Lone Star 01 (19 page)

“He don't believe what happened,” Daryl said grimly.

“Now, Daryl, you're givin' Miss Starbuck the wrong impression,” Deputy Oakes replied gruffly. “I ain't deputin' that a wad of steers broke crazy down that gorge, or that a few Block-Two-Dot punchers were trompled. I'm only queryin' the drift you've put on it, is all. Seems to me it's as liable that the men were trying to head off them rustlers behind the cows, or coming in to help you.”

“They were after us, I tell you, aiming to kill us!”

“Well, if they caught you trespassin‘, like you admit, I can't rightly blame them if some tempers got a little het up and—”

“Deputy,” Jessica cut in sharply, “why're you looking for me?”

“Oh, yes, that,” Oakes said with a haggard sigh. “What with this here in the gorge and everythin‘, the day's been kinda discombobulatin'.” He reached into his hat and brought out a rumpled, slightly sweat-stained envelope. “Here, this is addressed to you.”

The envelope had no marks or postage on it, only her name and the words URGENT, DELIVER IMMEDIATELY written on its front, and what appeared to be a knife-slice through its middle. Jessica ripped it open and removed a sheet of onionskin, also cut, and read:

“Horseshit,” Jessica murmured under her breath, then louder, to Deputy Oakes, she snapped, “Where'd you get this?”

“The workmen found it stuck with a knife to my office door, when they went there this morning to rebuild the cells. Gawd, what a mess.” Oakes nervously clutched his hatbrim in both hands. “Can't add more'n that, ma‘am. It's all I know.”

Jessica refolded the note and stuck it back into the envelope, saying to Daryl, “Ryker's got Ki. He wants me to go to the ranch.”

“The bastard! You can‘t, Jessica, it's a trap.”

“Sure it is,” Jessica agreed, nodding. “I know it, and Ryker knows I know it, but he's counting on my coming anyway. I don't have any choice, he thinks, because I don't have any idea where he's got Ki hidden. I'm forced to play his game his way. But Ki isn't at Ryker's place. Ryker's too shrewd to risk a charge of kidnapping. He made sure not to write anything incriminating in his note, but he wouldn't have sent it at all, if he had Ki where he could be found at the ranch. Though that's what he'd like me to believe.” Jessica paused, eyes narrowing, a tight, flinty smile creasing her lips. “But what Ryker doesn't know is that I do know where Ki is.”

Swiftly she sketched the events since she'd discovered the blood-spattered scene of the struggle in the gorge, as the two men listened with mouths gaping in surprise. She told of tracking the broken-shoed horse to the canyon, and described the natural pocket in which she'd located the camp, while Daryl breathed harshly with increasing anger, and Deputy Oakes grew redder in his fat jowls.

“So,” Jessica concluded, “Ryker's note has backfired on him. He's unwittingly answered which of the two places Ki must've been taken.”

“Him and his filthy kidnappers!” Daryl roared furiously. “God knows how long he's had them nesting up there, swooping down like vultures to steal our stock and now people! There you are, Oakes!”

“There I am, what?”

“She's found our rustlers. What're you going to do about ‘em?”

“I, uh ... I suppose a posse, and, uh...” The deputy hesitated, scratching his hair, and then he clapped his hat back on, a crafty glint coming to his eyes. “Hold on, won't do to go off half cocked. I gotta investigate this first, legal and proper. Now, Miss Starbuck, did I hear you admit that this here letter you got don't exactly spell out a kidnapping or ransom demand?”

“No, but it's implied, and Ki was taken by Ryker's men.”

“Your friend may be missing, ma‘am, but did you actually see him being taken, or being held against his will in that camp? And these here kidnappers—can you prove they're Block-Two-Dot men, and if so, that they're following Mr. Ryker's orders? Or that they're the rustlers, who you figure are also working for Mr. Ryker?”

Jessica glared at Oakes.

“No?” he said. “Well, ma‘am, I need evidence 'fore I can organize a posse and go rousting innercent folk. I mean, d‘you have proof the men in the camp are the rustlers? Did you see any stolen cattle with 'em?”

“Of course not. That pocket's too small for much more than their camp,” Jessica replied frostily. “But I've got a strong hunch, Deputy, that maybe you can tell us where those cows are.”

“Me? Not me,” Oakes retorted indignantly. “I haven't any idea who the rustlers are, or what they've done with the stock.”

“You should. It's part of your job, only Ryker's paid you to be blind to it, hasn't he? That's why you could never trace them.”

“Lady, you're loco,” Oakes growled, but his voice was quivering. Sensing that his denials were getting him nowhere, he again tried to attack: “Fact is, I'm thinkin' you're trying to trick me! You're trying to ruin me and disgrace Mr. Ryker, our most prominent citizen, so you can go ahead with your own dirty work!”

“Stop blustering,” Daryl raged. “You're caught.”

“Nope
you're
caught, both of you!” Oakes stepped closer to Daryl, his pudgy hand groping in his hip pocket for his handcuffs. “For trespassin‘, disturbin' the peace, bearin' false witness, and suspicion of havin' a hand in stampedin' them cows—”

Daryl's fist whipped out in a short, pistonlike punch that connected with the deputy's chin. Oakes's head whipped back and he crumpled to the rain-dampened earth, blood oozing from his mouth.

Jessica stooped and snatched his revolver from its holster, while Daryl rolled him over and snapped the cuffs on his wrists.

“There are some spare piggin' strings in my saddlebags,” Daryl said, as he wrestled to lift the mud-splotched deputy onto his horse. “See if you can use them to tie his legs to the stirrups.”

Fetching the strings, Jessica asked, “He's coming along?”

“Yeah, to make some arrests, even if he's in no mind to.”

