Mustang Annie (9 page)

Brett had chosen this particular town to rendezvous because there was no law to speak of, yet the few stares in Annie's direction reminded him that the law wasn't her only threat. Best just to get her settled out of sight before she attracted too much notice.

Recognizing a pack of Triple Ace mounts stationed at the hitching rail in front of the Silver Spur Saloon and Casino, Brett told Annie, “I need to meet up with the rest of my men and see if they've had any luck spotting the horses. There's a hotel across the street. Get a room as my missus.”

“The hell I will.”

Brett turned on her so fast he nearly threw his neck out of joint. “The hell you
won't
! For once, don't give me any guff. It's for your own safety.”

She leveled a glare on him that would have flattened the Rocky Mountains, but Brett couldn't decide which she objected to more: being told what to do, or using the protection of his name. It nettled him that she'd not even accept that much from him.

Well, too damn bad. He had enough on his mind without worrying about the kind of attention she'd bring to herself if word got out that she was in town, and he refused to let her make him feel guilty for trying to keep her safe.

He dismounted, flipped the reins around the hitching rail and stepped up onto the boardwalk, only to discover he'd acquired himself a shadow.

Brett grabbed Dogie back by the scruff of his collar. “Where do you think you're going?”

He puffed out his scrawny chest. “A man's got a powerful thirst.”

“So slake it in the horse trough. You're staying with Annie.”

“Come on, Dogie,” came Annie's tight response. “We'll find something to keep us busy.”

Brett waited until they'd crossed the street and disappeared through the doorway of the two-story excuse for a hotel before he pushed his way into the Silver Spur. The familiar sounds of a lazy weekday afternoon greeted him as he walked through the door: the clink of a glass against glass, the intermittent plunk of piano keys from an undeveloped tune, the monotone snoring from a sot in the corner with more time on his hands than ambition in his heart.

“Ace, over here!”

He spotted Tex and his crew waving him over to a table in the back corner. A week's worth of trail dust and whiskers made them almost unrecognizable, and made Brett acutely aware of his own unsavory state. First a report, then a bath. His priorities in line, Brett meandered around a table piled with chips, pocket watches, and folds of paper—some triple digit bank notes; others, deeds to land from those who believed they would triple their holdings by a turn of a card. The sight was as familiar to Brett as his own name; he'd lived it from the time he'd turned fourteen and left his father's house with nothing more than the clothes on his back, a deck of cards in his pocket, and a vow in his heart to prove the old bastard wrong.

“When did you ride in?” he asked Tex when he reached the table.

“Hell, the dust ain't settled yet.”

One of the ropers vacated a chair. Brett dragged his hat off his head, lowered himself into the chair, and crossed his forearms on the table top. “We haven't seen so much as a hoof-print of those horses. I hope you've had better luck.”

“They might as well have been wearing' a sign on their asses that read ‘follow me.' We tracked 'em all the way from Clarenden into the north end of the canyon.”

Brett would have been relieved if he didn't sense more was to follow. “And?”

“You ain't gonna like it, Ace. We gave chase. Woulda caught up to him, too, if that devil hadn't started zig-zagging through a prairie dog town north of Palo Duro Creek.”

Brett knew what was coming the instant Tex paused to take a healthy swallow of whiskey.

“Two mares went down in holes,” he said. “We had no choice but to shoot 'em.”

He sank against the back of the chair and rubbed his brow. Sonofabitch. Not only had that devil stolen his fillies, but now he'd caused the destruction of two fine mares.

“We figured you'd be hitting town soon and would want to know, so we came here to wet our whistle before headin' out again.”

“You figured right.” He could use a good sousing about now, himself.

As if in answer to a prayer, a bottle of bourbon appeared on the table in front of him. He glanced up and found himself the object of undisguised appreciation.

“Howdy, stranger.” Two fresh glasses joined the bottle. “Buy a girl a drink?”

Sloe-Eyed Chloe, as they called her, was as sultry a doxy as they came, with cat-like eyes, a milky complexion, and a bosom that should have been outlawed.

Tex cleared his throat. “Uh, boys, looks like the boss's got better things to do than swig whiskey with us saddle tramps.” He stood. “We'll meet up with ya in the mornin', Ace.”

After the men moved their drinks and cards to other tables, Chloe slid into Brett's lap and twined her arms around his neck. “It's about time you ambled into town.” She leaned forward, the motion pushing the rounded curve of one breast perilously close to escaping its scanty confines. “I put fresh sheets on the bed.”

Women had a delightful way of distracting a man from his woes, and Chloe, he'd discovered, was one of the most talented in the business. She'd helped him pass many a troubled night, and after Annie's cold shoulder, her interest should have been a balm to his bruised ego.

