"Did you? No, of course you didn't, or he wouldn't still be here. But. well, did you at least make some progress?"
"Progress?" Jocelyn felt like laughing. "Vana, he didn't kiss me because he wanted to. He was trying—"
"Yes, I heard. To make you fire him. But was it… what you expected?
"Expected? Yes. Wanted? No. He made it as brutal as he could, and I hope his blasted lips are just as sore this morning!"
Vanessa blinked at that heated reply. "Well, I guess we can safely say no progress was made," she allowed. "Unless of course you think he might have lost control and that's why he was so savage about it."
Control? His voice hadn 't been particularly steady when he'd asked her if she was ready to fire him.
And now that she thought about it, his breathing had been kind of ragged too. And his fingers had tightened in her hair when he ended the kiss, not before. Was it possible some passion had come into that kiss without his planning on it? God, she would like to think so, but she was just too inexperienced to be sure.
"I don't know, Vana, but it doesn't really matter. I ended up thwarting him again, so he would have gone to bed damning me to hell and back, not pining away with desire. And now that I think about it," she added, throwing back the covers to get up, "I would be smart not to get anywhere near him for a few days. I shouldn't have approached him last night, knowing that he hadn't had a chance yet to cool off. I don't care to make that mistake again."
Chapter Fifteen
"Pete's ridin' in."
" 'Bout time," Dewane grumbled.
"Did he bring a doctor with him?" Clay asked from his pallet in the corner.
"Quit yar bellyachin'," Dewane snapped at the wounded man. "I got the damned bullet out, did'n I?"
"Pete's alone, Clay," Clydell offered from the open doorway where he'd spotted the rider coming in. "A doc could'n do much now anyways, an' then we'd jes' hafta kill 'im ta keep his mouth shut. Ya want some more whiskey?"
Elliot watched silently as a bottle of the raw fire-water that passed for whiskey in this area was handed over to the man called Clay. The chap was dying and just didn't know it. He had lost too much blood before he had found his way back to them. Instead of making his suffering even worse by removing the bul-let, Elliot would have simply put him out of his mis-ery, but he wasn't asked his opinion and didn't volunteer it. He had wanted to kill him anyway for failing in his assignment, but he had kept that desire to himself too. It wouldn't do for the others to know how really furious he was.
The ultimate blame for this latest failure was his and he knew it, for hiring incompetents, for not coming up with a better plan, for not sending more than just two men after the duchess. Luck had come into it again, her infernal luck, this time in finding assistance in the middle of nowhere, and skilled assistance at that. How did she do it every bloody time?
Clay had fallen back into semiconsciousness, which ought to keep his moaning down for a while. It had been driving Elliot crazy, that persistent moaning. But he had said nothing. He was allowing it to get on the others' nerves, too, so no one would object very much when he suggested the chap be left behind to die in peace.
Dewane set the coffeepot down on the table, but Elliot made no move to refill his tin cup with the horrid brew. Their accommodations were deplorable, but at least there was a roof overhead.
Clydell had found the empty hovel which he called a line shack, a place the cowhands of one of the ranches in the area would use when they were out on the range doing whatever it was they did for a living. It sported a table and two chairs, an old cookstove, a few rusted tin goods in a chest, and a moldy mattress on a rope frame. Likely the roof would leak if it rained, but it gave them a place to wait while Pete Saunders was finding out what he could of the duch-ess's destination.
After two nights of waiting, however, Elliot had begun to think the youngest member of his little group had deserted them. He wouldn't have been overly sur-prised. After so bloody long having nothing go right for him, he had come to expect the worst. But Pete was back, and now he could finally get down to plan-ning his next move.
Pete sauntered into the one-room shack, grinning and dusting his clothes off with a beat-up hat that was likely older than he was. Elliot had been leery of employing the boy when he first saw him, even though a full brown beard concealed his tender age somewhat. But after being given a list of his accomplishments, which included armed robbery, cattle rustling, and one gunfight where he had emerged the winner, Elliot had reconsidered. He still didn't care for the eighteen-year-old's enthusiasm and jolly manner, though, as if this were only a game he was playing at.
"Thought ya got lost, Pete," Clydell remarked by way of greeting.
"Or too lickered up ta find yer way out of a piss-pot," Dewane added with a sneer.
"Didn't have a drop," Pete protested, still grin-ning as he plopped down across from Elliot in the only other chair. "But I could sure stand a drink now. How's Clay doin'?"
"The same," Clydell said and set his bottle of rot-gut on the table.
Elliot allowed the boy only a few swallows from the upended bottle before demanding, "If you have something to report, Mr. Saunders, I would very much like to hear it now. "
The grin was still there when the bottle was low-ered. Elliot would have thought it was a deformity of the boy's mouth, that constant grin, if he hadn't seen him without it when Clay had rejoined them, all cov-ered in blood.
"Sure thing, boss," Pete replied. "When I got to Tombstone, it weren't hard findin' the lady. She'd caused plenty excitement ridin' in the way she did with all those fancy rigs and guards of hers. Just about everyone was talkin"bout her, speculatin' who she was and what she was doin'—"
"Yes, yes, that happens no matter where she goes," Elliot interrupted impatiently. "Just get on with it."
"Well, she checked herself and her whole bunch into the Grand, so I figured she was there to stay a while. I was set to ride out the next mornin' after I found out if we had to worry 'bout a posse comin'
after us—"
"Do we?" Dewane wanted to know.
"Nah. The fella I asked who sweeps out the jail said we was listed as 'persons unknown' when they turned the body in. They didn't give no descriptions, so the marshal had nothin' to go on. But as I was sayin', it's a good thing I overslept the next mornin' and didn't leave first thing."
"Had some fun, did ya, while we was sittin' here twiddlin' our thumbs waitin' on ya?" Dewane asked in a surly tone.
"Ah, come on, Dewane, what was I supposed to do with time to kill? So I was up a little late that first night. If I hadn't enjoyed myself some, I wouldn't've still been there when the lady left town again."
"She's already on the move?" Elliot demanded with some surprise.
"Sure is. She took off right after the Shootout— hey, Dewane, you'll never guess who bought it!" Pete added excitedly. "The McLaury brothers and the Clanton kid."
"The Earps?"
"Who else?"
"Didja see it?" Clydell asked.
"Nah. It happened while I was findin' out what I could at the jail. But you could hear the shots firm' from everywhere. By the time I got there it was all over."
"If you please, Mr. Saunders," Elliot interjected. "I am interested in the duchess, not some obscure shootout in one of your frontier towns."
"Sure, boss, but you see, the lady was there. And right after is when she took to her heels. It don't take much to figure that all that killin' turned her stomach enough to want to get out of there. Anyway, I figured as late as I was, I might as well go by her hotel one more time, and that's when I seen her wagons lined up out front and bein' loaded up."