Texas Timber War (11 page)

There were halfhearted protests from Price, Olmsted, Phillips, and Walser, and entreaties for her to give them another chance to win some of their money back, but Isabel shook her head.

‘‘A girl has to get her beauty sleep, you know,'' she said.

‘‘My dear, you appear to have gotten plenty,'' Price said. He sighed. ‘‘But of course we'll be gracious and let you go, won't we, boys?''

A chorus of agreement came from the other players.

Isabel gathered her winnings and tucked them into her handbag. Fargo held her chair for her as she got up, and the other men stood politely. She looked around at them, nodded, and said, ‘‘Gentlemen.'' Then she offered her arm to Fargo, who took it and strolled toward the door with her.

He had seen the looks of jealousy in the eyes of the other men. Those hombres had something to be jealous about, he thought, and it didn't have anything to do with the money they'd lost tonight. He was leaving with Isabel, and they weren't.

So to Fargo's way of thinking, that sort of made
him
the big winner of the evening. . . .

 
She came into his arms almost as soon as the door of her room in the hotel closed behind them, and their kiss and the way they tugged at each other's clothes demonstrated the urgency of passion postponed until now. Fargo slid his tongue between Isabel's eager lips as they parted. He filled his hands with the firm bounty of her breasts as her dress fell around her waist.

As they left Skinner's a few minutes earlier, he had looked around for the man with the eye patch, just in case that hombre was lurking in the vicinity of the saloon, but Fargo hadn't seen any sign of him. Nor had they run into any other trouble on their walk back to the Excelsior House.

Now all of Fargo's senses were concentrated on the warm, willing woman in his arms. They stripped each other's clothes off, their arousal growing hotter with each new area of skin that was revealed. The night was warm, the sort of sultry evening made for passion.

When they were both nude, Fargo pulled Isabel tightly against him, cupped a hand behind her head, and kissed her again. She slid a hand down between them to caress the long, thick pole of his manhood as it prodded its heated length against her belly. She urged Fargo back until they reached the bed. Then he sprawled on the mattress while she positioned herself beside his hips. Wrapping both hands around his shaft, she leaned over and began to kiss and lick the head.

Fargo closed his eyes and lay there for long moments, basking in the sheer pleasure of what she was doing to him. He felt the heat of her mouth engulf him as she sucked in as much of his organ as she could. One hand steadied him while the other crept down between his legs to cup the heavy sacs at the base of his shaft.

A part of Fargo's mind would have been content to just lie there and let her bring him to culmination this way, but at the same time that seemed a mite selfish to him. So he opened his eyes and reached out to grasp her hips. She answered his gentle tugs by moving around so that she was above him, with her thighs straddling his head while her upper body rested on his stomach. She never stopped sucking, even while she was rearranging herself.

With her poised like that, Fargo was able to reach up and use his thumbs to spread apart the folds of her sex. He sent his tongue delving into it. That made a shudder go through her, and she finally stopped what she was doing to lift her head from his groin and gasp in ecstasy. Then she went right back to her task with renewed energy.

Both of them continued their oral caresses for long minutes, each selflessly giving the other pleasure. Finally, when they couldn't stand the exquisite torment any longer, Isabel rolled off of Fargo onto her back and spread her legs. He knelt between her thighs, brought the head of his member to her drenched opening, and drove into her. She was so wet and he was so hard that he was able to sheathe himself fully within her with one thrust.

Isabel wrapped her arms and legs around him and pushed her tongue into his mouth as they kissed. Fargo launched into the timeless, universal rhythm of men and women coupling. The only sounds in the room were their labored breathing and the soft, liquid music of their joining.

Despite the long, action-packed day, Fargo's desire allowed him to find fresh reserves of strength. He was tireless in his lovemaking, and his pounding thrusts soon sent Isabel spiraling over the edge into a climax. He eased off a bit as she clutched at him and spasmed around him. When the shudders rippling through her trailed away, he allowed her to catch her breath for a moment, then resumed his urgent pace. She looked up at him in amazement and whispered, ‘‘Skye, you didn't . . . ?''

Fargo smiled and kept going.

