Eyes of the Cat (20 page)

“But what?” Tabitha prompted, desperate to know the truth, yet dreading it at the same time.

“Well, Molly claims to have seen Elspeth’s cat racing through the courtyard at the precise moment of that horrible scream. And she has this peculiar notion that the Panther escaped…in a way…by, um…hurling his…his
inner essence
, if you will, into Caliban.”

Kathy grasped the torch and gave it a sharp downward tug. There was a raspy scraping and grating, and a narrow section of wall slid open, revealing something that looked like a pathway straight to Hades.

“Utter hogwash, of course,” she continued. “That poor man was well and truly killed. But it wasn’t entirely for naught. His sacrifice gave Jeremy the time he needed to reach Elspeth. He needed the extra time, you see, because during the fall, he’d somehow taken a nasty blow to the face and was reeling like a drunk when he arrived at the stake. Molly was horrified for a second that he’d accidentally slice Elspeth’s throat instead of her bonds. But that final cry from the Panther put steel in his spine, it seems. Just as it sounded, Jeremy pulled himself upright, freed Elspeth, and carried her off. They got clean away.”

Stepping into the tunnel, she beckoned for Tabitha to follow. “And we’d better move quickly and quietly now if we’re to do the same.”

Neither of them spoke again until they had reached the end of the dank, low, raw-beamed tunnel. It took 183 steps. Tabitha counted every one to help steady her legs. She simultaneously counted Kathy’s longer strides and every support timber they passed. No mean mental feat to keep the three tallies separate, but the effort served to drive all other thoughts and images into the back attic recesses of her mind—where she sincerely hoped they would stay. The only thing she wanted to think about was getting as far away from Castle MacAllister and all its occupants—past and present—as swiftly as possible.

Outlaw
Cat
Kildare seemed to be of a like mind, the only difference being that she was obviously enjoying herself in the process. Climbing through the trapdoor at the end of the tunnel with an easy feline grace, she reached down a hand and helped Tabitha scramble up into the moonlit prairie, grinning like the devil behind her phony mustache.

“This will be a new experience for me. I’ve never tried horse thieving before. Con-artistry is more my line, but I do believe in expanding one’s horizons whenever possible. And I know just the mount I want, too. She doesn’t belong to the MacAllisters, either.”

She turned toward the nearby corrals. By the time she’d reached the closest one, Kid Connors was in full control, complete with swaggering gait and western accent.

“Hey, you sweet thang,” he drawled to a stunning black mare with four white socks and a star on her forehead. “You look jus’ rarin’ t’go, an’ thass zac’ly what we’all need. Raht, Pedro?”

“
Sí
, Señor Keed,” Tabitha mumbled while counting the corral’s fence posts and the horses inside in a mental wrestling match with herself to keep all other thoughts at bay. Especially the thought that she was being watched.

Multiplying the number of posts by the number of horses, she began calculating the square root of the resulting sum as her eyes scanned the surrounding shadows.
Empty.
Nothing to see except the primitive prairie night and Castle MacAllister looming out of it, glowing like some mythical El Dorado. When she glanced back toward the corral, she realized with a start that she couldn’t even see Kathy.

Kid Connors had vanished! And so had the black mare.

Gulp.

Don’t panic, don’t panic, Tabitha ordered herself.
She wouldn’t just ride off and leave me…

Would she?

“
Buenos tardes, mí amigo
. Charming outfit. But I think I liked you better as a girl.”

Drat the man, if he wasn’t a wizard, after all.

Heaving a gut-wrenching sigh, she turned to meet a smoky gray gaze—
gasp
—then quickly averted her eyes so he wouldn’t see the shock in them.

“
Buenos tardes
, señor. Eez good night for ride, no?” she offered meekly.

“Oh, it’s a grand night for riding.” Simon shifted the weight of the large silver-studded saddle and bridle he held in his arms.

“Finally! It’s so nice to find something at last that we can all agree on,” Kathy remarked pleasantly over his shoulder as she cocked the revolver she’d just jabbed into the base of his skull. “And how generous of you to bring us such expensive tack. Now why don’t you be a good little wizard and saddle Esmeralda for me.” With her free hand, she drew the black mare forward by its rope halter.

Simon’s gray eyes went almost black as the gun barrel bit harder into him. It appeared this was a unique situation for him, one he’d probably never experienced before. He looked like he wished he wasn’t experiencing it now.

“That happens to be
my
mare, and her name is
Petunia
,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“Then she’ll be so relieved to become
my
mare and have it changed. She hates being called Petunia. You can see it in her eyes,” Kathy told him. “Pedro, come hold Esmeralda’s halter while Mr. Wizard saddles her. You like the name Esmeralda, don’t you? Why, she’s as graceful as a flamenco dancer. Her hooves will sound like castanets as we fly across the prairie on her back.” She grinned at Tabitha,

“
Sí
, señor.” Moving cautiously around Simon to take the halter, Tabitha tried not to grin too broadly in return. The man looked steamed enough as it was.

“All right! But get that damn gun out of my neck so I can move properly,” he snarled.

Kathy obliged him by backing off half a pace, and he reluctantly hoisted the ornate saddle onto the mare’s back—then spun around.

His eyebrows rose a fraction at the Kid Connors costume.

So did Kathy’s at the sight of the revolver Simon had been hiding beneath the saddle. Quick as a cat, she switched the aim of her own weapon.

And Tabitha’s black-dyed brows popped up the highest of all.

“Drop it—nice and easy,” Kathy purred. “Or you’ll have to explain to Alan how you happened to let me blow her head off.”

Simon’s gaze turned to steel. “What makes you think I won’t blow yours off first?” he asked in a tone to match.

