Читать книгу The Ranger's Woman - Carol Finch, Carol Finch - Страница 9

R oarke Sullivan pelted down the street of Galveston, hell-bent on his crusade to mount a patrol of capable men to track down his runaway daughter. Of course, he had a pretty good idea where Piper was bound. She had been pestering him for months to retract his decree that Penelope would be forever forbidden from acquiring her share of the Sullivan fortune.

Now, five days after Piper’s disappearance—and he had only received word an hour ago that she had not returned to her position as teaching assistant for the summer session at Miss Johnson’s Finishing School for Women—Roarke had to move quickly. He didn’t know how many days it would take his unruly, independent-minded daughter to travel across Texas, but she had to be somewhere close to her destination by now.

Roarke veered into the city marshal’s office to throw some weight around. Well known in this city, he expected his request to be met immediately.

“I need a posse to track down my daughter,” he said without preamble. “I’m putting you in charge, Drake. After all, I’m partly responsible for seeing to it that you were elected to this position.”

“Your daughter?” William Drake parroted as he drew his feet off the edge of the desk and bounded upright. “Which daughter would that be?”

“The only one I still claim,” Roarke said, and scowled. “I suspect she is headed to Fort Davis. My guess is that she took the train as far as the rails run then hopped a stage. She’s probably traveling under an assumed name so I can’t track her easily. I want you to notify law officials as far west as the telegraph lines run and order the formation of a posse.”

He loomed over the marshal who was a good six inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter. “I want reliable, responsible lawmen. Not two-bit gunslingers with the morals of hounds. I want Piper returned in the same condition she left and her fiancé-to-be damn well does, too!”

His voice boomed across the office and reverberated off the walls. “I am offering a five-hundred-dollar bonus for each posse member that escorts Piper safely back to me. There is another five hundred in it for you if you make the necessary arrangements.”

William Drake snatched up his hat. “Yes, Mr. Sullivan, I’ll get right on it.”

“I want Texas Rangers.” Roarke decided in afterthought. “Never mind about a posse.”

Drake fidgeted with the dingy hat that he had clamped in his hands. “Well, sir, that is not exactly the Rangers’ forte. They are frontier fighters, ya know.”

“They’ve been known to track down and rescue kidnap victims taken by Indians, haven’t they?”

“Yes, sir, but your daughter wasn’t exactly kidnapped, was she?”

Roarke flung his arm in an expansive gesture. “A technicality. We will quibble about that later. Just send the telegram to Ranger headquarters in Austin. I’ll add another five hundred to your bonus.”

When the marshal scuttled off, Roarke expelled an agitated sigh. “Confounded, headstrong female.”

He glared at the visual image that popped to mind. Piper had become as contrary as a mule after he had sent Penelope away without his blessing. And Roarke had paid the schoolmistress plenty of extra money to bring Piper under thumb for him.

Waste of time and money, he fumed as he wheeled around to stalk back down the street to his own office. He could buy, sell and ship merchandise at home and abroad by signing his name to contracts. But damn it, he couldn’t control that impetuous girl of his at all. He had money galore and barrels of influence and prestige. But what good did it do when he couldn’t handle one pint-size female who was the last heir to his vast fortune?

Damnation, he had found Piper the perfect fiancé, too. John Foster hailed from a distinguished family. He had been groomed to take over his father’s merchant business since the age of fifteen. This was to be an exceptional match, the merging of two influential families among the crème de la crème of Galveston society.

Until Piper had defied his wishes and left without notice.

Roarke growled in annoyance as he shouldered his way through his office door. Piper could run, but she couldn’t hide from him, he thought confidently.

Scowling mutinously, Piper eased a foot onto the narrow step to confront the desperadoes. She wanted to bite Cal’s offered hand instead of grabbing hold of it for support. And there was that cool, unflinching stare of his again—the one that indicated that he was nowhere near as rattled and upset as she was.

He should have been, damn his black soul. He had to be in on this!

“Ah, the black widow,” one of the bandits said in stilted English. “We heard you were on board.”

She shot Cal a murderous glare—not that he could see the fire in her eyes. Too bad about that. Now where could these men have heard about her, if not from this no-good, backstabbing gambler?

To her astonishment Cal tossed her a warning glance and discreetly squeezed her hand before he released it.

