Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (43 page)

      
It was nearly dinnertime when Slade came downstairs, still mulling over how to discreetly handle Sina's perfidy once she was recovered enough. At the same time, he must convince Charlee to marry him. It would be a neat juggling act at best.

      
Lee waited for him at the foot of the stairs, hat in hand, looking dusty and agitated; obviously he had just ridden to town in great haste. “The president's messenger just arrived from Washington-on-the Brazos with this.” He handed Slade a sealed envelope. “All kinds of high-power politics going on, and he needs your help...that is, if you think the widow can spare you,” he added sullenly.

      
Jim sighed, ignoring the youth's continuing hostility, which had resurfaced when he had stayed in town with Sina. Running a hand through his still damp hair, he swore. “For your information, Sina's past the crisis and I was on my way over to the boardinghouse to see Charlee. Now I guess that'll have to wait.”

      
Slade went into the study with Lee on his heels. Motioning the youth to sit down, Jim tore the missive open and began to read:

Jim-boy:

Some news you will doubtless find unpalatable but which I trust will come as no surprise. I find Tomasina Carver is more ambitious than ever we thought. She has made contact with William Kennedy himself. It is his blood money your local people confiscated from her. I expect you will fill me in as to the particulars of that episode in due course. (I also trust Markham is no longer a problem.)

Kennedy, however, remains one. He has rather conveniently, for our purposes, gotten himself arrested by Captain Kessler' s rangers while he was in the company of some Comancheros. I have sent official word he is to be let go, although the rest of them will doubtless hang. It is because of his influence in British politics and his high visibility in American circles that I am doing this, despite the sour taste it leaves in every Texian mouth.

Be that as it may, I am anonymously apprising some American sources of this special dispensation given the British Foreign Office. Kennedy will arrive on your doorstep shortly to collect his evidence—Mrs. Carver's ill-gotten gold. Give it to him, however you must arrange it.

As ever,

Houston

Postscript: If you have no match at hand, please feed this indigestible missive to Polvo!

      
Slade scowled darkly, then shrugged. He knew how badly Houston hated letting a dangerous man like Kennedy go, but he understood the chess game well enough. A discreet favor to the British government, carefully leaked to the Americans, brought the president's master plan one step nearer completion. Sources high in the Tyler administration were growing increasingly alarmed at the Anglo-Texian friendship that Houston was fostering. The more old Sam courted the British Lion, the more quickly the American Eagle would stretch out its talons and annex Texas.

      
He sat down and started to compose the report about Markham's demise and the expedition against Iron Hand, which he had been postponing writing since his return to San Antonio. As for Kennedy and the gold, he began to form a plan in his mind that might solve several problems at once.

      
Slade looked up at the scowling youth who had been fidgeting silently while he had read Houston's letter. “Lee, how'd you feel about delivering a message to the president for me?”

      
“Want to get me out of your hair for a while?” The young man grinned in spite of himself.

      
“Well, you were going to Galveston to pick up that breeding stock anyhow. Washington-on-the-Brazos is a detour, I know, but not too long a one.”

      
Shrugging, Lee replied, “I guess you and Charlee have to sort this out for yourselves.”

Chapter Eighteen

      
After the long, hot ride to Washington-on-the-Brazos and a lengthy interview with Sam Houston, Lee was tired and annoyed, still stewing over Jim's estrangement from Charlee and the mysterious goings-on with Tomasina Carver. What would his boss do with the scheming woman? And how did Jim's letter to the president figure into it all? Houston had questioned Lee about Markham's death, the raid on the Comanchero camp, and the state of Tomasina’s health after her near brush with death.

      
When the president had quickly perused Slade's letter, he had burst into gales of hearty laughter but had not offered to explain the source of his mirth to Lee, only telling the youth that several thorny problems were about to be neatly solved. Lee had left the office feeling very frustrated indeed. It was as if they thought him still a child, too young to be trusted with state secrets. But not too young too fight Indians and Comancheros, he thought grimly.

