A Fire in the Blood (14 page)

      
Lissa blushed as she drew herself up, trying to appear affronted, yet pleased that she had finally succeeded in eliciting a response. "You were yelling perfectly awful things at me. Naturally I lost my temper, too."

      
"Naturally."

      
"Strange, I don't ever recall there being an echo out here on the open plains," she teased. "Are you going to race your black?"

      
He sighed. "You never give up. No, I'm not risking my neck or Blaze's in a fool race."

      
"Fool race!"

      
"Now who's an echo?"

      
"Surely you aren't afraid of taking a little tumble? All the boys join in the fun."

      
"I'm not one of the boys, in case you hadn't noticed," he said drily.

      
"No, you certainly aren't," she replied crossly. "Don't you ever have fun, Jess?"

      
Thoughts flashed into his mind of the preceding night, which he had spent with Cammie, and he coughed discreetly, hiding his smile behind his hand. "Yeah, every time I get a chance."

      
A rider on a showy white stallion appeared on the horizon. As he approached them, he doffed his expensive, high-crowned hat and waved it with a flourish at Lissa.

      
"It's Yancy!" Lissa waved excitedly, seeing a chance to make Jess jealous. Yancy Brewster was the foreman at Diamond E, a tall, rangy man with light brown hair and regular features. He was considered quite a charmer by the local females, and he had made no secret about courting Lissa at every opportunity. If forced to choose between Lemuel Mathis and Yancy, she would probably choose the older man, who was more amenable and indulgent. Yancy was full of himself and intent on running his women much as he ramroded Cy Evers's ranch hands.

      
For the moment, Lissa ignored that and bestowed on him a dazzling smile as he reined in beside her. "Good morning, Yancy. I was just telling Jess about the rodeo. Oh, forgive my bad manners. Jesse Robbins is the new stock detective Papa hired—from Texas. Jess, meet Yancy Brewster, ramrod of the Diamond E."

      
Brewster appraised Jess as he skillfully maneuvered his horse between Jess and Lissa. "Heard all about you, Robbins. The baddest fellow west of anyplace east," he said. His hazel eyes had a hard glint to them.

      
Jess only nodded and would have pulled away. Brewster's question brought him up short.

      
"You're a Texan. Secesh?"

      
"My father was Union Army during the war." Jess did not elaborate.

      
"I never heard of Federals from Texas," Lissa said curiously.

      
"There weren't very many of us," he replied grimly.

      
“It must have been hard on your family." She was dying to know more but did not want to seem overeager.

      
"That why you took up guns?" Brewster asked.

      
Jess stiffened but did not reply. Tension hung in the air as heavy as clouds before a thunderstorm until Lissa changed the subject back to the upcoming rodeo. "I was trying to get Jess to enter some of the contests. His black might just give you some competition, Yancy."

      
Brewster appraised Blaze dismissively, then patted his white's thickly muscled neck. "Thunderbolt's never been beat. Course, I never raced against an Indian. Hear you boys are good," Brewster said with a cool grin that dared Jess. "I might just make you a side bet—if you think you got a chance."

      
Jess sensed that the animosity from Brewster was because of Lissa. The foreman was the sort most white women thought handsome, and he was used to winning. How the hell was he going to defuse this mess? Jess cursed as he observed Brewster's smirk. No matter what he did, the bastard would be laying for him until they settled matters. He did not need the grief he would inherit if he killed the troublemaker.

      
Sighing, he looked Brewster in the eye and replied, "You want a race, ramrod. You got a race." Maybe it would be a way to observe the hands and listen to their casual banter without having any of them suspect he was there looking for rustlers.

      
"How much you want to bet, Robbins?"

      
Jess shrugged negligently. "Let's make it interesting. Say, a month's pay—two hundred fifty dollars." He knew even a top ramrod only made around a hundred and fifty a month.

      
Brewster blanched imperceptibly, then grinned at Lissa and replied, "Done. Miss Lissa, you hold our markers."