Instead, it only made him feel more inadequate. How was it that Annie could take the one arena in which he felt totally confident, the one manner that made him feel worthy of being a man, and shoot it down like a tin can on a fence? He could gain the favors of other women just by walking into a room, yet not Annie. Was he so repulsive to her?

“What do you know of a woman named Annie Harper?” he found himself asking Chloe.

“Who?”

The blank answer reminded Brett that few knew her by any other name than the notorious one she'd earned for herself. “Mustang Annie.”

“Oh, her.” Chloe tucked her chin and looked up at him from beneath lashes thickened with kohl paste. “About as much as anyone, I suppose. She used to live on a spread south of here with her grandfather. They'd come into town now again to pick up supplies but otherwise pretty much kept to themselves. One day, they stopped coming. Some say Clovis caught the gold fever, others think vigilantes got him.”

“Why would vigilantes want him?”

“Rustling. One of the best—or worst, depending on the way you look at it.”

“And the girl?”

With a lift of her eyebrows, Chloe drew back. “Aren't you the curious cat? You aren't thinking on trading me in, are you, darlin'?”

The note of jealousy in her tone caused Brett to draw her closer to him. “Now, why would I want sour milk when I've got sweet cream right here in my hands?” A satisfied purr against his neck told Brett that his sweet talk had soothed the scrape to her vanity. “It's business, sweetheart. Just business.”

Chloe nibbled on his earlobe. “What kind of business could a lusty fella like you have with a scrawny thing like her?”

Had it been a man asking, Brett would've deflected the question with nothing more than a steely-eyed warning. But he knew Chloe only wanted an assurance of her own prowess. “Why, horses, darlin'.” He smiled. “Mustang Annie has a reputation for capturing wild horses. I've got one that needs catching.”

“Is that all you men ever think about? Horses?” Chloe straddled Brett and pushed herself against him. “Maybe if I grow myself a mane and a tail you'd think about
me
a little.” She helped herself to a drink from Brett's glass, and even that seemed a design in seduction. Her tongue traced the rim of the glass as she gazed up at him through her lashes.

Weeks of celibacy, the press of her womanhood against him, and the erotic play of her mouth on his glass had Brett hardening immediately.

Feeling inexplicably shamed over his body's reaction to Chloe, he gripped her hips to still her. “The girl. What happened to her?”

Chloe shrugged carelessly. “Last I heard, she married up with some half-breed drifter. No-body's seen hide nor hair of her since.”

Brett froze, and his arousal shrank as quickly as it had risen. His heart plunged to the pit of his stomach. Married? His Annie? To an Indian?

Where was he now? Dead? Alive? In prison? Again, the questions. But this time, by God, he'd get some answers—one way or another.

Chapter 10

S
itting on the balcony in a chair tilted back on its rear legs, her boots propped on the railing, Annie watched the saloon across the street. A humid breeze carried to her the faint plunking of a piano and the nicker of horses at the hitching rails. Dogie sat cross-legged in another chair beside her, his head bent over the strips of leather she'd produced from her own saddlebags. The idea of teaching Dogie how to make halters had been stirring at the back of her mind ever since that first showdown with Corrigan, and with nothing to do but wait, now seemed as good a time as any.

“You don't talk much, do ya, Annie?”

She continued staring at the street below, remaining tense and alert. Towns made her edgy, especially this one. It had been a long time since she'd been in Sage Flat, but people had long memories. “You talk enough for the both of us.”

“I reckon I do.” He turned and looked at her over his shoulder. Several angry welts still remained on his angular face as souvenirs from his battle with the hornets. “You don't have to stay with me,” he said. “I can take care of myself.”

She couldn't resist ruffling his cap of wheatgold hair. He might resemble Corrigan a bit but he reminded her so much of herself sometimes it was frightening. “I thought
you
were supposed to be protecting
me
.”

“You don't think they'll come after ya here, do ya?”

Annie considered playing dimwit, yet it seemed pointless to deny what the kid had known from the moment he'd seen her back at the ranch. He might be young, but he wasn't stupid.

“They might.” No sense in sugar coating the truth either. A horse thief was a horse thief. Even if they couldn't prove her crimes in Texas, she'd clinched the bounty on her head the day she'd fled Nevada. U.S. Marshals were probably on her trail as they spoke, and it wouldn't take long before they started making comparisons between Annie Harper and Mustang Annie. She could only hope others didn't discover the truth as easily as Dogie.

“Keep practicing on that hackamore,” she told him. “Before you know it, folks will be buying them from you faster than you can make them.”

“Your granddaddy teach you to make halters like this?”

A memory of Sekoda sitting behind her, his long, deft fingers helping her fashion soft leather strips into head gear for the wild ponies, evoked a bittersweet smile. He'd been so patient with her clumsiness, so persistent in her tutoring. She'd decided to teach Dogie not because she had a soft heart, like Corrigan had accused, but because she saw the same promise in him that Sekoda had once seen in her—and it seemed a shame to let that go to waste. “No, someone else very dear to me taught me how.”

