Mary Connealy (81 page)

Sid shoved the iron deep into the flames.

“Don’t you come near me with that thing.” Harv scooted away from the fire, a dirty kerchief tied around his jaw to staunch the bleeding from his face.

“It’d help, Harv.”

“No one’s gonna close a wound on my face with a runnin’ iron.”

The running iron with its hooked tip could be used to alter any brand. They didn’t rustle big-time, just enough for some odd cash. Sid had a lot bigger dreams than rustling. He aimed to rustle an empire from Mort Sawyer.

But money got tight for whiskey, so sometimes they’d grab a few calves, drive ’em in this dead-end canyon. They’d fix the brands then let ’em grow awhile before they sold ’em so the brand healed and looked pretty good. They’d even registered brands that were easy to twist around and turned Sawyer’s M Bar S, Linscott’s Double L, and Dawson’s D Bar into the brands the gang claimed. Now that the gap had melted and they could get into that high valley the Harden Ranch claimed, they could run off a few cows from there, too.

“It’s not like you’re purdy’r nuthin’.” Paddy laughed as he leaned back against a tree trunk that sat alongside their campfire, looking at Harv.

Harv’s fingers twitched, and for a second Sid thought Paddy had pushed himself right into the business end of a shootout. But Harv didn’t draw, and Paddy was too busy laughing to notice he’d almost died.

Boog, who didn’t miss much, slid his cold eyes between the two, his six-gun strapped down. His shooting hand still worked just fine. “Let’s get this over and done.” Boog sat down by the fire and reached for the iron.

“I’ll do it.” Sid needed Boog, make no mistake about it. He needed Harv, too, and that gnawed at his gut because Harv was slowing them down. “You can’t burn your own wound.”

“I have before.” Boog’s ice blue eyes, as cold and dead as coffin nails, flickered away from the iron and steadied on Sid’s face.

Sid felt death whisper across his skin like sleet. Sid moved cautiously, as if Boog was a ten-foot rattler. “So you want help or not?”

Boog nodded.

The dull rasp of the iron against the burning wood brought Harv forward, eyes riveted on the red-hot metal. Even Paddy shut up and got serious.

Carefully, Sid barely touched the oozing wound then pulled back the instant Boog’s skin hissed.

The four of them were silent as Boog closed his eyes, his teeth clamped shut against any sound of pain. The smell of burnt flesh burrowed into Sid’s nose.

Boog looked up at Sid. Killing-mean eyes. Sid’s stomach churned. One wrong move right now and Sid would be dead on the ground just because Boog hurt so bad he needed to hurt someone else.

“Now do the other hole.” Boog’s voice sounded like a thousand miles of jagged rock.

Sid swallowed his fear as he moved around to stab this dangerous man in the back. Again the hiss. Again the silence. Sid had a new appreciation for the steel at the core of his saddle partner.

Sid set the running iron aside and went back to his place by the fire while they all waited silently for Boog to stop wanting to kill someone.

At last Boog spoke. “We need…need to get back to Sawyer’s.” His faltering speech was the only concession he’d make to the pain. “We’ve been gone long enough. Questions will be asked if we’re away longer. But I’ll be laid up a couple more days.”

Sid suspected Boog should have been laid up in bed, with a doctor’s care, for two weeks. Instead he asked for two days.

“I’ll go back now with Paddy.” Sid was glad for the excuse to be rid of both wounded men. “We’ll leave you and Harv here to heal and tell the cowhands you got sidetracked and’ll be along shortly.”

Boog’s eyes slid to Harv. “No, I’m not sittin’ here listenin’ to Harv whine like a little girl for days. I’ll kill him just to shut him up. And there goes that gold you’re so hungry for, Sid. I’m going along with you. We’ll tell ’em we had a run-in with rustlers. Tell ’em they dry-gulched us and got away.”

“What if we see that spitfire of a girl? She can identify me.” Harv plucked at the caked blood in his black beard and fell silent.

Sid had no doubt Harv wouldn’t survive being left behind with a wounded, surly Boog. The only reason Sid hadn’t plugged him was that gold. “We’re biding our time until the boss dies. No heirs since he cut that worthless bum of a son out of his will. Once Mort is gone, I’ll stake my claim to the ranch.”

“There’ll be some others that want it for themselves,” Boog warned.