      
However, he had another mission of some importance entrusted to him, Lee consoled himself—the new breeding stock—two prize mares Jim had purchased from a plantation in Alabama. The boat would dock in Galveston Harbor any day now, and he was in charge of bringing them back to Bluebonnet. Since Slade was so busy tending to his wounded fiancée, Lee was handling ranch business in his boss' stead.

      
It took him two days to ride from the present capital to Houston City. “Sure wish they'd settle on a place,” he groused to himself. Since the Republic's founding, the government had shuttled between Washington-on-the-Brazos, Houston, and Austin, not to mention Columbia, Harrisburg, and several other obscure places. Lee arrived in the booming city named after the president late the second afternoon.

      
Early the next morning, after a horrible breakfast in a modest Houston hotel, he set out to purchase a ticket on one of the steamboats that shuttled back and forth the fifty-mile distance between Houston City and Galveston Island. Nostalgically recalling Charlee's fluffy biscuits and comparing them with the dreadful dough balls he'd just ingested, Lee hoped for better fare in the port city, or failing that, a brief stay. The trip between Mobile and Galveston was usually accomplished in a few days, weather permitting. Since it was a brisk late fall day without severe storms, Lee was optimistic. The horses should be ready and waiting for him.

      
“Maybe I'll even try one of those oyster houses Asa and Jim are always telling me about,” he said to himself as he strolled down the landing on the San Jacinto River. Grinning, he also recalled that oysters were supposed to be an aphrodisiac. If time permitted, he decided he would investigate the houses of pleasure on the Galveston waterfront as well.

      
Having had his initiation into sex over a year ago, Lee felt very much the man of the world, alone on a business trip in an exotic coastal city, hundreds of miles away from the rolling hills of the Texas interior. The flat gulf plain was certainly different from the San Antonio area. He had thought Houston City flat, but as the boat headed into the open waters of Galveston Bay, he was astounded at the dead-level, grassy marshlands.

      
When the boat passed Point Bolivar and pulled up to a long wooden wharf, Lee stared in amazement at the bobbing latticework of hundreds of oceangoing vessels, sloops and schooners, all floating at anchor. The sky was the usual blinding Texas blue, and the wind was brisk, but laden with the unfamiliar tang of salt. He saw gulls circling overhead and heard the screams of cranes in the distance.

      
“Never seen th' ocean before, young feller?” a wizened old seaman said, spitting a wad of tobacco juice into the clear turquoise depths of the bay.

      
“It smells different, all right. I've never seen land so flat and treeless before,” Lee confessed, suddenly feeling younger and less sophisticated.

      
The old-timer laughed. “Figger we got us three trees worth countin' on th' whole dangblasted island. Got us a new church, six hotels 'n all sorts o' warehouses and businesses. Place is growin' fast. Be th' biggest port on th' gulf someday...if one o' them hurricanes don't wipe it out!”

      
“I need to find a shipping line, name of Morgan-Kollar. Know where it might be?” He might as well check on the horses first, then decide how much time he could allot to seeing the sights.

      
The old seaman gave him directions and Lee set out, feeling oddly secure to have his feet planted on dry land once more after hours on the vibrating deck of the boat. Taking in the international flavor of the seaport, he quickly wended his way down the long pier. Ships of all nations were tied up across the harbor, and he could hear German and French mixed in with the lazy drawls of Alabamans and clipped tones of British merchants. Other more exotic eastern European accents sounded guttural and harsh to his ears.

      
Just then the strident tones of a clear soprano carried across the waterfront. The voice was that of a child, or a very young lady, judging by her educated vocabulary, speaking English with the faintest trace of a French accent.

      
“And I tell you, that is the price we agreed upon!” The speaker was indeed a child, although her slightly curved figure hinted at the woman she would become. She was tiny, with raven locks that bounced in girlish curls as she stamped her foot in pique.

