. “My father wants you to join us for dinner again tonight.” She did not care if the others heard the stiff formality of her invitation. Cookie had told her that both her father and Declan had made the nature of her marriage clear to the men.