Mary Connealy (94 page)

“I’ll start scrambling eggs and frying potatoes right now. We’ve got plenty.” She kissed him again and said with a pert tilt of her nose, “Now take me over to the house and quit distracting me. I’ve got work to do.”

Red loved it when she sassed him; he’d made sure she knew it, too. He rewarded that pert little mouth with another kiss.

Belle’s daughter Sarah had breakfast going before Red could walk Cassie back to the house. She dished out enough eggs and ham to fill up the whole crew of them, and it was a considerable crowd. The little redheaded girl did it all with one baby on her back, another on her hip, and one clinging to her ankle.

“We’re not riding into Divide with you, Red,” Belle said as she drained her second cup of coffee. “We’ve been away from home too long as it is.”

“With another rustler still on the loose, I don’t like leaving my place for so long.” Silas looked at Belle. “We ought to start standing a watch on both gaps into our place. We’ve never hired any cowhands, but maybe it’s time we did.”

Belle frowned. “I don’t like strangers around the place. Especially men when we’ve got young girls.”

Emma looked up from where she was wolfing her food. “Ain’t no man around I can’t handle, Ma.” Red saw the narrow eyes and quiet determination in Emma and suspected the girl had it exactly right.

“Let’s wait a few days on it, Silas. See what Red finds out about the rustler he caught. Maybe he can get the man to talk and we can put an end to the trouble without adding hired hands at the ranch.”

Silas nodded. “Gonna go cut our cattle out of that herd.” He rose from the table, the legs of his wooden chair scraping against the floor. “You womenfolk gonna help or sit in here having tea and cookies while I work?”

Red watched a brave, brave man leave his house, Belle and Emma right on his heels.

Silas and his family were soon heading down the trail, pushing their cattle toward home.

The Jessups found a few of their own herd, and Red cut out the ones that belonged to him. It was a smart operation, taking a few cattle at a time. Red wondered if the rustling hadn’t been going on for years.

Three of the Jessups drove their recovered animals home. Red was left with around fifty head to drive into Divide.

They were ready to set out by midmorning. Cassie rode well enough now to actually help with the drive, but she had Michael strapped on her back and Red had Susannah on his lap, so the Jessups got to do more than their share of the work.

The normally three-hour ride took the rest of the day, and as they confined the cattle in a holding pen, the Jessups hit the trail in three directions to area ranches with the news that cattle had been recovered. A man was in town from the Linscott place and rode out for his boss.

Before Red escorted his prisoner to jail, he turned to Cassie. “Cass, honey, go get us a room at Grant’s, okay? We’ll have to stay the night in town and wait for the ranchers to ride in and sort out their cattle.”

“Yes, Red.” The polite obedience was like sweet balm to his soul. There once was a time the little woman would hardly say anything other than “Yes, Red.” Ah, he loved remembering those days. Cassie scooped Susannah off his lap; then, loaded down with children, she skillfully turned her horse toward the hotel. Watching her reminded Red how far his wife had come since they’d married. His overly submissive, fumble-fingered little wife had turned into about the best rancher’s wife in the whole world.

He noticed the knife sheath at her waist and felt a little chill of terror.

Later, Red got his family settled in Grant’s Hotel and gave them each a good-night kiss, going down the row, sweeping Susannah up to eye level and listening to her giggle. Red next gave Michael a noisy smack on his drooly chin then ended with a longer kiss for his pretty wife.

“I’m going to stay with the sheriff, at least for a while. He’ll need to keep watch all night, and we can spell each other.”

Enviously, he watched Cassie tuck the children into bed then join them. If he stayed, he could climb in, too, and be surrounded by comfort and warmth and love.

Instead, feeling a mite sorry for himself, he went to jail.

H
arv’s in jail.” Boog slipped into the small cabin Sid was allowed as foreman. Chester had yet to kick him out.

Sid looked up from his whittling. “What? How?”

