Devil in Texas(17)

A sodbuster with "cat's eyes and goat whiskers" liked to play poker at a boardinghouse near Silk Stocking Row. The granger wasn't much good at cards, which got him lots of invitations, and his losses were something of a joke in that establishment, since he never seemed able to afford a rut. As a result, he often got served "consolation shots" by the proprietess, a spooky Cajun with red and blue snakes crawling on her hands.

Cass had no trouble recognizing the description of his old friend, Wilma LeBeau. Apparently, Wilma was sheltering Sadie. The question was, why would a money shark like Wilma let Sadie freeload in the casino, instead of earning her keep upstairs?

To learn the answer, Cass left Tito to guard the sleeping Westerfields and reported to Wilma's boarding house around 2 a.m. He could hear piano music and husky laughter behind the secret, sliding door of the pantry. That's where Wilma's long-time bouncer, Cotton, had bid him and Collie to wait. At any hour of the day or night, a man could drink, gamble, and rut to his heart's content at Wilma's place.

The exception, of course, was a man who'd been saddled with a sullen 17-year-old and a felonious coon.

"I still don't see why we had to stop at a bathhouse first," Collie groused, folding his arms in a huff. "I dunked my head in a stream last week, when Vandy caught us a trout."

Cass rolled his eyes, not bothering to dignify the kid's objection.

Scrubbed down, combed back, and sporting his cleanest duds, Collie frowned. He was glaring up at pantry shelves lined with spice tins and bottles. "What kind of brothel is this, anyway? They have a pond in the kitchen, but no liquor in the cupboard?"

"That pond is a basin swarming with mudbugs," Cass retorted, slapping Collie's hand away from a bottle labeled, Cooking Sherry. "Vandy's lucky he didn't get his tail snipped when he tried to fish one out."

The coon whined from the knapsack slung over Collie's shoulders. After the mudbug incident, Cotton had ordered the boy to stuff his pet in this leather prison.

Collie snorted. "Vandy's not afraid of a few foreign crawly fish."

"The term's crawfish, pal. And a crawfish is the least of your worries if you steal that Voodoo woman's liquor. Wilma will roast your balls. Then she'll sic her ghosts on you!"

"Bring 'em on," Collie retorted loftily. "I got more dead kin than most, and my spooks would make you look like an altar boy, Snake Bait."

At long last, the secret panel whispered open and Cotton waved them into a lavish, red-velvet parlor. According to the gossip at Boomer's Barbershop, Wilma's girls were the finest in Lampasas—which had come as a surprise to Cass. The last time he'd visited Wilma, her Dodge City brothel had been a watering hole for common cowboys and buffalo hunters.

But now, as Cass surveyed the room, he had to admit that Wilma had moved up in the world. Her bevy of high-class bawds lounged in skimpy silks in various come-hither poses on elegant sofas and chaise lounges. Some girls smoked cigarettes from long, black holders. Others sipped crystal glasses with sparkling champagne. Not a one of them would have suffered a man who chewed tobacco, stank of sweat, or scratched his balls. In fact, those yahoos never made it past Cotton.

The whisper of taffeta, followed by a murmur from the men, heralded Wilma's appearance on the second-story landing. Smoldering like a coal in her sheath of shimmering scarlet, she stood above the cigar smoke, surveying the crowd with cagey eyes that were nearly as dark as the blue-black corkscrews piled so elegantly on top of her head. No man had ever claimed Wilma for his own; Cass suspected even her most ardent admirers were slightly afraid of her reputation as a Mambo. Just mention "mojo" or "gris-gris" to any man who claimed to be head-over-heels in love with her, and that gentleman would toss back a shot and change the subject.

At last, Wilma's eyes rested on Cass. She flashed a sultry smile that would have made the limpest pecker stand up and salute. Graceful to the point of hypnotic, she descended the staircase, sauntering around a curve. The slit of her gown rose practically to the apex of her thighs. Grangers, ranchers, politicians, and merchants gawked with lust-glazed eyes, hoping to glimpse private parts that could cost a cowboy a year's worth of wages—and that was on a night when Wilma was feeling philanthropic.

Cass grinned, viscerally aware that her enticing sashay was raising the temperature of every man in the parlor. He crossed to the foot of the stairs.

"Cass," she drawled in her molasses-thick accent. She halted one step above him, playacting the Queen of the Sex Vixens to the hilt. "It has been too long, cher." She extended a hand.

Cass gallantly raised it to his lips.

"Ah, you have brought new friends for me to love. Who is this handsome devil?"

Collie reddened to the roots of his lanky blond hair.

"The handsome one's the furry bandit with the mask," Cass said drolly.

Amusement warmed Wilma's eyes. She lavished her loins-stirring smile on Collie. "I hold a special place in my heart for beasts," she murmured—which might have been a double entendre. With Wilma, it was hard to tell. Everything that came out of the woman's mouth sounded like sex. Her husky, Louisiana alto could say something as innocuous as, "I like buttered toast," and the wickedest images would plague a man's mind.

Cass adored her.

Collie, however, was out of his league. When Wilma's bold, measuring gaze fastened on his fly, he got so flustered, he nearly spilled Vandy to the carpet. Mumbling something that sounded like, "Bourbon," he fled for the nearest, liveried waiter.

Wilma's chuckle was low and husky. "Surely the boy's not a virgin. Not in your care."

"You'd have that effect on Casanova."

"True." Wilma's dimples peeked as she placed a bejeweled hand on his sleeve.

They strolled across the gold-and-crimson geometrics of the Aubusson carpet, making small talk, chatting amicably about Dodge, Lampasas, and mutual acquaintances. The latter topic inevitably led to Sadie.

But Cass knew better than to ask where his Texas Tiger had holed up. He hadn't earned the nickname, Coyote Cass, because he was in the habit of letting a woman make a cat's paw of him. His job was to distract and to decoy, while his secret weapon, Collie, prowled the premises with his weasel ears.

Since Wilma's secret parlor had no windows or balcony for romancing, Cass escorted her to a red-velvet settee behind potted palms.

"And now I can give you your present," he teased affectionately, drawing a small pouch from his vest pocket.

Her eyes lit up, as he knew they would. "But your company is present enough, cher," she cooed gamely.

"Aw. You always know how to make a fella feel special."

As a point of pride, Cass never paid for a bawd's services. Wilma never gave away a rut for free. After haggling like fishwives a couple of times back in Dodge, they'd finally agreed on a wager. If he could get her to scream his name just once in ecstasy, he could have his pick of the bawds in her house if—and that was a big "if"—the lady was agreeable.

That "wager romp" with Wilma had nearly killed him. He'd had to work for six unholy hours at his task, which had rendered him incapable of sitting astride a saddle, much less walking without a limp, for two days. However, he'd learned things about pleasure that he, in his 18-year-old arrogance, had never dreamed might happen between a man and a woman.

After that night, Cass had started a tradition. Each new droving season, when he would show up at Wilma's house for the first time, he would bring her a present—not because he had to, but because he liked to give pleasure to women.