Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
Max had meant a quick kiss, nothing more than a brush of a pretty girl’s lips against his mouth before he rode off on an adventure, nothing that acted on the desire for her that had been building, nothing that telegraphed how much he’d been falling for her, but Miss Calliope’s lips were soft as she gave a quiet gasp at his mouth’s touch, her breath honey sweet and warm, and instinct led him to pull her closer, his arms wrapping around her slender, strong back.
Tiny lightning bolts skittered between them everywhere his body touched hers, except their lips, tiny lightning bolts that astonishingly rose up, then sizzled out in a flood of tiny water droplets that disappeared as fast as they’d arisen, and he figured it was all part of the dream he was in, for surely this had to be a dream. His heart pounded in his ears, what little brain he had at the moment telling him what a fool he was to think he could keep desire and liking out of his touch.
And when she pressed her lips against his, her rose-scented body tight in his embrace, his mind fuzzed out completely, and all he could think was how good it felt to touch her.
Cally pressed her body closer to her prince, his masculine scent like a spur to her lips, the hardness of his muscles like a lure to her heart. That warm, urgent feeling she’d had low in her belly since she’d met him heated into something deeper. His strong arms held her firmly, not cutting off her breath as a suitor she’d left back in Denver had when he’d tried to kiss her, and Cally—rather than kicking Max in the shins the way she had the suitor—wrapped her arms tight around his neck.
His heart pounded against her breasts. His long legs seemed to cradle hers, though they were standing.
An odd sensation of tiny lightning bolts rising on her skin where their bodies touched, then sizzling out in tiny droplets of water skittered over her, but she didn’t take the time to look, she was too interested in what Max was doing to her mouth, his coffee taste mixed with peppermint, his firm lips seeming to enjoy hers.
She pressed her breasts tighter to his chest, seeking something more.
Max moved his hands to Miss Calliope’s face, wanting more as his palms cupped her soft cheeks, the rest of her body doing a good job of keeping close to his. Her mouth was a revelation, Max feeling as if he’d never truly kissed a woman before, not like this.
Not with his heart.
He’d just run his tongue along her closed lips when someone nearby cleared his throat, the loud, intentional sound breaking through Max’s heady, sensual daze.
Bart, he realized.
Her nineteenth-century brother.
Carefully, gently, he pulled back from Miss Calliope, as if she were a dangerous snake that might strike him more than her kiss already had.
Up by the front door, Mrs. James and Livia stood on the porch with Mrs. Zandt, the faces of all three noncommittal. Creede and the others were out of sight on the front drive.
Ten feet away, Bart sat on his horse like a disapproving statue.
“Thank you,” Max murmured to Miss Calliope, who looked as dazed as he felt.
“You’re welcome,” she whispered, her hands dropping from his neck.
Reluctantly turning away, Max took the bay horse from Nick and leaped into the saddle. Meeting Bart in the eyes, he started down the long drive.
Cally watched Max ride away, her fingers going to her lips, her heart beating fast, the feel of his muscles still in her skin.
“Was it mighty fine, Cally?” Livie teased in a low voice, coming down the porch steps to Cally’s side.
Remembering a conversation the two of them had had two years ago, Cally grinned, her whole body throbbing from Max’s touch. “Yes, Livie. It surely was.”
Ma went into the house with Flora, her face difficult to read.
Cally leaned closer to Livie. “I feel womanly, Livie.” She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the memory of Max’s kiss. “For the first time, I feel like a grown woman.”
Max rode in a daze as Bart led the way down the gravel drive and out through two wood pillars at the other end a quarter mile away. A wood sign hung between the top of the two pillars, the words ‘Sky Top Ranch’ carved into the wood.
On the other side of the pillars, a wide dirt wagon trail took over from the gravel drive, winding down from the top of the bluff to the Long Meadow below, where they caught up with Creede and the others.
No one mentioned the kiss, and he was pretty sure only Bart, Livia, Mrs. James, Mrs. Zandt, and Nick had seen it, but even so, he felt discombobulated in a way he hadn’t for a long time. Damn, Miss Calliope’s lips were so sweet and soft.
He floated along in a pleasant haze as they reached the far end of the meadow and started up a tall hill—Eagle Hill, Bart told him. Riding fast, they traversed the hill and several ridges, and had passed the big rock wall and the Fieldings’ grasslands—the rock wall called Coyote Fall, he’d learned, due to an image drawn by the minerals in the rock of a coyote falling from the top—when a tension grew among his companions, and he realized they must be nearing their destination. “What is it?” he said in a low voice to Bart, who rode behind him, Max turning his head as he spoke. They were crossing a rocky ridge, traveling single file through a patch of boulders, sun hot on his covered head.