She pushed the image to the back of her mind and returned her attention to the saloon, only to have her heart freeze in her chest at the sight of the man stepping onto the boardwalk.

With his back turned to her she couldn't see his face, but something about the way he stood, feet splayed, his hands resting on the butts of a pair of holstered pistols, sent a chill up her spine.

A saloon girl from the drinking establishment next door paused to chat. Whatever she said inflamed the man; he grabbed her by the arms, hauled her against his chest, and covered her mouth with his. Annie's breath stuck in her throat. Horror crept into the fringes of her mind. A knot of revulsion uncoiled in her belly. Annie remained fixated on the scene, even as the nightmare once again began to unfold.

 

He swaggered with cocky confidence into her cabin. She stared up at him, her arms tightening around Sekoda's shoulders. The brim of his hat shadowed his face but she would know him anywhere, despite the twelve months that had passed since she'd last seen him.

“I warned you what would happen if you left me, Annie.”

She couldn't speak over the tight knot of fear in her windpipe.

Another man appeared behind him, and Annie recognized him as the one who had struck Sekoda with his rifle. “Get out of my house,” she ordered in a highpitched voice hardly identifiable as her own.

He laughed. Then with the swiftness of a serpent, he seized her by the arm and wrenched her away from her husband. Annie stifled a scream.

“What's the matter, Annie?” She shied away from the hot, fetid breath scorching her cheek. He pinched her jaw between his thumb and forefinger and forced her to look at him. Cold, angry eyes drilled into her. “We're not good enough for you anymore?”

With a shove to her jaw he sent her flying across the room. She landed on the table beside the bed she shared with Sekoda; a kerosene lamp crashed to the floor. Annie crawled backward across the broken glass, oblivious to the shards boring into her elbows. He advanced toward her like a mountain lion intent on its prey. Fingers like talons clutched the front of her dress and rent it from neck to navel. Annie's breath came in panicked gasps. She reached behind her, searching blindly for a weapon. Her fingers grazed the base of the lantern. Just as she brought her arm up and swung, he caught her wrist. Annie cried out, feeling as if he were snapping her wrist in half.

“You filthy whore,” he sneered. “Wake that breed up,” he ordered the second man. “I want him to see what happens to those who betray me.”

 

The very real sound of laughter snapped Annie to the present activity. The woman beat against the man's shoulder with a futile fist. His comrades, still on horseback, cheered and whistled and howled their approval.

Dogie laughed along with them. “Looks like that doxy's gettin' a taste of a real man.”

Without thinking, Annie cracked him across the face, surprising herself as much as Dogie.

He looked up at her through wide green eyes. A red imprint of her hand stood out against his pale cheek. “What did you do that for?”

“I don't ever want to hear you talk like that again. I don't care what a woman chooses to do with her life; that doesn't give any man the right to treat her rough.”

“But they like it when a man takes charge.”

“Who the hell told you that?”

“No one. I've been around—”

“Have you ever seen Corrigan mistreat a woman?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen him have trouble getting a woman?”

“No.”

“Then if you want to know what women like, ask him.”

She could hardly believe she was defending the man, much less turning this impressionable kid to him for “training.”

Dogie visibly wilted. “He won't tell me nothin'—he barely knows I'm alive unless I'm doing something wrong.”

Wasn't that the truth? The whole camp noticed Dogie then, too.

They fell quiet for a long while. Annie's nerves continued to sit on edge and she opened her pouch of makings, needing the comfort of a cigarette. Even after the man on the boardwalk disappeared into the saloon, she couldn't make herself relax.

“Think Ace is giving Chloe what women like?” Dogie asked quietly, distracting her.

“Chloe?”

“His favorite. He always visits her when he goes to the Silver Spur.”

Annie felt as if she'd been turned inside-out. Was that why he'd given in so easily when she'd demanded he treat her like his men? Because he'd known he'd be paying a call on his harlot?

What the hell did it matter, anyway? She didn't want him. She didn't want any man. Yet the thought of Corrigan looking at another woman the way he looked at her, of his strong hands stroking her body, his mouth caressing her flesh. . . .

“Which room is hers?”

“The one on the corner, I think. Why?”

“You ever made a stink bomb before?”

 

Annie slipped back into her room a half an hour later. Still grinning over her and Dogie's antics, she stripped out of her shirt. She'd give her eye teeth to have seen the look on Corrigan's face when the sulfuric bottle flew through the open window. No doubt he and his painted piece of fluff had just taken up again in another room, but it gave Annie some satisfaction to spoil at least part of his enjoyment.

