Behind him, one of the percentage girls let out a scream.
Parker's head snapped up so that he could see what was going on in the long mirror behind the bar. A bloody, soot-covered apparition had appeared in the doorway of the saloon, swatting the batwings aside. A bellow of rage came from the thing's throat, and for a couple of horrifying seconds, Parker didn't realize what he was looking at.
But then, as he turned to meet the charge, he recognized Jeremiah Newton. The big blacksmith was still alive, and even worse, he was lurching toward Parker, his massive arms outstretched and his hands aimed right at the saloonkeeper's throat.
With a curse, Parker twisted aside and then met the attack with a lunge of his own. The two big men came together like a pair of bull buffaloes fighting for dominance over the herd. Their collision seemed to shake the entire building.
They were pretty evenly matched. Jeremiah was heavier, but Parker's reach was a little longer. However, Parker had only the one arm to Jeremiah's two. Jeremiah's left arm wasn't working very well, though, and blood was welling into his eyes from a gash on his forehead. He was already so battered that the only thing keeping him on his feet was his rage.
Parker sensed that, and he slammed his rock-hard fist into Jeremiah's face again and again, keeping the blacksmith from wrapping him up in a bear hug that might prove fatal.
If the fight had been between just the two of them, it might have gone on until one or both of them dropped from exhaustion. As it was, the odds swung quickly to Parker's side as the bartender and two of the men he employed to break up trouble in the Pronghorn leaped into the fracas.
The bartender hurried around the end of the bar carrying a bungstarter, and he slammed the wooden mallet into the back of Jeremiah's head, stunning the blacksmith. Parker's men grabbed Jeremiah's arms, jerking them painfully behind his back. "Hold him, boys!" Parker gasped. Then, setting himself, he began to slug blows into Jeremiah's midsection. When Jeremiah doubled over despite the efforts of Parker's men to hold him up, the saloonkeeper windmilled his fist and brought it down on Jeremiah's temple. Jeremiah collapsed onto the floor at Parker's feet, out cold. Parker drew back his leg, poising himself to kick Jeremiah in the head.
A metallic click sounded from the doorway of the saloon. "Do it and I'll kill you where you stand, you son of a bitch," Cole Tyler said icily as he stared at Parker over the barrel of his drawn and cocked Colt revolver.
Cole's face and hands were blistered from the heat of the fire, and his arms and shoulders ached intolerably from the strain of throwing countless heavy buckets of water onto the blaze. But the gun in his hand didn't waver a fraction of an inch as he pointed it at Hank Parker.
He had left the church while it was still burning, but the fire had been much smaller. The area around the church had been thoroughly wet down by more men with buckets, so there was little danger of the flames spreading. What was left of the church would just have to burn itself out.
So Cole had hurried back down the hill to town, thinking that it was possible he might find Jeremiah at the blacksmith shop. Not likely, he knew that. . . but possible.
Instead, to his great relief, he had found his friend here in the Pronghorn, on the losing end of a battle with Parker and some of the saloonkeeper's flunkies. The commotion in the saloon had drawn Cole's attention, and from the looks of things, he had gotten there just in time.
"Wait just a damned minute!" Parker protested angrily as he lowered the foot he had been aiming at Jeremiah's head. "Newton's the one you ought to be pointing a gun at, Tyler. He started this fight!"
"It's true, Marshal," spoke up one of Parker's men. "That big galoot came runnin' in here and tried to kill the boss."
"I reckon he had a good reason," Cole said. "You know anything about that fire up at the church, Parker?"
Parker straightened his coat and glowered at Cole. "Only what I heard gents shouting about out in the street," he said. "And I don't appreciate you jumping to conclusions like that. It's bad enough this bastard came in here and tried to tear my head off for something I didn't have anything to do with."
Cole didn't believe Parker for a second. But that issue could be dealt with later, he decided. For now, he had to see to Jeremiah. Motioning with the barrel of his gun, he said, "Step back away from him."
"Gladly," grunted Parker. He moved back to the bar, and the other men cleared out from around Jeremiah's slumped form.
