Unbroken Hearts (20 page)

    
The approaching man was Tom Black, a fair
haired, wiry young man with a quiet disposition and a discrete reputation.

    
Tom trotted his horse up through the heat
and waved a greeting. Then he swung down and looped his reins around the porch
railing.

    
"How do, Mr. Kingman!"

    
Ned stood. "Howdy, Tom."

    
"Got a wire," the young man sang
out. "For a Miss Sarah Anders."

     
Black peered nervously at Ned and
his cache of weapons.

    
Ned read Tom's thoughts and laughed.
"Yep, I'm a one-man army. Hold on Tom, she's inside." He stepped to
the door, and pulled it open.

    
"Miss Anders!"

    
Sarah heard Ned call and briskly walked to
the front door. The hinges creaked when she opened it a crack, and she saw Ned,
speaking amiably with a young stranger.

    
Tom Black went slack-jawed at the sight of
her.

    
Guffaws rose from Ned. "Ain't you never
seen a pretty girl before?" He shifted to put his weight onto his good leg
and boot leather squeaked. "Miss Anders, this here's Tom Black from
Western Union. Says he's got a message for you."

     
Sarah had never received a wire.

    
Tom, suddenly mute, colored and pretended
to search for something in his pocket. "W-well, the message is really for
Orville B-Bain," he stammered. "Y-yesterday an operator in Illinois
asked to locate him in Montana. So I went over to Aiken this morning to ask him
if he knew the feller, but Aiken wasn't at the jailhouse. Next thing I run into
the preacher. He said you buried Mr. Bain. S-seeing as you're next of kin, I
rode it out."

    
Black swung the pouch down from his
shoulder and pulled a small envelope from inside.

    
Sarah reached a trembling hand to take it.
"Oh. Thank you," she mumbled, perplexed, as she accepted the note.

    
She wondered who would send a message to
Uncle Orv? His sister? Helen and her husband lived twenty miles from the old
farm. They'd rarely seen each other. Over the years Helen's husband had grown
tired of Orville's drinking, gambling, and occasional requests for money. Ties
were severed, and except for times when a death or family business made it
necessary, they never visited.

    
"I'll stay, in case you want to make
a reply," Tom offered.

    
"Oh. Yes, of course."

   
The messenger drifted away to the watering trough to give her privacy.

    
Sarah sat on the steps and opened the
envelope. She read:

CLAIRVILLE ILLINOIS VIA CHICAGO JUL.TWENTYFOURTH
TEN-THIRTY A.M.

BE THARE SOON TO COLLECT WHAT YOU OWE. PLEASE ANSER.
ANSEL CRANE

    
Anxiety knotted in the pit of her stomach.
The message was confusing at best. Orv owed Crane more than the farm? Crane had
won the deed to the property in a three-day poker game.

    
Sarah considered Crane to be the same as
her uncle -- he drank and gambled. The only difference was he was luckier than
Orv. Crane visited the farm on several occasions, and he had a way of looking
Sarah up and down that made her very uncomfortable. The last time had been the
eve of their departure, when he'd met with Orv in the barn to haggle over the
remaining stock. They'd left the next morning, and Sarah hadn't given it
another thought.

   
Wringing her hands, she paced back and forth across the length of the
porch. Each time she glanced uneasily over her shoulder she saw Ned and Tom
Black quickly averting their gazes.

    
Finally, as casually as she could manage,
Sarah spoke. "May I make a reply?"

 
   
"Sure." Tom Black
jumped up and pulled a blank sheet of paper from the pouch. He pulled a pencil
from his vest pocket.

    
As Sarah accepted the paper and pencil
thoughts whirled through her head. She couldn't be responsible for her dead
uncles' debts. They weren't even blood relations. She flattened the piece of
paper on the porch rail and crafted her response.

    
Mr. Crane

    
Orville B and son dead. All money stolen.
No reason to come.

    
Sarah Anders

    
She handed the message to Tom Black. He
ran his lead-gray eyes over her lines.

    
"I've never written a telegram."
Her voice drifted lower and she looked down.

    
"It's perfect," Black assured
her. His lips formed a taut line. The reply message was tucked into the bag,
and he folded the flap over the top. Goodbyes were exchanged, but Sarah was
preoccupied. She needed to think.

    
The young messenger reluctantly jumped
over the porch rail, untied his horse, and lit off back to town.

    
Ned didn't stir as Sarah stowed Crane's
message away in her pocket.

    
The message nagged Sarah like a loose
bootlace. If only Crane had mentioned what her uncle still owed.

Chapter 18

     
Cal pushed his horse into a gallop
as he led the men northward. They passed beeves grazing lazily on buffalo grass
as the sun crept higher in the late morning sky.
 

    
Roy broke off and waved to several
weathered cowhands. The men turned away from the herd and made for Roy, who
spoke to them before trotting his horse back to join the trackers.
 

