Texas Lucky (15 page)

Faint light bled around the edges of the closed shutters, and as her eyes began to adjust, she could make out her surroundings and remember where she was.

Throwing back the sheet, she yawned, stretched, then smiled as she remembered her resolve to try to make Curt see how they needed each other. After all, she could well afford to hire him, and—

She stared at where she had left the money bag, and her heart slammed into her chest.

It was not there.

Bolting out of bed, she jerked the shutters to flood the room with light and glanced about wildly.

Then, with a sigh of relief, she saw it—not where it had been on the chair but at the foot of the bed, of all places. She could not remember putting it there, but she had been so weary when she had come in, and the wine at dinner had taken a toll as well.

Smiling, she picked it up to put it back on the chair, then paused as a chill of foreboding began to work its way up her spine.

The bag felt lighter.

But it had to be her imagination.

Still…

She untied it, opened it, and the chill became an icicle, stabbing into the very core of her.

The bag was only half-full, and laying on the top of the remaining money was a carefully folded note.

Retrieving it with shaking hands, Tess began to read, and with each word, fury was a snake, wrapping and winding and choking until she could scarcely breathe.

Dear Tess,

I’m borrowing half the money to make a new life for myself. Remember, if not for me, you wouldn’t have it in the first place. So go home where you belong. I took the envelope with your address from Saul’s shack and I will pay you back as soon as I can.

Curt

With teeth ground together she tore the note into tiny bits and pieces, all the while fury turning her blood to fire.

Go home, indeed.

She would show him, and if ever their paths crossed again, he would rue the day he had said she did not belong in the West.

He would eat his words, by God.

And she would live for that day.

Chapter Twelve

“Miss Partridge, if you should change your mind…”

Tess gently slipped her hand from Captain Halliday’s. “Thank you, Brent, but my mind is made up. I do appreciate all your kindness to me.”

He had led a cavalry patrol to escort her to the settlement of Phoenix. It was no more than a hay camp, established by a man named John Y. T. Smith a few years earlier to supply the soldiers at nearby Fort McDowell. A stagecoach came through once a month that would carry her along the old Butterfield Overland Mail Route to Dallas.

Tess had been waiting nearly three weeks, and during that time Captain Halliday had been persistent in his courtship.

“Please don’t forget to thank Lillian Jones for me again,” she said as he helped her up and into the stage. “She wouldn’t let me pay her near what it was worth to get a new wardrobe together.”

“She enjoyed it,” he assured her. “She adored you, like everyone else at the post. We’ll miss you.”

“And I’ll miss all of you.” Tess leaned back, and he closed the door, tipping his hat in farewell with a sad little smile.

With the snap of the reins, the wheels began to turn, and the stage rumbled forward.

“You did the smart thing, you know.”

Startled, Tess turned to the woman sitting beside her. She had tried not to watch the unpleasant scene of moments earlier when the woman’s husband, a lieutenant from Fort McDowell, had begged her not to leave, and she had called him a liar for promising her a life of comfort when all she’d had was misery since joining him at his post.

“What do you mean?” Tess asked.

“He wanted you to marry him, didn’t he?”

“Well, yes, he did.”

The woman gave a knowing smile. “I thought so. And you were wise to say no. Officers are all alike. All they care about is the Army. I finally came to my senses.”

Wanting to change the subject, Tess inquired, “So where will you go now?”

“Home. To New York. My father is a very prominent lawyer,” she said with an airy little sniff. “We live in a huge mansion with servants at my beck and call. Oh, I was such a silly little fool to think I could ever be happy out here in this”—she waved a gloved hand at the arid landscape rolling by—“godforsaken wilderness.

“My name is Iris Bonaventure, by the way,” she continued. “My father is Williston Bonaventure. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’ve never been to New York. And my name is Tess Partridge,” she finished.

Iris wanted to know what had brought her west, and Tess, with her usual candor, told her, then reeled beneath the woman’s scathing glare.

“You came out here to marry a man you’d never met? How…how awful. I can’t imagine ever doing such a thing. Why, I met my husband when I was formally presented to society. He was a student at West Point, and we had a long courtship, and”—she unfolded a dainty lace fan she had been holding and began to wave it rapidly over her face—“oh, the very thought of such a thing makes me feel ill.”

“It was my father’s wish,” Tess said in defense, ire rising both at Iris
and
herself for having confided something so personal. She was going to have to learn to be less open.

Iris sighed. “Well, at least you’re going home now. And you should thank God the man was killed. Now that you’ve come to your senses, you can marry in the proper way.”

“I’m not going home. I’m going to Texas to buy a ranch and raise cattle.” Again, Tess chided herself the instant the words were out of her mouth.

Iris threw her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. “Merciful heavens. I don’t think I can bear to listen to any more of this. I suppose I can’t expect to be in the company of civilized people until I get back east. Leave me alone. Please.”

“But…” Tess began, then fell silent. She had been about to remind the woman
she
hadn’t started the conversation but decided not to bother. Silence for the duration of the journey was better than having to constantly justify or defend herself.

Captain Halliday had told her how arduous, and dangerous, the way would be from Arizona to Texas. But Tess knew that from her previous trip.

So, gritting her teeth against discomfort, heat, and the misery of Iris Bonaventure’s whining and complaining, Tess concentrated on the future and her plans to have a place of her own.

She tried not to think about Curt but knew it would have been easier to live without breathing.

One moment she would hate him for stealing the money, and the next remind herself that he was right. Without his help, she would have nothing.

Still, it hurt to think they had shared such closeness and passion and it meant so little to him that he could abandon her as he had.

