A Fire in the Blood (25 page)

      
The man beside him took a deep drag off his cigarette and flicked it onto the dry ground. "Watch out you don't start a grass fire, you horse's ass!" Conyers hissed. His companion quickly jumped down and ground out the glowing butt with the heel of his boot, then remounted as the rustler boss directed the men to split up and approach the large, scattered herd.

      
"I don't like this, Tom," Bert Hauser said. "Lookit all them cottonwoods 'n tall grass. Even a bunch of narrow ravines—a whole damn army could be waitin' fer us down there."

      
"Sligo says there's no one posted here tonight," Conyers replied, but he, too, did not like the lay of the land. "But keep yer eyes peeled."

      
As the rustlers split up and rode into the basin, Jess, Tate, and Pardee's men watched them from their hidden vantage points around the perimeter. Jess turned to Shannon and said with a sharkish grin, "This shouldn't take long."

      
Once the thieves had scattered onto the open plain, Jess raised his Winchester and fired rapidly three times, then kneed Blaze into a canter and burst from behind the stand of cottonwoods with Shannon riding behind him. All across the shallow basin, flashes of gunfire erupted. Pardee's men swooped down on the surprised thieves, who were caught in the open.

      
The dark night air was filled with orange flashes belching from revolvers and rifles. The sound of the solid impact of lead sinking into flesh, the death screams of men, and the bellowing of cattle followed.

      
More than half the rustlers were knocked from their horses by the opening volley. The rest galloped madly in various directions, looking for an opening through which to escape the withering fire. Cattle were hit as well, and the scattered herd quickly caught the blood scent. They bawled in fright, then began a frenzied stampede.

      
"Turn em!" Jess yelled, aiming his rifle at one of the rustlers, who was riding beside the lead steer, urging it on.

      
As soon as Robbins's shot knocked the rider from his horse, Jess rode abreast of the steer, reversing its course back toward the tail of the herd. Tate followed suit, turning the cattle behind the leader, and two of Pardee's men who were near enough did likewise. Most of the rustlers were encircled by a bobbing, milling sea of cattle. As if to further seal their doom, the faint clouds that had flitted across the moon were swept clear by a strong summer wind. The rustlers were trapped by the very prize they had sought to steal, easy targets for the cold- eyed gunmen who methodically cut them down.

      
Tom Conyers had been one of the last to ride into the open. As soon as the killing fire erupted all around his men, he turned his big roan stallion away from the ambush at a dead run, heading toward a narrow ravine that would offer him cover. He had almost made it when the sound of pursuit and a bullet whistling perilously close to his shoulder caused him to lean low over his horse's neck, spurring him on.

      
Jess recognized the tall man on the roan as the one who had issued orders when the thieves rode into the basin. While Shannon and Pardee cleaned up the last of his men, Robbins pursued the leader, hoping to take him alive. Blaze was gaining on the roan.

      
Just before the outlaw reached the ravine, he reined in and turned in the saddle, knowing he must deal with his pursuer before he could ride safely down the steep incline. He squeezed off two shots but missed his mark, his aim thrown off by the agitated prancing of his roan.

      
Jess pulled Blaze to a halt and aimed high on his opponent's right arm. The shot hit with wicked impact, knocking the outlaw off the opposite side of his horse. He hit the ground and rolled to the edge of the ravine, trying to crawl over the side. Jess spurred Blaze forward. When he neared the fallen outlaw, he reined in and leaped from the saddle.

      
"Lie real still," he said, cocking his Colt with a deadly click.

      
Conyers swore, breathing hard. "I can't. Musta broke something when I fell." He tried to roll over, with the small Colt house pistol he had pulled from inside his vest with his left hand, but Jess stepped on his right arm, eliciting a harsh gasp of agony and immobilizing him.

      
"Now, you can bleed or you can talk. Your choice. And while you bleed, I'll keep on massaging that bullet inside your arm." His boot moved again, eliciting another oath. "Who brought you here to take down J Bar?"

