The Temptress (8 page)

Red looked at her a while. “He deserves more than what he got dealt in life. He's a good boy and he ain't never had a chance at nothin' but bad. If I tell you about Ty, will you tell me how come he's out of jail?”

“My father got him out. Have you ever heard of Delbert J. Mathison?”

“About as often as I've heard of beer. Tynan ain't got hisself mixed up with the likes of him, has he? That man will eat Ty alive.”

“He's my father,” Chris said, then waved her hand in protest as Red started to apologize. “I know him better than anyone. For some reason, he got Ty out of jail to kidnap me from where I was visiting and take me home. Tynan said that it was because he knew the rain forest, but I don't think that's all of it. I think my father had another reason and I have no idea what it is.”

Chris lowered her head. “I never met anyone like Ty and I like him a great deal. I sense that there is more to him than one can see right away. I…I'm afraid I threw myself at him. He told me that if he touched me my father would send him back to jail. Needless to say, I stayed away from him for the last few days of the trip.”

“I told you that Ty never touches innocent girls. The last time he did, he got thrown in jail and would be dead now if some of us girls hadn't stepped in.”

With an expectant look on her face, Chris waited for the woman to speak. She was older than Chris had originally thought, but her skin was well cared for and soft looking.

Red got up to get another drink of well watered whiskey. “I don't usually drink this time of day but seein' Ty again and havin' him to worry about makes me wanta get drunk and stay that way. You were right when you said that I seemed to know him. I'm one of four women that are the closest thing to a mother that boy ever had.”

She sat down across from Chris. “He wouldn't like me tellin' you this but you give me a lot of pleasure in them articles of yours and I wanta do somethin' for you. About twenty-nine years ago when I was just startin' out in this business—and I was little more than a kid myself—a miner brought a newborn baby to the house where I was workin' and left him to us girls to take care of. That old man was as bad as they come, nobody could stand him. He'd cheat cripples if he could. Well, he brought this baby in and he hadn't even cleaned it, it still had the birth filth on it and it was weak from hunger. We ran around real fast and found a woman to feed the baby and we took care of him as best we could for as long as we had him.”

“And that was Tynan? How had the miner come by him?”

“He wouldn't tell us until we'd given him free whiskey, but he said he'd found a pregnant woman wandering in the forest, out of her head. She stopped in front of him—I'm sure he didn't volunteer to help her—and delivered the baby herself. She whispered the single word of Tynan, then died. Knowing the miner, it's a wonder he didn't just walk away and leave the dead woman and the baby. But I guess he had plans to get what he could so he wrapped the boy up and brought him to us.”

Red stood, her back to Chris. “We did the best we could but a whore house ain't no place to raise a kid. All the girls adored him and I'm sure we spoiled him rotten, but we had problems we couldn't help. When Ty was about two, we dressed him up in a little suit and escorted him to Sunday School. The ladies of the congregation ran us off. They wouldn't believe that Ty wasn't one of our byblows.”

Red paused a moment. “He stayed with me until he was six years old. I never loved anybody more than I loved that boy. He was all that I had.”

“What happened when he was six?”

Red gave a resigned sigh and looked back at Chris. “The miner that'd found him came back with a lawyer, said Tynan was legally his and took him away. Two towns away, he stood Ty on a table and auctioned him off to the highest bidder.”

Chris sat still for a moment as she let this sink in. A little boy stood on a table and auctioned off as if he were an animal. Slavery had been abolished years ago. “Who, ah, bought him?”

“Some farmer on his way east. I didn't see or hear from Ty for twelve years. By then he was the strappin' big, good-lookin' thing that he is now, but he'd changed. I got him to tell me some of what had happened after he left the farmer's.” She paused to smile. “I don't think the farmer was too happy with Ty's leavin' 'cause Ty had a couple of scars on his legs and when I asked him where he got 'em, he said it was caused by differin' opinions about whether he should leave the farmer's or not. I think the man worked Ty like a draft horse. After he left, at twelve, he was on his own. He traveled around, took odd jobs, got into a bad crowd a couple of times, learned how to use a gun, all the things a boy does. Then for a while he seemed to be headed for real trouble but something changed him. I don't know what it was or if it was anything special. A friend of his, an outlaw, got hisself hanged and that may have had an effect on Ty, I don't know, but whatever it was, somethin' made him go straight.”

Red closed her eyes for a minute. “Goin' straight just about killed him. He took all the jobs nobody wanted or was too afraid to take on. He'd even go into towns run by outlaws and clean them up. But, since he always left dead bodies behind him, one after another, the good townspeople would always ask him to please leave.”