But she would get over it, she resolved. She was much stronger than when she had first come west, and if being with Curt had taught her nothing else, she at least now adhered to his credo.

She would do whatever it took to survive.

For that was what life was all about.

Drivers and teams of horses were changed periodically along the way, and Army patrols escorted them through country where the threat of Indians was the greatest.

Crossing into New Mexico, they finally reached Fort Seldon, newly built on the banks of the Rio Grande and eighteen miles north of the southern tip of the desert.

The fort was situated on a mesa flat at a point in the river teeming with beaver and alive with cottonwood trees. Tess was delighted to learn they would be there for two days while waiting for a new driver and guard to arrive on another stage.

Again, unmarried officers vied for Tess’s attention, as well as Iris’s, but Iris quickly cooled their ardor once she made known her contempt for the Army.

Tess found the post much more primitive than Fort Verde. The buildings were adobe and flat. The administration office was a long, two-story structure that housed storerooms, officers, and workshops. The floors were still dirt and would remain that way, it was predicted, for a few years to come.

One of the officers confided how life was extremely monotonous and harsh. The nearest town was a rough place called Leasburg but was off-limits. Instead, soldiers had to travel twelve miles to the settlement of Dona Ana, which was not much but at least was a change of pace from post life. The nearest railroad was in Colorado, over five hundred miles north.

Desertion, therefore, was a constant problem, as soldiers suffered from poor living conditions, isolation, and boredom.

But the fort had been built to provide protection from Apaches to any supply convoy or group of civilians passing through, which required a heavy escort. Picket posts had even been set up in two of the region’s most troubled spots.

“It’s dangerous, of course,” the officer had told Tess, “but actually we lost more soldiers to brawls in Leasburg before it was declared off-limits than we have to Indians.”

During the time they were at the fort, Iris constantly complained over the delay in waiting. Then, when the stage did arrive and she learned another passenger would be joining them—an old man—she was fit to be tied.

“There’s hardly room for me and Miss Partridge,” Iris whined to the new stage driver at breakfast the morning they were to depart.

The new passenger was not present for this conversation, and Tess was glad, not wanting his feelings to be hurt even as she knew Iris would probably get around to it sooner or later.

The driver, Joe Kemp, a heavyset man with no-nonsense eyes, looked Iris up and down, a forkful of fried fatback frozen in midair as he crisply informed Iris, “Little lady, you let me tell you somethin’ right now. I ain’t no stranger to this trail. I used to work for the Butterfield line back when it ran passengers and mail between the Mississippi Valley and San Francisco back in ’58 and ’61. We had Apaches after our scalps then, and we got Apaches after ’em now, and the more men we have along, the safer we’ll be.”

“Oh, poo.” Iris gave her napkin a wave. “Nonsense. We have cavalry patrols to take care of us.”

“Not all the time,” Sulley Putnam, the guard and a former Texas Ranger, was quick to inform her. “We’ll get across New Mexico all right, but, there’s a stretch near the Pyramid Mountains where the Army don’t see no need to tag along. I’ve heard rumors, though, about some renegade Mescaleros around there. So the more men we got, the better.”

Iris slammed her hands on the table. “That old man is no protection for us. He’s got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.”

Joe and Sulley looked at each other and laughed. Then Sulley told her, “Li’l lady, age don’t mean nothin’ if a man knows how to use a gun, and from the looks of the one Ben Moseley is packin’, he knows how or he wouldn’t be totin’ somethin’ that big.

“And besides,” he added, smile fading as he swept her with a look of contempt, “what do you want us to do? Tell him he can’t go because you might not have enough room for your uppity little butt?”

Iris’s brows crawled into her hairline. “Why, why…” she sputtered, “how dare you talk to me this way? My father is a prominent attorney. He’ll see to it you lose your job, and—”

“And a high-falutin’ back east lawyer don’t mean beans to us, lady.” Joe stuck the fatback in his mouth and spoke around it as he chewed. “And you’d best watch that smart mouth of yours or we might just leave
you
.”

Tess pretended to dab her mouth with a napkin to hide her smile.

Iris bolted to her feet, the chair tipping backward with a loud clatter as she cried, “You’ll regret this.”

She ran from the room.

Joe looked at Tess. “I hope this won’t make things worse for you.”

Tess assured him she was used to Iris’s sharp tongue. “I just feel sorry for Mr. Moseley.”

“Oh, Ben can hold his own,” Joe assured. “He’s a peppery old coot.”

And “peppery old coot” was an apt description of Ben Moseley, Tess quickly learned…as did Iris.

He was old, but agile, with kind eyes framed by bushy white brows which matched the beard that covered most of his face and the long, flowing hair that hung down his back.

He was dressed in denim pants, a blue muslin shirt, felt hat, and boots—and a cartridge belt with a holster strapped over it that held the biggest gun Tess had ever seen.

“Ladies,” he said with a wide grin as he took off his hat and gave a little bow before climbing up into the stage, “I’m real pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m Ben Moseley.”

Iris had situated herself in the middle of the seat on one side, spreading her skirt to indicate there was no room for anyone else.

Tess moved over for Ben as she introduced herself and, when it was obvious Iris had no intentions of doing likewise, added, “And this is Miss Bonaventure. She’s traveling all the way east to New York. I’m going to Dallas.”

“Dallas, eh?” He settled back. “That’s a fine town. You got a husband there?”

“No. I hope to buy myself a ranch,” she said proudly. She did not miss how the corners of his mouth twitched, as though he was endeavoring to be polite and not break into laughter.