Lone Star 04 (2 page)

“Very pleased to meet you,” said Torgler, in a mellifluous voice Ki had fully expected. He thrust out a strong hand, and Ki grasped it. “Miss Starbuck and I were just passing the time. Devilishly hot, isn't it?”

“Yes it is,” said Ki. He felt the man's eyes all over him, and took the opportunity to do some searching of his own. Something was there, but it eluded him for the moment. Torgler was good at hiding what he didn't want seen—and that in itself told Ki a great deal.

Torgler stood and nodded at Jessie. “Ma‘am. It's been a pleasure. I hope your stay in Kansas is most rewarding.”

“Well, thank you, sir,” smiled Jessie. “I've truly enjoyed your company.” Without another look at Ki, he walked quickly out of the compartment and disappeared.

Ki slid into a seat across from Jessie. Jessie looked at him and raised an inquisitive brow. “Well now. What was all
that
about?”

“All what, Jessie?”

“All right,” she grinned, “don't go Oriental on me, Ki. You know very well what.”

Ki shrugged. “I don't like the man, Jessie.”

“Didn't much care for him myself, but I think he's likely harmless.”

“Why
^?
”

“Why what?”

“Why didn't
you
like him?”

Jessie closed one eye in thought. “Oh, he's a little too ... what? Confident. Sure of himself. Nothing wrong with that, but Mr. Torgler makes too big a thing of it.”

“Ah,” Ki brightened. “Exactly.”

Jessie studied him closely. “You're going somewhere with this, aren't you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He quickly related his encounter with the two men between the cars, and what he'd done with them.

Jessie listened, then let out a sigh. “I don't think there's anything else you could've done, Ki. And as you say, they brought it on themselves.” She looked past him, squinting into the late afternoon. “And you think maybe there's a connection, right? That it has something to do with our business?”

“There's no way to tell. This is not the first time I've had to, ah,
explain
my Oriental heritage. And there is no reason to connect those two with Torgler. Except a look I didn't care for. Oh, I did go through their clothing. There was nothing to connect them with our business.”

“‘Course, if they're mixed up with our European friends, there wouldn't be,” Jessie said shortly.

“No, there wouldn't.” Ki shook his head. Something about Torgler kept tugging at the back of his mind. Jessie had noticed it too. Ki's old teacher, Hirata, had put it into words long ago, and now Ki remembered. It is easy to spot a bruise on an apple. But what of the fruit that is rotting from the inside out? That was Torgler—or at least it was Ki's impression of the man. But again, there was nothing at all Ki could really put his finger on.

 

 

The flat plains of the Kansas heartland flashed by the window, one mile stretching into another. Jessica Starbuck stared at her reflection in the dusty glass and didn't much like what she saw. Not for the first time, she felt that terrible sense of loneliness, the fear that she had bitten off a great deal more than she could chew. Even the loyal Ki, who in many ways knew her and understood her better than anyone else, could do little to help her at moments like this. He would protect her with his life, use his keen sense of danger and almost frightening talents to guard her from harm. In the end, though, she was alone. She was Jessica Starbuck, her father's child and heiress to the vast Starbuck holdings. She had inherited both the power of that title and the awesome responsibility that went with it.

And always, overshadowing all else, was the ever-present specter of those faceless men who would take it all from her—who had ruthlessly murdered her father, and signed her own death warrant at the same time.

Jessie knew the story well, even those parts not another living soul could recount. She had grown up with a part of it, seen it in her father's restless eyes, and heard the final chapter only moments before his death. Alex Starbuck had been a maverick from the start, a man who set his own course and knew what he wanted. Many young men had sailed with Commodore Perry to open the door to Japan. Most had served out their time and come back home with only the memory of that exciting adventure in the Orient. Alex Starbuck came home too—but not for long. He liked what he saw in Japan, and returned to learn more about those isles and their people. Later, when he knew what he needed to know, he returned to San Francisco, sought out a group of wealthy men, and made them a proposition. There were fortunes to be made in that newly opened land. He, Alex Starbuck, could deliver valuable import/export contracts with the Japanese. All he needed was money. He was a persuasive young man, and in time, the money came to him.

Starbuck took another important step in San Francisco. He married a lovely young copper-haired girl named Sarah, a woman who stood by his side all her life as his lover and companion.

Jessie had fond memories of her childhood in San Francisco—memories of her breathtakingly beautiful mother and the big, handsome man who was her father. Those were years when she was showered with presents from Alex Star buck's Eastern trips—silks, painted fans, and small ivory boxes with tiny cities and people carved in their sides. Better still, there were stories of fierce, scowling warriors, and secret gardens with exquisite lakes and trees—and still more exquisite ladies posed on delicate bridges, like butterflies on a branch.

At the time, Jessica was too young to know the rest of the story—that there were others interested in making their fortunes in the Orient, men from wealthy business cartels in Europe. Always on the alert for ways to extend their holdings, they saw such an opportunity in the successful young American. Money was tight in the late 1850s, and Starbuck was overextended. A group of Prussian businessmen approached him with an offer that seemed made in heaven. They needed Alex's ships for their silk trade, and were willing to sublease them at a staggering profit for Alex. Starbuck, of course, snapped at the offer—and soon learned the reasons behind the generous terms. The Prussians weren't shipping silks at all. Their cargo was Chinese slaves.

Alex tried to fight them, but the experienced Europeans were ready for him. They struck out at the Starbuck interests in the Orient and tried to ruin him, using every weapon they could bring to bear—coercion, bribery, and even murder. And Alex Starbuck struck back...

