“That’s not for you to decide.” Collier reached out and plucked the tin star from the deputy’s coat. “You’ll not be needin’ this. Move the wagon,” he motioned to Gilly. “Take the bodies to the back of the furniture store.” He waited until the wagon pulled out and the crowd had thinned before he spoke to Buck.
“Mr Lenning,” he held out his hand. “Lieutenant Collier.” He continued in a low voice. “Federal Marshal Stark advised me of the situation here. My advice is . . . stay off the street tonight and keep an eye on Miss Anderson. Should you need help, send word to the hotel; that’s where I’ll be until suitable quarters can be arranged for me and my men.”
“I’m obliged to you. I will take that advice.” Buck tipped his head and put his heels in the horse. He rode on down the street and turned into the alley. Bernie rode up beside him.
“Let’s leave the horses at the livery and go into the back of the café. If anyone’s interested, they’ll think you’re sleeping there. When it’s dark we’ll slip on over to Mrs. Gaffney’s.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Darkness had settled on the town by the time Cleve and Dillon turned down the street where the Forsythe mansion occupied an entire block. Cleve was pleased with the way Buck handled himself when faced with the angry crowd. Judge Williams had been impressed, too, and commented that Buck would make a good lawman if he ever decided to give up ranching.
They were walking alongside the picket fence when Cleve spoke about the problem at hand.
“You plannin’ on devilin’ the man some more? If this wasn’t so serious, it’d be fun.”
“It’ll be fun. I’ve waited a long time for this. I hope he gets so riled up he wets his drawers,” Dillon said.
“So yo’re goin’ to tell him who ya are?”
“I thought I’d let you do that.”
“I do it for you, Señor. I tell him plenty.” Pablo came up suddenly behind them. “You no hear me comin’,” he said proudly.
“I heard ya.” Cleve said. “I knew ya were there.”
“Dammit to hell! Can’t I go anywhere without you taggin’ along?”
“Got job to do. Colin say look out for little br—”
“Say it, you bowlegged clabber-head, and that mustache’ll be ticklin’ your tonsils.” Dillon stopped and drew back his fist.
“That’s enough. You two can jaw all you want after the job here is done.”
“He’s not goin’ in!” They were walking up to the front steps.
“No, he’s not. Pablo, stay here on the porch.”
“Sí, Señor. But Pablo come runnin’ if little brudder—”
“Hush up!”—Cleve lifted the knocker on the door—“Or I’ll bust your nose myself.”
After a few minutes the door opened. Forsythe looked from one man to the other.
“What do you want?” he asked bluntly.
“A word with you,” Cleve said.
“I conduct business in my office, not my home.”
“Ya’ll see us now.” Cleve gave the door an unexpected shove, pushing Forsythe back out of the way.
“Thanks,” Dillon said pleasantly. “We’ll come in, but we can’t stay to supper.”
Forsythe backed up even more when the two big men crowded into the foyer. Something in the face of that damn kid who had been needling him caused his bravado to waver. Stark was taking something from his pocket and attaching it to his coat.
“What authority do you have for pushing your way into a man’s house?”
“None, when it comes right down to it. I’m a Federal marshal.”
“I knew you weren’t what you claimed,” Forsythe sneered, eyeing the badge. “What’s a Federal marshal doing here?”
Cleve ignored the question.
“—And my friend here is Dillon Tallman of New Mexico. His father is John Tallman, the well-known scout, trader and rancher.”
Forsythe’s eyes went to the tall blond man, and the color drained from his face.
“You’re . . . you’re—?” was all he could say before his voice dried up.
“John and Addie Tallman’s son. How do, Mr. Kirby Hyde. Isn’t that what you called yourself down in Arkansas?” Dillon’s eyes were as cold as his voice.
Before Forsythe could recover from the shock of hearing the name he had used more than twenty years ago, Dillon’s fist lashed out and landed on his chin. The blow sent the older man back against the wall. He hit it with a force that stunned him. He slid down the wall to the floor and sat there, shaking his head to clear it.
