Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
Cally, standing twenty feet away from the stage with her silver trophy and her ma, gaped as Max and Prince Hugo hit the ground beside the stage with a loud thud , the Evil Prince taking the brunt of the blow on his back. Dust flew in the air.
Hurrying over to grab Ares’s reins, Cally watched Max pound his leather-gloved fist into Prince Hugo’s startled, arrogant face. “You filthy bastard,” he yelled, straddled over his ancestor, fury in his every word, his face as hard as stone. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Prince Hugo tried to push him off, but Max struck him again with his fist, bloodying his lip. “You’re a disgrace to the Crown,” he shouted, and Cally would put all her money, and the Sky Top to boot, on him. “A disgrace to every Balmont who comes after you.”
But Prince Hugo was a powerful man, as strong as Cally’s prince, and with a swift thrust, he flung Max on his back in the dirt.
With a roar of rage, Hugo scrambled to his feet, aiming a kick at Max’s head as Max scrambled to his own feet, Max dodging in time, Max in a fury. Breathing fast, he swung his fist again at Hugo.
But Hugo seemed to be getting his wits back together after Max’s first attack. Dodging the intended blow, he formed up into a boxing stance that Max recognized from the boxing lessons he’d learned as a boy from his grandfather the king. But he hadn’t done much sparring in the last couple of years.
Hugo, on the other hand, based on the precision of his stance, was more versed in what was in this century a well-regarded gentlemanly sport. His fist shot out in an upper cut.
Max blocked most of the blow with a swift side step and karate chop, Hugo’s fist just grazing his cheekbone.
Astonishment crossed Hugo’s face.
Uh, oh, Max thought as he followed up the block with a leg sweep, knocking Hugo backwards onto his butt. Somehow he doubted the Duke of Balmont would have used a martial art. “Don’t you recognize karate when you see it?” Max taunted as Hugo gaped at him from the ground, beside their fallen hats, looking stunned.
That was the thing about being coddled royalty, Max knew. People weren’t allowed to strike you, weren’t allowed to come close enough to even try.
He shook out his arms as if he was just getting ready to fight. “Really, Hugo, you must see more of the world.”
Red filled Hugo’s face. A hint of uncertainty filled his hard eyes as he leaped to his feet, then he gave a sharp nod to Wulfdag, the only one of the Four Henchmen not currently under arrest.
Dressed in his black livery, Wulfdag tossed a sheathed sword to Hugo, and Max abruptly realized how fraught their fight had become. Unarmed, he was vulnerable. If Hugo harmed him, killed him, he would no longer be able to protect Cally. And Hugo’s death, however unlikely at the moment, could as easily end Max’s life as Hugo’s terrible sword.
Hugo drew the sword from its sheaf with a swift hiss of deadly steel.
Guns all around them cocked. Guns aimed at Hugo.
“Folks around here,” Creede drawled to the Evil Prince, “prefer a fair fight.”
A crowd had gathered around them, Max realized. A large crowd, the spectators having paused in their discussion of the race to watch the fight.
Breathing hard, he wiped the sweat from his brow with his plaid shirtsleeve. “Arrest him, Sheriff,” he told Creede, accepting his hat from Bart. “He’s a danger to the community.” A danger to Max. That sword, still aimed at him, was deadly, and Max had to wonder that Hugo would pull such a weapon on his royal cousin.
Unless Hugo was beginning to suspect Max wasn’t who he said he was.
Hugo raised haughty brows. “Arrest him ,” he said with an arrogant nod of his bloodied chin toward Max. “He attacked me .” His gaze caught on Kuthbert, who still looked woozy from Max’s blows, the man sagging between Roy and Deputy Wilmo, the heavy manacles on his wrists weighing his arms down. Hugo’s haughty expression turned to rage. “Unhand him,” he demanded, his princely voice loud.
“Folks don’t threaten competitors in horse races in these parts,” Creede said, his six-shooter still aimed at Hugo, which only enraged Hugo more. “Set that sword on the ground nice and slow.”
Hugo gripped the sword hilt even tighter. “That man is in my employ.” He pointed the sharp tip of the sword at Kuthbert.
“You sayin’ you hired him to shoot riders in the horse race?” Creede said.
A collective gasp surged through the crowd. Beyond Hugo, Max caught sight of Cally and her mother at the edge of the spectators, their faces shocked, Cally holding Ares’s reins.
Hugo gave Creede the haughtiest of expressions. “Of course not.”
Creede gave him one back full of steel. “You give this man orders to hurt folks? Because he was threatening your competitors in that horse race with a rifle.”