 

 

Jessie sighed and sank back in her seat, listening to the hypnotic rhythm of the rails. From her window she watched the sun falling rapidly over the horizon behind a brilliant array of clouds. The broad, open fields of Kansas seemed greatly out of place with the thoughts that plagued her mind. Sometimes she found it all hard to believe, though she'd heard the tale from her father himself, when Alex Starbuck knew he was dying. It was a terrible, ugly story—nearly impossible to relate to the man himself. Starbuck had fought his enemies from one continent to another. Ships were hijacked and warehouses burned. Treachery was the order of the day, and there were no holds barred. It was a game her father hated, Jessie knew. But he was in it, and there was no getting out.

Finally the war intensified in a manner Starbuck had never imagined. On a trip to Europe, a runaway carriage struck down Sarah and killed her. Starbuck knew it was no accident—he, instead of his wife, had been the target. In a rage that Jessie could still not connect to the kind and gentle man she'd known her father to be, Starbuck took his revenge. He found the man responsible for Sarah's death. They had taken from him, and he would take from them in kind. The old Prussian count had a son, a young man in his twenties. Alex Starbuck, who had never committed a violent act in his life, killed the Prussian's heir with his own hands...

 

 

“Jessie?”

She looked up and found Ki watching her. She could hardly make out his face in the gathering dark, but knew what was there. “Yes, Ki?”

“It does no good to go back,” he said gently. “It can change nothing.”

Jessie forced a laugh. “More Oriental wisdom, old friend?”

“Nothing so grand, I'm afraid. Only words. Things that scatter quickly in the wind, and are likely as useless as brittle leaves.”

“No, that's not so at all,” she told him, reaching across to touch his hand. “Not true at all, Ki.”

 

 

Starbuck had told her the rest of the story on his deathbed, his eyes flooded with tears of shame. The murder of his enemy's son was the one act in his life he could never forgive, though he was paying for it dearly.

The old count waited, and finally struck back. His assassins caught Starbuck in a hail of bullets on his own Texas ranch. An eye for an eye, one man's son for another man's wife—and then the man himself.

And it doesn't stop there,
Jessie thought grimly. The earth was dark and the gloom seemed to close in around her.
It goes on and on, and there is no way to bring it to an end...

Chapter 2

In light of his earlier encounter, Ki urged Jessie to let him stay in her compartment for the night. She could curl up under a blanket on one side of the small room, while he kept watch.

“You will be less comfortable,” he told her, “but you will be safe.”

“I don't think there'll be any trouble, Ki. Really,” said Jessie. “And you'll be right next door.”

Ki pushed the point, but in the end Jessie won out—promising to keep a revolver handy and pound the wall if she needed help.

After a quick dinner she didn't enjoy, she let the porter make up the room and locked the door behind him. She knew, of course, that it made little difference whether Ki was with her, or just behind a wall. Even when there was little chance of trouble, he'd be on guard. Ki slept, but it wasn't what she called sleep at all; at the slightest hint of danger, his mind and body would be instantly alert. She didn't pretend to understand how he did this; she simply accepted it for what it was. It was a part of Ki. A part of
kakuto bugei,
the true samurai way. And a samurai, she knew, was as likely to let himself fall into a deep, snoring sleep on guard as he was to dig for worms with his precious
katana
longsword.

 

 

Jessie turned the light down low, slipped out of her tweed jacket and skirt, and perched on the bed to remove her stockings and cordovan boots. Standing again, she slid the white silk blouse off her shoulders, unhooked the light chemise underneath, and let it fall about her ankles. She was naked now, except for the red garter holster she wore high on her left thigh. Neither the holster nor the ivory-handled derringer tucked inside did much to hide her charms.

Crossing the small compartment, she caught a quick glimpse of herself in the narrow strip of mirror—a flash of full, uptilted breasts, the curve of a thigh tinted in gold in the soft light. Jessie approved of what she saw, and neither lingered nor turned away from her reflection. Many young women of her day might have blushed at their own sexuality, she knew—but old Myobu, the geisha who had been her father's courtesan in his early days in Japan, and later Jessie's friend, tutor, maid, and almost mother, had taught her better than that. A body was born with its beauty, and the feelings that went with it. Whether she was alone or in the arms of a man, those feelings, for Jessie, were as natural and healthy as breathing.

Turning off the light, she stretched out on the coarse railway sheet, closed her eyes, and listened to the miles clack by. Even though the sun had vanished hours before, the land held on to its heat. The compartment was stuffy and close. She was tempted to raise a window, but then thought better of it. Smoke and cinders from the big Baldwin engine would have filled the room instantly.

“Damn it all, anyway!” she said crossly. Slipping bare legs to the floor, she sat up and glared at the wall. The thoughts of the day still plagued her, and wouldn't let go. She couldn't put the looming shadow of the cartel out of her mind. They were always there—her father's enemies, and now her own. She'd learned a great deal about them since Alex Starbuck's murder; they were bigger and far more frightening than she'd first imagined. It wasn't just the Starbuck empire they wanted. That was only the start. It was the country itself they had their eyes on—a young and burgeoning nation of untold wealth and promise. They wanted that wealth, and would stop at nothing to get it. She and Ki had met them head-on more than once, and knew what they were capable of doing.

Jessie leaned back with a sigh. And now it was likely starting again. Like Ki, she didn't believe his encounter had simply happened—not with the two of them headed for Roster, Kansas, and the problems they'd face there. The message had come to the Starbuck ranch three days before. The Starbuck land offices had financed a number of groups of European immigrants—loaned them the money to get wheat started, in exchange for crop committments. Now those immigrants wanted to back down, sell their land at disastrous prices, and move on fast.