Riley looked like he wanted to argue some more, but after a moment he nodded and said, “All right, I reckon we’d better get back to the house. We should’ve told one of the boys to ride into town and fetch Doc Perkins.”
“I think they’re smart enough to figure that out on their own,” Bo said. He added with a faint smile, “They’re Creels, after all.”
“I’m not sure that means much anymore,” Riley said ominously.
Nick Fontaine was mad enough to chew nails by the time he got back to the Rafter F headquarters.
Part of the anger was directed at himself. He had acted impulsively when he took his rifle and headed across Bear Creek to find and kill John Creel. He knew that. It had been a reckless, foolish move.
But it had almost paid off. He had come damned close to ventilating the old pelican. He’d had a good shot at one of Creel’s grandsons, too. If he had managed to kill both of them, it might have been enough to make that stubborn bunch give up.
Probably not, though, he mused as he rode into the barn and swung down from his saddle. John Creel’s sons were as bullheaded as the old man.
But if all of them were to die . . .
“Where have you been, Nick?”
The question made him look around. His father had just walked into the barn.
“Just out on the range checking a few things,” Nick answered easily. When the family had first come to Texas, Ned Fontaine had been determined to learn the cattle industry from the inside out, but of late his interest in the ranch’s workings had lagged. These days, Nick did pretty much whatever he wanted, without his father questioning him or giving him orders.
That was the way Nick liked it.
Fontaine nodded and asked, “Everything all right?”
“Yeah, sure.” For a second, Nick considered telling him about the cattle drive the Creels were putting together. But there was no real point in it, he decided. He would have to deal with that threat himself, with no help from his father. The old man waffled too much these days. If he knew some of the things Nick had done—
No point in thinking about that, Nick told himself. He would keep his father in the dark until it was too late to do anything except seize control of the ruined Star C ranch.
Fontaine rubbed his chin and went on, “You haven’t seen Danny, have you?”
“Danny?” The question actually took Nick a little by surprise. He shook his head and went on, “No, not since breakfast this morning. Is something wrong?”
“No, I don’t think so. I hope not. He’s probably gone into town.”
Nick thought there was a good chance his father was right. Danny had a hard time staying away from whiskey and whores and poker games for very long.
That was fine with Nick, too. Being a full-time wastrel kept Danny out of the way.
“It’s just that I’m a little worried about the boy,” Fontaine went on. “He’s not around much, and he does hardly any work. That’s not fair to you, Nick.”
“I don’t mind, Pa, you know that.”
“Of course, but still, you shouldn’t have to bear all the load yourself. There’ll come a time when you two boys will have to take over here. When I’m gone, half of this ranch will belong to Danny. He needs to stop shirking his responsibilities.”
Nick’s jaw clenched. His father had said things like that before, about splitting the ranch between his two sons, and Nick didn’t like it. Danny could still live here if he wanted to, and Nick would even see to it that he had enough money to continue with his decadent ways, but he sure as hell didn’t deserve half of the Rafter F.
That would be even more true once Nick had doubled the size of the spread by taking over the Star C.
The old man didn’t say anything about Samantha, which came as no surprise to Nick. She was expected to marry somebody and go live with her husband. If she didn’t, then Nick would see to it that she was taken care of, like Danny, but she was no real threat to his plans.
“Danny’s still sowing his wild oats, Pa, you know that. But I’ll have a talk with him and tell him he needs to straighten up a mite. Maybe I’ll try to find him one particular chore around here that it can be his job to take care of.”
Ned Fontaine nodded and said, “That’s an excellent idea, Nick. Thank you. I knew that if I talked to you, you’d come up with an idea. You always know what to do.”
“I try,” Nick said.
He knew one thing that needed to be done. He ought to pull the shoes off his horse, put a new pair on, and bury the old ones. He didn’t think anybody would be able to track him here—he had ridden into the creek and followed it for several miles before coming out on the eastern bank—but just in case someone did, he didn’t want any incriminating evidence linking him to the attempt on John Creel’s life.
He could get started on that as soon as his father got out of here. He put a worried frown on his face and said, “You look a little gray, Pa. Are you all right?”
“Well, I am feeling a bit peaked, now that you mention it,” Fontaine said.
“Why don’t you go on back in the house and take it easy? It won’t be long now until supper.”
“All right.” Fontaine started to turn away, then paused and said, “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Nick.”
“Well, you won’t ever have to find out,” Nick said. “I plan to be around here for a long, long time.”
On his ranch.
CHAPTER 18
Dr. Kenneth Perkins’s examination confirmed what anybody with eyes could see: John Creel’s leg was broken about halfway between the knee and ankle.
“Will I walk again, Doc?” John asked as he looked up from the bed where Perkins had just finished setting his leg.
He had slugged down a considerable amount of whiskey to help dull the pain, having refused any of the doctor’s potions that would have put him under. So he was a little bleary-eyed but seemed to be coherent, Bo thought.
“Whether or not you walk again is going to depend entirely on how stubborn you are,” Perkins said as he started to roll down the shirtsleeves he had rolled up earlier.
