The Firecracker Gets Her Man (9 page)

“He’s too stupid to know what you are saying. Jeremy was raised by his mother, and she is the most narrow-minded woman in this town. I still say she was never married. No man would be stupid enough to marry that sharp-tongued nag!”

“That’s not true! You take that back, Rachel Waterford!” Jeremy blustered.

“Why should she? She has as much right to lie about you and your mother as you do to lie about her,” Lance said, trying not to grin.

“But, I ain’t lying!”

“Yes, you
are
.” Lance got in the other man’s face. “You
are
lying, Jeremy. And, if you do it again, I’m going to leave and let Rachel have at you with her whip. She would be within her rights. You almost got Doc killed by your self-righteous ways.”

“I didn’t mean to!” he whined, and then he burst into tears.

“Oh, good grief! Let’s go, Lance. I just can’t take any more of him today.” She linked her arm through his, and rested her head on his upper arm. “Thank you for coming to get me,” she whispered. “I lost my darn temper. When I think of how close Papa came to dying because of that fool, I just lost my temper and I was after him in a heartbeat!”

“I understand. Let’s get you home safe and sound.”

“Oh no! Am I in trouble with you?” she asked in trepidation.

“Not this time. I understand you were sorely provoked, honey. Besides, it is really late. I don’t think anyone will see you out here right now.”

“I wouldn’t care if they saw me with you, Lance,” she whispered.

“Well, now, I guess I wouldn’t care about that, either, as long as it wasn’t Jared Cane and his bunch.”

“Misty Feathers will arrive on the stage later today,” she reminded him. “And, if I am right, Jared will try to sneak into town about this time, just so he is here for the fourth and can rob the bank while the town is celebrating.”

“Don’t you worry about it, Rachel. We will see to it that the bank is protected, and I hope to have Cane in custody before the fireworks go off tomorrow evening.”

“I know you will,” she said, and then hurried inside the house and started making coffee.

“I’ll go and let your father know you are home and safe,” Lance said with a smile.

“Sure,” she agreed, rushing around the kitchen while he headed for Doc’s office, certain that is where he would find him.

“Did you find my daughter, young man?” Caleb asked, looking up from his desk.

“Yes, sir, I did. The coffee will be ready soon.”

“Was she after Jeremy?” Doc asked with a knowing smile.

“She was, and I understand why she was angry too. I wasn’t happy with the fool either. He was calling her names, and I promised to shoot him if he didn’t shut up.”

“Oh, I can see you and Rachel going toe to toe at times,” Caleb said, smiling. He motioned towards his patients in the other rooms and said, “Everyone here is quiet; let’s go on and have some coffee and cookies. Arnold should be back soon.”

Arnie came to the back door, stating he didn’t want to wake those who were sleeping. “I heard you went after Jeremy with a buggy whip, Miss Rachel. I’m sorry I missed it.” He started laughing. “He thought I should arrest you. I told him that if Doc had died, I would be arresting him and hanging him as an accomplice to murder. He started blubbering like a little girl, and said he was going to tell his ma and have me fired. I told him to go ahead, and asked if he wanted to wear a badge. He was horrified.”

“I will deal with his mother,” Caleb promised. “This coffee is the best ever, Rachel. You’ll have to forgive me, but I am very tired and need to catch some sleep while everything is quiet. I figure the three of you have plans to make, right?’

“We do, Papa,” Rachel said with a smile.

“We do not,” Lance corrected her as Caleb left the kitchen. “You, little girl, are going to spend the rest of this day inside your bedroom, where you cannot be seen. Ah, ah, ah!” he said, shaking his finger at her. “No arguing with me,” he ordered when it was obvious she was not happy and was planning to protest. “I mean it, little one. This is not the time to push me, either. Arnie and I are going to do our best to keep you safe, and you must do what you are told if that is going to happen.”

“I am not arguing, Lance, but you know I need to be in on arresting Jared Cane. He killed Doctor Merritt. I really need to put him in a cell.”

“It is not safe, my love. You will have the satisfaction of testifying against him in a court of law, and it is your testimony that will see him hanged for murder. That is if you cooperate and stay hidden from view.”

“That is something, at least,” she replied, but she was pouting.

“It is everything, honey. Arnie and I can lock him up, but without your testimony, he would get away with murdering the doctor. We need you, Rachel.”

“All right then,” she grudgingly agreed.

“Do you mean that? Or are you attempting to throw me off guard so you can do as you please?” Lance asked, looking at her.

“I will do as you ask, unless something serious precludes my promise, and then I will need to warn you, or do what I feel is right under the circumstances.”

“Rachel, do I need to put you across my knee right here in front of Arnie?” the ranger asked.

