A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  Both horses went loco then, in the deafening aftermath, screaming with fright, tossing their heads, spinning on their hind legs. For all that it was a battle to stay in the saddle, Vierra never looked away from that wreck, and he didn’t think O’Ballivan did, either. It wouldn’t have been right to do that, even though it required a lot of grit to hold on to the sight.

  “Sweet Jesus God,” O’Ballivan gasped, when it was over. When the crashing stopped and the awful silence boiled up out of that ravine.

  “Amen,” Vierra said into the dreadful, trembling calm. They’d seen one man toss that bundle of dynamite onto the trestle, but he wasn’t working alone. Any second now, the banditos would swarm out of the rocks on the other side, like tarantulas, and make their way down to collect the spoils.

  “There might be somebody alive down there,” O’Ballivan said, and started for the descending trail, snaking along that side of the ravine toward the river far below. Vierra reached out and caught hold of the gelding’s bridle strap.

  “Not a chance,” Vierra told him. “Wait.”

  The two men glared at each other.

  “No one could have survived that fall,” Vierra insisted, easing his horse backward, behind an outcropping of rock.

  Reluctantly, O’Ballivan joined him. “Where the hell are they?” he mused, and Vierra knew he meant the outlaws who’d caused the cataclysm they’d just witnessed.

  “Could be they spotted us,” Vierra said, and spat. Bile kept rising in his throat. Too late, he thought, and fathomless despair yawned inside him like an abyss. He had to stay way back from the edge. We were too late.

  “That won’t keep the murdering sons of bitches from going after the gold shipment,” O’Ballivan replied. “Maybe they’re planning to bide their time until nightfall. Or ride around behind and get the jump on us.”

  Vierra swung down off his still-fitful horse, reached for his canteen and poured the contents into his hat so the gelding could drink. After a moment of deliberation, the Ranger did the same.

  Vierra settled his sodden hat back on his head, once the horse had emptied it. The dampness was cool and soothing, though it didn’t ease the dry ache that had opened up where his belly had been.

  “Where are they?” he murmured, not really expecting an answer, watching the cliff on the other side of the river. There was no sign of movement, as far as he could make out, not even a jackrabbit darting out of the sagebrush.

  O’Ballivan stared down at the wreckage. The top part of his face was shaded by his hat brim, but Vierra saw the tight, pale line of the Ranger’s jaw. Saw the tension in his wide shoulders and in the way he gripped his horse’s reins in one gloved fist. “Noon,” he said. “The train wasn’t supposed to reach this trestle before noon.”

  Vierra sighed. “Must have skipped a couple of stops—no freight or passengers to pick up, maybe. Engineers like to make up time wherever they can.”

  All of a sudden, O’Ballivan mounted up. “I’ve got to go down there,” he said.

  There would be no stopping him, Vierra knew. He put a foot in the stirrup and swung up onto his horse. “We’ll be easy targets,” he pointed out. “They’ll see us for sure.”

  “We’ll be out of range,” the Ranger said, and started down the trail.

  It was a path for mountain goats, not men on horseback, and a couple of times O’Ballivan almost pitched over the side, gelding and all. Vierra followed, more slowly, and much more carefully. All the while, he watched the other side of the ravine, his rifle resting across the pommel of his saddle, but nothing stirred over there, nothing at all.

  And that made the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

  * * *

  ORALEE MARCHED RIGHT PAST Elias James’s scrawny little clerk, and didn’t so much as knock before she shoved open the door of his office and barreled over the threshold like a hay wagon pulled by a fast team.

  “I’ve come to pay you cash money for that mercantile,” she announced.

  The skin under James’s chin quivered like a turkey’s wattle and his eyes went narrow. “What?” he demanded, standing and gesturing for her to shut the door in one motion.

  Oralee smiled and opened her handbag, kicking the door closed with her right foot. She might have been hefty, but she was nimble, too. “How’s your wife?” she asked, putting a trill to the words.

  Banker James sat right down again and she heard the breath rush out of him. “I offered to sell the property to Maddie Chancelor,” he said, careful, like a man feeling his way over uncertain ground. “Not to you.”