“Then I reckon you know the answer,” John said. “I’m the stubbornest hombre you ever saw. I’ll be up and around again before—”
The doctor held up a hand to stop him in mid-declaration.
“You misunderstand me, John,” he said. “What you were about to say is exactly what I’m talking about. If you insist on getting up before that leg has had time to heal properly, there’s a good chance you won’t ever walk again.”
“You see?” Idabelle Fisher said from where she hovered over the head of the bed and reached down to wipe some of the sweat from John’s face with a towel. “I’ve been trying to tell you for years that being so mule-headed isn’t always a good thing.”
John glared at her, then at the doctor.
“You’re tellin’ me I’m stuck in this bed?”
“For the next several weeks, at least,” Perkins said. “And even then, you’ll only be able to get up for short periods of time. You’ll need a lot of help.”
“He’ll get whatever he needs,” Idabelle promised quietly.
“Great jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” John said. “I’ve got a herd of cattle to get to the coast!”
“We’ll do that,” Bo said. “There are plenty of us, Pa. You’ve got a big family, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah,” the old man muttered. He narrowed his eyes at the doctor and went on, “You sure there ain’t no way you can prop me up on a pair of crutches—”
“No,” Perkins said flatly. “I’m sorry, John, but you’re not going anywhere.”
John’s head sagged back against the pillows propped up behind him. He lifted a gnarled hand and waved it at the door.
“Get out, the whole bunch of you. Leave an old man alone in his misery, why don’t you?”
Idabelle patted his shoulder and said, “All right, but we’ll be close by if you need anything.”
“A new leg, that’s al
l I need.” As everyone started to file out of the bedroom, John added, “Thanks, Doc.”
“Just doing my job,” Perkins said crisply. His tone softened slightly as he went on, “You listen to Idabelle and let her take care of you, and I’m sure you’ll be all right, John. Old bones don’t knit as well as young ones, but you are the stubbornest man I know, and sometimes that comes in handy.”
“Damn straight,” John said. He raised himself a little on one elbow. “Bo, you and Riley hold on a minute.” He glanced at Idabelle. “It’s all right if I talk with my sons, ain’t it?”
“Just don’t wear yourself out,” she told him. “You’ve been through an ordeal. You need your rest.”
“Yeah, sure.”
When he and Riley were the only ones left in the room with their father, Bo asked, “What is it you want to talk to us about, Pa?”
“You know damn good and well what I want to talk about. That cattle drive.”
Riley said, “We’ll take the blasted cows to Rockport—”
“I know that. I’m countin’ on you boys to get ’em there and get back here with that money. But somebody’s got to ramrod the drive.”
“I’ve taken plenty of herds to Kansas—” Riley began.
“Bo’s in charge,” his father interrupted.
Bo and Riley said, “What?” at the same time.
“Bo’s the trail boss on this drive. You’ll be segundo, Riley, just like you were with me all them other times.”
Riley’s face was dark with anger. He said, “That whiskey you guzzled down must be muddling your brain, Pa. This can’t be about Bo bein’ older than me. That doesn’t count. Not when he left home forty years ago and hasn’t hardly been back since!”
“I figured Riley would be in charge, too, Pa,” Bo said.
His brother glared at him.
“Sure you did. What did you say to Pa before I got there, out by Caddo Knob? You’ve been tryin’ to take over ever since you got back, like you had some sort of right to run things around here!”
“If you think I have any interest in running anything, you don’t know me very well, little brother. I’ve spent the past forty years like you said, riding away from responsibility.”
John Creel said, “You boys settle down. You ain’t kids anymore, and this squabblin’ don’t serve any purpose. My mind is made up. Bo’s runnin’ the drive. If you can’t go along with that, Riley, I reckon you don’t have to.”
“You mean—”
“I mean you can stay here.”
“The hell with that! If you think I’m gonna let Bo hog all the credit—”
From the doorway, Idabelle said, “Land’s sake, what’s all the yelling going on in here? I left this poor injured man in here to rest, not to be harangued by a couple of loco cowboys. Now, shoo! Go on and let your father get some sleep.”
“Might as well not waste your time arguin’ with her, boys,” John Creel said with a chuckle. “It won’t get you anywhere. It never has when I do it.”
With his jaw tight from anger, Riley said, “All right, we’ll go.” He pointed a finger at Bo. “But this ain’t over.”
“It is as far as I’m concerned,” Idabelle said. “Git!”
They got.
Scratch rode in about suppertime to report that he had followed the bushwhacker’s tracks to Bear Creek.
“But I wasn’t able to pick up the trail on the other side,” the silver-haired Texan told Bo and the other Creel brothers. “The fella didn’t want anybody followin’ him, and he put some effort into it.”
“But the tracks led to the creek,” Riley said. “That means it had to be the Fontaines or one of their hired guns.”
“There’s a lot of Texas east of Bear Creek,” Bo pointed out. “The bushwhacker could have cut through Rafter F range and gone on somewhere else.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
Bo shrugged and admitted, “No, I don’t. But we’d have to find those same shoes on a Rafter F horse to prove anything, and I doubt if Fontaine is going to let us look.”
