The Last Ranch (6 page)

“What was that?” Ginny asked.

“Just a really big bang, honey. Maybe the army planes from the airfield mistakenly dropped a bomb or something. Let's go inside.”

“A bomb?” Ginny said excitedly. “Let's go see.”

Anna Lynn took Ginny's hand. “Not now. The ranch road is too muddy and we'd get stuck.”

Ginny tried to tug free. “It scared Peaches, I just know it did.”

“Peaches is just fine.” She guided Ginny into the kitchen. “When Matt and Patrick get home, they'll be hungry. We should bake something special for them. What will it be? You decide.”

Ginny's eyes lit up. “Sugar cookies!”

Her distraction worked. Sugar cookies were Ginny's favorite. She loved to use the star-shaped cookie cutter on the rolled-out dough. “Perfect. Get the flour tin from the pantry and we'll get started.”

While Ginny got the flour, Anna Lynn put on her apron, went to the living room, and from the gun case got the horse pistol Patrick's father had brought to New Mexico after the Civil War. She checked to make sure it was loaded before slipping it into her apron pocket. If trouble showed up, she'd scare it away.

In the kitchen, she lit the firebox in the cookstove, sprinkled some flour on the table, and with Ginny's help began to make the dough. Occasionally she glanced out the open door, still half-convinced trouble was coming. But by the time the dough was ready for Ginny to cut into star-shaped cookies, there had been no sign of any unexpected or unwanted visitors approaching on the ranch road. She felt silly for putting the old pistol in her apron pocket. She could always bean an intruder with a frying pan if need be.

She usually did not cook in the kitchen during the heat of the day, but the passing storm had cooled the morning and a pleasant breeze wafted through the open doors and windows of the house. She checked the stove firebox and decided more wood was needed to keep the oven at the right temperature while they baked six batches of cookies.

She left Ginny at the table busy with the cookie cutter, went to the walled courtyard, and startled a blue jay that was parading on top of the woodpile. It squawked in displeasure and flew away as she gathered an armful of logs. Back in the kitchen she found the room empty and Ginny gone from her chair.

“Ginny!” Anna Lynn called loudly, letting the firewood tumble from her arms to the floor near the stove. She rushed onto the veranda. Ginny was nowhere in sight.

“Young lady!” Anna Lynn shouted as she hurried down the veranda steps. Ginny's small footprints in the wet ground led directly to the barn. Relieved, she slowed her pace. Although she admired her daughter's concern for Peaches, she'd still earned a
scolding for disobeying. “You come out here right this minute,” she ordered.

A man stepped out of the shadows of the barn, holding Ginny in one arm, a gun in his free hand. His clothes were wet, his shoes were caked with mud, and his hair was plastered against his forehead.

“Let me down,” Ginny wailed, struggling in his arms.

Tyler squeezed her tight against his chest and leered at Anna Lynn. “Well, well, this is better than I expected.”

“I know you,” Anna Lynn said hotly. “You're the orderly from the Fort Bliss hospital.”

“That's right. Name's Fred Tyler. I want you to remember that.”

“Put my daughter down,” she demanded.

Tyler pointed the semiautomatic at Anna Lynn. “Or what?” he snarled. “Don't give me orders.”

“You've got no cause to hurt her.”

Tyler laughed. “You don't know the half of it. Where's your lover boy and his pa?”

“They'll be here any minute.”

“I don't think so.”

“Did you shoot somebody and blow something up?”

Tyler bared his teeth in a smile. “Aren't you a nosy bitch? Just maybe I did have to kill me someone. Maybe you're next. Or your little girl.”

“You don't have to do that.” Anna Lynn dropped her shaking hands in front of the apron pocket. Unless Tyler put Ginny down, the horse pistol was useless. “I'll do anything you want if you promise not to hurt my daughter.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.” Anna Lynn switched her gaze to Ginny. She was crying, her face contorted with fear. “It's okay, sweetie,” she said, forcing a smile.

“Look at me, not her!” Tyler thundered. “And do exactly what I say.”

Anna Lynn stiffened. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“First, food,” Tyler replied, as his leer reappeared. “Then you and me are gonna have a little party.”

“I'll do whatever you want,” Anna Lynn said. “Anything. But please, please, let Ginny come to me. You're scaring her.”

The bitch was his now, he could sense it. He couldn't remember when he'd had so much fun. He put the kid down. “Since you asked so nice.”

Sobbing, Ginny ran straight to Anna Lynn, who scooped her up. “Thank you.”