  “Maddie’ll be the owner, all right,” Oralee said, making a show of catching hold of the wad of hundred dollar notes she’d taken from her private safe, not ten minutes before, and hauling it out for him to see. “I’m just financin’ the deal.”

  “You can’t be serious,” James said, but when he got a look at all that money, he started to salivate. Fixed it with his eyes and didn’t turn loose.

  “Oh, I’m serious, all right,” Oralee replied. She all but waved the bankroll under his nose before dropping it casually back into her handbag. “Are you plannin’ to handle the sale, or do I have to ride all the way out to the Donagher place and make my pitch to Undine?”

  James gulped. Reddened around his mutton-chop whiskers. “That won’t be necessary. Anyway, it’s Mungo who has to agree, not Undine.”

  “I reckon you’d better talk to him, then,” Oralee said.

  “You shouldn’t be carrying around that kind of money, Oralee,” James prattled, after clearing his throat a couple of times. “It’s dangerous.”

  “There’s nobody in this town that’s as dangerous as I am,” she countered. “My saloon ain’t called the Rattlesnake for nothin’. When I coil and hiss, I mean to sink my fangs in, and that’s that.”

  He looked longingly at her bulging handbag. It was her favorite, silk, with real pearls stitched on in the shape of a forget-me-not, but she didn’t reckon it was the purse that held his interest. No, sir, it was money Elias loved, ill-gained or otherwise. “I’d be glad to put your funds into escrow,” he offered, waxing friendly. “Just until I’ve spoken with Mungo.”

  “I’d just bet you would,” Oralee retorted. She took in her surroundings with naked contempt. “And I’d sooner give it to old Charlie Wilcox for safekeepin’ as let you get your fat paws on it.” She smiled. “And you didn’t answer my question. How’s the missus these days? Still sufferin’ from the vapors and those sick headaches of hers?”

  James swallowed again. “Lenore,” he said, “is very delicate.”

  “I reckon it would half kill her to find out that her fine, upstandin’ husband pays double for Lulu’s specialty every other Saturday.”

  A dull flush climbed the banker’s neck. “I will not stoop to reply to that,” he said indignantly.

  Oralee smiled again, more broadly this time, and showing her teeth. “You stoop to plenty else,” she replied.

  “What do you want, Oralee?”

  “Damn fool question,” she said. “I just told you. I want the mercantile.”

  “You keep inquiring after my wife. I don’t see what Lenore’s health has to do with that. Unless, of course, you think you can blackmail me.”

  Oralee batted her eyelashes and put one hand to her bosom. Her derringer was tucked between her breasts, just in case she should have need of it. “Blackmail?” she repeated, suitably horrified. “I would never do such a thing.” She paused, enjoying the banker’s discomfort. To her, he wasn’t just one banker, he was a whole string of carpetbaggers, going back as far as she could remember, each one a bigger thief than the last. It was folks like him that’d stole her papa’s land and left her mama to die of the heartbreak. “On the other hand, I really can’t say what my girls might let slip, maybe in the mercantile or some other public place.”

  Banker James rallied, but it was all bluster and Oralee knew it. She could read any man, though she had to admit, at least to herself, that that O’Ballivan fella s
tumped her a little. He was about as male as a feller could get, but he hadn’t come near the Rattlesnake Saloon, save to pat Charlie Wilcox’s old horse and give it a handful of grain now and then. Something odd there, even if he was taken with Maddie, and darned if Oralee could work out what it was.

  “It is highly improper for a lady like Miss Chancelor to do business with the likes of you,” the banker said. “Her reputation will be in tatters by the time this is over. She’ll be lucky if folks don’t travel all the way to Tucson to do their marketing, just to avoid dealing with her.”

  “I guess that’s more her concern than mine,” Oralee said confidently. Up until now, she’d bought most of her own supplies in Tucson, mainly because the selection of goods was better and the prices lower. A few other townspeople had done the same. Most folks, though, preferred to buy at home, and the mercantile was thriving proof of that. “I’m just looking to earn a little interest on my money.”