“That was for a lady named Addie Faye Johnson.” Dillon hauled Forsythe to his feet and pinned him to the wall with one hand and slapped him across the face with the other. “That was for runnin’ out on her down in Freepoint, Arkansas.” He slapped him again so hard, the man’s eyes crossed. “That was for marryin’ her under a false name so you could get her in bed. And this—”
Cleve stepped in and took Dillon’s arm. “Don’t knock him out until I can serve the papers.”
“I won’t knock him out. And this”—he slapped Forsythe hard and repeatedly on first one cheek and then with the back of his hand on the other—“is for all the work she did during the war to keep her son from starving.”
Dillon grasped Forsythe’s upper arms and banged his head against the wall.
“Since the day my mother told me about you, I’ve wanted to kill you. But killin’ would be too quick an end for a piece of horseshit like you.” He held him against the wall and spat in his face.
Forsythe took the insult with a stunned expression on his bloody face and stared back at him with spittle running down his cheek.
“Mama said you were a sorry excuse for a man. Now that I’ve seen you, I know you’re not worthy to be called a man. You’re nothin’ . . . but shit.”
Dillon backed away, wiping his hands on his britches as if touching Forsythe had left something offensive on them.
Blood from Forsythe’s nose ran down over his white mustache and onto his shirtfront. His face was beet red from the blows and his eyes blazed with hatred. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his nose.
“If I’m shit, what does that make you?” he sneered.
“Nothin’ that’s got anythin’ to do with you. Any rotten, gutless male, even a cur dog, can spill a seed. It takes a real man to tend that seed. My pa, John Tallman, saw to it that I had everything I needed to grow into a man.” Dillon reached over and grabbed Forsythe’s shirtfront. “Don’t ever, in any way, word or deed, link me to you or I will kill you!”
“Get out!”
“Not yet.” Cleve drew a paper from his pocket and held it out. Forsythe ignored it until Cleve waved it in his face, then he snatched it from his hand.
“What the hell is . . . this?”
“It’s a notice to appear at nine o’clock tomorrow morning in the courtroom of Judge James Williams. Bring all the papers you have concerning any land deals you’ve made during the three years you’ve been here.”
“The hell I will! Everything I’ve done here has been according to the law.”
“Killin’ old men legal now, Cleve?” Dillon asked. “Hell. I didn’t know that.”
“Get out!”
“We’re goin’.”
Cleve went to the open door and tried to prod Dillon out ahead of him, but he held back for one last word.
“You’re a rotten no-good son of a bitch! You’re like a cancer sore eatin’ away at everything that’s decent in this town. But not for much longer, Colonel Asshole.” He slammed the door behind him.
“Feel better?” Cleve asked as they went across the porch and down the steps.
“Not as good as I thought I would. He’s nothin’ . . . but shit. Just stood there and took it. Hell, he’s less than nothin’.”
“Ya needed to find it out for yourself.”
“Ya didn’t need me, Señor?”
Dillon turned on the Mexican. “Why in hell would I need a stunted little piss
ant like you? If ya breathe one word of what ya heard in there, I’ll break both of yore bandy legs, cut off your balls and make a geldin’ outta ya! Hear?”
“Ohhh . . . ahhh—” Pablo grabbed his privates. “That’d hurt, Señor!”
Cleve walked on ahead. The fact that the man who had sired him had deserted him and his mother had been eating away at Dillon for years. Maybe now that he had shown his contempt for that man face-to-face, he would settle down and forget there ever was a Kirby Hyde or a Kyle Forsythe.
John Tallman, Cleve’s friend of many years, had told him to take Dillon with him to the Montana Territory and let him confront the man. When he had expressed the hatred he felt, he’d put it behind him and it would no longer be of such importance to him.
From the sound of the lighthearted bickering between Dillon and Pablo going on behind him, it seemed that John was right.
* * *
In the Forsythe mansion, Kyle paced the floor, holding a wet towel to his face. Ruth had not been in the kitchen when he went there to get the towel. She had not gone upstairs . . . unless she had slipped by while that son of a bitch was hitting him.
