Bleeding Texas

by William W. Johnstone

  “If anybody thinks I need a dang she-wolf to help me rustle grub, maybe I better just pack up and light a shuck outta here!” he threatened. “I been feedin’ cowboys for nigh on to thirty years, and the day I need some fancy female critter tellin’ me what to do is the day I throw my pots and pans in the river and go off to sit on a cactus!”

  “But . . . but . . .” Lauralee said, looking surprised and flustered. “I didn’t mean to offend you, Mr. Hammersmith. I just thought—”

  “Thought you was a better cook than me!”

  “No, I swear I never thought that,” Lauralee said as she held her hands up, palms out in an entreating gesture. “I would never try to usurp your authority—”

  “Never try to what? Now you’re not only a better cook than I am, you’re smarter, too, with them highfalutin words, is that it?”

  Lauralee stood there wide-eyed, clearly surprised by the hornets’ nest she had stumbled into and unsure what to say next for fear of stoking the fire of the cook’s rage even more.

  Bo took pity on her and went over to put a hand on her shoulder.

  “We’ll go on now, Mr. Hammersmith, and let you get on about your business,” he said as he turned Lauralee away from the chuck wagon.

  Hammersmith snorted and said caustically, “Damn well about time. And if you think I’m gonna apologize for my language, you can go rassle a skunk!”

  Trying not to laugh out loud, Bo steered Lauralee to the other side of the camp. As supremely self-conf ident as she was, it was good every now and then to see her run up against a situation where she didn’t know what to do.

  “Honestly, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble,” she began.

  “I know that,” Bo told her. “A range cook is sort of like the king of all he surveys, though. Most of them don’t take kindly to anything they take as a challenge to their authority.”

  “That’s not what I meant to do,” Lauralee insisted. “I just wanted to give him a hand.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you meant. It’s the way Mr. Hammersmith took it that counts.”

  “Like the way you don’t want me here, even though all I’m trying to do is help.”

  “It’s not a matter of not wanting you here,” Bo said. “I’m always glad for your company. I just don’t want to see you get hurt, that’s all.”

  “What if I promise I won’t?”

  “I don’t see how you can do that. Nobody knows what the future is going to bring.” Bo shook his head. “There are no guarantees in life.”

  Quietly, Lauralee asked, “Did you really believe there were, back when you got married and had kids?”

  Bo stiffened and said, “I don’t reckon I want to talk about that.”

  “Why not? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? This thing between you and me.”

  Bo shook his head.

  “There’s nothing between you and me except friendship, Lauralee.”

  “But there could be,” she insisted. “If you weren’t afraid.”

  A frown creased Bo’s forehead. He said, “You think that’s what it is? That I’m afraid of getting involved with you? You think the fact that I’m more than twice your age doesn’t have anything to do with it?”

  “You’re only a little more than twice my age,” she pointed out. “And if that doesn’t bother me, why should it bother you?”

  “Because I’ve got a sense of what’s right and proper, that’s why.”

  “And I don’t, because I’m just a saloon girl. A trollop.”

  “I never said that,” Bo protested. “And you know good and well I don’t think that. You’re a lot more than that, and everybody knows it.”

  “Then it comes back to the fact that you’re scared.”

  The two of them were standing in the shadows under a live oak. The glow from the campfire didn’t quite reach them. Bo could see well enough to know that she was looking intently at him, however. She had let her hair tumble loose around her face when she took her hat off earlier, and now he saw the blond curls stir slightly as a night breeze made the tree branches sway and tremble.

  He put his hands on her shoulders. She lifted her head and tipped it back slightly. He knew she expected him to pull her to him and kiss her. And he was tempted to do exactly that.

  Lord, was he tempted.

  But he said, “Lauralee, there are some things we just have to accept in life, no matter how much we wish we could change them. If I was younger . . . if I had something to offer you besides pain and regret . . . well, things would be different between us, I can promise you that. But they aren’t, and we have to live with it.”

