Bandit's Embrace (The Durango Family) (3 page)

He leaned on his elbows, looked into the Kid’s eyes without blinking. “I haven’t got that much.” He silently counted the pile of silver before him. “Will you take my marker?”

The Kid grinned as he tipped his chair back on two legs, the big chandelier reflecting off his whiskey glass. “Nope.” He shook his head.

“I got a bay gelding I can bet.” Bandit had the winning cards, he knew it. He wasn’t going to be bluffed out of this pot, but he couldn’t cover the bet.

“That hunk of buzzard bait I saw at the hitching rail when I tied up my pinto? Nothin’ doin’! ” The outlaw brought his chair down, with a thump, on all four legs, looked around at the people ringing the table, looked into Bandit’s eyes. “I want you as part of my gang, Bandit. What you can bet is a promise to ride with me at least a year.”

Bandit paused, looking into cocksure eyes as blue as his own. He wouldn’t even spit on men who’d murder a little old lady. But he had the winning cards. “Ride with you one year, huh? I’ll see you.”

“Done!” The Kid tipped his hat back on his blond hair, reached very slowly to turn over his hole card. A queen of spades. “Royal Flush!” He smiled triumphantly, reached to rake in the pot.

In that split-second, Bandit felt his belly lurch with fear. Sweat plastered his light hair against his forehead as he glanced over at the trio at the bar, leering back at him. The smart thing to do now was say, You’re right, Kid, you got me beat, and toss his cards in, hole card unseen, without making an issue of it. All he had to do was tuck in his tail like a scared hound and let the Kid take that pot he was reaching for. There’d be plenty of money for him, riding with the Kid.

His life or his honor. A mart’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do
. Bandit made a halting gesture. “Hold it! There’s five ladies in this deck! I say you been dealing seconds and slipping extra cards in!”

The Kid’s hands froze in midair.

With murmurs of dismay, the crowd edged away from the table, grew quiet. When you call a man a cheat in Texas, you’d better be ready to fight. There was an abrupt silence as someone nudged the bald piano player and he stopped in midnote. The girl moved away from the piano, which was almost directly behind the Kid. Laughing whores, perched on chair arms, hushed and turned around to look.

In that split second, Bandit turned his head ever so slightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the renegades at the bar come as alert as three starved wolves ready to feed off their leader’s kill. He knew what fear tasted like then, like a copper penny in his mouth.

Bandit felt apprehension twist his gut, but he grinned lopsidedly, trying to appear as cocky and arrogant as ever. Chances were, he couldn’t take the Kid if the gunfighter was as fast as everyone said.

He glanced from the Kid’s hands to the three men almost behind him at the bar. The biggest one was actually licking his lips in anticipation. Bandit was good, but he hadn’t a chance against the four.

He had survived all these years by watching people, gauging their reactions. So now he didn’t look at the gunslinger’s hands, he watched his eyes. saw the little pinpoints of light reflecting in them from the big chandelier overhead.

“Apologize, Bandit. Say you was wrong and I’ll forget it.” In the dead silence, the words seemed to echo and reecho through the saloon.

“No. You see, Kid, I’ve already got the queen of spades.” Very slowly, Bandit reached out, turned his hole card over on the table, and heard the shocked murmur around him.

He watched the Kid’s eyes, knew almost to the split second when the Kid would scramble to his feet, the death hand of cards fluttering as his left hand reached down. But Bandit was ready. He came to his feet like swift justice, his chair going over backward, loud and clattering. Bandit barely cleared leather as the Kid fanned the Colt hard with the heel of his right hand.

In that instant, as his ears rang with the deafening roar of the Kid’s gun, he smelled burnt powder. The slug grazed him, plowed into the mirror behind the bar with a shower of tinkling glass. In that split second, Bandit fired almost instinctively, not even aiming, fanning twice. Never would he forget the surprised, horrified look on the Kid’s face as the man stumbled backward from the impact of the forty-four bullets.

The first plowed a scarlet furrow through the hair light as Bandit’s own. The second blew a bloody hole in the Kid’s chest. The Oklahoma Kid staggered backward into the piano. Discordant notes tinkled as he slammed into the keyboard. Fresh blood scent drifted to Bandit on the stale, smoky air. The Oklahoma Kid was dead even as he slid toward the floor.