His bastard had grown up to be quite a man. Even so, if he’d had a gun, he would have killed him. He had felt that there was something familiar about that kid. Now that he thought about it, he had Addie’s hair and eyes.
Well, what the hell! He probably had a dozen other by-blows scattered from Tennessee to Arkansas to New Mexico and into the northern territories. They meant no more to him than a fart in a whirlwind.
He pulled the paper Stark had given to him out of his pocket. It was a printed form with time and place written in. What was going on? Lee had sent the correct papers to Helena to be recorded; the paper supposedly signed by the Anderson woman giving Lee the authority to act in her behalf and the papers turning the land over to him for the sum of three thousand dollars. Someone there in Helena must have begun wondering about how much land he was acquiring and contacted Judge Williams.
The judge had a reputation for siding with homesteaders and others who signed to use government land. Forsythe had known that if trouble came, it would be from him. That was why he’d sent Del to Bozeman to kill him. If the lovesick bastard had done his job, this wouldn’t be happening. It should be all over out at the Larkspur by now. Bruza, Lyster and the men would be returning soon. He had plans for Del Gomer when they got back.
Forsythe continued to walk back and forth, holding the wet towel to his face. Everything had been done legally . . . according to Lee. If the axe should fall, it would not be on him, it’d fall smack-dab on the one who had claimed to have the authority to sell him the land and who had collected the money—Mark Lee. He had made sure a check had been issued to Lee, cashed, and the money put back in his account. It paid to have the banker indebted to you. Forsythe would have laughed, but his jaws were too sore.
He went to the foot of the stairs and yelled.
“Ruth!”
“I’m here.” Ruth came from the kitchen.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
“Out on the porch.”
“All the time?”
“Most of it. I didn’t want anyone to see me.”
Her once-lovely face was bruised and swollen, her lips almost twice their normal size. Her neck, and chest to the neckline of her dress, showed marks of a beating.
“You only have yourself to blame for the beatings. You’ve become arrogant, so damned arrogant I can hardly stand the sight of you. You’re a servant here, Ruth. Just because I sleep with you, doesn’t give you special privileges. I want you to go get Lee. Tell him to get over here and fast.”
“Kyle, you know I don’t like to go out alone at night. All those men that hang around—”
“Hush up!” he said harshly. “I don’t care what you don’t like! Goddammit, do you have to argue every time I tell you to do something? You’re a stupid bitch, Ruth. A stupid bitch! I’ve fed and clothed you these past two years. You’re no better than the lowest-paid whore down at Flo’s. At least they can give a man satisfaction.”
Ruth turned to go get her shawl. She knew the signs. He was in a rage. The boy (his son, from what she’d overheard) had worked him over. She had listened with glee to every blow that landed. While shivering on the porch she had made up her mind that she’d not take another beating without fighting back.
“Don’t turn your back while I’m talking to you,” Forsythe shouted.
“I’m going to get my shawl.”
“You heard, didn’t you? ’Course you did. You heard every word the bastard said. You nosy bitch! You can’t wait to spread it all over town.”
Forsythe moved toward her. She backed up and sidestepped along the wall toward the kitchen. He stalked her, his eyes bright, his nostrils flaring. This was a game he liked to play. She sidled toward the dining room; he continued to stalk her. She moved around the table and he followed. When she made the break for the door, he pounced, caught her, and pushed her up against the wall.
As Dillon had done with him, he held Ruth with one hand against her chest and with the other hand he slapped her back and forth across the face. The first blow bloodied her nose. The second one whipped her head around so hard she blanked out for a second or two, but she refused to cry out. It would only excite him more.
“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” he shouted as he struck her time and again.
It excited him to hit her. Already he was getting aroused; he wanted to throw her to the floor and plunge his stiffened member into her. Since he had discovered this treatment of her aroused him, he’d taken her on the table amid the supper dishes, on the stairs, on the back porch in plain sight of the carriage house where the stableboy could watch, and a time or two at night, in the dirt of the flower bed.