Isabel gasped as she felt her arousal building back up. Fargo was relentless, and when she climaxed again he had to kiss her to keep her from screaming in pleasure. This time Fargo let himself go as well, relaxing the iron control that he had exercised earlier. He drove his shaft into her as far as it would go and began to empty himself in spurt after shuddering spurt. His juices filled her to overflowing. Their shared culmination left both of them limp and drenched and covered with a fine sheen of sweat.

With his manhood still inside her, Fargo tightened his arms around her and rolled onto his back, so that she wound up sprawled atop him. He felt the fast, steady thudding of her heart against his chest. His right hand stroked her fair hair as she rested her head on his shoulder, while his left caressed the swelling curve of her rump.

Isabel was too breathless to speak for several minutes. When she finally recovered enough to find her voice again, she lifted her head and said, ‘‘Skye, even . . . even after last night . . . I didn't know it could be so good.''

Fargo chuckled. ‘‘Practice makes most things better, or so they say.''

She laughed, too, and said, ‘‘In that case, I intend to get a lot of practice with you.''

She pushed herself up a little, leaned over, and blew out the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Fargo didn't know what she had in mind to do next, but he was pretty sure he would enjoy it, whatever it was.

Unfortunately, he didn't get the chance to, because at that moment he glanced over Isabel's shoulder toward the window. The curtain was pulled, but it was thin enough so that some of the moonlight from outside came through it.

And that silvery illumination was enough for him to be able to make out the silhouette of a man crouched on the balcony just outside the window.

Somebody was spying on them.

Fargo clamped his arms around Isabel and moved again, this time rolling right off the bed. He twisted so that he landed on the bottom as they fell to the floor. Isabel cried out, not in pleasure this time but from surprise.

Eavesdropping on their lovemaking was bad enough, but the lurker on the balcony might have something even worse in mind. Fargo wouldn't have been surprised if the glass in the window had shattered under the onslaught of bullets. The man might have come to ambush them, not just spy on them.

No shots came, though, and as Fargo pushed Isabel off of him, she said in alarm, ‘‘Skye, what—''

‘‘Stay down,'' Fargo told her as he snagged his Colt from the holster he had placed on a chair beside the bed. He saw that the shadow of the lurker had disappeared from the curtain. The faint sound of running footsteps came to his ears.

The son of a bitch was getting away.

Naked as a jaybird, Fargo leaped up and lunged to the window. He swept the curtain aside with his left hand and thrust the window up. He went through the opening in a low dive that sent him sprawling on the balcony. Given the fact that he was naked, that was a mite painful, but he didn't care at the moment. He spotted a shape in the darkness several yards away and identified it as a man trying to climb over the wrought-iron railing at the front of the balcony.

‘‘Hold it!'' Fargo called as he lifted the Colt.

Halfway over the railing, the spy twisted around. Colt flame bloomed in the darkness as the gun in his hand erupted twice.

Fargo was already moving, rolling to the side as the slugs plowed into the planks of the balcony. He felt the sting of splinters in bare flesh, but that was better than the smash of bullets. As he came to rest on his stomach again he triggered the Colt and felt it buck against his hand as fire gouted from the muzzle. The flash lit up the balcony, and in that searing instant, he caught a glimpse of the man's face.

He wasn't a bit surprised to see the black patch over the lurker's left eye.

With a yell of pain, the man went backward over the railing, disappearing. Fargo didn't know if he'd been hit or had just lost his balance and fallen.

Fargo got to his feet and hurried over to the edge of the balcony, being careful as he peered over because he didn't want to get a faceful of lead if the one-eyed man opened fire on him from the street below. The man wasn't interested in fighting anymore, though. Instead he was running along Austin Street, limping quite a bit but moving fast despite that. Fargo snapped a shot at him, aiming low in hopes of knocking a leg out from under him, but the bullet kicked up dust in the street as the man suddenly darted sideways and vanished into the black mouth of an alley.

Fargo bit back a curse and lowered the Colt. He knew that by the time he could pull some clothes on and get downstairs, the one-eyed man would be long gone. Jefferson was a big enough town so that someone who didn't want to be found could lose himself without much trouble, even a varmint with an eye patch and an injured leg.