      
The Diamond E was a big spread. Not as big as J Bar, but impressive nonetheless, with a wide, low ranch house made of dressed lumber weathered to the color of rich tobacco. The bunkhouses were almost identical to J Bar's, but the corrals were not as well laid-out or numerous. The mid-roundup break was traditionally celebrated by a rodeo alternating between the two largest ranches in the southeast part of the territory.

      
As this year's host, old Cy Evers and his daughter Cridellia presided over the festivities, welcoming the cowboys from all the surrounding spreads. A festive air pervaded the gathering, and the spicy, mouth-watering aroma of several whole barbecued steers wafted on the warm summer breeze. Vinegar Joe worked with the Everses' cook, Sourdough Charlie, stirring a huge iron kettle of beans. The two cooks had drafted a number of the junior hands to assist, pitting cherries for pies and scrubbing the mountains of pots and pans dirtied in preparing for the feast.

      
Cy greeted the arrivals heartily, then ushered them to the cook's big tent set up between the mess hall and bunk house, where they drank scalding, inky coffee, talked, and joked as they waited for the contests to begin.

      
Cridellia Evers was a mousy little woman with prim lips that rarely smiled and slightly popping eyes. She blinked her pale lashes nervously as she watched the crude men assemble for their rough-and-tumble exhibitions. She was dressed in a paisley blouse and heavy twill skirt with a bustle. The dark purple shade did not flatter her sallow complexion and light brown hair.

      
Beside the fiery Lissa, clad in a butternut brown riding skirt and clear yellow blouse, poor Cridellia looked like a molting purple wren. The young women were the only daughters of the two wealthiest ranchers in the basin, and as such had been continually thrown together since early childhood. When Lissa had been sent East to school, Cy had kept Cridellia at home, where her mother Ethel had educated her as best she could before passing to her reward several years earlier. If Dellia and Lissa were not friends, they at least held their rivalry at bay in front of their doting fathers.

      
"The bustle on your skirt is all the rage back East, Dellia," Lissa said as they sat together on a small bench placed just in front of the big corral where the first contests would be held. Lissa forbore mentioning how uncomfortable and inappropriate the drawing room outfit looked at a dusty corral.

      
Dellia smoothed her skirts and wriggled her bottom discreetly, trying to seat herself more comfortably with the bustle shoved over the backside of the bench. "Papa almost had a seizure when he got Charlene Durbin's bill for making the skirt," she replied smugly. Her eyes rolled like a calf's at a branding fire when she talked, an unfortunate habit she had never been able to break. Searching the crowd, she fastened on Yancy Brewster, watching him exchange some bawdy joke with two other hands. "Yancy rode out to meet you," she observed. "I imagine he wanted to get a look at your pa's half-breed gunman," she added more casually.

      
"Jess and Yancy made a bet on the horse race. I think Yancy might lose this year."

      
"No, sir! Yancy always wins," Dellia declared. She looked over at the gleaming black stallion with the blaze face and his owner standing next to him. "Emmaline Wattson told me you were taken with the gunman." Her eyes protruded even further from her thin, sallow face as she studied Jesse Robbins.

      
"I'm not taken with him." Lissa smiled puckishly, then added, "But he is sinfully beautiful, isn't he?" She loved giving Dellia apoplexy.

      
Her companion almost swallowed her tongue. "I hope your pa doesn't hear you talking this way. He'd marry you off to Lemuel Mathis so fast everyone in Cheyenne would be counting on their fingers."

      
Lissa laughed to cover her revulsion at the thought of Lemuel's thick blunt hands touching her intimately. "I'm not going to marry Lemuel."

      
"If your pa takes a notion, you will. My pa's already talking about giving Diamond E to Yancy someday—when he marries me, of course," she added hastily. "Men decide those things. We don't."

      
"I'll choose my own husband. And it won't be a man who wants me just for my papa's ranch either."

      
Dellia stiffened at the implied insult, but before she could respond, Cy signaled one of his hands to bang on the cook's big wash pot. Everyone quieted when Evers began to speak.

      
"I'm happy as a spotted pup in a new red wagon to see all you boys here for some fun afore we head on back to finish up this here roundup. First event is calf ropin'. All you top hands, come on 'n bring yer best ketches with you."

