Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (23 page)

      
She recognized the glossy black hair of Tomasina Carver even before she heard the low-hissed voice with its heavy Spanish accent. Charlee strained to hear what they said.

      
“Here is the information you need, all I could glean from that fool councilman. His son is a ranger, but I could not question him too openly about troop strengths and locations without making him suspicious.”

      
“If your people south of the border weren't so clumsy moving their army into position, the rumors making everyone suspicious would never have begun,” Markham said nastily.

      
“Do you have the money?”

      
“Don't I always, pet?” He smiled sarcastically and offered her a small leather sack that she quickly slipped into her reticule.

      
“I do not like meeting here out in the open,” she said petulantly, looking back down the alleyway. “What if I were seen back here?”

      
“There's no one about this time of day, and I need to get this information to my contact within the hour. He just arrived in town at daybreak. We could scarcely use the Rojas place at this hour without arousing even more suspicion, now could we?” His very reasonableness was irritating to her.

      
“Very well, just do not come to my town house anymore. The time is too near for us to risk being discovered now.”

      
Tomasina turned to leave, but before she could get more than a step away, Markham grabbed her by one arm and swung her roughly into his embrace, kissing her passionately until she began to wriggle free, pushing at him with her hands and tossing her head back to avoid his mouth.

      
Tomasina's eyes opened wide and a loud hiss of shock escaped her lips as she arched back and looked up at the open second-story window of the mercantile, where Charlee sat frozen in horror. For a second, black and green eyes locked. Then, Markham followed Tomasina's gaze upward to see Charlee. “You fool!” Tomasina spat at Markham and turned, pulling him down the alleyway.

      
Charlee had been sitting in the window listening to the quick snatches of conversation between Tomasina and Markham. When her rival looked up and saw her, she did not move, but stared in shock as their words and actions hit her with wrenching impact. Jim's fiancée was a spy for the Mexicans, in league with a British agent! She stood up numbly as they hurriedly left the alley. What should she do now? Lee would know. He could convince Slade of the truth. Quickly, she went downstairs and instructed Chester to load the wagon as soon as Bainbridge had all the supplies assembled and go directly to the boardinghouse. Then, she began to walk briskly toward the livery to get Patchwork. She would ride to Bluebonnet as fast as she could.

      
Once they were out of sight and earshot of the horrified girl, Tomasina said breathlessly to Markham, “Kill her, at once, or we're both as good as hanged for treason!’’

      
“Don't be a fool! I can scarcely go rushing in there and shoot her in front of half a dozen people,” Markham retorted, his eyes squinting in concentration. “We can't just have bodies turning up all about town and country, now can we? Quite a few people would ask questions. Nor do I fancy pushing her from the second-story window in hopes she'll break her neck in another of your unfortunate accidents! Who is the child, anyway? Pretty little thing.”

      
Tomasina seethed. “She is a nobody, Dick McAllister's sister, a waif who turned up on Diego's doorstep a few months ago.”

      
Markham laughed in spite of himself. “You mean that new girl at Kensington's boardinghouse, the one who created such a furor at the Pearsons' Saturday night when your beloved beat her escort senseless? Are you quite certain you're not using this as a new grotesquerie for eliminating rivals, Tomasina?”

      
She gave him a withering look, then said calmly, “You said you had to meet your Comanchero friend this morning. What is his name—Brady? Before she can babble this to anyone, let Señor Brady take her to his allies. She'll hardly be the first white slave to die in a Comanche camp.” Tomasina's eyes glowed like black fire.

      
Though he was a hardened espionage agent, Ashley Markham quailed at her lust for violence, especially directed against an innocent young girl. Carver and the meddling brother, now those were other matters, but this...well. He considered with his usual detachment, ignoring her agitated expression. It must be done, unpleasant or not. The McAllister girl must vanish, and Rufus Brady was perfectly equipped to handle it. A job was a job, after all.

* * * *

      
The Comanchero was a big man, over six feet five, with greasy, sand-colored hair and pale gray eyes, wide set in a square, pockmarked face. He walked with an oddly lumbering grace, and his smile showed large, straight teeth. The grin would have been boyishly engaging were it not for the dark, tobacco-stained enamel and the twisting leer created by a deep scar at one side of his mouth.