A girl screamed. Bandit swung around to cover the trio at the bar, started backing toward the swinging doors, his gun still smoking.

The Kid’s gang moved toward him.

“Get him!”

“He’s killed the Kid!”

It wasn’t going to matter that it was a fair fight, Bandit thought, the trio would kill him anyway. Against three desperadoes, he had no chance. Bandit stood alone as he always had, no one in the gawking crowd making any move to help him. But all these years, he’d survived like a solitary lobo wolf by sheer guts and reflex. In that split second, he shot down the wagon-wheel chandelier, plunging the room into blackness as guns roared and women shrieked and ran in all directions.

He tasted real terror as he whirled on his boot heel and ran through the darkness, crashing into people. Behind him, gunfire flashed orange as the trio drew, fired.

Outside it was cool, the late April night fresh on his sweating face. He ran down the wooden steps.
Damn! He
was flat broke, hadn’t even managed to grab any of that big pot off the table. What to do?

In a couple of hours, it would be daylight. Bandit’s bay gelding was slow as Christmas. The outlaws would overtake him before he’d gone five miles. He hesitated, looked around.

From inside, he heard screaming, shouts, and curses as people stumbled over furniture, pushed into each other. Another minute and that crowd would be outside. Dammit! What in blue blazes was he gonna do now? Stealing a horse was a hanging offense anywhere in the West.

Might as well get hung for a sheep as a lamb, he thought, looking down the row of horses tied to the hitching rail. The finest
overo
pinto stud he’d ever seen nickered and jerked at its reins. Instinctively, Bandit ran to it. The flashy sorrel paint was a big stallion, more than sixteen hands. It tried to fling its fine head up against the tie-down that ran from its velvet muzzle between its front legs, hooking to the saddle girth. He grabbed the bridle, noted the long-shanked bit. This was a fiery horse, the rigging told him that. “You like to run, boy? Old Bandit’s gonna give you the run of your life!”

But before he swung up into the saddle, he freed the other horses, waved his hat and shouted to run them off. The powerful stallion reared and pawed the air, flinging its head against the tie-down. Bandit hesitated, uncertain which trail to take. “You got any choice, Hoss? It sure don’t make me no never mind!”

Then the trio ran out into the street behind him, shouting and cursing. “There he goes! Get him!”

“Damn him! He’s got the Kid’s stallion!”

“Stop him! He’s taking the horse!”

Where to go? Bandit sucked in his breath, ran his tongue over his dry lips as he used his spurs. The outlaws might be from the Territory, too, probably knew every inch of it, so it would be easy for them to track him if he headed north. Along the Rio Grande it was isolated, lonely. Only an occasional war party of Kickapoo, Lipan, or Mescalero Apache rode those arid stretches. He reined the magnificent horse around, headed south. Maybe after a few hours, the Oklahoma Kid’s partners would tire of the chase and give up.

It was dawn before he finally reined in, dismounted, and walked the lathered stud to cool him out. For the first time, he noticed the pinto’s eyes were as blue as his own. Bandit grinned crookedly. “Well, old Hoss, maybe we belong together!” He felt in his vest for the reassurance of his lucky pieces. Yeah, maybe the Kid’s partners had quit following him and he’d ridden far enough.

Was there any hardtack in those saddlebags? As he fumbled through them, he noted the mark on the stallion’s hip. There was something vaguely familiar about that eagle brand. Oh, yeah. For the very first time, he considered the eagle on his lucky piece. He’d never thought about it, but it stood to reason the small coin was Mexican, since the eagle was that country’s emblem. His mind searched for something else, found it.

He turned the thought over in his mind as he reached for some hardtack to munch. His fingers closed on something metal, cold. What in blue blazes? . . .

Bandit felt the hair raise on the back of his neck. He would have to ride a lot farther than he’d planned and that trio wouldn’t give up easily. Worse than that, he was going to have the army looking for him and they’d shoot first, ask questions later.

“Ol’ blue-eyed hoss, I’m in big trouble!” Bandit looked from the pinto to what he held in his hands. Now he knew those outlaws would chase him ’til they ran him to ground, like coon dogs on a hot trail. He’d have to try to lose himself down in the vast wilderness below the Rio Grande.