    
Aiken observed three hands as they headed
south, back toward the ranch. He noted they were heavily armed, and alert, eyes
scanning and narrowed, as if waiting for somebody to jump them.

    
A gloating satisfaction filled the
sheriff. His harassment strategy had forced the Eastons to take extreme
measures to secure their spread. And today he'd seen Cal Easton's weakness for
the Anders woman. That bit of information would prove useful when the time came
to move the boys from dilemma to desperation.
 
Then they'd be willing to sell the place to Dullen for a
mere fraction of its true worth.

    
The sheriff stretched in his saddle,
daydreaming about the saloon he planned to catch with the reward Dullen
promised. He decided it was time to grease the axles; he smoothly sidled his
horse up between the brothers.

    
"All this trouble gotta make ranching
rough," Aiken drawled easily. "You boys still got cattle wandering
off?"

    
Icy silence met his comment, but it made
no matter to Aiken. "Ya' know, other ranches aren't complainin' 'bout
losing none. Boys, how can I say this nice-like? It could be your own hands
doing the stealin'," he prattled. "Sad," he shook his head,
"Sad! Ya' know, boys, there's easier ways of makin' money than rasslin'
steers."

    
Except for a muscle twitching in his jaw,
Cal's face was hard. "It'll get easier again," he spun out,
"after we kill the bastards." Cal turned to Aiken and slowly smiled.
"
Every last bastard
."
His lips edged up, but the glacier covering his eyes didn't retreat.

    
Aiken shuddered inwardly. Dullen was flat
out wrong about these men.

    
Roy had silently deferred to his older
brother, but he was anxiously twisting in the saddle, ready to take his turn at
the trough.

    
"Yeah, we like a good challenge, a
chance to kill us a few outlaws." Roy added, slow and easy. He wore a
playful smirk. "And that reward money we earned bringing in the Malgers
– that'll be downright helpful. We hired on more guns."
 

    
Aiken looked surprised, and Roy's grin
broadened.
 

   
"I guess you plum forgot to tell us Sheriff. Anyhoo, I stopped at
the bank
.
And tarnation, if that
five hundred dollars wasn't being held for Cal and me. Golly, they were happy to
move the reward into our ranch account. We surely appreciate you taking care of
it,
Sheriff
.

    
Aiken felt like a mule had kicked him in
the backside.
Damn, it must have been flap-mouthed Ella.
He'd forgotten she was sweet on the younger Easton.
The afternoon the Eastons hauled in the Malgers, one dragging a wounded leg and
another completely lifeless, a US Marshal had been in his office. It turned out
the Malgers were wanted over in Butte for robbing a payroll stage and killing
the two men riding shotgun.
 

    
Aiken had turned the wounded outlaw over
to the deputy sent over from Butte. He'd forgotten the whole incident until
another lawman passed through, carrying reward money, and he'd insisted on
taking it direct to the bank to put it into a special account for the
Eastons.
 

    
Aiken didn't have a dodge, so he pledged bank president Abe Wright to secrecy. So the loose cannon had to be
Ella, Abe's daughter, the on-duty teller who made the deposit. Aiken had plumb
forgotten about Roy Easton's dalliance with the woman.

     
Aiken swallowed. "Anytime. You
boys earned it. Er, how's that shoulder Cal? Not totally useless I hope."

    
"All healed," Cal replied
tersely, and then he abruptly reined in his horse. "Here it is. The place
Sarah was hit."

                                                      
*
     
*
     
*

   
Emily cleaned and polished the black stove in the kitchen until it was
shinier than new. Midday was bearing down, and Sarah opened windows in hopes of
a breeze. Emily read a story about a jumping frog to Mrs. Easton while Sarah
sat with mending in her lap. Through open windows they heard ranch hands
passing, talking to Ned on the porch, voices fading as they walked around the
house and out to the barn.

    
Sarah couldn't stop thinking about the
telegram. Crane's words gnawed and chafed until she had to set aside her
sewing. She remembered the wooden box filled with old letters, and she hurried to
their shared quarters to find it. Even the barest of clues might ease her
mind.
 

    
Entering the room she swiftly shut the
door. Dropping to her knees she groped under the bed until her fingers touched
the rough box.

   
Sarah sat back on her rump, and as she was alone, she hiked her skirt to
her thighs. Cross-legged, she lifted the hinged top, hoping to find the
explanation for Uncle Orv's outstanding debt to Crane.

    
She thumbed through notes about money owed
to other creditors, some dating back ten years. She sifted through old letters
from Orv's sister. She pulled the contents from each envelope, scanned, and
hastily stuffed it back. Nothing. It didn't take long to empty the box. Sarah
was ready to give up when she felt the envelope wedged against the side under
the latch. An edge was stubbornly caught in the seam between the bottom and
backside of the box. She yanked the paper free, ripping one edge. Orv's unruly
scrawl ran across the front of the envelope.
Mr. Ansel Crane
.

