“Pa always made that your job, Rafe. He put too much on you. Both our folks put too much on all of us.” Ethan let his smile fade. “I’d never neglect my little girls like our parents did us. A youngster needs someone watching over them.”
Ethan looked from one brother to the other, and he knew they were all thinking about that cave. How wild they’d run. How Seth almost died.
How Ethan had watched his little brother’s mind break. How Ethan had done the breaking.
“It’s not gonna be like that for the children Julia and I have. I don’t know why Pa even gave us a thought. I suppose dying makes a man consider his life. I reckon he wanted to tell you good-bye, but he was ugly about it. Mad at me for not keeping the family together. There he was dying and all he cared about was trapping and complaining about his children. He said something about wanting a wife or a daughter at his side. Ranted and raved about women taking better care of him than I did.”
“I reckon he’s right about that. Girls are usually better at caring for the sick, short of doctoring.” Ethan had the urge to give Rafe a hug for going through all that. To stop such an embarrassing thing from happening, he shoved his hands in his back pockets.
Oh sure, Rafe had hugged him when he’d first come home, and they’d both hugged Seth. But that was enough of that nonsense. Ethan decided he’d maybe hug his wife just a bit more tonight to get the feeling to ease. He liked that idea. Rafe could get Julia to hug him, too.
Which again left Seth. Seth definitely needed a wife.
Seth wiped his palms again. “Let’s get back to tracking. Talking about Pa is about as much fun as living alone in a cabin all winter.”
Ethan had to agree. Anything to do with Pa was no fun at all.
“How could you not get her, Grove?” Mitch wanted to come at Grove with his fists. Furiously he said, “Now they’ll be on their guard.”
“Guard or not, our chance’ll come.” Grove didn’t like to be pushed, and Mitch was in the mood to do some serious pushing.
Grove’s icy-cold eyes studied the woods around the ranch.
Impatient and grim, Mitch thought of just how Jasper Henry handled people who betrayed him. Merciless. No one got away.
“Jasper is probably about ready to send someone after us.” Grove’s icy eyes went downright frigid.
“Yep, he was in a powerful hurry.” Fear skittered up Mitch’s backbone and it made him mad. He liked dispensing fear a lot better than feeling it. “Tracker was only a day late contacting the boss before he called us in.”
Grove pulled his Colt out and checked that it was fully loaded.
Mitch didn’t know why he bothered. Grove and his gun were always ready. “We’ll never get that woman and find out what she knows about Jasper’s money without a fight. And having all three of those Kincaids around makes it harder. We need to thin them out.”
“Might be a good time right now. The men are worn down from a bad night’s sleep. The Kincaids are off in the woods looking for trouble.” Grove swung those eyes to Mitch. “Maybe we oughta let them find some.”
Mitch liked the idea. He was in the mood to hurt somebody. “Let’s do it before they learn anything from their tracking.”
Grove bristled. “I was careful.”
“Careful or not, those Kincaids are knowin’ men. The folks in Rawhide all say so.” They’d all agreed that the oldest, Rafe, was the toughest cowpoke in the territory, maybe in the whole West. A couple of folks in town had been around long enough to remember the younger brothers. Ethan, the middle one, always full of easy smiles but as smooth and fast with a pistol as any man needed to be. The youngest was a wild man, not afraid of anything.
Grove hissed.
Mitch fell silent as the foreman came walking up. “What’ve you got for us to do now, Steele?” Mitch hadn’t meant to sound gruff. He didn’t need to give this old wolf an excuse to fire them. “Sorry. Long night. We’re ready to work, boss.”
Mitch deliberately forced his shoulders lower and tipped his head down. He could feel the need to hurt someone, work off the frustration of failing last night.
“We’re all worn out.”
Mitch didn’t like this one’s sharp eyes, and he didn’t want to stand around getting to know him, just in case Steele could read too much.
“I showed you a couple of the pastures yesterday. You two ride out and have a look. No one’s been out all day.” The foreman had a casual tone to his voice, but his eyes were mighty watchful.
