Summer Breeze (4 page)

Hoping that they might be invited in out of the cold, Joseph stomped his boots clean on the porch as David mounted the steps behind him. When they stood shoulder to shoulder before the door, Joseph glanced at his brother before raising his fist to knock.

When Rachel heard footsteps on the porch, she closed her book, thinking Darby had returned.

She almost parted company with her skin when someone started pounding on the door. Not Darby. He only ever rapped on the iron wood safe to let her know he was home.

"Miss Hollister?" a man called out.

Rachel leaped up from the chair and fell back a step. No one ever came to call on her anymore.

Her last visitor had been Doc Halloway, and that had been well over four years ago.

"Wh-who is it?" she asked in a voice gone thin with anxiety.

"Joseph Paxton, your neighbor, " the deep voice replied. "I own the spread just south of here. "

Rachel vaguely recalled Darby's telling her that someone had bought the land due south of her ranch, but the name Paxton didn't ring a bell. She whirled and ran for the gun case that stood between her night table and the armoire. Her hand went straight for the Colt breechloader, a 10-gauge shotgun with shortened barrels that Darby claimed would stop an enraged grizzly dead in its tracks. At close range, all you had to do was point and pull both triggers. Rachel had no desire to shoot anyone, but it only seemed prudent to have the weapon ready, just in case.

Muscles jerking with fear, she spilled a few shells from the ammunition drawer when she jerked it open.
Hurry, hurry.
She broke open the shotgun barrels, shoved a cartridge into each chamber, and snapped the weapon closed again. In the otherwise silent room, the rasp of Damascus steel seemed deafeningly loud.

On wobbly legs, she turned to face the barred door, braced the butt of the shotgun against her hip, and yelled, "State your business!"

She heard boots shuffling on the porch planks.
More than one man?
Her blood ran cold.
Oh,
God. Oh, God.
Where was Darby? Had these men harmed him? The old foreman was never this late unless something detained him.

"This isn't the kind of news I want to shout through the door, " the man replied. "The marshal is with me, if that eases your mind any. "

The marshal?
Rachel's heart skipped a beat.

"Can you open up for a minute, ma'am?" another

man asked. "This is David Paxton, the marshal of No Name. I give you my word, we mean you no harm. "

Rachel curled her forefinger over the triggers of the shotgun, prepared to start blasting if they tried to come in. "State your business through the door. I can hear you just fine. " She swallowed to steady her voice. "My foreman will be along at any moment. If you prefer to speak face-to-face, you can wait a bit and talk to him. "

Another silence ensued. Then the first man said, "That's why we're here, Miss Hollister, to bring you news about your foreman. Along about three this afternoon, he rode in to my place, looking for help. He's been hurt. "

"Hurt?" Love of Darby had Rachel taking a hesitant step toward the door. Then she caught herself and drew to a stop. She was a woman alone, miles from the nearest neighbor. It would be sheer madness to trust two strangers. "How was he hurt?"

Rachel had grown up on the ranch and knew all the dangers. Darby could have been cut by barbed wire, thrown from his horse onto rocky ground, or kicked by a steer, to list only a few possibilities. Unfortunately, he might also have been bushwhacked by two thieving ne'er-do-wells.

She heard a low rumble of male voices. Then the man who called himself Joseph Paxton finally said, "He was at the north end of your property, tracking a heifer, Miss Hollister. When he left the rocks and headed back toward the creek, someone shot him in the back. "

Shot?
The word resounded inside Rachel's mind,

and black spots began to dance before her eyes. She knew the place the man described. She saw it in her dreams every night.
Not again, God. Please, not again.
A strange ringing began in her ears, and she could no longer feel her feet. Images of her family flashed before her eyes—of her little sister, Tansy, chasing butterflies—of her father, sitting on the creek bank and playing his fiddle while her mother danced on the grass—and lastly of her brother, Daniel, golden hair gleaming in the sunshine, his grin mischievous as he wrestled with Rachel for the last drumstick in the picnic basket.

She made her way to the table and sank onto a chair. Dimly she heard Joseph Paxton speaking to her, but she couldn't make out the words. It was as if she had water in her ears.
Darby, shot.
She couldn't wrap her mind around it. And to think that it had happened in exactly the same place where her family had been killed.
No, no, no.