“I would rather you didn’t. I’m sore, Lance. And, I really do intend to keep my promise, but I also know that things sometimes don’t go as we plan, and then I will need to do something that we didn’t count on. Please try to understand. I’m not trying to be difficult.”

“You are sassy, is what you are!”

“No, I’m not! I am agreeing with you.”

“Are you sure?” He teased her, but his dark eyes were very serious.

“Lance, I’m not trying to upset you. I just don’t wish to be accused of breaking my promise to you if things go wrong on this end and I need to come and save your life.”

“What I do not want you to do is to place your life in danger. I am a Texas Ranger; I am sworn to place myself in danger if necessary; you are a pretty lady, and you are not supposed to put your life in danger for any reason. I need to know you are here, safe.”

“I will try to do what you want,” she meekly agreed.

“That is what I want and need to hear. You will stay in your room today, and once we have Jared Cane and Misty Flowers locked up, I will come and free you, and we’ll take in the Fourth of July activities together.”

“I am going to look forward to that, Lance. I do not like to be confined to my room.”

“I wouldn’t like it either, but this way Cane can’t peek into your house and see you caring for patients, or cooking a meal. He will be convinced you aren’t here, and he won’t dare speak to anyone about you without letting them know he is in town.”

“We’ll see. What about feeding everyone?” she asked, worrying.

“Mary will see to that; she offered, honey. She wants you to be safe.”

“That is so nice of her.”

“It is,” he agreed.

“So, what do you and Arnie plan to do?” she questioned.

“We are going to try your plan,” he admitted. “It just stands to reason that Jared will try to sneak into her room tonight. We will be watching, and try to pick him up without anyone being hurt.”

“Very well.” Her disappointment was evident in her lovely green eyes, and in the way she held herself. She really wanted to be there when they captured Jared Cane. She wanted to be right there when he was locked away!

“I know you would like to be there, but I honestly think it best if we do it. Jared Cane is a bit crazy, and we must keep the two of you apart so that you can testify.” They talked a bit more, with Lance making sure to include Rachel as much as possible. He wanted her to be a part of the arrest in that she knew their plan and would feel included, even though she would be safe in her bedroom until it was all over. “Disobey me, little one, and I promise you that if Jared Cane doesn’t get you, I will!”

“There is no need to threaten me, Lance Underwood!” Rachel huffed, thoroughly insulted. “I gave you my promise that I would try and obey you. That is all the guarantee you are going to get. What if Cane sends someone after you and I find out about it? What if something terrible happens and Misty Flowers comes to Papa for help and she confesses something you need to know? Good grief, Lance! It would be just like the Mary situation; you could need to know something!” Rachel was perfectly serious.

“This is where I leave. You take that one in hand, my friend, before she gets us all killed. If ever a woman needed a good tanning, it’s this little gal, and I expect you to do a good job of it. A good wooden spoon works wonders. She’s too fragile for a belting,” Arnie stated. “And you don’t want to make your gun hand too sore that you can’t do your job either.”

“I’ve got it under control, Arnie. Go and get a few hours of sleep. You’ll need them because the town will fill up early with all of the contests going on and the other activities.”

“You’ve got that right. Miss Rachel, you listen to this man. He loves you and he’s tryin’ to keep you alive!” With those final words, Arnie put his hat on his head, and then marched out the kitchen door, preferring to take the alley down to the jail. He was going to sleep on a cot there so he would hear any commotion and be up to handle it.

“You can just stop thinking what you are thinking, Lance Underwood!” Rachel bluffed for all she was worth. It had been stupid of her to mention the Mary situation. He was still aggravated with her for thinking he didn’t know how to read the signs around the site where Clay was found, and for saving his life!

“I am going to do more than think about spanking you, young lady. You do know how to try a man’s patience, and I can see that I am going to wear out my hand on you for the first few years we are married. You are going to test the limits of the word obey every darn chance you get, and I am going to set your sweet butt on fire each and every time you push those limits.”

The only thing to do was run, and Rachel was closer to the door than he was. If she made it to the front steps in the hallway, he wouldn’t dare follow her upstairs to her bedroom, especially with Papa up there! Rachel was on her feet and running in the next second, but before she reached the doorway, Lance caught her. “You let me go, Lance Underwood!” Rachel tried to jerk free, but he was simply too strong, and too used to dealing with criminals. She wasn’t going anywhere unless he released her, and she knew he wasn’t going to do that. “Please, Lance! Don’t!”