“We’re coming up on Robert Porter’s place,” Bart said in his own low tone. “Sam believes your Prince Hugo might still try to do harm to Robert’s herd or house or barn just out of pure cussedness.”
Max wanted to point out that the horrendous Prince Hugo wasn’t his Prince Hugo. But as far as these people were concerned, Hugo belonged to Max’s family, and therefore to Max, and it was with the knowledge that Hugo’s behavior reflected on him that he and the others crossed the tidy, well-kept, still-safe Porter ranch to its far southern border, where eight ranchers, plus Robert’s foreman, waited atop a wooded hill with a good view of the countryside.
A great many horses, belonging to the ranchers and their men, were tethered among a sparsely wooded area on the east side of the hill as they rode up, away from view of the Crown of the West and Hugo on the west side. A handful of armed ranch hands guarded the animals, and leaving their horses with the guards, Max and the others climbed through the pine trees to the crest of the hill.
More ranch hands guarded the hilltop itself, the crest densely wooded, except for a grassy clearing, and the need these people had to go to such precautions to avoid Hugo hardened Max’s resolve to stop him. His ancestor was causing too much trouble. Too much harm.
He paused at the edge of the clearing, hanging back from the rest of his small group. “Is that the posse Creede was riding with?” he said in a low tone to Bart with a nod toward the grim-faced, armed men off to the left who were gathered around Deputy Wilmo, Max using his Texas accent. The last thing he wanted was for the angry ranchers to detect any resemblance between him and Hugo.
And angry, they were. They stood in a loose group in the center of the grass, each accompanied by three or four ranch hands. All of them armed.
All of them focused on Creede as he stepped into the clearing with Roy and Doc, Finn trailing after them, Creede pausing for a word with his deputy.
“It’s part of it,” Bart told Max in his own low tone. “Sam sent them to chase down and arrest the two men who tried to kidnap Jeremiah—unless they fetched up at the Crown ranch.”
“So their presence here means that’s exactly where the two kidnappers went?”
Bart nodded. “Sam wants to be the one to personally confront Prince Hugo, if that’s what’s needed to arrest those two men.”
“Any idea who the two men are?” Max asked, thinking of Hugo’s henchmen.
“Only that they spoke to each other in a foreign language.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “In Zalgravian, perhaps?”
“Could be,” Bart said. “Foreign, at any rate, according to Matthew. Some language he didn’t recognize. We don’t know much more than that, except that those two men were willing to do Prince Hugo’s dirty work.”
“Willing to do it for the money it paid,” Max said. Or for a misplaced loyalty to the Evil Prince. Men like Hugo attracted the worst sort of employees.
“I reckon,” Bart said, as if it was a common enough occurrence, but Max’s distaste for his ancestor grew.
Leaving the posse, Creede strode to the ranchers. The eight ranches Hugo had messed with bordered the Crown to the north, south, east, and west. Of the ranchers themselves, four were youngish men, twenties and thirties, including Matthew Fielding, who was mad as a hornet, as Miss Calliope would say, and ready to take a rifle to Prince Hugo and demand retribution for trying to harm his young son.
The other four were in their forties and fifties, the original homesteaders of the land. And all of them— all of them —had stories to tell, of Hugo’s depredations. It had gotten so bad that each of them—except for Matthew, who’d arrived with the posse—had brought two or three additional men along with them as protection from Hugo’s people.
They welcomed Creede with friendly enough greetings—if you needed a sheriff on the job, Sam Creede was the one you wanted.
Even so, Max hung back, staying along the eastern fringe of trees with Bart, keeping half-behind a pine, not counting on his cowboy hat—low over his brow—and his red bandana—high on his chin—to be enough disguise. He’d learned that from Matthew. But still, he was close enough to hear the ranchers’ angry stories, the ranchers hard-looking men who lived off the land, land that Hugo was trying to steal.
