by Janet Dailey
The sheriff moved forward to take Culley’s arm and lead him away. “Let’s go, Culley.” Culley made a brief attempt to shake away the hand on his arm, but Doc Barlow came up on his other side, his benign influence quieting the rebellion.
“You need help, some time to rest,” Doc said. “We’ll see that you get it.”
Culley stood his ground for a minute, not resisting, but not yielding to be led away. His half-crazed laugh ran up the scale as he eyed Chase. “I really had you running scared, didn’t I? Now you think that by getting rid of me it will be all over.” Again came the laugh. “I’ll make you a bet that before this week is out your son will be dead. Maybe he’s dying right now while you’re here. I’d like that.”
An icy fire burned within Chase as all mercy went out of him, crowding the restraining image of Maggie from his mind. With cold determination, he walked his horse to the man, turning his mouth until he was looking straight down into the face of his taunter.
“Who’s in this with you?” There was a ruthless quality to the harsh glare of his look, and the demand soft enough to be dangerous. A threat had been made against his son’s life. It would not go unanswered.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Culley replied with a jeering smugness. “Wouldn’t you like to know who put that hangman’s noose on your desk? I think he hates you almost as much as I do.”
“Is it Tucker? Who?” His horse sidestepped closer, tossing its head at the tension of its rider.
“That gutless traitor? Keep guessing.” Culley was enjoying the angry fear his remark had aroused. “Maybe I’ll tell you when you get it right.”
His lips disappeared into the thinning line of his mouth. “By God, I’ll have his name from you if I have to reach inside your throat and tear it out!” A gleam of satisfaction came into Culley’s eyes and Chase realized he would not get his answer by using force. With an effort, he took hold of his temper and drew back, changing his tactics. “It’s all a lie, isn’t it? You don’t have a partner in this. Nobody would be fool enough to team up with a man who’s mentally deranged. I don’t know why I’m wasting my time listening to a raving lunatic like you.”
As she closed the east gate to the north range, Maggie glanced again at the pickup truck and empty horse trailer parked along the ranch road. Turning in the saddle, she scanned the rolling terrain for a sign of the truck’s occupants. This far from The Homestead, her presence was bound to raise questions if she was seen by any Triple C riders. She preferred that Chase not find out that she was making one last appeal to Culley to bring an end to this attempt to terrorize them.
The endless sky stretched over the wild plains, empty of any rider, save herself. She sent her horse forward at a canter, angling north toward the Shamrock boundary. She sat in the saddle with a born sureness, a slim extension of her horse. There was a firm line to her lips and a self-assurance in the way she held her head, a driving directness in her attitude.
For so long she had lived with uncertainty, filled with question for what tomorrow held and holding on to Chase’s strength. That wasn’t her nature. With the morning’s decision to face her brother and take a stand against him, her old self-reliance returned. It was a relief not to shy away from the looming shadows of reality. She and Chase would survive this—or they wouldn’t, but her resolve to bring the situation to a climax didn’t waver. She was cool and strong; the land had bred this into her, as it had bred it into Chase. There was trouble ahead, and she had to face it squarely without leaning on Chase.
The gate to the fenced range was lost from sight. Off to her left, a cow bellowed as Maggie skirted the crown of a hill. She glanced toward the sound, automatically checking her horse to a trot. Motion caught her eye first as a range cow bolted away from a clump of willows to race over the grassy meadows with a calf at its side. Her glance sought the cause for the cow’s hasty retreat, and Maggie noticed the two saddled horses standing in the shade of the trees. It was another second before she saw the two riders on the ground and recognized Ty as one of them. On its own, her horse slowed to a walk as she watched her son stow something in the rear pouch of one of his saddlebags. The second rider walked up behind him and raised his arm, bringing it down suddenly. In what seemed to be slow motion, Ty pitched forward against his horse; then his legs slowly buckled and he crumpled to the ground. Gradually it dawned on her that he’d been hit over the head and knocked unconscious.