  “Living with things . . . hurts,” she whispered.

  “Yes, it does,” Bo agreed. “But pain—all sorts of pain—is the price we pay for being alive.”

  “Damn it, Bo . . .”

  “If you want to turn around and go back to Bear Creek in the morning, I’ll understand.”

  She pulled away from him and snapped, “I’m not a quitter. Never have been and never will be. I said I was going along on this cattle drive, and by God, that’s what I’m going to do!”

  Her answer didn’t surprise him at all.

  Over by the chuck wagon, Alonzo Hammersmith called out, “Coffee’s hot and the biscuits are done! Come an’ get ’em ’fore I throw ’em out, dang your ornery cowboy hides!”

  CHAPTER 24

  Samantha couldn’t help but notice that Trace Holland didn’t come back to the Rafter F with Nick. She didn’t really care where the gunman had gotten off to, but his absence made her curious. If she hadn’t seen him sneaking around with Nick, she never would have given it a second thought.

  But were they really sneaking around? she asked herself that night. She had seen them ride away together, sure, but they had done so openly.

  Maybe she was just trying to distract herself from the fact that Lee was gone and she wouldn’t see him for the next couple of weeks. That weighed even more heavily on her mind than Trace Holland’s disappearance.

  A couple of days later, when she was passing by the open door of the ranch office and saw Nick sitting at the desk with some papers in front of him, she decided to indulge her curiosity and went in.

  “Nick, can I ask you a question?”

  He didn’t glance up from the papers, which were covered with printing and numbers. Samantha didn’t know anything about how the ranch was run and didn’t really care to know, even though she didn’t think it was fair that her father intended to leave the spread to Nick and Danny and cut her out of it.

  “What is it?” Nick asked.

  “I noticed that Trace Holland hasn’t been around the past couple of days. What happened to him?”

  That made Nick look up. In fact, his reaction was rather sharp, Samantha noticed.

  But his tone was deliberately casual as he said, “What do you care about Trace Holland?”

  “I didn’t say I did. I’m just curious, that’s all.”

  She started to add that she had seen Holland riding off with Nick but then decided not to reveal that.

  Nick waved a hand and said, “He drew his time and left, that’s all. I don’t know where he went and don’t care.”

  Again, Samantha thought her brother was acting a little too disinterested. Plenty of times, she had seen Nick’s reaction when he really didn’t care about something, and this was different.

  “I was just curious,” she said again.

  Nick grunted and looked back down at the papers.

  “A saddle tramp like Holland’s not worth being curious about,” he said. “Forget him.”

  “Of course.” Samantha hesitated. “What’s that you’re looking at?”

  A slightly annoyed expression appeared on his face. He wasn’t accustomed to her asking questions about ranch business.

  “I was just figuring what it would take to expand our herd. How much money . . . and how much range.”

  “I didn’t know you were planning to expand the herd. I haven’t h
eard Pa say anything about it.”

  “I’m just considering the possibility. Haven’t bothered him with it yet.”

  “Oh. Well, that makes sense, I guess.”

  He couldn’t conceal his impatience as he asked, “Was there anything else, Samantha?”

  “No, I guess not. I’m sorry I bothered you, Nick.”

  “No bother. I’ve just got things to do, that’s all.”

  She left the office, but she was more puzzled now than she had been when she went in.

  She didn’t like the idea that Nick was trying to hide something, and she especially didn’t care for a gunman like Trace Holland being mixed up in whatever it was.

  Despite what she had told Nick, she was more determined than ever now to find out what was going on.

  And while she was doing that, maybe she wouldn’t be thinking about how much she missed Lee . . .

  The bunkhouse had always been forbidden for Samantha to enter. Her father didn’t want her becoming involved with any of the cowboys who worked for him. She could do much better for herself than that, he had declared, and he would see to it that she did.

