Chapter 6
Devon picked up the gunpowder flask from the top of the weathered fencepost and measured a load. This was his chance to talk to LeBeau about Morning Fawn. Helping her without sabotaging his welcome and his mission was as easy as walking between bullets.
Thank goodness, Mrs. LeBeau insisted that Thea accompany her on a visit to a neighboring plantation. A morning of feigning mild interest had grated on his nerves worse than clanging pots.
A cotton field with its stubbled leavings stretched before him and LeBeau. A murder of crows hopped along the hardened rows pecking. Seventy-five yards out, a board swung from an extended branch of a post oak. Yellow leaves dangled above the bull’s eye George had used coal to scrawl on the target.
LeBeau held out his revolver and rotated it from side to side. “You ever seen one of these, Reynolds?”
“No, sir. Looks mighty fine.” Devon admired the iron barrel and wood grip with its brass trigger guard. Steel was hard to come by these days with the Union blockade of the entire Southern coastline and control of the Mississippi.
LeBeau rubbed his thumb over the polished walnut. “Dance and Brothers Company. Made here in Texas.” He pulled his powder flask from the pocket of his buckskin hunting coat.
Might as well have been playing dressup for the frontier. The hypocrite probably wouldn’t last two days in Palo Duro Canyon. If Morning Fawn attempted to don anything that came off a deer, her uncle would undoubtedly have a fit.
LeBeau stuck out his chest. “We’ll see how this beauty fares against that Northern-made Colt of yours.”
“Colts have served me well.” Devon poured a load in the fifth chamber and dug wadding out of a pouch on his belt.
“1860 Army model?” LeBeau arched his eyebrows. “That make is hard to come by in this neck of the woods.”
“I ran across a dead Yank in Louisiana. He had no further need of it. That’s where I got these boots too.” Devon scuffed the heel of his knee-high cavalry boots against a clump of shriveled grass.
LeBeau’s lips twitched upward as he finished his loads. “You ever put a bullet in one of them blue-bellies?”
Devon’s stomach turned.
A breeze rippled across his face and tugged at the corners of the brown frock coat LeBeau had loaned him until his uniform could be washed. Tailor-fitted for LeBeau’s son, Arthur, doctor in the Confederate army, the wool stretched against Devon’s muscles, limiting his range of motion.
“I’ve killed a man before.” He answered without looking up. “More than one. Only, I don’t care to talk about it, sir.” He rolled a soft lead ball between his fingers and dropped it into the first chamber.
A ripple of sound erupted overhead. Honk. Honk. A V of geese flapped toward Mexico.
“Blast. I should have brought my shotgun.” LeBeau smacked his palm against his hip. “George,” he hollered to the slave who leaned against the fence about fifty yards down the line. “Hurry back to the house and get my shotgun.”
“Yes, Massa.” George waved and trotted off.
Devon rammed the loading lever into the fifth chamber and glanced toward the distant house, where only the roof above the smattering of trees could be seen at this distance beyond the rolling fields.
Was Morning Fawn at her window? If she was smart, she’d crack it open a couple of inches, no more, so that it wouldn’t be noticed from the ground.
Would she recall he’d done that for her?
If only she could remember that and forget some of the fool things he’d said. He’d give her the moon? Had that really come out of his mouth? What had gotten into him?
“Care to wager?” LeBeau threw back his shoulders, adjusted the brim of his brown top hat, and lifted his revolver toward the target.
Betting? He’d done his share of playing cards and gambling.
A skill he’d picked up evenings along the scouting trail after he’d run off at age seventeen.
A skill that had earned him the scar on his nose in New Orleans as a newly enlisted Federal officer.
“I’ll pass. I’m a bit short on funds at the moment. ”
“I’d accept an I.O.U. After all, you’re going to manage my cotton shipment.”
Devon added caps to the chamber nipples and clicked the cylinder back into place.
Maybe this was his opportunity. Did he dare ask?
With most able-bodied men off fighting in the war, LeBeau was more than eager for his services.
Maybe that’d buy him a bit of grace if he overstepped boundaries.
“Suppose we wager for something other than money?”
“And what might that be?” LeBeau shifted his revolver in his gloved palm.
Devon exhaled. The mission had to come first. He should keep his mouth shut. Sabotaging the cotton warehouse in Alleyton had the potential to cripple the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy’s ability to buy arms for months.
His throat tightened. If he didn’t do something to intervene on Morning Fawn’s behalf, and they tried to shove that trash down her throat again tonight, he might run up those stairs and wring her uncle’s neck.
Devon had brought her to this house. The responsibility lay on his shoulders like a yoke.
