Alberto rode up as Dave finished speaking. “I know you want a look at that cabin you were talking about, getting it set up to live in. I’ll ride a circuit around the canyon and look for bolt-holes.”
“Take Jimmy Joe with you.”
Alberto gave Dave a narrow-eyed look. “That youngster talks until it’s like to make my ears bleed.” Alberto twisted in the saddle and hollered. “Jimmy Joe!”
“Thanks, Alberto. Fire off a bullet if you want someone to come a-runnin’.”
“Good advice for everyone. Keep your eyes open, Dave. We don’t know if Wax Mosby had any other way up here.”
“Let’s ride on to the cabin.” Dave noticed that Jo was getting pretty good at riding. Of course, staying in control of the gentle horse he’d given her was about as tricky as staying in a rocking chair.
They walked the horses. The herd wasn’t a fast-moving bunch, no herd was, so Jo’s riding had been nothing but a walk. Dave decided to leave trotting and galloping for another day.
They reached the cabin, and Dave swung down, then hovered near Jo, holding the reins as she dismounted.
“You’re getting good at that.” He held on to the reins as he studied the cabin and contemplated sleeping here tonight.
“I’m going to sleep here tonight.” Jo strode toward the cabin.
Dave stumbled and rammed his shoulder into the cabin wall. Too bad the outside of the cabin was hidden by limbs and underbrush and whatever else Jo’s grandpa had piled up. Some of it was sharp, and he heard his shirt rip.
“In fact, I might just move in permanently.”
“You can’t move in here.” Dave growled as he rubbed the scrape on his shoulder through the newly torn hole. He was gonna need a new shirt. “I’m moving in here.”
Jo whirled. “You? Why? You don’t have to live right next to your cows, do you?”
“Why would you move in? You’ve got a cabin.”
“Your parents need you. Your ma is tending your pa in the cold, and that leaves her with a lot of work and too few hands.”
“You can’t live up here alone.”
“Just like you said I can’t live up here with my sisters the day you grabbed me in the woods and dragged me out and kept me prisoner for hours?”
“Oh, it wasn’t hours,” Dave said in disgust. One hour at the most. “You’ve got a cabin. I don’t.”
Jo leaned close, glaring. “Are you planning to steal my other home from me, too?”
Dave straightened. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea.”
Jo kicked him in the shin.
“Those moccasin things don’t hurt much.”
She glowered and crossed her arms. Turning, she pressed her back to the door. Almost as if she were blocking his way in, which she sure as certain was. “Maybe you’d let my folks sleep at your place.”
“Ursula would kill me. Or she’d die of fright. She might find a way to do both. My sister is getting crazier all the time.”
“But you do have a cabin, right? And well-built like this one? Your grandpa knows tight construction. This cabin is made to keep out the winter winds.”
“Our cabin is tight, but there’s no room.”
“You said it had bedrooms.”
Jo’s jaw tightened, and he got the idea she really did not want to say something. Which made him ask, “How many bedrooms?”
Her jaw worked funny, it made her look mighty stubborn. Finally, she said, “Three. Three bedrooms. But no empty rooms.”
That sent Dave’s brows arching almost to his hairline. “Three bedrooms for three people? I always shared a bedroom with my big brother, until he moved off to a city. Do you each sleep in your own room?”
“Yes.” She ground the words out like it was killing her to admit it. “There was one for Grandma and Grandpa, one for my ma and pa, and one for us girls. Now we each have our own. We all get along a whole lot better if we’ve got a closed door between us.”
“Then you can leave your crazy sister in one.” He paused for a second. Ilsa was pretty strange. Jo might have two crazy sisters. But only the one seemed foaming-at-the-mouth mad. “You and Ilsa can share, and Ma and Pa can take over one until Pa’s feeling better, and we get a good cabin up for him.”
“Your folks can’t stay there.”
“Sure they can. You can make room for them for a few weeks, can’t you?”
“No.”
