sunsets, you name it. On an animal that won’t stay still. It’s a mental and physical challenge.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“Miss Delilah thought it up.”
“Of course.” It sounded like a beauty salon owner’s idea.
“Don’t sound so snickery. Miss Delilah raises a lot of money for charity with her contests. People come from miles around to enter. And then, when the fair comes to town the following year, she sells the bull to the restaurant in Texas that bids the most for it. By then, everybody’s seen her bull for that year, in several events, and they bid it pretty high. With this money, she’s been able to keep her salon open.” Katy shook her head sadly. “Everyone wins, you know. The student who raised the bull, Lonely Hearts Station charities, a lucky restaurant and Miss Delilah’s favorite charity, taking in women who need a helping hand. But not since the Never Lonely girls opened up their salon.”
She tossed her head in the direction of a business no one could miss—almost the red-light establishment of beauty salons with a neon sign sure to light up a dark sky and all manner of lip prints painted on the windows. “Rivals, huh?”
“Delilah’s sister, Marvella, runs that shop, and she wants nothing more than to put Delilah out of business. And her weapon of the moment is a bull named Bad-Ass Blue.”
Laredo would have laughed, except, by the serious stiffness in Katy’s back, he knew he’d better swallow the laughter fast. “So, how does a bull ruin Miss Delilah’s shop?”
“By getting more attention. By having a rider that knows how to showboat. By luring our rider into missing his ride,” Katy said bitterly. “Bloodthirsty Black never even got out of the chute because we didn’t have a rider.”
Laredo was afraid to ask, but he had to know. “And the best-hoof-painting contest? How did Bloodthirsty Black fare in that?”
“Not at all,” Katy said. “Someone slipped a baby mouse into his stall and he darn near broke it down trying to crush the poor thing. After that no one dared get near him.”
Laredo shook his head. “No one plants a mouse. They just hang around livestock areas.”
“Not this one. It still had the price tag on it.”
He couldn’t help a chuckle now, which earned him a rebuking stare from Katy. “They don’t put price tags on mice, Katy.”
“This one was wearing a red price tag on his back. Two dollars and ninety-eight cents,” she said definitively.
Laredo was positive she was giving him a tall tale. “A marked-down mouse, I guess.”
She instantly halted, putting her fists on her hips. It was a gesture he kind of thought looked good on her, even though any sane man shied away from a ticked-off female. “There is nothing funny about Miss Delilah’s dilemma. If you were truly my hero, you would know that this is a serious matter.”
That stung, far worse than it should have. So much for doing something big—he couldn’t even pass a small hero’s test like not laughing at a story aimed to make him look like a patsy. “I’m sorry,” he said earnestly.
“You certainly should be. It’s not gentlemanly to laugh at people’s livelihoods.”
He hadn’t thought of it that way, and Katy was right. In silence they began to walk again, more companionably now since he’d proffered an apology. “Okay, say the price tag on the mouse was a coincidence. Maybe it had run through a bag and picked it up accidentally.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. It was from a store in Dallas.”
“But it could have been something someone brought to the rodeo,” he insisted. “What’s the purpose of leaving a price tag on a mouse? It basically alerts you to the fact that there’s been cheating and sabotage.”
“But that’s the intimidation factor. They have never cared that we know what they’re doing. Who’s to stop them? All the younger men in this town go to that salon, including the sheriff. We get the wives, who want no part of what goes on over there.”
“And that’s another thing. Have you ever been inside the salon? Tried their services?”
“No.”
“So how do you know that this is all deliberate?”
“They lured our cowboy into their salon, they got him drunk—and possibly more—on the day he was supposed to ride. What assumption would you draw from that?”
“That he was a lazy cowboy, and maybe not even a real bull rider, Katy. Did you ever think of that?”
“He had a buckle and all kinds of pictures of him with other trophies.”
Laredo sighed, knowing any of that could have been bought or finagled. Katy, as earnest as she was, seemed the type people might take advantage of. She was so sweet and trusting and open. A marked-down mouse, indeed. Why would a rival salon go to the trouble of bringing in a mouse with a red tag when they could have spooked the bull any number of ways? “So, if the rodeo is already over, why do you need another rider?”
“Because Miss Delilah raised a huge stink and called Marvella and told her that she knew she’d cheated and that if there wasn’t a rematch, she was going to burn the Never Lonely Cut-N-Gurls Salon to the ground.”
“She did that?” This didn’t sound like the woman who had come out to Malfunction Junction with twenty women and one baby, who had taken care of eleven cowboys and a truck driver during one of winter’s worst storms. That woman had seemed very sane and practical. “I’m having trouble with Miss Delilah being a lawbreaker and an arsonist.”
“We’ll never know, because her sister agreed to a rematch. The thing is, though, I think it’s a setup,” Katy whispered, stopping to gaze up into his eyes. Laredo felt his heart go thud and then boom as he tried to inhale. Then exhale. Katy’s eyes widened, drawing him in. “I think a red-lined mouse was child’s play to Marvella. Call me gullible if you will, and trusting, but I was recently duped by a girl who was just like a sister to me.”
“You don’t say,” Laredo breathed, trying real hard to sound surprised.
She nodded. “So I know what women are capable of.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“And I know Miss Delilah’s getting set up on this.”
“What could Marvella do?”
Katy’s gaze swept over his shoulders and then across his chest. “I don’t know. But she will send her girls to steal my hero.”
His mouth dried out at the thought of a bunch of women coming after him with their feminine lures. It wasn’t an altogether unhappy vision.
But the words from Katy’s mouth had perked up his heart. He could be her hero. He could do it. He was not the kind of guy to make a promise and then cut and run.
“You can count on me,” he said.
“You’ll ride Bloodthirsty
