Salas shook his head. “There are no mistakes in blacksmithing. The iron is forgiving because it can always be reused and reshaped. There are always second chances, in metal and in men.”
Kate nodded. “That’s something to remember.”
“A clear mind means good work, Mrs. Kerrigan, and tonight your mind is not clear, I think.”
“Is it that obvious, Marco?”
“The iron told me, did it not?”
“The ranchers I’ve spoken to told me our fight with Savannah St. James is none of their concern. They say her herd won’t come their way and the killings of Jason Hunt and Kyle Wright have them really shaken.”
Salas nodded. “If the owner of one of the biggest ranches in West Texas can be killed, then so can they.”
“That’s how they see it,” Kate said.
“Not one?”
Kate shook her head. “I really can’t say I blame the small ranchers. Savannah St. James wants the H bar H and Kerrigan range. Why would they fight for us?”
“You’ve been good to me, Mrs. Kerrigan. Your ranch is now my home and I will fight.”
Kate smiled. “I know you will, Marco. And I appreciate it.”
A voice came from behind them. “The night is getting cool, Kate. Maybe you should get inside.” Cobb stood half in shadow. He wore his gun, a thing he seldom did that close to the cabin.
Salas turned away from the forge. “Mrs. Kerrigan helped me with your knife.”
“I didn’t do much. I . . . what was it you said, Marco? Oh yes, I chased the iron all over the anvil.”
“All it takes is practice,” Salas said.
“And dedication.” Kate stared at Cobb for a moment, then turned back to Salas. “Thank you for letting me try the hammer, Marco. I’ll leave it to you from now on.”
She took Cobb’s arm and they walked together toward the cabin. “What has happened, Frank?”
“The H bar H punchers have pulled out, all but Henry Brown.”
Kate was shocked into silence and Cobb took up the slack. “Brown says with their boss dead, the hands reckon they got no brand left to fight for. Sanchez, Monk Boone, and Loop Davis and the others talked among themselves and figured they’d be up against a stacked deck taking on a bunch of hired guns.”
She found her voice. “But I thought they wanted revenge for the murder of Mr. Hunt. Frank, you know how angry they were.”
“Kate, anger can carry a man only so far before common sense takes over. Four of St. James’s men were killed in the stampede, and they shot to pieces the man who killed Jason Hunt. I reckon they figure they done enough.”
“Did Jason Hunt have an heir, someone who could take over his ranch and get the punchers back?” Kate asked.
“I once heard Hunt say he had a sister back east somewhere, but that she was ailing with a cancer.”
“Do we know how to reach her?”
Cobb frowned. “Maybe her address is in Hunt’s correspondence. We’d have to look. But if she was as poorly as he made out I reckon she’s dead by now.”
After a few moments, Kate lifted her chin. “Then there’s only us.”
“Seems like.”
She stared at her segundo. “I’m afraid, Frank.”
“No shame in that, Kate. I’m afraid, too.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Rube St. James drew rein and studied the ranch house that lay a mile or so to the east of Table Top Mountain. The limestone mesa itself, rising two hundred feet above the flat, was covered in a thick growth of juniper, oak, chaparral, and cactus, but the surrounding area was rolling grassland where a scattered herd of about two hundred longhorns grazed. To his envious eyes, it seemed like an excellent place for part of his own herd to fatten over the rest of the summer and into next spring. Savannah might disagree, preferring to drive the entire herd farther west, but the ranch was still worth acquiring.
Rube took a brass ship’s telescope from his saddlebags and scanned the ranch house more closely. It was a modest affair, small and cramped with a sod roof. A few shabby outbuildings, a pole corral, and a well with an iron pump were nearby. A woman who looked to be pregnant stepped out of the door, tossed away a pan of dirty water, and went back inside.
Then Rube saw what he needed to see. A man came round the side of the cabin leading a yearling colt. He wore no belt gun and looked exactly like what he was, a one-loop rancher living a hardscrabble existence at the ragged edge of nowhere.