Mitch strode alongside Grove on their way to the corral. As soon as they were out of hearing range from Steele, Mitch said, “Once we’re away from this place, we’ll circle back and thin out the Kincaid brothers.”
“I’m ready.” Grove slapped leather on his horse, swung up, and spurred the gelding toward the woods directly away from the Kincaids’.
Chapter
16
“I feel an itch between my shoulder blades.” Seth turned in a circle, studying the thick forest.
Ethan paid enough attention to draw his gun and make sure it was loaded, but he couldn’t help but remember Seth was as crazy as a hydrophobic squirrel.
“You hear anything? See anything?” Rafe rose from where he’d hunkered down by another footprint. He yanked his gloves off and tucked them behind his belt buckle, then checked the load in his gun.
“Nope.” Seth had his gun out, too.
Should a lunatic carry a gun? Ethan decided to think about that later. Right now he didn’t mind having both his brothers ready to fight.
Rafe studied the woods in one direction, Seth in another, Ethan took a third. There was a sheer wall of rock lifting up on one side, so they were safe from the west.
Ethan got real close to Seth and Rafe and lowered his voice. “If Seth’s itch is right, maybe whoever started that fire is out here, listening, to see if we’re on to him.”
They’d come a long way from the clearing around the ranch. They’d as good as climbed a mountain following a difficult trail. At the top of a rise, the trail had begun moving to the south, then curled around in a line that, if it kept going, would take a body around the ranch and come out behind the bunkhouse. Or if a man went a bit farther, he could get into the cabin without being seen from the barn—where all the men were busy fighting fire. Ethan’s jaw got so tight he thought his teeth might crack.
“Spread out.” Rafe giving orders. “No sense making ourselves an easy target.”
Made sense to Ethan. He dropped back. Seth surged ahead and to the left. Rafe eased off to the right.
“I don’t think there’s much more to learn from these tracks. Let’s head back.” Obeying Rafe was as familiar as the sunrise. “We’ll see if the men are all accounted for.”
His brothers nodded but didn’t talk as they fanned out and descended a section so steep, Ethan could reach his arm out straight behind him and touch the ground. Things leveled off and they picked up the pace. Seth, a few yards ahead, stepped into a clearing, Rafe next.
Just as Ethan emerged, the sharp crack of a twig snapping brought his head around to his left. “Get down!”
All three of them were already moving. He dove for cover just as two six-guns opened up.
In the instant he was in midair, Ethan remembered something about the three Kincaid boys.
Sure Rafe was a tyrant.
It was true Ethan refused to take life seriously.
Seth was a crazy man, no denying it.
But they were all wilderness born and bred. They’d endured bitter cold winters and cattle stampedes. They’d lived through run-ins with rattlesnakes and grizzly bears. They’d survived working with longhorns and bucking broncs. They’d hunted wildcats and rustlers and lived to tell the tale. Besides that . . . they’d been saddled with a mighty poor set of parents. They’d raised themselves, and except for being bossy, apathetic, and crazy, they’d learned a lot of hard lessons about survival in a hard land.
It all added up to them being hard men to kill.
&n
bsp; Ethan clawed his way to a boulder. A bullet caromed off the rocks two inches above his head. Spinning around on his knees to take aim, he saw Seth, who’d been in the lead, get out of the small clearing on the far side, about twenty feet away. He scrambled behind a narrow oak and vanished.
Good thing the boy was skinny.
Rafe had been farthest from the gunmen, but he was also farthest from safety. He fired with his right arm crossing his body, shooting under his left arm as he ran, crouching low. A bullet slammed into him and his six-shooter flew.
A shout of rage tore out of Ethan’s throat.
Rafe jumped over a fallen tree. He landed on his belly just as bullets bit a line into the trunk. Blood glistened on the stump. A thin line of Rafe’s shirt was visible. The shooters were on high ground and they had him pinned down.
Ethan opened fire. He sent a rolling crash of lead in the direction of the attack. He couldn’t see where the shooters were hiding, but he could make a good guess. Even without a target, he needed to draw the fire away from Rafe.
