Diablo (A Piccaddilly Publishing Western Book 6) Read online

  “Rambunctious, my foot!” Wynn said. “Those Bar K hands were fixin’ to murder Mr. Hays.” He thrust his own rifle at the man bearing the scattergun. “Shorty, didn’t you hear me? Put that cannon away before you cut someone in half.”

  Shorty sheepishly complied.

  Stepping aside, Wynn introduced the two men to Lee Scurlock, adding, “There’s no cause for alarm. Buckskin, here, drives the stage, and Shorty rides shotgun when they’re carryin’ valuables.”

  Lee had been in the stable when the stage pulled in and had not paid much attention to anyone once he spied Allison Hays. Her beauty had caught his breath in his throat, and he had not taken his eyes off her until she disappeared inside. It was strange, how he reacted. He couldn’t recall ever being so frazzled by a pretty face before.

  Buckskin was talking. “We were tending to the stock and giving Salazar a hand switching the team when we heard the shots. Any idea why they’d be after Mr. Hays?”

  Everyone faced the father and daughter. Lee twirled his Colt into his holster with a flourish and began to wedge the spare revolver under his belt. That was when he noticed the blatant admiration that the redheaded beauty was lavishing on him. He met her sweet, wonderful, awed gaze, drinking in the loveliness she unconsciously radiated. The proper thing to do was introduce himself, but his tongue refused to work. To cover his embarrassment, he swiped at the acrid gun smoke.

  Her father came around the table, offered his hand, and explained who he was. “I don’t know what got into those men. I’d never seen them before. But I do know I’d be dead right now if you hadn’t stepped in.”

  Lee swore he could feel his cheeks burn. Shrugging, he made light of the incident. “I heard them giving your daughter a hard time,” he said lamely. “What man worthy of the name wouldn’t help out?”

  Jim Hays glanced at the ivory-handled Colt. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone as quick as you, and I’ve witnessed more than my share of gunplay over the years.”

  Lee shrugged again. “I was lucky.”

  “You were magnificent!” Allison Hays declared, then pressed a hand over her mouth, shocked by her own declaration. “I mean,” she corrected herself, grinning in an effort to be lighthearted, “only a magnificent gentleman would come to the rescue of a damsel in distress.”

  Lee’s legs moved toward her of their own accord. “Thanks, ma’am. I don’t often get compliments from a lady like yourself.”

  “Will you join us?” Allison asked hopefully, pushing out a chair to her right. She would never admit as much, but she found her rescuer irresistibly handsome.

  “Please do,” her father said.

  The southerner looked at Gristy. Since he was responsible for gunning the man down, by rights he should dispose of the body. As if the station owner could read his thoughts, Wynn clapped him on the back and said, “We’ll take care of the trash.”

  Nodding, Lee lowered himself, instantly pushing up again when he realized that the redhead was still standing. It had been so long since he was around a well-mannered woman that he forgot his own manners. “Allow me,” he said, holding her chair for her.

  Jim Hays took his seat.

  The matron knowingly appraised the young woman and her knight-errant, then moved to the drummer’s table. Wynn, Buckskin, and Shorty briskly attended to the corpse, whispering all the while, now and again secretly studying the man who had brought Gristy low.

  The redhead looked into her benefactor’s lake-blue eyes and felt her pulse quicken. “I didn’t catch your name,” she said softly.

  “Lee Scurlock, ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Allison.”

  “All right, Allison,” Lee said, rolling her name off his tongue as if it were golden honey. He could not take his eyes off her smooth complexion or her full, rosy lips.

  “Scurlock?” Jim Hays repeated quizzically. “Are you any relation to the one they call Doc Scurlock?”

  “He’s my older brother,” Lee admitted.

  Allison found the news interesting. “Your brother is a physician?” Her childhood ambition had been to become a doctor, but she had been sidetracked by a later desire to follow in her father’s footsteps.

  “No, ma’—Allison,” Lee corrected himself.

  “Doc Scurlock is a gunman,” Jim Hays said. “A man-killer who operates in New Mexico Territory, if I’m not mistaken. There was a story about him in the newspaper last year, about his escapades with Billy the Kid.”