Maggie’s reaction was instantaneous. She spurred her horse and changed its course toward the small clump of trees. She gave full rein to her temper. The thunder of her horse’s hooves turned the cowboy’s head in her direction. He had grabbed Ty’s feet and started to drag him around; then he saw her and stopped, to stand erect. He stepped forward to catch the bridle of her horse as it slid to a stop and Maggie bailed out of the saddle.
“You got here just at the right moment, Maggie. Ty fell and hit his head,” Buck Haskell explained with an anxious look of concern. “I was trying to lift him into the saddle. You can give me a hand.”
“He didn’t fall! You hit him over the head!” she accused in a fiery burst of anger. “I saw you!” She started to push her way by him to attend to her son, but he caught her arms to stop her. Her green eyes flashed him a killing glance. “Take your hands off me! This stupidity has gone too far! And I don’t give a damn what the reasons for it might be!”
She attempted to shrug out of his hold with an angry twist of her shoulders, but his grip tightened. The easygoing expression that usually masked his face fell away. In its stead, Maggie saw deadly cunning in his blue eyes. Her primitive instincts recognized the presence of danger.
“So you saw me hit him.” His cold smile chilled her and she stopped struggling. “In that case, I guess I’ll just have to speed up my timetable and get rid of both of you at the same time.”
“What are you talking about?” Until that moment, she had been ready to dismiss this as another hazing incident. A cold chill danced through her blood as she realized differently.
“Why, I was going to wait a couple of weeks before I arranged for your disappearance. You were going to be so overwrought over the death of your son that you just took off for parts unknown.” His grin became menacing, cold and calculating.
Her glance flashed to her unconscious son. “Ty—” she began, then felt a tremor of relief when she saw the rise and fall of his chest. He was alive.
“No, he isn’t dead yet.” Buck followed her thoughts. “The greenhorn kid is going to get his foot caught in the stirrup when his horse spooks at a rattlesnake. I’m going to do my darnedest to help him, but he’ll get dragged to death before I can catch his horse.” He adopted a look of mock regret and anguish. “I’ll tell Chase how it was all my fault, and blame myself for not being able to save him. I’ll cry and beg him to forgive me, tell him how terrible I feel.”
Maggie felt the curdling of fear in her stomach. She could almost see the scene he was describing. No matter how great his grief, Chase would never blame Buck—would never guess.
“You won’t get away with it now. I know about it, so it won’t work.”
“It will work,” he insisted confidently. “I admit it might look suspicious for you to disappear the same day your son is killed in a ranch accident. But even if they suspect foul play, Chase is going to blame your crazy brother. You should never have come back, Maggie.”
“Why? Why do you want to kill us?” She strained against the grip of his hands, pulling back as she searched his face for a reason.
“Because the Triple C is going to be mine. If you hadn’t come back, Chase would have made me his heir, left me control of the ranch—just the way it should have been from the beginning. I had him convinced of it until you showed up with that bastard of yours.” His upper lip trembled on the edge of a snarling hatred. With a rough shove, he pushed her toward his tethered horse. A coiled rope was looped around his saddle horn. Before Maggie could fully recover her balance and elude him, he had grabbed the rope
and slipped the noose around her wrist, pulled it snug to tie her hands together. The impulse to fight him rose and was immediately squelched by the glimpse of Ty stirring behind him. Her priority changed and she submitted without a struggle in order to keep Buck distracted while Ty regained consciousness.
“You’re responsible for the death of the stallion and that calf, aren’t you?” she accused to keep him talking and cover any sound Ty might make as he came to.
“No.” He grinned at her, snugging the rope until it bit into her flesh. “Your brother’s visit on your wedding night proved to be opportune. We discovered that we both wanted the same thing when I was ‘escorting’ him off the ranch. We decided to team up.”
“That’s a lie,” she denied. “Culley isn’t interested in owning the Triple C.”
