Devil's Dare

Sam shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll just sit around and keep my boys outta trouble.” The whiskey was singing a sweet song inside his head, but he knew better than to drink any more of it. Too much of it, and he’d be just another bleary-eyed, slurred-voice cowboy making importunities to the queen of the calico queens. “But if you’d like me to find another table so you can start a new game…”

Earp shook his head, gracious in victory. “No need for all of you to move. I’m just going to mosey over yonder where those boys’re beckoning for me to join them.” He indicated a table with a trio of cowboys Sam recognized as some of Lee Hill’s hands from San Antone. “But never fear, I’ll keep my eye out for Mamselle Mercedes so I can point her out to you.”

Earp left, and for a few minutes the Devil’s Boys went on drinking, with Sam just watching the stairs.

“Hey, would ya look at what Tom Culhane found, gents?” Jase Lowry said suddenly, pointing toward the entrance.

Six heads swiveled to look up at the swinging doors. Through them sauntered the bowlegged young cowboy who’d groused earlier about his wages, his arm around the waist of a slender, fine-boned blonde who was eyeing him with a mixture of admiration and nervousness.

Spying the table full of familiar faces, Culhane aimed the blonde in their direction, his stumbling gait proclaiming the fact that he’d already been downing a considerable amount of rotgut at another Abilene establishment. “Lookee what I found, boys! A beauty, ain’t she? An’ guesh what? She sh-said she seen me earlier today an’ thought I wuz a han’some fella an’ wanted to meet me! Ain’t that a wonderful turn of events, boys?”

Smacking the table and laughing, the Devils’ Boys all agreed it was. Jase Lowry rose and pulled out a chair.

“Why don’t ya offer the lady a chair, Tom? What’s wrong with yore manners?” He bowed with exaggerated care. “Jase Lowry, ma’am, at your service, if this here saddlebum fails t’ please ya.”

The blonde blinked at the towheaded cowboy she’d come in with, then, blushing, she accepted the chair Jase held for her. “Why, thank you, Mr. Lowry, you’re very kind.”

Cookie guffawed. “Kind? Jase? Ma’am, he’s just hopin’ t’ cut ya out before Tom here gets his brand on ya!”

Sam’s eyes narrowed as he studied the girl sitting by Culhane. She seemed awfully young to be one of Abilene’s soiled doves, though the sidelong glance she was currently bestowing on the goggle-eyed Culhane was full of coquetry and much fluttering of her sandy lashes. Her clothing, compared to the flashy, flounced satin dresses of the other whores, was almost demure. She wore an embroidered Mexican peasant blouse, an innocent enough garment—or at least it probably had been until she had pushed it down so that it revealed slender shoulders and the tops of her breasts swelling above her corset—and a somewhat faded black cotton skirt. Jet black earbobs dangled from her ears. Her face was innocent of paint, though.

“Tom, you haven’t introduced your lady friend,” Sam said, keeping his eyes on her. The blonde giggled at the sight of her companion’s crestfallen face.

“Oh, yeah! Sorry, boss!” Culhane said with a grin, as if the scene this afternoon had not taken place. “Gents, this here’s Miss Charity Fairweather. Miss Charity, these’re the Devil’s Boys—my boss, Sam Devlin, Cookie Yates, Manuel Lopez, Clancy McDonnell and Jase, who ya already met.”

Miss Charity Fairweather dimpled as she acknowledged everyone’s greetings. Then she seemed to start as she saw that Culhane was pouring her a drink of whiskey. As Sam watched, she hesitated, then raised the glass to her lips with a hand that trembled slightly. She sipped, sputtered, giggled, then drank some more.

The boys cheered, and Culhane hugged her with one hand while he whispered in her ear with the other. Then she winked at something Culhane whispered in her ear and was rewarded by an enthusiastic kiss, which she returned with apparent relish.

Well, maybe she was new to the calling, Sam thought, and hadn’t been on the job long enough to dress and paint her face like the others. It sure wasn’t his job to watch out for the calico queens. Chances were this soiled dove was more than up to coping with the likes of Tom Culhane. Maybe she even left off the paint on purpose, so that her customers would be lulled into thinking her just a whore with the proverbial heart of gold. Meanwhile she’d be picking their pockets, or helping herself to the rest of their money while they dozed.

Yessir, if Tom kept guzzling the Alamo’s whiskey at that speed, that was exactly what would happen, and Tom would be grouchy as a gored steer in the morning. But Tom was a man grown, so Sam went back to watching the stairway for the reappearance of Mercedes LaFleche.