Judging by the way Boog moved, Sid knew his arm was still hurting him, but no one else would have noticed. Boog wasn’t a man who showed weakness.

“Someone must have tracked us.” Boog positioned himself so he wasn’t visible through the single small window in the shack. “I didn’t stay around to learn their names. They posted marksmen on top of the canyon wall and pinned Harv down. I could see I’d never be able to pick them off from the angle I had, so I told Harv to keep his mouth shut and we’d bust him out of jail as soon as we could. Then I climbed out on foot over the west wall.”

Sid felt his throat tighten at the memory of that treacherous trail. He and Boog had scouted it, knowing a way out might be necessary. But that trail was a terror. And Boog had managed it with only one good arm. He’d had to go out on foot; no horse could make the passage. Then he’d made it all this way. Sid raised his already sky-high respect for his saddle partner’s toughness.

“I walked ten miles before I found a horse. I rode hard then set it loose and swatted it toward home. I hope it just goes on back and no one asks too many questions.”

“So the cattle are gone, too?” The very careful cattle thieving they’d done was a prison offense, but a man could get hanged for stealing a horse. Sid steered clear of hanging offenses until he had no choice. That was one of the reasons Sid hadn’t killed Mort Sawyer that night. A decision he’d regretted ever since.

“I didn’t stay around to watch, but we gotta figure they took the herd.” Boog wasn’t so squeamish about killing, but then, he’d ridden a hard trail for a long time and was a known outlaw in parts of the West. Boog figured he could only hang once and he’d done his worst, so nothing he did now made any difference. His only goal was to stay out of the hands of the law.

Sid’s pockets were empty of cash money. He’d enjoyed himself a bit too much after their last sale, with whiskey and women and poker. He’d been counting on those cattle. “Okay, give me a minute.” Sid set his knife and the sharpened stick aside. “Mort’s son and that wild woman are here to stay. The only way we’re gonna take possession of this ranch is by getting rid of Mort and his son. Getting to that old curly wolf, Mort, took some planning, but Wade’s a weakling. I can swat him like a fly.”

“Don’t count Mort out. He ain’t dead yet, and even busted up, he’s dangerous. Worse now that he’s got his son to back him.” Boog eased toward the window and took a long, careful look out through a crack in the shutter.

“He’ll be dead soon enough. No one lives long with a broken back. As for Wade, I just need some time to set it up, make it look like an accident or blame it on someone else.” Sid didn’t admit that he’d tried once already and he’d missed. He didn’t want to hear what Boog had to say about that. “Are they taking Harv into Divide?”

“Yep. I reckon.”

“Someone there will recognize him as being a hand here. We need to get him out of there fast.”

“He don’t look like himself without the beard.”

Sid met Boog’s eyes. The two men knew each other well. Their thoughts traveled the same lines. Harv knew too much.

“Easier just to put a bullet in him,” Boog said as if he was discussing the weather.

“We’d lose the gold.”

“Yep, ‘less’n we find it ourselves.”

“Harv said it’s where no one would ever find it. He stumbled on it by accident.” Sid pondered. “We’ll make one try for him. If we run into trouble, we won’t leave him alive to talk. We need to go as soon as it’s dark and bust Harv out. I told Wade you were at the line shack, the old Griffin place, so he hasn’t asked any questions, but if I’m not here for work in the morning, he’ll notice sure enough.”

“I wouldn’t mind a few minutes with the Sawyer kid. I owe him for this bullet.” Boog’s eyes burned with hate. He rubbed his shoulder hard as if to stir up his pain and feed his desire to get revenge for being wounded.

“You’ll get your chance to pay him back.”

A quiet shake of the head was Boog’s only answer. “Go wake up Paddy.”

“Leave him. If I go into the bunkhouse, the hands will remember we left the place.”

Nodding, Boog said, “Let me get down the trail a ways and into the woods. Then you catch up.” Boog left the cabin as silently as he’d come.