Sid nodded. “And they can fall off their horses just as easy as Mort did.” Sid stood and started saddling Boog’s horse. He knew better than to ask, because Boog wouldn’t accept help from any man. He’d saddle his own bronc if he were hog-tied and buried up to his neck in scorpions.

Boog’s eyes narrowed but he let Sid work.

“What about the gold? We don’t need the ranch if we get the gold.” Harv’s shifty eyes darted between Sid and Boog. He was a man without honor, so he expected none from anyone else. Sid knew that Harv realized his knowledge of that cache of gold was the only thing keeping him alive.

Sid suspected Harv had the situation with the gold and the ranch about right. “I want both. The ranch and the gold. And if Mort don’t up and die pretty soon, I might just give him a shove right through the Pearly Gates.”

Boog made a sound Sid had never heard from the man before. Narrowing his eyes, Sid said, “What?”

“Mort Sawyer in heaven.” Boog snorted, shook his head, and then snorted with amusement again. It was as close to a laugh as Boog had ever come in Sid’s presence.

Y
ou sure you don’t want anything from your cabin?” Red asked Wade for the fourth time.

“Nothing there. Food for a few days, nothing I want.”

“We can lay up at my place overnight.” Silas pulled up as the four riders reached a trail that climbed up a treacherous, snaking path. “See what the womenfolk are up to.”

Wade looked up that narrow trail, dreading the journey home. He’d ridden in near silence all day, switching between his imagination—dreading what his father would have to say—and prayer. The afternoon was wearing on and it’d be deep into the night before they got to Pa’s ranch, if Wade rode straight through.

The June days were getting longer, but in the Rockies the sun set early if a body stood in the shade of the mountain. And the shade of the mountain was everywhere. Staying at the Tanner Ranch was a one-day reprieve. It’d give him a chance to clean up, shave, wash his clothes, and work up his nerve. “Sounds good to me.”

“Agreed.” Red tugged on his hat brim. “It’s too far to travel to your ranch tonight.”

“Pa’s ranch. Not mine.”

Red gave Wade a sharp look. “Tomorrow I’ll go on with you, Wade. I told Mort I’d see you all the way home.”

Wade couldn’t hide much from Red. The Dawsons were the best friends he’d ever had in his whole miserable, friendless life. “I don’t need a babysitter, Red.” Wade could barely speak through a jaw that seemed permanently locked in a grim line.

“No”—Red clucked to his buckskin and headed up a trail that’d scare a mountain goat into a dead faint—“but you could use a friend.”

Wade nodded silently and veered his thoughts away from whatever ugliness his father would have waiting. Red knew him well enough that no thanks were needed.

Glowing Sun…no, Abby…sat her horse quietly while the men talked. Today her name was Abby, so he’d use it, even make himself think it. Abby had to come along to Pa’s ranch. Wade had to take care of her. She’d lost her whole life. So if she didn’t come home with him, he wasn’t going.

Silas fell in behind Red. Abby watched Silas quietly. She had a way about her of observing everything. Wade was sure the woman would be able to follow this trail back to her home without hesitation. He wondered if she had plans to do such the minute he wasn’t watching. But what did “home” mean with her village wiped out?

She glanced at him, and he tipped his head for her to go next. She shrugged and started up. The trail was narrow enough that they rode single file and it was easy to stay quiet.

“Whom shall I fear?”

It was a psalm. One of Wade’s favorites. The Twenty-seventh.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” I’ve spent my whole life being afraid. God, I’m sorry about that man I shot. Give me peace in my soul about pulling that trigger.

The irony was, if Wade told his pa he’d shot an outlaw, Mort Sawyer would be proud. If Wade talked about how sick it made him, Mort would be ashamed.

Everything Mort stood for and respected was completely at odds with Wade’s way of thinking. And how many thousands of times had Pa made sure Wade knew what a disappointment he’d turned out to be?

Wade repeated
“Whom shall I fear?”
whenever he imagined conversations with his father, imagined rage, imagined blows. The worst was Wade’s imagined blows in return. He caught himself daydreaming about venting years’ worth of fury on his father.

That was the real reason it made him sick to think about putting a bullet into that brutish man. Because on a very deep level, Wade wasn’t sorry. He was glad he’d shot the man. He wished he’d have killed him. Killed them all. And that bloodlust led back to his anger with his father.

A terrible sin, to imagine hurting my father. I’m sorry, God. It’s driven by fear. All the anger and vengeance is based on fear. Because I know my father can hurt me. Not with his fists anymore, but his words feel like a beating. “Whom shall I fear? Whom shall I fear?”