“Too late, Miss Rachel.” He sat on the chair she’d been sitting on, and pulled her over his lap. She was wearing a dark skirt and he flipped it right up, along with her petticoats. He then brought his hand down on the seat of her drawers and she gasped in pain and renewed her efforts to free herself. He whacked her again, and she cursed, using a word that his ma had switched him for using when he thought he was much too old for a tanning! “That language just cost you your drawers, young lady. You will not use that word, ever! I’ll cut a switch if you ever do it again, and stripe your bare fanny.”

“No! Don’t you dare do that!” Rachel cried out in shock, anger and outraged dignity as Lance reached beneath her and untied the pink ribbon holding up the delicate garment. All too soon she felt cool air on her bare skin, and she knew her face was burning and red with embarrassment. “No! This is not proper! We are not married!” she whispered, stricken. “What if Papa or Mary comes in here?”

“Then they will see you getting a sound spanking!” he said, and started spanking her delicate skin once more. She cried out in pain each time his hand landed on her pretty butt, and he would be lying if he claimed he wasn’t interested in turning her over and making love to her right here and now. He always did have a fondness for a female bottom.

“Stop, Lance! You are truly hurting me!”

“A spanking is supposed to hurt. Next time you will think before pushing, won’t you?” He spanked her again, and she cried out. Her skin was already burning and hot to his touch, and he knew he couldn’t spank her much longer or she was going to be black and blue. He wanted to lesson her, not harm her. “Get up and go bring me a wooden spoon and we will finish this spanking,” he ordered.

“No! I can’t!” she protested. “It is too embarrassing!” His answer to that was to spank her sit spots until she agreed to get up and get the damned spoon. Rachel’s drawers fell around her shoes, and she simply stepped out of them so she could walk. At least her skirts were covering her naked bottom; she took comfort in the one small blessing.

“Don’t take too long, Rachel, or I will reheat you before I start with the spoon!”

“You are being mean!” she accused.

“I am being firm and giving you to understand that I am a man of my word. Now get back here or your spanking will last that much longer.”

She was determined to dawdle as long as possible – until Lance started counting. That bothered her because she didn’t know what it meant. Was it the number he was going to give her with the dratted spoon? Rachel grabbed the smallest spoon she owned, hoping it wouldn’t hurt so very much, and she walked over to him. He held out his hand, and she wanted to throw it at him and run.

“Don’t do it,” he softly warned. “It won’t go well for you.” He smiled when she handed him the spoon. “Thank you. Now, pull up your skirts and lie across my knees.”

“I c-can’t!” she stammered, tears filling her eyes. “It isn’t right; we aren’t married!”

“Very well,” he conceded. He pulled her over his lap, and then he flipped up her garments giving him a bared target. “I hate to tell you this, honey, but a little spoon like this still stings.” He proved it with several stinging smacks to her sit spots. Rachel was quickly in tears and promising she would obey him. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He then spanked her rounded bottom until she was stinging and on fire. Rachel was sobbing, and saying she was sorry by the time he stopped the spanking and regretfully pulled down her clothing to give her back her modesty.

Rachel didn’t protest when he lifted her and turned her over and sat her on his lap to hold her and offer comfort. She was in pain; her poor bottom burned like she’d backed into a hot stove, and she was truly miserable. What she didn’t understand was why she wanted the one who had caused the pain to hug her and hold her and tell her she would be all right. She needed Lance’s arms around her, comforting her, and making her feel cherished and loved. They sat like that for the next hour and then Lance put her on her feet and said, “I need to go, honey. You get on upstairs and get some sleep. Do your best to trust me,” he said, then kissed her and left.

Rachel looked around, saw the dirty dishes and decided to wash them up, filling the dishpan with the cups and saucers from the table. She hated to wake up and find so many dirty dishes to wash when nothing had been served yet! She filled the pan with hot water from the stove, adding soap, then she picked up her dishcloth and put it in the pan to get it wet again. Just as she started to wash one of the china cups, a large hand containing a chloroform-soaked handkerchief covered her nose and mouth and his other arm held her tightly against his body. Rachel struggled, but that only caused her to breathe in more of the sickly sweet chloroform, and she fell limp in the man’s arms.

* * *

Caleb knocked on Lance’s hotel room door. “Lance! Lance! Wake up!” he called out, not a bit concerned with waking people. He held the record in this town for being woke from a sound sleep at all hours of the night and early morning. The door opened almost instantly, and he could see the ranger was completely alert. “My little girl has been kidnapped! She is nowhere to be found, and I discovered a pan of dirty dishes in the sink with a broken cup on the floor. I also found this!” He held up a handkerchief and warned, “Don’t breathe too deeply. Do you recognize the odor? It is chloroform! She was drugged.”

“Who would have access to chloroform, sir?” Lance asked, trying to think logically and not let fear for his lady overtake him. It wasn’t easy because he was scared to the very bone.

