Sweetwater Seduction (43 page)

“Where are we going?” she demanded. “I thought you said Mr. Kerrigan had been shot.”

“He will be,” Deputy Joe retorted with a vicious grin. “Just as soon as he gets the note I sent him and comes looking for you.”

Before Miss Devlin could jump from the wagon, or grab the deputy, or do any one of a dozen other things to get free, the deputy shouted, “Hiyahh! Giddyap!” and lashed the mules into a run.

Miss Devlin clung to the careening wagon for dear life. The only way she could have escaped would have been to try and wrest the reins from the wiry deputy, or jump from the lurching wagon. Both of those options were sure to result in serious injury or death. Miss Devlin wasn't a foolish woman, and before she killed herself she wanted some explanation for what was going on.

“Where are you taking me?” she shouted over the rackety noise of the wagon.

“Somewheres you can't be found when Kerrigan comes looking for you.”

“Then Kerrigan hasn't been shot?

“Not hardly,” he said with a derisive snort.

Miss Devlin felt a flood of joyful relief that was quickly dammed when she realized she must be part of another plot to ambush the gunslinger. Which made no sense to her. “Why do you want to kill Mr. Kerrigan?”

“That ain't none of your never mind. Just keep your mouth shut and your hands to yourself and you won't get hurt.”

It didn't take much deduction on Miss Devlin's part to realize that the “you won't get hurt” part was going to last only so long as keeping her alive was useful to the deputy.

They drove for another twenty minutes at a breakneck pace. By then, the snow that had been falling when Miss Devlin first got into the spring wagon had turned as malevolent as the rest of the evening. The farther from town they got, the worse the weather became. It was as though the snow recognized their frenzy and conspired to add to it. The temperature got colder, so Miss Devlin's toes and fingers felt frozen. The wind began to whip, and enveloped them in stinging snowflake tornadoes. It soon became apparent they were in for a full-fledged blizzard.

It was appalling how fast the snow suddenly began to accumulate. It quickly covered the road and began layering drifts that made it difficult for the mules to find footing. The deputy was forced to slow the mules down to a walk or take the chance of driving off the road. A short while later, the deputy left the road and headed off toward no apparent destination.

“Do you know where you're going?” Eden asked.

“Sweetwater Canyon.”

“There's no way to get into Sweetwater Canyon from this direction,” Miss Devlin protested.

The deputy smiled. “That's what everybody thinks. Ain't so. There's a secret way in, leads right to the floor of the canyon. Found it myself, following a deer.”

“How far is it? Are we close?”

“Not close enough,” the deputy muttered, squinting at a landscape that was fast disappearing under the drifting snow.

They were going slow enough now that Miss Devlin could easily have escaped the deputy. But it would have been foolhardy to set herself afoot in the middle of nowhere at the height of what could only be labeled a blizzard.

What also became clear to her was that there was no way anyone was going to come hunting for her when it was nigh impossible to see your hand in front of your face. Just as Miss Devlin began to think she and Deputy Joe would likely be found frozen to death when the storm was over, she saw a glimmer in the distance.

“Look! Is that where we're going?”

Deputy Joe just grunted, but he turned the mules in the direction of the distant light.

Miss Devlin was the first one down when Deputy Joe pulled up in front of a boarded-up line shack. Leaving him to take care of the mules, she walked up to the door of the dilapidated hovel and knocked. When the door opened she said, “May I come in, please?”

In a million years Miss Devlin couldn't have imagined what she saw when she entered the shack. Calling it a pigsty would have been generous. Calling it a shambles was calling it close. A cowshed, a chicken coop, even a cattery, would have been cleaner. Incredibly, in the corner of the room, was a wood box containing a calico cat and a litter of tiny kittens.

There were five men crowded in a room that might have comfortably held four. She removed her coat and shook off the snow before handing it to the closest man.

In a voice she would have used on a new first-grader, Miss Devlin said, “I am Miss Devlin, the schoolteacher in Sweetwater. Would you all like to introduce yourselves?”

“Name's Stick,” said the one holding her coat in his hand.

“Do you have a peg where you could hang that up to dry, Stick?” she asked.

Stick stared a moment longer at her before he replied, “Yes'm.”

Miss Devlin stepped up to the two men who were sitting at the rickety wooden table in the center of the room. “And who might you be?”

“I'm Doanie.”

“I'm Hogg.”

“A gentleman always stands in the presence of a lady,” Miss Devlin admonished.

Doanie and Hogg lurched to their feet.

“And hats are never worn indoors,” she instructed.

Doanie and Hogg quickly yanked their battered felt hats off and held them in front of them like neck-wrung chickens.

“What's your name?” Miss Devlin said as she approached the largest, most ferocious-looking of the bunch, who was standing before the potbellied stove holding one of the kittens.

Bud blushed. “B-b-b-bud.”

Miss Devlin put out her hand. “I'm pleased to meet you, Bud.”

Bud set the kitten gently in the box with the others and then stuck out a meaty paw and carefully shook Miss Devlin's hand.

Miss Devlin turned to survey what had become, in a matter of moments, her domain, and discovered the scowling face of the fifth man, who was leaning against the wa

“I don't believe we've met,” she said, taking a step in his direction.

“We ain't goin' to, neither,” Levander snarled.

“His name's Levander. Levander Early,” Stick volunteered.