“But that's not fair,” Chris said.

“Honey, we ain't even come to unfair yet. Like I said, Ty never did fool around with clean girls, he always had sense enough to stay away from 'em. But that didn't keep the girls from swarmin' around him. They like the way he ignores 'em. Well, one of 'em, a real pretty little thing used to twitch her tail around Ty till he was about to break. Then one day she come into the saloon to get him. I saw her cryin' and he was holdin' her. He's always been a sucker for tears, couldn't stand 'em on a woman. Next thing I knew he was saddlin' a horse and takin' rifles out of a cabinet. This girl said that a big rancher around here was attackin' her father and could Ty help.”

Red took a drink of her whiskey. “I told him not to go, that it wasn't his fight, but he wouldn't listen. There was a gun battle and when the dust and gunpowder settled, the big rancher's son was dead and Ty was being hauled off to jail.”

“And that's when you rescued him.”

“Heard about that, did you? Yeah, we rescued him. He didn't kill that man's son, that girl did and he was gonna hang for it rather than turn her in. It seems that she'd been sneakin' out to see the boy and had only been usin' Ty to make him jealous. But, even knowin' that, he wouldn't turn her in. I got to thinkin' that maybe he didn't mind dyin'. Sometimes he acts like he don't think he's worth much.”

“He said he wasn't good enough for me,” Chris said softly. “He said I deserved more than somebody like him.”

“Don't you believe it, honey, there ain't
nobody
better 'n him.”

“That's exactly what I thought too,” Chris said with a grin. “Do you think there's any way I can tempt him into giving me what I want?”

“And what you want is Tynan?”

“With all my heart and soul.”

For a long while, Red stared at Chris. “You know, you may be just what he needs.” She stopped and narrowed her eyes. “I feel like I know you from years of readin' your stories, but I'm warnin' you that if you think Ty's just one of those cases of yours and you get rid of him after a little while I'll—”

Chris burst out laughing. “This is a turn of events, isn't it? Isn't it usually the father who warns the prospective young man?”

Red returned her smile. “I ain't too good at bein' a mother.”

“It seems to me that you've done a fine job. At least
I
like what you've done. My problem is that Ty doesn't like me. At least not the way I like him. How can I get past the threat of prison and the memory of how another so called ‘good' girl treated him? And, besides, I think he really likes another type of woman better than me.” Chris looked down at her own slight curves.

Red didn't get to answer because of the voice at the door.

“Red, you awake?”

There was no question of whose voice that was.

“Just a minute, Ty, baby,” Red called. “You come with me,” she said, taking Chris's arm in her hand as she opened a closet door. “This is a place for men that can't but like to watch. You stay in here and listen. I'll find out how much Ty does or doesn't like you. You game?”

It was on the tip of Chris's tongue to ask questions about the closet, but she suppressed herself. “Yes,” she whispered, then Red half shoved her into a chair and closed the door.

“I'm just comin', Ty honey,” she called and went across the room to open the door.

Ty's hair was wet and he was just buttoning his shirt.

“Don't even put it back on,” Red said, holding the door open for him. “I want to look at that back of yours.”

“It's fine,” Tynan said but removed his shirt obediently.

Red ran her hands over his skin, turned him toward the light—and the closet—so she could see better. “It's all right but it'll be weeks before it's fully healed. And you're skin and bones. We need to fatten you up.”

He put his shirt back on. “You sound like Chris.”

“She that little blonde rode in with you? The one everybody's sayin' is Nola Dallas?”

Ty poured himself a whiskey and sat down on the sofa. “God, that's good. The thing you miss most in prison isn't freedom but the small pleasures of life like good food and drink, a clean bed,”—he grinned—“and women. You ought to pay that Leora more. Whatever you're paying her, it's not enough.”

“You're not answerin' my question. Is that little blonde Nola Dallas?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at his whiskey. “Tell me what's been going on the last couple of years. Business good? You seem to have more girls than usual.”

“I think some of the girls in the tub with you weren't mine,” Red said heavily. “Tynan, stop dancin' around me. What are you doin' back here? Are you free from jail permanently or what?”

He smiled at her. “With a few hitches, I am more or less free.”

“Hitches? Such as what?”

“One pretty little blonde that's about to send me back, that's what.”

“Oh?” Red asked, eyebrows raised.

