Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (31 page)

      
Houston's faraway expression turned to Tennessee and bitter memories, long buried in the past…for a brief moment. He said, “I know the feeling. One woman in the world you never expect to—” He stopped abruptly, shaking his great shaggy head. The poker player's mask slipped into place once again. “I assume you have someone watching both her and Markham?”

      
Slade nodded. “I'm pretty sure he has to make connections with his Comanche friends soon, as soon as he gets more money from his New Orleans source. Now he doesn't have Brady to do his dirty work for him.”

      
“But he still has Mrs. Carver,” Houston said almost gently.

      
Slade looked up abruptly, then tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire. “She only has contact with some renegade
Tejanos
who relay information between San Antonio and Mexico City.”

      
“Antonio Perez?”

      
Slade sighed. “I'm almost certain his band supplies the couriers, but I don't have a complete list of all the local
Tejanos
who are involved, only Felipe Rojas, and Sina, of course,” he finished bitterly.

      
“Well, Jim, about the same time I received word of your scrape, some other intelligence came my way. It seems the captives from the Sante Fe expedition are on their way out of that stinking Mexican prison, thanks to the good offices of our American friends, although the British are taking a few bows, too.”

      
Slade snorted and Houston continued. “But that's not the half of it. Everything's still in turmoil with those idiots in the legislature passing declarations of war and appropriations for an army to invade Mexico.” He threw up his hands in disgust. “Where they expect to get the money to feed and arm this grand ‘levee en masse’ I'd love to know! I suppose they expect Texian soldiers to eat cactus and then club Santa Anna into submission with the chewed-up pulps.”

      
“What we need are more men like Jack Hays and his rangers, who can live off the land and keep Santa Anna at bay on the border,” Slade said with a crooked grin. He and the president had long agreed on the futility of a full-scale war Texas could never win and could not even finance.

      
“Men like Hays and you, Jim-boy.” He paused and looked levelly at Slade. “I have special need of your intelligence in San Antonio now, although I'm not any more certain of the widow Carver's reliability than you are.”

      
As Houston carefully chose his words, the thought crossed Slade's mind that his chief may have had another source report to him about Sina's connection to Markham. But he held his peace. The president would tell him only what he wanted him to know. “What's happening on the border, Sam? Troop movements? We've only heard rumors as far north as San Antonio.”

      
“Maybe a big invasion this time, bigger than Vasquez. If it is, it'll take them a while to organize it; but one way or another, something's in the wind. I have a Yankee friend in Mexico City who says a certain French mercenary named Woll has a new command, orders unknown to outsiders as yet.”

      
“And his orders involve Texas,” Slade surmised. There was little doubt.

      
Houston nodded. “If your...fiancée”—Slade noted his tentative use of the word—“is in touch with Perez, she'll know. He's under Woll's command.”

      
Slade considered this. It all fit. A strike sometime before winter. “Hear anything more about those warships coming from the British?”

      
“One's arrived. The other's still tied up across the pond, but I'm certain Santa Anna will get both his new toys if Pakenham has anything to say about it. However, Aberdeen himself may have changed tack, to use a nautical term.” Houston's eyes lit up. He loved the complexities of international politics and its intrigues.

      
“The British Foreign Secretary's done something to please you?” Slade was incredulous.

      
“Let's just say the American Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, has. It seems he and another diplomat on the British side named Ashburton have concluded the long wrangled-over Canadian-American border dispute in Maine. Webster won the chess game. Pushy, those New Englanders.”

      
Slade nodded, beginning to see where Houston was leading him. “And so, having gotten their tails scalded in the north by President Tyler's administration, the British have decided the Yankees just might cast their greedy eyes south—to Texas.”

      
“Exactly,” said the president, with gleeful malice unconcealed in his voice. “Lately my correspondence with the Foreign Office has been exceedingly cordial. Mexico is in their hip pocket—if they can only keep her from unraveling at the seams. But Aberdeen will do anything to avoid having the Americans, flushed with their diplomatic triumph in the north, cast their eyes toward Texas in the south. He proffers us undying devotion.”

      
Slade broke into a broad grin now. “You plan to cozy up to Her Majesty's government and rattle a few chains back in Washington.” He was beginning to think like his chief. Houston would use the British to goad the United States Congress into voting for Texas annexation.

      
“Sooner or later, we've got to jump, Jim-boy. It's either statehood in the American Union or disintegration into a satellite of some European power. Most likely the British lion would gobble us up.”

      
“Here's to a royal case of indigestion,” said Slade, hefting his refilled coffee cup.

      
With a roaring laugh, Houston returned the salute. Then he sobered. “Look, I am sorry about Tomasina Carver. I understand what you're going through better than you might imagine. Don't trust her, but do listen to her. And watch her. If any of Perez's people try to contact her or Rojas, you may hold the key to nipping a full-scale war in the bud. Or, the Mexicans may just wait on the Comanche to do their dirty work for them and strike when we're marshaling ourselves to repel the savages.”

      
“All the more reason to break the chain that links guns and whiskey to belligerent Indians,” Slade answered softly.

      
“Markham,” said Houston.

      
“Markham,” echoed Slade.

Chapter Thirteen

      
Tomasina Carver was on a mission of desperation. It was the second-to-last of her considerable repertoire of fallback plans. It shouldn't be too difficult. After all, if she'd just managed to convince Ashley Markham of her continued ardor after what he had done to her, surely she could handle one Texian frontiersman. She would seduce Jim Slade and trick him into marrying her.

