Devil in Texas(34)

Besides, a Ranger, who roamed the state risking bullets every day, had no business siring rugrats when he couldn't be home, protecting the ones he loved.

Cass drew a ragged breath at the notion. Tonight was as close as he had ever come to being a real Ranger. He didn't want anything to go wrong on his watch. He had a lot to prove, now that he'd been exonerated and was working for a senator.

That's why he'd taken extra care at dinnertime, when he'd visited the Barleycorn Saloon on Western Avenue. He'd acted as civil and cordial as a fella in chaps could be while visiting a taproom full of cowboy-hating sodbusters. He'd even bought the house a round of drinks to loosen tongues and win allies.

But charm only went so far when roostered rednecks were itching for a cockfight. He'd no sooner coaxed a sweet, young Mexican girl, named Marisol, to confide how her brother, Joaquin, had shined the shoes of a mean-spirited homre with notches on his six-shooter, when a brute in a sack coat grabbed her arm and yanked her away from Cass's table.

"I don't like my ruts to stink of cow," the redneck announced with a sneer.

"I am a dancing girl, Seňor O'Shaunessy!" Marisol protested, trying to wrench her arm free of her captor's ham-sized fist. "Let me go!"

Cass smiled pleasantly, rising with his whiskey bottle. "Seňorita Marisol asked you kindly, amigo. Don't make her ask again."

O'Shaunessy curled his lip at Cass's pale gold hair and honey-colored tan. "I don't take orders from Greasers. Especially albino ones."

"Good thing I'm Irish then." Cass winked.

O'Shaunessy roared, taking a swing. Cass ducked, grabbing the bully's arm, twisting it behind his back, and using O'Shaunessy's momentum to slam his face into the table. Cass didn't need much strength to pin O'Shaunessy there, not after smashing the whiskey bottle for a weapon. He let the amber glass scratch blood from the redneck's throat.

"Now then," Cass instructed in that same pleasant tone. "I believe you owe Seňorita Marisol an apology. Let's hear it, amigo, lest I remember where I hid my Peacemaker."

"You mustn't trust him, seňor," Marisol whispered urgently, pointing at a suspicious lump under O'Shaunessy's sack coat. "He has a six-shooter!"

"Well, lookie there." Cass relieved the redneck of the .45 poking from his waistband. "Little notches. And they look like steers."

"It ain't even loaded!" O'Shaunessy wailed.

"Yeah? Well, mine is. Start talking if you don't want your ass used as target practice."

Cass sighed at the memory. Like he'd assured Poppy earlier in the week, most gun-toting chuckleheads strapped on firearms for show. O'Shaunessy fell into that category. The redneck had practically peed his pants at Cass's threat. That's why Cass believed O'Shaunessy's claim that he knew no other "mean-spirited hombre" with a notched six-shooter.

Marisol had tried to help by describing a brown-eyed, brown-haired, brown-bearded customer of Joaquin's. The features she'd listed could have belonged to any one of hundreds of men in Lampasas. But when she'd described how the hombre had rendezvoused with a gaunt, stoop-shouldered man with a crab-apple face, Cass had suspected Pendleton. Marisol swore up and down that Pendleton had passed the hombre a sack of money.

Maybe Collie's suspicions about Pendleton aren't so far-fetched, after all.

Cass's jaw hardened as he remembered how the hombre—or rather, the sniper—had escaped from the livery. He couldn't let the bastard elude him again. But recognizing an assassin at a public gala in Hancock Park wouldn't be easy. Little more than starlight and paper lanterns were available to illuminate the faces of the crowd.

Cass scanned the white folding chairs, marching like well-heeled soldiers across the sun-beaten grasses that surrounded the pavilion. A dozen suffragettes with wildly waving fans had taken refuge in the shade with their perspiring beaux, but most of the highbrow couples were congregating under hardy live oak trees or golden cedar elms, rather than strolling through the field of wilting, yellow daisies near the boardwalk. Unfortunately, a dry heat couldn't be eluded anywhere during a Texas drought, even after dusk.

The conductor of the Grand Park's orchestra was swinging his arms with great gusto, and his blue-liveried musicians were fervently playing the kind of ruckus mostly heard in opera houses. Cass didn't know Mozart from Bach—or Bach from Stephen Foster, for that matter. But he did know a two-bit killer could clean up as good as any dude in a top hat.

And Sadie should know that too.

That's why Cass had half a mind to walk over to that stage, tear down the handbill with her golden-eyed portrait, and cry fraud. Or thief. Or something that would make Sid lock her up out of harm's way.

Yes, Collie was right. Caring makes me a fool.

But Cass couldn't shake his worry that Sadie was in danger. Why else would she go to such lengths to disappear, creating a multitude of identities with beards, spectacles, and wigs?

Did the sun fry her brain? What can she possibly be thinking, to let her face get plastered all over Hancock Park for some stupid music recital?!

"You got cotton in your ears, boy?"

Cass's neck heated. Apparently, Baron had asked him a question.

"Uh... reckon I was scanning the crowd for snipers, sir."

Baron laughed good-naturedly, clapping Cass's shoulder. Despite his show of good spirits, the senator was having trouble disguising his affliction. His swallowtails looked more like a sack suit on his diminishing frame. According to his doctors, who'd posed a variety of uncertain diagnoses, Baron's weight loss was probably due to a faulty liver.

Poppy claimed that sex, whiskey, and tobacco were the real culprits.

At any rate, Lampasas's famed mineral baths didn't appear to be leeching the poison from Baron's blood. And that could be bad news for cattlemen, especially if Baron withdrew from the election.

"Fess up, boy," Baron ribbed him, twirling his handlebar mustachios. "You were scanning the crowd for pretty faces."

"Naw." Cass grinned at Baron's lampoon. "I wouldn't stand a chance against Coon Collie, here."

The boy shot him a withering look. As usual, Vandy was frisking at Collie's heels, acting adorable, and earning coos from eyelash-batting belles. Vandy was a skirt magnet. Cass didn't understand why Collie didn't have at least one female trotting after him like a puppy on a string.

As if on cue, Collie growled in his usual, surly manner, "That churnhead of a clerk refused to give me the tickets. He claimed the front row is sold out."

Cass arched an eyebrow at the stretch of seats in question. Huddled beneath long ropes of orange and yellow lanterns, in honor of the Halloween season, the chairs were pinned with paper signs, each scrawled with the word, Reserved.

"I'm sure Mr. MacAffee did his best," Poppy said to her husband, her tone suggesting that Collie's best would never be good enough. "But you can hardly blame the clerk for refusing to believe that a youth of his... er, proclivities was running an errand for a senator. The chef at the Globe Hotel made such a ruckus over that stolen-trout incident, Mr. MacAffee's coon made the headlines—which is more than I can say for your campaign, dear. Perhaps you should get a coon to steal a trout."

"Cranky already?" Baron hiked an eyebrow at his wife, whose elegantly piled curls barely came up to his chin. "Did you remember to take your medicine?"

"Did you?" she fired back.

Cass winced. Baron wasn't fond of highbrow music recitals, but he was forever looking for opportunities to win votes. According to a rumor on the street, Rexford Sterne and his "plus one" had RSVP'd for this charity event, so naturally, Baron had bought tickets.