Devil Moon Read online

  “It’ll do,” Teddy said. “I don’t expect any more consideration from Wells Fargo than my father did. Or any less,” she added loud and clear. “The Gamble Line will run like it always has—without a shipment lost.”

  Northrop made several notations in a journal, blotted the page, then tucked it in the satchel. He turned to Adams. “Mr. Adams, Wells Fargo appreciates your offer to assume the Gamble Line’s contracts but you’ve heard Miss Gamble’s assurances that her company will continue to meet its commitments.”

  Adams cleared his throat. “I’m sure Miss Gamble has every intention of doing as she has indicated,” he remarked to Northrop. His smile was smooth and easy, his manners polished and polite, his voice had the sound of gravel crunched underfoot. “Nevertheless, I want you to know my offer still stands should things change.” His quick nod to Teddy had an air of self-assurance. “Miss Gamble may feel differently once she’s been at this business a little longer and experienced more of the uncertainties and hardships in a man’s work. You remember, Mr. Northrop, that I am prepared, at a moment’s notice, to extend the routes of Adams Overland to include this area.”

  “I’ll relay that information to my superiors,” Northrop said, rising. Glad to be finished with his unpleasant chore, he stuck out an arm and shook Parrish Adams’s hand. “Good day, Mr. Adams.” He cut short the hug he had for Teddy when he found her shoulders tight and resistant. “A word of advice, Teddy.” With his broad back turned to Adams he spoke softly. “Get your Uncle Zack back here to help run the line. What happens won’t be up to me the next time there are questions raised about your capabilities.”

  Teddy opened her mouth to retort that Zachary Gamble’s help would just about equal that she’d received from the holdup gang. Instead she said, “I’ll think about that, Cabe.” Few people knew that her Uncle Zack’s decision to leave Wishbone hadn’t been entirely voluntary. She preferred to leave it that way.

  “You do. And you tell your grandmother I’m sorry I missed one of those delightful suppers of hers,” he stated hurriedly. “I’ll be expecting an invitation next time I’m in Wishbone.”

  “You’ll get it.” Teddy told Northrop good-bye but didn’t follow him out of the smoky confines of the office. She had a few things she wanted to say to Parrish Adams now that she’d been granted something of a reprieve. She wanted to let him know she wasn’t so foolish as not to be looking for whoever was behind the calamities that had befallen the Gamble Line. He must have sensed her wishes because he too delayed after Northrop was gone.

  “I shoot sidewinders,” she said.

  “Are you threatening me, Miss Gamble?”

  Adams shifted so that the light fell on his face. A smile came slowly to his thin lips, rounding lean cheeks smooth from a recent barbershop steam and shave. Had Teddy been able to find any inkling of honesty in his dark eyes she’d have called him a handsome man. He had all else it took—thick black hair spattered just so with gray, a precisely trimmed and exquisitely waxed mustache, a firm square jaw, a form fit and trim inside a starched shirt and collar and a suit miraculously unwrinkled even in the heat of midday. But Teddy found an insidious look to the man that negated any attractiveness he had. She couldn’t see past it to find anything likable about Adams, even if she had nothing but instinct to back up her opinion.

  “I am telling you how I deal with snakes,” she said matter-of-factly. “I kick over every rock and when I see a sidewinder I shoot him.”

  Adams stood, casting an elongated shadow in the grid of amber light from the room’s sole window “I can see how that might work for a while, Miss Gamble. For a while. Eventually though there will be a sidewinder you don’t see. And that one will get his way.” He moved menacingly toward her. “I know I always do. Always. You keep that in mind—when running a business you’re not cut out for gets too burdensome for you.” A strange twist of his lips contorted his smile. “And you remember that I can afford to wait. Unlike you I don’t have to prove my ability to anyone. Adams Overland has never been held up.” Slowly, he looped his thumbs into the pockets of a plum silk vest, starting the heavy gold links of a watch chain swaying against the rich fabric. “So, Miss Gamble, all I have to do is sit back and wait for you to fail. And you will fail. And I will get those contracts, eventually.”

