Winter's Touch (3 page)

Of course, Carson thought wryly, even a railroad clear to Denver wouldn’t negate what lay ahead of them between Pueblo and the ranch. He dearly hoped the girls enjoyed their a night or two in a hotel.

“How long will it take us to get to the ranch from here?” Bess asked.

It was uncanny the way his baby sister could sometimes seem to read his mind. He wasn’t used to this. The last time he’d spent much time around her had been before the war. She’d been about Megan’s age. Now she was thirteen, a young lady.

Once again his mind mocked him.
What do you know about raising girls?
And once again, the answer was, nothing.

Watching him, Bess tilted her head in the way their mother used to do. She must have inherited the gesture. She’d been less than a day old when their mother had died.

“Carson?”

“Sorry.” He smiled at her. “I was just wondering when you grew up on me.”

“I grew up,” she said softly, “while you and Daddy were off fighting Yankees.”

Carson forced his smile to stay in place, although God knew there was nothing about that cursed war to smile about.
May I never live long enough to take the life of another man,
he thought fervently.

He still carried a rifle. The trusty Maynard that had seen him through the war was in his hotel room with the rest of his belongings. In this wild, unsettled territory a man never knew when, or from whom or what, he would have to protect his own. But Carson would be damned if he would do like so many men in Colorado did and wear a sidearm. Rifles were for hunting, or killing wild animals in defense, and sometimes, when your country called, they were for war.

Pistols, on the other hand, existed for one thing and one thing only—killing men. There was no other purpose for them. His was wrapped in leather and tucked away in the bottom drawer of his bureau at the ranch, and that was where it would stay. Carson Dulaney had killed his last man. He wanted no more dead or dying eyes following him into his sleep. He had enough, more than enough, already.

Which was why the talk he was overhearing from the other tables concerned him. Indian trouble, people were saying. Three people had been found dead a half day’s ride south of Pueblo. Cheyenne had done it, they said.

Carson’s father had told him that the Kiowa and Comanche were gone from the territory, and the Southern Arapaho pretty much kept quiet in the area, but the Cheyenne still liked to cause trouble. But as a rule, none of the tribes roamed up the river to his ranch.

But getting home from Pueblo might prove to be a challenge if the talk Carson was hearing now was to be believed.

Damn. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t put the girls in danger by exposing them to possible attack.

“You said we would have to go by wagon from here.”

“That’s right,” he answered Bess, pulling his mind into the present. At least she seemed unaware of the potential danger. He didn’t intend to enlighten her. “I’ll see about that in the morning. A wagon and team. We’ll need supplies, too. It might take a day or two before we’re ready to leave.”

“And then?”

“And then we head home. It’ll take us a couple of days to get there.”

“A couple of days of sleeping out in the open.”

He didn’t much care for the disapproval in Bess’s voice. “Probably one night.” He started to remind her again that she had promised to give Colorado a chance. To give
them
a chance, him and Megan and herself, to be a family. But Bess was tired, and so was he, and poor Megan was about to fall asleep in her plate—and then there was the threat of Indians along the way—so he let it go.

“Come on, let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. There had to be a way to get them safely to the ranch. All he needed to do was find it. “I bet we could arrange for you to have a bath.”

Bess’s eyes lit. “A real bath? In a tub?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Megan, wake up,” Bess said swiftly. “We’re going now.”

A decent meal, a bath, and a good night’s sleep did the trick. The next morning both girls were their old cheerful selves again, much to Carson’s relief.

His relief was short lived, however, when, after breakfast, he took the girls with him to the livery to see about buying a wagon.

The livery was several blocks from the hotel. Carson escorted the girls down the street, walking between them and the wagons and horses that raised dust on their way by. He passed several saloons, a barber shop, a boarding house, two small churches, and a general mercantile along the way.

Bess was not impressed. “This is the whole town?”

“It’s young still, but it’s growing. Don’t worry, we probably won’t have occasion to come back here in the near future.”

Bess looked over her shoulder and gave a delicate sniff. It was such a perfect imitation of Aunt Gussie’s method of showing disapproval that Carson nearly smiled.

“Thank goodness,” Bess muttered.