  Once his feud with the Creels had heated up and he began hiring men of unsavory character for their gun-handling skills, Ned Fontaine was even more determined that his daughter wouldn’t associate with any of them. She was allowed to be around the barn and the corrals during the day, but that was all.

  So she couldn’t try to find out from any of the hands if they knew where Trace Holland had gone. They would profess ignorance or just refuse to answer her, and then there was a good chance they would go to Nick or her father and tell them that she was asking questions about things that were none of her business.

  That left her with only one option.

  Spying.

  She spent a lot of time in the barn, ostensibly taking care of the horses she used for riding, but her real purpose was eavesdropping on the hands when they came in to get something from the tack room or tend to their own mounts.

  The Rafter F had its own blacksmith shop, since several of the men were qualified to work as farriers, and Samantha made a point of being around there whenever some of the cowboys had gathered for one reason or another.

  The members of the crew took their meals at a long table in a wing built onto the bunkhouse. The weather was still nice enough that the windows in that dining hall were usually open, so Samantha managed to linger just below one of them one evening while the hands had supper.

  She hadn’t heard anything worthwhile, though, just some bawdy jokes that made her ears burn with embarrassment, before Danny stepped out onto the porch of the main house and called, “Hey, sis, where are you? It’s time for supper!”

  Samantha scurried through the twilight shadows and circled around to make it look like she was coming from the barn.

  She was glad she hadn’t overheard the cowboys making any ribald comments about her. She was sure they did from time to time, but hearing them might have been too much to bear.

  “Where you been?” Danny asked in a surly voice as she came up to the porch. “Pa says you’re always off somewhere these days, instead of underfoot like you usually are.”

  She figured Danny had added that part about her being underfoot. It didn’t sound like something her father would have said. But Danny, despite being younger than her, had always acted like he considered her a pest.

  “I was just out in the barn brushing Sweetie Pie,” she said, referring to the white horse she rode more than any of the others.

  Danny snorted.

  “Damn stupid name for a horse,” he muttered. “Reckon you like those horses more’n you like people.”

  “More than some people,” she said, not bothering to disguise the tart tone that sprang into her voice.

  “Then why don’t you just marry one of ’em? Seems to me you got a better chance of doin’ that than you do of findin’ a real husband.”

  “Oh!” Samantha suppressed the urge to slap him. That would just cause more trouble than it was worth. “You’re terrible, Danny Fontaine.”

  “Just honest, that’s all,” he said with a smug, self-satisfied grin.

  She couldn’t tell him about Lee Creel and how she hoped that the two of them would be married someday. Instead she said, “I don’t see you out looking for a wife. You’re too busy dallying with painted saloon hussies to court a respectable young woman.”

  “I’ll get around to it in time, don’t you worry. Right now I still got wild oats to sow.”

  “Maybe that’s how I feel.”

  He snorted again and said, “Girls don’t have wild oats, stupid.”

  Ned Fontaine appeared in the doorway. He said, “What are you two wrangling about now? I sent you to find your sister, Danny, not argue with her.”

  “There she is,” Danny said, pointing. “I found her.”

  “Well, come in and eat supper before it gets cold. Good Lord, I’m surrounded by barbarians.”

  That evening, after she had eaten, Samantha realized that her spying on the ranch hands was misdirected. It would just be a fluke if she happened to overhear a conversation between any of the men about Trace Holland’s whereabouts. Most of them probably didn’t have any idea where the gunman had gone.

  But there was one person on the ranch who did know for sure, or at least she was convinced he did.

  Her brother Nick.

  From now on, she decided as she sat in her room on the second floor of the ranch house, she would keep an eye on him.

  Even now, she smelled tobacco smoke and knew it came from the cigar Nick smoked every evening as he sat out on the porch. The aromatic smell drifted up and in through her open window.

  Acting on impulse, she blew out the lamp in her room, went to the window, and pushed the curtain back so she could look out into the ranch yard.