“I…” Hugo drew his erect posture up even higher, haughtiness giving way to princely arrogance, and Max hoped that he himself had never pulled such an expression on anyone ever before. “Now see here. This man has my protection as a prince of Zalgravia.”
“By whose say-so?” Creede said.
“By my say-so. And by the word of His Majesty the King of Zalgravia.”
“You get me a letter attesting to that with proof it came from your king, and I’ll consider it,” Creede said. “Until then, this man goes to jail, pending his trial.”
“Trial?” Hugo said, his face going red again, outrage in his voice.
“That’s what happens in these parts when folks break the law,” Creede said with a pointed look at Hugo. “I’d be real careful if I were you. Wouldn’t want the good people of Mule Stop to get the wrong idea about you, especially if they were sitting on a jury, judging your actions, Prince Hugo.”
A mighty hubbub broke out as Evil Prince Hugo left the race grounds astride his gray stallion, some folks jeering at the prince for trying to cheat. Other folks turned back to collecting their bets and congratulating Cally.
But Cally’s gaze was on Prince Hugo, her heart still racing with the shock that had galloped through her body when he’d turned a sword on Max, her heart racing even faster now with the news he’d tried to have folks in the horse race shot.
The sidekick named Wulfdag was the only feller from Zalgravia who rode beside him now, the other three having been arrested that day for crimes against Prince Hugo’s neighbors, such as shooting Robert Porter, and trying to kidnap Jeremiah Fielding—and against her, she reckoned, her gaze shifting to Kuthbert. Weren’t no need to shoot all the folks racing against the Evil Prince today. Only the ones ahead of him. Like her.
And Max.
Bart sent Nick to follow the royal varmint, to make sure he didn’t try anything else against their family, Bart as shaken by Kuthbert’s actions as Max seemed to be, Cally could tell by the tight line of her brother’s mouth. Bart had also set Luke to guarding Apollo as soon as the race was over, and now Cally understood why—in case the royal varmint had any other ideas, like kidnapping her horse.
Handing Ares’s reins to Bart, she pushed her way through the crowd around Max, making a beeline for her prince, her racing trophy clutched in one hand.
She reached him as the mayor was informing him with a disapproving frown that he and the Evil Prince were disqualified from the race for unsportsmanlike behavior. According to the mayor, the Evil Prince had struck Max with his horsewhip and bumped Max’s horse with his gray stallion, and Max, in turn, had kicked the Evil Prince.
Max took the news with a grim nod, but Cally reckoned he didn’t care about the disqualification. He’d had more important things to do, like stopping a gunman who was threatening the racers.
Threatening her.
She’d wondered why he hadn’t followed her across the finish line. Wondered why he hadn’t even finished the race. Instead, he’d come running on foot across the racetrack while she was being congratulated, running past the crowd around her.
Running straight for the Evil Prince.
He hadn’t finished the race because he’d been busy keeping her alive.
“Prince,” she whispered once the mayor had stalked away, her voice too quiet for anyone else to hear, Cally putting all her gratitude into the one word.
He turned, his gaze locking onto hers with a fierceness that startled her, fierceness and an emotion in his blue eyes that sure as blazes looked the way Bart had the day he’d almost lost Livie. He nodded to her, as if he’d heard every ounce of gratitude she’d tried to convey, and perhaps more than gratitude, the more unintentionally in her voice. She wanted to hug him, kiss him, touch him all over, to make sure he was unharmed.
But she knew a lot of the folks who’d watched him fight the Evil Prince were still watching him. And those who weren’t were still keeping an eye on her, seein’ as how she’d won the biggest horse race around.
That fierce gaze dropped to the trophy in her hand.
Sun struck the silver cup.
The corners of his eyes tightened. “Congratulations,” he said in a low voice with a hearty excitement that she believed was real, but still, his handsome face seemed perturbed. “You blew me away, you and Apollo.”
She frowned at him for a long moment, wondering what it was he was perturbed about, seeing as how Kuthbert was in the hands of the law.
Wondering what he knew that she didn’t.
“Don’t let what Hugo did spoil your victory,” he said, reading her mind again. Glancing at his hands, he seemed to realize blood had smeared on his gloves, and he pulled them off with sharp jerks and balled them inside out in one hand.
The urge to hug him hard struck her again. A thousand things she wanted to say filled her head, but not here, not now. “How’d you like ridin’ Ares?” she said instead, wanting to ask what had really happened behind her on the racetrack, what he had seen that had alerted him, what he had done. All she knew was that something powerful wrong had almost happened. Would have happened if he hadn’t been there.