      
"We're just stealin' cattle, that's all," Conyers ground out when he could get his breath. He looked up into the cold, hawkish face of his captor. The breed gunman Jacobson had hired. He swore again as Jess's boot bore down on his arm.

      
"You didn't just single out Jacobson because you don't like the way he parts his hair. Who hired you? Who's buying the stolen cattle?"

      
"All right, all right. We was hired . . . got a broken rib. Can't talk," he gasped.

      
Jess released his arm and watched as Conyers painfully rolled onto his back. "Who is this—" He saw the glint of the small gun in the semidarkness just as Conyers raised it and fired.

      
The two shots came so close together that they sounded as one. Conyers's shot went wild. Jess hit the outlaw straight in the heart. He knelt and checked for signs of life, then swore as he began to examine the dead man's pockets for any personal effects that might offer clues.

      
Unlike Billy Argee, Tom Conyers was a seasoned professional who had not so much as a scrap of identification on him, much less a photograph of a woman. But he had admitted he was hired to attack J Bar by someone. Who?

      
Shrugging, Jess figured he would never know. Although he would inform Jacobson about it, with the demise of this large and well-organized bunch of rustlers, old Marcus's spread would probably be safe enough. If it was some other rancher in the Association or even Yancy Brewster, it was unlikely trouble would start up any time soon. If it did, it was another job of work. He smiled grimly as he retrieved the roan and threw the dead body across its saddle. Let Jacobson hire someone else.

* * * *

      
Dellia Evers was sweating. She rubbed her hand across her forehead and grimaced, then removed the broad-brimmed felt hat that protected her sallow complexion from the sun and daubed at her whole face with a scented handkerchief. This hot and she was well sheltered beneath the thick, draping branches of a willow by the creek. Imagine if she had been watching the J Bar ranch house all this time out on the open plain!

      
Her tan riding skirt and plain white blouse were chosen for service, not style, cool and suitable for riding on a hot August day. But nothing would have been comfortable for this task. She had been waiting for well over an hour. What if that disgusting little tart Lissa had sneaked off for her lovers' tryst before Dellia had been able to get away from her pa this morning?

      
Just as she was about to despair, Lissa's gleaming red head appeared on the front porch. She was dressed for riding as she casually sauntered toward the corral with that hateful brute of a dog beside her.

      
Yancy would be proud of her when she exposed Lissa Jacobson for the whore she truly was! And to think Yancy had once favored the brassy redhead over her. "No more, Melissa Jacobson. After today you'll be finished with Yancy and with every decent man in Wyoming Territory."

      
As Lissa mounted up on Little Bit, she was deeply preoccupied by what she had to tell Jess. Her father was closeted in his office with paperwork and had left Germaine with strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed. Nothing would interrupt her meeting with her lover. She was taking Cormac out for a run, her excuse for this afternoon's excursion.

      
The pulse-pounding anticipation that had first made her trysts with Jess so exhilarating was gone now. She was left with only a hollow sense of dread. He had to love her enough to claim her as his wife, to give a name to his own child—but she was trapping him this way. He would resent it.

      
Jess had ridden in early this morning and reported to her father that the rustling ring had been broken. She had eavesdropped on part of their lengthy conversation, fearing all the while that he would simply collect his pay and ride away. But he had agreed to wait a day or two. The federal marshal was on the way from Cheyenne to claim the dead men and determine if any were wanted.

      
When he left the ranch house, she had been sitting on the front porch, waiting for him to indicate that he would be at the pool that afternoon. He had been dusty and bloodstained, so exhausted looking that she had wanted to fling herself into his arms and hold him, just grateful he was alive and that the blood was not his this time. That should have bothered her, but it did not. She was no longer titillated by the forbidden thrill of his dangerous occupation. Now that she loved him, all Lissa wanted was for him to put away his gun and live in peace.