Cole went to Jeremiah and knelt beside him. The big man was breathing, Cole could see that much. Jeremiah looked like he had been beaten badly again; there was blood on his face, and it was already purple and swollen with bruises. In addition, his eyebrows and some of his hair had been singed away, and his hands and face were burned in places. His clothes were nothing but charred rags, and he appeared to have burns scattered all over his body. He was in pitiful condition.
"We've got to get him over to Dr. Kent's," Cole said as he straightened. "Some of you men come over here and pick him up, but be damned careful about it."
The men looked at Parker, who nodded brusquely. "Better do what the marshal says," he told them, then added with a sneer directed at Cole, "otherwise our fine, upstanding lawman is liable to shoot somebody."
Cole ignored the gibe. He stood back while the men gathered around Jeremiah and hefted him with grunts of effort. They carried him out of the saloon and started down the street toward Judson Kent's office.
Pausing in the doorway with his gun still in his hand, Cole looked back at Parker. "Jeremiah had better be all right," he warned. "If he's not, I'll be coming back to see you, Parker."
"He's the one who went crazy and attacked me," Parker snapped. "You can't prove a damned thing against me, Tyler, and as long as you're wearing that badge, you've got to have proof."
A humorless smile touched Cole's lips. "You've forgotten one thing: I put this badge on—and I can damned sure take it off."
With that, he pushed out through the batwings and hurried down the street after the men carrying Jeremiah.
Chapter 9
Jeremiah must have stumbled down the hill and in the darkness somehow missed the people rushing up the slope toward the burning church. That was the only thing Cole could figure out after talking to the big blacksmith later that night in Judson Kent's office.
Cole was grateful Jeremiah was still alive, and according to Kent, that was something of a miracle in itself. The punishment Jeremiah had absorbed would have been enough to kill any man with a constitution weaker than Jeremiah's iron one.
"You're a lucky man, my friend," Kent told him as he rested a hand on Jeremiah's shoulder. "And you're going to stay right here in this bed for a few days until you've recovered a bit. We won't be taking any chances with that head of yours this time."
Stubbornly Jeremiah tried to sit up, but he lacked the strength to do so. "Got to . . . see about the church," he complained.
"Don't you worry about that," Cole assured him from the other side of the bed. "I've already heard plenty of folks say that they'll pitch in to clean up the debris. By the time you're able to be up and around, the town will be ready to start building again."
"All that work," Jeremiah sighed as he let his head ease back onto the pillow underneath it. "All that work for nothing." He looked at Cole. "What are you going to do about Parker?"
Cole grimaced. "There's not much I can do. Again, you didn't see the faces of the men who jumped you. All Parker has to do is deny knowing anything about it, and unless somebody comes forward to contradict him, we can't disprove his story."
"No one in that lot is going to testify against Parker," Kent said. "They'd be afraid to."
"That's what I figure, too," Cole agreed.
"So he gets away with it," Jeremiah said dispiritedly.
Cole looked at his friend. Jeremiah's body was swathed in bandages where Kent had smeared ointment for the burns on his skin. His left forearm had splints strapped to it to hold it immobile; Kent suspected one of the bones in the arm was cr
acked but not completely fractured. There were stitches on Jeremiah's forehead where the medico had closed up the worst of the gashes. Jeremiah was a mess, pure and simple, and Cole felt he was letting his friend down by not going after Parker.
"There's nothing I can do about it now," Cole said wearily. "But one of these days, Parker is going to overplay his hand. When he does, he's going to be sorry he ever got off the train in Wind River."
Cole hoped those were more than just empty words.
* * *
By the next morning, things were back to what passed for normal in the settlement. Cole and Billy Casebolt rode up to the burned-out church on the knoll and poked around the cooling ashes for anything that might point them toward the men who had done this.
Finding any tracks was hopeless; there had been so many people milling around the night before that any sign had been completely obliterated. Unless they got some sort of lucky break— which Cole didn't foresee happening—they weren't going to be able to tie Hank Parker to this atrocity.
When the two lawmen got back to the marshal's office, there was another shock waiting for Cole. Parker himself was waiting there, his face bruised from the battle with Jeremiah. Cole stopped short when he strode into the building and saw Parker. "What the hell do you want?" he demanded.
Parker returned the icy stare Cole was giving him. "Newton attacked me last night for no reason. I want to press charges against him."
