Swept Away (11 page)

“I need a man I can count on. Bullard?” Flint Greer was getting mighty tired of his ranch foreman fussing about his wife. Bullard wasn’t the man he’d been when Flint had hired him. Marriage had ruined him. Marriage had ruined them both.

“Lana seems to be okay tonight, but you never know.” Bullard pulled a kerchief out and mopped his brow. “Don’t ever have a baby, boss. It’s a worrisome business.”

Flint doubted any babies would come along. His wife was a disappointment in every way a man could measure. He should’ve never married her. But he’d gotten a wild notion and thought a man as rich and powerful as him oughta have a pretty wife. And his Glynna was pretty, all right. But also stupid and lazy. She’d gotten too skinny to
interest him. She couldn’t cook to save her own life, and the woman cried over everything. A sniveler like his ma before she died.

Glynna had moved out of their bedroom during one of her tantrums after only a few weeks of marriage, and he’d never let her back in. Even that wasn’t enough to keep the woman from wanting to challenge him at every turn. Flint clenched his fist as he thought of all the times she’d as good as begged him to shut her mouth.

Something he was glad to do.

Flint had learned how to teach a real clear lesson from his pa. A boy didn’t forget a lesson taught with a hard thrashing. No reason a wife couldn’t be trained proper with the same methods. Pa had showed him the way of managing a wife.

“Bullard, what’s become of you? You were my right-hand man. You helped me build this spread.”

“I helped all right. How many of the new acres you’ve acquired came because the owners mysteriously died?”

Flint laughed. “While I was in plain view of plenty of folks for an alibi.”

Bullard lifted his gun from his right holster. The man always carried two in plain sight. Besides that, he had a gun strapped to his ankle and wore a knife in his boot. And he probably had more weapons Flint didn’t know about. Bullard was a man who liked to be ready.

Sounding real casual, Bullard said, “I got word today that they missed in Appleton.”

Every ounce of humor Flint possessed shriveled up. “That’s about the last place before Broken Wheel?”

“Reckon Stone’ll show up here any day now.” Bullard glanced up and the flash of amusement made Flint killing
mad. His own foreman was laughing at him, as good as calling him a coward.

His fists clenched again. He wanted to hurt someone. Stone wasn’t at hand. Bullard would exchange a gunshot for a thrown fist. But the need to hurt someone goaded him. It ate at him the things that’d been said when he’d run rather than serve in the Union Army. As if there were any reason to risk his life over some other man’s war, and especially over something as stupid as freeing slaves. It wasn’t Flint’s fight and he’d taken off out West to evade it. Then he’d come back when the fighting was over and found himself branded a coward, especially by his pa.

That time when Pa had thrown a fist, he’d found a son who wouldn’t stand for it. Flint took out years of rage on his pa, then gathered up whatever cash he could lay his hands on and headed for Texas, along with a lot of others from the North looking for easy pickings in the war-weary South. He’d met Bullard along the way; the man was running from a posse and they fell in together. When they’d reached Texas and this rugged, beautiful stretch of canyon, Flint had found his home. He’d wanted it the first moment he’d seen those bleak red rocks.

Broken Wheel was a tired little settlement, with no law around that could stop Flint’s land grab.

He’d bought his first place fair and legal. And then in the disarray left by the war he’d begun to expand. He started with Sal Stone, a man alone save for a daughter. Having Bullard kill Stone while Flint was standing in full sight of witnesses miles away, with a forged bill of sale and deed in hand for the S Bar S had worked so well they’d done it again and again until they owned all the land around and Flint had been content. He’d taken particular pleasure in driving off
a black man by the name of Harvey Foster, as well as his wife and children. The man stood for all the trouble with the North and South that had led to Flint ending up being called yellow, and Flint would liked to have seen Foster and his whole family dead. But the man had turned tail and run, so there’d been no chance for Flint to get his revenge.

The law still hadn’t come to north Texas. There were only a few settlements between Broken Wheel and Fort Worth. But when the law did finally come, Flint planned to present himself as an honest, well-established land baron. For some fool reason, Flint had decided that image he wanted to show the law included a wife.

Then Bullard had come up with a wife, too. They’d have been better off stealing more land.

Flint looked along the road to Broken Wheel. The first stretch of the road was a tight passage, high-sided with red stone stripes. The narrow stretch curved out of sight. In the predawn darkness, it was so deeply shadowed it looked like a tunnel. Flint made sure it was a well-guarded tunnel.

He hadn’t ridden it since he’d gotten those blasted legal letters from Stone. It sent a chill down Flint’s spine to think of that kid coming—and the chill was for no reason. No one man could stand against Flint and all his hired men.

Those letters were from a judge claiming Luke held the deed, and that made him the owner. The letter stated baldly that Flint had to vacate the S Bar S land. Flint owned close to ten thousand acres and had that many head of cattle. He could’ve just given Stone back his pa’s land, but that would be admitting wrongdoing and, with Sal Stone dead, it didn’t take a big leap to think Luke would want more than land. He’d want revenge.

It would take a bullet or a noose to satisfy Luke Stone.
Flint didn’t aim to let that happen, and the only way to stop it was to kill the man. Too bad Luke hadn’t been there when his father had died. Bullard could’ve finished off both Stones at the same time.

Luke Stone. Flint had come to loathe that name. Loathe it, and worse yet, fear it. And being afraid made Flint fighting mad. He looked down at his fist and wanted to swing it at someone.

