Joseph was pleased when David replied, “That’s interesting. If you know nothing, Jeb, how is it you even know Darby was shot?”
“Got it in town from Slim Jim Davidson.”
Slim Jim, the bootlack? Joseph dropped his gaze to Jeb’s manure-encrusted plow shoes.
David glanced at Jeb’s feet, too. “Got your boots shined, did you?”
“Hell, no. What do I look like, a Nancy boy? I seen Slim Jim when I dropped off my other boots at the cobbler shop.”
Jeb’s oldest son, Hayden, emerged from the house just then. His weapon of choice was a Smith & Wesson revolver. He wore the gun belt cinched tight at his waist, the holster hanging free. Stocky like his sire, he stood to his father’s left, puffed out his chest, spread his feet, and planted his hands on his hips. He wore nothing over his faded red undershirt, the tattered sleeves riding high on his thick, hairy forearms.
The stench coming from the porch grew stronger with Hayden’s arrival. Soap and water being cheap, Joseph could only wonder why some folks refused to wash. Though he couldn’t imagine it, he guessed there was some truth to the saying that a man stopped smelling himself after three days.
“What’s this about the shooting?” Hayden fairly growled the question, displaying the inherent charm that ran so strongly in his family.
David shifted his weight in the saddle. “I just wanted to ask your pa a few questions.”
“Why pester Pa?”
That inquiry came from inside the house. Boots thumped loudly to the door, and Cyrus, the next oldest son, came out. The very spit of Hayden and his father, Cyrus positioned himself at Jeb’s right side.
“Pa’s got no quarrel with Darby McClintoch,” Cyrus exclaimed. “Neither does Hayden or me.”
“Never said any of you did,” David replied. “I’m just sifting through the flour for weevils, so to speak.”
“Ain’t no weevils around here,” Cyrus assured him.
David smiled. “I’m sure not. I just dropped by to see if you fellows saw or heard anything yesterday. As a crow flies, the scene of the shooting isn’t that far from here.”
“Happened in the same place where Hollister got his,” Jeb interjected. “Leastwise, that’s what Slim Jim says.”
“Slim Jim seems to know quite a few details,” David observed dryly. “That’s strange. I’ve kept a pretty tight lid on things.”
Jeb’s beady little eyes took on a dangerous glint. “You sayin’ I’m lyin’?”
David sat back in the saddle, a clear sign to anyone who knew him well that he wanted fast access to his weapon. The blasting potential of a shotgun still fresh in Joseph’s mind, he took his cue from David and tossed down his cigarette.
“I’m just amazed that Slim Jim knows so much about the shooting, like I said,” David replied evenly. “Make what you want of it.”
“Maybe you oughta talk to Doc,” Jeb suggested. The brown hen chose that moment to leave her nest in the washtub. She clucked cheerfully as she hopped off the porch. “Doc was at the Golden Slipper last night, flappin’ his lip about Darby to anybody who’d listen.”
David’s jaw muscle had started to tick. “You never liked Henry Hollister, did you, Jeb?”
“Hated his guts, more like,” Jeb shot back. “He was a selfish, connivin’ bastard.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Just was, that’s all, and the devil take his black soul.”
“Rumor has it that you had some kind of a boundary dispute with him.”
“Dis-pute, hell. It was a flat-out war, and he only won ’cause he hired a highfalutin lawyer outa Denver to twist the facts all around.”
“The facts as they actually were?” David asked. “Or the facts as you saw them?”
Pritchard came forward a step, his face flushing red with anger above his scraggly mustache and beard. “Facts is facts, and there’s only one way to see ’em. Wolverine Crick marked my south boundary, and that damned flood in seventy-nine moved it. Way I see it, my property line should’ve moved with it!”
“Not according to the recorded deed that I read last night,” David replied. “Your south boundary line description clearly states that the rock formation, once at the center of Wolverine Creek, is the permanent survey monument, with the boundary moving in a straight line, east and west from there, for a certain number of feet in each direction. The stream helped delineate that line, but it didn’t legally define it. The rocks did.”
“Fancy words! Hollister stole what was rightfully mine!” Pritchard jabbed his chest with a grimy finger. “My land, bought and paid for with my own sweat.”