Rube St. James smiled, put the glass a way, and kneed his horse forward. He anticipated no trouble. He’d tell the man to go and he’d go.
In an age corset-bound by the Victorian code of ethics, a visitor was expected to hail the dwelling and then sit his horse until given permission to light and set. That is what Rube St. James would have done for people he considered members of his own class, but a cocklebur rancher, like the poor, blacks, Mexicans, and Indians, merited no such consideration.
Rube swung out of the saddle and fisted the rickety door so hard it rattled on its hinges. The door was opened almost immediately by a brown-eyed, brown-haired man of medium height and build, a striking contrast to the tall, blond, blue-eyed St. James.
The rancher was angry. “Why the hell do you hammer on a man’s door like that?”
Rube smiled. “Howdy. I’ll sum things up for you in two words. Get out!”
The man was taken aback. “Mister, are you crazy? I want you off my property now.”
“I told you to get out,” Rube said. “Take what you can carry and light a shuck.”
The rancher turned his head. “Jane, I got a crazy man here. Bring me my rifle.”
“No rifle!” Rube yelled. He drew and fired.
Hit dead center in his chest, the men staggered a few steps backward and then fell on his back. The impact of his body hitting the timber floor made the cabin shake. The woman screamed. She ran to her husband’s side and threw herself on his body, sobbing uncontrollably.
In a conversational tone, Rube said, “Ma’am, I’ll saddle the horse in the corral for you so you can be on your way. I thought it might rain earlier, but all I see now is blue sky. Real nice weather for riding.”
The woman’s tearstained face turned to Rube and she shrieked, “You fiend! You . . . murderer!” She scrambled to her feet and dashed into the cabin. A moment later, Rube heard the click-clack of a lever rifle and then the thud of heels on the floor. He shot the woman as she appeared at the door. The Henry dropped from her lifeless hands and she collapsed on top of her husband.
Rube lowered his head in thought. As Savannah often told him, the lower classes had no idea how to act in a civilized society and could always be depended on to do the wrong thing. “All you had to do was walk away,” he said to the dead. “You fools, was that so damned difficult?”
His first thought was to burn down the cabin, but the summer grass was tinder dry and now that he’d acquired new graze, he didn’t want it to burn away under his feet. He contented himself with kicking legs aside and closing the cabin door.
A few minutes later, he rode away with the Henry rifle, the paint cow pony from the corral, and the mustang colt. Those were the only items of worth the dead couple had possessed.
Marmaduke Tweng was indignant. “That, my dear sir, is the Emperor Maximilian, a triumph of modern steam engineering. Put wings on it and I could drive it to the moon.”
“Damn thing looks like a railroad car cut in half,” Jack Hickam said.
“The Emperor does not need rails,” Tweng said. “It will go anywhere there is a road and it can ford rivers and climb hills if need be.”
The land liner had six great drive wheels, each as tall as a man. The cabin was up front, the boiler, smoke box, and coal tender behind the driver and then the passenger compartment. The steel of the great coiled wheel springs were polished to a silver sheen and the tangle of brass steel pipes glowed like solid gold. The liner was painted dark green and boasted four windows to a side and an engraved brass plaque a yard lon
g read, EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN, each letter picked out in red.
“The steam liner was a gift to Miss St. James from the Emperor Maximilian himself,” Tweng said. “He brought engineers over from Germany to build the machine and they later declared it their masterpiece.”
“You must be the men my brother is expecting.” Savannah St. James stood in one of the Emperor’s three side doorways. Her black hair was undone and hung over the shoulders of a bright scarlet robe that revealed a great deal of her milk-white breasts and thighs.
His eyes popping out of his head, Hickam said, “We sure are, ma’am. Jack Hickam at your service as ever was and my associate Pete Slicer.”
Slicer bowed from the saddle. “Your servant, Miss St. James.”
Hickam was a rough-hewn man with a broad, savage face and experienced eyes that slowly removed Savannah’s robe. Pete Slicer was thin, almost frail, a small-boned man who was fast beyond belief, as the sixteen men he’d killed could attest. He was being eaten away by a stomach cancer, and it pained him.