“Don't play innocent with me. Even in the tub the girls were giggling about this famous Nola Dallas being here. Is she really all that famous? I mean I know what she's done, her father gave me a stack of newspaper articles to read about her or by her, but I thought that out here…”

“Honey, she's what every woman dreams of being: brave, courageous, a fighter, and she's made it in a man's profession.”

“More than I've done,” Tynan muttered.

“Was it really bad in jail?” Red asked, sitting across from him.

“I think old man Dickerson had friends. I guess he figured that if he couldn't kill me with a rope, he'd have it done with whip and chains.”

Red reached out, caressed his cheek and Ty kissed her palm. “But you're out now,” she said.

“If I keep my hands off that pretty little daughter of Del Mathison's. And I've had easier jobs.”

“You like her, huh?”

“Well enough, I guess. Any man would like a woman who put herself in his path the way she does. The first few times I met her she didn't even have her clothes on.”

Red leaned back against the sofa. “Really? I can't imagine that someone of Nola Dallas's fame would have to pursue a man.”

“Well, she damn well has pursued me. Said she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me.”

“Would that be so bad? A home and kids?”

Tynan stood and refilled his glass. “Are you going to start on that again? Look, even if I did marry somebody, it couldn't be her. Her father holds the papers for my release. I take her back to him, leave her and I get a full pardon. I touch her and I go back to jail. And then there's the money, too.”

“For taking her back?”

Ty looked at Red. “Did you see that city dude that rode in behind me? He's a fine, upstanding citizen, born with parents and a silver spoon in his mouth, and Mathison wants his daughter to marry him. I get ten thousand dollars if I bring his daughter back in love with Mr. Asher Prescott. Course she had to go and fall for me.”

“How inconvenient for you.”

Tynan grinned at her. “It wasn't my fault. I told you she followed me everywhere. I tried to stay away from her but there she'd be—usually stark naked. I'm only human, you know.”

“More human than the rest of us. Did you ever think that maybe she
liked
you?”

“A girl like her? All she wanted was a fling before going back to her rich daddy. I'd have one night in the hay, then the rest of my life in jail regretting it. No thanks. Deliver me from good girls. I think I'll just stick with Leora and her kind.”

“Oh Ty,” Red said, standing, putting her arms round the back of him. “What are you going to do with your life?”

“Not
spend anymore time in jail. I thought I'd take the ten thousand and buy some land with it.”

“The money you get for matchmaking Miss Mathison with that man? You're sure you can do that?”

Ty walked to the window and looked out into the street below. “I admit it's not easy, not with what Mathison gave me to work with. That man has no…force, I guess you'd call it. He doesn't even know how to win a girl.”

“Not like you do?”

He looked back at her. “Are you mad at me about something? You seem awfully short tempered.”

Red sat down. “Ty, honey, I'm gettin' old and you're the closest thing to a son I'll ever have. I'd like to see you married and settled down with half a dozen kids. I'd like to think there's an empty room in your house that's for me if I ever wanta retire.”

Ty took her in his arms and kissed her forehead. “Wherever I am there'll always be room for you, but I can't see me with a wife and kids.”

She pushed away from him. “That's because you've never been in love.”

“Why, an hour ago I was so in love with Leora that—”

“Hush! You know what I mean. Have you ever even asked a girl to a church social? Taken a girl out for a buggy ride and a picnic?”

“Sounds mighty boring to me.”

“Well, it
ain't,”
she said, glaring at him.

He looked out the window again. “You know, one day Chris and Prescott were singing and it looked like it might be an all right way to pass the time.”

“You have a beautiful singing voice. Why didn't you join in?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. I just don't fit in with people like them. Hey! You got any pork in this place? I'd love four or five pork chops tonight.”

“We got pork. Ty, are you gonna try to match Chris with that man?”

He took a while to answer, turning back and looking at his drink. “It's my job.”

“But you're reluctant?”

“She deserves a lot better than him. She's got spunk. She liked the rain forest and wasn't scared to death of the place. She walked around while he huddled beside the fire. And she pulled her weight in work too. He treated me like a servant hired to wait on him but Chris always helped me unpack the mules.” He smiled. “Except for that first night.”

He put the whiskey down. “Oh, hell, she's not for me.”

Red put her hands on his arms. “Why isn't she? Isn't she Mathison's only kid? I bet if he thought she wanted you, he wouldn't put you back in jail.”

“It's my neck if you're wrong, isn't it? Besides, she doesn't want me. It was just that she thought I was the leader and the forest can make you feel as if there's nobody else on earth. It was the time and the place. And the fact that there was no competition.”

“So now that you're out of the forest, she won't be interested in you, is that it?”

“I'm sure of it.”