      
Now I'll find out if he's willing to do it
. In her heart of hearts, she feared he would refuse. A man like Jesse Robbins was not easily domesticated. That had been his allure—and her downfall.

      
So deep was she in thought, Lissa paid no heed to Cormac's antics as he chased after a butterfly, leaping high in the air and gamboling across the open grassland, carefree as a pup. Neither was she aware of the distant figure who followed them as she approached the barren stretch of escarpment and vanished over the horizon.

      
When she reached the pool, Jess was there, having already bathed his weary, bruised body in the invigorating cold water and stretched out in the shade beneath a spreading cottonwood tree. He was dozing as she approached quietly. She could see the sheen from droplets of water that still clung to his wet hair and upper torso as he lay clad only in denims, bare-chested and bootless. Her eyes drank in the perfect symmetry of his long, bronzed body with its delicious patterns of night-black hair. She felt her heart thrum furiously in her chest and her mouth go dry as she gazed on him like a voyeur, reluctant to awaken him and spoil the perfect enchantment with her news.

      
"I assumed I'd already passed your inspection, ma'am," he said in a low, amused voice, his eyes still seemingly closed.

      
Lissa's mouth formed a small "O" of surprise and her face heated as she knelt beside him and placed her hand on his chest. "I was just remembering the first time I saw you wet in that bathtub at the hotel." She moistened her lips provocatively. "And you're right. You passed my inspection early on," she whispered breathlessly as he pulled her down on top of him and kissed her possessively.

      
From her hiding place, Cridellia Evers adjusted the powerful binoculars she had taken from her father's desk. She had already seen that big evil brute of a blaze-faced stallion the Indian rode, grazing on the opposite side of the pool. The lovers were hidden in the trees, but she could make out the shadowy outlines of two figures, lying prone on the ground. She had already seen Lissa's dog chasing up one end of the narrow little valley and was careful to avoid him lest he alert her quarry to her presence. Turning her horse away, she slipped the binoculars into the saddlebag and rode as fast as she could for the J Bar.

* * * *

      
Marcus Jacobson was pleased. The marshal had wasted no time, and now he and Tate Shannon were out examining the remains of the rustlers. Robbins and his men had gotten every damn one of them. The breed was worth every last cent he would pay him. Of course, there was the matter of their leader telling Robbins about working for someone else, but a desperate man, shot and held at gunpoint, would say anything. He dismissed any threat from that quarter as improbable and returned to the tally sheets he had in front of him. This fall, only he would be selling J Bar cattle.

      
Germaine Channault heard the rapid knocking on the front door and wiped her hands on a towel with irritation. She had croissants rising and Marcus's favorite bearnaise sauce simmering on the stove. Who would come calling in midafternoon? Probably another of that obnoxious vixen's bumbling suitors. If only she would marry one of them and have done with it!

      
When she reached the front door, the last person she expected to see was a disheveled, dust-coated Cridellia Evers dressed in shabby riding clothes.

      
"Good afternoon, Mademoiselle Evers. Won't you please come in. I'm afraid Mademoiselle Jacobson is not at home right now."

      
Dellia hesitated, then answered, red-faced, "I know. That is ...." She twisted her riding crop nervously in her hands as she edged past the housekeeper and into the hallway. Following Lissa as Yancy had suggested had been the easy part, but explaining exactly what she had seen was going to prove most humiliating. How could she face Marcus Jacobson's imperious, icy stare?

      
Germaine studied the nervous girl with shrewd dark eyes. She and Lissa had never been friends, only rivals. And plain little Cridellia always came in second. The chit knew something!

      
"Come with me into the parlor and have a seat, child. I’ll bring you some nice cool lemonade and then you can tell me what's wrong."

      
Dellia followed her into the large, elegant room and sat on the edge of the elaborately carved Neo-Grecian settee like a bird poised to take flight at the slightest sound. Germaine quickly brought the lemonade. Dellia took a gulp as if tossing back a swig from a jug of forty-rod whiskey for courage.