“Nothing more,” Desmond said, “from you.” He leaned on the table, eyes only on Estella. She blushed just a little under his appreciative stare.

  “You come on strong, sir,” she told him.

  “In this life, a man has to if he’s going to get what he wants.”

  “Oh? What is it you want? Me?” She slid back in her chair and crossed her arms over her breasts.

  “To buy you another meal,” he said, slipping a dollar bill from his stack. “To please you.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “Everything more, but in time,” he said. This confounded her. She blushed more vividly and sipped at her coffee to cover her reaction. “What plans do you have for the rest of the day? I’m thinking there must be somewhere we could go with a picnic basket and watch the world go by.”

  “Sit by a stock pond?” She laughed at this. “I do so enjoy sitting on a lake shore, but water is difficult to come by.”

  “Except in the Pecos.” Desmond launched into a description of fording the river and how he had saved the chuckwagon from certain destruction. He embellished his role in saving Mac because he saw how wide-eyed she got at his tale of braving the dangerous water and coming through with the herd intact.

  “You are very brave. But your friend Mac seems to be, also. To ride beside you requires great courage.”

  Desmond almost told her of how he’d been kidnapped and held for ransom because the bounty hunters wanted Mac, but he realized no one came out sounding brave in that story.

  “A picnic doesn’t have to be near water, though that can be very . . . romantic. Where else can we go?”

  “Why, nowhere, Mister Sullivan. I came to town to get supplies and must return immediately.”

  “I can ride with you again, but what’s the hurry?” Desmond worried she was trying to brush him off. Mention of getting back to her hacienda turned her distant, as if her thoughts were there rather than on him.

  “We leave in the morning. At dawn. We were supposed to leave this morning but supplies were necessary that we did not have. We have them now.”

  Desmond sat speechless. He wasn’t going to lose her so soon after he had found her.

  “Where are you going?” he asked when he found his voice again.

  “Back to Mexico. Oh, don’t look so forlorn. I will return after Papa sells our cattle there. That horrible Luther Wardell made certain we couldn’t sell any cattle to the Army, so we must find other markets.”

  “There’s Denver,” he said. “The Circle Arrow is moving out what’s left of our herd in a few days. We could combine our herds. That’d be safer for all of us and make it easier to handle the cattle.”

  “You have longhorns. They do not mix well with our breed. And no, it is too far, too long on the trail, for us to sell in Denver. Mexico is closer. Besides, Papa has received a telegram assuring him of a sale.” She made a face.

  “To someone you don’t like? Maybe I can convince Mister Flowers to buy your cattle.”

  “Does he have more money than that which Wardell gave him for the three hundred head? We need more than that to . . . We need more than that.” She covered her lack of forthrightness by taking one long, last sip of coffee. “Now I must go.”

  “You’re riding along with the herd? You can stay here in Fort Sumner.”

  “I bullied Papa into letting me go. He would never permit me to stay now. I cannot go back on my word to help, either. We have too few vaqueros for the size of our herd. I will help however I can.”

  “You can ride night herd? I bet you’ve got a great singing voice.”

  “Oh, you. Thank you, Mister Sullivan, for your kindness. I must go. Really.” Estella Abragon stood.

  Desmond shot to his feet.

  “How many more hands do you need on the drive?”

  “We have ten. My Papa, me. That makes twelve. I can do many things. I am not what you call a hothouse flower.”

  “But you are as beautiful as one.” Desmond took her hand, tugged a little until she yielded, then kissed it in what he hoped was a gallant, courtly fashion. Estella should be in high society and not riding along a dusty trail with hundreds of beeves threatening to stampede at every turn.

  “Please, sir, return my hand to me.” She tugged it free, then graced him with one of her sunshiny smiles. With that she left.

  But he had to grin when she paused at the door and glanced back at him before leaving. If she had rushed out without a backward look, it would have left him disconsolate. That look meant she cared as much for him as he did for her.

  So why did they have to go their separate ways? By the time she returned from Mexico, he would be on the trail and almost in Denver, a thousand miles to the north. He’d sparked many women and had even more he paid for, but none of them held a candle to Estella Abragon. Not a single one.