“We were just admiring your . . . ah . . . wagon, Miss St. James.” Hickam’s eyes never left Savannah’s body.
“Mr. Tweng,” Savannah said, enjoying Hickam’s heat, “fire up the Emperor. I’m sure Mr. Hickam will enjoy a ride.”
“Perhaps some other time, Miss St. James,” Hickam said quickly. He didn’t trust the infernal thing not to blow up and take half of Texas with it.
“Very well,” Savannah said. “Yes, then some other time.” It pleased her that she’d put the crawl on the most feared gunman in the West. The barbarian would have to be kept in his place. “Put up your horses and come inside for a drink, gentlemen. My home on wheels is a humble one, therefore I trust Martell cognac is to your taste.”
Tweng unbuckled his hooded leather coat and removed his goggles from around his neck and replaced them on his hat. He was relieved he had not needed to fire up the Emperor Maximilian. Raising sufficient steam was a long and labor-intensive process.
A movement in the distance attracted his attention and then a rider emerged through the heat haze leading two horses. The little man finally recognized the rider as Rube St. James. Tweng would not ask where the man got the horses. It was pretty obvious.
Mr. St. James was forever killing some poor soul.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“I’ve called you all together because I’ve reached an important decision and I wish to know if you concur,” Kate said.
Cobb smiled. “Kate, since when did you need our approval for anything?”
“You’re right, Frank. But I don’t want your approval because my mind is already made up. What I wish is for you to agree or disagree as your conscience dictates.”
“Ma, you plan to shoot that St. James woman,” Quinn said.
“Not quite, Quinn. And please don’t speak with your mouth full.”
The boy laid his biscuit on his plate. “Sorry.”
“You’re being very mysterious, Karina,” Count Andropov said. “Have you decided to take a husband and am I the lucky one?”
Kate smiled. “No, Count, that is not the case.”
“Then I am devastated,” the Russian said, spreading his hands. “My heart is broken. I should have known that a peddler dare not aspire to a queen.”
“Since you don’t have marriage in mind, don’t keep us in suspense, Kate,” Cobb said.
“Very well then.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve decided to take over the H bar H—the land, the cattle, horses, the ranch house, and outbuildings pertaining thereto. In other words—all of it.”
Kate’s words were met with silence, then Moses Rice asked, “Mr. Hunt didn’t have kinfolk, no?”
“A sister maybe,” Henry Brown said. “If she’s still aboveground.”
“And if she comes to claim the H bar H then I will surrender it to her willingly,” Kate said. “But in the meantime, I will not have squatters moving onto Hunt range.” She looked first to her segundo. “Frank?”
“Sets just fine with me, Kate. You’d surrender the Hunt spread willingly?”
“We’ll see,” Kate said, refusing to meet his smiling eyes. “Trace?”
“I have no objections, Ma.”
“Mose?”
“You always do the right thing, Miz Kate.”
“Marco, I’d like your opinion,” Kate said.
“You are my patrón. That is all I have to say.”
“Mister Brown, you worked for Jason Hunt,” Kate said. “What do you say?”
“Ma’am, if you can take the land and hold it until spring, then go right ahead. The H bar H will make the Kerrigan spread the biggest ranch in West Texas.”
Kate frowned. “Hold it, Mr. Brown?”
“You got a diseased herd and some mighty hard people headed this way, ma’am,” Brown said. “It ain’t happened yet, but in a week or two, maybe less, a war will come right to your doorstep.”
“Will you stand with us, Mr. Brown?” Kate asked.
“Sure. Now Mr. Hunt is gone, I got no boss to answer to. But I’ll be gone for a while. Got to attend to some personal business.”
Kate looked him in the eye. “Will you be gone long, Mr. Brown?”
“No, not long. I’ll be back when you need me.”
“Then we are agreed that I take over the H bar H,” Kate said. “I will tell Dr. Fullerton later. She needs to know these things.”
“There are some things I need to say first, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Brown said suddenly.
“Please feel free,” Kate said, but she frowned a little again.