“It can be purchased – or stolen,” Caleb answered. “You told me that Cane killed that other doctor. He probably stole anything he thought he might find useful.”

“Where do you think he could be hiding that is close to town, but not on the regular road? Do you think he could be holed up at the same place the Anderson brothers held Mary?”

“I would think that is the obvious choice. Of course, there is a mine on the opposite side of town, but they were coming from the northeast. They wouldn’t tack another fifty miles, sixty until they circled around town, to go to the mine.”

“I’ll check the ranch where they took Mary. It could be that someone is hoping to get me out of town today, but it won’t take long to go and check it out.” He turned back to the doctor and said, “Please pray, sir. Rachel needs prayer, and so do I, if I am to save her.”

“I would like to come.”

“You would slow me down, sir. You can help by telling Arnie what is happening and that he needs to watch the stage come in. He’ll know what to do.”

“I will do that. Be safe, Lance. Save my Rachel.”

“She is my Rachel too,” Lance said so seriously and with so much pain in his voice that Caleb knew the man loved Rachel deeply, as crazy as it was. He hoped his daughter knew how special this kind of love was, how rare!

* * *

“Damn it!”

“Will you shut up, Parker? I’m tryin’ to sleep!”

“She bit me again.”

“Slap her then, but stop yelling. I want to sleep.”

“Oh, go to hell, Risky. Wait until you try guardin’ ‘er.”

“You must be the stupid ones in the Cane Gang,” Rachel mused aloud.

“We ain’t stupid, girl,” Parker growled.

“You must be; you two were left to guard me while Cane and Misty Flowers are in town to rob the bank. They don’t intend to share that money; they’re planning to take off to Mexico where they can live very well with the proceeds, but not if they have to share.”

“We’re guarding you because he intends to kill you!” Parker argued.

“He’s gonna do you too, bitch!”

Rachel forced herself to laugh. “While his pregnant girlfriend watches? I don’t think so; she would shoot him in the back while his britches were down around his knees.”

“Misty sure wouldn’t like it,” Parker agreed, and then asked, “What you think, Risky?”

“I sure ain’t stupid,” but the doubt in his voice was working in Rachel’s favor.

“You two need to get away from here while you can,” she said quietly. “There is a Texas Ranger in town and he’s planning to put Misty and Jared behind bars. He knows they are there, and that they intend to rob the bank.”

“How could he know that?” Risky’s chair landed on four legs so that he could look at her.

“Because your esteemed leader and his girlfriend made their plans in the doctor’s office where he went for treatment for his gunshot wound. They forgot I was in the office, and the doctor sent me away and they didn’t know that when they killed him. I heard what happened and hid from him, and that is why he had you two fools kidnap me.”

“He told us it was so’s you could nurse us if one of us got shot up!” Parker told her. “He didn’t say nothin’ about you bein’ there…” He looked at Risky. “I think she might be right. He ain’t gonna share that money with us after doin’ the job himself.”

“He don’t want ‘er here to tend us either. He intends to kill ‘er ‘cause she done saw him and can pin murder on ‘im.”

They scrambled to their feet and then whispered between themselves. “We ain’t gonna kill ya, girl. You saved us, but we cain’t let you go, either. We’re real sorry.” They were gone within minutes, and “goin’ home,” wherever that was.

Rachel was relieved when they left. Now all she had to do was free herself. Her poor bottom was killing her. She’d been tied to the chair for hours, and the spanking that Lance gave her left her hurting something awful. Rachel was going to tell Lance that she did not want him spanking her at all. It simply hurt too much, and the after was even more painful than when it was happening. Of course, when he learned that she didn’t obey him and go straight to her room after he left, she would be darn lucky if he didn’t turn her over his knee again! She really didn’t mean to be disobedient, but her pride got in the way. She didn’t want Mary to find a dishpan full of dirty dishes to start the day.

She finally managed to get her hands free, and she shrugged out of the ropes. She then reached down, untied her feet, and hurried to get away from the house. She didn’t want to take a chance that Jared Cane or Misty Feathers would get away and run here to hide. Rachel was going to need to be careful. She didn’t want one of those two gang members to double back with rape on their mind either. In short, she needed to be very vigilant. She patted her pocket again, and felt a bit comforted by the sharp knife she had taken from the table. Parker left it behind after cutting lengths of rope to tie her to the chair when she regained conscious. Fortunately for her, he laid his knife on the table, and thanks to her papa, Rachel knew how to use a knife and do some serious damage.

She walked toward town, and had only gone a few miles when she heard a horse galloping fast toward her. She quickly hid, and it wasn’t until Lance went past her that she recognized him racing toward the abandoned ranch house. She stepped out and yelled, “Lance! Lance! Stop! I’m over here!”