Tyler smirked, looked her up and down hungrily, and waved his gun at her. “Now, turn around and go to the house. I'm right behind you.”

Anna Lynn nodded, turned, and carried her terrified daughter, who clung fiercely to her, into the kitchen. She heard Tyler's footsteps at her back, the scraping of a chair as he pulled it away from the table, and creaking sound of him sitting down.

“Get me something to eat and drink,” he demanded.

Anna Lynn lowered Ginny, and holding her tightly by the hand, turned. Tyler's gun was resting on the table.

“Send that little girl over here to me,” Tyler said huskily, wetting his lips. “I want her to sit on my lap.”

Smiling to hide her disgust, Anna Lynn nodded, figuring she had just one chance. She squeezed Ginny's hand even tighter to keep her from moving. “You heard the nice man,” she said.

Fixed only on Ginny, Tyler's eyes lit up.

Anna Lynn shot him dead between the eyes from four feet away with Patrick's horse pistol.

The last ten miles home, Patrick rode with his gut ache worsening by the minute. The shooting pain in his bloated stomach nagged him relentlessly and he felt god-awful sour in both mind and body. He let his pony, Ribbon, do most of the work and rested in the saddle as best he could.

After midnight, clouds masked the full moon and slowed their pace in the canyons where flooding from the storm had tumbled rocks and boulders across the trails. Darkness allowed him to hide his discomfort from Matt, who eyed him worriedly as they entered the last canyon to the 7-Bar-K headquarters. When the ranch house came into view, every room was lit up, lamplight winking through the windows and open doors.

“Something's wrong,” Matt said, spurring his pony into a fast trot, maneuvering around a soggy pool of mud at the lip of the stream that flowed into the near pasture close to the barn. He splashed across the rushing water and broke into a fast lope with Patrick following apace, grimacing in pain.

In front of the veranda on the muddy ground near the
hitching post, a body lay covered with a blanket. Matt took one astonished look at the dead man's face, realized who he was, and climbed the stairs two at a time, anxiously calling out for Anna Lynn and Ginny. He found them on the living-room couch, Ginny fast asleep, her head on her mother's lap, Anna Lynn awake and wide-eyed, Patrick's old horse pistol close at hand on the lamp table.

“Are you all right?” he asked, searching her face.

“I couldn't get all the blood up,” Anna Lynn replied dully, gently stroking Ginny's hair. “I scrubbed and scrubbed, but there's still a big brown spot on the kitchen floor.”

Matt knelt at Anna Lynn's feet. “What happened?”

“I shot him, but I couldn't stand to see him dead inside the house. I dragged his body to the yard and covered it. He was going to kill us both.” She searched Matt's face. “Why did he come here?”

Matt took her hand in his. “Revenge, most likely. Fred Tyler tried to rob me years ago in Las Cruces. After I testified against him in court, he threatened me. At the time, I figured he was shooting off his mouth. How did he even know where to find me?”

“From your medical records, probably,” Anna Lynn replied. “He was one of the army orderlies at Fort Bliss. After your surgery, he waited outside to speak to me. At the time I thought it was creepy, but I never saw him again and forgot all about it.”

“Don't dig a hole and bury him,” Patrick advised from the open living-room door, remembering with great clarity his failed attempt to hide Vernon Clagett's body from the law after justifiably killing him. “Get the sheriff out here, pronto.”

“Yes, we must,” Anna Lynn replied. “I think he may have killed somebody before he got here. I heard two gunshots and an explosion on the ranch road about an hour or so before he arrived.
That's why I got the pistol. When Ginny went to check on Peaches, he was hiding in the barn. He came out carrying Ginny in his arms with a gun in his hand.”

“Where's his gun?” Matt asked.

“On the kitchen table,” Anna Lynn answered. “I didn't give him a chance to use it.”

Patrick considered his pappy's old horse pistol on the side table. “Well, from the bullet hole in his head, you surely corrected his misdeeds.”

Anna Lynn winced at the reminder, and Patrick, embarrassed by his words, turned his attention to Matt. “Best you wrap the body in an old horse blanket and weigh it down with rocks so some hungry critters don't come and make a meal of him before we can get the law out here.”

Matt rose to his feet. “I'll take care of all that, and fetch a doctor to take a look at you.” The ranch, so remote and isolated, was still without electricity or telephone service.

“No need,” Patrick said as he made his way to his bedroom door. “This gut ache will pass and I'll be fine come morning.”

Matt looked out the window at first light touching the Sacramentos. “Morning is upon us, and I'll be the judge of what's needed.”