Carson followed her gaze to see what she found so particularly disparaging. All he saw of note was a big bear of a man in fringed buckskins a few yards behind them. What people would have called a mountain man in the old days, from the look of him. With this man, Carson wasn’t sure if the appellation referred to the man’s assumed preference for living in the mountains, or to the size of him. His shoulders were massive, and even without the big floppy-brimmed hat that left the upper half of his face in shadows, he topped Carson’s own six-foot height by several inches.

“But you’ll remember,” Carson said, facing forward again, “I told you before we left that we won’t be living anywhere near a decent-sized town.”

Bess heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Yes, you told me.”

“Bess,” he warned.

“I know.” She sighed again. “I promised to give this a chance. I just don’t see why we had to come all the way to Colorado, that’s all. Why couldn’t we have been a family in Atlanta?”

“You liked living on charity?”

Bess’s face flushed. She lowered her head and studied the boards of the sidewalk.

Carson knew she had hated losing their home, not having any place to call their own. It had stung her young pride to have to live off of friends. The once proud Dulaneys reduced to accepting handouts. It damn sure would have stung his pride, too.

“Come on,” he said, hoping to cheer her. “After we see about a wagon and team, we’ll go to the mercantile and you can help me select our supplies.”

As he’d hoped, the prospect of shopping, or perhaps of having her advice sought, seemed to brighten Bess’s mood. Her gaze lingered on the window of the mercantile as they passed it.

Then she stiffened and abruptly stared straight ahead. “Is that man following us?”

“What man?” Carson glanced over his shoulder to see that the man in buckskins was still a few yards behind them. “He’s probably just minding his own business. There are a dozen people headed the same direction we are.”

The livery was located a block away from what appeared to be the edge of town. The girls stood to one side while Carson approached the man who was cleaning out a stall. “Are you in charge here?”

“I am.” The man propped his pitchfork against the side of the stall and stuck out his hand. He was of average height, maybe thirty years old, with a balding head. His face was long, his teeth big, giving him a look amazingly similar to the horses around him. But his handshake was firm and friendly. “Lester Bacon’s the name. What can I do for you?”

“I’m in need of a wagon to haul people and supplies.”

“Well, now.” Lester beamed. “Believe I can help ya.”

Taking Megan by the hand, and with Bess beside him, Carson followed the man back outside to the alley beside the stables.

“Sturdy as the day is long.” Bacon slapped a hand against the blue-painted side of the platform spring Studebaker.

“Looks like an Army wagon,” Carson noted. If nothing else, that Yankee-blue paint was a dead giveaway.

“Yes, sir. U.S. Army surplus. Took it in on trade last week from the man who bought it from the Army. Greased the axles myself, I did.”

“What do you want for it?”

“Well, now, I think fifty dollars would be fair.”

Carson snorted. “Only if you’re throwing in the team and harness with it.”

Lester Bacon’s eyes sharpened with the glee of a man who loves to haggle. “Well, now, you want a team, too, do you? Well, now, then, we’re talking a sight more money.”

Carson was just settling down to do some serious negotiating when he happened to glance around to make sure Bess and Megan were still nearby. They were, but so was the buckskin man standing at the corner across the alley from the girls, watching them.

“We’ll talk,” Carson told Bacon. “I’ll be right back.”

Carson strode across the alley and stopped before the man in buckskins. He had a broad face, a crooked nose, and piercing gray eyes, but what a person noticed most, aside from his sheer size, was his thick, flaming red hair hanging past his shoulders, and an equally thick, equally red beard that bushed out and tangled with the hair until it looked as though he was peering out from behind a busy red wreath.

With narrowed eyes, Carson met the man’s flinty stare. “Something I can do for you, mister?”

“What makes ye ask?” The Scottish brogue was slight but unmistakable.

“You’ve been following us. Why?”

The man eyed him keenly. “I hear yer name be Dulaney.”

“Depends on who wants to know.”

“I knew a man named Dulaney, I did,” the man said, ignoring Carson’s statement. “Had himself a ranch upstream along the Huerfano.”

Sharp interest, mixed with a healthy dose of caution, stirred in Carson. “What about him?”