‘‘Skye?'' Isabel asked from the open window. Her voice was tight with worry. ‘‘Skye, are you all right?''

Fargo turned toward her and said, ‘‘Yeah, I reckon I'm fine. Skinned up a mite, that's all.'' He went to the window, and as Isabel stepped away from it, he threw a leg over the sill and climbed back into the darkened room.

Along the street, people had come out to see what all the shooting was about. Men yelled questions to each other, but nobody had any answers.

Fargo didn't intend to volunteer any information about his involvement in the fracas, either. He didn't want to have to try to explain things to Sheriff Higgins.

For one thing, he didn't have any real answers. He didn't know who the one-eyed man was, or why the hombre had been following him.

Or
had
the man been following him? Fargo suddenly asked himself. The bastard hadn't hesitated to start shooting, as if it didn't matter one way or the other to him whether Fargo lived or died.

If that was true, then maybe the one-eyed man had actually been spying on someone else, and Fargo just happened to have been there.

He pulled the curtain closed and then turned to Isabel, who stood near the bed. ‘‘Do you know a tall man with dark hair and an eye patch?'' he asked her.

‘‘Is . . . is that who was out there?''

‘‘That's right,'' Fargo said. ‘‘I first spotted him last night, and I thought then that he was on my trail, even though I'd never seen him before. He was at Skinner's tonight and I figured the same thing. But now I'm wondering if he was actually following you.''

His voice was blunt and uncompromising. He wanted answers. Being shot at always made him mighty curious.

But he wasn't prepared for the gasp of dismay that came from Isabel. As if her knees had suddenly gone weak, she clutched one of the bedposts and sat down on the mattress. ‘‘Oh, no,'' she said in a hushed, miserable voice. ‘‘Dear Lord, no. It can't be.''

Fargo reached into the pocket of his buckskin trousers, found a lucifer, and snapped it into life with his thumbnail. He set the gun down, lifted the lamp chimney, then held the match to the wick. It caught, and as Fargo lowered the chimney, a yellow glow filled the room and showed him just how scared and distraught Isabel looked.

‘‘What is it?'' he asked. ‘‘What's wrong?''

She looked up at him with terrified eyes. Choking the words out, she said, ‘‘That man . . . that man must work for my husband. Oh, God, Skye, he's found me . . . and now he's going to kill me!''

 
‘‘His name is Gideon Cutler,'' Isabel said a few minutes later as she sat on the edge of the bed. She had a dressing gown wrapped around her now and clutched a glass of water that Fargo had poured for her from the pitcher on the table. ‘‘I met him when I was nineteen. He was rich and powerful and handsome, and he . . . he swept me off my feet. That's the only way to put it.''

Fargo had pulled on his buckskins and his boots. He buckled his gun belt around his hips as he said, ‘‘So you married him.''

Isabel nodded. ‘‘Yes. I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.''

Fargo thought the whole thing sounded like something out of a melodramatic novel, but he didn't say that. Anyway, real life was often stranger and more melodramatic than anything in fiction, he mused.

‘‘I didn't know what he was really like, though,'' Isabel continued. ‘‘I thought that since he came from one of the finest families in New Orleans, surely he would be a gentleman.''

‘‘Having money and good breeding never kept anybody from being an evil son of a bitch if that's the way they're bent,'' Fargo pointed out.

‘‘Yes, I know that now,'' Isabel said with a sigh. ‘‘But I was young and innocent then.''

‘‘I reckon the marriage turned out worse than you thought it would.''

Another shudder went through her. She took a sip of the water and then said, ‘‘Gideon was a devil. He asked me to do things . . . terrible things . . . not just with him, but with his friends, too. They were just as bad as he was.'' She looked up at Fargo. ‘‘I didn't come from a wealthy family, Skye. My father was a merchant. He had to have a loan to keep his store going when business was bad. Gideon's father owned the bank.'' A sad smile touched her lips as she shook her head. ‘‘Gideon married me, but at heart he thought I was just a whore. So that's the way he treated me. He even told me that he owned me and that if I ever tried to leave him, he would kill me. I tried to make the best of it . . . until I couldn't stand it anymore and I . . . ran away.''