“Let’s say that we both want to see Chase dead and in his grave. We just have different reasons for wanting it. Your brother wants to see every Calder wiped off the face of the earth, and I want the ranch. We just want to have some fun with him first, give him some misery,” he taunted. “It really shook him up when he saw that stallion of his old man’s hanging from that stable beam. Your brother is really looking forward to the day when he can hang Chase and call it suicide. Culley told me about your pa and how he died. It’s poetic justice for Chase to go the same way.”
“I don’t believe you.” She saw Ty’s arm move jerkily, half-lifting it to his head as he started coming around. She talked louder, trying to give her son a warning. “You plan to kill Ty and me. And you expect me to believe that my brother approves of this?”
“Your brother doesn’t know about my plans for you. He’ll think you disappeared, just like everyone else will. Or else he’ll figure that Chase killed you. Nobody will find your body. You’re just going to vanish without a trace. It doesn’t matter to Culley that the kid is his nephew. He’s a Calder first.”
She didn’t dare look at Ty and possibly draw Buck’s attention to him. Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware that he was pushing carefully and quietly to his feet, making very little noise. Her pulse was racing. She was afraid he was going to try something foolish, like attempting to overpower Buck and rescue her. She tried to subtly send Ty a message.
“You won’t get away with this, Buck. Chase will find out somehow. Somebody will tell him, get word to him somehow,” she insisted, and Ty hesitated, poised beside his saddled horse.
Buck frowned at her. “Who would tell him? Nobody knows. You’re as loony as your brother.”
“You’re the one who’s crazy if you think you won’t get caught.” As Ty put his weight into the stirrup, the saddle leather creaked. An instantly alert Buck spun toward the sound. For an indecisive second, Ty sat motionless in the saddle. Maggie threw herself at Buck, tangling her legs with his to trip them both to the ground. “Go, Ty! Ride for help!” she yelled, and had a glimpse of him spurring his horse away from them before Buck kicked her out of his way. With a grunt of pain, she was sent rolling off him as he scrambled to his feet. He took one step after the fleeing horse and rider, already in full stride and lengthening the distance, then raced to his saddled horse to tug his rifle free of its leather scabbard. Buck looked toward his target but didn’t bother to bring the rifle to his shoulder.
He gave Maggie a grimly mocking look as she staggered to her feet, hampered by her wrists, tied in front of her. “It was a nice try, Maggie, but you only postponed the inevitable. The kid isn’t going to find any help,” he jeered, “not in that direction.” With a sinking heart, Maggie realized that the horse and rider were streaking north. “In ten minutes he’ll be lost. I won’t have any trouble finding him. This just rearranges things. A fella’s gotta stay flexible. I’ll work it the other way around—dispose of you now, then hunt down the kid. The result’s the same.”
Chapter XXXVI
Less than three miles from the scene, the sight of a cottonwood and willow barrier forced Ty to rein his puffing horse to a halt. Through the thick-leaved limbs, he had a glimpse of sunshine glittering on the smooth surface of water and realized he was lost. They had crossed no river.
It was three o’clock and his shadow lay on the grass to his right. The discovery that he’d incorrectly ridden north brought a groan of despair. The pickup was to the east—the pickup, with its citizen’s-band radio and the rifle in the rear window rack. He reined his horse to the right to put the sun at his back and kicked it into a reluctant gallop.
Water splashed, followed by the grunts of horses laboring up a bank and the groan of saddle leather and jangle of bridle chains. Ty almost cried aloud with relief when he saw the quartet of riders gallop into view with his father at the head. His hoarse shout pulled them to a halt, their horses plunging excitedly when he approached.
“Where’s Buck?” His father’s question was urgent and demanding.
Ty waved a hand to the south. “He’s got Mom. He’s going to kill her, I think.” And he breathlessly explained the little he’d overheard and noticed how white his father seemed beneath the layers of tan. Yet none of the information appeared to startle him.
“Show us where you left them,” Chase ordered. He loosened the flap securing his rifle in the scabbard and pulled it free. The trio of riders followed suit.
