Bloody Sunday (3 page)

“Do you recall the name of MacCrae's new wife?” Luke asked the storekeeper.

“Don't know that I ever heard it,” the man replied. “All I know is some of my customers gossiped about ol' Sam getting himself a young, pretty wife. That's all I can tell you, mister.”

“There's one more thing you can tell me,” Luke said. “How to get to Painted Post.”

The storekeeper was glad to supply him with directions, especially after Luke bought some supplies. A couple of days' ride brought him to Painted Post, a sleepy cow town not much different from a hundred others Luke had seen. While he was there, he picked up some more gossip about Sam MacCrae and the rancher's new wife.

MacCrae had been a widower for quite a few years, and evidently he had fallen hard for the young woman who had gotten off the train and settled in at the hotel. A whirlwind courtship later, the couple had gotten married in the Painted Post Baptist Church, and the woman—her name was Glory, Luke was told—had gone off to live on the ranch with her new husband.

All that information combined to convince Luke that he was on the right trail. Glory MacCrae had to be the fugitive murderer Gloria Jennings.

All he needed to do was get a look at her to be absolutely certain of her identity. Even though it had been a while, in his mind's eye he could still see the portrait of the woman he had seen on that wanted poster in Major Jones's office.

Now, as he stood there with Glory MacCrae's warm hand gripped in his, he was dead solid sure.

“Welcome to the MC Ranch, Mr. Jensen,” Glory said. “I don't know what brings you here, but you've done us a favor.” She nodded toward the dead man. “This is one less gunnie to do Harry Elston's bidding.”

She gave his hand a final squeeze and let go of it. Luke was a little sorry not to be holding her hand anymore. She was the sort of woman whose beauty possessed a raw, primitive power over men, and Luke wasn't immune to it . . . although he would never let it make his decisions for him, either.

“I don't know anything about this fella Elston,” he said. “All I know is that somebody in that bunch tried to kill me, and I don't take kindly to that. Could've even been this hombre. If it wasn't . . .” A cold smile curved Luke's mouth under the mustache. “Then I reckon he was guilty by association.”

“Elston's men are all guilty of one thing: associating with a skunk.” Glory turned to Pendleton and went on: “Put him on a horse and take him back to headquarters, Gabe. From there one of the men can take the body to Painted Post in a wagon and leave it at the undertaker's.”

“You aim to pay for planting him, Miz MacCrae?” the foreman asked.

“Not if there's enough of Harry Elston's dirty money in his pockets to pay for a pine box, I don't,” Glory answered without hesitation. Then she shrugged and added, “But whoever takes the body to town can tell the undertaker that I'll cover the difference, if there is any.”

Pendleton's voice hardened as he said, “I'll make sure you get an honest accounting, ma'am.”

“Thank you, Gabe.” Glory turned back to Luke. “If you're not in a hurry, Mr. Jensen, I hope you'll come on to the ranch house with us and have supper. You're welcome to spend the night in the bunkhouse, as well.”

“That's kind of you,” Luke said with a nod. “I accept.”

“Not at all. Like I said, you did us a favor . . . and I like to repay any favors that I owe.”

She was a plainspoken, straightforward woman, Luke thought as they mounted up. He liked that about her, over and above her good looks.

It was a shame he was going to have to take her in and turn her over to the law. It would be even more of a shame when they put a hang rope around that pretty neck of hers and stretched it for murdering her husband.

Her other husband, Luke corrected himself as he moved the dun alongside her horse and they began to ride along the base of the bluff. Behind them, a couple of the hands rounded up the dead man's horse so they could throw the corpse over the saddle.

“Are you from somewhere around these parts, Mr. Jensen?” Glory MacCrae asked. “I don't think I've heard your name before.”

“No, ma'am. Originally I'm from Missouri, but I've moved around a lot in recent years. I consider myself a citizen of the world.”

“I like that,” she said with a smile.

“Where are you from?” he asked. “You don't really sound like a Texan.”

She laughed and said, “Those can be fighting words around here. Although a lot of people in Texas these days weren't born here.”

Luke knew that was true. After the end of the war, there had been nothing left in the conquered Southern states for many of the returning Confederate soldiers. The brutal, vindictive Yankee reconstructionists and carpetbaggers had seen to that.