Red turned away for a moment. “You know something? I have more faith in this young lady. From reading her articles I think she's not at all flighty. If she said she loved you, I think she does.”

“For how long?” Ty asked in disgust. “Deliver me from the faithful love of a good woman.”

“How about putting her to a test?”

“Such as?”

“Rory Sayers.”

Tynan didn't speak for a moment. “Is
he
here?”

“At the hotel. Want to introduce your Chris to him?”

“She's not mine.”

Red smiled at him. “You know what your problem is, Tynan? You've never had to work to get any female. Did you know that there are other things to do with a woman besides take her to bed? You've probably never spent five minutes talking to a woman who wasn't a whore. I'll bet that you don't even know what to do with a girl outside the bedroom.”

“I talked to Chris one afternoon in the forest.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Red, what are you trying to do?”

“I want you to do something that's not so easy for you. I think you're half in love with this Chris. Why don't you take her out a few times, talk to her, get to know what she's like? It'll be practice for when you're lookin' for a wife.”

“And what if she keeps saying she loves me? I'm not going back to jail for her or anybody else. And I'll not be cheated out of the ten grand.”

“There, you see, you can organize a few socials yourself. Take Chris and Prescott for a ride in the country.
Help
him court her. You'll learn from him and he'll learn from you.”

“And what about Sayers? What has he got to do with all this?”

“Don't you think Rory would be a perfect match for your Chris? He's rich, established, owns all that lovely timberland and Rory certainly doesn't lack force. Maybe you could get Chris to marry him. I'm sure Mathison would approve and you'd get your ten thousand dollars.”

Ty didn't say anything but picked up his empty whiskey glass and refilled it. “I can't see Chris and Sayers together.”

“Oh, I can. Rory has so much personality and the women all adore him. You could take Chris and Rory and the handsome young man Mathison chose out in the country for the afternoon and just sit back and think about your ten thousand dollars. It'll be the easiest money anyone ever made.”

“Chris may not like Sayers. She's got taste. She's a real lady. All her underclothes have her initials on them, not big and gaudy like Susie used to wear, but tiny initials done in white on white cloth. And Chris asks a lot of questions. She finds out about people. If Sayers tries a line on her, she'll see through him.”

“But you'll be there to smooth things over and help Rory over the rough spots, won't you?”

“Chris isn't all that easy to fool. You know that she figured out I was in pain? Even guessed that my feet were blistered from the damn new boots. And she put it all together and figured out about my being in jail.”

“Not like other women you've known, is she?” Red said softly.

Abruptly, Ty put his half full whiskey glass down. “Look, I got things to do. I'll see you tonight for supper.”

“Yes, honey, you do that. Let's eat at the hotel and invite your friends. Maybe I can help you get the money. I'll make your Chris see what a charming gentleman has been chosen for her. And maybe we can invite Rory. He always livens up any gathering.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. Chris won't like him, though. He's all hot air.” He put his hand on the door. “And she's not
my
Chris.”

“She is until you sell her to someone else.”

“Why do I feel like I've been run over by a twenty-car train? I'll see you tonight.”

“At six at the hotel,” she called after him.

• • •

As Chris was dressing that evening, she noticed her underwear, looking at the initials on all of it and wondering when in the world Ty had had a chance to see it. He's seen what's under it, so what's the difference in seeing the underwear, she wondered.

As she examined the lovely blue velvet gown Red had loaned her, with its tight waist, the skirt fitting snugly around her slim hips, and a little bustle in back, she thought about what she'd heard from Tynan that afternoon. He seemed such an odd contradiction of confidence and insecurity, she mused as she left the room.

At the foot of the hotel stairs waited Asher and another man who stepped forward instantly and introduced himself as Rory Sayers—and Chris felt that she knew all about him at once. He was the type of man her father had paraded before her for the first eighteen years of her life. He was handsome in a sharp sort of way: sharp nose, sharp chin, eyes a snapping blue. And he had more confidence than any six other men, confidence that Chris knew came from having had money all his life.

There was coolness behind her smile as she took his arm and allowed him to lead her into the dining room.

Dinner was a disaster. Rory dominated the meal, talking about everything that had been happening in the country in the last two years—the years that Ty had been in prison. And Tynan looked like a sulky little boy who was being punished by having to eat with the grownups.

For just a moment, Chris closed her eyes and prayed for strength.

“Of course you wouldn't know about that, would you old man?” Rory said to Tynan who had his head bent over a plate heaped with pork chops. “You were a bit too busy over the last two years to read the papers, weren't you?”