Nan Ryan (9 page)

“Where is the sheriff?” Landsfelt’s voice was loud, booming. “I must speak to a lawman at once!”

The aging local wrenched free of Hantz Landsfelt’s big hands, shoved him away, bent and picked up his dropped pocket knife and the whistle he was whittling. He eased gingerly back down into his chair, looked up at the big, red-faced man standing over him, and said, “I reckon whatever it is you need to say to the sheriff will have to wait till tomorrow.” He took up his whittling again. “Sheriff Jackson’s gone fishin’. He won’t likely be back before tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I can’t wait un … Where did he go fishing?”

The slight little man lifted bony shoulders in a shrug. “No way of knowin’. Lots of good trout-filled streams up here.”

Hantz Landsfelt slammed his open palm against his forehead. He turned and hurried away, not knowing where he was going. Then he caught sight of the stage office two blocks down the street. Yes! That was the answer! He’d grab the next stagecoach out of Cloudcroft! Surely by the time he reached Las Cruces the telegraph wires would be back up and he could send a telegram to Montillion! And he could inform the authorities!

Landsfelt rushed into the stage office, looked about, and was surprised to find it empty. He hurried to the counter to buy a ticket on the next stage to Las Cruces. And learned why the waiting room was empty.

“The stage to Las Cruces,” he said, still laboring to breathe, his big chest heaving. “When does it leaver?”

“Three thirty this afternoon,” said the slender, bespectacled man behind the counter. “That be a one way ticket, mister?”

Landsfelt shook his head. “Forget Las Cruces. When is the next stage out of Cloudcroft?”

“Going where?”

“Anywhere! Doesn’t matter. I don’t care where!”

“Well, now, that would be the three-thirty stage to Las Cruces,” the man said, a teasing twinkle in his light eyes, as if he had said something humorous.

Landsfelt was not amused.

Frustrated, frantic, he knew he had no choice but to wait. He could go down to the livery stable and buy a saddle horse. But it wouldn’t do him any good. He didn’t know how to ride. He had never been on a horse. So he was forced to wait. He paced nervously back and forth, back and forth, realizing with every step that the Texas Ranger was carrying the princess farther and farther away.

After what seemed an eternity to Hantz Landsfelt, the time finally came for the stage to depart. There were two other passengers traveling to Las Cruces. A couple of slow-moving, white-haired old ladies. Landsfelt rolled his eyes, silently counted to ten, and stepped forward to assist the brittle-boned ladies in boarding the coach. They were grateful. One tried to give him a coin from her worn reticule. He declined.

The bearded driver stuck his head in the coach and said, “Looks like it’s just the four of us today, folks. The young man who normally rides shotgun didn’t show up. Don’t know where the devil he is, beggin’ your pardon, ladies.” He patted the heavy Colt .44 on his hip, and added, “No need for worry though. I don’t anticipate any trouble, but I’m always ready. Now sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Three hours into the journey down the steep, treacherous mountain pass, a dozing Hantz Landsfelt was awakened by the sudden sound of gunfire. He bolted upright, looked at the two frightened, twittering ladies, and drew the revolver from the waistband of his trousers. He peered cautiously out the stage window.

In the pastel gloaming of the setting sun he saw a half-dozen masked mounted gunmen swiftly surrounding the slowing coach. A bullet whizzed past his ear. He jerked his head back inside and ordered the little old ladies onto the floor. He heard the driver yelp in pain, knew he’d been hit.

He was aware that if he tried to shoot it out with the bandits, somebody would get killed. He didn’t want the blood of the little silver-haired ladies on his hands. So, at gun point, hands raised above his head, Hantz Landsfelt climbed down out of the coach, as ordered. He and his two terrified traveling companions were robbed of their valuables.

Then the coach’s six horses were unharnessed and set free. Leaving Landsfelt with two feeble old ladies and a wounded stage driver afoot in a high mountain pass beside the useless stagecoach.

