Trouble in Disguise: 5 (Eclipse Heat)

August 1884

Deacon McCallister lay facedown and spread-eagled on the packed dirt, his arms and legs anchored by stakes driven into the ground. He squinted blearily through sweat and the tears of pain he couldn’t control.

Captured earlier because of his own stupidity, Deacon had already suffered under Alistair Pettigrew’s flaying knife. The outlaw had cut thin strips of skin from Deacon’s back. Though it was still morning, the heat of the sun burned his damaged flesh and he shuddered as insects discovered the feast.

One of the camp whores had decided to have fun too. He wanted to scream, but he strangled the sound and lay untwitching in the dirt while the woman crouched next to him, layering honey over the raw wounds on his back. The sweet balm melted, soothing the flayed flesh, but she made it clear easing Deacon’s pain wasn’t her intent.

“Come see how the ants love his taste,” she coaxed Pettigrew and was rewarded when the outlaw leader joined her.

Deacon’s stomach knotted, anticipating more pain. Pettigrew kicked dirt, sending a cascade of fine stone and dust over the raw wounds. Deacon’s breath caught in his chest as he locked his jaw to stifle a moan. When he’d faded to a near unconscious state, the shock of water dribbling down his face revived him.

“Stop that. I want the sonofabitch thirsty,” Pettigrew ordered her.

“If he passes out, sugar, you’ll miss the fun of seeing him hurt.” Regardless of her purpose for delivering it, the water trickled close enough to catch with his lips and cleared Deacon’s head. The woman was squatting in such a way that her dress had bunched high enough above her knee to show the top of the boot and the knife sheathed there.

“Let me just get that spot on the far side and paint him up good. Then you and me’ll have us some fun.” Instead of standing and walking around his body, the woman leaned over Deacon, her skirts falling over his arm, covering the stake that held his right hand, her knee so close the knife handle brushed his knuckles.

Deacon fumbled for the blade, pulling against the leather strip that bound his wrist, his fingers stiff and unresponsive. Any moment he expected her to call out and expose his actions, but she leaned farther across his body, slathering more honey on his back, indifferent to his desperate grope.

“That ought to bring the critters on real fast.” She sat back on her heels, admiring her work, her skirts still covering the upper right stake and hiding the knife he’d secured.

“You like watchin’ ’em die slow, don’t you?” Pettigrew praised her, and even Deacon could hear the surge of lust in the other man’s voice. Evidently more interested at the moment in rutting than torturing, the outlaw suddenly jerked the woman to her feet. “Gets ya kinda juiced up, don’t it, girl?”

The woman laughed, seeming agreeable to Pettigrew’s idea of romance. Deacon groaned, sawing desperately at the rawhide binding him because there was no way to hide the knife clutched in his hand when she stood.

He’d sliced through one leather strip and had started on the other when the outlaw groaned and fell to the ground. Panicked, Deacon tried to make the blade cut faster so he could defend himself when the outlaw looked over and caught him with the weapon.

But the woman was draped across the fallen man, sealing his mouth with hers as he arched, grunted and then slumped under her. The whore rolled off Pettigrew, revealing the knife sticking from his chest heart-high. Wasting no time, she pulled the blade free and crouched by Deacon’s feet, severing the ankle ties binding him.

“Beau sent me. I’ve got a horse waiting and we’re leaving but I need your help.”

As soon as his legs were freed, Deacon struggled to his knees and gazed at the young woman. White-blonde hair cascaded down her back, oddly contrasting with the dark brows and lashes accenting fiercely demanding gray eyes.

“Put this on. You’re about the same size.” The soft edges of her drawl mixed with a harsher twang as she gave him orders. She handed Deacon the outlaw’s black hat. “The others have their backs turned so as not to see you get carved up and me fucked. Don’t count on that lasting if they get curious.”

Even in his desperate state, her crude words and rough accent jarred in his mind. They didn’t match her face. Nevertheless, too blurred by pain to do much thinking, he waited for her to tell him what to do next.

She removed Pettigrew’s shirt, rolling him over so he lay facedown on the spot just vacated by Deacon, then kicked the body’s legs apart, mimicking the shape that had lain there before.

She worked so fast, Deacon barely realized what she’d done before she focused on him again. Sliding his arm around her shoulders, she lifted him to his feet, half carrying and half dragging him toward the bushes and rocks beyond.

“It’ll take a damn miracle to get out of this fix.”

His growled opinion made her snort.

“Lucky ya got one then, McCallister. Now get a move on.”

“How many wanteds?” he muttered, trying to get his feet moving faster than a slow shuffle.

“Enough to make Christmas right promising this year,” she answered.

Deacon had counted more than a half-dozen outlaws when he’d ridden into camp. He didn’t think the woman had a chance in hell of getting out with or without him. But if rival bounty hunter Beau Beauregard was helping her, that might not be the case. Since Deacon was on his feet and it looked as if he might have a chance at surviving, he didn’t question the possibility further.

“Hey!” The shout warned them they’d been discovered.

“Ketchum, get him.” She shouted the order and kept moving, ignoring the outlaw behind them.