“Don’t be absurd.” She laughed. “Everyone knows the famous
Smoke
Elliott is far too much of a gentleman to shoot a woman.”

“What woman? I don’t see any
women
around here.”

“All right, if that’s the way you want to play it.” Kathy sighted down the barrel of her revolver. “Tabitha dear, remember, you
did
ask me to shoot you if we got caught.”

It told Tabitha all she needed to know. She trembled so violently, the mare nearly shied on her. “No! I never meant that! You know I didn’t really mean it!
Please
, Mr. Elliott, don’t…don’t let her…”

It must have been the sheer panic in her voice that decided him. With a blistering curse, Simon knelt and laid his revolver on the ground.

Like lightning, Tabitha ducked down and retrieved it.

“Very nicely done. For a moment there, you almost had
me
convinced I was going to shoot you,” Kathy commended her. “If you can’t spot a bluff any better than that, I’d stay away from the poker table if I were you,” she advised Simon.

He responded with a lethal look and a few curses that made his previous one seem as cool and refreshing as iced lemonade.

“Spoil sport,” she said. And promptly ordered him to remove his boots. Which was the easiest part of the next few minutes, because he turned out to be a good deal more attached to his trousers than he had been to his footgear.

“Don’t be shy, pardnuh. You said y’self ain’t no wimmin ’round heah,” Kid Connors coaxed. “Y’think you gots anythin’ Pedro an’ me ain’t a seed b’fore?”

Pedro turned redder than a basket of ripe chili peppers at a sudden vivid memory. It wasn’t of Michelangelo’s
David
either.

“I just didn’t want to
overawe
you,” Simon said wickedly.

As his hands moved to his belt buckle, Tabitha speedily decided that she was quite capable of finishing the saddling on her own. There was no sense in embarrassing Mr. Elliott any more than necessary. For that matter, there was a lot less sense in embarrassing herself.

One, two, three, four… Goodness, look at all the little silver conchos decorating this leather…

By the time she had finished counting them, Simon’s trousers and boots had been hurled deep into the center of a thick stand of prickly pear cactus, and the rest of him had been tied to the corral fence with his own belt. Oddly enough, however, he didn’t look fit to be tied. Leaning against the corral as though he were simply pausing in the middle of a midnight stroll, he watched Kathy and Tabitha mounting his mare, that lazy grin playing about his lips, and his eyes glinting with a devilish satisfaction. He seemed to be expecting something.

What, exactly, the riders found out before they’d trotted sixty feet into the scrub. A distinctive whistle fluted over the prairie. The black mare began dancing under them, like she’d suddenly decided to demonstrate the trickier steps of a fandango. Instead of fighting with her, Kathy let the reins go slack. A sharper whistle sliced the air, and Tabitha had to tighten her grip as the mare wheeled about and cantered back to push her soft nose against Simon’s solid shoulder.

“Good girl, Petunia.” He flashed Kathy a butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth grin.

She ignored it. “Now listen to me, Esmeralda honey, as one female to another,
never
come running when a man whistles. It makes them think they own you.”

“I
do
own her!”

“You see what I mean? He thinks of you as nothing but his property.” Kathy stroked the mare’s sleek neck. “All men are like that, you know. The only thing they want from us gals is to be able to dominate us. Is that what you want, Esmeralda, to be some man’s slave? I think you have more horse sense than that.”

The mare’s ears flicked back as though she thought so, too. But she was evidently a fair-minded sort, and batted her big beautiful eyes at Simon, giving him a chance for rebuttal, apparently.

He didn’t take it.

“Do you have any idea how asinine you sound talking to a horse that way?” he asked Kathy.

“There’s nothing asinine about giving a strong, intelligent creature a chance to make her own decisions. Is there, Esmeralda?”

She was answered with an agreeable nicker.

“Her name is Petunia!”

He received an aggravated snort.

“I told you, she doesn’t like Petunia,” Kathy said. “Now which will it be, Esmeralda? Do you want to come with me and be treated with respect, or stay here and be treated like you-know-what?”

The mare pranced a few steps sideways, tossing her head and whinnying.

“That’s what I thought.” Her rider grinned, and without another look at Simon, reined the mare toward the open range.

“Petunia!”

A shrill whistle brought the black head swinging back to the corral for an instant, and Esmeralda gave a final long whinny. It sounded a little like an apology.

But a lot more like horsey laughter.

Chapter 8

There was no way they could go on to Abilene after that, not dressed as they were. Anyone from the castle who came after them now would be looking for a black clad gunslinger and a Mexican youth. Granted, the tartan shawl would have given Tabitha away in any case, but she had been planning on ditching it before they reached the station. She’d only worn it for the ride there, because spring nights on the high plains could be as cold as the days were hot.

Crowded behind Kathy in the leather armchair known sometimes as a western saddle, she pulled the makeshift serape closer around herself as she considered the “Plan B” they’d chosen. It would delay when she got back to Philadelphia by another week or three, but she could live with that, just so long as she
did
get back. She could live with quite a bit, she realized, just so long as she could continue living, period. The threat of death had given her a brand new perspective on life.

“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. It was only card game gossip, after all. Geordie doesn’t like Alan very much, you know. And he’d been drinking pretty heavily that night. Maybe he made the whole thing up,” Kathy was saying. “Now that I think about it, I don’t recall anyone else mentioning that Alan even had a wife, let alone that he killed her.”

“I have. Alan himself,” Tabitha replied bleakly. “He admitted flat out he was responsible for her death.”

“Maybe he was merely trying to frighten you.”

“If he was, he succeeded.”

“And what I just added to the story has only frightened you more.” Kathy sighed. “It’s an old ailment of mine. Hoof-in-Mouth disease.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s far better that I know exactly what I’m up against,” Tabitha assured her.