A foggy darkness encroached on her vision. Rachel had experienced it before and knotted her hands into tight fists, determined not to let it happen again. Not
now,
with two strangers on her porch. But the blackness moved inexorably closer, a thick, impenetrable blanket determined to enshroud her.

"Well hell. "
Joseph kicked a piece of stove kindling that lay near Rachel Hollister's woodpile. "That got us nowhere fast. "

His breath fogging the frigid air, David hunched his shoulders inside his jacket. "It's worrisome, the way she went quiet all of a sudden. " He gave Joseph an accusing look. "I knew we shouldn't talk to her through the door. You're supposed to break news like that gently. "

"She wouldn't open the door, " Joseph reminded him. "And tell me a gentler way to say it. I told her that he was hurt before I told her that he was shot. "

"You're too blunt by half, Joseph. She may have a deep affection for that old man. With ladies, especially, you need to sugarcoat things. "

"How can you sugarcoat such news?" Joseph demanded. "If you're so damned good with words, why don't you do the talking next time?"

"Thank you, maybe I will. "

Joseph kicked at the kindling again. "Like you're

such a charmer? I don't see you with a gal on each arm every Friday night. "

"Saloon girls, " David countered with a derisive snort. "Like your popularity at the Golden Slipper is a measure of your charm? I haven't seen you with a decent young lady in a good long while. "

"The same can be said of you. "

Impasse.
Neither of them was in the habit of keeping company with respectable young women.

Their older half brother, Ace Keegan, the closest thing to a father either of them could clearly remember, had always spoken strongly against it. When a man trifled with a proper young lady, he'd better be prepared to marry her, end of subject. That was the Keegan and Paxton way.

David sighed and toed the kindling back toward Joseph. "I just hope she's all right, is all. "

"Anyone who boards herself off from the world like that isn't all right. Alive and halfway rational is the most we can hope for. "

"With her family getting killed and all, maybe she's just scared half out of her wits. "

Joseph considered that suggestion. "Could be, I reckon. " Thinking of what had happened to Darby, he felt a chill inch up his spine. "And maybe with good reason. "

Before stopping at the Hollister house to speak to Rachel, Joseph and David had ridden to the north end of the Hollister ranch to have a look around. They'd found the place where Darby had been ambushed, and in their estimation, the shooting couldn't have been an accident. The direction of the hoofprints left by

Darby's horse bore out that Darby had been riding toward the creek when the shot was fired. The prominence of rock behind him would have blocked a stray bullet. Someone had been hiding in those rocks and deliberately taken aim at the old man's back.

"So now what?" David asked.

Joseph knew his brother was referring to the shooting, but he didn't have all of his thoughts about that in order yet. "The lady will need firewood to get her through the night. I'll start with that, I reckon. "

As they loaded their arms with split logs, David asked, "Where you planning to spend the night?

In the bunkhouse?"

"Too far away, " Joseph replied with a grunt. "On the off chance that Darby's right about her being in danger, I need to be close enough to hear if anyone comes around. "

Arms filled, Joseph made for the porch, his brother only a step behind him.

"Where will you sleep, then? It's colder than a well digger's ass out here, and there's no windbreak that I can see. "

They shoved the wood into the box. On the way back to the pile for kindling, Joseph said, "Darby says Miss Rachel lives in the kitchen, boarded off from the rest of the house. That must mean all the other rooms are unoccupied. " He stacked slender pieces of pitch-veined wood on the crook of his arm. "I'll just slip in through a downstairs window and find a spot somewhere inside to shake out my bedroll—preferably as close to the kitchen as I can manage so I can hear if there's any trouble. "

As they retraced their steps to the house, a cow lowed plaintively, the sound faint on the evening breeze.

"You think going inside is a good idea?" David asked as they dispensed with their burdens. "The lady's a mite skittish. "

Joseph dusted off his hands and straightened his Stetson. "What other choice is there? I'm as happy as a ringtailed possum to play Good Samaritan, David, but I'm not angling to get a bad case of frostbite while I'm at it. "

David chafed his arms through the thick sleeves of his coat. "I can't say I blame you. It's not fit out here for man nor beast. "

"I'll knock on the door again and explain that Darby sent me over to look after her. If she knows I plan to sleep somewhere in the house, it shouldn't alarm her to hear me coming in. " Joseph flashed his brother a sarcastic grin. "You want to write me a speech so I sugarcoat everything enough to suit you?"

