Laurie Grant - Devil's Dare

There was a blush blooming on her cheeks now, as if she was not unaware of his scrutiny. “Hmm, what looks good to you, Sam?” she asked him.

You do, he thought, but I’ll have to wait till later to see about that. “I don’t know—what do you recommend?”

An anxious frown creased her forehead, and she rescanned the menu. “Umm, I hear the steaks are good,” she offered.

“You hear? Honey, hasn’t anyone ever taken you to supper here?” he said, before he could think.

She shook her head, her eyes still fastened on the menu. “No,” she answered in a small voice. “P—” she began, then stopped. “No,” she repeated. “You’re the first.”

What had she been about to say before she stopped herself? He found it amazing that she had never been here. Maybe the hotel was very recently opened. After all, Abilene had only consisted of a few log cabins before the railroad’s coming brought on the cattle boom only last year. Or perhaps she thought it made a man feel special to have been the first to take her somewhere nice? No, she’d have to be an awfully good actress if the latter was the case—she seemed sincere about what she was saying.

“Well, then—we’ll do our best to make it a memorable occasion, won’t we?” he said with a wink, and was touched to see her blush again. Maybe she did find him appealing. “I don’t think I’ll have the steak, though—I just spent three months eating beef any possible way it could be fixed. We had beef morning, noon and night on the trail. No, I think I’ll have the fried chicken for a change,” he concluded, just as the waiter returned to their table.

“Oh,” she said, “how silly of me. Of course you don’t want steak. I…I think I’ll have the steak, though, if that’s all right,” she said, her eyes glued to the menu. “We—I-don’t eat it too often.”

He was surprised by her meekness. “Honey, you can have anything you want to eat—you can have the whole dang menu if you want it.”

Did he imagine it, or did the waiter frown at him for the endearment that had slipped out? The old sourpuss! What was he afraid of…that next Sam would start making love to Mercedes right at their table? But the waiter scuttled off and they were alone, so that Sam was free to enjoy the color that had invaded Mercedes’s face again—all because he had called her honey?

For a moment there was silence, and then she said, “So—you’re up from Texas. Where, exactly? Do you have a family down there?”

He wondered if she was really asking if he was married, and if he had been, if that would make a difference to a woman of her calling? Probably not, he reasoned. Women like that were used to servicing a man’s needs away from home, knowing that it had nothing to do with the good women they were married to.

“I’m from Brazos County—good blackland prairie country. My father came from Ireland with the clothes on his back and a fine stallion, and started a horse farm there. It was prospering by the time he died. That was before the war, though. The Confederate army requisitioned all our horses, the ones that the Devlin boys didn’t ride to war, anyway. Now the Devlins—or what’s left of us, anyway-are trying to rebuild the stud, but it takes cash. So I’m here in Abilene to sell the herd we rounded up in south Texas. They’re runnin’ loose down there, free for the takin.’“

“’What’s left of us’?” she echoed. “Did you lose family…in the war?”

He nodded. “My mother almost died of grief. My brother Caleb, the middle boy, never came home, and neither did my sister Annie’s husband—but at least we got a letter from his captain telling us where he fell. Garrick, my oldest brother, might as well have died. They cut his leg off after it was shattered by a minié ball, and now he just sits around the house and feels sorry for himself. I guess I would, too,” he added, feeling guilty for criticizing the brother he’d idolized when they’d been growing up together. “There isn’t much he can do around the farm.”

She reached out a hand and touched his wrist. “No, you wouldn’t,” she said with sudden certainty. At his surprised look, she added, “I know, I haven’t known you long enough to say that, but I just know you wouldn’t. You’d find a way to do what had to be done. Did your brothers have wives?”

He allowed himself a bitter laugh. “Garrick’s wife ran off the morning after he came home. Couldn’t face the sight of him, I reckon. Cal hadn’t married yet—fortunately, as it turned out—though every mama in the county wanted her daughter to marry the parson.”

“Your brother was a preacher?”

He nodded, thinking how easy she was to talk to. “Yeah, but not the hellfire-an’-brimstone kind. He said you couldn’t teach people about God’s love that way. He went and fought for the Union army because of his beliefs. Shocked a lot of folks in Brazos County.”

“How did your family feel? Was your father angry?” she asked.

“He was dead by then. Garrick, though, was furious. He thought my brother had shamed the Devlins, even though he knew how Cal felt. The Devlins didn’t own any slaves-Papa didn’t hold with it, either, you see—but Garrick felt a Southerner ought to support his state.”

“And you?”

“I wasn’t real happy about Cal’s choice, either, but I was a green kid then, all excited about what I believed was the glory of war,” he said grimly. “But he was my brother, and I loved him. Before he rode away to join the Yankees, I told him I just wanted him to come home safe.”

She looked thoughtful. “My father’s a preacher, too. Except he’s that other kind you mentioned.”

Now he’d put his foot in it. “Oh, say, Miss Mercy, I didn’t mean any offense…”

“None taken,” she said quickly. “I was just wishing Papa was more like your brother was. I think it works better, too.”

Her face looked wistful. He wondered what had caused a preacher’s daughter to earn her living whoring in a cattle town? Had her father been so harsh that he had driven her away for some trifling offense? Perhaps he’d caught her out in the haystack with some hayseed swain?

Then their meals came, and he ceased wondering about her for a while.

“He’s havin’ dinner with her right this very minute,” Cookie Yates announced triumphantly and without preamble as he stood over Wyatt Earp, seated at his usual table in the Alamo Saloon with three other players, one of whom was Tom Culhane. Cookie was relieved to see that Culhane looked a little more amiable than he had earlier in the day. Maybe he had just had a sore head earlier.

“What’re you talkin’ about?” Wyatt Earp growled. He didn’t much cotton to having his game interrupted, especially when he held the winning hand. Giving the other players too much time to think could cause Lady Luck to smile on someone else.

“Devil—Sam Devlin, my trail boss. He and the sportin’ woman you made the bet about was just headin’ into the Grand Hotel’s dinin’ room when I passed by. Sure looked like they was sweet on one another already,” Cookie said with a grin. “Looks like you’re gonna lose your money, Earp. Sure hope you can afford it.”

“Well, lookin’ sweet doesn’t mean much from a sportin’ woman,” Earp replied, a cynical smile on his face. “You don’t know the breed if you think that means she’s gonna give it away—hey, wait a minute, who did you say your trail boss was with?” he asked, his eyes on the man and woman descending the stairway as he spoke.

“That Mercedes gal you made the bet about,” Cookie repeated. “You know, that sportin’ woman you said was so choosy? The one Dev bet you he could poke without payin’? It was her, all right, saw that red hair in the lamplight at the entrance.”