So most of those men had headed west, looking for new lives on the frontier. Luke's experience had been different in some details, although there were certain similarities. He didn't consider himself an unreconstructed rebel, though. The war was too far in the past for that.

He noticed that Glory had dodged his question about where she was from, but he didn't press her on the issue. Anyway, he already knew the answer. Her voice had a slight trace of a Southern accent, another indication that she was from Baltimore, which straddled the cultural line dividing north from south.

To pass the time, Luke said, “Tell me about this hombre Elston. Why would he want his men to rustle some of your stock?”

“Why will a rattlesnake sink its fangs in anything that moves?” Glory asked in return. “It's filled with venom, and that venom has to come out somewhere.” As they passed the embers of a fire that had burned down to almost nothing, she pointed at them and went on: “They were using that as a branding fire, venting the MC brand into a Lazy EO with a running iron. We've caught them doing it before.”

Luke frowned and said, “I don't see how they thought they could get away with that. It would be easy enough to spot an altered brand if you killed the cow and peeled the hide off. Don't you have a cattleman's association to send in some brand inspectors and put a stop to it?”

“The brand inspectors have been in, and they've warned Elston,” Glory said. “He claimed his men were doing it without his knowledge. He fired some of them, ran them off.” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Paid them off, is more like it. He put on a show of being angry about it, but he really gave the men money to go somewhere else and find another job. I'm convinced of that.”

They left the branding fire behind. Luke said, “It doesn't seem like you could steal enough cattle that way to make it worthwhile unless you had a little outfit and were just barely hanging on.”

“Well, it's not like Harry Elston is trying to stock his ranch. He has his own herds. What he really wants is my range and my water. Sabado Creek runs through the valley and is the best source of water around here. Elston just wants to make enough of a nuisance of himself that I'll give up and sell out to him.”

Starting out, Luke hadn't been sure why he was questioning Glory MacCrae about what was going on around here. He didn't care about the ranch's troubles. He was just here to make sure she was the fugitive he was after and then figure out a way to get her behind bars.

She had said some things that intrigued him, though, and his interest grew even stronger when he recalled how one of the ranch hands had referred to her as “the boss” when he spotted Glory approaching.

“Mrs. MacCrae,” he said, “how does your husband feel about all this?”

Glory's horse broke stride a little, and Luke knew his question had caused her to jerk the reins. She looked over at him and said, “My husband is dead, Mr. Jensen. The MC Ranch is mine now.”

Well, thought Luke, given this woman's history, that wasn't really much of a surprise.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't know.”

She shrugged and said, “Since you're a stranger in these parts, there's no reason you should have.”

That storekeeper back in Bracken's Crossing could have told him, he thought. Of course, it was possible the man hadn't known about Sam MacCrae's death, especially if it had occurred recently.

“You have my condolences,” Luke said. “If you don't mind my asking, how long ago . . . ?”

“Three months.” Glory glanced down at the riding clothes she wore and went on: “I know, these aren't exactly widow's weeds, are they? But I don't have time to sit around in a dark room with a veil over my face, weeping and wailing. There's a ranch that has to be run. The last thing in the world Sam would have wanted was for me to let things go to hell around here.”

She was good, Luke thought. Every word out of her mouth sounded genuine and sincere, but he knew she was lying through her teeth. The most likely explanation was that she had killed Sam MacCrae, gotten away with it somehow without being suspected, and now intended to strip her late husband's ranch of every penny she could before she disappeared again.

“I did my mourning for a few days,” Glory was saying as those thoughts ran through Luke's brain. “Gabe and the other men kept things going. But then it was time to move forward again instead of looking back. I had my time with Sam. It was too short, but other than that it . . . it was everything a woman could ask for.”

That little catch in her voice was perfect. Anybody else hearing it would believe that deep down she was still devastated by the loss of her husband.

“How long were you married?” Luke asked.

“Three months. Like I said, not nearly long enough.”

But long enough for Sam MacCrae to have changed his will, Luke was willing to bet. Wasn't anybody around here suspicious of this woman? Had she managed to fool them all just because she was beautiful?

They came to a place where the bluff had caved in, a long time in the past. An easy trail led to the top. As they rode up it, Luke glanced back and saw Pendleton and the other MC hands strung out behind them. One of the cowboys was leading a horse with the dead man draped over the saddle.

“How far is it to your headquarters?”