      
He grimaced at Markham, then leaned back in his chair. They were seated in a sleazy cantina, where Brady sipped a glass of cheap whiskey. Before noon, the place was deserted; but nonetheless they met in the back and spoke in whispers. ‘Took ya long 'nough, English. Ya got th' money 'n places fer us ta hit?” When Brady stood up he dwarfed Markham's slim, dapper five-foot-ten form.

      
“Yes, I have your information and the whiskey money for your red friends. But first there is a small matter in town you must take care of for me...”

* * * *

      
As she hurried up the street, Charlee was so immersed in the jumble of thoughts ricocheting through her mind that she didn't notice him until he collided with her. He was the biggest man she had ever seen. She looked up to face the stranger and apologize for her absentminded clumsiness. The words died on her lips when she met his cold gray eyes and saw the evil-looking scar that rent his face into a grotesque mask.

      
Before she could move or say anything, he grabbed her around her waist in a lightning-swift gesture, literally squeezing the breath from her. She struggled to clear her swimming head and cry out, all the while flailing impotently against his grasp. Her head rolled around and she searched frantically for someone, anyone to help. The alleyway where she had been intercepted was deserted. Not a soul was in sight.

      
“Fer a little bitty thing, ya shore kin wriggle somethin' fierce.” Brady's huge hand clamped over her mouth just as she let out a loud cry. His meaty palm covered her whole face and virtually suffocated her as he lifted her effortlessly and swung her tiny body around the corner into a narrow side street. At the end stood a small, rickety shed with its door ajar.

      
“Markham sez ya gotta go ta th' Comanch. Pure shame. Dunno if’n they'll keep ya long.” He regarded her small, fine-boned frame, running his hand over her breasts and hips as he lowered her to the filthy floor of the shed. “But then, yore stronger'n ya look, 'n ya got all th' right parts. Yep, Iron Hand'll like yew.”

      
Charlee felt nauseated as his words struck her with terrifying force. He was a Comanchero, one of those hated and feared outcasts, desperate cold-blooded cutthroats who traded whiskey and weapons to the Comanche. And he was going to sell her to the savages!

      
Brady reached in his hip pocket with one hand while the other still covered her face, muffling her desperate cries. Quickly and efficiently, he stuffed a foul, smelly rag into her mouth and then threw her face-forward onto the dusty floor of the storage shed, once more knocking the breath from her. She was bruised and suffocating, but her terror overshadowed all else as she struggled to spit out the wad of stinking cotton. Rufus Brady laughed cruelly as he tied her hands tightly behind her back, then looped the rough rawhide around her ankles, hogtieing her. When he had tied another rag between her lips, securing the gag in her mouth, he stood up and looked down at her, helpless at his feet.

      
“I got me some bizness over at th' Tres Hermanos Saloon. A feller owes me money—'n lady, I always collect my debts. Yew remember thet,” he said with a chilling grin.

      
Once he had her away from town, what might he be capable of doing to her? Thinking of that, she felt her blood freeze.

      
As if reading the terror in her huge green eyes, he let out a low, evil laugh and opened the door. “I’ll be back fer ya afore long. Once't we're clear o' Santone, wal...” He left her then, with his threat hanging in the air like an ax ready to fall.

      
Soon she would be missed and Deborah would institute a search. But who'd look for her here, on a deserted back street in one of the poorest sections of town? By the looks of the shack, it had once been a small warehouse or stable, long ago abandoned.

      
Think, Charlee. Be calm and think.
She forced herself to stop struggling, since that was only using up her limited supply of strength and air in a totally futile endeavor. The killer was an expert with ropes. She began to inventory every inch of the shed from top to bottom. She had to figure a way out of this.

* * * *

      
Asa Ketchum, too, had a problem that Monday morning. As he sat in the big ranch house kitchen listening to Weevils clank pots and pans in the dishwater, he threw a rock-hard biscuit on top of his leathery gray eggs and forced down another swallow of the spunk water coffee. Since Charlee had left, the food had suffered a marked decline. In addition, there was an ominous air of tension at mealtimes. Lee would discuss his frequent trips to town to visit Charlee, while everyone covertly watched Jim's reaction.