      
The morning progressed through calf roping, wild bronc riding, even a contest between the intrepid hands and a very large ornery mule named Jake Ass, who unseated every rider. Dust billowed while the men cheered and bet openly, and cussed and sneaked liquor covertly so as not to offend the two females. By the time the midday meal was announced, Marcus had arrived. Lissa was relieved to see Lemuel had not returned with him.

      
Her eyes scanned the crowd of rumpled hands in their dusty denims, scuffed boots, and sweaty cotton shirts. Jess stood out among the sea of homely faces and unruly cowlicks. His elegant face was beginning to show just a hint of virile black whiskers, adding to his appeal. Straight thick hair fell against a snowy white shirt of soft lawn that fit indecently well across his muscular shoulders. Unlike the callused hands of the rest of the men with their blackened and broken nails, his were smooth, with long, tapered fingers and clean nails. Everything about him was graceful, quiet, and charged with a dangerous sort of sensuality that drew her like wind plucking rich pollen from

the heart of a high plains wildflower.

      
"There you are, Lissa. I've been looking all over for you. I thought we could share our meal. I fetched you a plate." Yancy held aloft two heaping plates filled with slices of juicy brown beef, rich beans in spicy molasses, and high, fluffy sourdough biscuits.

      
Her first impulse, sensing the murderous look Dellia was casting at her, was to suggest they join their host and hostess and her father, but then she saw Jess watching her and changed her mind. With a blinding smile, she took the ramrod's arm and led them toward the shade of a big cotton-wood tree. "How gallant of you, Yancy." Eating with Dellia always gave her indigestion anyway.

      
Jess saw Lissa's bright curls bounce as she tossed back her head and laughed at some remark by the foreman. He also observed Marcus's scowl and the malevolent expression on the face of that plain little daughter of Cy Evers. "God save me from your scheming, Lissa," he muttered as he sipped some of the bitter black coffee. Too bad Mathis was not here.

      
The next event was the rooster ketch, a sport much loved by Mexicans and Californios, which had spread across the high plains. A large mean old rooster was buried up to his neck in soft sand near one side of the corral. The contestants all took turns riding a full circle around the hapless bird. As they approached, they bent down low, hanging precariously from their saddles, and attempted to pull the snapping, squawking rooster from the sand by his neck, while avoiding getting bitten. Some wore buckskin gloves to protect themselves, which handicapped them when they tried to pluck up the prize. Others went after it bare-handed and came away bloodied.

      
After over two dozen passes, the terrorized rooster was still embedded in the sand when Yancy Brewster prepared for his turn.

      
"Yancy will win," Dellia said smugly, now over her pique with Brewster, who had come solicitously to the family's table after Lissa insisted on sharing dessert with her father.

      
While she and Marcus had talked, the smooth-tongued foreman had quickly brought Dellia out of her sulk, plying her with compliments in a feckless attempt to make Lissa jealous and regain her wandering attention. Once Jess disappeared in the crowd, Lissa had lost interest in the vain, oily Brewster.

      
"Maybe Yancy will win." Lissa shrugged indifferently as the foreman mounted up on one of his cawy, a small fleet gray with a steady gait.

"Yancy'll take that cock—I got me five dollars says so," one hand wagered.

      
"Done. I say he'll end up with his fingers bit jist like the rest," another hand countered.

      
All around the corral, men exchanged bets and cheered or harangued the ramrod. He spurred the sleek little filly into a canter and circled the track, increasing his speed until he drew a roar from the assembly. Just as he approached the prize, he swung one long arm down and seized the rooster, yanking the flapping, squawking bird cleanly from the wet sand, which went flying every direction as he reined in the gray.

      
The bird continued to flap and screech, twisting his thick neck and pecking with a sharp curved beak at the offending fingers choking him until he succeeded in biting Brewster's thumb. With an oath, the foreman dropped the reins, seized the bird in both hands, and wrung its neck with a vicious twist. Grinning, he tossed the dead rooster to the ground and dismounted to the cheers of the crowd.