A Fire in the Blood (41 page)

      
Just then the figure of a tall man crested the stairs with two of the opera house ushers racing behind him. Several of the women gasped in shock at Yancy Brewster's appearance. His clothes were torn and filthy, and his face was swollen and discolored, evidence of the beating Cy's men had given him.

      
"Looks like Evers's hands didn't do as good a job as he thought," Jess said, instinctively knowing who the enraged man would fasten upon. As Brewster shook off one of the ushers and headed toward Robbins, Jess set Lissa behind him.

      
"Well, well. Look at the fancy-ass gut-eater all dressed up like he was a white man," Brewster sneered.

      
Jess could smell whiskey on him from ten feet away. "You should've stayed on that train, Yancy." He watched Brewster's hand near the Army Colt he wore on his hip.

      
“'N leave behind everything I worked for? Let you get away with dirtyin' her so no white man'd touch her? Shit, I had to settle for that bug-eyed little Evers bitch."

      
"Shut up, Brewster, you always were a foul- mouthed cur," Jess said, trying to get close enough to the drunk to disarm him before someone in the crowd was hurt by accident.

      
"Didn't want Dellia but, hell, Diamond E's almost as good as J Bar." He turned venomously to Lissa, "Then you, you greaser lover—you had to tell old man Evers and spoil that too. Not bad enough you're screwin' a—"

      
"That's enough, Brewster!" Jess's voice crackled like shards of glass. He had moved close enough to the enraged man now, and the rest of the crowd, which had been drawn by the outburst, hastily drew back.

      
"Robbins ain't armed," one voice said above the low hum of whispers.

      
"His kind can always take care of themselves," another replied.

      
Cy Evers, who had been at the far end of the ballroom when the altercation erupted, shouldered his way through the press of people, yelling at Brewster. "Yancy, you son-of-a-bitch, I'll kill you for this!"

      
But Brewster was fixated on Jesse Robbins with the single-minded determination of a drunk with a longtime grudge.

      
"Stay out of this, Evers," Jess said as the older man finally emerged in the open hallway.

      
Brewster shouted a vile epithet and drew his gun, but before he could raise it to fire, Jess's pocket revolver barked twice, hitting the big man at close range with two .38 caliber slugs. The Colt dropped from Yancy's lax fingers, and his lanky body crumpled, tumbling backward and rolling down the shallow circular stairs until he lay sprawled grotesquely midway to the bottom.

      
Women screamed and fainted, and men rushed forward to see the body. Jess replaced the revolver in his shoulder holster, then turned back to Lissa, who rushed into his arms.

      
She clung to him, trembling as Lemuel Mathis and Cy Evers approached.

      
"I'm obliged to you, Robbins," Cy said grimly.

      
"I've sent for the marshal," Mathis added with a self-satisfied air.

      
"Well, you tell him what happened when he arrives. I've got to get my wife out of here." With his arm around Lissa, Jess headed toward the side stairs leading to Hill Street.

Chapter Twenty-Four

      
They rode back to their hotel suite in silence. Lissa held tightly to Jess's arm, still seeing the crazed hatred in Yancy Brewster's eyes. What if she had been able to talk Jess out of carrying the hidden weapon? He would be the one now lying dead on the opera house floor. She shivered just thinking about it.

      
Jess felt her mute misery and her trembling. Damn, he had known it was a mistake to return to her bed and give her hope for a future together. If the whole awful debacle of being cut at the dance and subjected to such vicious gossip was not bad enough, he had to kill a gun-crazy drunk. Brewster could have shot Lissa in the fracas. Just thinking about it made his blood run cold.

      
Given how the town in general and Lemuel Mathis in particular felt about him, he still stood a good chance of being arrested on some technicality.

      
Cy Evers was probably decent enough to see that it did not stick, but the scandal would further wound Lissa and leave her and Johnny completely isolated.

      
When they arrived at the hotel, Jess escorted her upstairs. Once she was safely ensconced with their son, he would take care of his business with the sheriff and indulge his need for a drink at the saloon.

      
A small wail carried through the door, and Lissa smiled tremulously, her eyes luminous with love as she entered the suite. "He's woken up hungry." She started toward Clare's room, then turned back to Jess. "I'll bring him to our room to feed him," she said softly, knowing how he liked to watch.

      
Jess felt defiled and unworthy. He had just killed a man, one of so many, and not all of them as justly in need of a bullet as Yancy Brewster. "I have a lifetime of blood on my hands, Lissa. Scarcely the legacy I want to pass along to my son. Take care of Johnny and go to sleep. I need to be alone for a while."

      
"You've been alone too long, Jess. That's the trouble—"

      
"No, the trouble is my dragging you and Johnny down with me."

      
"Stop it, Jess," she said in a choked voice, reaching out to him.

      
He put her hands aside and stepped determinedly away. "If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your son. You heard those old harridans tonight—and their menfolk. They'll never let you forget Johnny was conceived outside wedlock. They won't let him forget it either when he gets old enough to understand—not bad enough that he's got Mexican and Indian blood, but as far as they're concerned, he's a bastard to boot."

      
She blanched white and stood frozen. "Why are you saying such horrible things?"

      
"Just think of Johnny, Lissa, not us. Take a good look at your son. He's only an eighth Indian. Back East, no one would have to know the circumstances of his birth or who his father was. You could be a widow lady. Hell, say your husband was some dead Spanish nobleman. Nobody would know. They'd think it was romantic. Just. . . just think about it, Lissa. I have to go out now. I'll be back late."

      
He turned quickly and left. Her cry echoed in his ears, "Where are you going, Jess?"