Oakes, regaining his wits while he slumped in his saddle, glowered and cursed them, swearing to have them both in jail by nightfall. His moro didn't seem to appreciate his language, and started prancing, its tan leggings flashing droplets of the continuing drizzle. Oakes promptly shut up, straining to keep his seat.

“I hope you fall on that fat head of yours,” Daryl told him, then turned to Jessica. “Now let's get to gathering all the hands from my ranch and the Flying W, and then we'll go rescue your friend.”

Jessica, startled, restrained him with her hand. “Please, Daryl, I appreciate your offer, but I can't have all of you risk—”

“Don't you argue, Jessie,” he fumed. “I thought we had this all sorted out last night. You may've come here to make this your fight, and Ki may be the reason you're fighting now. Hell, I like the feller too. But this was
our
fight first, and it goes a lot deeper than just one man—or woman. And by God, I aim to see it finished.”

Jessica nodded and smiled. “All right, offer accepted.”

“Y‘think we should get the other ranchers in on it?”

“Frankly, I don't. If you're determined to do this, then it'll take too much time to reach them, explain, and get their crews together. Besides, we'll have enough men to surround the rim of the pocket and cover the entrance hole. The rustlers don't realize it, but if we can hold them down in there, they're virtually sitting ducks.”

Daryl mulled it over for a moment, then said with a frown, “Listen, I'd better warn you, and if you don't like it, you'd better say no. Way I see it, it's going to be a fight to the death, no quarter given. If we bottle them up like you say, and knock them all to hell an' gone, Ki is liable to get hurt permanent-like.”

“Daryl, Ki is either already dead—and as you told me last night, dead's dead—or he's being kept locked in someplace. And if that's the case, what we've got to do is attack so swiftly and surprisingly that the rustlers won't have a chance to bring him out and use him as a hostage. They'll be too busy fighting us.”

“Well, I still figure his odds stink.”

“Maybe so, Daryl, but they're worse every other way. If we tried to simply ram through the pocket's entrance, we'd suffer awful losses, and never reach Ki in time. If we do nothing, eventually he'll be killed anyway, and if I do what Ryker's note demands, it'll only result in my dying with him. I know Ki; given a sliver of a chance, he can take care of himself better than any man alive. And I also know that this is the way Ki would want it.”

But she was equally aware that Daryl was right—this was a frightful risk to take. If Ki wasn't gunned by the rustlers in retaliation or panic, he could just as easily be caught in the murderous crossfire that the two crews would be pouring down into the pocket. That is, if Ki was still alive—if Ryker's cutthroat gang hadn't already slaughtered him out of sheer cussedness.

Chapter 14

Ki was very much alive.

And he was feeling more alive with each passing moment. He was in trouble, but it was trouble he'd been figuring might be turned to his own disadvantage. Daphne Chung was spoiling his chances of that. Just the mere presence of Volpes's willful, mischievous lover was adding a potentially volatile threat he couldn't predict and guard against. Yet he couldn't look on her barely clothed, provocative sultriness and miss the feeling that here was a devastating female whose survival ability was centered between her legs. Her fiery challenge was unspoken, an undercurrent he was determined to defend himself against.

Not that he didn't want her.

That was the problem. He did.

She was staring up at him from where she was slumped beside him on the dirty shed floor. The frightened sheen was dimming from her eyes, and she was watching him with, it seemed to Ki, something like fascination. He expected her to continue tongue-lashing him. He waited, but no more furious outbursts came.

Finally he said, “Stop sulking. If anybody's trapped in here, it's me, not you.” He said it harshly—too harshly, as if directing some of it inward—and instantly relented. “Hell, Daphne, you've got nothing to worry about. When the door opens, you can explain.”

“No, he'll kill me. He owns me.”

“Volpes just wants to scare you into thinking he does.”

“He owns me, Ki. And he's warned me that if he ever catches me with another man, he'll kill me. He means it, he will.”

“A bowl of soup isn't very compromising.”

“In my gown, without getting his permission first, it is. Oh, he'll know the soup was only an excuse, he'll know what I was after.”

“Mind letting me know?”

“I was going to make you promise that if I ... if I released you, helped you escape, you'd take me with you.”

Ki raked her face with a quick, questioning look, and saw that her gaze was intent and pleading. “You vixen, you really were.”

“I certainly was.” Her voice was low and husky with emotion, and made Ki feel warm inside. She caught his arm and tugged him down to sit with her, then leaned over and pressed her lips against his mouth. When he started wrapping his arms around her, she pushed away. “There, you see? Any way I had to, I was.”

Ki felt her warm breath against his face and smelled her womanly fragrance, and read in her anguished gaze the strength of a soul living with a truth that is against it. “Oh, yes, Ki, I'm a passionate girl. I take lots of loving. But you know, all I've ever really wanted was to be liked. I've been pushed down, sat down, thrown down, and upside-downed, but never turned down. Never simply liked for myself. Who could, considering what I am?”

“Don't hate yourself, Daphne. I don't.”

“You do, you don't have to lie. It's too late now, but the worst part is that I'd been waiting for you a long, long while.”

Again, Ki studied her eyes for meaning, and this time she smiled. “That's a silly thing for me to say, isn't it?” she murmured. “When I couldn't have been waiting for you, since I didn't know you existed till late last night.”

“It could do with some explaining, yes.”

“It's not a pretty story.” Her voice was unsteady. “Volpes bought my contract from a house in Salinas. Utah, that is, not Kansas. It cost him a bundle. I was the ... resident virgin, and virgins can make a house a fortune. Anyway, he's always led a gang, long as I've known him. His men change, but it's always the same—thieving, rustling, robbing trains—and he's kept me with him in a dozen different hideouts, getting his money's worth, you could say.”