Johanna Lindsey - Angel

He only knew his name, Pecos Tom. Someone had had to check the hotel register to find that out. He was a stranger to the town, just as Angel was, so no one could tell Angel if he was facing a killer or just a foolish young man. Damn, he hated this, hated not knowing. He hadn’t asked for the fight, had tried to avoid it, but no one expected him to ignore it once the challenge had been issued. Pecos Tom had every intention of killing him. Angel had to settle for that simple truth to assuage his regret.

Pecos was taking his sweet time coming down the street. Twenty feet away, fifteen. He stopped finally at ten. Angel would have preferred more distance than that, but this wasn’t his show. He’d heard that back east a man got to choose the weapon when he was challenged, even no weapon, just fists if he wanted. It would give Angel pleasure to beat some sense into this kid, instead of killing him. But the West didn’t offer a man choices. When you carried a gun on your hip, you were expected to use it.

Pecos’s sheepskin jacket was already tucked out of the way, his hands out at his sides, ready. Slowly, Angel moved his yellow mackintosh out of the way. He didn’t watch the hands, not even to note if they trembled. He watched the eyes.

And he tried one last time. “We don’t have to do this. These people don’t know you. You can just ride out.”

“Forget it,” the boy replied, relaxing now, figuring Angel was afraid to fight him, that he was the one who wanted out of the fight. “I’m ready.”

No one was dose enough to hear Angel’s sigh. “Then make your peace, mister. I don’t shoot to wound.”

Twenty-year-old Tom Prynne didn’t shoot to wound either, and his draw was faster, about two seconds faster, all the time he would have needed if he had had the patience to perfect his aim before he’d gone gloryseeking. His bullet flew past Angel’s shoulder to lose itself in the dirt at the end of the street. Angel’s momentum was too quick to stop even if he’d wanted to, and his aim was deadly accurate.

Tom Prynne had made a name for himself after all, though it wouldn’t travel far. But he’d be talked about here for a good while to come, and his epitaph would read: Here lies Pecos Tom. He challenged the Angel of Death and lost . The undertaker in this town had a morbid sense of humor.

Cassandra Stuart absently dropped a piece of wood into the fireplace as she passed it. Across the room a feline lifted its head and hissed in complaint. The slim girl glanced at the cat and shrugged.

“Sorry, Marabelle,” Cassie said as she resumed her agitated pacing. “Habit.”

Both Cassie and her pet were used to much colder weather in Wyoming, where she’d grown up. Here in the south of Texas, where her father’s ranch was located, it probably wasn’t more than fifty degrees outside, and they were a few days into December. One piece of firewood would have sufficed to take the chill out of her bedroom. With two… It wasn’t long before she stripped down to her camisole and drawers.

The small desk that she had been avoiding for the past half hour was still sitting in the corner, her stationery in a neat stack on top of it, the inkwell opened, the quill pen sharpened, the lamp turned up high. Her father had given her the old-fashioned writing set right after she’d arrived in the fall. And she’d been faithful in her letter writing, sending off one or two letters a week to her mother — at least she had been up until six weeks ago.

But she couldn’t avoid writing any longer. The telegram had arrived late this afternoon. IF I DON’T HEAR FROM YOU IMMEDIATELY I’M COMING DOWN THERE WITH AN ARMY.

That last part was an exaggeration — Cassie certainly hoped it was. But she didn’t doubt her mother would come, and that wasn’t going to help anything. Her father most definitely wouldn’t appreciate it when he returned. But then her father wasn’t going to appreciate that his neighbors were now his enemies, thanks to his interfering daughter.

Cassie had sent back a reply that she’d have a letter off by tomorrow to explain everything. There was no help for it now. But she had been so hoping that the Peacemaker would have arrived first, so that when she told her mother what she’d done, she could at least also tell her that she’d fixed it and there was nothing else to worry about.

She made a sound resembling a groan that had the sleek black feline following her to the writing desk to investigate the problem. Marabelle was very sensitive to Cassie’s moods. The cat wouldn’t settle down until Cassie gave it a reassuring scratch behind the ears.

At last she took pen in hand.

Dearest Mama,

I don’t suppose it will surprise you to hear that I’ve meddled again. I don’t know why I thought I could put an end to a feud that’s been going on for twenty-five years, but there you have it, my infernal optimism letting me down once again. By now you must realize I’m talking about Papa’s neighbors, the Catlins and the MacKauleys, whom I told you about after my first visit here.

This was Cassie’s second visit to her father’s ranch in Texas. She had been amazed the first time she’d seen the house he had built here ten years ago. It was an exact replica of the one he had left behind in Wyoming. Even the furnishings were the same. It was like being at home — until she walked outside.

Her father had wanted her to visit for a long time, but her mother had refused to let her travel without her until she’d reached the age of eighteen two years ago. And Catherine Stuart wouldn’t step foot on Charles Stuart’s ranch unless there was a dire emergency— involving their only child. She hadn’t seen her ex-husband in the ten years since he’d left Wyoming, hadn’t spoken to him in twenty, even though they’d lived in the same house for the first ten years of Cassie’s life. Their relationship, or their lack of one, was the one thing Cassie had never tried to meddle in. As much as she wished it were otherwise, her parents despised each other.

But Cassie had told her mother all about the Catlins and the MacKauleys when she’d returned home in the spring of last year, and about her new friend, Jenny Catlin, who was two years younger than Cassie. Cassie had found Jenny nothing but melancholy this visit because she was at an age when she wanted to get married, and lamented that the only good-looking young men in the area happened to be R. J. MacKauley’s four sons, who were, unfortunately, her sworn enemies.

Cassie really wished that Jenny hadn’t mentioned the MacKauley men in the same breath with marriage. It had got her to thinking that maybe Jenny didn’t see them in the same light that her mother and older brother did. It had got her to noticing how Clayton MacKauley, R. J.‘s youngest son, stared at Jenny in church, and how the young girl blushed each time she caught him at it.

This probably won’t surprise you, either, Mama, but I’ve managed to include the Stuarts in the feud — at least the one with me. Papa doesn’t even know about it yet, but I’m sure he won’t be happy about it when he finds out. I’ll get to leave, after all, but he’ll still have to live with these people after I’m gone.

And before you start cussing him for letting me meddle, I have to tell you he wasn’t here to stop me. Actually, it started before he left, not long after I arrived, but it was all done in secret like a conspiracy, and then Papa got a letter from this man in North Texas whom he’d been bargaining with for two years for the purchase of a prize bull, and the man finally decided he’d sell. And don’t cuss Papa for leaving me alone, either, to go get his new bull, because he was only supposed to be gone for less than two weeks, and I am twenty now and fully capable of running his ranch — when I’m not meddling. Besides, he wanted me to go with him, but I begged off, since I had already begun my… well, there’s no easy way to put this. What I did was try my hand at matchmaking again, and unfortunately, this time I succeeded.