Mercy woke with a start in the darkened bedroom, awakened by a sudden sense that something was wrong. It was too quiet. Charity’s snoring was a normal nocturnal accompaniment to her dreams, but now all she could hear was the neighing of a horse in a corral down the street. She reached out a hand, and realized the space next to her on the bed was empty.

Had Charity gone to the outhouse? Usually if nature called in the middle of the night, the girls used a chamber pot that was kept underneath the bed, for both of them were afraid of meeting spiders and snakes in the darkness. But perhaps her sister’s stomach was upset from something she ate, so that she had felt it necessary to brave the terrors of the path to the outhouse.

Mercy went to the window and opened it, staring out into the moonlit darkness at the darkened shape of the little building between the barn and the house. No candlelight showed through the chinks between the boards. She watched, thinking perhaps the candle had blown out in the soft night breeze, and while she waited she heard the distant sounds of tinkling pianos coming from Texas and Cedar streets. The saloons must be doing a good business, as usual. As she listened, a shot rang out, and then another, followed by some drunken shouting, and all was quiet again.

The sound of gunfire at night from the streets where the saloons were was so usual that it didn’t even wake them anymore. She wondered if the darkly handsome cowboy she had seen today was one of the drunken revelers. She hoped not—or at least, if he was, that he wasn’t shot in some pointless brawl.

After five minutes she was forced to realize that Charity wasn’t in the outhouse. Where could she be? Quietly she found the lucifers in the darkness and lit the candle on the bedside stand. Then, tiptoeing so as not to wake their father, she went down the hall to the parlor.

But Charity wasn’t a victim of insomnia, sitting in the parlor, the kitchen, on the porch or even in the barn. She was just…gone!

But where? Mercy only had to think for another moment before she remembered the mulishly rebellious expression on her sister’s face while Papa had reprimanded her for being so interested in the Texans and the town whores. You had only to tell Charity to forget about a thing to guarantee that that was all she could think about, Mercy reminded herself. Dear Lord, could Charity possibly have been so foolish as to go over to the saloons, in search of her towheaded drover?

With a sinking heart Mercy realized that was just where her foolish sister must have gone.

Her heart pounding, she stole back through the darkened house and into their bedroom. A quick check of the nails on the wall revealed that Charity had taken her Sunday skirt and the Mexican blouse Papa had said was too sheer to wear except at home, as well as her high-buttoned Sunday boots.

Charity had no idea what she was getting into! Mercy had had no chance to have that talk she’d promised herself to have with her younger sister, for Charity had gone up to bed while Mercy was still saying good-night to her father’s congregation, and Mercy had found her with her face turned to the wall, apparently asleep. She was going to have to rescue the foolhardy girl from the consequences of her folly, Mercy realized, but to do so would mean braving the vice-ridden dens of depravity herself! And if their father discovered what they’d done, neither one of them would be able to sit down for a week, let alone leave the house. But she couldn’t just leave Charity to her fate, as much as the silly girl deserved it.

She stared at the remaining dresses hanging from the nails on the wall. Which of them would look enough like the garb worn by the whores that she wouldn’t be stopped at the swinging doors of the saloons, yet not encourage drunken cowboys to treat her as fair game while she searched for her sister?

Chapter Four (#ulink_3056ddbc-4c3f-5ad2-b5b1-848e3342a5e8)

In the end Mercy settled upon a dress that had been Mama’s, realizing that she had nothing of her own that did not shout the fact that she was the preacher’s daughter and had no business in Abilene’s saloons. But Mama had been the daughter of a banker, and had possessed a great many dresses for events more worldly than those she would attend after she had made her unlikely match with the Reverend Jeremiah Fairweather. She had saved some of these in the large cedar chest at the foot of Mercy and Charity’s bed, thinking the girls might be able to use them someday.

The forest green silk dress had a round neckline that dipped low, and since their mother had been a little smaller in the bust than Mercy was, when Mercy dropped it over her head it revealed a shadowy hint of cleavage. She would have to remember to keep her shawl wrapped around her.

She crept down the short hallway as quietly as she could, freezing momentarily when she forgot which plank in the floor always creaked. But her father’s snoring, audible as usual all over the house, continued unabated.

By the light of her candle the grandfather clock in the parlor showed the time to be ten minutes to midnight. Shivering, Mercy patted her hair, which she’d twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck, and gathered the fringed black paisley shawl tightly over her mother’s dress. Then, murmuring a prayer that Papa wouldn’t hear her and that she’d find Charity before he awoke, she exited the house. She’d try the Alamo Saloon first. It was the biggest, and catered to the Texans. It was the most likely place her sister had gone.