  Lee mightily regretted ever getting to know the happy-go-lucky youngster who was now touted as the “Terror of the Southwest” by a hack journalist slavering after sensational headlines. But then, who could have foreseen how events would unfold? How famous Billy would become?

  Allison’s forehead furrowed, and she glanced at the scarlet stain on the wall. “Is everyone in your family a gunman, Mr. Scurlock?”

  “Call me Lee,” he coaxed, and felt it prudent to stare at the table instead of at her face for fear of the stirrings deep within him. “To answer your question, no. My brother and I are the only ones who have acquired a bit of a reputation for slinging six-shooters, and not by choice, I can assure you.” He paused, feeling a strange compulsion to explain so she would not think ill of him. “My sister lives in Tennessee with her husband and five young’uns. Two other brothers have their own farms there. As for my ma and pa, they were killed in a flood five years ago.”

  “My own mother passed on to her reward last year,” Allison disclosed sadly. She could not say why, but she felt a peculiar kinship to the handsome stranger, an instinctive liking that was stimulating and discomfiting at the same time.

  “I’m right sorry to hear that,” Lee said sincerely. Losing a parent was one of the worst calamities he could think of.

  “How do you make your living, then?” Allison inquired. “Do you kill people for money?”

  Jim Hays stiffened, saying sternly, “Allison Hays! You know better than to pry into this fellow’s personal life.” His daughter had always displayed a knack for being brutally blunt. Most of the time he admired her honesty, but there were instances, such as now, when she overstepped the bounds of propriety.

  “It’s all right,” Lee said. Had a man asked him that, he would have pistol-whipped the cur. But he could not find it in him to be offended by the redhead. “As a matter of fact,” he went on, “of late, I’ve been making ends meet in a rather footloose fashion.”

  “How?” Allison brazenly prompted. She could not say why, but she wanted to learn all there was to know about him.

  “At poker.”

  “You’re a gambler?” Allison said, unable to keep a hint of distaste out of her tone. It had long been her opinion that men who made their living at cards were too lazy to secure decent work. And here her knight in shining armor did just that! She felt let down, as if he had failed her somehow.

  “Afraid so,” Lee confirmed. It was common knowledge that many folks frowned on the gambling fraternity, but until that moment it had never bothered him before.

  Allison arched an eyebrow. “Correct me if I’m wrong. I admit that I don’t know a lot about your profession, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a future in your line of work.” She emphasized the last word to show that it was anything but.

  “So they say,” Lee hedged. It was beginning to peeve him that she was being so critical when she had no notion of the circumstances that had led him to his current state.

  “Don’t you agree?” Allison asked earnestly.

  “I’ll confess I haven’t cogitated the matter much,” Lee said, his drawl more pronounced than ever. It always was when he became defensive. “I like to take each day as it comes along, without much thought for what lies ahead.”

  “You live hand to mouth, you mean,” Allison said, her displeasure mounting. That in itself disturbed her. She had no earthly excuse for being so annoyed. If Lee Scurlock wanted to fritter his life away at a senseless occupation, that was his right. What should it matter to her?


  Jim Hays was sipping his water when he saw something mirrored by his daughter’s features that only someone who knew her as intimately as he did would have noticed. It was there, then it was gone. He glanced at the gunman again, not knowing whether to be happy or distressed. In the strained silence that had fallen between the two, he said, “Are you taking the stage, Lee?”

  “I’ve got a horse,” Lee said without really thinking about the question. He was preoccupied by Allison’s beauty. She had tilted her head to stare out the window, and her face, caught in profile, was positively breathtaking.

  “There’s room for one more inside,” Jim Hays suggested. It would be an ideal way of getting more acquainted with their benefactor, and give Hays an opportunity to confirm his suspicion about his daughter.

  “If he doesn’t want to come, we shouldn’t prod him,” Allison commented. “He probably has an important gambling engagement somewhere.”