“About five miles,” Glory said. “It's over there at the edge of those foothills to the west.”

A couple of ranges of small mountains, not much more than hills themselves, bordered the valley on the northeast and southwest. The settlement of Painted Post was ten or twelve miles back to the southeast. This whole area between the mountain ranges was known as Sabado Valley—Sabbath Valley, in English—and it all belonged to Glory MacCrae now. Some of the landscape Luke could see was brown and arid, but a large swath of the valley was verdant with grass and brush. Luke wasn't a cattleman, but he had been around enough ranches to know good grazing land when he saw it.

Maybe Glory wasn't planning on running out after all. Maybe she was sincere about keeping the ranch going. It was possible she had lucked into something by marrying Sam MacCrae, something that would allow her to settle down.

Of course, she still had a murder charge hanging over her head, and unless Luke missed his guess, that wasn't the only murder she had committed. He had to pretend to be taken in by the web of lies she was spinning, but he couldn't let himself actually be convinced she was telling the truth.

She was worth five thousand dollars, after all!

They passed more cattle as they rode, good-looking animals, Luke thought, although he wasn't really a judge of such things. After a few minutes, Glory said, “You never did tell me what you're doing on this range, Mr. Jensen.”

“I'm headed for El Paso,” Luke said, “but I'm taking my time getting there and seeing some of the country while I'm at it.”

“What's in El Paso? Family? Friends?”

For a long time after the war, Luke hadn't had either of those things in his life. He hadn't even known at first that the famous gunman Smoke Jensen was really his little brother Kirby.

Since then he had met not only Smoke, but also their adopted brother, Matt, along with the old mountain man known as Preacher who had been Smoke's mentor for many years. So, yeah, he had family now, and friends, and they were the same.

But in answer to Glory's question he said, “No, none of that. But I'm told there's always a big poker game going on in the bar of the Camino Real Hotel.”

Glory laughed and said, “So you're a gambler?”

“When you get up in the morning, you're betting that you'll make it through the day, aren't you? And when you lay your head down at night, you've made a wager that you'll wake up again.”

“That's a rather . . . fatalistic way of looking at things, isn't it?”

“I suppose you're right,” Luke said with a chuckle of his own. “Let's just say I enjoy a good game of cards.”

“Fine. That means it won't be keeping you from anything important if you have dinner with me tonight and stay a day or two.”

It didn't escape Luke's notice that she had gone from asking him to spend the night at the ranch to saying that he could stay a day or two. He didn't comment on it, though.

They came within sight of the ranch headquarters. It was a fine-looking place. The house was whitewashed adobe with a tile roof and several cottonwood trees around it. A long, low adobe bunkhouse sat to one side. There were a couple of barns built of rough-planed lumber with a network of corrals between and around them. Other outbuildings were scattered here and there. Luke could tell the ranch was successful.

A couple of big, shaggy dogs, one yellow, and one gray and brown, ran out to greet them with full-throated barks. A woman with gray hair braided and wrapped around her head came out of the main house, and a couple of young punchers emerged from one of the barns. One of the youngsters hurried up and took hold of the headstall on Glory's horse as she reined to a halt.

“I'll put him up for you, ma'am,” the boy said. He was a stocky, redheaded youngster with a scattering of freckles across his face.

“Thank you, Ernie,” Glory told him, and as she expressed her gratitude a smile as bright as the sun broke out on the boy's face. He looked like he'd just been given the world's best present on Christmas morning.

Glory swung down from the saddle, and so did Luke. Glory said to the other young man, “Vince, take care of Mr. Jensen's horse, will you?”

“Sure,” Vince said. He was taller, leaner, and darker than Ernie, and he looked like it would take a lot more than a fleeting smile from Glory MacCrae to make him beam like the sun.

The other hands who had been with Gabe Pendleton during the fight with the rustlers were headed for the barn, except for Pendleton and the cowboy leading the dead man's horse. Pendleton hipped around slightly in his saddle, peered to the north, and said, “Company coming, Miz MacCrae.”

“Can you tell who it is?” Glory asked.

Pendleton's voice hardened as he said, “Looks like a buggy with three or four riders trailing it. Coming from that direction, you know what that means.”

“Yes,” Glory said. Her voice had gone flinty, too. “Harry Elston is coming to pay us a visit.”