A glance at the fallen tree told Ethan that Rafe was still flat on the ground, unmoving, behind that meager protection.
Was Rafe still because he had to stay down? Or was he dead?
The smell of smoking cordite burned Ethan’s lungs and lit up his rage as he kept up a thundering volley of bullets.
He counted two gunmen, both shooting down from a rocky ledge to the north. Ethan couldn’t see the ledge, tucked back in the trees, but he knew Kincaid land, and he knew that ledge was high enough that, from up there, this clearing was easily visible.
Fury welled up in Ethan as he thought about his big brother, who may be lying dead at the hands of cowards. He kept up his shooting, and at last the bullets turned to him.
He pulled the trigger on an empty chamber. With a quick hand he cracked the gun open and shoved in more bullets.
His shoulder-high boulder was one of a heap spilled down from the side of a mountain, and Ethan had thought it looked like solid cover. Then bullets started bouncing off the rocks behind him and he was dodging lead from every direction.
Seth opened fire.
The bullets smashed into the rocks and whizzed past Ethan’s face. Bits of granite sliced his skin. He dropped and dragged himself along on his elbows to stay low, trying to get away from the vicious field of fire.
Ethan got another rock between him and the stinging, careening bullets. Once he was clear, he opened up again. Seth was no longer shooting. Afraid he’d find another brother shot and maybe dead, he twisted around until he could see the tree Seth had ducked behind. Seth had quit shooting so he could climb the tree he hid behind.
Like a giant squirrel.
A giant crazy squirrel.
Ethan couldn’t yell at him to keep down or he’d give away Seth’s position—if Seth was crazy enough to answer. Instead, Ethan kept moving, hoping he could find a spot that was clear enough he could see what he was shooting at. He moved to a spot where he could no longer see Rafe, so he had no way of knowing if Rafe had moved to better cover.
But with Seth and Ethan taking turns shooting, they were drawing the fire away from Rafe.
As Seth climbed, Ethan scrambled sideways, shooting, ducking, dodging bullets, keeping his head down as he crawled forward, then opened fire again.
He had only a few more yards to go to get in a position where that ledge was visible. He could take dead aim. Finish this.
Steele and the cowhands were coming now. Ethan knew it without hearing a thing. When Steele got here, the dry-gulchers would cut out for sure. Knowing Audra and Julia, they’d probably come running, too. Ethan had to end this before the women got involved.
He kept moving.
“Rafe! Ethan!” Steele was charging into the fight at the risk of his own life. His yelling told Ethan he was trying to draw the fire toward him.
There were pounding footsteps behind Steele, so he’d come with help.
The attack broke off. The bullets quit buzzing as suddenly as they’d begun. Ethan heard rustling in the bushes and the sound of running feet.
He jumped to his feet, conscious of the would-be killers, but taking a chance.
Determined to get a least one good look at the varmints.
All a man had to do was run around the edge of the clearing, then come dashing up with Steele and the men to give themselves a perfect alibi.
Ethan sprinted around trees and rocks. Footsteps sounded in the distance, and Ethan charged toward the sound. He heard hoofbeats and knew he was too late. One look, one glimpse of these men, was all he wanted. He ran on until the galloping horses outpaced him in the distance.
He gave up, disgusted, and turned just as Seth dropped down from the tree right in front of him.
Squirrel-Boy was short a furry tail. Then Ethan looked closer and Seth had the look of a hunter in his eyes. His gun was drawn. Ethan fought the urge to back up, get out of the line of Seth’s six-guns. Seth’s eyes seemed to focus on Ethan. The guns went back into the holster and the predatory gaze faded.
Ethan closed his eyes to keep from cutting a chunk out of his loco brother.
Brother!
“Rafe!” Ethan’s eyes popped open and met Seth’s. They turned and ran back to the sight of the shooting to see Rafe standing up, shaking his bleeding hand.
“How bad is it?” Ethan asked.
Rafe shook his head. “It’s just a scratch. I’ll live to be shot at another day.”
