Taming of Jessi Rose (9 page)

As Hatcher dismounted and tied his horse to the post in front of the porch, Jessi could see Griff and Joth put down their shovels to come and see what was going on.

“Afternoon, Jessi.”

She didn't offer him any pleasantries. Even though he'd been dearly loved his whole life, he didn't deserve any. “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

His jaw tightened at her unfriendly stance. “Came to see somebody named Blake. Heard he works for you?”

Jessi eyed Griff a moment, then turned her attention to her nephew. “Joth, your lunch is on the table. Go get washed up. I'll be in to join you shortly.”

The boy gave the sheriff a wary look, then said, “Yes, Aunt Jessi.”

Silence reigned until Joth disappeared around the side of the house.

Griff stepped up. “I'm Blake. How can I help, sheriff?”

Hatcher looked Griffin up and down. He didn't appear to care for what he was seeing. “You can stay the hell away from Reed Darcy to start.”

Griffin could only assume Darcy had run back and tattled after their meeting the other day, but out of a sense of fairness, he vowed to listen to the sheriff anyway. “Explain.”

“If I ever hear of you pulling a gun on him again, you'll go straight to jail.”

“And what will Darcy get for drawing on me?”

“Mr. Darcy doesn't have the time to waste drawing on somebody like you.”

“No? Well, he drew first, but he probably left that part out.”

Hatcher seemed caught off guard for a moment, but it didn't take him long to recover. “Whatever happened, Darcy is not somebody you want to fool with.”

“And neither am I,” Griff pointed out firmly. “He was rustling, Sheriff. I was protecting ranch property.”

“You keep getting in Darcy's way and
you're
going to need protecting.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

Griff began making a show of searching his pockets. “A friend of mine gave me a magic amulet a few weeks
ago. He thought I should wear it to keep me safe. What did I do with it?”

Still patting the pockets of his pants and shirt Griffin looked up to Jessi standing on the porch and asked. “Miss Clayton, do you know what I did with that amulet?”

With a completely straight face, Jessi replied, “No, Mr. Blake, I don't. Maybe you should check your pockets again.”

“Good idea.”

Checking the pocket of his shirt again, Griff paused and then smiled. “Here it is.”

When he withdrew the marshal star and held it up for Hatcher to see, Griff drawled coolly, “Do you think this will protect me?”

Hatcher went stock still. “Where'd you get that?”

“Friend of mine.”

Griffin pinned the star to his pocket. “How's that look?”

Since Hatcher still seemed to be having problems with his speech, Griffin turned to Jessi. “How's that look, Miss Clayton. Too flashy?”

“Some might think so, but I find it very stunning, Mr. Blake.”

They shared a grin.

The sheriff didn't appear amused by their antics. “Who sent you here?”

“Deputy Marshal Dixon Wildhorse.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Probably not, but I'll bet you've heard of his boss, Hanging Judge Issac Parker, up at Fort Smith?”

Hatcher began to cough violently.

“I think he does,” Griffin told Jessi.

“I'm guessing that, too,” she said, amused. Jessi hadn't had this much fun in quite some time.

When Hatcher finally recovered from his fit of cough
ing, he barked, “I want to know everything, and I want to know it now, especially the parts about how you got out of that Kansas Penitentiary.”

Griff had no intention of telling him any more than was necessary. “The judge pardoned me.”

“Why?”

“Because he wants Reed Darcy to have my bed there instead. Judge Parker's had his eye on your friend for some time because the judge doesn't take kindly to men burning out their neighbors or shooting folks in the back.”

“I had nothing to do with any of that!” Hatcher snapped angrily.

“Well, you'd better start having something to do with it, or your name's going to be right next to Darcy's on Judge Parker's list. How'd you know about my parole?”

“Darcy had me wire a few railroad friends of his up in Kansas to find out about you and they wired him back. They said you'd been paroled, but the warden couldn't tell them anything else.”