Carefully, Anna Lynn shifted the still-sleeping Ginny from her lap to a couch cushion and gently picked her up. She didn't stir. “After I put her in bed, I'll fix you a hot water bottle and some warm lemon tea to settle your stomach.”

“Don't put yourself out on my account.”

Anna Lynn brushed a stray strand of hair away from Ginny's cheek, smiled weakly, and whispered, “I need to do something, otherwise I may just fall apart.”

Patrick smiled in return. “Much obliged.” He waited until
Anna Lynn left the room carrying Ginny, shook his head in admiration, and said to Matt, “That gal of yours is some pistol.”

“Don't I know it,” Matt agreed with a worried sigh. Anna Lynn looked as if she could fall apart at any moment, and he'd never seen her like that before.

***

M
att wrapped Fred Tyler's body in a horse blanket, piled rocks on top of it, and left to fetch a doctor and the law. On the ranch road, he stopped for a look-see at the burned-out Buick with the charred body inside before continuing cautiously to town on the state highway that had been badly damaged in the storm. Six hours later, he returned leading a small caravan of vehicles containing Sheriff Riley Dodson in his patrol car and Dr. Edwin Slattery in his Chevy. At the twisted metal wreckage of the Buick, Dodson stopped to investigate while Matt and Doc Slattery drove on to the ranch. There, Slattery did a thorough examination of Patrick, pronounced him to be suffering from a severe case of appendicitis, and ordered him to the hospital immediately. He drove off with Patrick in the passenger seat of the Chevy protesting mightily just as Sheriff Dodson arrived to inspect his second dead body of the day. A tall, thin man with a square face and thick lips, Dodson had come up through the ranks, serving as undersheriff before winning the election after his predecessor retired.

Matt helped him expose Tyler's remains and in the harsh light of day he looked at the face of the man who'd wanted to kill Anna Lynn and Ginny out of pure meanness and revenge. In town, he'd told Dodson about his history with Tyler and what had happened at Fort Bliss and the ranch, and he repeated it briefly once again as the sheriff looked through Tyler's wallet.

“He's an army private all right,” Dodson remarked, holding up a military ID card. He stuck the wallet and card in his shirt pocket, flipped the horse blanket back over Tyler's body, and allowed that the bullet hole in the victim's forehead was some damn fine shooting for a woman. He asked to speak with Anna Lynn.

“She's inside,” Matt said, bringing Dodson into the kitchen, where he pointed out Tyler's semiautomatic pistol lying untouched on the table. He gave the sheriff a cup of coffee and went to fetch Anna Lynn. He found her sequestered in the casita with Ginny, both of them lying on the bed with the curtains closed.

“We're going home, if the sheriff will let us,” she said before he got a word out. “I can't stay here.”

Matt sat on the end of the bed and nodded agreeably. “We'll all go to your place. I need to check on Patrick at the hospital anyway.”

Anna Lynn smiled. “Good.”

“First, Sheriff Dodson wants to talk to you.”

Anna Lynn swung her legs off the bed. “Stay here with Ginny.”

“Are you sure you don't want my company?” He held out his arms and Ginny eagerly scooted over to him.

“No, I'll be fine.”

Anna Lynn left and Matt snuggled with Ginny, unsure of what to say, wondering if the horror of what had happened was too fresh in her mind to risk discussion. He decided to forgo words and hold her quietly in his arms. For a long time, they stayed silent, Ginny's head against his chest.

Finally, she looked at Matt and asked, “Is Patrick gonna die?”

Matt didn't have an answer. “Doc Slattery will take good care of him.”

Ginny's eyes filled with tears. “He's gonna die, I just know it.” She started sobbing.

All Matt could do was gather her closer and hold her tight. “Hush now,” he said.

***

B
efore leaving his office for the murder scenes at the 7-Bar-K ranch, Sheriff Riley Dodson made several important telephone calls. He called Fort Bliss to advise the army that one of their soldiers had been killed, told the county coroner to meet him at the 7-Bar-K, where there were two alleged murder victims, let the district attorney know about the crimes, and lastly spoke to the editor of the local newspaper, who readily agreed to send his best reporter out to cover the story.

Killings, once somewhat common in the early frontier days, had become rare events for sheriffs in the rural southern counties of the state, and Dodson, who was up for reelection in November, wasn't about to let any free publicity slip away. He took Anna Lynn's statement knowing full well that the coroner, the district attorney—who was also up for reelection—an army officer, and a newspaper reporter would soon be arriving at the ranch. And although he was inclined to believe her story, he wasn't about to let her leave for her home until everyone, including the reporter, had a crack at her—although he'd didn't put it to her quite that way.