Her heart was pounding in her chest, but she was thinking clearly. The more time she gave Ty to get away, the longer it would take for Buck to find him, which strengthened the chance that someone from the ranch would stumble across them. The galloping hooves of Ty’s horse faded from her hearing as she lifted her gaze from the rifle muzzle in Buck’s hands. She had to keep him talking.
“You aren’t going to get away with this. Somewhere you’ll slip up. Look at what already has gone wrong. Nothing is going the way you planned.” She tried to puncture his confidence, make him hesitate.
“I’ve gone too far to turn back now.” He shrugged and the rifle barrel swung away from her. “I know how to cover my tracks.”
“When Chase finds out I’m missing, he’ll turn this place upside down looking for me. How can you be sure there isn’t something of mine here that would be incriminating evidence?” Her hat was on the ground, knocked off when she fell while tripping Buck. “Are you positive that you can wipe out all traces?”
With the rifle cradled in the crook of his arm, the muzzle pointed down, he scooped the hat off the ground and walked over to push it on top of her head. “It’d be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”
“How are you going to get rid of my body so no one will find it?” She spoke matter-of-factly, not letting her imagination dwell on the subject. “You’re running out of time, Buck. If you dig a shallow grave, you run the risk of a coyote uncovering it. My bones will be found sooner or later, and people will start putting two and two together and coming up with your name.”
But he just smiled. “I’m not going to dig any grave for you. I’ll just dump your body in the river.” He cocked his head to one side, his attitude smug and mocking. “Gas makes a corpse float. Did you know that? The insides bloat all up, making it buoyant. When I was in prison, my cellmate was a half-breed Arapaho. He told me about it and said you could keep a dead man from floating if you disemboweled him and filled him with rocks.” He paused, then observed, “You’re looking a little pale, Maggie. I admit it’s a grisly thought, but it is effective, very effective.”
“You’re crazy.” She took a step backward, recoiling in a wary move and fighting the tremors that shook her.
His look became ugly. “You may think I’m crazy, but I’m not going to be cheated out of this ranch. It should have been mine from the beginning. I’m a better cowman, a better rider and roper. I’m better than Chase any day of the week. My mother, my grandparents—all the way back, it was their sweat and blood that built this ranch. I deserve to be in charge. It’s my right as much as it is anyone’s!” He walked over to grab the trailing reins of Maggie’s grazing horse. His gesture was impatient as he motioned her over. “Get on your h
orse.”
“No.” She backed up another step. “I’m not going with you peaceably. And if you kill me here, then you’ll have to carry me to the river. How would you explain the blood on the saddle?”
“Listen, you little bitch—” Buck took a step toward her just as her horse lifted its head and sent out a searching whicker to the right.
Maggie turned. “Chase!” She cried out his name as he crowned the jagged ridge of a hill and started down the slope at the head of a band of riders. She broke into a clumsy run, her coordination made awkward by the hands bound in front of her.
She had barely gone four feet when she was grabbed by the hair and jerked to a stop. An arm hooked around her neck, half-choking her, the toes of her boots barely scraping the ground. Her body acted as a shield for Buck, the barrel of the rifle lying diagonally across her front, the muzzle pointed up toward her head.
“Pull up, Chase!” Buck shouted the order. “That’s close enough!”
Chase slid his horse to a plunging stop, the other riders spreading out behind him. “Let her go, Buck. You don’t stand a chance against all of us.”
Her fingers dug into Buck’s arm, straining to ease the strangling pressure on her throat. There were too many. It was impossible for Buck to salvage any remnant of his plan now. She could feel his desperation hover on panic.
“Throw away that rifle!” Buck called. The blood bay shifted nervously under Chase as he tightened his one-handed grip on his rifle and debated his chances, but the risk was too great for Maggie. He flung it into the tall grass. “Tell Nate and the others to ditch theirs.”
“Do what he says,” Chase growled under his breath and swung out of the saddle on the right side, stepping to the ground and facing Buck every minute. Behind him, he heard the thud of the rifles being dropped to the ground. “It’s me you want, Buck, so let her go.”
“If I let her go, I’m finished. We both know that. She’s my ticket now.”