  Teddy had meant to say more, to tell him she intended to find the men responsible for the holdups and who they worked for. As the damning words formed in her mind, she noted that Adams looked exactly like a hungry coyote poised and waiting for a wounded prey to give up the fight. If she guessed right, the man wanted to rattle her, and force her to say or do something she would regret. She would not give him the satisfaction—not if she had to chew her tongue off. And she would have to, if she didn’t get away from the man quickly.

  Rising briskly she snatched her hat from the peg that held it, then plopped it on her head. “No, Mr. Adams, you will be a disappointed man. You see I never,” she said methodically, “turn my back on a sidewinder. Those I can’t see I can always smell.”

  “Time will tell,” came his reply as she stormed out of the office and across the clean swept plank floor of the Mercantile Company without bothering to acknowledge Milt Penrod. He stood conveniently close to the office door dusting a row of canned goods with a folded corner of his white apron.

  Outside, Teddy threw her hands toward the heavens and muttered a curse. Above her a pale wafer moon hung in the daylight sky. Last night, as she stood outside the ranch house unable to sleep, that same moon had been red as blood and laced over with dark, moving shadows—a devil moon. All her life her grandmother, Felicity Gamble, had told her such an occurrence bode change for those who looked on it. Sometimes good. Sometimes bad. Last night Teddy had looked hard. Today Cabe had changed his mind about putting her out of business. Now if the holdups would stop.

  Distracted, she would have whisked by Horace Roper, her right-hand man in the company, had he not swiftly caught her by the arm.

  “Dang, Teddy.” He let go of her then turned his head and spat tobacco juice in the dust. “I saw Cabe Northrop runnin’ for the stage like he had a war party after him. That skunk ain’t pulled our contract, has he?”

  “No, Rope.” Teddy slowed her feet and forgot the foolishness about the moon. She fell in beside the broad-shouldered man as they walked down the street toward the stage stop. Horace Roper’s face was like lined leather, and his eyes had the soft glow of old copper coins. Teddy loved that weathered face, appreciated the look of worry and affection in the kind eyes. In the same way as her father had done, Rope gave her a feeling of comfort and strength. She respected the tough old codger. She would be the first to admit that as company manager he was the major asset of the Gamble Line. Still she couldn’t dredge up a smile for him as she relayed what had happened in the meeting with Northrop. “Cabe wants me to call Zack in to help run the company,” she said.

  “Hell take that long polecat.” Rope shook his head then spat again. To his mind Zack Gamble had been an open wound the whole time he’d been a part of the Gamble Line. He for one wouldn’t welcome the scoundrel back. “Shows how well he knows Zack Gamble.” They walked a few paces more before Rope cocked a bristly brow and asked, “Is the contract ridin’ on Zack comin’ back?”

  “No,” she said. “Wells Fargo is honoring the contract as long as we deliver safe and on time.”

  “Well maybe Northrop ain’t quite a skunk,” Rope relented.

  “Maybe not,” Teddy agreed. “But I’d insult a skunk if I called Parrish Adams one.”

  “He was there?”

  Teddy bobbed her head.

  “Adams is a slick one that’s for sure.” Rope stepped up on the board sidewalk where the freight had been unloaded from the last stage. “Don’t figure that a man could come into a town and in six months just about run it.”

  “It figures if you buy the sheriff.” Teddy picked up a box and hoisted it on the back of a buckboard for deliveries around town. Rope hurriedly tossed t
he heavier cartons in beside it.

  “Watch what you say, Teddy. Len Blalock ain’t much pinned behind a badge but he’s the only law in Wishbone. We got to depend on him with these holdups we’ve been havin’.”

  “The thing is, Rope, Adams could tell Len Blalock to pin that badge on his butt and Len would do it. He’s no good to us.” Teddy waved the buckboard driver off and pushed open the door of the small building that was the Gamble Line’s headquarters. “Besides, I don’t like having to watch what I say. I want a sheriff who stands for law and order, not one who clears it with Parrish Adams before he spits.”

  “Adams might pull out, now that he’s seen he can’t grab all he wants in Wishbone. He thought you’d leap like a jack rabbit at his offer to buy you out. He didn’t expect a woman like...”

