Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail(36)
“Gentlemen,” she said, her voice hoarse. “May I have another whiskey?”
Skip blinked at her. “You ain’t serious, are ya, Miss Alex?”
“Of course I am serious. An elephant,” she enunciated carefully, “never gives up.”
In that instant Zach knew his life was over. The minute Dusty climbed on that train tomorrow, nothing else would matter, not riding back to Smoke River, not Charlie Kingman, the man he’d come to admire, not savoring Consuelo’s cooking, not even owning his own ranch.
Yeah, he’d worked like an idiot for years, scraping his hard-earned pennies into a mason jar under his bunk and drawing and redrawing plans for his own horse corrals and barns and a ranch house. When he got back to Smoke River he’d by God have enough money to do it.
But somehow, all of a sudden it didn’t matter. Inside he felt empty as a flour barrel. And lonely? Lord God, he missed her already.
Dammit, what he wanted more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life was Dusty.
Curly returned with a second glass of whiskey and set it down in front of her. She looked up, and suddenly Zach saw her eyes go wide and the color drain from her face.
Juan shot to his feet, followed by Skip and then Jase, all staring at something behind him. Zach swiveled around to see what it was, and his gut twisted.
Cassidy.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Howdy, boys,” Cassidy drawled. “Figured you’d get here sooner or later.”
Zach let out a muttered curse, and his men immediately closed ranks around Dusty, screening her from view.
Zach stood up. “What do you want, Cassidy?”
The big-bellied man ignored the question. “Looks like I timed it just right.”
“Just right for what?” Zach snapped. As far as he was concerned, the man was all hat and no cattle.
Cassidy slicked back his overlong brown hair. “Just right for gettin’ what’s owed me.”
“Nothing’s owed you. I paid you off the night you left camp, twenty dollars in gold.”
“Mebbe. See, the way I look at it, you had no cause to run me off like that.”
“Guess I see it differently,” Zach replied evenly.
“Guess you do at that. Now Miss Murray, sure as shootin’ she wanted me to stick around. But you poked yer trail bossy nose into her affairs and—”
“Get out,” Zach ordered.
Cassidy pushed back his jacket and ostentatiously stroked the Colt stuffed under his belt. “Now, I really don’t think you wanna order me outta here, Strickland.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?” Zach kept his eyes on the man’s face, not on the hardware. Even Cassidy wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man. Or would he?
“Well, ’cuz this here saloon’s a public place. I got as much right here as you or anybody else. Now, I figure you owe me some more money, Strickland, so let’s have it.”
“What’d you do with the twenty dollars in wages I gave you?”
Cassidy barked out a laugh. “Had to spend half of it buyin’ a horse off yer wrangler to ride out of camp. Drives a hard bargain, that Cherry does.”
“When you give Cherry back the horse, you’ll get your ten dollars back.”
Cassidy’s close-set black eyes narrowed. “That ain’t the way I figure it, mister.”
“I don’t care how you figure it. I’m telling you to move on.”
“I will iff’n you pay me another twenty bucks.”
Zach gritted his teeth. “I don’t owe you another twenty. I pay my top hands that much, and you’re no top hand.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Move along, Cassidy. I fired you once. Don’t figure on doing it twice.”
Cassidy ran his forefinger over his bristly chin. “Now hold on just a damn minute. I been waitin’ here for more’n a week to see that pretty lady travelin’ with you. Thought she was maybe sweet on me.”
Zach opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Dusty’s voice rose from behind the wall of surrounding cowhands.
“You’re wrong, Mr. Cassidy. This lady was never sweet on you.”
Cassidy blinked. “That you, Miss Murray? Never expected to find you in a saloon.” He made a quick lunge forward and butted Juan away from his protective position in front of her.
“Well, now.” Cassidy grinned when he caught sight of Dusty. “That’s more friendly-like. What’re you doin’ here in a saloon, pretty lady?”
“Research,” came her cool response.
“Oh, right. Plumb forgot you was a newspaper writer. You learnin’ anything interestin’ tonight?”
“Yes, I certainly am. This may be a public place, Mr. Cassidy, but I do not believe you are welcome here.”
“Mebbe. Mebbe not. I’ll mosey on when Strickland here pays me what he owes me.”