“A lot of folks think it was just the other way around, that it was you who tried to steal from Hollister by insisting that the stream marked your property line, even though it had moved and encompassed several acres of Hollister’s prime ranchland.”
“Bullshit. It ain’t stealin’ to demand what’s already yourn. I bought a place with runnin’ water. Ain’t right that the water’s gone, leavin’ me nothin’ but a dry crick bed and thirsty cows. But Henry Hollister refused to set things right.”
“He channeled water into a pond on your property.”
“Well, whoop-dee-do. Wasn’t that just grand of him?”
“Did you kill him?” David fired the question.
“Hell, no, I didn’t kill him. But I can’t say I’m sorry the bastard’s dead. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I celebrated when I heard what happened. Justice was served, if you ask me.”
David’s eyes narrowed. “And his wife and kids? You glad they’re dead, too, Jeb?”
“The devil take the whole lot of ’em,” Jeb volleyed back. “Too bad the oldest girl didn’t die with the rest. Maybe then I could’ve bought that place. As it stands, you couldn’t get her off that ranch with a wagonload of dynamite.”
“Pa,” Cyrus said, his voice cast low. “Watch what you say.”
“Watch what I say, be damned. A man can’t be thrown in the hoosegow for speakin’ his mind.”
From the corner of his eye, Joseph saw the youngest son emerge from the barn. Like his older brothers, Alan Pritchard wore a sidearm. There all similarity ended. Pale and flaxen-haired, he was a good fifteen years younger than Hayden or Cyrus, who were pushing forty. He was also the beanpole of the family, so thin that he barely cast a shadow standing sideways.
Gossip had it that Alan took after his mother, who had died giving birth to him. Gossip also had it that shortly before Charlene Pritchard became pregnant with Alan, she had been sneaking off to meet a blond piano player at the Silver Spur, the oldest of No Name’s two saloons. Jeb supposedly got wind of her shenanigans, came home reeling drunk, and beat her so severely that she went into early labor and bled to death.
For several reasons, not the least of which was Jeb’s charming personality, Joseph believed the gossip. He could well imagine a woman sneaking off from Jebediah Pritchard to be with another man. He could also imagine Jeb using his fists and boots on his pregnant wife. Thirdly, Alan didn’t have the look of a Pritchard. Normally, even when a child took mostly after its mother, there were slight resemblances to the father as well. Joseph suspected that Alan had gotten the blond hair and those long, graceful fingers that twitched so eagerly near his gun from his piano-playing papa.
Drawing gently on Obie’s reins, Joseph backed the stallion up a few paces to better guard his brother’s back. Alan might not be a Pritchard by blood, but he’d been trained up to think like one, and right now he looked to be spoiling for a fight.
“What’s the fuss about, Pa?” Alan asked.
“The marshal here thinks I killed Henry Hollister.” Jeb jutted his chin to spit again. “Thinks I shot Darby McClintoch, too, I reckon.”
Alan’s blue eyes glittered. “I’d shoot a man for insultin’ me like that. Him wearin’ a badge don’t make me no nevermind.”
“Your father would have to take both of us,” Joseph pointed out with a humorless smile, “and he knows that’d be damne
d near impossible.”
“How so?” Posture cocky and challenging, Alan advanced several steps. “There’s four of us and only two of you. You may be fast like folks say, Paxton, but nobody’s that fast. The odds is in our favor.”
Joseph continued to smile. “Draw that gun, son, and you’ll find out how fast I am.”
“Don’t go lettin’ your temper get the best of you, Alan,” Jeb warned. “He’ll clear leather before you even touch your gun.”
Alan curled his lip. “He don’t look that fast to me.”
Joseph sincerely hoped that Jeb got control of this situation. Alan appeared to be somewhere in his early twenties, no longer really a boy, but still too young to die. Joseph had enough regrets to haunt his dreams without adding another to the list.
“Don’t be an idiot, little brother,” Cyrus interjected. “Everybody in these parts knows his reputation. You got a death wish?”