He asked Bullard, “Do I need more men standing lookout?” Two men were always on the high ground, posted round the clock.

“Nope, those two are all you need. I’ve done a sight of scouting and there’s no way to the ranch house that the men can’t see. If a rider comes, your men’ll fire a warning shot. I’ll make sure of who’s coming before we let him close. If he runs, our men’ll cut him down.”

“They should have killed that blasted doctor.” It’d been a while ago, but it irked Flint that someone had sent for the doc. Glynna must’ve shown herself when someone carried in the eggs. She’d probably been crying her fool head off. Flint had been real tempted to fire the wrangler, though it wasn’t his fault. No, the fault could be set right at the feet of his worthless wife.

“Now, boss, you can’t kill the doc.” Bullard was mostly as good a hired gun as a man could wish for. But now he sounded like a mewling pup. His wife was a soft spot, and Flint wished her long gone.

“Lana needs him. I don’t know what’d become of her without Doc Riker.”

Maybe she’d curl up and die and Flint could get his ramrod back. He needed Bullard, and Flint knew there was no call to shoot the doctor.

It was Glynna who was to blame.

Looking at Bullard, Flint realized he could see the man. The sun was coming up. Another night had passed without Luke Stone showing up.

Flint felt that wash of fear again and hated it. He wanted someone to pay for the fear.

His fist curled just as a lantern went on in the house. His useless wife up to ruin another day. Flint played with the idea of getting rid of her somehow. Those no-account kids would have to go too, and Flint couldn’t quite see himself harming a child, even though he couldn’t stand having them around.

But while he liked the idea of getting rid of Glynna, he also felt a powerful sense of ownership. And what Flint owned, he kept. Thinking of that doctor with his hands on Glynna was just her trying to provoke him. She had a lot to answer for.

Nope, his wife wasn’t going anywhere. The driving need to kill Luke Stone churned all the way to Flint’s bones. His rage grew and burned and bled until the whole world seemed bright red. Flint hadn’t felt this kind of madness until he’d married. Well, maybe it’d started after he’d heard Stone was heading home. But his anger at Stone and his anger at his wife seemed all tied up together. Before Stone, Flint had taught Glynna lessons with the back of his hand. That’d been enough. But no more. Now, when he was angry, only his fists would do.

It was time to teach her some more.

“Get on with the day’s chores, Bullard. I’m going to go explain how things work around here to my wife. Again.”

Stalking toward the house, satisfaction grew into triumph. He’d found someone he could terrify and it was
surprising how all those worries about Stone faded when he was busy training Glynna.

He swung the door open just as Glynna came into the kitchen. Still limping. Weak. Worthless.

She took one look at his face and knew. The power of it was as heady as whiskey.

“I’ve got a few things to get straight with you, wife.”

A whimper from her lips reminded him he’d married a weakling and it infuriated him. Right now, fury suited him.

C
HAPTER 8

Dare didn’t get stew for lunch, and he knew just who to blame.

Glynna Greer. Her house was stolen, her children were rude, and her husband, the richest man in the area, didn’t believe in paying doctor bills.

Dare fumed as he rode for the Greer ranch—the
Stone ranch
, he corrected himself. He’d had a message sent from the ranch that a doctor was needed. He wondered what it was this time.

He galloped out, wishing he was coming with his gun loaded and his Regulator friends at his side.

Dare well remembered the last time he’d been summoned. And now, this morning, only weeks later, the same hired hand who’d come for Dare last time had ridden up again.

“You need to hurry this time, Doc. She . . . she . . . fell again. She’s hurt bad.”

That was about the same thing the man had said last time, so Dare didn’t get worked up. Most likely the woman hadn’t yet healed from her earlier clumsiness.

Tempted to ignore the summons, Dare had only gone because he wanted to see what the woman would say. See
if she had any shame for her rude ways. Well, he’d have gone anyway. A doctor couldn’t just ignore something like this. But just in case she threw him out again, which he expected to happen, he rehearsed the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Maybe a fable, well told, would be just the thing to get Mrs. Greer to let go of her snooty ways.

As he rode that last stretch, where the space between the hills got so narrow and the layers of red stone closed in around him, his eyes were on the gunmen standing high above him. They had their guns aimed down at him.

One of them seemed to be smiling, as if delighting in the power he held over Dare’s life. Dare looked at those rocks, too. Hanging on to the bluffs more by habit than anything. Some boulders, some huge flat slabs of red stone. Dare wondered if a shot would set off an avalanche. The ground along the narrow stretch was littered with smaller stones that said a boulder could and did come tumbling down from time to time. A good rancher would take charge of this situation by knocking over or dynamiting the large stones deliberately. Yet Dare suspected Greer liked the menacing danger.

One sentry pointed his rifle up in the air and pulled the trigger. A signal.

The stones didn’t roll, thank God.

It would be a pleasure to run Greer and his lookouts out of the territory. Dare intended to enjoy every minute of it.

When he rode up and tied his horse to the hitching post just outside the house, the son was waiting at the door, just like last time. That time the boy had tried to block Dare from coming in.

Dare braced himself.

“Hurry.” The boy swung the door wide. “Ma’s hurt bad.”

As if a cracked rib and a sprained ankle weren’t bad? She’d had those the last time he’d ridden out here. This time, instead of being sullen, the boy looked sick with fear.