The first pink light of day gleamed on metal.
Sí
, they’d trail him into hell without a backward look. He ran his fingers over the telltale letters etched on the canvas sacks inside the leather saddlebag. God damn! He’d stolen more than the Kid’s horse!

Double eagles. The twenty-dollar gold pieces felt cold against his fingers as he silently counted them. Three cutthroats on his trail and next the U.S. Army! With a sinking heart, Bandit mounted up and headed south as fast as the fine-blooded stallion could gallop. Now just what was he gonna do? He sure couldn’t expect protection from the law. Not with his saddlebags full of stolen Fort Concho payroll!

It was almost dusk when the stage pulled into the sleepy little relay village to stop for the night.

Amethyst sighed and leaned on her hand, looking out at the tumble of adobe buildings around the courtyard. The place even smelled dusty in the late April warmth. After several days of travel, this was her last night of freedom before she was locked away in the convent of the Cloistered Sisters, probably forever. Just what was she going to do about that? All through the trip she had watched for some avenue of escape, for someone who might be willing and able to help her. Nothing . . . no one.

Mrs. Wentworth belched and scratched coarsely as the driver came around to open the door for them. She’d been sneaking drinks from a small flask when she didn’t think Amethyst saw her and was more than a little drunk. “I feel like I’ve grown into this cushion,” she grumbled, then clambered down. “A big dinner and a night’s rest sound mighty good to me!”

But not to me, Amethyst thought desperately as she let the driver assist her out into the dust of the sleepy way station. She shook the wrinkles from her bustle, from the expensive black-purple silk skirt. Prune, she thought, what a silly name for the latest fashion color. Funny how unimportant things like that cross one’s mind when one feels threatened. She took a deep breath and looked around.

A noise made her turn in time to see a big, blond man on a fine paint stallion ride into the courtyard, dismount. She was too far way to read the brand on the horse, but there was something very familiar about it. . . . She laughed out loud when she realized she recognized that
overo
pinto. The gunfighter was either very brave or very stupid!

Her chaperone looked up from shouting orders at the driver regarding their luggage. “Young lady,” she snapped, peering nearsightedly at the
americano
in the growing dusk, “you can stop gaping like a common tart at some saddle bum! He can’t be up to any good, not this far below the border, and he’s certainly not the class of man a high-born girl would even consider!”

I would consider him.
Amethyst watched with unabashed curiosity as the tall
americano
led his horse over to the trough to drink. He wore red satin sleeve garters, like a gambler might, and an ivory-handled pistol was tied low on his left hip. At any moment now, Mrs. Wentworth would scold her again for staring at the rugged cowboy. But that stout woman was fussing with the luggage, shouting orders to scurrying servants.

The paint stallion bent its head to drink, and across its neck, the blond man with the dark face and high cheekbones seemed to feel her gaze upon him. He stared back at her with unabashed but respectful curiosity as he pumped water over his bandana, then wiped his neck and the skin visible through the open collar of his shirt. Strange, Amethyst thought, he wears some kind of necklace. In the man’s dark face, his pale blue eyes were as light as faded denim.

The light-colored eyes surprised her. At first glance, he might have been a blond Castilian Spaniard, but there was an Indian somewhere in his pedigree. Among the wealthy people she knew, pedigree and talk of good breeding was often the topic of conversation.

In the moment that their eyes met, Amethyst felt blood rush to her cheeks. He seemed surprised by her staring, evidently not used to being noticed by the gentry. And she felt he sneered at what she represented. His expression, previously respectful, became arrogant and frankly appraising as his gaze swept all the way to the ground and then back up to her face.

Why, he looks at me as if he’s imagining what I might look like beneath my clothes! Amethyst thought indignantly, but she couldn’t prevent her own gaze from moving down his big frame to his worn boots and then back up to his eyes.

His sudden smirk deepened the cleft in his chin, told her he had decided she was a female looking over a male. While his mouth pulled up at the left corner in a crooked grin, he touched the brim of his Western hat with two fingers and nodded slightly in her direction.

What she should do now was shrug with haughty contempt and turn toward the inn as servants staggered away under the weight of her luggage. But she couldn’t seem to take her gaze away from the virile, swaggering americano. A Texas gunfighter, Amethyst thought, looking at the telltale Colt, the trigger filed away for fast shooting. Sí, he was just what she was looking for. He looked virile and capable of anything. Just how would she enlist his help, talk him out of that horse?