Sid moved furtively to the corral, saddled up, and made tracks for Divide, doing his best to keep the barn between himself and the bunkhouse until he was out of sight. If they were careful, no one would even know Sid had been gone tonight. As he rode, Sid considered that it might be time to just cut his losses and move on. Instead of riding toward Divide, he could head for Helena, hop on the train, and make tracks for Denver. Boog would probably go, but it might be best to travel alone. Sid would have done it if he had enough money to pay for the train ride. Instead he’d have to go on horseback, live off the land, find some way to make money as soon as he got to Denver, because no one lived without money in the city.

The M Bar S was going to be hard to claim now. The gold was lost if they didn’t pull Harv out of that jail. Sid was probably going to lose his job by the end of the week anyway, unless he broke his back working for Wade. And working that hard for a young whelp grated until Sid wanted to start unloading his gun at someone.

This had seemed like a way to strike it rich when he’d ridden in. One old man working a huge, successful ranch. Easy pickin’s. But there wasn’t much easy about it now. He should just ride out, leave Boog, Paddy…Harv, too. Start over in California. Easy pickin’s out there, he’d heard.

But he thought of Wade coming in here and taking what Sid thought of as his, and it made him mad clean through. No, he’d stay, and he’d get Harv out, too. He wanted the ranch, the gold…and at that instant greed took him by the throat, and he decided that he even wanted that pretty wild girl. He’d break her spirit, crush her for causing all this trouble, bringing Wade home, being in the way when they’d attacked that village. She was the only survivor, and if she hadn’t been there, no one would know what had happened. The massacre, if it was ever discovered, would have been blamed on one tribe attacking another. Yes, he owed that spitfire of a girl, and he’d make sure she paid.

As he savored his hate, he felt fire for a second, fire in his soul. Painful fire telling him, not for the first time, his life fit him only to spend eternity in a burning lake.

Even knowing that, he heard a whisper from his black heart that it was his
right
to take by strength. This was the West. Strength won in the West. And he was strong. The feeling of fire in his soul had been with him for years. He remembered long ago; the first few times he’d felt it had scared him, made him doubt the path he’d chosen.

Not anymore. As he spurred his horse toward Divide, he basked in the warmth.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, Red. No sense both of us being up all night.” Sheriff Dean had his feet up on his desk and was rocked all the way back in his heavy wooden chair. His hands were folded over his stomach, and Red suspected that with about ten minutes of silence, the sheriff would be fast asleep. He wasn’t used to much trouble here in Divide. It was a quiet little town for the most part.

Red was tempted. Of course, he’d have to lie down on the hard floor. “It’s been a long day, Sheriff. I think we both need to stay alert. I’ll keep you awake and you do me the same favor.”

“Fine, let me get a stack of wanted posters, then.”

“I thought you went through them already.”

With a dry laugh, the sheriff pointed to a stack of posters knee high against one wall. There was an ankle-deep stack right beside the bigger one. “I set the ones to the side I’ve looked at.”

“Tell me it’s the short pile we have to study.”

“Nope, ‘course not. I’ve looked at the ones on the left.”

Red sighed and thought of Cassie, asleep and warm and sweet. And his beautiful children. “Catching outlaws is almost more trouble than it’s worth, Sheriff.”

“Tell me about it. I thumbed through ’em until my eyes crossed and all the men started looking alike.”

“Fine.” Red got up and picked up all the posters he could get in his hands. He took them to the desk.

The sheriff sat up straight, the hinges of his chair shrieking like he was killing them. “Give me half and pull your chair up to the desk.”

Red dragged his chair over, and as he got it in place, he felt a little rush of cold chill. Not from a gust of wind so much as from nerves.

“You ever had a jailbreak from this place, Sheriff?”

Shaking his head, Sheriff Dean said, “Nope. I’ve mostly just arrested cowpokes that drank too deep in their monthly pay. Let ’em sleep it off and sent them on their way with a scolding. Usually half-grown boys get into nonsense like that.”

“You checked that the back door is locked, right? That man we arrested has a partner out there.”