Miles from the nearest town.

Physically defeated, but still defiant, Princess Marlena, seated across the saddle, enclosed in the long arms of the stone-faced Texas Ranger, clung tenaciously to the saddle horn. Despite the fierce aching in her back, she sat ramrod straight, determined she would not collapse against the broad chest of her stubborn abductor.

She abhorred the thought of touching or being touched by this mean-looking Texan who was so inflexible and pigheaded he wouldn’t listen to reason. She had explained everything to him over and over again! Had told him exactly who she was. Had told him of her untimely illness. Had told him of the pretender who was taking her place on the bond tour.

It had done no good.

All her reasoning and revelations had fallen on deaf ears. She may as well have been talking to the wind. There had been no response. He hadn’t said a word or even nodded his head. He had continued to lope the stallion across the high mountain meadows, hardly glancing at her. Taciturn and withdrawn, displaying no emotion.

The princess was angry, but she was also frightened.

She was afraid of both the dark-visaged man and his huge black stallion. Never in her twenty-eight years had she been on the back of a horse. Her kingdom had owned some of the finest horseflesh in Europe, but the well-trained creatures had been used only to pull the royal carriages. She had never had any desire to be a horsewoman. Now here she was, high up off the ground, on a snorting, thundering beast that might well toss her over its head any moment.

And her only protection from the big four-legged devil racing wildly in and out of the towering pine trees was the big, two-legged devil astride him. An unapproachable man with a dark, strong face. A face too hard, too strong for pure beauty. But a lean, chiseled face as darkly bronzed as an Indian’s with a high, intelligent forehead, a straight nose, soaring cheekbones, sensual but cruel-looking lips, and a pair of deep, piercing blue eyes that were sullen and brooding. A harshly masculine face that compelled and arrested attention. She couldn’t keep from covertly sneaking peeks at that harshly handsome face, despite continued efforts to keep her eyes off him.

The princess had finally—after what seemed an eternity atop this tirelessly running stallion—become too exhausted to raise a hand and strike at her stone-faced abductor another time. There was no fight left in her. She had expended every ounce of her energy. Her arms were now so weak and tired, it was all she could do to hold on to the saddle horn.

Her throat was raw and aching from screaming, but she continued to threaten in low, hoarse tones. “You will
not
get away with this,” she rasped, her red-rimmed eyes flashing with a mixture of fear and anger. “I’ll have you flogged until there is no flesh left on your back! I’ll order you tossed into the deepest, darkest dungeon beneath the castle and throw away the key! I’ll see to it you are hanged in the town square before all my cheering subjects! I’ll call for a firing squad to—”

“I get the general idea,” Virgil Black finally interrupted, his hard-planed face expressionless. “Now, why don’t you give it a rest before you lose your voice entirely.”

“Oh, you would like that, wouldn’t you?” she croaked. “You’d revel in silent obedience from me, but let me assure you that … I … I—” her voice cracked, she swallowed painfully, then swallowed again, “I … I will not be quiet! Never, ever! I shall curse you with my last breath!”

“Your last breath may come quite soon if you don’t pipe down.” He glanced warningly at her, then back at the trail ahead. “Red, you know as well as I do that the Apaches could be within earshot.”

“Indians? Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed. “Even in Hartz-Coburg everyone knows that the American Indians have been placed inside little villages and told to stay there.”

“Telling an Apache to stay on the reservation is like telling you to be quiet.” Again he glanced at her, and Princess Marlena flinched involuntarily as his icy gaze touched the tangled locks lying around her face. “If you want to hang on to all that red hair, you had better be still.”

The princess opened her mouth to protest, but shut it without speaking. What was the use?

It was early afternoon.