The merriment showed no signs of diminishing as the ornate clock over the door of the Alamo Saloon struck the hour of midnight, but Sam’s mood was far from merry. He’d drifted over to the mahogany-and-brass bar and was leaning on it, nursing a beer. So far he’d seen no signs of Miss Mercedes LaFleche, though he’d kept a steady watch on the staircase. Earp had disappeared at some point. The only thing left to do was watch his cowhands get steadily more drunk, and that was getting old quickly. He was wasting his time. Maybe he ought to call it a night and begin his hunt again after a good night’s sleep.

Tom Culhane had gone out the back door a few minutes ago with his little blonde, “for a stroll,” he’d said, but Sam knew darn well what was on the cowboy’s mind. He’d start by kissing Charity Fairweather, then his hands would start to stray…No doubt by then they’d already be discussing her price. Maybe they’d even consummate the deal right out there in the alley, up against one of the buildings. He’d heard some of the whores had been forced to conduct their business that way the last year before the brothels had been built, and Sam imagined most weren’t averse to doing it that way again if their customers were impatient.

Sam only hoped that Tom wasn’t going to try to sneak the little blonde into his room at the Drover’s Cottage and get them all in trouble. The landlord had already made it quite clear that he didn’t hold with such things—the soiled doves were not to roost in his rooms, he’d said.

“New in these parts?” the bartender asked him as he wiped a glass dry behind the bar.

He barely glanced at the man before replying, “Just in town to sell my herd.”

“Up from Texas?”

“Yeah.” He knew his answer had been curt. It would have been mannerly to extend his hand and give the man his name, but he wasn’t feeling very mannerly right now. And anyway, a man never knew when admitting to being a Texan would land him in a ruckus. He’d already run into some hostile Kansans fussing about their own cattle being endangered by tick-infested Texas longhorns bringing the Texas fever. The danger had been exaggerated out of proportion, of course, and it seemed that the Kansans had forgotten about the boom the drovers were bringing to the area.

But the man, who wore a patch over his right eye and had several scars marring the same side of his face, didn’t seem hostile. “Deacon Paxton’s my name.” He wiped his hand dry with the towel he had over his shoulder, then offered it to Sam.

Sam felt vaguely ashamed as he shook the man’s hand. There was no need to take his sour, suspicious mood out on the bartender. “Sam Devlin. You say your name is Deacon?” he asked, more to make amends for his earlier abruptness than because he was curious.

The man smiled, his expression lightening the somewhat weary, somber side of his face beneath a silvering thatch of hair. “They like to joke with me because I read the Bible when it’s not busy around here. So they call me Deacon.”

“You oughta be a preacher—seems like they’re scarce around here,” Sam commented, nodding toward the street to indicate the whole town.

Deacon Paxton chuckled. “I am—or at least, I was once. There ain’t no church built in Abilene yet. There’s a Baptist preacher who holds services in his house a couple of streets over, though, so I reckon he sees to folks’ souls around here. In addition to informing us that the saloon keepers an’ the cowboys an’ the gals in th’ saloons are bound for perdition, that is.”

Sam snorted. “That’s just about the whole population of Abilene, isn’t it?”

Meeting Deacon and talking about the fire-andbrimstone Baptist preacher had made Sam think about his brother Caleb, who’d been a minister, too. Unlike Sam and the oldest Devlin brother, Garrick, Caleb had been in the Union army, because of his belief that no man should own another—though the Devlins themselves had no slaves. Unlike Sam and Garrick also, Caleb had never returned. Sam barely remembered his older brother’s face now, some seven years after they’d said goodbye. Cal had been a gentle man of the cloth, who spoke of God’s love rather than his wrath. He wondered what had happened to him. Where was the markerless grave that held his elder brother’s body—or had there even been enough of him to bury?

“Say, where in Texas—” the bartender began, then broke off as he saw his customer’s attention was distracted.

Sam had just been about to politely excuse himself and go back to the Drover’s Cottage when an auburn-haired woman had peered over the curved doors, then let herself in.

Could it be…? It had to be. The woman was lovely, though far younger than Sam had imagined she’d be, small boned and dainty. He couldn’t see much of her figure; she kept a shawl clutched tightly about her, but her face would have held his interest in any case—a classic oval with large, deeply green eyes and a mouth that was wider than the rosebud pout favored by the classic beauties of the day, but which looked to him as if it were meant for kissing.