The list of depredations had grown since yesterday, and Max realized how much Hugo had churned up the relatively peaceful existence of these good folks. In addition to the dam Miss Calliope had vowed to destroy, the barbed-wire fence Hugo had strung across a corner of Matthew Fielding’s land, the shooting of Robert Porter by Hugo’s henchman, and the theft of cattle from Arnold’s cousin, confirmed here by the cousin, there was now to be added to it the attempted kidnapping of two-year-old Jeremiah Fielding, plus the new barbed-wire fence illegally built across a section of the Maddens’ land—owned now by Doc and represented here by his foreman.
Not to mention the attempt by Hugo’s men to rip out a half mile long of years-old, existing fence posts and fencing where one rancher’s land abutted Hugo’s to the south, an attempt that had first brought Creede and the others that morning from town.
Good God, they should build a satellite jail out among these ranches, just for Hugo and his men.
Skillfully, Creede listened to each story, each one worse than the next. “I’ll handle this,” he promised when he’d heard them all, the steel in his voice a warning, too, to stay away from Hugo.
A chill went down Max’s back. Any one of these men could decide to resolve this their own way, with vigilante justice, putting a bullet or two or three into Hugo’s arrogant chest, next to his medals, putting an end to him and his attempts at theft all in one moment.
A moment, Max had to remind himself, that had never actually come. According to history, Hugo had returned to Zalgravia in one piece, unharmed and alive.
But a young woman named Cally James—a vibrant, lovely, adorable young woman—had died.
A rush of frustrated uncertainty hit him. Should he even be here in this hot clearing full of hatred toward Hugo? Should he walk away, stay uninvolved, do as Doc insisted? To have no impact or influence on this century, in order to preserve his family? Not Hugo, but all those descended from the man?
And what then? Let history take its course? Allow a young woman to die at Hugo’s hands?
He rubbed his jaw through his bandana, dropping his gaze to the ground as a young member of the posse glanced at him, then at Bart. Could Sheriff Larson back in Max’s time be wrong? Was it possible Hugo had had nothing to do with Cally James’s death?
Did it matter how she’d died, if Max could somehow save her?
The ranchers were all frowning at Creede, not liking his warning to leave everything to him.
This was how a mob got started, Max realized. A group of men with a common goal that could only be met with violence.
“I reckon I’ll go with you to that prince’s castle and settle this here and now, Sheriff,” one of the older ranchers said.
“I reckon you’ll go home to your family,” Creede said, calm and unperturbed, but as steely and unmoving as a brick wall.
“You can’t stop all of us,” one of the younger ranchers said.
The posse tensed, and Max couldn’t tell if they were on the ranchers’ side or the sheriff’s.
“I can put you all in jail, alongside this new prince,” Creede said, “if you break the law.”
No, Max thought. Not a brick wall. A towering, armored military tank, impregnable in pursuit of justice.
Silence dropped through the clearing.
Creede’s hard gaze never wavered.
“Three days,” the older rancher said. “We’ll give you three days to put this prince feller and his men in jail. Then we’re going after him ourselves.”
Ten minutes later, Max stood among the trees on the other side of the hot clearing, atop an outcropping of large rocks, where he’d moved to get a view of the Crown of the West. Bart and the others had gone to see the ranchers and posse off, the jingle of bridles coming faintly from where the horses had been tethered on the other side of the hill’s crest, the sound of horse hooves clattering on the rocky ground.
Three days, the ranchers had said. Three days before they went after Hugo.
Was that when Miss Calliope would die? Caught in the crossfire of a gun battle? Taken as a hostage for Hugo’s safe passage out of Wyoming, and then murdered by Hugo out of spite?
He thought of the weapons—pistols, rifles, knives—the ranchers and posse wore. Damn. So easy to incite violence here. So easy to shoot.
His gaze swept the land spread out to the west beyond the hilltop. His land, in another hundred or so years, and that rush of possession, that desire to nurture and protect he’d felt the first time he’d seen the immense ranch when he was ten burst through him now. Barring a handful of roads added in the next century, it looked just like the recent satellite images he had of the area, and the drone footage he’d commissioned.
He unfolded the waterproof topographical map he’d taken from his buttoned shirt pocket and traced with his finger the boundaries of the ranch he’d drawn on the laminated paper with a permanent marker before he’d left Zalgravia. There—his finger traced down the left side of the map, the map lined up with the actual land—was the ranch’s southern border, defined by a series of high ridges. There—his finger moved to the right along the bottom—was the eastern boundary, along the far side of a creek that flowed a mile beyond the foot of the hill he stood on now, the hill and the grazing land at its foot, all the way up to and including the water, part of Robert Porter’s place.