      
She might think he was headed straight to the Royale to see Cammie. That would suit his plans well. Better to hurt her quickly and have it over with than let her keep holding on until they destroyed not only each other but their child as well.

      
After he was gone, Lissa changed out of her finery and slipped on a nightgown and robe, then took her fussing son from Clare.

      
"He must've heard you come upstairs, for he didn't make a peep all night until you returned," the maid said, embarrassed to have overheard the argument between the missus and her husband.

      
Smiling distractedly at Clare, Lissa took Johnny to her room and sat on the bed to nurse him. As she watched his small mouth tug eagerly at her tender nipple, she caressed his silky hair with adoration.

      
"How beautiful you are. Your father's son for certain," she whispered, trying not to think about Jess's words.

      
In spite of her resolve, she studied Johnny's face and features. Jess was right about the prejudices that would follow him if he grew up in Wyoming. Could Johnny pass for white in a new place? Her aunt and uncle in St. Louis knew little about the man she had married or the circumstances of Johnny's birth. She could go back and pick up the threads of her life as a respectable widow with a son who would be admitted to the highest ranks of society.

      
The baby finished his meal and nuzzled against her breast, a milk bubble on his rosebud lips. A wave of love washed over her as she held him. "No, little one, I won't betray your birthright with lies. You should be proud of who you are and who your father is." Sneaking away to build a life on a lie would not guarantee her son a better future—only one without a father's love.

      
Lissa had never been certain that Jess loved her with the same unconditional desperation with which she loved him, but she did know for a certainty that he loved his son. She would never see John Jesse Robbins cheated of that as long as she drew breath.

      
Jess's destination was not the theater but the sheriff's office in the courthouse. He would have taken bets that Lemuel Mathis had beaten a trail to the law before Brewster's corpse got cold—and won the wager. Mathis had visited the sheriff and sworn out a complaint. There were ordinances against carrying guns within the city limits, laws observed far more in the breach than by their enforcement. The nicety that he would have been killed by Yancy if he had gone unarmed was beside the point to Mathis.

      
Fortunately, the sheriff, a shrewd Irish politician named Sean Feeney, was inclined to take Jess's point of view. This more likely happened because Cy Evers and several other witnesses corroborated the facts, or perhaps because the fat old sheriff was nervous in the presence of a famous gunman. In any case, Jess left the thick brick walls of the impressive courthouse behind, relieved when the issue of Brewster's death was finally settled.

      
After walking around for the better part of an hour, he realized that he was postponing the inevitable. He began to retrace his steps to the Metropolitan. Crossing Eddy Street, he decided to stop in a saloon for a fortifying drink, which quickly turned into several. The bartender was corpulent and sweated nervously as he served Jess. Cammie found him two drinks later. She had just finished her late show when word of the shooting fracas reached her at the Royale. She had quickly changed and went searching for Jess.

      
"It took me long enough to find you. I expected you would be cooling your heels in one of Feeney's new cells," she said, sitting down at the battered table beside him. "Buy me a drink?"

      
He looked at her morosely, then motioned to the fat barkeep for another glass. "What the hell do you want, Cammie?"

      
"I am not certain this has anything to do with Brewster coming after you tonight. . . but I learned something very strange the other day. I planned to tell you about it before you left town."

      
Jess rubbed his aching head. "What, Cammie?"

      
She proceeded to explain about overhearing the conversation concerning Germaine Channault's bizzare purchase of arsenic.

      
If Jess felt any effect from the whiskey he had consumed, it quickly evaporated. "What the hell would that old crone want with arsenic if it wasn't the stuff that poisoned our water?"

      
Her eyes narrowed. "That is the conclusion I also reached,
querido
. I have been asking around town to see if anyone from the Association has been seen with the Frenchwoman."

      
He looked at her with silent expectation.

      
She shrugged. "So far, I have learned nothing."

      
He pushed back his chair and rose. "I'd appreciate it if you'd pass on anything you hear. Maybe I'll just dust off my rusty French tomorrow and have a little talk with the old biddy."

      
By the time he slid the key in the lock to suite 12, it was three a.m. He expected everything to be quiet and dark—at least, he hoped it would be. But a dim light sent a dull golden shaft from beneath their bedroom door. He opened it and found Lissa standing with her arms around herself, looking frail and delicate, silhouetted against the dark window.

      
She turned as he entered. Her face was pale, and her amber eyes had big, dark smudges beneath them. She flew into his arms. "Jess, I've been so worried." Her head came up and she looked him in the eye. "You've been drinking."

      
He smiled wearily. "Didn't pass the sniff test?" At her look of pain, he cursed himself silently. "I'm sorry, Lissa. That was uncalled for. I went to the sheriff's office." He outlined what had happened as he stripped off his dress clothes and turned down the lamp.

      
"Do you still think Lemuel is involved with the rustlers trying to break us?" she asked, shedding her robe and slipping into bed.

      
"Could be. God knows he has enough bile in his system to poison half of Cheyenne." He voiced aloud the idea Cammie had given him. "Germaine could be working for Mathis."

      
"I've been thinking about the poisoned cattle, too," Lissa replied. "If we could find out if Lemuel has been seen talking to Germaine, we'd know he was guilty."

      
"Forget about Mathis's spleen and get some sleep, Lissa. This has been a hellacious night for you."

      
"Oh, I don't know. I got to dance with my husband in public. That part of the evening was grand."

      
He scowled in the dark. "Not so grand when everyone was whispering about us and giving us looks that could wither a thistle bush," he replied grimly.

      
Her heart tightened in her chest. She could feel him withdrawing from her even though they lay in the same bed. Before he could say anything about what was best for Johnny and provoke another argument, she rolled over against him and lay partially across his body. Only the sheer silk of her nightgown separated their flesh.