How to Lasso a Cowboy (30 page)

Glory lifted a cautioning finger at her. “Now, Tess, honey. You're wanting this man to do you a favor. Mind your temper.”

The prospective groom heaved an alcoholic sigh and shook his head. “I'm not much for lovin' and leavin'.”

Tess hastened to squelch that notion. “You won't be doing no loving in this deal, mister! You can be sure of that!”

“You wouldn't be married long,” Glory hastened to assure him. “Once things have settled down and people have forgotten about Colin's stupid will, you'll get an annulment, won't you, Tessie? It'll be like the marriage never existed.”

“Right!” Tess confirmed. Then she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You aren't already hitched, are you?”

The man chuckled a little too cynically. “Hell no.”

“And you could use the money, couldn't you?” Tess took an envelope from her shirt pocket, extracted a sheaf of bills, and dangled the money before his eyes. “Couldn't you?”

The poor sot's eyes crossed as he tried to focus on the greenbacks. “Three hundred dollars,” he said slowly.

“Three hundred dollars,” she echoed temptingly. Good old money, the bait that would hook almost any fish. “And you'll be a free man to use the money however you want.”

He reached out to take the money, but she pulled it away. “When the deed is in my hand, cowboy. Not before.”

He squinted suspiciously. “No strings?”

“I'll cut the strings while the ink is still drying on that deed.” Her heart jumped. The fish had taken the hook.

“Nobody gets hurt.”

“Not a soul.”

“Nothing ill . . . illegal,” he slurred.

“Of course not. Say a few words and sign a piece of paper. Then you leave, and a while later, I send word that you're legally free. Simple.”

Simple. Right. Anything but,
a voice in her head warned. But she had no choice.

Her groom-to-be looked a bit queasy. “You got yourself a deal.”

TESS
wasn't about to let her fish squirm off the hook while she dilly-dallied about. Glory stood guard over the groom
on the excuse of letting him sleep off his liquor in her room, while Tess dispatched the bartender's son to the Diamond T to fetch Rosie and Miguel for the wedding. The ranch was an hour's ride on a fast horse, and longer for her foreman and stepmother to hitch the buckboard (Rosie flat refused to climb up on any horse) and drive back to town, so Tess had time to talk Preacher Malone into a hurry-up wedding and also drop by lawyer Bartlett's office to inform him that she was about to head up the matrimonial trail. She didn't bother to tell him what a short trail it would be.

Tess left the attorney's office with a chuckle bubbling in her chest. The look on Harvey's face had told her that he didn't think she had what it took to lasso herself a man, not if her daddy had given her six years instead of six months.

Arrangements made, Tess had time on her hands, something she didn't want. So far the morning had moved fast—the ride into town, meeting Glory in the Bird Cage, putting her persuasive powers to the test with—what was the damned fellow's name? She hadn't even asked. Oh well. His name didn't really matter.

Tess walked over to the hotel for lunch, even though her stomach didn't much welcome the idea of food. Through the steam swirls rising from her coffee she saw her father's face. She had labored so hard to please that hard-edged, obstinate man. His rare words of praise were hoarded treasures. His impatience, hot temper, and above all, his razor strap, had inspired her to labor even harder to please him.

Her brother, Sean, on the other hand, had fought the bit like a sour mustang. He had hated the ranch, hated the work, hated the livestock, the dust, the summer heat, and the winter cold. On his fifteenth birthday he'd up and left. Colin had been both furious and embarrassed that his only son “had a limp noodle spine.” And he'd leaned even harder on Tess, who had tried her best to be better than a son to him.

But in one thing she had never pleased him. Colin couldn't understand why his daughter couldn't lasso herself a husband and bring him home to help run the Diamond T. Her
mother could have told him that no man wanted a woman who could handle a branding iron but not a clothes iron, who could butcher a hog but didn't know the first thing about fixing a fancy pork roast. By the time Tess had reached marrying age, however, her mother wasn't telling Colin anything. She had died in childbirth, trying to deliver a third child, when Tess was ten.

Tess dropped another lump of sugar into her cup and stirred.
I've got myself that husband now,
she told her daddy silently.
But things aren't going to be the way you wanted, you stubborn old jackass. You're gone now, and I have to live life the best I know how. And I'm not taking up with some man who wants the Diamond T, not me, and who thinks he can step in and run things better than some silly woman.

So now she was stuck with a pickled bum. But not for long. Everything would work out, Tess assured herself. She would make it work out.

By three o'clock, Tess had rebraided the long black hair that hung to her waist, washed her face at the OK Corral watering trough, and readied herself to meet her bridegroom on the steps of the white frame church on Allen Street. Just as she arrived at the church, Glory turned the corner, headed her way, and the man beside her walked on his own two feet, though his boots didn't exactly track a straight line. From the other direction, a familiar wagon rattled toward her with Rosie and Miguel perched up on the box. Perfect timing. It was a sign, Tess told herself. A good sign.

Rosie and Miguel arrived first, and her plump, brown-haired stepmother jumped down from the wagon to give Tess a hug. “You found someone so fast!”

“Glory helped.”

Glory and Rosie were good friends from the days when Rosie also had earned her living at the Bird Cage. The two women sometimes banded together to give Tess annoying lectures on how she ought to wear frills and curls to catch a man, but Tess loved them anyway.

Miguel, dark, lean, and wiry, climbed down from the wagon more slowly, favoring a stiff knee that had been stomped by a cranky steer two years before. He gave Tess a smile, but his attention swung quickly to the pair coming up the street. “That him?”

“Yup.”

“Big fella. And that don't look like fat filling him out. You sure about him?”