"I would if I had paper. You're nothing if not plain-spoken, and that's a fact. "

"Yeah, well, flowery speech has never been one of my strong suits. " Joseph narrowed an eye at his brother. "Come to think of it, maybe you should be the one to stay. You were born with a lump of sugar in your mouth. "

David threw up his hands. "Oh, no, you don't. Darby asked
you
to watch after her, not me, and you're the one who gave him your word. "

Joseph had never gone back on his word in his life, and he didn't plan to start now. That didn't mean he

couldn't toy with the thought. There were better ways to spend a Friday night than playing nursemaid to a crazy woman.

David collected his gelding and mounted up. Joseph thought about asking him to stop off at Eden and bring him back a jug of whiskey before he headed home, but he already knew what his brother's answer would be. Now that David wore a badge, he was as puritanical as a preacher about the consumption of spirits—and practically anything else that Joseph thought was fun.

"Well, " David said in parting. "Good luck. If nothing else, it should be an interesting night. "

Sleeping on a cold floor with only hardtack and jerky in his belly wasn't Joseph's idea of interesting, but he couldn't see that he had a choice.

David rubbed his jaw. "I don't have a good feeling about this, big brother. "

The comment brought them both full circle to that unsettling moment when they had realized Darby's shooting had been no accident. "Me, either, " Joseph confessed. "My theory of a stray bullet was a lot easier to swallow. "

"Only it wasn't a stray bullet, " David said. "No how, no way could it have been an accident. "

The words hung between them in the cold air like ice particles. David stared solemnly at the house. "As much as I hate to think it, she truly may be in danger. "

Joseph hated to think it a whole lot worse than his brother did. He was the one who'd promised to protect the woman. "I'm sorry if my frankness put her in a dither, " he offered by way of apology. "I know you wanted to ask her some questions. "

David turned his gelding to head out, then settled back in the saddle and didn't go anywhere.

"Maybe she'll feel more like talking tomorrow. "

Joseph doubted it. Insanity didn't normally right itself overnight. "Maybe. " Interpreting his brother's reluctance to leave as a sign that he needed to talk, Joseph asked, "In the meantime, what's your gut telling you?"

"That I'm flummoxed. Darby's so drunk on laudanum he can't tell me much of anything, and she refuses to talk. How can I make sense of this mess with nothing to go on?" David rubbed the back of his neck. "What if the shooting today actually is connected to the murders five years ago? We didn't even live in these parts then, and Estyn Beiler, the marshal at the time, never figured out who did it. "

"Estyn Beiler was a piss-poor lawman. " Just saying the man's name made Joseph's lip curl. "He was so caught up in his own shady dealings that he never did his job. You're dedicated, David, and you're a hell of a lot smarter than he was. I'm confident that you'll get to the bottom of this. "

"Without even a suspicion to go on?"

Joseph reached inside his jacket for his pack of Crosscuts. "Ah, now. For the moment, forget the incident five years ago and start with the obvious question. Who might want Darby McClintoch dead?"

"Nobody that I can think of. He comes into town for a couple of drinks every now and again, but he never causes any trouble. He doesn't play cards, which

rules out the possibility that he took someone's money and made an enemy. As far as I know, he never goes upstairs with any of the girls, either, eliminating all likelihood of a jealous lover. He's a quiet, inoffensive man, not given to discussing politics or religion, which can cause hard feelings. He just sits at a corner table, enjoys his drinks, and then goes home. "

"Okay, then. " Joseph offered his brother a smoke. The faint low of a cow reached them again.

"Chances are the shooter has nothing personal against Darby. "

"Which leads me right back to the incident five years ago and a big, fat nothing in clues. " David accepted a cigarette and leaned low over the saddle horn so Joseph could give him a light. As he straightened, he said, "This whole thing is giving me a headache. My thoughts keep circling back on themselves. I have no idea where to start. "