Page 123 of Texas Glory
The man who neared wasn’t Cooper. Dallas had never seen the burly man before, and he hoped to never see him again.
“You got the money?” the man asked through a mouth of missing and rotting teeth.
“Yep. Where’s my wife?”
“At the camp.” The man held out a black cloth. “Put this on.”
Dallas snatched the cloth from the grimy fingers and bound it over his eyes. He wasn’t a man accustomed to playing by another’s rules, but he had no choice. He’d do whatever it took to keep Dee alive.
She’d lost their child because he’d thrown caution to the wind. He didn’t intend to be as careless this time.
The dark material muted the afternoon sun’s blinding rays, but Dallas used the intensity of the light to measure the passing of the day, to gauge the direction that they traveled: west, toward the sunset.
After what seemed hours, Satan stumbled to a stop.
“You can remove the mask now,” his captor said.
Dallas jerked off the foul-smelling cloth. His eyes needed little time to adjust as dusk was settling inside the small canyon.
His gaze quickly swept the area, registering the dangers, the risks. the terror in Dee’s eyes as she stood with her back against a tree, her arms raised, her hands tied with coarse rope to the branch hanging over her head.
Dallas dismounted, grabbed the saddlebags, and strode toward Cooper, ignoring the man’s knowing smirk, unable to ignore the whip he was trailing in the dust like the limp tail of a rattlesnake.
“Cut her loose,” Dallas ordered as he neared the loathsome man who called himself Rawley’s father, sorry to discover that he’d left too much of the man’s face intact.
Cooper spit out a stream of tobacco juice. “Not till I got the money.”
Dallas slung the bags at Cooper’s feet and stalked toward Dee.
“Stop right there or Tobias will shoot her,” Cooper snarled.
Dallas spun around. A man standing to the right of Cooper had a rifle trained on Dee. The man who had brought Dallas to the camp had dismounted and snaked an arm around Rawley, holding him close against his side, a gun pressed to the boy’s temple. Dallas would have expected fear to be hovering within Rawley’s dark eyes. Instead they only held quiet resignation. Dallas tamped down his anger. “You’ve got the money. Let them go.”
Cooper chuckled. “This ain’t just about the money. This is about what I owe you.” He snapped the whip and the crack echoed through the canyon. “My face can’t even attract a whore after what you done to it. Hurts something fierce. Figure you could do with a little hurt yourself.” His lips spread into a smile that lit his eyes with anticipation. “How many lashes you think it would take to kill her?”
Dallas took a menacing step forward.
A rifle fired.
Dee screamed.
Dallas froze. He slowly glanced over his shoulder. Dee vigorously shook her head. He could see no blood, no pain etched over her face.
“Next time, Tobias won’t miss,” Cooper said.
Swallowing hard, Dallas turned his attention back to Cooper, deciding it was time to risk everything in order to gain all. “Kill her and you’ll never get the money.”
Cooper’s laughter echoed around the canyon as he kicked the saddlebags. “You damn fool. I’ve got the money.”
“Do you?” Dallas asked.
The laughter abruptly died as Cooper dropped to his knees and flung back the flaps on the saddlebags. Frantically, he pulled out paper. Pieces and pieces of blank paper. Fury reddened his face as he glared at the man who had escorted Dallas to the camp.
“Quinn, you fool, didn’t you look in the saddlebags before you brung him out here?”
“You didn’t tell me to look in the saddlebags. You just told me to bring him.”
Cooper glowered at Dallas. “Where’s the money?”