“I heard them ride out to the north, Steele.” Ethan turned on his foreman. “I want to know who’s not accounted for.”
“I sent half the men out to check the herds because no one had been out all day. I can’t begin to account for where everybody is right now.”
Ethan clenched his fist and only kept from punching his foreman because it’d be pure stupidity. “Then what horses are missing? You know our stock. See if you can identify the hoofprints.”
“I’ll try. Bad ground for tracking.” Steele shouted a couple of names and headed into the underbrush.
“Seth, did you get a look at them?” Ethan turned to his tree-climbing brother. Maybe the boy wasn’t entirely crazy.
“Nope.” Seth reloaded his gun, his movements jerky and fast. “They took off running before I could see either of them.”
“Let’s get back to the cabin, quick.” Ethan looked at Rafe’s bleeding hand. “The women will have heard the shooting. And you need to get that gunshot looked after.”
The mention of the women set them striding down the slope toward home.
Ethan stepped into the clearing around the cabin to see Julia and Audra at open windows, both armed, braced for trouble. They’d gotten to Ethan’s rifles and had them in hand.
“Smart women,” Seth said. “I sure wish one of them would’ve married me.”
Ethan slugged Seth in the shoulder. “Can’t have mine.”
“Mine neither,” Rafe said, smiling, holding his bleeding hand against his chest.
“Rafe!” Julia dropped her rifle and vanished from the window.
“Should’ve stopped the bleeding before we came into view.” Rafe picked up speed. “I don’t like them outside. Those gunmen might still be around.”
The front door of the cabin slammed open and Julia shot out of it and down the steps.
“I’m fine. It’s just a scratch. None of us got hurt.” Under his breath, Rafe added, “Much.”
“Let’s get inside,” Ethan said. They all three hurried forward, and Julia met Rafe only a few steps from the cabin. He caught her in his arms, lifted her off her feet and kept moving.
“Rafe! You’ll hurt your hand!” Julia wiggled to get down even as Rafe practically ran toward the doorway.
“Hold still. You’ll hurt me more if you’re moving around.”
Julia froze.
A surprise to Ethan. She was actually being obedient. His big brother was a genius.
Audra came to the door. Holding Maggie in one arm with a rifle in the other.
What a woman.
Ethan heard Lily crying in the background and was hard on Rafe’s heels as Rafe carried Julia into the house. Audra stepped back to clear the doorway.
“What’s going on, Rafe?” Julia slapped at Rafe’s shoulders. Ethan noticed she didn’t put any force behind it. “Why are you carrying me?”
“I want you inside. That’s why.”
Ethan pushed past Rafe and went to pick up Lily, disarming Audra as he went by. He stole a quick kiss, too. He scooped Lily up and she slowed down with her bawling. By the time he’d hung his rifle up on the rack near the fireplace, the baby was calm. Ethan turned to see Rafe surrounded by fussing women. He almost wished he’d gotten shot.
Nah.
“Ethan, I want to see your burns.” Audra scowled at him as if he were a naughty schoolboy. And since Ethan had never been to school, having never lived near one, it surprised him some to recognize the look.
“This is a crease from a bullet, Rafe Kincaid. You tell me right now what happened.” Julia was snipping at him, but she held his hand so gently and her eyes were so kind and worried, Ethan figured Rafe was enjoying himself.
With Maggie on her hip, Audra whirled from Rafe’s side, got a basin of steaming hot water, and hurried back to the table with it. Ethan enjoyed watching her move.
“I’ve got some bandages torn up. I made them for Ethan.” She turned to flash a look at him so fiery he wondered if he might have a few new blisters. “But he hasn’t stood still long enough for me to wrap him up.”
“You can’t wrap up my whole back, Audie.” Ethan snagged her as she hurried past him and took another kiss, slower this time. They were getting pretty good at kissing with two babies between them. When he eased back, he said, “I’ll let you take care of my burns later, sweetheart, just see if I don’t.”
“Don’t call me Audie.” That order would have carried more weight if she’d been able to look away from his lips.
Seth laughed.
In Too Deep Page 17