  Rope trailed off, uncertain exactly how to proceed. Like what? The question hung uncomfortably heavy in his mind. Teddy Gamble was a woman sure as the sun came up every morning. The alluring swells and curves of her figure left no doubt of her sex. On the other hand she might as well have been a man for all the use she made of those lovely curves. He couldn’t remember Teddy ever sporting a pretty dress or ever testing a man with those soft green eyes of hers. Just for a moment he wondered if Teddy ever thought about being female.

  “Like me?” Teddy supplied an answer. “A woman with something besides ruffles and lace in her head?”

  “I reckon,” Rope conceded. “Anyhow he’s learned there’s at least one thing in Wishbone that ain’t his for the takin’.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Teddy mumbled to herself.

  Chapter 3

  Rhys Delmar, having invested the whole of an afternoon in an endeavor of monumental importance to him, did not like the look on the face of the man who sat at cards with him. That ghostly pallor suggested either desperation or ill health. Either was likely to spoil his evening.

  “Brandy perhaps, Monsieur Gamble?”

  Rhys signaled for his man, Lucien, to bring the brandy. But before the servant lifted the silver serving tray with the crystal decanter and sparkling glasses, Zachary Gamble waved him back.

  “Later, maybe,” he said, his flat American drawl rolling out the words slower than usual. Never one to turn down a free drink, Zack Gamble for once could not abide the thought of consuming spirits of any kind. Damned English food. A man more accustomed to buffalo steaks and hardtack biscuits couldn’t stomach such rich victuals without paying for his indulgence. He was paying royally now. He had a case of indigestion that was ripping into him like he’d swallowed a claw hammer.

  “As you wish, monsieur. A smoke, perhaps?”

  Zachary Gamble gave his head a firm shake. Acknowledging his refusal, Rhys opened a square wooden humidor with a lid of inlaid ivory and silver. Lucien had previously laid it upon the table. He removed a long slender cigar and with measured movement clipped the head with the blade of a silver cutter. By that time Lucien was at his side with a flaming match.

  When the cigar was lit and Rhys had enjoyed several deep draws of the excellent tobacco, he opted for a glass of the brandy to accompany it. A flick of his hand motioned Lucien to serve him.

  Lucien Bourget, for the third time, shuffled from his watchful post beside the rich maroon and gold silk window coverings. Dragging a leg lamed at a time when he had been waylaid by thugs, he moved slowly on the thick Persian carpet to the nearby drink table. There he poured generously from the lead glass decanter, savoring the smell of the fine brandy as it swirled like molten gold into the glass.

  He would be equally generous with himself after his master retired. He had a feeling there would be cause to celebrate. The young master was doing well this evening. Success was welcome after a few lean weeks at the tables had left them with a purse so thin he had wondered how they would pay the rent on the rather sumptuous suite of rooms they had taken in London.

  An imperceptible grin—no good servant could show his emotions in the midst of duty—flickered upon the dry line of Lucien’s mouth. The matter of the rent, at least, was no longer of concern should the master lose or win. A week earlier, they had vacated the apartment in question. The rent on the present one, he was certain the master paid with regularity.

  Rhys, without a nod or a backward glance at Lucien, took the glass from the manservant’s hand. Quietly he sipped his brandy, assessed his cards, and found both pleasing. The American, Monsieur Gamble, had won heavily the night before, from him and from the four others who made up the game. The man was skilled with the cards, artful even, but not as skilled as he was himself. Monsieur Gamble and those other gentlemen had not realized that Rhys had deliberately downplayed his talent at the game, nor had the vociferous American been wise enough to guess that tonight’s solitary match had been planned to divest him of his earlier winnings.

  Rhys Delmar’s long deft fingers absently stroked the mounting stack of signed marks that had already slipped from Monsieur Gamble’s side of the table to his own. He did not need to sum them up to know the total was close to ten thousand pounds. He had kept a running count in his head as the game progressed. Unless his information was wrong, which was unlikely—since he discreetly ferreted out an opponent’s ability to pay before he sat down to play—there could not be much more remaining for the American to wager.

  Zack Gamble looked at his cards and saw a dizzying blur of lines and numbers. Trying to focus his eyes, he blinked his heavy lids and took a ponderous breath, which shuddered painfully from his chest as he exhaled. His already-wan face blanched even whiter.

