The Last Renegade (38 page)

“When I came to town and you boys saw my guns, you asked me if I was here to start trouble or end it. You said it would be a real shame if I had already hired on with the Burdicks.” At the mention of the name, the boys went rigid. “Lots of people in this town worry about the Burdicks,” Kellen said. “It seems pretty smart of them, if you ask me. The Burdick name comes up a lot when there’s some sort of trouble.”

Rabbit and Finn remained still as stone.

“You didn’t see one of the Burdicks that night, but you saw something you recognized that belonged to them.”

A shiver slipped down Rabbit’s spine. He didn’t have the benefit of Raine’s calming hand at his back.

“I think you saw their horses at the back of the Pennyroyal.” As soon as he said it, he realized he didn’t yet have it quite right. Rabbit and Finn wanted to tell him in the worst way, but they couldn’t, and now knowing how close he was to the truth, he understood their need to keep the secret. “You saw
a
horse.”

The boys’ cheeks puffed and deflated slowly as they released long breaths.

Kellen nodded slowly, looking over their heads to Raine but continuing to speak to them. “I went out to the Burdick ranch yesterday. Did you know that?”

Rabbit and Finn traded looks and shrugged. Rabbit spoke. “We mighta heard something about that.”

“You probably saw me leaving the livery again and asked around. It’s not a secret that I’m writing a story and that the Burdick ranch is part of it.” Kellen folded his hands together on the table. He tapped his thumbs slowly. “Eli and Clay escorted me all over the spread, and I know I still did not see the half of it. They gave me a mare to ride to spare the horse I borrowed from the livery. Eli rode a black stallion that must have been sixteen hands from ground to withers, but Clay rode an even bigger gray, one that I imagine looks silver in a little bit of moonlight. It was a beautiful beast. Long-necked. Lean body. Deep chest. Back East an animal like that would be on the racetrack. Not everyone can handle a horse as bold and spirited as that gray. I bet you boys know that animal’s name.”

Neither boy spoke up. They kept their lips pressed tightly together.

Raine said, “That’s Phantom. Everyone knows him. If I saw him shaking his head or pawing the ground behind the Pennyroyal, I’d look for somewhere to hide. He frightens me in the daylight. At night, he’s a ghost.”

That brought a quick nod from Finn and a slower one from Rabbit.

Kellen finally sat back in his chair and stretched his legs
under the table. He envied Finn the hand that Raine still had on his back. “I don’t imagine you stayed under the stairs for long.”

Staring down at their plates, the boys shook their heads hard.

“I wouldn’t have either,” said Kellen. “You did the right thing to go home.”

Raine asked, “Did you hear anything before you left? Something odd that perhaps you didn’t understand at the time?”

“No, ma’am,” said Rabbit.

“Mostly it was just my own heart,” said Finn. “And the snorting.”

“Have you told anyone else about this?” asked Kellen.

Rabbit’s chin came up. “We didn’t tell you.”

Kellen smiled appreciatively. “No, you didn’t, did you? Well done, men. Is it your intention not to tell anyone else?”

Rabbit gave his brother a narrow look.

“I’m not sayin’ anything,” said Finn, crossing his heart. “I’m not even goin’ to sit still for the speculation.”

“Very good,” said Kellen.

“Granny would worry,” said Rabbit. “Pap would have to turn us over his knee.”

“The Burdicks might murder us in our sleep,” whispered Finn.

Raine put her arm around Finn’s shoulders and squeezed. “That’s not going to happen. Don’t even think that it can.”

“It wouldn’t be such a worry,” Rabbit said, “if Mr. Coltrane would show folks his guns.”

Raine sat on a woolen blanket at the foot of a cottonwood tree watching Kellen reload the .44 Colt. The .45 caliber Peacemaker with the pearl grip lay beside her. It was the first time she had seen the guns since Kellen’s arrival. She remembered how he’d set them out on the table in his room as casually as calling cards on a silver plate, and it wasn’t until they reappeared that she realized she had no idea where they’d been hidden away.