Griffin found the situation highly ironic. How many outlaws had lawmen like Wildhorse and Judge Parker guarding their backs? “Sheriff, you can either honor that badge you're wearing and help me, or not. Either way, Darcy's going to be stopped.”

The sheriff looked Griff up and down once more, then said with a brittle smile. “You're pretty damn sure of yourself, aren't you?”

“I've been told that a time or two.”

“Well, Darcy ain't no train you're trying to rob, son. You're on your own.”

Griff's jaw tightened. He'd hoped for the sheriff's help. “I think you're betting on the wrong horse, sheriff.”

Hatcher turned to walk back to his mount. “Maybe, but
I'll
be alive to find out, you won't be.”

“Even if it means you spend the rest of your life in prison?”

The sheriff turned back and replied quietly, “I'm already in prison, son.”

Hatcher got into the saddle, then looked over to Jessi, still standing on the porch. He told her, “Talk some sense into him, Jessi, before it's too late.”

He touched his hat and rode off.

After the silence resettled, Jessi said. “I don't think he has much faith in your abilities, Marshal Blake.”

“I don't think so, either.”

 

After they finished lunch, they worked on the corral until the sun got too hot and they were forced to retire to the coolness of the house. Joth went to his room to work on his lessons. Jessi went to the kitchen to shell peas and start the bread for dinner. Griffin followed her in and as he walked behind her, feasted his eyes on the tempting sway of her lush denim-clad hips.

He took a seat at the table. “Mind if I sit awhile?”

“Nope,” she told him as she grabbed the large wooden bowl that held the peas and joined him at the table.

“You know, the sheriff's visit did make me realize something, though.”

“And that is?”

“I don't know the first thing about what I'm doing.”

Jessi looked up. “I wondered when you'd get around to that, but I didn't think you'd admit it aloud.”

“Me being so exaggerated and all,” he came back sarcastically.

He sounded offended, but she ignored the tone. “Exactly.”

“So you don't have any faith in my abilities, either?”

“I don't know anything about your abilities.” She
paused. “Well, I know a bit about some of your abilities.”

He smiled at that.

“But in reality I've known you less than a week. I don't have a true measure of what you're capable of. I do know Darcy, however, and he's been stampeding through folks' lives since before either of us were born. He's crafty, mean, and arrogant, and smart enough not to do his own killing.”

She held his eyes. “I'm not saying you can't do what you came here to do. You obviously love a challenge.”

He smiled at that too.

“But this challenge could cost you your life. Darcy's not going to surrender simply because you walk up and ask him to.”

Jessi paused to observe him for a moment. Had she stepped on his manly pride with her words? “You're not one of those men who can't handle taking a woman's advice, are you?”

“I'm still deciding.”

Gasping with mock offense, she threw a few peas at him.

He ducked, chuckling, “Hey, I was being honest. Now, tell me about the sheriff.”

The light in Jessi eyes faded. “He and my father were best friends at one time. Grew up together. When Hatcher's wife Betsy became ill, the doctor visits and the medicines she needed cost more than he could afford. He sold his ranch to Darcy's bank because he needed the funds and then ran for sheriff with Darcy's blessings.”

“When was this?”

“About five years ago. At first, Hatcher thought he was going to be a true sheriff. He'd fought on the side of the Union during the war, so he knew about honor, but Darcy stripped him of that. There were rumors that
Hatcher had to do what he was told or Darcy wouldn't pay for Betsy's treatments.”

“What happened to his wife?”

“She died. The doctors said some kind of cancer.”

“Did Hatcher love his wife?”

“As much as my father loved this land. He hasn't been the same since Betsy died. I thought he'd help avenge my father's murder, but he didn't.”

Jessi finished shelling the peas silently, then poured flour onto the tabletop and began combining the ingredients for the bread.

“How'd Darcy's family get to be in charge here?”

“Through his father.”

“Explain.”