  “How ’bout opening that window, you there.” Zack loosely waved an arm at Lucien. “A man could suffocate in one of these damned smoking rooms.”

  “You would like for me to put out my cigar, Monsieur Gamble?”

  “Damned right I would,” Zack grumbled. “If a man wants to smoke he ought to go to the out-of-doors.”

  Rhys hurriedly extinguished the fuming cigar he held between his fingers. “A thousand pardons, monsieur,” he said. “Had I known...”

  “Aw hell!” Regaining a bit of color in his cheeks, as fresh cool air rustled through the silk curtains and swept into the room, Zack waved his hand, cards and all, at Rhys. He didn’t know what had gotten into him. Any other time he would have been smoking himself. He was fond of a good cigar, ordinarily. “Don’t mind me,” he apologized for his abruptness. “A man ought to smoke where he wants to, I reckon. After all it is your house.”

  “And you are a guest in my house, monsieur.” His house. Hardly, Rhys thought. Borrowed rooms belonging to the Countess Clemenceau, a French “refugee” in London like himself. The countess was an aging confection of a woman with whom he had made a mutually beneficial agreement—one which he was not proud of, but one of necessity. The countess had youthful passions despite her advancing years. She liked a hot-blooded young man to share her bed. For his services he got splendid accommodations and the introductions which had gained him a long-awaited invitation to last night’s gaming.

  Still, there was a need to proceed slowly. He had a reputation to disprove. Knowledge of his propensity to win had preceded him from Paris to London. On arrival, he had found himself shut out of gaming clubs, unwelcome in the card rooms of the wealthy gentry who liked a bit of sport to their games. A time of sacrifice was required, a period of losing rounds at the tables until these English concluded that his reputed skill was naught but the usual exaggeration of the French. Once they dropped their guard he would find himself among the first included when the stakes were especially high. He smiled softly as he thought of the moment, the thrill of once more playing to win.

  He needed the American’s money for that time and he knew that the English, who held such low regard for their colonial cousins, would not hold such a win against him.

  “You are ready to begin, monsieur?” he asked.

  Zack Gamble leveled bleary eyes on the handsome Frenchman, and gripped the velvet-covered arms of his chair. “Zack! By damn, call me Zack! I’ve been mo
n-shured ’til I’m choking on it.”

  Rhys laughed. “As you wish, Zack,” he said in polite compliance. He liked this American who had no decorum and no manners, possibly because his own were assumed, a mimicry of those of the privileged sons of the noblemen he’d worked for as a lad. Debauched, some of them, but proud and proper when need be. Thanks to his gift of mimicry he now moved among them. His manners were as perfect as those of the best of them—the nuances of his speech, whether in English or his native French, as refined as those of the best educated among them.

  “Zack,” his companion echoed, pushing up straight in his chair, feeling more himself again. “Now how about a hand that will let me win back a pound or two of my own money.”

  The brief exuberance Zack Gamble felt was not enough to sustain the concentration necessary to win at a game of chance. In under an hour the American’s pockets were empty as rain-spent clouds and he’d written marks for every pound and gold eagle in the cash-box hidden in his room. When he paid up he wouldn’t have much more left than the price of a good meal.

  Weary, feeling as thick-headed as if he’d drowned in drink, Zack reflected on the circumstance he was in, while Rhys Delmar excused himself from the table for a few minutes. The odd thing was he didn’t much care. For Zack, money had always come and gone with remarkable ease. Plenty of times he’d been down to wagering his pearl-handled Colt revolver, once even his boots. He’d never stayed busted long, except once. That time he’d been down and out so long he’d done the unpardonable, wagered a few shares of the company on a hand.

  Damn! He’d been sure of himself with that hand. Sure he couldn’t lose. Self-assurance had not carried him. He had lost and it had cost him more than ten percent of the Gamble Stage Line. It had cost him family. Hell! He blamed Theodor. High and mighty Theodor. Anointed by their father, his mother’s favorite. High and mighty, unspotted Theodor Gamble. Damn him! Damn him to hell! He missed him, and Teddy. And his mother. And he was tired, tired as if he had the whole world strapped on his back and he’d been walking with it all day.