Unfortunately, that grazing land had been enclosed in barbed wire two days ago by Hugo’s henchmen in Hugo’s attempt to claim the land as his, and over which Robert Porter had been shot.
Max shook his head at Hugo’s actions as his finger followed along the eastern border to the Fieldings’ ranch. Another creek. More grazing land. Another attempt by Hugo of theft.
His back still sore from pulling out Hugo’s shoddy fence posts, Max stretched his shoulder blades.
Footsteps came from behind him, crossing into the clearing from the far side. The sound of long grass swishing against boots and horse hooves followed.
Max turned. Bart, Creede, Roy, and Doc were leading their horses toward him, Bart bringing Max’s horse, too.
The sound of the departing ranchers and posse faded.
Max turned back toward the Crown.
A tall, wooded hill blocked any view of the heart of the ranch. Horace Hill, the tall one was called—the former owner of the Crown had not been a modest man—and Max said the name aloud, getting a swift glance from Creede. “It’s on my map of the Crown of the West,” Max said, and when Creede held out his hand to take a look, Max started to give it to him.
“Stop,” Doc said in a strong voice, his eyes sharp on Creede. “No looking at the future.”
“It’s just a map,” Max said, but Creede had jerked his hand back, away from the map, and Max remembered Creede’s words about changing the future. He glanced at Creede, then Doc, then buttoned the map back into his shirt pocket. “I take it Hugo has built his castle by now?” he said to the others.
“He has,” Doc said. “Put it up as fast as the builders could go. Brought a lot of jobs to the area.”
“Where, precisely, has he built it?” Max didn’t recall any family stories about Hugo building more than one ridiculous Wyoming mini-castle, but he wanted to be sure.
“Up above Walford River,” Roy said, opening a leather saddlebag slung over the back of his horse behind his saddle. “With a beauty of a view of Walford Valley. The castle itself is tucked up against a ridge against the winter winds.”
“His land to command,” Max said, the words summing up Hugo to a T.
He caught another sharp glance from Creede. “More like he can see any arriving bands of lawmen.”
Doc stopped in a patch of shade and untied the leather strips that attached his metal canteen to his saddle, the horses munching on the clearing’s buffalo grass. “How do you want to handle this, Sam?” Doc said and sipped water from the canteen, his tan cowboy hat with a wide brim shading his face.
“Go straight in and accuse him outright,” Creede said. He’d had a brief conversation with Deputy Wilmo before sending the posse—plus Matthew and Finn—to the Fielding place, to keep Hugo’s men from doing any more harm to the ranch. The rest of the posse was escorting Matthew’s wife and kids to the Sky Top. He turned to Max. “What would you do?”
“The same,” Max said, keeping his gaze on the Crown in the distance. “He only respects power that’s as powerful as his, and any threat to incarcerate the henchmen he brought with him from Zalgravia will get his attention.”
“You would get his attention,” Roy said to Max, handing him a strip of beef jerky.
Max gave him a grim smile. “As always, I would be delighted to meet my ancestor and set him straight on a few points. But I can’t help but feel his making my acquaintance at this moment in time would be of no value to our cause.”
“Hold you in reserve?” Creede said.
“Rather, have me do the risky things, the ones that are illegal, or at least borderline.” Max swatted at a horse fly that had landed on his jeans-clad thigh. “If caught, I can call upon my royal connections.”
“Those connections are over a hundred years away from here,” Doc said, tying his canteen to his saddle.
Max’s grim smile lightened. “Hugo and his family don’t know that.”
“You’re that certain of your history?” Bart said and handed him the reins to the bay horse, who was named after the Greek god Ares.
Max stroked the bay’s neck. “I know it by heart. Oh, I admit there are deeds that have gone untold over time, that never made it into my ancestors’ diaries and journals or formal royal histories, but with the proper clothing, I could step into any abode, including the big castle at home, and be as royal as any current Zalgravian prince existing today.”
“Well, you sure have the lingo down,” Creede said with the first grin Max had seen him make, and damn, it made the man look a hell of a lot younger. Creede couldn’t be more than a handful of years older than Max.
“He’s got a point, Sam,” Bart said. “We wanted to reconnoiter the Crown and its employees. Max can do that while we keep Prince Hugo’s attention.” He turned to Max. “Any of that military training of yours teach you to infiltrate the enemy?”
Max grinned. “Not any of my military training. But what I’ve learned in avoiding the paparazzi should come in quite handy.”