Levander spit tobacco juice on the dirt floor an inch in front of Miss Devlin's shoe. “You got them idjits all lickin' outta your hand, but I ain't as dumb as them, and you ain't gonna hog-tie me with your goody-goody manners. Now you set yourself down over there and keep outta my way!”

Miss Devlin looked in the direction Levander had pointed and saw nothing remotely resembling a chair. “I'm afraid I don't see—”

Levander grabbed Miss Devlin's arm to steer her toward one of the two double-deck bunks in the room, but he had barely laid a hand on her when he was grabbed under the armpits and lifted clear off the floor.

“What the hell?” he yelped.

“D-d-d-don't you be touchin' the lady,” Bud said. “Not less'n she says so.”

“Put me down!”

Obediently, Bud put Levander down.

“Doanie, Hogg, come get Bud so's I can take care of this bitch,” Levander ordered.

“You oughn't to be callin' her names,” Stick said. “Ain't nice to call a teacher names.”

“Doanie! Hogg!” But the two of them stayed rooted where they were, their hats clutched to their chests. Levander threw his hands up in the air and stomped over to the filthy, much-rumpled lower bunk bed on one wall and plopped down. “You wait'll the Boss gets in here,” he muttered. “You won't be so high 'n' mighty then.”

“Deputy Joe is your
boss
?” Miss Devlin exclaimed.

Levander crossed his arms behind his head and his feet at the ankles and grinned, exposing a newly broken front tooth. “Sure is. Brains behind the whole operation.”

“What operation?” Miss Devlin asked.

Levander smiled smugly. “That's for me to know and you to find out.”

Miss Devlin didn't waste any time. She turned to Stick and said, “What's your business with Deputy Joe?”

“We rustle the cattle and Deputy Joe sells 'em and gives us our share of the money,” Stick dutifully replied.

“You're the gang of rustlers Mr. Kerrigan has been chasing?” Miss Devlin asked incredulously, her glance skipping from one to the other of the simpleminded men.

“Guess we are,” Doanie admitted. “Ma'am,” he added as an afterthought.

“Yessir, we are,” Hogg agreed. “Ma'am,” he added as an afterthought.

“C-c-c-course we also cut them nester fences,” Bud volunteered. “But not till Levander said it was okay.”

Miss Devlin hadn't been a teacher all those years for nothing. She recognized stupidity when she saw it. It seemed to her, however, that while these men were outlaws, they were not necessarily violent men. She spied Levander's cruel smile and amended,
at least not all of them.
Bud, Hogg, Doanie, and Stick were too ignorant to realize how they were being manipulated.

Miss Devlin took a deep breath and nearly gagged. “Well, gentlemen,” she said after a fit of coughing. “It appears we have some straightening up to do to make this place habitable.”

Miss Devlin had picked up a bowl caked with some sort of dried-up food when Deputy Joe came stalking in the door. It was amazing the change that came over Bud, Hogg, Doanie, and Stick. She could feel the electricity in the room, and their immediate fawning deference to the man whom they called Boss. How had ineffectual, innocuous Deputy Joe put the fear of God into these four men? She glanced at Levander and amended,
five men.

“I want you boys to keep an eye on Miss Devlin,” Deputy Joe said. “I don't want her to leave this place. If you see anybody come nosin' around here, shoot first and ask questions later. You understand?”

Four heads nodded.

“You understand what I'm saying, Levander?” Deputy Joe said.

“Yeah, Boss. I understand fine.”

“We got a little hitch in our plan 'cause of the weather,” Deputy Joe said. “Kerrigan ain't goin' nowhere till this blizzard blows on through. So y'all might as well get comfortable.”

Miss Devlin saw no way the seven of them could be comfortable in the cramped space available—even if it had been clean, which it wasn't. The potbellied stove was belching smoke, which made it hard to breathe, even when the stench didn't.

“May I suggest,” Miss Devlin said, “that we might all have a little more room if we moved some of the debris outside?”

“You can do whatever you like, long as you don't go nowheres,” Deputy Joe said. “I can't stay myself. I gotta get back to town.”

Miss Devlin reached out and put a hand on the deputy's sleeve. “You can't be going back out into this weather.”

“What I do ain't none of your business,” Deputy Joe said.

“You're going to freeze to death out there. You'll never find your way back,” Miss Devlin warned.

“The mule I'm ridin' knows the way back to town.”

“You're crazy!” Miss Devlin said.

As soon as she made the statement, she knew it was a mistake. Because it was clear as a lily pond before the splash that Deputy Joe
was
crazy to be leader of this particular fuddle-brained band of outlaws.

“Levander, get this bitch away from me, before I shoot her where she stands,” Deputy Joe snarled, his hand already on the butt of his .45.

An instant later Miss Devlin's arm had been twisted painfully behind her back and she had been dragged across the room and thrown down on one of the bunks. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. Although the four half-wits were agitated by what Levander was doing, none of them made a move to defy him in the presence of the Boss. Levander took full advantage of the opportunity to hurt Miss Devlin as much as he could.

Deputy Joe gave one last severe look around the room and threatened, “Don't none of you forget what I said. That schoolteacher better be here when I get back.” He turned and left.

As soon as he was out the door, Miss Devlin jumped up off the bunk. “Are you going to let him leave?” she demanded. “He's never going to make it back to town.”