Devil in Texas (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 1) (11 page)

As the tin-stars opened fire, the grocer's sign quickly turned into the wooden equivalent of Swiss cheese. Outgunned and out of cartridges, the sniper fled, ducking behind façades as he headed west. Cass finally had the diversion he needed to drag Poppy through the batwings of the saloon. He emerged a heartbeat later with both guns and a vengeance.

"Baron!"

The senator waved. He appeared to be all right. He was squatting beside the pasty-faced Pendleton, who looked like he might spew his breakfast as he tied a neckerchief around Tito's bloody arm.

Cass muttered an oath when he realized Sid's panting, pot-bellied deputies had become less concerned with apprehending the sniper than a passel of looting adolescents. The Public Square was in chaos. Matrons were shrieking; toddlers were wailing; and sodbusters were raging against "the depraved morality of city folk." If Cass wanted the sniper caught, he'd have to do it himself.

Squinting against the sun, he scanned the eastern skyline until his watering eyes spied a two-legged shadow, sprinting through the undulating heat waves.

Found you, you bastard!

Charging into the middle of the Square, Cass nearly got flattened by a rearing horse and its surrey before he reached his destination: the grocer's porch. Ignoring the red-faced merchant's threat to press charges, Cass vaulted for the rain spout and scrambled onto the roof.

"What the hell are you doing, Cass?" Baron yelled. "You're not deputized!"

Sid yelled something similar, but Cass was burning with vigilante vengeance. The sniper had made him look like a gun-waving bumpkin. Worse, the renegade had nearly plugged Baron and Poppy, who were counting on him for protection. No way was Cass going to let that gunman escape!

The sniper was four stores ahead, bounding toward Live Oak Street like a suicidal jackrabbit. Gritting his teeth, Cass did the same, clawing for purchase at chimneys, ripping shingles from roofs with his spurs. Collie was sprinting across the construction site, firing his Winchester, because Cass's .45 was out of range.

"Hey, kid!" Cass yelled when Collie's cartridge pinged off Boomer's barber pole. "Who taught you how to aim?"

"You did!"

"Then you didn't learn squat! Toss the rifle here!"

Collie obliged, and Cass caught it on the run, snapping the breechblock.

"It's only got one cartridge left!" Collie shouted, his voice fading as he fell behind.

Never warn the enemy, kid.

Cass slid to a halt on the building's edge. He had seconds—fractions of seconds—to steady his stance and take aim before the sniper jumped down to the hay wagon parked conveniently outside the livery. Cass could see a saddled bay, waiting patiently in the shadow of the iron horse sign that wobbled in the wind.

A numbing calm swept over him.

"That's bully, Pa," he remembered his 10-year-old self praising the 12-point buck his father had felled. "Caught him on the run, too! Not even a Ranger could shoot so good! You
could
be a Ranger, Pa. Why don't you wear a badge?"

"Cause I got family, Billy. A Ranger would never risk the people he loves. Too many vengeance-minded outlaws prey on a lawman's kin. 'Sides. It takes more than fancy shooting to be a Ranger."

"It does? Like what?"

"Like respect for life, boy. Like knowing right from wrong. A Ranger keeps the peace. He doesn't take the law into his own hands."

Not long after that, Matthew Cassidy had been caught in the crossfire as feuding neighbors did the very thing that he'd warned his son not to do.

And Pa wasn't the only Cassidy who got murdered by a menace the law was too chicken-livered to punish.

Hardening his jaw at the bitter memories, Cass squinted through the rifle sight. Shooting a man in the back was a death sentence. He'd learned that the hard way. Since the fleeing sniper wasn't likely to turn around and make the shot defensible in court, Cass had to devise another plan. And fast. The bastard was getting ready to jump. Cass didn't have the protection of a badge if he missed.

So it's a good thing I never miss.

With a feral snarl, he pulled the trigger. Sparks flew as the cartridge ripped the iron horse from its mooring. The swinging sign slammed into the sniper with a clang. He yiked, dropping his Winchester. The rifle clattered down the shingles and plunged into a watering trough. A heartbeat later, both the sniper and the sign went crashing through the damaged timbers of the roof.

"Cassidy!"
It was Sid's voice. "So help me God, I'll throw away the key to your cell this time!"

Cass gave the lawman a cheeky salute. "He's all yours, marshal. Wrapped up nice and pretty with a bow."

Lumbering into the livery yard with a deputy, Sid warned Collie and Vandy to stay out of harm's way, a warning which they obeyed for roughly 90 seconds.

In the meantime, Cass shimmied down a porch pillar. When he caught up with Collie inside the stable, he was dumbfounded to see Sid and his deputy wading through straw, poking their rifles into hay bales, and generally looking perplexed.

"He got
away?"
Cass said incredulously. "What the hell happened?"

Collie rolled his eyes. "Your lawman friend moves slower than a three-legged tortoise. My guess is, the sniper was disguised. He threw off his granger clothes and disappeared through the tack room into the crowd."

About two minutes later, Vandy proved Collie right by sniffing out a ratty brown wig and sack coat, stashed under the straw.

But by that time, the sniper was long gone.

Chapter 6

Cass had two things on his mind the rest of that day: identifying the sniper and tracking down Sadie.

In Cass's opinion, the sniper had been a professional. He'd positioned himself so anyone returning his fire would be sunblind. He'd even pre-planned his escape. So why had the bastard been such a lousy shot?

That question plagued Cass for hours. Baron hypothesized that his would-be assassin had hit Tito because the big man was in the way, but Cass wasn't so sure. The sniper had taken numerous potshots at Tito, while Baron, who'd been returning fire, only dodged two bullets.

In any event, Baron was too canny not to milk the incident for every ounce of publicity he could get. He awarded Tito a medal. Poppy all but smothered the big man with her maternal fussing. She dressed his wounds and vowed she would only have a
hero
as her bodyguard.