  Her words, spoken quietly yet tinged with sarcasm, ate into Lee’s conscience. He thought of all the women he had known in the past seven years, all those he’d met since he lit out from Tennessee with his brother, all the saloon fillies and dance-hall girls and the doves of the night who made their money on their backs, and a feeling he had not experienced in ages washed over him: guilt. Allison Hays qualified as the first genuine lady he had spoken to in a coon’s age, and her acidic rebuke was like having a red-hot branding iron scorch his soul. With a start, he realized that her father was speaking to him again.

  “... our way to Diablo. Have you ever been there?”

  “Can’t say I ever heard of it,” Lee said.

  “The town is twenty-one miles west of here, the next stop down the line,” Jim detailed. “An old friend of mine, Bob Delony, lives there. He’s why we came. About two weeks ago we received word from him to come as fast as we could, so I suspect he’s in a fix of some sort. A legal fix, that is. You see, I’m a lawyer.”

  “Oh?” Lee said, to be polite. He would rather talk to Allison, but she was acting distant.

  “We live in Denver, Colorado,” Jim said. He did not add that they had been there more than ten years, that they lived in a well-to-do section of the Mile High City, and that he enjoyed a thriving, lucrative practice. “I wanted to come to Diablo alone, but my daughter insisted on accompanying me. It might not be safe, though, with the situation as tense as it is.”

  “How do you mean?” Lee asked, aroused by the implied threat to Allison.

  The lawyer’s answer was forestalled by Clarence Wynn, who came over to their table bearing a grimy bandanna in his left hand. “Will you look at this?” he said. “We just found it in one of Gristy’s pockets.”

  It was a human finger.

  Chapter Four

  Lee Scurlock could not say, exactly, why he did what he did next. Maybe it was the look of horror that came over Allison Hays’s face. Maybe it was the notion, bred into him by his folks, that showing such a gruesome trophy to a lady was not proper. Whichever, he suddenly swatted the station owner’s arm to one side and snapped, “There are women present.”

  Wynn was so stunned that he nearly lost his grip on the bandanna. Anger brought an oath to his lips, an oath he stifled when he realized that the pretty young redhead had recoiled and the matron was looking at him in disapproval. “Sorry,” he blurted.

  Allison recovered quickly, curiosity overriding her loathing. “Whatever would prompt a man to carry a grisly thing like that?”

  Wynn covered it, saying, “Some men are peculiar, missy. I knew a trapper once who toted a coin pouch made from the breast of an Apache woman. And there’s a bartender in Texas said to keep a pickled Comanche kidney in a jar on his bar.” He hefted the bandanna. “This here finger is an Indian’s, too, unless I miss my guess. Gristy probably liked to take it out and fondle it when he was sittin’ around a campfire at night and had nothin’ better to do.”

  “How sick,” Allison declared.

  “Life in Arizona ain’t for the squeamish, ma’am,” Wynn said. “There are bad men like the three who braced your pa everywhere, and the Apaches and the Navajos are forever taking scalps and such.” He paused. “I couldn’t help but overhear that you’re headed for Diablo. If’n you’ll take my advice, you’ll get on the first stage back out once you get there. It’s no place for decent women, though a few call it home.” He rejoined the stage driver and the shotgun.

  Lee was reminded of Jim Hays’s statement. “What was that about a tense situation?” he asked.

  Hays finished his water. “My friend wasn’t specific, but I gather that various factions are at odds and he’s caught in the middle.”

  “What does your friend do?”

  “He’s a lawyer also. We went through school together back east, years ago.”

  A shuffling and scraping noise heralded the removal of Gristy’s body. Wynn, Buckskin, and Shorty carted it out the back door, having to tug when one of Gristy’s spurs snagged on the frame.

  Allison worried that soon the stage would leave and she might never see the Tennessean again. “Where are you headed, if I may ask?”

  Given how she had looked down her nose at his card playing, Lee was almost ashamed to say, “Nowhere special. I’m just sort of drifting at the moment.”

  “Drifting,” Allison repeated, with all the enthusiasm she would have uttered the word “plague.” She could not help herself. Her parents had instilled a strong work ethic in her. It was simply unthinkable that anyone would wander aimlessly through life like a piece of wood adrift on the sea.