“His name was Edmond Dulaney. He was a good friend of mine. I hear he got himself killed. I hear his son, by name of Carson Dulaney, be takin’ over the ranch. I come lookin’ for him.”

“Mind telling me your name?” Carson asked.

“I be Innes MacDougall.”

A slow, wide smile spread across Carson’s face. This was the man his father had spoken so eloquently about so many times in his letters home and then in person when he came home to fight.

The two men, according to Carson’s father, had saved each other’s life several times throughout their friendship. They’d stumbled into each other shortly after Edmond had arrived in the Colorado Territory. Both sloppy drunk, mourning the loss of their wives, shamed by having walked out on their children. Two lonely men trying to learn to face life by running from it.

They were so drunk, that first night they met in a saloon in one of those disreputable tent towns that sprang up around gold strikes, that despite both being big men, they’d been easy prey for the gang of thugs that roamed the rutted, muddy streets in search of easy money.

Edmond had told in one of his letters of the two of them waking the next morning, in the icy mud of a back alley, their heads pounding, pockets empty. They had helped each other out of the mud and decided that perhaps providence was trying to tell them something. Perhaps this road to destruction they were on was not what they really wanted after all.

The last time Edmond had spoken of MacDougall had been during the rushed march to Spotsylvania in the middle of a thick, foggy night. “Wish Innes was with us,” Edmond had said. “I love that man like a brother, son. I would trust him with my life. He’s a crack shot, too. We could sure use him.”

So this, then was the famous Innes MacDougall. “Well I’ll be damned. My father spoke of you often. He set a great store by your friendship.”

MacDougall nodded soberly. “And I by his. You have the look of him when you smile. Is it true, then? He was killed in that damned war?”

Carson, too, sobered. “Yes. At Spotsylvania.”

The big man looked away and blinked. “Damn shame, that. He was a good man, was Edmond Dulaney.”

“I agree. He was the best.”

“So you’re taking over his ranch?”

“I am. I— Wait. You said you had come looking for me?”

“Aye. I went by to visit a spell with Edmond, at his ranch. Man by the name of Rivers told me you’d been there, that you’d gone back East to bring your family out.”

“He told you right. We just got in on the stage yesterday. Girls?” Carson turned toward them and motioned them over. “Girls, meet a friend of dad’s. This is Mr. MacDougall. Mr. MacDougall, I’d like you to meet my sister, Elizabeth. Bess, we call her. And this is my daughter, Megan.”

“Ladies.” MacDougall swept off his floppy-brimmed hat and executed an elaborate bow. “’Tis a right great pleasure to make yer acquaintance, to be sure, lassies. Yer father,” he said to Bess, “and yer grandfather,” he added to Megan, “was the best friend a man could hope to have. I place myself at your service.”

Megan giggled. “You talk funny.”

MacDougall let out a booming laugh that threatened the windows in the building across the street. “So I’m told, lassie, so I be told.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. MacDougall.” Bess held out her hand like the grand Southern Belle she hoped to become.

MacDougall took her fingertips gently in his giant paw of a hand and bowed to her. “The pleasure be all mine, Mistress Dulaney. All mine, indeed.”

When Lester Bacon realized the man wanting the wagon was a friend of MacDougall’s, he kissed his profit goodbye. It was a fact up and down the front range of the Rockies, and, from what Lester had heard, deep into the heart of the mountains themselves, that Red Beard MacDougall was just about the toughest son of a bitch walking. Not mean, not greedy, but tough, and fair. The big Scot expected everyone else to be as fair and honest as he was, and woe be unto the man who wasn’t.

In a matter of minutes the sale of the wagon, team, and harnessing was complete.

As the Scot, the Southerner, and the two young girls walked away, Lester Bacon let out a sigh. There was always another greenhorn coming along. He would make a profit yet, before this day was done.

“You’re a handy man to have around,” Carson said to MacDougall as they walked away from the livery. “I doubt I would have gotten the wagon and team so cheaply if it weren’t for you. You have my thanks.”

MacDougall chuckled through his bushy red beard. “Ye be welcome, lad. Bacon and me, we go back a ways. Yon wagon’ll get ye and yer lassies home in fine shape. Would ye be mindin’ a wee bit o’ company on the trip, I be wondering.”