In that moment, Amethyst did something so brazen, later she could not believe she had done it. She made a gesture outrageous for an elegant Spanish lady. Very slowly and deliberately, she winked at him!

His mouth dropped open as if he could not fathom what she had done. Then he threw back his head and laughed, his gaze sweeping over her again as if she were some cheap
puta
in a cantina. He winked at her slowly, broadly, with his sky-blue eyes.

Santa María!
Of all the impudence!
She was too innocent to know just what reaction to expect, but she had certainly not expected him to wink back! And then she recalled the stories she had heard of respectable Spanish matrons dallying with their unsuspecting husbands’ virile vaqueros. Obviously the Texan had heard those stories, too, and thought her a rich, married lady looking for a forbidden thrill.

Before Amethyst’s startled mind could react to this, Mrs. Wentworth grabbed her arm drunkenly.
“Señorita,”
she scolded, “have you gone loco? Why, to think a girl from such a fine family would stand here gaping like a common parlor girl at a saddle tramp who looks like a coyote about to snap up some tender baby chick!”

Amethyst jerked out of the woman’s grasp, turned to flounce away toward the inn. “I was not gaping at him,” she lied, the chaperone puffing along in her wake. “I was just admiring his horse.”

Did she hear a faint mocking laugh from him? She managed to suppress the urge to turn around and look as she headed into the inn.

“Humph!” snorted the stout woman. “I’ve been around a long time, young lady! Even as nearsighted as I am, I can guess just which stallion you were looking over—that cocky Texan two-legged one! No wonder your papa wants you placed in a strict convent school!”

Amethyst didn’t look back at Mrs. Wentworth. She lifted her skirts and kept her chin high, defiantly sweeping through the corridor behind the servants. “As I recall,” she said icily, “my papa never gave a thought to sending me anywhere until he met your conniving employer who’s got him dancing to her tune!”

“Don’t speak so disrespectfully of your future mama.” Mrs. Wentworth puffed along behind her.

“My mama is dead,” Amethyst retorted. “And she may well be turning over in her grave at the thought of my silly papa playing the fool to a woman half his age!”

The dumpy woman followed her into their room, closing the door behind them. “Mademoiselle Monique is thinking of your own good!” She declared, and shook the trail dust from her grim black dress.

“Spare me from people who do something for my ‘own good,”’ Amethyst flounced across the room. “I think that might have been the rationale behind the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witchcraft trials!”

“Your mother’s friend educated you too well for a proper Spanish lady! And your doting papa has let you do as you please all these years! Next thing we know, you’ll be leading a pack of those crazy Suffragettes, trying to get the vote for Mexican women!”

Amethyst cocked her head, considering. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. . . .”

“Lord God, preserve us!” Mrs. Wentworth clapped her beefy hand to her forehead in horror. “Young lady, keep a civil tongue in your head!”

Amethyst strode over to lean against the window frame. She looked out at the courtyard while the chaperone poured water in the wash basin, then splashed her florid face like a fat cow enjoying the ranch pond on a hot day.

Dusk slowly settled on the world outside, like a soft lavender and mauve mantilla gradually draped over the harsh desert colors of brassy gold and hot orange.

Amethyst watched the tall cowboy lead the weary paint toward the barn. Even though his broad shoulders slumped with weariness, he swaggered a little as he walked.

The Texas pistolero and the horse are two of a kind, she thought, built big, virile and powerful. No mare or mere woman would dare to stand up to either one of them . . . or would want to. Sí, her prayers had been answered. Now how could she carry out her plan?

The dinner bell clanged out in the courtyard and she started, then glanced over at the clumsy woman still splashing her face. Amethyst had been lost in thought about the Cloistered Sisters, imagining the big gates slamming shut behind her on the morrow. In spite of Papa’s insistence that her stay at the convent was only temporary, while she learned to be a proper lady, the gleam in Monique’s cold green eyes told her otherwise. Santa Marí!
If that clever French redhead thought she could pressure her to take the veil, she’d better think again!

The gunfighter came out of the barn, sauntering across the courtyard to the inn for supper. Even though it was almost dark, Amethyst could have recognized that tall, muscular frame just by the swaggering walk. Yet in that split second when his blue eyes had first caught her gaze, there had been something sensitive, vulnerable, about the man.