“My grandfather, Thomas, and Reed Darcy's father, Vale, were given this land in '36 as a reward for their bravery during the Texas war for independence. They were both freedmen. My grandfather started this ranch after getting his title, and Vale started a town he named for himself.”

“Humble man.”

“Very,” Jessi cracked. “Over time, more and more freedmen moved here and they brought their families and their businesses, and soon Vale was a real town. Vale Darcy died in '56. That's when Reed took over the reins.”

Griffin had heard about men of the race participating in the various Texas wars for independence, but had never been personally acquainted with one. He'd have to remember to ask her about her grandfather's role sometime. “Besides burning out his neighbors and declaring war on women and children, what's he like as a man?”

“You've met him. Pompous and arrogant. He's the richest person around, and he makes sure everyone
knows it. Gives fancy parties; has all of his house furnishings shipped from back east.”

Jessi began to knead the dough with relish. Just thinking about Darcy made her blood rise, and she took it out on the bread.

Griff watched her pounding the dough and smiled to himself. She was all fire. “I think that dough would yell surrender if it could.”

She stopped. “I guess I am being a bit brutal.” When she resumed, she worked the bread at a more normal pace.

Griff watched her silently for a while, noting the strength in her dark hands and how expertly she handled the task. “Can't remember the last time I saw a woman making bread.”

“I've been making bread since my mother died.”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen summers.”

After placing the bread in a big bowl to rise, Jessi covered it with a cloth, then rinsed her hands at the sink. Dipping herself a cup of water from the water jug by the sink, she told Blake, “It's probably much cooler out on the back porch. How about we talk there?”

“An invitation?” he teased.

Jessi did her best to hide the smile in her eyes. “It's an invitation to talk, nothing more.”

“Pity,” he replied without embarrassment.

Jessi decided that resisting him was going to be an all-day job. “You flirt as easily as you breathe, I think.”

“And I think that deep down inside you're enjoying it.”

Jessi had to confess she
was
enjoying this highly-charged back-and-forth banter. It made her feel alive and, dare she say, sensual. Having him here awakened a part of herself she never knew existed. The path of life she'd been following since the death of her mother
left little time to explore tenderness, frivolity, or feelings other than those fraught with pain and anger. Now life had put this man in her path and she didn't know what she was supposed to do with him or about him. “So are you going to come out to the porch or not?”

He stood slowly and gestured. “After you.”

It was much cooler at the back of the house, just as she had hoped. She took a seat on the old rocker and he sat on the porch step.

“Where'd you grow up?” she asked, once they were comfortable and the silence of the Texas afternoon resettled around them.

“Nebraska. Mother died when I was ten. Drifted awhile until a preacher man named Royce Blake hauled me out of a whorehouse in Abilene and took me home.”

“A whorehouse? What were you doing there?”

“Worked there, ran errands for the girls and gamblers. Swept floors.”

“How old were you?”

“Twelve, thirteen.”

“Surely you weren't on your own all that time after your mother's passing?”

“Yep.” Griff didn't want to think about those times.

“You had no other family?”

“None that I knew of.”

Jessi realized Blake carried his own heartaches. Royce Blake must have been a very special man to take in a thirteen-year-old orphan. “Did Mr. Blake have other children?”

“One, a son named Jackson. He's a few years older than I am.”

“Did you two get along?”

Griff grinned. “Yeah, we did, although we were nothing alike.”

“Where is he now?”

“Here in Texas, last I heard. Probably in the Brazos
Valley. He was a sheriff down there after Lincoln's war, but when some rebs murdered Royce, Jackson had to leave or be lynched.”

“How long has it been since you've seen him?”

“Too long,” he replied wistfully. “Going on six or seven years now.”

Jessi could sense Blake's love for his brother in his tone. “What's he think about your way of life?”

A half smile curved his red gold mustache. “Hates it, of course. It's hard having a former lawman in the family when you're robbing trains, but he's always walked the straight and narrow, even when we were young. I was the wild one. In and out of scrapes the whole time.”