  “I’m not letting you go, not alone,” he said.

  “You sure you don’t want some pie?” came the ringing question. The restaurant owner leaned against the door leading to the kitchen, arms crossed and looking smugly satisfied. How much he had seen, Desmond didn’t know. It wouldn’t take much to guess what was going on, him making dewy cow eyes at such a beautiful woman and she playing coy.

  “When we get back. Both of us will have a piece.” Desmond rushed from the restaurant. Estella’s heavily laden buggy was gone. She had moved his mount’s reins from the back wheel to an iron ring set up high on the restaurant wall for the purpose of tethering horses. He should have looked at what she carried, though he had no reason to doubt she had purchased supplies for the trail drive, as she claimed.

  She couldn’t get far or drive very fast with so much cargo. He started after her, then drew rein. All he could do was ride alongside, then watch her leave him behind. A dozen excuses rattled around in his head, but he realized none would hold water with Hiram Flowers. The best way for him to proceed was both sneaky and straightforward.

  Asking Flowers for permission to leave the drive would be futile. He might as well hammer nails into his own skull. Flowers hadn’t wanted to let him come in the first place but agreed to wet-nurse him to keep his ma from riding along.

  He smiled crookedly. Estella Abragon and his ma had a lot in common. Fear didn’t make up any part of their personality.

  Galloping hard got him back to the Circle Arrow camp just as Mac had supper ready. Desmond picked at his food and thought he might tell the cook what he planned. Then he figured that was the same as telling Hiram Flowers. Mac and the trail boss were thicker than thieves. Expecting Mac to keep a secret wasn’t too smart.

  “What’s eating you?”

  Desmond jumped a foot and spilled some of his beans on the ground. He hastily kicked dirt over them. They had enough trouble with bugs without advertising for more.

  “Nothing special. Just thinking about the drive up to Denver. You ever been there before?”

  “Nope,” Mac said. “This is all new country for me. Can’t say I like it as much as East Texas, but it has its appeal, I suppose. From what Mister Flowers says, once we get to Colorado, the land’s a whole lot different. Tall trees, cooler, greener.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Are you feeling all right, Desmond? You act like you’re a million miles away.”

  “I’m just a tad tired. I rode night herd last night.”

  Mac looked at him strangely, then shook his head slowly and said, “No, you didn’t. At least somebody who snored like a ripsaw cutting through tall timber curled up under your blanket all night long.”

  “Must have been the night before.”

  “No, that was—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Desmond shot to his feet, tossed his plate into the slop bucket, and marched away. He knew Mac stared at him, unconvinced. It didn’t matter one little bit. He had made up his mind, and nothing would change it. Nothing.

  Around midnight, just as the first of the night herders came in and the next wave of wranglers went to keep the herd bedded down safely, Desmond saddled his horse and packed what supplies he could in a pack. He rummaged through the chuckwagon for food. His fingers touched cool glass. The whiskey bottle taunted him.

  “Medicinal,” he said. “That’s for medicinal use only.” He held it in his hand, considered popping the cork and taking one long pull to get him on the way, and made his decision. He replaced the cork without so much as taking a sniff of the potent rotgut.

  With the bag of food, he silently walked from camp and stowed the supplies on his horse. A pang of guilt hit him. He was stealing from the drive. A deep breath settled his thoughts. His ma owned the ranch and cattle. In a way, they were all his, so how could he steal from himself?

  He stepped up into the saddle, wheeled around, and cut across country for the Abragon ranchero. Don Jaime wouldn’t turn down an experienced cowboy, not when he had only ten men to handle his entire herd.

  Desmond looked forward to the trip into Mexico with Estella riding alongside. He might even learn some Spanish.

  CHAPTER 22

  “You all packed up until the noon meal?” Hiram Flowers chewed on his lower lip and kicked at a rock as he spoke. He hated the uncertainty. He wanted Mac to get ready for the drive to Denver, but giving that order meant he had to commit himself—and the herd. A mistake now meant Mercedes Sullivan wouldn’t get as much as possible for the beeves.