  She couldn’t have said what made her think anything was going to happen, but if it did, she wanted to be where she would know about it.

  Nothing happened, of course, except that nearly half an hour dragged by tediously. She was wasting her time, Samantha told herself. She might as well go to bed.

  If she was lucky, she might dream about Lee.

  Then she heard the faint crunch of footsteps coming across the yard from the direction of the bunkhouse. Samantha slid the window up farther and leaned out a little so she could see better.

  At first she couldn’t make out anything, but then a figure ambled into the faint glow that spread across the yard from lamps in the house. She heard spurs chinging and recognized the shape as that of Owen McNamara, one of the hands who had been hired more for his skill with a gun than with a rope or a branding iron.

  The only reason McNamara would be approaching the house right now was if he wanted to talk to Nick.

  Without pausing to think about what she was doing, Samantha rushed out of her room, down the rear stairs, and out a side door into the night. She slid along the wall toward the front of the house, where she could peek around the corner and see onto the front porch.

  McNamara had a shoulder propped against one of the posts that supported the roof over the porch. He was rolling a quirley as he said, “—handful of men left over there, boss, just like you thought when you sent me to scout around. We could take the rest of the herd without any problem.”

  Nick stood at the top of the steps, looking out at the night in his usual pose with his hands tucked into his hip pockets. He had a fresh cigar in his mouth, clenched between his teeth.

  He said around the cheroot, “If you did that, you’d have to kill all the hands the Creels left behind. It was different when it was Palmer’s bunch hitting the Star C herd. Even if any of them got spotted, nobody knew they were working for me. I can’t have Rafter F men identified as rustlers.”

  In the shadows at the corner of the house, Samantha’s eyes got so big she felt like they might pop right out of her head. Her heart slugged painfully inside her chest.

  She had worried in the past th
at maybe Nick was cutting some corners he shouldn’t have, but she’d never dreamed that he had become an outright criminal.

  And yet he was talking about having a gang of rustlers working for him, led by someone named Palmer. There was no mistaking his meaning. He had just admitted that he was behind all the thefts from the Star C herd.

  Owen McNamara had finished rolling his smoke. He put it between his lips, took a lucifer from his shirt pocket, snapped it to life with his thumbnail, and held the flame to the end of the quirley. The light from the match cast harsh shadows over his hard-planed face as he set fire to the gasper.

  He shook the match out, flicked it away, and said, “You know it wouldn’t be any problem takin’ care of those Star C punchers, Nick. The rest of the boys and I knew it would probably come to that sooner or later.”

  “Sure,” Nick said, “and it might yet. But we’ll wait and see how Palmer’s bunch does.”

  Samantha had to clench her jaw tightly to keep from moaning in despair. Nick and McNamara were talking about murder now, and their conversation was casually cold-blooded, too.

  What had happened to Nick? He had always been distant, more like an uncle than an older brother to her, but she would have sworn that he was a decent, law-abiding man at heart, despite the hardness she sensed in him.

  Had ambition and greed hardened him even more, to the point that he was willing to work with outlaws . . . to become an outlaw himself?

  The things she was hearing seemed to indicate that was the case.

  Even though the world was spinning crazily around her and she felt like she might be sick, she forced herself to listen. Her brother and McNamara were still talking.

  “When will you hear from Palmer?” the gunman asked.

  “I told Holland to ride straight back here as soon as Palmer’s bunch has the herd. He doesn’t have to go all the way to Rockport with them. All I need to know is that the Creels won’t be selling those cattle and ruining my plans.”

  McNamara chuckled.

  “You reckon Palmer will leave any of those Creels alive? From what I’ve heard, he ain’t the sort to be merciful.”

  “I don’t care,” Nick said with a note of savagery in his voice. “As far as I’m concerned, he can kill all of them, and good riddance. If all the old man’s sons and grandsons are dead, he won’t have anybody to back him up anymore. The Star C will be mine, and as far as anybody knows, it’ll all be legal.”