“Pay him, señor,” Roberto muttered. “Get rid of him.”
“Hell if I will,” Zach replied.
Cassidy shook his head. “Well, I’ll make you a deal, Strickland. I’ll leave if you let me have one hour with Miss Murray. One hour alone.”
“No,” Zach said, his voice hard. He wouldn’t let this man within twenty feet of Dusty.
“Let the pretty lady answer for herself, why don’tcha? Might be she’d fancy—”
“No,” Dusty sang out. “She wouldn’t.”
“Lissen, there’s a good number of you fellers and only one of me. But...” he patted his Colt “...this one is armed.”
“Señor,” Roberto hissed at Zach’s elbow. “Someone will get hurt. Why you not pay him?”
“Because. That’s—”
“Extortion,” Dusty supplied. She raised her voice. “Besides, I am not the kind of lady who spends time with a man for money. Leave me alone, Mr. Cassidy.”
“Like hell, I—”
On impulse Zach spun toward the man and dropped him with a single punch to the jaw. Then he bent over, yanked the man’s pistol out of his belt and hurled it over the batwing doors into the street. Roberto grabbed the unconscious man’s shirt and Curly gripped his belt; together they heaved Cassidy after his gun.
Quick as a cat, Juan scrambled toward the door. “Not smart to leave angry hombre with weapon.” The cowhand disappeared, then returned within minutes and handed the Colt to Zach.
Dusty stood up. “Gentlemen. Has this interruption stopped our poker game?”
Zach watched her move gracefully past the whole ugly incident to put the men at ease, and he shook his head in admiration. There’d been lots of times in the past month when the woman he’d thought was Charlie Kingman’s citified, pampered niece had surprised him. Tonight was sure no exception.
Settled once more around the table for the poker game, Dusty garnered advice from Skip, seated on her left, and from Juan on her right. Juan pretended he knew nothing about poker, but back at the Rocking K Zach had noticed something. After most of the bunkhouse card games, Juan made a trip into town to visit the Smoke River Bank.
He shook Juan out of his thoughts and leaned back to watch the game. He didn’t worry about Dusty losing money; he just wanted her to have a good time. If she did lose, he didn’t want her to owe money to anyone but him.
So he motioned Juan to deal him in. Later, he decided, he’d visit the sheriff, tell him to keep an eye on Cassidy. Right now, he wanted to play poker.
Nah, he didn’t give a peacock’s hind feather about playing poker. The truth was he just wanted to be near Dusty, stick to her as close as he could get until she got on that train tomorrow.
He laid down the cards Juan dealt him and closed his eyes. God, tomorrow morning the train was going to take her away from him.
“Boss?” Jase jogged his arm. “You okay?”
He opened his lids to see Dusty watching him, her face grave and those blue-blue eyes of hers beginning to shimmer with unshed tears. She knew. She knew what he was feeling and what he was thinking. And she knew how he was hurting inside.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said. His voice came out rougher than he intended. “I’m thinkin’ the sheriff oughta know about Cassidy.”
Dusty caught on to five-card stud pretty fast. So fast that when everyone dropped out of that hand, it ended up being just him and Dusty. “Why, Zach,” she said with a laugh. “I do believe I am learning this game to your disadvantage.”
He just looked at her. Her voice betrayed nothing, but her eyes were full of something that made breathing difficult. In her eyes he saw longing. And pain. He couldn’t hazard a guess about what his own eyes showed.
She came within an ace of beating him out of a big pot. Then, while the hands cheered and hurrahed, she won the next hand. And then the next two hands.
After that, things went all to hell. Dusty cleaned him out. Yeah, he had to work hard to keep his mind on the game, but the truth was she won fair and square. She kept her face set in a perfect poker-player’s bland expression. But her eyes...
He couldn’t stand to look into her eyes.
She scooped in her winnings, practically bouncing up and down in her chair, her eyes as wide as a kid’s at Christmas. Guess she liked winning.
Maybe because his pride was a bit stung after he’d lost the last three hands to her, Zach challenged her to one final hand. “Just the two of us,” he said. “Double or nothing.” If he won, Dusty would forfeit all her winnings, which amounted to around three hundred dollars. If Dusty won, he’d have to write her an IOU.