  James spread his tallow-colored hands. “This whole thing was Undine’s idea in the first place,” he said. “For all I know, Mungo won’t agree to any such transaction.”

  Oralee leaned in a little. “You’d better hope he does,” she said.

  The banker swore, but he pushed back his desk chair, stood and took his bowler hat off the rack on the wall behind him. He pushed past Oralee, making for the door.

  “I won’t keep you,” she called after him, with plenty of sugar in her voice. “But give Lenore my best regards, won’t you?”

  * * *

  MUNGO DONAGHER GRIPPED the rusty bars of his cell in both hands and stared, disbelieving, at the woman standing on the other side, a sheaf of what looked like legal papers in her hand. He’d had a bath and a shave and a change of clothes since the day he’d done the murder, but just looking at her made him feel dirty all over again.

  Near as he could tell, it was late afternoon, but he was only guessing. He’d stopped marking the passage of time the moment he took Garrett’s worthless life.

  “Whore,” he said just as the banker hurried in. Elias must have brought Undine here, then. Gone out to the ranch to fetch her into town for some business they’d cooked up between them. Drawn up those papers, too.

  Mungo ignored him.

  Tears sprang to Undine’s eyes. Pretty as a picture, she was, in a flowered hat and a rose-colored dress. A matching beaded bag dangled from her wrist, and she had a parasol tucked under one elbow, like she was out for a stroll. All that frippery, bought with his money. She’d been down on her luck when he’d met her. Stranded, without a nickel to her name. Now, she looked like a Roosevelt.

  It galled him severely.

  “I know you don’t mean that,” she said brokenly. “You’re just overwrought because you had to kill Garrett to save me.”

  Mungo blinked. For a moment he was in that accursed bedroom at the ranch again, putting a gun to his own son’s head. He wrenched himself back to the grim present just before the trigger tripped.

  “What?” he bawled, confounded.

  She spoke up a little, maybe for the benefit of the cowpoke who’d been standing guard ever since the killing, but her eyes were clear and direct, as though she was trying to get a point across. “If you hadn’t done what you did,” she said, “well, who knows what would have happened to me?” She paused, sniffled again, but the tears had already dried, if they’d ever been there in the first place. Could be he’d imagined them. “I’m your wife. You protected me. I can’t think what else you could have done.”

  Mungo opened his mouth, closed it again.

  Undine smiled. “Soon as the judge hears my side of the story, you’ll be out of this place. Back home, where you belong.”

  The thought of stepping over the threshold of that house gave Mungo pause. Hard as he’d worked all those years, he’d as soon burn the place to the ground as look at it, after what happened there. As he came back to himself, though, he felt a powerful yen for his old freedom.

  “Maybe you’d like to go to California, after all,” Undine suggested sweetly. Her eyes were still shrewd; she was looking straight into his head, unraveling his thoughts like so much tangled thread. Weaving the strands to suit her. “We could make a fresh start there. Put all this behind us for good.”

  Mungo felt himself being drawn like smoke to an open window. He gripped the bars harder, rested his forehead between them and shut his eyes tight. “What are them papers, Undine?” he asked in a thin whisper. After a few moments he glanced at the banker, saw the man tug at his celluloid collar with a nervous finger.

  “Maddie Chancelor wants to buy the mercantile,” Undine answered. “She’ll pay fifteen hundred dollars cash.”

  “Buy the—?”

  “Mercantile,” Undine finished for him. She bit her lower lip, but her gaze held steady. Whole cloth, that was what her story was, and she was trimming it to fit. “We can use the money to hire us a Tucson lawyer, Mungo.”

  “There’s plenty of money,” he said, and looked past her to James for confirmation. He’d scrimped and saved for years, and he owned the ranch free and clear.

  The banker nodded, and that was reassuring, but he kept his distance just the same. Meantime, the cowpoke looked on from over by the stove, sipping coffee from a blue enamel cup and not even pretending not to eavesdrop. The yellow dog lay snoring at his feet.

  “We’ll need all we can get together to make a go of it in California,” Undine reasoned. “It might take a while to sell the ranch, too.”