He reminded her that he’d come to Bitter Springs with two trunks and a bag and that for almost the entire length of his stay, the bag had been squirreled away under the bed in Ellen’s old room. She didn’t believe him at first, but then she recalled how she’d found him in her apartment one evening. He’d made it seem as if he was there for the express purpose of speaking with her, but he had gone there to hide the valise and everything that followed was improvisation, including the kiss that set her back on her heels.

He did not say as much—in fact, he said very little—but once Raine was prompted to remember something from that night, she remembered
everything
.

Drawing from the holster, Kellen fired off two shots. His target was a smooth stone about the size of his fist resting on top of a stump. The first shot nudged the stone to the left. The second splintered the side of the stump.

“What were you trying to hit?” asked Raine.

“The stone. Both times.” He holstered the gun, paused, and drew and fired again. This time he hit the stone twice so that it skipped off the stump’s platform. “I’ll get it,” he told Raine.

“I wasn’t moving.” She huddled deeper into her coat, lifting the collar and tucking her chin below the frog closure.

Kellen gathered all the stones he had scattered and returned them to the stump. When he turned and saw Raine pulling the corners of the blanket around her shoulders, he just shook his head. “Did I invite you to come with me?”

She scrunched her nose at him.

He chuckled. “I didn’t think so.” He walked over to the blanket and unfastened his gun belt. He exchanged holsters so he could practice with the smaller .45 caliber. “Do you want to shoot? If you were up and moving around, you wouldn’t be so cold.”

“Snow’s coming. Can’t you smell it?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Smell it?”

She sighed. “Never mind. No, I do not want to shoot.”

“All right. Let me do a couple more rounds with the .45 and then we’ll leave.” He stood farther away from the targets this time and picked the stones off one by one. He reloaded,
crouched, and fired again. He missed the stones twice but caught the stump on both of those occasions. Kellen backed up another five feet, reloaded, and took aim at the stones he had missed. He got them both this time. “This gun doesn’t release as smoothly from the holster as the other.” He repeated holstering and drawing the weapon several more times.

“I like this one,” Raine said, pointing to the Colt on the blanket. “It’s bigger.”

“More importantly, I can draw quicker and hit what I’m aiming at.”

“I didn’t notice a difference between how you did with the two weapons.”

“That’s because it’s not your finger on the trigger. The handling’s different, the weight, the pull. I favor the .44.” He returned to Raine’s side and held out a hand. She took it, and he helped her up. He stooped, picked up the .44, and gave Raine the blanket. “Are you satisfied with what you saw?”

“I never doubted that you could shoot. Nat Church would not have asked you to join him if he couldn’t depend on your aim.”

“Then I’m glad to know that you have at least as much confidence in my aim as you do in Nat’s judgment.” He began to exchange holsters again, strapping on the .44. “Why were you so set on coming with me?”

Raine gave herself over to the task of folding and rolling up the blanket.

“Raine?” He tried to catch her eye. “What is it?”

Shrugging almost imperceptibly, she turned in the direction of their tethered mounts. “We should go. We don’t want to be out here at night.”

Kellen put a hand on her elbow. “Wait. We have time. What is it you don’t want to tell me?”

Her laughter was low and ironic. “Now there is a question.” She shook off his hand at her elbow and continued walking.

Kellen stayed where he was, watching her go. There was something to be said for maintaining a little distance. He waited until she strapped the blanket to the back of her saddle and was prepared to mount before he approached.

Kellen placed the spare Colt in his saddlebag, took up the reins, and mounted. He asked Raine if she wanted to lead the way through the trees and down the rocky incline to the valley floor. She did not hesitate. Even when the trail widened and could have easily accommodated them riding side by side, Kellen hung back. He did not doubt that she would eventually tell him what was on her mind. What he could not gauge was the span of time between now and eventually.

That was only troubling because he could not gauge how much time he had left.

“How far is Matt Sharp’s farm from where we are now?” he asked her.

“Maybe six miles northeast. Why?”

“How does the Sharp farm get its water?”

“I don’t know. A well, I suppose.”

“Is there a lake? A spring?”

“Hickory Lake. But it’s miles from their farm.”

“It might supply their water, though.”

Raine twisted in her saddle so she could see Kellen. “Why are you asking about this?”