Dodson's decision to have Anna Lynn and Matt remain until he released them raised Matt's ire. “That's unnecessary,” he snapped, staring at Dodson, who had called them out to the veranda. “This was self-defense, plain and simple. For chrissake, there's no good reason to keep us here. Can't you see that?”

“I understand how you feel,” Dodson said calmly. He had no desire to rile a homegrown war-hero veteran or his lady friend, saw no benefit to it, but wasn't about to get hornswoggled,
although he appreciated Matt Kerney's concern for the woman. He eyed Anna Lynn, who appeared shocked, numb, and deflated; almost like a department-store mannequin, which was understandable given the fact she'd killed the man lying outside the house mere hours ago. “Ma'am?” he asked, offering her the chance to make her case.

“If we try to leave, will you arrest us?” she asked unemotionally, her face blank.

Dodson toyed with the notion of arresting her if she tried to leave and decided not to risk it. Instead he tried persuasion. “I've got to get this job done right, ma'am, and as material witnesses, I need your and Matt's help. So, I'm detaining you both. It's a lot more polite than an arrest.”

“How long do you plan to keep us here?” Matt inquired.

On the ranch road a line of vehicles appeared that included the coroner's car, an ambulance to carry off the remains of the victims, the DA's automobile, an army jeep, and reporter Ed Julian's old Studebaker. “It may take a while, I reckon,” Dodson replied. “I'll push it along as fast as I can.”

“We'll wait inside,” Anna Lynn said. For a long moment, she stared at Fred Tyler's covered body before retreating to the casita, where Ginny, forbidden to venture outside until Tyler's body had been removed, impatiently waited.

***

A
nna Lynn's ordeal didn't end until darkness, when the last of the men who'd descended on the ranch left, taking with them Fred Tyler's body, the blackened remains of the unknown person in the burned-out car, and all the evidence, photographs, and sworn statements Anna Lynn and Matt had been required to make.

In full moonlight casting long, silver shadows across the basin, the twisted wreckage of the car, high-ended on the crest of a precipitous washout that cut across the road, had an eerie look about it that chilled Anna Lynn to the bone. On the passenger side of the bench seat to the truck, with Ginny nestled at her side, she closed her eyes against the sight of it as Matt slowed to take a look when they passed by. She had no desire to see anything more that spoke of violent death. The stain on the kitchen floor was reminder enough.

The ranch, once so dear to her as a delightful hideaway, now felt ominous. She wondered if that mood would last. Just then it felt indelible. Since the moment Fred Tyler fell dead on the kitchen floor, an obsessive desire to flee the 7-Bar-K dominated her thoughts. She desperately wanted to be alone with Ginny in her own home. Even the prospect of Matt's company in her bed, recently so welcome and agreeable following the long absence of intimacy after his return from the war, felt bothersome.

“Sheriff said he'd have that wreck towed away in a day or two,” Matt noted.

Anna Lynn didn't respond. She turned her face to the passenger window and said not a word on the drive to Mountain Park.

***

A
fter five days in the hospital and minus a ruptured appendix, Patrick was discharged, lucky to be alive, and told to recuperate in bed for a week and avoid any physical activity that would put the slightest strain on his abdomen. He was even to avoid laughing or coughing if at all possible. Because of his age and slow recovery from surgery, Doc Slattery specifically forbade him from doing any ranch work for three weeks and told him to gradually increase his physical activities by an hour a day after that.

Although in pain and crabby, Patrick was having none of it, determined to get back to his normal routine as soon as he could put his boots on and go about his business. In order to enforce Doc Slattery's regimen and keep Patrick from literally working himself to death, Matt and Anna Lynn decided he would convalesce at her home, under her watchful eye and care.

As Anna Lynn helped him dress to leave, Patrick groused about it, but not convincingly, as he was secretly delighted by the prospect of being cared for by a woman he truly liked and in the company of a child he adored. He'd lost a few pounds on hospital food, and with a fresh haircut, a shave, and some color in his cheeks, he actually looked good for his years.

Outside, several newspaper reporters waited, including Ed Julian, who'd interviewed Anna Lynn at the ranch, hoping to get additional comments about the killings on the 7-Bar-K. Not once had Anna Lynn, Matt, or Patrick spoken to the press since the day of the shootings and with the dead man in the car now positively identified and the DA yet to decide whether to press charges against Anna Lynn, the story was front-page news again. The reporters took pictures and called out questions as Matt hurried Patrick in a wheelchair to the truck with Anna Lynn and Ginny close behind.