“There’s close to ten thousand cattle headed this way, all of them with tick fever,” Brown said. “If you let them get among your own, your cows will all be dead or mighty sick before its time for the spring gather. Ma’am, that could put you out of business.”
Cobb looked at the puncher. “What do you suggest, Henry?”
“Get your cows the hell—begging your pardon, ma’am—out of the way. Drive the H bar H cattle all the way across the Mexico border if need be and the Kerrigan herd north where there’s grass and water. Mrs. Kerrigan, then you burn this cabin and the old Hunt place. Leave Savannah St. James nothing that she can use to get through the winter.”
“Scorched earth,” Count Andropov said with an air of great finality. “That is what we Russians did to Napoleon when he invaded the motherland.”
“Will the St. James herd last through winter?” Kate asked.
“No, ma’am,” Brown said. “The buzzards will grow so fat they won’t be able to get off the ground.”
Intrigued, she asked another question. “Does Savannah St. James know this?”
“My guess would be no. And if you told her, she wouldn’t believe you.”
“They haven’t made a move this way yet,” Cobb said.
“The stampede slowed them,” Brown said. “But count on it. They’re coming.”
“What do you think, Frank? I mean about moving the herds,” Kate said.
“What Henry says makes sense, Kate. Just get your cattle out of the way.”
Kate nodded. “I’ll take your advice into consideration, Mr. Brown. In the meantime, I’ll ride out to the Hunt place tomorrow and take a look at the grass and the cattle.”
“I’ll ride with you, Ma,” Trace said.
“No. You’ll stay here in case the St. James woman makes a move against us.” She smiled. “Trace, I’ll take my derringer and a rifle, and I’ll be quite safe. I don’t really think we have anything to fear until the fall.”
Henry Brown looked as though he was about to say something, but Cobb said, “Don’t waste your breath, Henry. When Kate Kerrigan ties onto a thing, nothing you can say will change her mind.”
Kate smiled. “Why, Frank, what excellent advice you give.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Kate Kerrigan crossed the Pecos shortly after sunup and then headed southwest onto the H bar H range. After an hour of riding, she saw her first steer, a big brindle that plodded in
her direction for a few yards, then stopped, his nose lifted to the wind. After that more and more cattle appeared, all of them sleek and fat from grazing on good grass and what was at least a trickle of water in most streams.
The range looked just fine, the cattle healthy, and at no point did she see signs that squatters had moved cattle onto Hunt grass.
She rode along the bank of a dry wash for thirty minutes, looped around a stand of mesquite and juniper with tangles of brush and cactus in between, then latched onto a wide trail that aimed straight as an arrow due south.
As she expected, the trail led to the Hunt ranch house. The place was deserted. Devoid of the people that gave it life, its windows stared at her with dead eyes. Over by the bunkhouse a door banged open and shut in the wind. The day was hot, the sun burning bright in a blue sky, yet Kate shivered as she urged her horse toward the cabin, a place fit only for ghosts.
She rode past the empty corral and stepped out of the leather when she was still several yards from the door. She thought about taking her rifle but decided to leave it in the boot. The derringer in the pocket of her riding dress would suffice.
The interior of the cabin revealed the personality of the man who’d lived there: dark polished wood, steel-studded leather chairs, a rack of charred briar pipes on the mantel above a great round stove manufactured from riveted iron and brass. On one wall hung a picture of Robert E. Lee and on the opposite, a strange juxtaposition, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln draped in black crepe. A gun rack hung on the wall to the right of the door, but the rifles were gone, as was the petty cash from an upturned cashbox. Worn cow-skin rugs covered the wood floor and with great solemnity a massive grandfather clock ticked in a corner. Like Justin Hunt himself, the cabin was solid, steady, and seemingly indestructible.
Oddly depressed, Kate stepped out of the door back into the morning sunlight.
A tall, flashily handsome man in a frilled white shirt, riding breeches, and knee-high English boots sat his horse grinning at her. He had a Colt in his hand but holstered the pistol and swung gracefully out of the saddle. “Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
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