Pa couldn’t hit him. Wade was an adult. If his father, even when he was healthy, had attacked, Wade would have gotten away. He wasn’t a child trapped in that house with nowhere to go. But it was so hard to leave the childish fear behind.

“Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.”
The Bible said so. Jesus was in Wade’s heart. Jesus was greater.
“Whom shall I fear?”

Wade had stored up scriptures about fear and strength and courage since he’d become a believer. Red and Cassie had helped him search for verses that gave him strength against the things that tormented him, and now he clung to them.

And he clung also to the dream of being a light in his father’s life. That would be the true test of courage. Not hitting back or shooting a bad man but speaking honestly of his love for God and of how much his father needed that love, too.

He’d already talked to his father about faith. It ended ugly. Maybe that was why he was going home now. To try again.

After a grueling climb and descent, they approached Silas’s house riding four abreast as the setting sun washed red and orange across the land. From a distance, they saw dust kicked up from a corral.

“That’s Cassie. She’s riding. Cassie doesn’t ride.” Red kicked his horse into a trot.

Wade was on Red’s right, Abby next to Wade with Silas on Abby’s right. They picked up the pace to stay even with Red.

Shaking his head, Wade found his first smile for a long time. “Belle must’ve taught her.”

“My Belle knows how to train girls to handle themselves.” Silas looked across Abby to smile at Red.

“But she…she always rode to town on my lap.” Red tilted his hat back. “I kind of liked that.” They closed the distance to the corral.

“There’s four of you now, Red.” Wade had stayed at the Dawson place for long stretches, working as a hand for Red. He well remembered carrying the baby while Red carried Cassie. The little woman was scared to death of riding. “That would’ve been a load for a single horse.”

Wade knew that when he wasn’t around, Red carried Cassie while Cassie carried Susannah with the baby on Red’s back.

“She’s doing good, isn’t she?” Red’s voice was thick with pride.

They’d drawn near enough that Wade could see Cassie twirl a rope. “Look at her with the lasso.”

The noose shot out and snagged a yearling steer. Cassie’s pony dug in its heels and jerked the calf off its feet. Hitting the ground, Cassie fell toward the calf, straight into the thrashing hooves.

With a cry of alarm, Red lashed his reins on the horse’s shoulder, and the buckskin leapt into a flat-out run.

Wade was one second behind, goading his chestnut, charging toward the disaster.

Red pulled up at the corral and hit the ground sprinting.

Just then Cassie stood up out of the churning dust, her hands raised high in triumph.

“I did it!” Her teeth gleamed white in her dirty face as she smiled.

“Cassie!” Red vaulted the fence.

Whirling at his voice, Cassie laughed aloud. “Did you see me hog-tie that calf? I’m going to brand him then cut him. Emma’s going to—”

“Belle Tanner, you get over here.” Red’s face turned the color of a beet. He was enraged.

Cassie had taken several running steps toward him, but she stumbled to a halt at his tone. Her arms lowered. The smile shrank off Cassie’s face.

Red turned toward the group of women sitting on the fence. Wade recognized Belle and little Susannah. But the rest of the brood were strange to him—except the infant with hair the color of a carrot had to be Red’s son, and he knew Belle had a brood of young’uns.

“It’s Harden.” Silas joined them in the pen. “Belle Harden. Try to remember that.”

Wade stood outside the fence to watch the fireworks. He and Abby dismounted and shared a look.

“Belle, you promised me you wouldn’t start spring branding until I got back.” Silas pulled his gloves off and glared at his wife as he tucked them behind his belt buckle.

Wade whispered to Abby, “I know Belle Tanner…uh…I mean Harden, a little. Silas is a brave, brave man to talk to her that way.”

Abby arched a brow at Wade.

“What’d I tell you, Cassie Dawson?” Belle climbed over the fence with economical movements, striding toward the bawling, thrashing calf. Her spurs jingled, her holstered six-gun slapped against the hip of her leather riding skirt. She released the hog-tied little guy.

Cassie nodded and marched right up to stick her nose in Red’s scowling face.

Red was an easygoing man for a fact. He didn’t get mad often. Wade had only seen it a few times. But when Red’s temper blew, it flared as hot and red as his hair. Wade resisted the urge to go put himself between Cassie and that anger.