      
She had it all figured out. It was near sundown, a warm late summer evening. Jim would be finishing dinner, not expecting a visit from her. She would give him all the information about Ashley's rendezvous with Iron Hand. Then she would break down and weep copiously over her betrayal of Mexico and her own fall from grace with that cad Markham. Slade would take her into his study to comfort her and calm her down, she would unbutton her basque saying she was faint, ask for some brandy, get him to share it with her. No, it should not be too difficult at all, she concluded with a small shiver of anticipation. Always a lover of danger, Tomasina reveled in the challenge.

      
Once he had taken her honor, he would be duty bound to marry her, no matter what his ridiculous attachment to that harlot of a scullery maid. She would deal with Charlee McAllister later. For now, Tomasina realized she needed the name and protection of Jim Slade, and Tomasina Aguilar had always gotten precisely what she needed.

* * * *

      
As he retraced his grueling ride from Bluebonnet at a far more sedate pace, Slade reviewed his parting words with Houston. The white-haired giant had been the first one up, waking Ben Jonson to relieve the man standing night guard duty. Then he had made coffee, terrible coffee, but coffee nonetheless, and Slade had drunk it gratefully.

      
Noticing the haggard appearance of his young protégé, the shrewd old Texian cleared his throat and searched for a way to console Jim over Tomasina's betrayal. “Jim, you're young…you have a lot of life ahead of you…” He paused. “Even if you've been dealt a losing hand twice now with that widow lady...”

      
Jim smiled at his chief’s unease. A man who could filibuster the United States Congress into submission and let loose a volley of bombastic oratory strong enough to cow the French ambassador was actually fumbling for the right thing to say. “For a man who could write love sonnets while lying wounded on a battlefield, you seem at a loss, Sam.”

      
Houston's leonine brow creased. “Believe it or not, my press reports often exceed my elocutionary abilities.”

      
“Somehow I doubt it, but I appreciate your concern.”

      
“Hell, son, you look like a man with a leak in his canteen who's just watched his horse piss in the water hole and then dropped his last bottle of whiskey on a sharp rock.”

      
“No. It's only my side stiffening up after sleeping on hard ground. I'll live, just like you said. Don't worry about me and Tomasina. I guess it was never meant to be between us anyway. My father's deathbed request, cemented by a boyish infatuation, nurtured through six years of jealousy over old Jake Carver.” He shrugged philosophically.

      
Houston arched a shaggy white brow. “Don't sell us old fellows altogether short, you young pup.” He stopped as if gathering his thoughts, then said almost reluctantly, “I was disillusioned in my first love, as well. But when I met Margaret, I could never have envisioned how blissful my second chance at matrimony would be.”

      
“Maybe I've already found my second chance, too. I'm not certain yet, but don't grieve over Tomasina and I won't either.”

      
“That young fool McAllister's pretty little sister?” Houston's eyes sparkled.

      
“You crafty son of a bitch! How did you find out about Charlee?” The man's sources of information and ability to put things together never ceased to amaze Slade.

      
Houston's shaggy white head tipped back in laughter. “Hardly a state secret. Your young friend Lee is quite certain it's a match made in heaven. Is it, Jim-boy?”

      
“I honestly wish I knew.”

* * * *

      
As he neared Bluebonnet, Slade pondered that question and his answer to it over and over. Could he really marry that wild little hellion, who made him burn with lust one moment and drove him to homicidal frenzy the next? He shuddered to think about spending the rest of his life with her. Yet when he considered the alternative of losing her, as he almost had twice that week, it made him feel desolate.

      
Slade pulled up at the corral, looking over toward the ranch house. It was good to be home. Charlee was probably in the kitchen with Weevils, cleaning up the remnants of supper and feeding that crafty old cat. Suddenly, he was eager to see her, to put his arms around her slight body and lift her up in the air, spin her around and kiss her soundly. He would see her green cat eyes light, be warmed by the radiance of her smile, feel her response to his kiss. As he swung down from Polvo and vaulted up the kitchen steps, he realized that he had the answer to Houston's question.

      
“Where's Charlee, Weevils?”

      
At the familiar gravel voice, the old cook turned and his beefy face split in a toothsome grin. “Didn't expect ya back so soon, boss. Charlee's down at th' pond. So blame hot this afternoon, she decided ta take a cool-off.” He no more than got out the words when his young employer spun on his heel, calling over his shoulder, “Sounds good to me, too!”

      
“Yeehaw!” Weevils let loose with a string of whoops as he watched Jim kick Polvo into a brisk canter, heading toward the pond. The boss hadn't looked that animated or happy in a month of Sundays!

      
Hellfire basked in the early evening sunset while Charlee splashed, dived, and floated. The water was soothing to her restless spirit. She didn't know how long Jim would be gone, probably at least a week's travel all the way to Houston City. What would happen when he returned? If only he would realize what Tomasina Carver really was, that she didn't love him, and in fact was using him, not the other way around. But an inner voice nagged her,
Little fool, he
is
using you and that doesn't bother him
.

      
She rolled over and began to swim with fast strokes back toward the edge of the pool, her agitation evident in the vigorous way she knifed through the water. Like a naked sylph, she quickly slapped the mass of her hair back so that it clung to the curve of her spine as she climbed the diving rock with sure, easy steps. Her gleaming, sleek flesh caught the golden hue of the setting sun as she stood on the top of the small promontory, poised to dive, her silhouette outlined against the azure and orange of the evening sky.

      
Slade stood rooted to the ground, watching her in much the same way he had months ago, still amazed at the grace of her tiny body. But now he felt no surprise or guilt, only a fierce, protective urge to enfold her in his arms. As he watched her dive, he began to strip off his dusty trail gear—gun belt, shirt, boots, pants. He considered the bandage around his side, then shrugged and stripped it off. Four days after the stitches had been removed the wound was healing nicely. Silently, he walked around the edge of the water, keeping the thick cover of underbrush between him and Charlee's line of vision as she floated in the center of the pool.