Joseph remained relaxed in the saddle and kept his gaze fixed on Alan’s. The most important part of a gunfight took place during the stare down. A large percentage of the time, the man who blinked first ended up walking away.
Alan blinked.
Holding his hands palm out, he made his way to the porch to stand with his father and brothers. In Joseph’s opinion, this party was fast losing its shine. Knowing that his brother would sit tight and watch his back, he turned Obie and trotted the stallion from the littered yard. When safely out of pistol and shotgun range, he wheeled the horse back around, drew his rifle from its boot, and swung down from the saddle.
As David rode from the yard, Joseph kept a close eye on the Pritchards, ready to shoot if he had to but hoping he wouldn’t. It was an old stratagem, drilled into both Joseph and David by their older brother, Ace. Never take your eye off the enemy unless someone you trust is watching your back.
“That went fair to middling well,” Joseph observed a few minutes later as he and David turned their horses onto Wolverine Road toward town.
“I didn’t find out much of anything.”
Joseph thought about that for a moment. “You found out for sure that Jeb Pritchard hated Henry Hollister’s guts,” he pointed out, “and that he’s glad the man and his family died. Those were pretty strong words, if you ask me. He also said that he wishes Rachel had died with the rest of them.”
David shook his head. “Can you believe that? What did she ever do to him?”
“She lived when the others didn’t, and her existence is preventing him from buying the Hollister place.”
“It’s only land. To wish someone dead over it? If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never understand how some people’s minds work.”
“Me, neither,” Joseph agreed. “But there you have it, David. There are some folks in this world who have no respect for human life. They can kill and feel no remorse.”
David nodded, his expression solemn. “You catch that reference Jeb made to dynamite?”
“Yep. In my opinion, he’s definitely the one who dynamited Wolverine Creek.”
David removed his hat to wipe his brow. “We can’t prove one damned thing. That’s the problem. I can’t arrest a man on supposition.”
“Nope,” Joseph said with a broad grin, “but you can sure as hell make him nervous.” He let that hang there for a moment. “Here in a few days, I reckon you ought to go back. Keep him guessing and off balance. If he killed the Hollisters, he’s become complacent over the last five years, thinking he got away with it. It must be unsettling to have a marshal in his dooryard again, asking if he did it.”
“What good will it do to make him nervous?” David asked.
Joseph touched his heels to Obie’s flanks to quicken the pace. “Nervous men make stupid mistakes, especially if they’re dumber than dirt to start with.”
Rachel had hoped to watch the dogs play through the peephole in her back door, but Ace Keegan sat on the back porch, his broad back and brown Stetson blocking her view of the yard. According to Joseph, Buddy had a brother named Cleveland that belonged to Ace and Caitlin, and the two animals romped nonstop whenever they got together.
Rachel had spent the first thirty minutes after Ace’s arrival pacing in circles around the kitchen table, ever conscious of the gaping hole in her barricade. If someone sneaked in through the window that Joseph had broken, Ace Keegan would be none the wiser. Why wasn’t he sitting at the side of the house to make sure no one got in?
Pacing, pacing. Rachel couldn’t relax enough to sit down and pass the time reading. She thought about cooking something special for supper to make the hours go faster, but that would involve turning her back on the hole in her barricade. Not a good plan. She needed to be ready, with her shotgun close at hand, just in case something happened.
Rachel had paced to the point of exhaustion and was about to sit in the rocker to watch the barricade when she heard a strange sound coming from the front part of the house. A tinkle of laughter? The hair at the nape of her neck stood on end. Then it came again, a light, feminine giggle followed by footsteps, not the imaginary kind that so often set Rachel’s heart to pounding, but real, honest-to-goodness footsteps.
“Raaaa-chel? It’s Caitlin!” a feminine voice called out. “Caitlin O’Shannessy. When Joseph asked Ace to come over and watch the house, I couldn’t resist joining him for a short visit.”
Caitlin? Rachel could scarcely believe her ears.
“I won’t come any farther, I promise, not unless you answer and say it’s okay. I’ve got my baby boy with me.”
This was unprecedented. This was terrifying. This was—oh, God, it was wonderful, too. Caitlin. Rachel hadn’t clapped eyes on her in years and years. Except for Darby and Joseph Paxton last night, she hadn’t seen anyone.