A knock on the door startled her from her thoughts. Reflexively she clutched her shirt to her breast, then reached for the pistol in her boot just as the door opened.

The broad-shouldered frame that filled the entrance almost made her wilt in relief. Annie closed her eyes and released her grip on the revolver.

She didn't bother asking how he'd gotten in. Though it had galled her to the core, she'd taken the room as his missus, figuring it would make it more difficult to trace her. Unfortunately, it also meant no one would question his request for a key.

“I don't recall inviting you in here, Corrigan.”

“I don't recall asking for an invitation.”

“What's the matter, didn't your little doxy give you what you came for?” she taunted.

His lips curved into a smile that didn't come close to reaching his eyes. “Oh, she gave me more than I expected.”

He strolled to the window overlooking the street below. Moonlight pouring in through the glass silhouetted his head and torso. The sight reminded Annie of the night she'd seen him on the prairie, practicing with the lasso. Bare backed, muscles rippling.

Tension uncoiled in her stomach and a forgotten and wholly unwelcome desire began to tingle through her breasts.

“Where's your man, Annie?”

The question hit her like a maverick's kick, rip ping the ground out from beneath her, knocking the breath out of her. “What?”

“Your man.” He pinned her with a ruthless stare. “I was told you'd married and I want to know where he is.”

Annie's mind reeled. How had he found out? What did he know? Obviously, not enough, or he wouldn't have barged into her room in the middle of the night to interrogate her.

Who could have told him? Other than an occasional trip to trade horses, she and Sekoda had lived in almost total isolation, partly for her protection and by choice. They'd never missed the company of other people; they'd had each other.

Even now, what they'd shared remained her most treasured memories . . . and her greatest sorrow.

She pushed shaking fingers through her hair and lifted her chin. “It's none of your damned business.”

“I'm making it my business.”

“You're still sore because I won't sleep with you.”

He laughed. “Don't flatter yourself. Contrary to what you might think, I do have other things on my mind besides getting between your legs—I have my men to worry about. I'm responsible for them, and the last worry I need is having some enraged husband storming into my camp one night after you, and putting them in danger.”

Annie might have laughed at the ludicrousness of the statement if it weren't so sad. “That's one worry you'll never have. And if you ever pry into my personal affairs again, you'll be lookin' for another mustanger. Now, get out.”

The room all but hummed as she matched him glare for glare.

Just when she thought she'd have to shove him out herself, he gave her a mocking bow and strode out of the room.

After the door slammed behind him, Annie sank to the bed, trembling with incredulity and cold rage. Damn Corrigan. He had no right digging onto her past with Sekoda. And why would he want to? What threat could a dead man possibly pose? Sekoda was no danger to him.

She was.

 

Outside in the hallway, Brett pressed his back against Annie's door, struggling with the gamut of emotions roiling inside him. Frustration. Rage. Jealousy.

The last was foreign to Brett. He'd never before cared whose boots had been under the beds of women he'd taken a fancy to, but the idea of someone else getting from Annie what he'd spent the last week coveting filled him with a sense of possession. Invasion. Much like the stallion stealing his fillies.

He tried telling himself that it was none of his business, that what Annie did with her life outside this job was her own affair, yet a sense of betrayal gripped him like barbed wire, and he knew he'd not rest until he discovered what happened to the man she'd pledged herself to. If Annie wouldn't give him the answers, he'd have to get them elsewhere.

And he knew just who to start with.

It didn't take long to track Henry down, for wherever the horses went, Henry could be found.

Brett strode into the livery, his rapid pace stirring up dust and kicking up hay stems as he sought out noises in the last stall.

Henry looked up at him over Fortune's back; the brush halted in his hand. “Ace—somethin' wrong?”

“I want to know what happened to Annie‘s husband,” Brett stated. “Tell me everything you know about him—his name, where he's from, where he is now.”

Taken off guard, Henry's mouth opened, then closed. Then he shook his head. “I'm afraid I can't he'p ya there.” He went back to sliding the brush down the stallion's neck. “Annie was just a young'un last time I saw her. I never knew she'd gotten hitched, much less met the feller she hitched up with.”

“Then find out.”

“With all due respect, those are questions you should be askin' Annie.”

“I did. She'd just as soon put a bullet between my eyes as tell me anything about herself. She'll tell you, though. She trusts you.”

“At one time, maybe, but Annie's different now. Keeps to herself more.”

The careful choosing of words had Brett's eyes narrowing. “Are you refusing an order?”

Henry stared at Fortune's mane for a moment before lifting troubled eyes to Brett. “I reckon I am. I've always done everything you ever asked of me, Ace, but this time you're askin' somethin' of me that I just cain't give.”

“Can't? Or won't?”

Standing taller and straighter than Brett had ever seen him stand before, Henry answered. “Both.”