He shrugged. “Something Uriah said to me when we were talking about the government survey. He has his eye on some property that he thinks the survey will take off the market. He wants it for himself. It was just an impression, but I had the sense the property was out this way. I don’t know much about the area except what I saw when we were searching for Emily. I’m wondering if Uriah went after the land around the lake whether or not the Sharp farm would be in his way.”

“What do you want to do?” she asked, but she knew the answer. She looked at the sky, studied it for a moment.

Watching her, Kellen shook his head. “No. It’s too late now. But tomorrow I’ll go out.”

“I’m going with you.”

“You have a business to run.”

“I’m going with you.”

Kellen said nothing. That argument would be waiting for them in the morning.

Or it should have been. It was only when morning came
around that Kellen realized that he’d left it until too late. Raine was not in the apartment when he woke, and she was not in the kitchen or dining room when he went to steal bacon and biscuits from under Mrs. Sterling’s nose. Sue could only tell him that she thought Raine had gone to the rail station. Walt’s guess was the same as Sue’s.

She was waiting for him at the livery, saddled up and ready to ride. She was wearing a split riding skirt, belted wool jacket, boots, and a white Boss of the Plains short-brimmed Stetson. He recognized the modified stock and butt plate of a Springfield Model 1877 carbine in the scabbard.

He pointed to the carbine. “Do you know how to use that?”

“I’m not Annie Oakley, but I can hold my own.”

“You really want to do this?”

“Yes.”

Kellen did not have to think about it long. If he said no, she would follow him. He would rather have her at his side than somewhere behind him with a carbine. “All right.” If she was surprised that he surrendered so easily, she did not show it.

They spoke very little as they rode toward the lake, but this silence was comfortable and mutually agreed upon, not edgy and one-sided as it had been the previous day. Kellen did not take them close to the Sharp farm; rather, they skirted the property and climbed to a higher elevation once they were well clear of it. They followed Elk Creek to its source, a silver-blue lake nestled in the mountain crag that was a reservoir for the snowmelt every spring.

Kellen dismounted when they reached the edge of the water and let his horse drink. He studied the lake, the land, and tried to imagine how Uriah Burdick might stand on precisely this same spot and see an opportunity.

“What do you expect to find here?” asked Raine.

“I’m not sure, but I want to go around the lake. Do you want to come or wait for me here?” He chuckled when she merely lifted an eyebrow at him. “Very well.” He led his horse away from the water and mounted. “Clockwise? Counterclockwise? You choose.”

Raine had been looking around much as Kellen had. Her
particular interest, though, as dictated by her hunger, was locating a place where they could spread a blanket and have something to eat on the relative comfort of the ground. At their current elevation, there was not much in the way of cover, but she had noted an outcropping of scraggly pines some three hundred yards away that might offer reasonable shelter from the wind.

“That way,” she said, pointing left.

Kellen tugged on the reins, and they were off. “If Uriah could control and divert the natural path of water from this lake, he could irrigate a large portion of his spread that can’t support cattle now. He would be able to cut off the smaller ranchers who are just an annoyance to him and buy up their land.”

“And farmers like Matt Sharp and his family.”

“That’s right. Bitter Springs, too. The town will be dependent on him in a way it only imagines that it is now.”

“Do you think he knows about Clay?”

Kellen allowed his horse to pick his own way over the rocky ground while he gave his attention to Raine. “Knows
what
about Clay?”

Frustrated, she sighed. “He murdered Mr. Weyman. The boys as good as told us that. I don’t know why you want to defend him.”

“Rabbit and Finn saw Clay’s horse, not Clay. That’s the fact we know. It seems likely that Clay is responsible for Weyman’s murder. Probably for Emily’s as well. ‘Likely’ and ‘probably’ are not certain words, Raine, and I have no idea what Uriah suspects or knows about his son. I imagine Uriah would act to protect Clay just as he did Isaac, but I can’t even say that with certainty. He pits Eli and Clay against each other, goads them. I observed it several times during my visit. I don’t think that it’s respect for him that makes them keep their distance; I think it’s fear. They don’t see Uriah so differently than anyone else in Bitter Springs sees him.”

Raine fell silent, thinking. Her eyes followed the curve of the lake to where it disappeared between two crests. “How far do you suppose the lake goes that way?”