   
Sarah's hands trembled as she carefully unfolded the letter. She glanced
at the date at the top – the day before Orv was killed!

     
Sarah dared her eyes to carry on.

Dear Ansel,

I wright to give you notise that we reached
Montana. I kennot pay you the $350 I owe. Tharefore as we agreed you ken haf
the girl if you come to git her. She will, no dobt, maek you a fine wife she
knows how about running thengs at the farm. Her sister is worth speakeing off
and although I thout to reserve her for myself I woud consider to accept an
offer for her.
 

 
Yours
Truely,

Orville Bain

    
The shudder that ran though Sarah would
have knocked her down, had she been standing. Orv had betrothed her
to Crane, the ugly, old, gambling sot!

    
A hollow ache grew in her stomach. How
dare he?

    
A harsh bitterness slowly festered inside
her as she pictured the bulldog Crane -- three chins, and more than twice her
age!

    
She sat down on the edge of the bed with a
heavy sigh. Think. Remember, she told herself. Uncle Orv must have been sending
letters back as they traveled. How else could Crane know where to send the
telegram? The more she thought about the deal Orv had made with Crane, the
higher her anger climbed. Surely he'd have known that a man who wasn't kin
couldn't own another person. It wasn't legal. That was what the war had been
about. He'd likely planned to trick her when the time came to sell her
off.
 
Ansel Crane was a clever
schemer too. After all, he'd swindled the farm from her uncle. Surely he'd
know, now that Orv was dead, that he couldn't buy her with money owed.
Not
with money
.

    
Another man's debt couldn't buy a person,
but the threat of exposing her past could. Crane had the power and knowledge to
publicly shame her. The man was low enough scum to do it.
 

    
Sarah didn't want to admit, even to
herself, that she'd hidden a few facts about her previous life. She considered
she hadn't
really
hid them; she
simply hadn't divulged them to the Eastons, and they hadn't asked. She
told herself it wasn't their business, so long as she was merely an employee.

    
Yet Cal had called her a 'fine lady', and
she'd convinced herself it was because she was
becoming
a fine lady. He'd surely think her a fraud when Crane
showed and talked.

    
Images from the past came flooding back,
all those painful years the decent families back home had shunned them. Other
girls went to parties wearing pretty new dresses. Meanwhile, Sarah and Emily sat at
home. The girls they met at school weren't allowed to visit them at the farm
because their families didn't trust Uncle Orv. And stories were plenty, idle
gossip, even that Orv used Sarah
that
way.

    
When all was said and done, Crane had only
to spend ten minutes regaling the men at the general store with lurid tales
suited to his purpose. It was easy for Sarah to imagine the hurtful stories
rolling over Wounded Colt like a flash flood.
 

    
She shuddered. A man like Cal Easton had
his limits. Despair stabbed at her, pushing a river of tears through burning
eyes and down hot cheeks. It wasn't fair. But then few things were. No, she
could never expose a fine family like the Eastons to scandal.

    
She wiped at her face with bare hands,
slumped her shoulders forward. If she had $350 she'd buy Crane's silence and be
done with the whole mess. But the man was likely already riding in her
direction, and now he'd know exactly where to find
them, because she'd replied to his telegram.

   
What could she tell Emily? She reflected that she'd been in
difficult situations before, but nothing akin to this predicament.

    
Sarah shifted on the bed and ran her hands
over her hair. Her thoughts wandered to her mother and father. Death had
shattered their world and hers. She would not be broken, through privation
and hardship. After all, she was an Anders.
 

    
Sarah sat still for a long time. Then she
shoved the odious letter back into the box, pushed it under the bed, and stood
up. She loped over to the dresser and leaned against it to steady herself.
After a minute she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, smoothed her dress
with shaking hands, and walked back to the parlor.
 

                                                              
  
*
    
*
    
*

     
The men took their supper in the
ranch house kitchen quietly, except for Aiken, who ran on about all the
diseases and fevers cattle could catch, after which he speculated on how ranchers
were raising better beef in Texas. Roy countered that he'd been to Texas and
Hell, preferring the latter. Aiken waved off the younger Easton, and tacked on
a bit about a rumor he'd heard about the beef market crashing. To him it seemed
nobody wanted to eat beef anymore, and if he were in the business he'd just
sell out, go east and find himself comfort in a fancy woman.

    
The men lingered over their coffee as Peck
finished writing his "report" on the interviews and clues he'd
pretended to find.

    
The men relaxed after they sashayed Aiken and Peck out the front door. The duo saddled
up and rode on back to town.

    
Cal swaggered into the kitchen, to where
Sarah was cleaning. Emily had gone out front to sit with Ned. Mrs. Easton sat
in her wheeled chair.