      
She was arguing with a large beefy American dressed in seaman's clothes, apparently an officer of the schooner from which they'd both just debarked. His florid face was mottled in rage as he towered over the feisty girl. “You see here, you told me your pa was meeting you and he'd pay. I'm not letting you go until he pays me the difference!”

      
“My father's family is one of the finest in New Orleans. I assure you he will make good for such a paltry amount. I need the cash I have now for lodging until he arrives...any day. You'll get your money, Monsieur Phillips.”

      
Her voice carried the cultured tones of wealth with its accompanying arrogance, no doubt there, Lee thought wryly. As he observed her expensive gray silk traveling suit and matching bonnet, he wondered why a girl of such tender years was traveling alone.

      
The ship's officer had apparently become impatient with the debate. He reached out and grabbed the girl. “I’m beginning to be suspicious about your family, missy. No pa here to meet you 'n no one traveling with you from New Orleans. If you want to pay for a hotel room, I got me an idea about how you can do it...after you give me the rest of that cash.”

      
The girl was small and quick as she twisted from his grasp with a furious hiss. “You Yankee pig! My father owns one of the biggest ranches in Texas, Renacimiento! Rafael Flamenco will kill you for even saying such a thing!”

      
Lee debated whether to interfere on behalf of the girl. Lord knew, her battle with the burly sailor was most uneven. But when he heard the names Renacimiento and Rafael Flamenco, he was rooted to the wharf in shock. Rafael Flamenco was Deborah's husband, the lethal-looking Texian Rafe Fleming, who had appeared at the boardinghouse during the Mexican occupation of San Antonio. Charlee had told him all she knew about the bizarre situation just before Fleming had taken his wife and son back to his ranch. Now it seemed the mysterious gunman had a runaway daughter as well as a runaway wife!

      
“Let the girl go,” Lee said quietly to the seaman as he walked up behind the struggling pair.

      
Phillips whirled, loosening his hold on the shrieking, flailing girl. “Who the hell are you—another kid of this here Flamenco fellow's?” With a mixture of amusement and contempt, he looked Lee's youthfully slim form up and down.

      
“Just a friend of the family, so to speak,” Lee replied levelly. “What seems to be the problem? Maybe I can pay you what she owes in her father's place.”

      
The sailor noted Lee's worn boots, cotton shirt, and cord pants, the clothes of a cowhand. In addition, he had the Hispanic features of a despised Mexican. “Huh, you're one of them greasers without a peso or I miss my guess. Get lost, sonny, or I'll loosen your teeth.” Phillips turned back to the girl, whose small, heart-shaped faced looked pale in breathless fright as she clutched her reticule tightly.

      
“In Texas, men respect women and girls. Keep your hands off her.” Lee's voice was soft but cutting now as his anger ignited. “And, any man who calls me a greaser had better be prepared to back up his insult.”

      
Something in Lee's tone of voice set off a warning bell for the American. He turned again to face the slim younger man. “All right. I can back it up, greaser.” He raised a big fist for a roundhouse swing.

      
As Lee ducked, he jabbed, thankful Jim Slade had given him lessons over the years. Still, he was sure that his wiry quickness would not match the big brute's strength for long. Another quick jab to the enraged seaman's midsection and then he danced back toward the edge of the pier.

      
At the very instant the burly American lunged past him, Lee felt an agonizing sting in his right arm. The girl was beside him with a pair of tiny scissors in her hand. She had stabbed at her antagonist and caught her rescuer instead!

      
Before Lee could do more than let out an oath of pain, the sailor was swinging again. Lee caught sight of the girl from the corner of his eye, scissors once more raised. This time she found the right target, but not before the distraction of her sudden movement caused Lee's reflexes to slow. The brute caught him squarely in the midsection, knocking the wind from his lungs in a hissing whoosh. Luckily, she distracted Phillips just long enough for Lee to suck some air into his aching chest. The seaman gave her a brutal swat, sending her flying back onto the rough boards of the wharf, then lumbered after Lee once more.