Thus, while Cass was relegated to Baron Duty, he kept his ears pricked—and not just for sniper news. He figured he owed Sadie a colossal comeuppance.

Cass couldn't forgive the Devil's Daughter for kicking him in the gut, and worse, for laughing at him while he'd flailed like an oaf on the hotel carpet. He imagined how the hellcat must have hidden in the stairwell, watching in delight as Rexford Sterne slapped him with cuffs.

But Cass's good humor was restored around dinnertime, when Collie returned from his Sadie Hunt. Apparently while whittling critters and trading quips with Joaquin, the shoeshine boy from Boomer's Barbershop, Collie had heard some juicy gossip:

A sodbuster with "cat's eyes and goat whiskers" liked to play poker at a boardinghouse near Silk Stocking Row. The granger wasn't much good at cards, which got him lots of invitations, and his losses were something of a joke in that establishment, since he never seemed able to afford a rut. As a result, he often got served "consolation shots" by the proprietess, a spooky Cajun with red and blue snakes crawling on her hands.

Cass had no trouble recognizing the description of his old friend, Wilma LeBeau. Apparently, Wilma was sheltering Sadie. The question was, why would a money shark like Wilma let Sadie freeload in the casino, instead of earning her keep upstairs?

To learn the answer, Cass left Tito to guard the sleeping Westerfields and reported to Wilma's boarding house around 2 a.m. He could hear piano music and husky laughter behind the secret, sliding door of the pantry. That's where Wilma's long-time bouncer, Cotton, had bid him and Collie to wait. At any hour of the day or night, a man could drink, gamble, and rut to his heart's content at Wilma's place.

The exception, of course, was a man who'd been saddled with a sullen 17-year-old and a felonious coon.

"I still don't see why we had to stop at a
bathhouse
first," Collie groused, folding his arms in a huff. "I dunked my head in a stream last week, when Vandy caught us a trout."

Cass rolled his eyes, not bothering to dignify the kid's objection.

Scrubbed down, combed back, and sporting his cleanest duds, Collie frowned. He was glaring up at pantry shelves lined with spice tins and bottles. "What kind of brothel is this, anyway? They have a pond in the kitchen, but no liquor in the cupboard?"

"That
pond
is a basin swarming with mudbugs," Cass retorted, slapping Collie's hand away from a bottle labeled,
Cooking Sherry.
"Vandy's lucky he didn't get his tail snipped when he tried to fish one out."

The coon whined from the knapsack slung over Collie's shoulders. After the mudbug incident, Cotton had ordered the boy to stuff his pet in this leather prison.

Collie snorted. "Vandy's not afraid of a few foreign crawly fish."

"The term's
crawfish,
pal. And a crawfish is the least of your worries if you steal that Voodoo woman's liquor. Wilma will roast your balls. Then she'll sic her ghosts on you!"

"Bring 'em on," Collie retorted loftily. "I got more dead kin than most, and my spooks would make
you
look like an altar boy, Snake Bait."

At long last, the secret panel whispered open and Cotton waved them into a lavish, red-velvet parlor. According to the gossip at Boomer's Barbershop, Wilma's girls were the finest in Lampasas—which had come as a surprise to Cass. The last time he'd visited Wilma, her Dodge City brothel had been a watering hole for common cowboys and buffalo hunters.

But now, as Cass surveyed the room, he had to admit that Wilma had moved up in the world. Her bevy of high-class bawds lounged in skimpy silks in various come-hither poses on elegant sofas and chaise lounges. Some girls smoked cigarettes from long, black holders. Others sipped crystal glasses with sparkling champagne. Not a one of them would have suffered a man who chewed tobacco, stank of sweat, or scratched his balls. In fact, those yahoos never made it past Cotton.

The whisper of taffeta, followed by a murmur from the men, heralded Wilma's appearance on the second-story landing. Smoldering like a coal in her sheath of shimmering scarlet, she stood above the cigar smoke, surveying the crowd with cagey eyes that were nearly as dark as the blue-black corkscrews piled so elegantly on top of her head. No man had ever claimed Wilma for his own; Cass suspected even her most ardent admirers were slightly afraid of her reputation as a Mambo. Just mention "mojo" or "gris-gris" to any man who claimed to be head-over-heels in love with her, and that gentleman would toss back a shot and change the subject.

At last, Wilma's eyes rested on Cass. She flashed a sultry smile that would have made the limpest pecker stand up and salute. Graceful to the point of hypnotic, she descended the staircase, sauntering around a curve. The slit of her gown rose practically to the apex of her thighs. Grangers, ranchers, politicians, and merchants gawked with lust-glazed eyes, hoping to glimpse private parts that could cost a cowboy a year's worth of wages—and that was on a night when Wilma was feeling philanthropic.

Cass grinned, viscerally aware that her enticing sashay was raising the temperature of every man in the parlor. He crossed to the foot of the stairs.

"Cass," she drawled in her molasses-thick accent. She halted one step above him, playacting the Queen of the Sex Vixens to the hilt. "It has been too long,
cher."
She extended a hand.

Cass gallantly raised it to his lips.

"Ah, you have brought new friends for me to love. Who is this handsome devil?"

Collie reddened to the roots of his lanky blond hair.

"The
handsome
one's the furry bandit with the mask," Cass said drolly.

Amusement warmed Wilma's eyes. She lavished her loins-stirring smile on Collie. "I hold a special place in my heart for beasts," she murmured—which might have been a double entendre. With Wilma, it was hard to tell. Everything that came out of the woman's mouth sounded like sex. Her husky, Louisiana alto could say something as innocuous as,
"I like buttered toast,"
and the wickedest images would plague a man's mind.