That fierce gaze softened. He smiled at her as if she were the only person around for miles. “I’m guessing he’s a brother or cousin to Apollo.”
“That’s right,” she said. “They’re cousins.” She raised her brows, questioning him with her face. “I was expecting you to come in second.”
“I took a detour,” he said and nodded toward Wilmo and Roy.
The two lawmen were escorting Kuthbert toward a flatbed wagon, the heavy manacles on Kuthbert’s wrists clunking as he moved.
“You planning on telling me what happened?” she whispered, wanting to take Max’s hand and press it to her heart.
“Later,” he said and looped his arm with hers. A trickle of blood was still running down his cheek from a small cut by his eye. His dark hair was askew, with bits of dead cottonwood leaves in it. “Where does one go around here to celebra?—?”
“Cally,” Miss Jenny Ferguson called out, a group of Cally’s friends from town converging on her and Max.
“Later,” Cally told Max in a firm voice, her gaze boring into his, letting him know she wanted a full accounting, then reluctantly, she turned to receive the congratulations from her friends.
Max wanted to wrap his arms around Cally and hold her tight, to reassure himself she was safe and alive, to kiss her mouth to reassure himself more, and to congratulate her on her win.
But her reputation was square and center in his thoughts, and reluctantly, he relinquished her to her local friends—including Finn, who, after a quick talk with Max, in which Finn had been gratefully thanked for his assistance during the race, had joined her and their childhood buddies.
Her suitors, even more besotted than before, had also joined the youthful group admiring her and her trophy, though for the suitors, the emphasis was on her, not the silver cup. The three of them that she’d beaten in the race didn’t seem too perturbed about losing, and Max realized the young men had never seen her gallop in her free-spirited way astride Apollo when they’d been at the Sky Top. Her entire persona during their presence there, except for her justifiable outburst at Mr. Perth, had been the demure one that was so unlike the real her.
Turning away from them, Max was brushing dirt from his clothes, a small cut beside his eye stinging where Hugo had struck him, when the eight ranchers he’d powwowed with at the Porter place three days ago strode up to Creede, who’d been having a tense conversation by the stage with Stubby and the mayor.
The ranchers, grim faced and angry, arrayed themselves in a semicircle, the older man who’d previously been their spokesman in the center now, facing the sheriff and mayor. “Three days,” the man reminded Creede. “We gave you three days to get that varmint off our backs before we took matters into our own hands.” The other ranchers nodded. “Instead the bastard tried to shoot up folks in today’s horse race.”
“Our folks,” one rancher said, his arm around a young man who looked like his son and who’d been in the race.
Damn.
Wanting to get to Hugo before the ranchers harmed him, Max, not quite sure yet what he’d do once he found his ancestor, searched for Bart in the back-slapping crowd. Bets, won and lost, were exchanging hands. Stories of how Max had ridden off the racecourse full tilt toward Kuthbert were being told, each retelling getting wilder and wilder, people sending sidelong glances his way, no one—yet—seemingly brave enough to come speak with a royal duke.
Not seeing Bart anywhere, he made his way to the James family’s buggy in the shade of the cottonwood trees along the river, where Livia sat alone on the front buggy seat, away from the jostling, celebrating townsfolk.
“Where’s Bart?” he asked without preamble, his anger at Hugo still taut in his body, his rage barely spent in their fistfight.
“Making arrangements to keep an eye on the Evil Prince while we’re in town.” She gestured to the padded, gray leather buggy seat beside her. “Let me bandage that cut.”
“It’s nothing.” He turned and ran his gaze around the crowds of spectators again, no one other than Hugo seeming to be in any hurry to leave the race grounds. “Where exactly is your husband?”
“I don’t know exactly. Sit.” She pointed at the seat. “No antibiotics here, remember?” she said in a lower voice. “You need to keep cuts clean.”
“I—”
“Bart will find us faster here than you’ll find him in that crowd. And folks are already buzzing with conjecture about what happened out there on the other side of the racetrack. Once they get over their fear of talking with a royal duke, you’ll be mobbed.” She tugged at his sleeve as his gaze went back to the crowd. “ Max .”
He turned to her.
“Sit. And let me thank you.”
He gave out a short laugh. And sat, the buggy rocking gently as he climbed in.
“Thank you,” she told him in a quiet voice. “For saving Cally.”
“You’re welcome,” he said back in his own quiet tone, but the rest of him was still keyed up, his fists clenching of their own accord, his entire being still wanting to beat the hell out of his ancestor.
“Is that why you’re here, in the past?” she asked, her voice dropping even lower to a whisper, her eyes on him as she lifted a black doctor’s bag from beneath the buggy seat. “To stop today’s shooter? Did you know this was going to happen?”