Now she was completely confused.

“You first, gringo,” the thief wearing fancy silver spurs demanded. “Empty your pockets.”

Cal accommodated by slowly reaching into the pocket of his breeches to retrieve a hefty roll of bank notes, then pulled off his diamond-studded ring.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Silver Spurs taunted as he raised his pearl-handled Colt and aimed it at Cal’s head. “What else ya got that’s of any worth?”

Cal fished into his vest pocket for the expensive watch and a handful of silver dollars. “That’s all I have,” he said. “You’ve wiped me out until someone takes pity and grubstakes me for another poker game.”

Silver Spurs gestured his head—which was concealed by the bandana mask and a wide-brimmed sombrero—to the two hombres riding a roan and a buckskin gelding. “Loot the strongbox while Granny hands over her valuables.”

“I have nothing valuable except sixty years of wit and wisdom,” she insisted.

Silver Spurs snorted. “You’ll have to do better than that, crone. Now hand over your money and valuables before I lose my patience.”

Quinn flinched when the old woman huddled closely behind him and commenced yowling about how she was so terrified that she was about to have a seizure.

“Don’t let them hurt me, Cal!” she shrieked.

“Nobody will be biting any bullets if you cooperate, lady,” Silver Spurs snapped. “Now hurry it up.”

Quinn tried not to show his surprise when he felt Agatha tug on the waistband of his breeches, then drop something down the back of his pants. Then she shuffled sideways to step into clear view of the four outlaws holding them at gunpoint.

“I told you I didn’t have much money,” she gritted out as she opened her beaded reticule. She waved one lone coin in Silver Spur’s masked face. “See? Only one lousy dollar. And if the fright you have given me over one measly coin becomes the death of me, I swear I will come back to haunt you.”

“Agatha…” Quinn muttered warningly.

“What? Just because I’m down to my last dollar and he’s taking it from me doesn’t mean I have to like it. And shame on all of you!” she shouted at the gang at large.

“Agatha—” he began again.

“Scaring an old woman to death like this,” she harrumphed. “If you don’t cease your wicked ways you will all wind up in the seventh circle of hell!”

“Will you please shut up!” Quinn growled, but quietly.

“Fine. I’m shutting up—” Her voice broke off when a shotgun blast erupted from behind the coach, startling the team of horses.

“Hey, boss, come look what we found,” one of the thieves called out a moment later.

Silver Spurs gestured his pistol toward the coach. “You two get back inside, pronto.”

Quinn grabbed Agatha’s hand, but she pushed him ahead of her. No doubt, she intended to block the outlaws’ view so they wouldn’t notice the bulge in the seat of his breeches.

“Some watchdog you turned out to be.” Agatha scowled at the pup that was sprawled out on the seat.

Quinn heard the cackles of delight coming from the back of the stage. Obviously the booty in the strongbox had pacified the bandits.

Six gunshots erupted simultaneously and the stage lurched forward. Harnesses jangled. Horses whinnied. Another round of gunfire sent the team lunging off at a swift pace.

Quinn thrust his head out the window, noting the driver and guard—their arms held high—had been left afoot.

The bandits split up and headed for the hills.

“Damn it to hell,” he muttered as the runaway coach careened around a sharp curve, hurling Agatha against the window frame.

Flinging open the door, Quinn tried to twist around to grab the luggage rail atop the coach. Agatha pulled him off balance and he sprawled backward on the floorboards. Snarling, he stared up at that veil-covered face. He was tempted to rip off that concealing getup so he could give her the full benefit of his irritated glare.

“What is the matter with you, woman?”

“You are not bailing out on me,” she snapped brusquely. “You are in on this scheme, aren’t you?”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Where did you get the idea that I’m part of that outlaw gang?”

“You knew we were about to be robbed,” she hurled in accusation.

“That’s because I have good instincts.”

She scoffed at that and tilted her head to a challenging angle.

“I wasn’t bailing out on you,” he insisted as he lurched to his knees. “In case you haven’t noticed, no one is guiding this coach. Unless you want to plunge off a cliff I need to climb onto the driver’s seat and get control of the horses.”

“Fine, but not until I have my money and valuables back!”

Grumbling, Quinn rolled onto one hip and dug out the heavy pouch that she had stashed on him for safekeeping. “There. Happy now?”