He thought constantly of ways to humiliate and degrade her.
“Get on the floor,” he commanded.
The instant he moved the hand holding her to the wall, Ruth kicked at his groin. When he jerked back, she ran to the kitchen. He was so startled that she would dare to fight him, that seconds passed before he went after her.
“Ruth,” he shouted. “I’ll beat the livin’ hell out of you. Slut! Whore! Get on the floor and spread your—” Words and breath left him when he swung back the kitchen door.
Ruth was there. She had a crazed look on her bloody face. Her lips were drawn back over her teeth and she looked like what she was: a woman possessed. In her hand, raised high over her head, was a long kitchen knife.
“Nooo . . . !” she screamed and dived at him. “Nooo . . . ! Nooo . . . !”
Her voice rose, bouncing against the walls of the room, echoing throughout the house and spilling out into the still, dark night.
Before he could recover from the shock of seeing the usually cowered woman so wildly distraught, she was on him and plunged the knife into the base of his throat. Blood spewed like a fountain. His eyes widened, his mouth opened, his hands lifted to ward her off as he crumbled to the floor.
Crazed and screaming, Ruth fell to her knees beside him and plunged the knife again and again into his chest.
* * *
It was near midnight. Gustaf sat on Mrs. Gaffney’s porch with his rifle across his knees. He had been given the responsibility of protecting Kristin, and he was determined that no one would slip past him this time. His mind, however, drifted from time to time to Bonnie.
Bonnie Gates was quite a woman. It had taken courage to poison the stew with the larkspur. Not one woman in a hundred would have thought of it. He liked her attitude about the money Del Gomer had left to her. She swore that she’d not take a cent of it for her own personal use. The money, she declared, would go to an orphans’ home, or if there was enough of it, to establish a new one.
His thoughts were interrupted by Kristin. She came to the porch every few minutes to ask Gustaf if he’d heard anything.
“Stay in the house, Kris. Buck said that he and Bernie would come as soon as they thought it safe.
”
Gustaf, too, was worried. It had been hours since Buck had led the wagon carrying the dead bodies into town. But if there had been trouble at that time, he reasoned, they would have heard of it by now.
Gustaf was happy that Kristin would have a man like Buck Lenning to look after her. It was obvious that the man was wildly in love with her. Just looking at his rough exterior, it would seem that he was an unlikely choice for his cousin, but Gustaf knew men. He had learned from his travels up and down the river to separate the ones who dreamed and created from the ones who raped and destroyed.
“Don’t come out, Kristin,” he said when he heard the door squeak, behind him.
“Let her come out.” The voice came out of the darkness beside the porch. Gustaf sprang to his feet with his rifle ready. The voice came again, quickly. “It’s me, Buck.”
“Buck! Oh, Buck! I’ve been so worried.” Kristin came flying out the door and threw herself into his arms. “I never want to go through such a night again. Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry you worried, honey.” Buck spoke with his arms tightly around her. “Things have come to a head. Let’s go in, and I’ll tell you about it. Come on in, Gus. Bernie should be along soon.”
Rose Gaffney greeted Buck warmly and led them to the brightly lit kitchen.
“We saved you and Bernie some supper,” Bonnie said. “I’ll warm it up when he gets here.”
Buck looked at the expectant faces waiting for him to relate the news and plunged right in.
“Forsythe is dead. His housekeeper killed him.”
Kristin was the first to react. “Oh, my goodness!” Then, “Mrs. Gaffney may not have heard—”
“I heard,” Rose said. “I hear when I want to. All I’ve got to say is, she did the town a favor.”
“Sit down and tell us.” Kristin took his hat from his hand and hung it on a hook on the wall, then sat down close beside him.
Buck told them everything that had happened from the time they stopped the wagon in front of the saloon. He told about the crowd’s reaction when they saw the dead men and about Lieutenant Collier’s being the law until a territorial marshal arrived.
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