      
Slade was alternately hostile and taciturn. Always quick to anger, the boss now exploded at the most insignificant things. He and Lee had a terrible brawl the day after Charlee left. Asa had seen Slade's black eye and the boy's bruised knuckles and quickly put two and two together. “Whole damblasted place's goin' ta hell faster'n a cornstalk lawyer can get a man's mark on a quit-claim deed,” he swore, absently rubbing his aching jaw.

      
“I kin fix thet toothache fer ya, Asa,” Weevils offered as he watched the foreman wince in misery.

      
“Pshaw, I'll wait till I can get to Doc Weidermann next week,” the Virginian drawled softly.

      
“All's he'll do is pull it. I kin stop th' pain without yew openin' yer mouth.”

      
“You 'n your home remedies,” Asa scoffed, taking another sip of the foul coffee.

      
“Best cure fer toothache in th' world is ta take a rag 'n rub some cat shit on it. Wrap it round yer jaw fer a day er so. Works ever’ time,” Weevils averred.

      
Asa spit a stream of the vile coffee across the table. “That what you're puttin' in this here coffee?”

      
“Naw. Don't talk foolish. Onliest thing ya use animal dirt fer is poultices on th'
outside
o' a body.”

      
“Well, smellin' it'd for sure take my mind off my tooth,” Asa said sarcastically.

      
“Whut'd I tell ya. Works ever’ time. ‘Course, what with Miz Charlee gone 'n thet critter o' hers with her, I'm right pressed for th' makin's, so ta speak.”

      
Asa stood up. “That's just what I've been thinkin' on, Weevils—Charlee, that is.”

      
“Yew miss her, too.” It was a simple statement of fact.

      
“Yep, I do, 'n so does that hardheaded youngun' of Will's. Damn if Will didn't make the mistake of his life askin' that boy to marry the Aguilar girl. I liked her pa right enough, but she's not the one for Jim. It's Charlee McAllister he should marry.”

      
“Yew 'n me know thet, 'n so does Lee, but who's gonna convince th' boss?” Weevils shrugged, causing his mountainous frame to ripple.

      
“Someone's got to. I—”

      
Just then Slade came striding rapidly up the back steps and into the kitchen. “Asa, two men are down with a sprained back and a stomachache—or at least that's what the malingerers tell me. You're supposed to handle the men. It's a good hour past sunrise. What's the holdup?”

      
Asa took one look at the agitated young man before him and motioned for Weevils to leave them alone. The fat old cook was happy to oblige, quickly scooping up his dishpan and heading out the door.

      
“Two good-for-nothin' hands more or less won't make no mind, Jim. It's Wyler and Kellerman, right?” At Slade's surprised nod, Asa motioned for him to sit down at the round oak table.

      
“You've had a burr under your blanket for quite a while now, son,” he began carefully. “It's time I talked ta you the way Will would’ve if he was here.”

      
“I know what my pa wanted me to do, Asa,” Slade said wearily, with a touch of defensiveness in his voice.

      
“I wonder. Oh, I know what he told you when he died, but that was over six years ago, before the Aguilar girl married Jake.”

      
“She's a widow now and I'm going to marry her,” Jim said doggedly.

      
“Lots of things change, son. You, her. You ever think if Will was still here he'd change his mind, too? Maybe see you with someone else, someone you really care about, who cares about you?”

      
“You mean Charlee.” Slade stood up stiffly, in an abrupt angry motion, nearly overturning his chair. “Let me alone, Asa. It's between her and me.”

      
“Appears ta me, after what went on here that night, it's gone a little too far for you ta just pack her off ta town 'n go about your business. Charlee McAllister is a good girl, young and inexperienced. What you did shamed her 'n you know it.” He put up a hand to stay Slade's angry retort and continued, “Now, it'd be different if she didn't care for you or you for her, but anyone with eyes ‘round here knows that purely ain't so. Charlee belongs at Bluebonnet. Mrs. Carver don't, 'n Will'd be the first ta tell you the truth of it, if he was here.” He stood up as he spoke, fixing Jim with his level blue gaze. For all the rebuke in his words, his voice and manner were gentle.