She bobbed her head a couple of times and clutched the leather pouch to her ample bosom.

Muttering at the woman’s obsession with her worldly possessions, Quinn plunked onto the seat and hurriedly strapped on his holsters. He couldn’t track those desperadoes until he stopped this stage and grabbed one of the horses. Agatha, insisting on retrieving her precious valuables, had cost him several minutes he didn’t have to spare. Those bandits could be miles away before he went after them.

Clamping a hand on the luggage rack again, Quinn leaned out to survey the road ahead of them. “Son of a bitch!”

He recoiled the instant before the opened door crashed into an outcropping of rock on the narrow trail. The door was ripped off its hinges and it shattered to pieces against the stone wall beside them.

Quinn collapsed on the seat and gripped the window frames on either side of him. He stared solemnly at the old harridan. “Agatha, if you’re a religious woman, I suggest you start praying. Now.”

“Why?” Her voice was wild with alarm.

He nodded his ruffled head toward the open doorway. “Take a look for yourself.”

She grabbed the window frame and peeked out. “Good God!” she howled in dismay.

“My sentiments exactly. And it’s been nice knowing you…sort of.”

The mountain pass they were traveling at breakneck speed had opened into a yawning canyon where the ledge plunged at least a hundred feet straight down. It would take only one wheel dropping off that unprotected curve in the road to send the coach plummeting off the cliff. No way could Quinn scramble atop the stage to gain control of the horses on such a dangerous bend of the road. All he could do was hold on for dear life and encourage Agatha to do the same.

The coach jostled and rocked on its springs. Fallen rock must have littered the path because the stage bounced violently. He and Agatha were simultaneously launched upward and tossed off balance.

The pup howled and cartwheeled onto the floorboards.

Timber cracked and shattered. Quinn had the sickening feeling that the front left wheel had broken into bits beneath them because the coach spun wildly, then tilted to a precarious angle.

“We’re going to die!” Agatha squawked as the swaying coach sent her lurching headfirst into his lap.

Quinn let go with one hand to grab hold of the nape of her gown, then jerked her up beside him. He felt the horses’ momentum swinging the wrecked coach into a hapless skid. It rocked sideways, teetered off balance for a few unnerving seconds…and then wham!

The coach crashed onto its side, hurling the occupants against the opposite wall. Quinn made a wild grab for Agatha when she toppled over him toward the broken door. There was nothing beneath the opening except a wide expanse of nothingness, a craggy tumble of rocks on the mountainside and a swift-moving stream riddled with white-capped rapids.

Agatha screamed bloody murder as she dropped through the opening, held aloft only by Quinn’s death grip on the neck of her gown.

Dust rolled around the confines of the coach, filling his eyes. Agatha’s terrified screams blasted his ears and his pulse hammered so hard in his chest that he could barely draw breath.

One false move, one careless shift of weight and the coach would be taking the short way down the mountain.

Quinn kept a stranglehold on Agatha while her legs churned to find solid footing. He could have told her she was wasting energy because there was nothing but air beneath her.

Carefully, he inched his legs farther apart without shifting to a position that would alter the perilous balance of the coach. Quinn hauled in a steadying breath. He had been in dozens of hair-raising scrapes through the years. But this one tested his mettle to the limits.

If he tried to save himself it meant that he had to release his hold on Agatha. Pain in the patoot that she could be at times, he didn’t relish the idea of watching her body bounce from one outcropping of stone to another until she hit rock bottom.

He really wished he could see her face, wondered if she had made peace with the world…just in case. But there was that damn veil standing between him and this cantankerous old crone that he found himself liking for reasons he was at a loss to figure out.

Quinn kept remembering the sound of her grating voice hurling curses at Silver Spurs, vowing to come back and haunt him in the afterlife. He figured if his tenuous grasp on Agatha slipped, she would be cursing him all the way down the mountain. That was one ghost he wouldn’t want breathing down his neck till the end of his days.

He swore colorfully when he heard the shoulder seam of her gown rip loose and saw her drop a quick six inches. She was staring death in the face. Knowing her, she would have something mean and nasty to say about that, too.

Gritting his teeth, Quinn tried to figure out how in the hell he and Agatha were going to get out of this mess alive.