  Jim Hays coughed. “Why don’t you tag along with us to Diablo? We wouldn’t mind the company.”

  “Papa,” Allison said, “I’m sure Mr. Scurlock doesn’t have time to spare, what with his gambling and drifting and all.”

  Her father frowned. “You must forgive my daughter, Lee. She tends to be too critical sometimes, a failing she picked up from her mother, God bless her soul.”

  “Papa!” Allison exclaimed.

  “Only twenty, and she thinks she can judge people like cowboys judge cattle,” Jim continued, grinning impishly. As much as he loved his offspring, she had to be put in her place every now and then for her own benefit.

  “I never!” Allison huffed. Her father had the disconcerting knack of making her feel as if she were ten instead of twenty, and he invariably did it in public.

  Lee forgot himself and laughed. Immediately, he regretted it when Allison’s eyes flashed with indignation.

  “And how old might you be?” she asked.

  “Twenty-seven next month,” Lee divulged.

  “Mercy. Yet you don’t have a wife?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Never married?”

  “Allison, that’s enough,” Jim Hays said. “The poor man won’t have any secrets left by the time you get done with him.”

  “I don’t mind,” Lee said, meeting her inquisitive look. “No, I’ve never been halter broke.”

  Allison smiled smugly. “You make it sound as if marriage is the same as breaking a new horse.”

  “They’re acquainted, I reckon.”

  “How so?”

  “Whether it’s a horse or a woman, a man should always pick quality.”

  Jim Hays burst into mirth. “Doggone it, son! I like you! There aren’t many men who can hold their own with my daughter.”

  Lee saw Allison blush and rushed to her defense without hesitation. “Most men, I’ve found, are intimidated by beautiful women.”

  The compliment flattered Allison immensely, but she was not about to let on that it did. “Intimidated?” she said. “Such a big word for a man who makes his living reading cards.”

  “My ma was real keen on book learning,” Lee said. “All of us young’uns had to read out loud every night.”

  “What would she say if she knew you were a gambler?” Allison pressed. She knew it was wrong. She knew that she had overstepped herself. But she wanted him to see it as she did.

  “That’s en
ough out of you,” Jim Hays said strictly, and nodded at the southerner. “What about my proposition? You can ride along with the stage if you don’t care to ride in it.”

  “I was thinking of heading to Tucson,” Lee said. In truth he had been thinking no such thing, but it was apparent that the redhead was not as attracted to him as he was to her.

  “You can always go on to Tucson later,” Jim said, then had an inspiration. “If it’s gambling you’re after, Diablo might be to your liking. There are several reputable gaming establishments.”

  “Several?” Allison broke in. “It’s more like two dozen.”

  “I said reputable,” Jim pointed out, not taking his eyes off Scurlock. “What do you say?”

  “I don’t know ...” Lee wavered.

  “I’m not asking for myself so much as I am for Allison and the other passengers,” Jim said. “Those rowdies headed west, didn’t they? For all I know, we might encounter them again.”

  The man had a point, Lee reflected. The Mexican was bound to light a shuck for town and the nearest sawbones. If Hays bumped into them again, Lee wouldn’t give two bits for the law wrangler’s life. Allison might be harmed, too. “You’ve convinced me,” he drawled. “I reckon I’ll tag along.”

  “Excellent,” Jim Hays said, beaming.

  Allison did not think so. Or, rather, she did not quite know what to think. On the one hand, she was pleased that they were not parting company. On the other, her feelings toward the handsome southerner troubled her. She had never felt like this toward any man before. Yet she hardly knew him. What was the matter with her?

  ~*~

  Forty minutes later, and half an hour behind schedule, the stage pulled out from the relay station. Wynn and Salazar stood waving as the coach rattled into the distance and was swallowed by the haze.

  Lee Scurlock, astride his roan, rode beside the stage. He would rather have been in it so he could talk to Allison, but that would require him to tie his horse to the back. The poor animal would breathe dust all the way to Diablo. He could not put it through that, not after the ordeal of crossing the Painted Desert.