And why did he carry his saddlebags slung carelessly over one broad shoulder? Other riders left theirs with their saddles until morning.

A cantina across the way erupted into loud music, and a woman’s laughter echoed across the courtyard. The cowboy paused, looked in that direction a long moment as if considering, then shrugged and continued toward the inn.

. Amethyst turned, her skirts rustling across the floor, and moved toward the door.

Mrs. Wentworth raised her head from the washbowl like a fat turtle poking up, looking around. “And just where do you think you’re going?”

“Why to dinner, of course.” She shrugged. “Didn’t you hear the bell?” Maybe she would be lucky enough to sit across from the brash pistolero, maybe—

“I think not.” The woman’s nose wrinkled as if she smelled something spoiled. “Rather than let you mix with all those sweaty, no-’count commoners, I think we’ll have dinner brought to our room on a tray as we’ve done throughout the trip.”

Amethyst bit her lip in annoyance. She had to see the Texan again, had to find out if he would help her escape. She’d have to outwit this annoying woman. “Señora, you are right, of course. It is better I should spend this last night in contemplation and prayer before I face the sisters.”

Mrs. Wentworth’s eyes widened in surprise and suspicion, as if she had seen too much of the world to be so easily fooled. “What’d you say?”

“No, no, you’re right,” Amethyst forced herself to make a gesture of surrender, her violet eyes downcast now in humility. “Perhaps I should consider the error of my ways, knowing my papa and his intended will do what is best for this unsophisticated, unworldly girl.”

“That’s more like it.” The older woman regarded her suspiciously for a long moment, then puffed across the room to pull the bell cord for a servant.

Amethyst studied her nails carelessly. “Perhaps we should have something special tonight, maybe even a bottle of the inn’s best wine to celebrate tomorrow’s new beginning.”

She’d struck the right note. The stout woman’s eyes, formerly like two burnt holes in a blanket, gleamed with sudden interest. Mrs. Wentworth ran her tongue over her thin lips. “Si, such a wonderful idea,
señorita!
I’ll tell your papa you insisted!”

“Oh, I do!” Amethyst responded, forcing herself to smile. “And tomorrow, before you return, I might write a glowing letter of commendation for your loyalty to your employer!”

A timid knock at the door. The chaperone answered it with a broad smile, and gave orders while Amethyst went to the basin, poured fresh water, washed her own face. In her mind’s eye, she remembered the big
Texian
running the wet bandana around his neck, down the open collar of his sweaty shirt. She wondered, suddenly, what he looked like without that shirt. Amethyst had never seen a man even partially unclothed at any time in her twenty-three years.

From the dining room somewhere in the inn, she heard a peal of hearty, earthy laughter, recognized the voice even though she had never heard him speak. It had an easy way about it, and she imagined him, flirting with the servant girls, guessed that after dinner he would go over to that cantina across the way, dance and drink with them.

Somehow that thought annoyed her. Amethyst took a damp washcloth, rubbed it across the hollow of her throat, then pressed down the low-cut, dark purple silk dress. She closed her eyes as she rubbed her breasts with the cool cloth, remembering his big, square hands running the wet bandana down the open throat of his shirt. She had a sudden fantasy that the Texan held her washcloth, that he teasingly washed lower and lower, pushing the purple silk farther down with each stroke until her full breasts were bared to his wet bandana and his hot hands.

“
Señorita,
what in the world are you doing?”

The woman’s stern voice brought her out of her fantasy just as the Texan’s mouth bent to run his tongue over her naked nipples. “Nothing. Just washing away the dust, that’s all,” she said guiltily.

Behind her, the door squeaked open as the little maid brought in a tray of food, a bottle of wine. Amethyst came over to the table with a sigh. The stout woman clattered the dishes around, dismissed the servant.

“All right,
señorita,
let’s eat it before it gets cold!” Mrs. Wentworth sat down, piled enough food on her plate to have fed half of Texas, then poured herself a tall glass of wine and drained it. “Aren’t you hungry?” She poured herself another glass of wine.

Amethyst sat down, toyed with her food, pretended to eat and drink so as not to arouse suspicion. “Mrs. Wentworth”—she gave the dumpy woman her most charming smite—” I really am not very fond of wine, but do enjoy it yourself.”