The Wedding Chase (53 page)

The cowboy’s eyes widened questioningly. “You think that’s what it is? I figured it for a bee sting.”

She shook her head and scratched under the piebald’s chin. The horse blew noisily through his lips but then visibly calmed under her touch. “I know horses.” She glanced toward the house. “I really need to talk with Mr. Steele.”

He shrugged. “Guess he can’t do no more than run you off. Ma’am,” he added respectfully. She let go of the bridle. He tapped the horse’s rump with the end of the reins and continued on down the rutted lane.

Tamsin hadn’t gone another hundred feet before she heard the screaming whinny and the thud of iron-shod hooves against a barn wall. Dancer! She would recognize his angry bellow anywhere. And if her stallion was there, Fancy must be with him.

Tamsin broke into a run, but as she neared the stables, she saw several men repairing a railing on the corral. One turned to stare at her, and she slowed to a dignified walk.

“Hey!” the cowboy shouted.

She ignored him and turned toward the house. A black gelding, hitched to a piano-box buggy with yellow wheels, stood near the front porch. The animal’s sides were streaked with sweat, and foam dripped from his mouth.

Tamsin circled the horse and carriage, stepped over a sleeping cat, and climbed the steps to the front porch. The door stood open. From inside came the sound of a man’s swearing.

“It’s not what you think, Sam,” a woman pleaded. “Henry—”

“Henry’s my brother and you’re my wife! You’ve been whoring with him behind my back!”

Tamsin heard a second man’s voice, an older man. “I warn you, Sam. It isn’t like that. Don’t do anything you’ll regret!”

A woman’s scream was followed by the crack of a gunshot. Glass shattered and the woman began to sob. “No! No! No!”

Tamsin stood motionless, not sure if she should go inside or turn and run. Then the three burst through the door onto the porch.

The woman, a petite blonde in her mid-thirties, bore the imprint of a man’s hand across her cheek. Her eyes were swollen with tears, and her elaborately coiffured hair was disheveled. She clung to the arm of a muscular man with shoulder-length brown hair and a drooping mustache.

“Sam, please,” she begged. “It’s not true.”

Cursing, he backhanded his wife and drove a clenched fist into the belly of the man Tamsin supposed must be Henry.

The blow rocked the middle-aged gentleman in white shirt and waistcoat, and he doubled up, clutching his stomach. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“Get the hell off my place, Henry! If I ever lay eyes on you again, I’ll blow you to hell!”

Henry staggered back and steadied himself against a porch post. “Come with me, Sarah,” he urged. “It’s over. You don’t need to stay with him anymore.”

“I warn you, I’ll kill you.” Sam’s face darkened with rage. “I’ll kill the both of—”

“Not if I kill you first!” Henry flung back.

Then, for the first time, Sam caught sight of Tamsin. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What the hell are you doing on my spread?”

She blanched. “I’m Tamsin MacGreggor,” she managed. “And I’ve come for my horses. A mare and a stallion, thoroughbreds, stolen last night from the livery in Sweetwater.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Sam grated.

“Am I?” she dared. “Let’s take a look in your bam.”

Henry wiped the blood from his chin and stared at Tamsin. She caught a whiff of hair lotion from his too black, obviously dyed hair.

“I’ve got two thoroughbreds in my stable,” Sam admitted. “Bought and paid for from a dealer yesterday. I don’t know who the hell you are, woman, or what your game is. But if you’re calling me a horse thief, you belong in a madhouse.”

“No! They’re mine,” Tamsin insisted. “I bred them both, back in Tennessee. I—”

“Get the hell off the Lazy S,” Sam ordered. “Broom! Willy!”

The two cowboys, who’d been mending the fence, came on the run. A third man in a farrier’s apron followed, still carrying his hammer. “Yeah, boss?” the first man said.

“See these two off my land,” Sam ordered. “If they come back, you’re fired.”

“The judge, too?” The tall cowboy who had spoken first looked uncertain.

Sam nodded. “You heard me, Broom.” Sam seized his wife by the shoulders and pushed her roughly back inside the house.

“Keep your hands off her,” Henry said.

“She’s mine, brother. I’ll do with her as I please.”

Tamsin turned toward Henry. “If you’re a judge, you’ve got to help me.”

He scowled at her. “I’d advise you to get back where you came from. Accusing a man like Sam of stealing can get you in more trouble than you can imagine.”

The man Sam had called Broom held up his hands. “I’m havin’ no part of this, boss. You want Judge Henry throwed out of here, you do it yerself.”

“Damn you, Broom,” Sam snapped. “You can get off the Lazy S as well.”

The tall cowboy’s weathered tan flushed beet-red. “You can’t do that, Mr. Steele. I worked for your father since you were both mites. Who else is gonna hire me with my gimpy leg?”

“You heard me,” the rancher replied. “You haven’t been worth your keep in years. Get the hell off this spread.”

“Not without my pay,” Broom said. “I’m owed—”

“You’re owed shit. You don’t follow my orders, you’re fired!” Sam advanced on Tamsin with a clenched fist. “I warned you to git off the Lazy S, woman.”