“Where’s Beauregard?” Deacon muttered, grasping the one thing that made sense. Knowing the kid had orchestrated the rescue gave Deacon hope he might make it through the day alive. He could hear the sound of a snarling beast behind him and that was additional incentive to believe.

“Up you go,” she murmured, seemingly unafraid as she faced Possum, Beauregard’s black-and-white pinto. The animal stood quietly as the woman boosted Deacon to the back of the saddle seat. She mounted in front of him. “Wrap your arms around my middle and hang on.”

“I won’t let go. Ride hard, hellcat,” he growled in her ear. He didn’t know how she pulled it off other than sheer guts. He wasn’t any use other than clinging like a limpet to her back.

The pinto took off at a dead run and the woman knee-guided her mount while she held a gun in each hand, clearing a path with bullets as they raced through the main camp heading for the corridor leading out of the canyon. Behind them, Deacon heard a wolf snarling. The outlaws’ horses streamed past them in the granite corridor, and then they were out.

He started to slide and grappled for a better hold, clutching a plump breast in his fist.

“Hang on to something substantial, ya dang fool.” She holstered one gun and grabbed his hand, moving it to her waist. Then she reached back, pressing his shoulder and attempting to shift him closer to her body. “Dadblamed honey’s slippery,” she complained.

“You painted me with the mess, what do you expect?” Deacon focused on their sporadic conversation, trying to keep himself from passing out. “You owe me for the honey.” He didn’t know what else to say so he hung his head over her shoulder and complained.

“Mister, honey’s a mite dear where I come from.
You
owe
me
. It’ll take me six ways to Sunday to replace my stash.”

Even confused by the agony of his back, the woman’s drawled answer perplexed Deacon. He held on to a woman’s body but heard Beauregard speak. Deacon figured the pain had just been too much and sent him to crazy land.

Three months later, Hell’s Half Acre

Deacon McCallister mounted wide, curving steps leading to the grand entrance of the Southern-styled plantation house. Among its mediocre copycats, the building at the end of Rusk Street made an impressive statement. Windows decorating the first and second levels viewed the world with amber eyes as afternoon lamps glowed behind filmy curtains.

Smoke drifting above each of the chimneys indicated fires had been lit inside to stave off the chill of the dreary day. The weather was unusually cold for October and Deacon appreciated the warmth of his leather duster although its weight irritated the new scars on his back.

He was here because Hiram Potter, the Eclipse sheriff, had asked him to check on Beau Beauregard.

“I got a wire this week. The kid’s in Hell’s Half Acre hunting a counterfeiter. I kicked up a fuss about him working alone after what happened to you so he’s keeping me posted as to his whereabouts.”

Deacon didn’t need the oblique reminder that without Beauregard’s recent rescue he’d be dead. Ungrateful though he might be, he was more interested in meeting the woman who’d risked her life for him. Galling as it was, Beauregard was the only one who knew her.

Hiram evidently thought Beauregard in danger, stumbling around somewhere in Fort Worth. Deacon sorely doubted it. But he had additional incentive to find the young bounty hunter since Beau’s trail intersected with that of the fake money. The McCallisters had been stung by the counterfeiters along with half the Territory.

This is a waste of time. There’s no way they’d let that brat inside.
Picturing the lanky, half-grown youth in his floppy hat and buckskins, Deacon let his gaze sweep over the elegant edifice before him.

When the kid was on the hunt, he had a nose like a bloodhound, but it didn’t seem probable that the owner of this establishment was his quarry. Nevertheless, Deacon continued climbing the steps, intent on reaching the door before the guards watching him from their patrol posts decided he wasn’t fit for entrance either.

Deacon reached the top of the steps and faced the ornate entry. At his first knock, the door swung open and he was greeted by a doorman ushering him into the Pleasure Dome, one of the premier whorehouses in Fort Worth, Texas.

“Lydia in?” he asked gruffly, avoiding the gaze of the butler as he stared at the lavish décor. Silently the doorkeeper escorted him to the sitting room, waved him to a seat and left him alone to wait for the owner of the brothel. After only a few moments, Lydia joined him.

“Robert,” Lydia said, flashing him a dimpled smile and holding her hands out as she entered the room. ”When Calvin announced your presence, I couldn’t believe it. It’s been too long.” If one didn’t know better, Lydia would be described as a sweetly refined gentlewoman. Deacon knew better. Her discreetly flirtatious manner covered the mind of a shop owner assessing a customer.

The infamous madam had been childhood friends with Deacon’s wife, Annie. The two women hadn’t visited often and Deacon had met Lydia no more than a half-dozen times before Annie’s death. After he’d hunted down his wife’s murderers, severed ties with the church and become a bounty hunter instead of a preacher, Lydia had invited him to become her lover and partner in a brothel.

He’d declined both offers, but when Annie’s old friend opened her establishment in Hell’s Half Acre, Deacon sometimes visited. He steadfastly declined intimacy with Lydia and made it a point to keep his couplings emotionless, never bedding the same paid companion twice. His use of prostitutes shamed him and he didn’t visit often. When he did, he paid well and marked his weakness as another smudge on his character.