  Sell the ranch.

  Damn the house, but that land—that land—had soaked up his blood and sweat for thirty years. How could he leave it? Who would he be, anyhow, without that patch of ground, stretching as far as the eye could see, in every direction?

  “I can’t bear to go on living here, after what’s happened,” Undine said, and her voice took on a fretful note, though her eyes still didn’t change. Mungo was reminded of a rattler he’d run afoul of one time, out on the range. It had sprung at him from some rocks next to the creek, when he squatted to drink, sunk its fangs into his thigh and, even as the venom surged through his system like so much molten lead, he’d drawn his pistol and shot that snake into little chunks of quivering flesh. “Folks will talk.”

  Mungo didn’t figure he’d ever see the outside of that jail, except maybe to stand trial in Tucson or Tombstone, and then, like as not, he’d hang. Still, there was that fierce longing, wandering inside him like a wraith, feeling its way from window to door, pounding and wailing to be let go.

  Mungo wasn’t stupid. He knew Undine might take the money from the sale of that store and light out for California or elsewhere without him, leave him to face his comeuppance on his own. But the truth was, he didn’t give a damn about the mercantile. If Undine took to the road, well, he’d know the truth of her feelings, at least. If she stayed, that might be reason enough to fight for his life.

  “Get me a pen and ink,” he said.

  Undine’s cheekbones went pink with pleasure, and maybe triumph. Rhodes produced the requested items from a desk drawer and Mungo signed the papers. Before the ink was dry, Undine had snatched them back.

  “You won’t be sorry,” she said.

  Mungo wasn’t sorry about much of anything, including the fact that he’d shot his firstborn in the back of the head, at point-blank range. Undine claimed he’d saved her, and he knew that wasn’t precisely true, but a man had a choice about what he believed. Might as well be the easier thing as the hard one.

  “You run off,” he warned as she turned away from him, “and you’d better pray to every saint in heaven that I hang.”

  Undine stopped cold, looked back at him. “Why, Mungo,” she scolded prettily, “if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were threatening me. And here I am, ready to tell the truth about what happened and save your stubborn neck from the noose!”

  Mungo scowled. “California ain’t such a big place that I couldn’t find you,” he said. “You just remember that.”

  “I
never forget anything,” Undine said coolly. “Not anything at all.”

  A moment later she was gone, with the banker trotting at her heels like a blind sheep.

  “I reckon a lot of folks would believe you were just protecting your wife,” the cowboy jailer observed thoughtfully when the door closed behind Undine and Banker James. He set the ink bottle down on the desk and laid the pen next to it. “Yes, sir, I reckon they’d believe it.”

  Mungo sat on the edge of his cot, buried his face in his hands and waited—not for the circuit judge, or some fancy lawyer come from Tucson to take his part, not even to be set free.

  No, sir. Mungo Donagher was waiting to see what his lovely bride would do once she got her mitts on that money.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THEY WERE ALL DEAD, piled up in those upended railroad cars like the last few matches in a box.

  Eight passengers. Two conductors. Six federales, apparently guarding a strongbox Sam assumed was filled with government gold. While Vierra stood watch on the riverbank, Sam brought the bodies out, one by one, starting with a woman and two little girls in flowered bonnets. He laid the three of them in a row on the rocky shore; surely somebody was waiting up ahead somewhere, to gather them in and celebrate some long-awaited arrival. Now, there would be tears instead of joyful greetings.

  Something ground deep and hard inside Sam.

  Vierra scarcely glanced at the corpses, but he was sweating as if he’d carried them himself. “Did you find the gold?” he asked after visibly struggling to contain the question for a few moments.

  It was a reasonable thing to ask, and offered quietly, but it made Sam’s jaw tighten just the same. He looked at the trestle, part of it standing, a spindly, wooden thing, part dangling like splintered bone from a severed arm. “It’s in there,” he said, filled with bleak determination, steeling himself to go back.

  “Where the hell are they?” Vierra fretted, presumably referring to the outlaws, turning in a full circle to take in the surrounding terrain. “I know they’re here.”