Surely, there was a way to protect her and complete his mission.
He swallowed hard and jumped into the muddy waters of risk.
“If more of my shots come closer to the bull's eye than yours, Miss Beth gets to join us for dinner.”
LeBeau pivoted toward him, mouth ajar. Piercing blue eyes scoured Devon as if he were a page in an accounting ledger. “You have an interest in my niece, Lieutenant Reynolds?”
Sweat broke out on the back of Devon’s neck.
How should he play this? Interested beau?
But there was Thea to contend with. He couldn’t slight the man’s daughter.
And Morning Fawn would welcome his attentions about as much as a momma cougar would allow a stranger near her kittens.
He shrugged. “I feel bad about treating her so roughly yesterday. She reminds me of my sister.” Mostly a lie.
But he had to find some way to intervene without criticizing the man who held the reins of authority.
“My younger sister is a wonderful girl, but she can be a bit strong-willed and stubborn.”
“Your sister… I see.” LeBeau smoothed his thumb and forefinger over his mustache. “And how does your stepfather deal with the young lady?”
“By trial and error.”
“Hmmm.” LeBeau squinted his left eye shut, inhaled, and fired.
The target rattled.
LeBeau blew the smoke away from his barrel. “If I win, you’ll act as my factor overseeing the selling and transportation of this year’s crop for free.”
Devon nudged his slouch hat off his forehead. “You drive a hard bargain, sir, but you have a deal.”
“A real gambler for a lady’s hand.” LeBeau eyed him as if measuring his response.
“Mercy for a sister.”
“So you say.” LeBeau squinted, stilled, and fired again.
Footsteps crunched on the graveled walkway.
LeBeau held up his hand toward George. “Stay put.” He fired again. Five times in total, the board rattled each time. ‘Leave the shotgun by the fence and go check my hits. Use the charcoal to mark the spots.”
Should he trust the man’s slave? Devon itched to follow after George and see for himself. But he planted his feet firm and flexed his fingers. Gentlemen didn’t question each other’s honor without reason.
George’s footfalls churned across the field, scaring off a rabbit.
LeBeau swiped his brow with a handkerchief and dug his brandy flask from his pocket. “So, Reynolds, tell me more about your sister.”
An opportunity to bring in his idea regarding Morning Fawn. “My stepfather discovered she cooperated more fully when she earned a reward for doing so.”
“Sounds like a way to spoil a child.” LeBeau took a swig.
Is that what he’d done with Thea? Devon swallowed his smirk. “In some cases, perhaps. But not in my sister’s, and maybe not in Miss Beth’s either. A spirited young woman needs something to work toward, a goal.”
“Do you consider yourself an expert on the fairer sex, Lieutenant?” LeBeau handed the flask his way.
“No, thank you, sir. I still have shots to fire. And no on the second account, as well. I’m no expert. Just on my sister.”
“You had a wife.”
Sure way to rattle his concentration, ten times worse than the brandy.
“My wife was a different sort. Sweet, demure…” He rubbed his palms on his trouser legs and slipped his revolver from his holster.
“But you asked about my sister. My stepfather persuaded her with new dresses, a trip to New Orleans—” Drew her into the planter culture so tight, Devon hardly recognized the young woman she became.
“And a horse.” The horse. That was the only gift worth having, the one in which he could still see the girl she had been.
“A horse is the last thing my niece needs.” LeBeau chuckled. “But dresses, a trip after the war—”
“All of those fancy frills wouldn’t mean a thing to Miss Beth. But a horse would be a different story.”
Lebeau’s eyebrows cocked. “Are you insane? Give her a horse, and she’d run off the first time our backs are turned.”
“Well, then, something more permanent, something that’d give her a reason to not escape.”
George ran up to them, grabbing his battered slouch hat to keep it from slipping off his head. “Mighty fine shootin’, Massar. Three in that there bull’s eye.”
LeBeau grinned. “Better get to it, Reynolds.” He nodded toward the target and slapped Devon on the shoulder. “If you want to give up now, I’ll only have you work three days without pay.”
Devon ran his finger along his steel barrel and spun the chamber.
It’d be prudent to allow his host to win.
But he wasn’t going to leave Morning Fawn up there another night to a dinner of laudanum.
If the LeBeaus could see her at the table behaving like a reasonable person, they’d be less likely to force-feed her that poison.
Could Morning Fawn behave herself? The question rolled around in his head as he lifted his revolver, steadied his right hand with his left, and inhaled.
He squinted through the sight.
A mockingbird whistled from the field.
Devon cocked the hammer, squeezed the trigger, and fired.