She took a step backward. “I’m going.”

Broom took a swing at Sam, and the rancher hit him hard in the face. The cowboy got in a weak punch to Sam’s chest, but the younger man’s return blow caught him full on the nose. Blood spurted as Broom went down on one knee. Sam followed up with a vicious kick to the midsection.

Broom groaned and sank to the ground. “You bastard,” he managed. “I’ll get you for this.”

Sam kicked him once more before glancing at the second cowhand and the man with the hammer. Swiftly, they moved toward Henry.

Swearing, the judge retreated to his buggy. “You’ll regret this, Sam,” he warned. “I’ll be back, and we’ll settle this for once and all.”

Tamsin touched Henry’s arm. “I’m on foot,” she said. “Could you at least give me a ride back to town?”

He scowled at her. “Get back the same way you got here.” The judge slapped his lines over the horse’s rump and drove away without looking back. Sam gave Tamsin a shove. “Get moving,” he warned. She winced as she heard Dancer’s angry whinny from the barn. “I’m going,” she repeated. But I’ll be back, too, she vowed silently. You can count on it.

Read on for an excerpt from Katie Rose’s

A Case for Romance

The World’s Second Consulting Detective

Colorado, April 1, 1894

Emily Potter closed the dog-eared copy of the
Strand
amid the rumbling of the stagecoach, and sank back into the seat with a smile of satisfaction. Along with Holmes, she, too, had figured out the mystery long before everyone else, but it was enjoyable just watching the story play itself out. Her reading glasses slid down her nose, and she pushed them back into place, ignoring the odd glances she received from the other stagecoach passengers. Besides herself, there were two women, a businessman, a cowboy who smelled suspiciously of whiskey, and a preacher. Although it couldn’t possibly matter, Emily noticed that the preacher was undeniably handsome, with piercing blue eyes and indecently long lashes. He seemed preoccupied with the landscape that whizzed by the coach window. Putting the book aside, she felt the familiar surge of disappointment that the tale was over.

Emily sighed. She hated that her active mind no longer had anything to occupy it. Like her great-aunt Esther, who painted nudes and was admittedly the family eccentric, Emily simply marched to a different tune than most women. Give her a puzzle, a problem, the most intricate enigma or most obscure crime, and she was in her element. From her earliest memories, she had been obsessed with mysteries, devouring them like candy as she helped her mother in the millinery business. While other girls shopped, went to dances, called on each other and gossiped, Emily read every kind of mystery she could find. She knew all of Poe, memorized Doyle, despised Gaboriau, and adored Vidocq. When that wasn’t enough, she alarmed her mother by voraciously following the daily papers, marking the local murders in ink and poring over the details of each case. She often gave the police information about the crimes, even though they dismissed her help with fatherly smiles. Yet Emily never doubted that she would one day convince them of her methods and win their respect.

But Emily had just turned sixteen when her mother died, and thereafter she had less free time to track the activities of the criminal element. The millinery shop was still successful, so Emily continued the business, propping her beloved books between hats and feeding her habit secondhand. The books almost sufficed, but were never really enough. She longed to be like Holmes, to awaken her counterpart in the middle of the night and whisper, “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!”

A rustle came from the bag on the floor of the stagecoach, disturbing her thoughts. Reaching down, Emily’s glasses slid to the tip of her sharp nose as she scooped inside the bag to pull out a black-and-white cat. Dr. Watson mewed contentedly, although he was tangled up in laces and yarn, thread, and artificial cherries.

“Silly cat.” Emily smiled fondly, disentangling the feline. Fascinated with the mess, the cat swiped at the dangling threads, ignoring his mistress’s attempts to remove them. Much of the millinery business was easily transportable, everything fitting neatly into her bag, but trimmings didn’t necessarily mix well with a cat. Yet Emily wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without her precious feline.

Glancing up, she saw the preacher watching her again. He turned his face away, but not before a strange little flutter began inside of her. Emily frowned. This man of God had the strangest effect on her! Surely he was just as bored as everyone else, and only looking at her to pass the time. Satisfied with this logical explanation, she placed the now string-free kitten in her lap and forced her thoughts back to the reason for her trip.

If anyone had told her a year ago that she would be making this journey out West, orphaned and un-chaperoned, she would have examined them with her magnifying lens in disbelief. But she couldn’t have known then that after her mother quietly passed away, she would feel a wretched loneliness. Nor could she have guessed that several years later, the death of her long-lost father would leave her with a house in Colorado with a mystery attached. Excitement coursed through her as she fished the attorney’s letter out of her bag. This was a good time to refresh herself of the facts. Shaking aside the millinery materials, she opened the missive and scanned it once more.

Emily’s nose wrinkled. She really hadn’t known her father. He’d left when she was very young, to make his fortune in the West. Unlike her mother, a romantic who’d always clung to the hope that he’d come back for her, Emily had been quite sure they would never see him again. So while his final parting stirred some small emotion inside her, it wasn’t nearly as heart wrenching as it might have been. She continued reading.