“Hello?” Caitlin called again. “Can you hear me, Rachel? I’m just here to visit for a bit. I won’t come into your room or anything. But here’s the problem. I can’t come back with my baby until you say it’s okay.”
Rachel didn’t have words. To hear a woman’s voice—to know that a friend from childhood was only a few steps away—was almost overwhelming. Tears sprang to her eyes, so many that she could barely see.
Caitlin. As a girl, the redhead had often sported bruises, which she’d gone to great lengths to hide. Even so, everyone at school had seen the marks at one time or another. When asked about the injuries, Caitlin had always sworn that she’d had an accident, her explanations never ringing true. Her father, Conor O’Shannessy, had been an ill-tempered man with a heavy fist, an unquenchable thirst for whiskey, and little if any regard for his children.
“Hello?” Caitlin called again. “I’m just dying to see you, Rachel, and if it was only me—well, I’d be back there, lickety-split. But I have my little boy to think of. Joseph says you have a loaded shotgun. Little Ace, he’s such a dear. I can’t bring him back there until I know for sure that it’s safe. Do you understand?”
Rachel tried once more to speak and simply couldn’t. Caitlin. A ghost from her past, part of a world to which she no longer belonged but had never stopped missing.
“Okay, fine,” Caitlin called. “Visiting is just talking, right? We don’t have to see each other to do that. Although I must warn you, Little Ace is active. He’s already squirming to get down. If I let him loose and he gets away from me, you won’t shoot him, will you?”
Tears streaming, her throat closed off so tightly that she couldn’t breathe, Rachel managed one choked word. “No.” It came out so faint that she doubted Caitlin even heard.
“Well, then!” Caitlin said cheerfully. “He’s down. And, oh, dear, he’s off and running down the hallway. Don’t be startled, please. He just goes as fast as his chubby little legs will carry him. He’s—Little Ace, come out of there. Is there anything that he can get into in the rooms along the hall?”
The concern in Caitlin’s voice had Rachel at the hole in her barricade, trying to remember the contents of the rooms along the corridor. Was there anything that might harm a small child? The sewin
g room. It would be full of dangerous things. Rachel couldn’t clearly recall what she had removed from the room or left lying about, but she knew that the child might find something injurious if he were left to explore.
“Go get him, Caitlin!” she cried. “He’s either in Pa’s library or Ma’s sewing room. There are lots of bad things in Ma’s sewing room. Scissors, maybe. And needles! I’m sure there are lots of needles.”
Footsteps scurried up the hall. Then she heard Caitlin laughing. “You silly boy! What will your pa think if he sees you in that? It’s a dress, sweetheart. Dresses are for ladies, not little boys.”
Rachel recalled the half-finished dress that her mother had been working on when she died. It had been for Rachel, a graduation dress to mark the end of her school days. More tears sprang to her eyes. Pain. Over the last five years, she’d blocked out so many memories, unable to bear thinking of them. Beyond her barricade, the house was filled with them—memories that fairly broke her heart.
Rachel’s hands were clenched over the jagged edge of the hole. The shards of splintered wood cut into her fingers and palms. Eyes closed, cheeks wet, she stood rigidly straight, every muscle in her body aching with the strain.
“Pa?”
Her eyes popped open, and there, standing at the other side of her barricade, was a toddler—a pudgy, raven-haired, sloe-eyed little boy with rosy cheeks and absolute innocence shining on his face. He wore a blue shirt without a collar, knickers that drooped almost to his ankles, and a grin to break Rachel’s heart.
“Pa, pa, pa, pa, pa!” he shouted. And then he grinned, displaying pristinely white bottom teeth, with little ruffles along the edges. “Pa, pa, pa, pa, pa!”
“Little Ace, you get back here this instant!” Caitlin cried, and then there she was, hovering in the doorway, a mother intent on protecting her baby. Her red hair was done up atop her head, just as Rachel remembered the fashion to be, only now long tendrils dangled before her ears and curls popped out almost everywhere. The latest in vogue? Or was the untidy look a result of motherhood and too few minutes in the day?
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