  “What do you need from me, Mister Flowers?” Mac jumped up and sat on the chuckwagon tailgate, swinging his feet back and forth. To be as confident, as at ease, as the young man eluded Flowers. He wanted nothing more than to turn around, go back to Fort Worth and the Circle Arrow ranch, and—

  And what?

  “Near her,” Mac said.

  Flowers jumped as if he had been stuck with a pin. He had been thinking about getting home to be near Mercedes, to just see her again.

  “What?”

  Mac frowned, licked his chapped lips, and combed his fingers through his hair. “Mister Flowers? Mister Flowers!”

  “Sorry,” Flowers said as he gave a little shake of his head. “Got my mind on other things. The herd, getting on up to Denver.”

  And Mercedes . . . but Flowers wasn’t going to say that.

  “You’ve decided the Army won’t take any more cattle?” Mac asked.

  “You heard what Luther Wardell did with the three hundred he bought from us, eh?” Flowers nodded slowly. Mac kept his ear to the ground, especially since he kept on talking about that rancher’s daughter he had met in town.

  “He’s trying to run the Abragons off their rancho,” Mac said. “Now that the Army has all the cattle they can use, Don Jaime can’t sell any of his cattle to the quartermaster. And neither can we.”

  “I about came to that decision on my own,” Flowers said. “With the grasslands around here being so lush, the ranchers are raising big herds. Wardell, Don Jaime, several others. I think that fellow, the newcomer, Maxwell, has a decent herd, too.”

  “He’s just started breeding. It’ll be a year or two before he’s ready to start selling,” Mac said. “But you’re right about too many head looking for a market.” He paused. “Denver? When are we heading out?”

  “You don’t sound too happy about it. You will stay with the drive for another thousand miles? We can sell the rest of the herd for good money. The pay’ll be worth it.”

  “It’s a long way back to Texas.”

  “Don’t sound so down in the mouth. We can take the train across to Abilene, then ride on down to the Circle Arrow from there in a week or two. There’s no reason we have to backtrack the trail from here to Denver.”

  “Crossing the Pecos again, even without a herd, is not much to my liking, so I’m glad of that.”

  “What’s Desmond think?” Flowers looked around. “Where is he, anyway? I saw him on night herd.”

  “He ate breakfast, or at least he grabbed a couple biscuits. I thought you had him watching the herd this morning.”

  Flowers suddenly had a bad feeling. “Show me where he spread his bedroll.”

  “You think something’s wrong, Mister Flowers?” Mac asked as he slid down from the tailgate.

  The trail boss took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His heart sped up, and he heard blood hammering in his ears.

  “I don’t look for things to go wrong, but that doesn’t mean they don’t find me now and then. Desmond was sweet on the same girl you are. I heard the two of you arguing about her. Estella? That was her name?”

  “Estella,” Mac confirmed. “We weren’t arguing, exactly. He owed me some money from when we met her in town.” Mac spat. “He owed me more than the money. I put in four hours working for the restaurant because Desmond walked out on me.”

  “With the girl.”

  Mac’s sour expression answered his suspicions.

  “Show me where he flops,” Flowers said.

  Mac walked around the chuckwagon hunting for a spot nestled between three mesquite trees and a large creosote bush. The ground showed where Desmond had scooped out for his hips and shoulders, but the blanket and the rest of his tack were missing.

  Flowers stared at the empty, sandy patch, his mind racing. Mac completed a circuit of the area and came back, shaking his head.

  “He’s nowhere to be found. Did you send him out to ride herd?”

  “I gave him the day off. He said he was feeling poorly, but it might just be that he was feeling frisky. Do you think he’s off to pay court to Estella?”

  Mac said nothing, which answered the question better than a lie. Flowers wrestled with the problem. He had hired on to get the herd to market. Watching after Mercedes’s boy had become an additional chore, one he wasn’t paid for, but if he let anything happen to Desmond she would never forgive him. Being in Mercedes’s bad graces was worse than ignoring his duty as trail boss. He wanted nothing to happen to the boy, but choosing what to do tossed him on the horns of a dilemma broader than the span of a longhorn.

  “Tell Messy he’s in charge while I’m gone.”

  “You thinking on being gone long?”