“That seems mighty unfriendly. Why can’t they stay?”
“Because Ursula wouldn’t allow it.”
“She’s one sister of three. She doesn’t get to tell you what you can do with your own house.”
She looked straight at her toes. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
Dave leaned close. “We could lie in wait, then sneak in and take the place over. By gum, we could lock her out.”
Jo looked at him in dead silence for a long moment. Then a smile broke over her solemn face, and a chuckle leaked past her clamped jaw, and she relaxed and laughed. “We could take her, couldn’t we?” Jo’s shoulders squared, and her eyes flashed with good humor and determination.
Dave’s expression turned serious. “The truth is, Jo, this snow is falling faster every minute. The little lean-to we built yesterday isn’t fit for the winter, especially not when Pa is so badly hurt. Letting us move into a cabin that’s already built and warm might be the difference between life and death for my pa. Please let us stay.”
14
Why am I climbing this stupid mountain?”
A rocky ledge, coated in ice, crumbled under Mitch’s hand. For a gut-twisting moment, he dangled out over thin air with fifty feet to fall. One hand with a grip, his feet swinging free.
He clawed at the mountain, got both hands back to work, and scrambled to find footing.
As he climbed, he muttered words so rude that, even without a single cuss word, Ma would probably get out the bar of soap.
Ah, he couldn’t wait to see her.
He moved on, fighting for each bit of progress.
His hand landed on something not coated in ice. Then he found another clear spot. Then his feet were above the slippery ledges. A few yards on, he found a place wide enough to sit. There’d been no easy, wide ledge like this when he and Dave had climbed before.
Where was he? Lost? Climbing toward some sheer section of the mountain that would trap him so he couldn’t go up or down?
Or maybe there’d been a rockslide, and the rocks broke in such a way to leave this ledge. He had no idea where he was going to end up.
Exhausted, he sat and caught his breath. He needed to rest for a minute and think.
He still had his saddlebags and guns. He dragged his canteen out and drank water so cold it made his teeth ache. He drew the leather gloves off his stiff-with-cold fingers and finagled around until he could tuck his hands under his arms, inside his shirt.
As he sat there, warming up, out of the sleet but not by any measure out of the cold, he realized he’d gotten above the worst of the storm. And looking down, he saw his home.
Pa had built a nice spread.
Thinking of Pa sent a shudder through him that had nothing to do with the oncoming winter.
He knew exactly why he was climbing this stupid mountain. To find out about Pa.
Was it possible? Could that strong man be dead?
Quill Warden would be a hard man to kill.
But strong wouldn’t stop a bullet. It’d help a man dodge them, but if one landed, no amount of brain, muscles, or strength would stop it.
Mitch considered himself strong, and he had a scar from the bullet that’d creased his right shoulder.
Mitch studied the land below, wondering if he could see things better from up here.
There was no sign of a downed man. But in the deep snow, there wouldn’t be.
“Couldn’t find the body, but they got him sure enough.”
Mitch heard those words from the saloon over and over again. “Couldn’t find the body . . .”
Mit
ch needed to find the outlaw who had done this and make him pay. Wax Mosby. Shaking his head, Mitch knew the Warden family was tangling with terrible enemies.
What had they said? Budge . . . no, Bludge. One man had said, “The Circle Dash is on the far west end of Bludge’s range.”
Mitch had no idea who Bludge was, but if he hired his killing done by the likes of Wax Mosby, then Bludge was a killer himself.
Hired guns sure enough weren’t just in the Wild West.
Mitch thought with cold satisfaction of that day shortly after he’d headed west, when his old business partner would’ve awakened to find creditors at his door. Pete Howell, a man who’d reminded Mitch of himself. Only Howell hadn’t been an ambitious, reckless kid. He’d been a viper. And Mitch had arranged for him to take a hard fall.
Then Mitch looked down the mountain and hoped he didn’t have a hard fall in his future.