“I don’t know if today is why I’m here,” he said. “Not for sure.” But that damned trophy haunted him. Why had Hugo taken it back to Zalgravia with him? He wouldn’t have given a damn about the race unless he lost it. A win today would only have reaffirmed his own opinion of himself—he’d have tossed the trophy itself away, if he’d won it instead of Cally. Which meant he’d had it in his possession for a different reason when he left Wyoming. As a different kind of trophy? “And I didn’t know about Kuthbert until I saw him hiding in the sagebrush.”
“Good God,” Livia said. “To be so determined to win a horse race that you would…” Tears filled her eyes, but her expression was angry, tight with a need to make Hugo pay, as she took a small white tin with a big red cross on the top from inside the black bag.
“She’s okay,” Max told her, her need to make Hugo pay a faint echo compared to the rage still thrumming through his blood. “I’ll do everything I can to keep her that way.”
“I know.” Wiping away her tears with a small, embroidered handkerchief, she glanced toward Cally a hundred feet away at the winner’s stand, the suitors having set her atop the small stage. “Wasn’t it a silver racing cup that brought you here to the past?” she said, her lavender eyes narrowing on the trophy Cally held. The anger on her face faded, her expression turning shrewd, and he knew she knew as well as he did that the answer to her question was yes.
As she said, she’d been to this rodeo before.
“Does your stopping the shooter today end things now with your ancestor?” she asked when he didn’t say anything, her fingers pulling a small gauze pad, a pair of small scissors, and a dark-brown bottle from inside the small tin.
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully, but he had a feeling his own actions that day had only made things worse. Hugo would be out for blood. Max’s blood. “Back in the future, the history of these last few days was rather hazy and incomplete.”
She watched his face, looking, he was sure, for any prevarications, then nodded toward the racetrack. “What exactly happened out there?”
It was all still a fast blur in his thoughts. The flash of sunlight off the barrel of the rifle. The tense, wrenching moments when he realized Cally was in the rifle’s sights. His determined departure from the track toward the man hidden in the sagebrush, while the rifle barrel kept on glinting, aimed at— “Ouch.”
“Iodine,” Livia told him. “Hold still.” And she cleaned the small cut by his eye as he told her about the race, about the rifle, about the desperate sprint toward the rifleman, and with the telling, the rage still thrumming in his body started to ease. Not to dissipate, but to cool into something more dangerous, something more dangerous directed straight at Hugo.
A burst of laughter came from the crowd around Cally. Mr. Pretty-Face Pop Idol, taller that the others, was—to Max’s eyes—telling a story, while practically drooling over her.
Livia gave Max a wry smile. “Nothing like a horse race to make a man hot for a woman.”
Max had to admit his own admiration for the young woman held a healthy portion of desire for her lithe, athletic, purely feminine body. With a short laugh, he turned his gaze toward the two expensively dressed women talking with June eighty feet away—mothers of two of Cally’s suitors. They didn’t seem to be terribly friendly to June. There were no signs of them celebrating Cally’s win, unlike their sons.
A bit to June’s side, two more of the mothers—Mrs. Vann and Mrs. Yardley—whispered to each other, disapproving expressions on their pinched faces.
“Nothing like a horse race to turn a man’s ambitious mother against a young woman,” Max said with a nod at them.
Livia nodded. “Poor June.” She taped a gauze pad over his cleaned cut. “She’s worked so hard to make Cally’s path a smooth one.”
“I doubt Cally would recognize what others would consider to be a smooth path.” Pride of what she’d accomplished that day filled his heart, driving away, for the moment, the rage. “Man, Livia, the way she rode today.” The memory prompted another one, of how she and Apollo had practically flown across the valley at the Madden place two days ago, as free and wild as the mustangs they’d raced with.
“Careful,” Livia said. “There’s that love again in your eyes.”
He sighed. “I can’t help it. All I have to do is look at her, and…” And his heart was lost.
Once Hugo was back in Zalgravia, how could Max leave her? Hugo aside, how could Max walk away—or be washed away in a flood? How could he go on in the future knowing he’d never see her again?
“Awfully fast, there,” Livia said, “that falling in love.”
“It happens,” Max said, still shocked that it had happened to him. “Though I have a feeling I’ve been looking for her my whole life.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“Ignore the emotion. Watch her like a hawk. Find a way to get Hugo sent back to Zalgravia.”
“Change the future, you mean.”
Max exhaled. “What else can I do? I can’t let him harm her.” His eyes bored into Livia’s. “Can you?”