  “Can’t say, but I intend to be back to get some of those biscuits you fix up so good.” Flowers sighed. “The fact is, I might be longer. You go tell Messerschmidt for me.”

  He felt Mac’s eyes boring into his back as he walked away. The cook knew what was going on and that his trail boss had just abandoned the herd in favor of finding the boss’s kid. What trouble Desmond might be in mattered less to Flowers than getting him out of it. As always. Whether it was a whorehouse in Hell’s Half Acre or stepping between him and an irate gambler, or now keeping him from getting mixed up in what might turn into a range war, it was always the same. Desmond Sullivan blundered into a mess, and Hiram Flowers got him out of it.

  He got the boy out of it because of what he felt for the boy’s ma.

  “Damn me.” He saddled a mount from the remuda, stepped up, and said, “Damn me,” again for good measure. Tapping his heels, he got the horse galloping in the direction of Don Jaime’s rancho.

  He knew vaguely where the place was, and his instincts steered him right, as usual. When he reached the front gate, he slowed his breakneck pace and looked around. Something was wrong. His stomach knotted tight and his heart hammering away, he rode to the hacienda. Before he dismounted he took another look around. The place felt like a ghost town. The usual bustle around a place where people lived was gone.

  Dropping to the ground, he walked to a wrought-iron gate in a thick adobe wall. As with most houses of Spanish design, this opened into a courtyard surrounded by the house itself. He stopped to admire the garden, then jerked around when he heard soft footsteps coming from the house.

  Flowers was quick on the draw. He might be an old man, but he cleared leather and fired accurately with the best of them. Quick Willy Means had found that out the hard way, and all that had happened to him was being whomped on the head with a pistol—before he kidnapped Desmond. Flowers wished they had found the body. He was certain he had put at least one hunk of lead into the bounty hunter’s worthless carcass, but he wanted to bury the son of a bitch.

  “Who are you?”

  Flowers took off his hat respectfully as he faced the servant, dressed Mexican style in a flowing skirt, snow-white blouse, and with a red sash tied around her ample waist. They were of an age and, if Flowers judged matters rightly, of similar positions. He worked for Mercedes Sullivan in an important job. This woman had the same air of command he did when he rode with the herd.

  “I’m looking for a young man, Desmond Sullivan. Red hair, about so tall—” He started to indicate Desmond’s height but the woman put up both hands, palms toward him, and waved them to stop him.

  “I know of him. He is no good.”

  “We can agree on some things, then,” Flowers said. “I want to get him back to his job working the Circle Arrow herd. Where is he?”

  “Gone. He is gone with the rest of them.”

  “What do you mean?” He looked around again and the sense of abandonment hit him even harder. The only two people in the house were standing in the garden. Everyone else was . . . gone.

  “Don Jaime has taken the herd to Mexico to sell. To Don Pedro.” She spat the name out as if it burned her tongue like a red-hot chili pepper.

  “What about Desmond?” The sinking feeling became more akin to drowning now. He hardly dared breathe.

  “He rides with Don Jaime.” She shook her head angrily. “No, he rides with her. I thought she had better sense. She likes him.”

  “She? Estella Abragon?”

  “Who else?” She looked at him as if he had been out in the sun too long. Maybe he had.

  “Don Jaime and his vaqueros are driving the herd into Mexico and Estella rode along? With Desmond, too?”

  She glared at him, tapped her toe, and crossed her arms. Never had he seen a more emphatic dismissal.

  “Did they leave at dawn?”

  “They did. And I do not know where Don Pedro’s rancho is. Mexico. That is what I do know.” She pointed to the gate leading out to where he’d left his horse.

  He put his hat on, touched the brim politely, muttered a “thank you,” and hightailed it. Astride his horse again, he spun in a circle, trying to figure out what to do. As if by its own accord, the horse walked southward. Here, Flowers saw where Don Jaime’s men had rounded up their horses for the drive and headed south. If the herd was of any real size, tracking it would be simple. If he went after Desmond. For two cents and a plugged nickel he’d let the boy go off on his own. What did he owe him, anyway? Desmond had been nothing but trouble.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28