Hank said, “He wouldn’t have any choice if it was the law asking to have that look.”
“Jonas Haltom’s just the town marshal,” Cooper said. “He doesn’t have any jurisdiction out here. We might persuade the sheriff up in Hallettsville to send a deputy down here, though.”
“I can’t believe the whole lot of you,” Riley said. “When Pa settled the Star C, there was no law anywhere in these parts except what a man carried in his holster.”
“Things were simpler then,” Bo agreed, “but times have changed, whether we like it or not.”
“So what do you think we should do, Bo?” Riley asked with a challenging tone in his voice. “Just forget that somebody tried to kill Pa and was responsible for that broken leg of his?”
“We’re not going to forget about it,” Bo said, and now a grim note had come into his voice. “But we can’t afford to let this distract us from saving the Star C. And that means getting those cattle to Rockport, so that’s our first goal.”
Riley didn’t say anything for a moment, but then he nodded.
“You’re right. But when we get back . . .”
“When we get back, we’ll find out who took that shot at Pa,” Bo said. “And once we do . . . we’ll make that hombre wish he’d never been born.”
The roundup continued for several more days before Bo tallied the herd and decided they had enough stock to make the drive. He and Hank sat on the fence of a wooden chute and watched as riders pushed the cattle past them. Bo and Hank each had a length of rope with knots tied in it to help them keep count. The ropes slid through their fingers with practiced ease as they tallied the stock.
“That’s fifteen hundred,” Hank announced first.
“I make it fourteen ninety-eight,” Bo said. “Close enough.”
He took his hat off and waved it over his head, signaling to the others that they didn’t need to drive any more cows through the chute.
They didn’t know exactly how many head they needed to take to Rockport because they wouldn’t know for sure what the buyers were paying until they got there. But fifteen hundred would be more than enough, Bo thought. The number gave them a good cushion.
The rest of the animals that had been rounded up would be turned back out onto the range to grow fatter and wait until next time. They had been given a reprieve, Bo mused from his perch on the fence, but it was strictly a matter of the luck of the draw.
All too often, it seemed to work the same way with people. There was no way to fathom the workings of fate.
A similar thought went through Lee Creel’s head later that day as he waited for Samantha in a grove of trees near the creek. The last time they were together, they had arranged to meet today because Lee worried that it might be their last chance. He knew the end of the roundup was fast approaching.
Sure enough, earlier this afternoon Uncle Bo had said they had enough stock gathered to start the drive to the coast.
Fate would determine whether or not Samantha would be able to sneak off from her home and meet Lee here today, just as fate had charted the course of the rest of their relationship. What else could you call it? Had he just happened to be in the right place at the right time when Samantha’s horse ran away from her? Or had some other mysterious force been at work that day?
Lee figured that had to be the answer. It couldn’t be just pure luck that had brought a Fontaine and a Creel together and allowed them to discover the feelings they had for each other.
He heard a horse’s hooves splashing through the creek and eased his mount forward as he peered anxiously through the trees. His heart gave a little jump as he spotted Samantha riding toward him. He started to move out into the open to meet her, then reined in the impulse.
It was better to wait and let her ride into the trees. If anybody was spying on them, the growth would obscure the view, anyway.
“Lee,” she called softly as she steered her horse into the gr
ove.
“Here,” he replied.
A moment later they were off their horses and in each other’s arms, and for a while there wasn’t much talking going on.
Eventually, though, Samantha said, “Something’s bothering you. I can tell.”
“Yeah,” Lee said with a sigh. “We’ve finished the roundup. We’ll be startin’ for the coast soon, maybe as early as tomorrow.”
“Well, we . . . we knew this day was coming,” she said, and he could tell that she was trying to put a brave face on. “And it’s not like you’re going to be gone forever or anything. You said it would only be a couple of weeks.”
“Thereabouts,” he agreed. “Even so, it’s gonna be a long two weeks if I don’t see you the whole time.”
“I’ll be here when you get back,” Samantha promised. “And maybe . . . maybe once your grandfather’s ranch is safe again, he and my father can start getting along better.”
Lee smiled down into her face as he held her.
“You really think so?”
“You never know,” she said. “Father’s changed some. He’s not as loud and angry as he used to be. Sometimes he seems so unlike himself that I . . . I almost worry about him.” Her voice steadied. “It would be good for everyone if there was peace between the Rafter F and the Star C.”
“You won’t get any arguments from me on that score. I don’t know if we’ll ever see it happen, though. Even if your pa decides to live and let live, there are still your brothers. No offense, but Danny’s got a hell-raisin’ streak in him.”
Samantha sighed and said, “I know. I keep hoping he’ll grow up, but so far . . . I just try to be as good an influence on them as I can. On all of them.”
“Well, you keep it up,” Lee said. “Maybe it’ll do some good. Can’t hurt to try. In the meantime, I think we got some more sayin’ good-bye to do.”
“I think you’re right.”
It got quiet again in the grove of trees.
CHAPTER 19
Samantha had been in there a long time, Trace Holland thought as he lowered the field glasses he had trained on the oak trees across the creek. Obviously, the Creel kid had been waiting for her among the trees.
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