“Seems pretty no-account to me. I found him drunk in the Bird Cage. He jumped on the money fast enough.”

Miguel's eyes narrowed. “You sure he won't jump on more than the money?”

Rosie batted the foreman with her reticule. “Don't talk like that in front of Tess.”

“Woman, I'm just looking out for the girl's interests. She ain't no lily-livered little miss who ain't ever heard a cow turd called a cow turd.”

Tess put her hands on her hips. “Call a truce, you two. And don't worry about my bridegroom. I made it pretty clear the money is all he gets.”

Miguel scowled, first at Rosie, then at Tess. He had been foreman at the Diamond T for the last thirteen years, and in many ways, he had been more of a father to her than Colin McCabe. He had a father's protective instincts.

Tess grimaced at him. “Don't look like you're going to hog-tie the poor sot and carve a brand into his hide, Miguel. You'll scare him away. After all, this was your idea.”

“It was Rosie's idea. Only a woman could think up a plan like this one.”

“Well, you agreed.”

“Two against one. I didn't have much choice.”

“Yeah, damn.” Tess sighed. “Neither do I.”

Tess's soon-to-be husband looked a bit dazed when Glory hauled him by the arm up the church steps. “Here he is,” the saloon girl declared proudly.

He shrugged off her arm and nearly toppled with the effort. The bum must have really tied one on to still be soused after sleeping for a couple of hours.

“Well, now,” she said with false heartiness. “Here we all are. Time to get this thing done.”

Rosie eyed the groom with growing doubt. “If there were another way—”

“There's not.” Tess wished there were.

“Well, then.” Rosie pasted a smile on her face. “Let's do this up right. Come inside. We'll just clean you up a bit.”

“Aw, Rosie!”

“You will not be married looking like you've just ridden in from the range.”

“He looks worse than I do!”

“Him I don't care about. You, I do. Come.”

Miguel chuckled. “You better not argue with Rosie,
chica
. You know how she gets.”

Rosie gave the foreman an arch look.

“I know how she gets,” Tess grumbled.

But she followed Rosie into the preacher's office, where Rosie had enough privacy to fill a basin with water, make Tess scrub her face—in Rosie's mind the watering trough of the OK Corral didn't make for proper washing—and then sat Tess down to brush and braid her hair once again.

Rosie never gave up trying to make Tess look like a proper woman. Such persistence had to be admired, even if it was annoying as hell.

“The man you found is big,” Rosie noted. “And he looks like he knows how to work. No fat. All muscle.”

“He's a drunk. He'll be off to drink his way through my three hundred dollars without a thought to how he earned it.”

Rosie shook her head dubiously. “I don't know. You be careful, Tessie. I wish I'd thought to bring a dress.”

“Forget that! This isn't a real wedding.”

Rosie humphed. “It would have been nice if you could have found a real husband. Every woman needs a man, and men are lost without a woman to keep them in line.”

Tess snickered. “Miguel, for instance?”

Rosie yanked at the braid. “That one? Ha! It would take an angel from heaven to put up with that mule of a man.”

They met Glory, Miguel, and—what was his name?—in the back of the church, and Tess noticed that Glory had spruced up the groom a bit as well. But even with his hair slicked back and his face washed, he still looked like a bum.

“I guess I'd better know your name for when the preacher gets here. Preacher Malone can get picky about marrying folks who don't really know each other. He's funny that way.”

The man gave her a fuzzy look. “Ransom.”

“Ransom what?”

“Joshua Ransom.”

“Josh Ransom,” Tess repeated. A good strong name to be wasted on the likes of this fellow. “I'm Tess McCabe. Diamond T Ranch.”

He had the nerve to look uninterested.

“But don't get any ideas about the ranch, just because you're standing up with me.”

So why had she even mentioned the Diamond T? Tess wondered. Maybe because Tess McCabe wasn't anybody without it. She always attached it to herself. Tess McCabe of the Diamond T. That was who she was. One without the other just wasn't worth much of anything.

Before she could pursue that unhappy thought, Preacher Malone walked in. Tess warned her groom with a subtle elbow to the ribs. “Just say the right words to earn your money.”

The wedding ceremony was mercifully short. Preacher Malone delivered long, windy sermons in Sunday service, but this being a Tuesday, the preacher seemed to have his mind more on getting back to his carpentry business than running off at the mouth about the sanctity and responsibilities of marriage. Good thing, Tess reflected, because the longer she stood in that church with what's-his-name, the more the man swayed beside her. The groom had taken on a tinge of green, and the church had begun to smell like a still. If the preacher hadn't been in such a hurry, he might have noticed such things.

But more important, if the ceremony had dragged on
much more than five minutes, Tess herself might have showed a yellow streak and run. Her stomach began to turn somersaults, and the palms of her hands broke out in sweat. Should she back out before the words were spoken? Could she back out?

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Preacher Malone declared.

Too late. The deed was done, for better or worse.

Slow, insolent clapping from the rear of the church made Tess's heart jump. In unison with Rosie, Glory, and Miguel, she turned.

“Congratulations, Tessie girl.”

Looking like a greenhorn in a fancy suit and slicked-back hair, her brother leaned against the frame of the open church doorway, applauding sarcastically.

“You finally caught yourself a husband, did you? How lucky for you.”

His grin told Tess her luck had just stepped in a cow pie.

 
JOSH RANSOM COULDN'T
remember a time when he'd felt quite so lousy. Of course, right at the moment, his memory didn't work all that well. Neither did his stomach, his legs, or his tongue; and his eyes still slipped in and out of focus. A pounding headache hammered his brain, and every muscle in his body screamed for mercy.