The two of them had been atop the black stallion since the noon hour when Virgil had snatched her off the depot platform. Indifferent to her distress, he had galloped the big stallion for a full mile before reining him down into a more comfortable lope. Now as they crossed one of the many verdant mountain meadows high up in the pine-cloaked Sacramentos and the princess had finally fallen silent, Virgil Black said, “That’s better, Red. Why don’t you lie back against me and get some rest. We’ve a long, hard ride ahead of us.”

“How long?” she asked, refusing to release her grip on the saddle horn.

“We’ve only ridden about six or seven miles, so we have another hundred and thirty-five miles to go,” he said. “Barring any unforeseen problems, we should be in El Paso in four, maybe five days.”

Princess Marlena was horrified. Four days before anyone would know what had happened to her! Four days before this terrible mistake could be cleared up. Four days before she would be released to join the bond tour.

It might as well have been a lifetime.

Her throat too sore to continue trying to speak, the distraught princess made mean faces at the uncaring Ranger until she grew so weary she could no longer hold her head up. The effort was too great. She was too exhausted.

Her head finally bowed, her chin sagging down onto her chest. Her back was aching painfully. Her eyes were burning. Her throat was hurting so that she would barely swallow.

So the bone-weary princess put up only a brief show of obligatory resistance when Virgil Black laid a gloved hand on her shoulder and gently urged her back into the curve of his bent arm. The stiff fingers of her left hand opened and came uncurled from the saddle horn, fell to her lap. Her head drooped against the support of his muscular shoulder. She slid a weary arm around his back and clutched at the white cotton fabric of his shirt, admitting to herself she was so impossibly tired, she would have willingly rested in the arms of Satan himself.

Her stinging, watering eyes slipped closed. She sighed softly and her entire body relaxed. She snuggled her cheek close against the flat muscles of Virgil Black’s broad supporting chest. She licked her dry lips. Her eyes fluttered half open. She looked up, and an unsettling shudder surged through her slender body.

His darkly handsome face was as impassive as a stone statue, but his eyes—those incredible indigo eyes—were fastened on her face, a strange, sardonic light shining out of their deep blue depths. Somewhere in her groggy brain, a warning signal sounded.

She
was
in danger.

Great danger.

Instinctively she knew that being thrown into the El Paso County jail was likely the least of her worries. This tall, lean, virile Ranger of Texas posed the biggest threat of all. He was nothing like any of the men she had known back home. She didn’t know how to handle him. And she didn’t trust him. Not for a minute. She would have to be on her toes at all times.

But even as those worrisome thoughts nagged, Princess Marlena knew she was drifting helplessly toward slumber, and there was nothing she could do about it. She simply had to have a short nap, then she’d watch him. She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes again, and nestled her face closer against his chest. The last thing the princess heard was the heavy rhythmic beating of the Texas Ranger’s heart.

11

“
… off to London in June
, the races at Goodwood, yachting at Cowes, and then, of course, the German spas in July.”

Montillion spoke in low, conversational tones, continuing, as he did anytime there was a free moment, to inform and enlighten his attentive charge. He was repeating himself, he knew. He had told her all of this before. But he would tell her again and again until he was certain she would not forget a single detail. It was imperative that she be so well versed in every aspect of royal life that there would be no chance she would falter, not even under the most intense questioning.

It was nearing dusk in Dallas.

The last dying rays of the setting summer sun spilled in through the open balcony doors of the lavish Adolphus Hotel rooftop suite. A gentle breeze stirred the sheer curtains.

Montillion relaxed in an easy chair near the mirrored vanity where the lovely woman he had chosen to play the part of the royal princess sat obediently still on a velvet stool, listening intently, while Baroness Richtoffen put the finishing touches on her upswept ginger-red hair.

The Queen of the Silver Dollar, in her role of royal princess, was even better than Montillion could have hoped. From the minute she stepped down from the royal train in Fort Worth, she had demonstrated incredible acting ability. Their five-day stay in the seat of Tarrant County had been hugely successful, the banquets and rallies attended by the city’s elite. Hartz-Coburg bond sales had been brisk.