While he sat there catching his breath and thawing his fingers, he saw three men ride up to Pa’s house. They dismounted and headed for the cabin.
Friend or foe?
Mitch wasn’t going to take a chance on introducing himself. As the third man reached the door to enter, he scanned the area, and he did it well, a cautious man.
The man’s eyes searched in the woods. Even from this distance Mitch recognized a skillful man.
Slowly, the eyes scanned every inch, then climbed the cliff Mitch was on, and stopped.
Without being able to see the man, not even really seeing the details of his face beyond a dark beard that didn’t sway at all in the wind, Mitch knew he was looking right into this man’s eyes. A man who could have already killed Mitch’s father.
Mitch didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. Maybe the man couldn’t see any more detail than Mitch could. Maybe Mitch even looked like a dark crevasse in the rocks.
Would he start shooting? Would he call out his men and come climbing after Mitch?
Like the stirring of a sleeping hound, the man slowly began raising his finger. It rose an inch at a time. Higher, still higher.
Then it stopped, aimed right at Mitch’s heart, and he wasn’t pointing his finger so much as he was mimicking an aimed gun.
The man smiled. White teeth flashed, parting the motionless beard. Then he turned and went in the house, and no one came out. No alarm was sent up.
Mitch sorted through things he’d picked up here and there, information that he stored in his head as surely as Ma put away root vegetables for the winter.
The strangely dark, unmoving beard.
It was waxed. Wax Mosby was known to have a strong inclination to wax his mustache and beard. No one knew why, but there were some who said he was very proud of his beard and he tended it carefully.
Wax wasn’t going to come after him. At least not right now.
But if he did—when he did—Mitch had just shown Wax Mosby the trail to his parents’ hideout.
Mitch ran his palm over his face and realized he hadn’t shaved since he set out from New York City. That’d been months ago, with the time he lingered along his journey to make sure no one was on his trail.
But now, if Wax Mosby wanted to follow, he knew the trail Mitch was on. Mitch turned and went back to climbing.
Wax Mosby stepped into the house. His mind working, flipping through possibilities.
Who was that up on the side of a mountain in a blizzard?
“We got the place, Wax. We done it.” Smiling Bob, named that because of the ugly scar on his face that pulled up one corner of his mouth in a twisted kind of smile, laughed.
Wax wanted to shut his mouth and do it permanently. “Bludge said these folks were nesters, taking over his land. But look at this place.”
Wax made a wild gesture at the ranch house they stood in. Solid, settled, old. Furniture handmade. Cushions and curtains. Dishes that matched, and glass stuff, not like the tin most folks had. “A woman lives here. Look at that desk, there are papers in all the cubby holes. That didn’t fill up in a few months.”
“Maybe new folks moved into a place that’d been deserted.” Smiling Bob didn’t believe it, but he didn’t mind who he had to kill to earn his pay.
“And kept the letters from the folks who were here before?”
“Maybe Bludge bought out the old owners, and nesters found it and moved in. Maybe the old folks left things behind to travel light. Maybe the newcomers didn’t bother to go through what they found.”
Wax strode to the desk and pulled out a handful of letters. One from someone named Mitch, with a date that was ten years old and addressed to this place. “The man you shot was Quill Warden. And he’s been here for years. They’re not nesters, and they’re clear and away off Bludge’s spread. He’s not driving off settlers, he’s making a land grab.”
“You want to talk that way about the boss, you say it to his face,” Canada Phelps growled.
Wax met his eyes. Canada was a hothead, but he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t start shooting because he wasn’t fast enough. Wax was the fastest gun in five states.
Phelps and Smiling Bob together weren’t fast enough. That didn’t mean Wax wanted a shootout. A gun could hang up or misfire. He didn’t start shooting if he could help it. That’d earned him the reputation of a cold, clear-thinking man.
He’d found out just how skilled he was with a firearm when his ma and little sisters were killed and he hunted down the killers. Then he found out he could chase outlaws and earn rewards. Then he found out how well people would pay for his skill. But he didn’t kill for hire. He fought for the brand. Some might not see the difference, but Wax knew there was one.
“I do work for Bludge, and I will say this isn’t right—I’ll say it to his face. You two can stay here and attack innocent ranchers if you want, but there’s plenty of honest work on Bludge’s ranch. I’m heading back.” And he’d leave that man on the cliff alone. That had been so strange a chill went down Wax’s spine.
It was as if an angel was perched up there watching, judging, avenging.
Was that a real man trying to climb up, get clear of the trouble here? Or was it a descending angel coming to rain fire down on the heads of unjust men?
Shaking off the fanciful notion, Wax knew it was mighty interesting to see someone all the way up there. Wax liked high ground, and whether that climber was going up or down, it figured there must be something up there.
“Nah, don’t get all out of sorts, Wax.” Smiling Bob headed for the door. “We’re done here. I’m not going on the prowl to find cows and cowpokes in this weather. We’ll ride back with you.”
Wax didn’t lead the way out, neither did he lag behind. He didn’t want these two to get ahead enough to take up a shooting position, and he sure as certain didn’t want them following where they could back-shoot him.
It was then Wax was hit hard by something he already knew . . . but he was young enough to not really believe it until right now.
He was going to die.
And he was going to die hard and bloody and soon.
Someone faster was bound to come along, and Wax, in his reckless youth, had already used up as many lives as a cat.
Bludge was paying him top wages, and the folks they’d driven off were nesters who were on Bludgeon Pike’s land. Wax had seen the deeds.
And they were made to move along without harming them.
But all the success they’d had must’ve gone to Bludge’s head because now he was taking from someone who had been here and was settled, and considering the way all the people and cattle had vanished, they were tough, knowing, and wary. They wouldn’t be likely to just move along.
No, they’d go to high ground, and they’d wait and watch.
And Bludge would want a fight. And he’d want Wax in the thick of that fight while Bludge sat safely behind his desk.
Wax was going to find Bludge and have a long hard talk with him. He didn’t want to quit. He was going to need the money Bludge was paying to start a new life, and he’d have to change his name a
nd shave off his beard.
Wax ran his hand over his heavily waxed beard. It came to a point below his chin and his moustache curled up. He’d always liked wearing it that way. It’d have to go.
Maybe he’d go back to his real name, too, Jacob Mosby, and find a new state, one he wasn’t known in. He’d heard California was nice.
He plotted his future. He had to change or die.
“Yes.” Jo jerked her chin with determination. “Your parents can stay with us. That’s my house, too, and I have just as much say as Ursula. And your ma and pa are fine people. It’d be good for Ursula to spend some time with new people. She’s about over the edge to a full-blown lunatic. But there might be time to pull her back. Your ma can help me save her.”
Dave smiled. Then gunfire split the air.
The horses he held jerked on the reins.
Dave saw Jo’s fear, but he had no time to study it. He thrust her reins into her hands and yelled, “Hold on to your horse.”
Then he swung up, glanced back, and jabbed a finger right at her nose. “You stay here.”
He spurred his horse, but it wasn’t necessary. The critter was game, and they were flying across the yard.
Jo’s horse jumped and whirled toward Dave, racing away. She almost dropped the reins and was dragged a few feet. Afraid the horse was getting away, she remembered how she’d gotten on before and mounted up . . . and the horse took off.
Jo wasn’t exactly disobeying orders. The horse just tore after Dave, and Jo went along for the ride.
Dave veered, and when Jo got to his turning point, she found a game trail, left by the elk probably. The footing was good, and Jo mostly just clung to the saddle horn with the reins twisted between her fingers.
Ahead of her, Dave rushed around a clump of trees. The gunshots came from that direction. Jo was really sorry she was taking this ride because, whatever trouble was up ahead, she was just going to be in the way, at least until she got this horse to stop. Then maybe she could help with her bow and arrows.
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