Casebolt goggled at the saloonkeeper. "You want to press charges?" he echoed, his voice rising in astonishment and anger. "Why, you low-down, sidewindin'—"
Cole stopped him. "That's enough, Billy," he said. Cole's jaw was so tight that a tiny muscle jerked in it as he faced Parker and went on, "You can swear out a complaint, but it's up to the law to determine whether or not there's enough evidence to proceed with it. And all I saw last night when I got to the Pronghorn was you and three of your men beating up on Jeremiah. I'd say he's got a case against you."
"That's not the way it was, and you know it, Tyler," snapped Parker. "You're just trying to protect Newton because he's your friend."
Cole shrugged. "If you've got a problem with my decision, Parker, you can go to Cheyenne and see about getting some federal law in here. I'm sure you wouldn't mind having a U.S. deputy marshal come in and start poking around. Dan Boyd might even get the job."
"You and Boyd worked together not that long ago!" Parker protested. "You think I'd get a fair hearing from him or any other federal badge-toter?"
"Maybe your trouble's not with me, it's just with the law in general." Cole brushed roughly past him. "Now, if you don't have anything else to say, stop wasting my time and get out of my office."
Parker pointed a finger at him. "I'm not forgetting this, Tyler."
"I've got a long memory, too," Cole said softly. "I reckon it'll be a while before I forget what Jeremiah looked like last night before Dr. Kent got back from the fire and started patching him up."
Parker glowered at him for a moment longer, then turned on his heel and stalked out of the building.
In a quiet voice, Casebolt said into the silence, "One of these days you're going to have to kill that old boy, Marshal."
"You could be right, Billy." Cole sat down behind the desk and sighed. "You could be right."
* * *
The way things had been going, Simone McKay was waiting for another catastrophe. After the brawl at her campaign rally, the attacks on Jeremiah Newton, the destruction of the church . . . well, it was a reasonable assumption that something else bad was going to happen. But it didn't, not the rest of that day, and Simone was pleasantly surprised.
She went home from the land office that night, saw no sign of the ghost of her late husband, and slept well. The next morning, Brenda Durand was waiting when Simone arrived at the land development company.
"I want to see your records," Brenda announced without preamble. "I have a right."
"And good morning to you, too, Miss Durand," Simone said dryly, making an effort to keep her temper in check. Brenda certainly knew how to irritate her. The girl seemed to have a positive genius for it.
Brenda flushed. "Good morning," she said belatedly. "What about those records?"
"Come into my office. I'll gladly open the books for you. As you say, you have a right."
The worst part about it was that Brenda did have a right to inspect the company's books. Simone wondered if she had made a mistake by not contesting Brenda's claims in court. It was possible, even probable, that Simone would have lost in any legal action against Brenda. But it would have been a delaying tactic, at the very least. She wouldn't have had to deal with Brenda's annoying attitude while she had so many other, more pressing matters to occupy her attention.
But it was too late for that now. Brenda's involvement in the holdings Simone had considered her own was a fact, and there was little or nothing she could do about it.
"Sit down," Simone said as the two women entered the private office. She gestured at the comfortable chair in front of the desk. "I'll get what you need to see."
"I need to see everything," Brenda said as she sat down. "I want to know everything there is to know about the workings of this company, as well as all the other assets."
"And so you shall," Simone said, still trying to be polite. "Would you like me to have some coffee brought in?"
Brenda considered for a second, then nodded. "That's a good idea. We're likely to need it."
Simone opened the office door again, spoke quietly to one of the clerks in the front room, and then went behind the desk to sit down and open the large bottom drawer to her right. She took out several ledgers and handed them across the desk to Brenda. "Help yourself. If there's anything you don't understand, I'd be glad to explain it."
"I can read a ledger," snapped Brenda. She opened the first one and began poring over the columns of figures written inside. When she was done with the first book, she set it aside and started on the second one.
Simone saw a small frown appear on Brenda's face, and the expression grew more pronounced as the younger woman looked through the ledgers. By the time she was finished, she definitely looked unhappy. Simone didn't bother asking what the problem was. She was sure Brenda would tell her.
"Either your accounting methods are awfully slipshod," Brenda said after a moment, "or there are a great many people who haven't been prompt about paying what they owe. There are a lot of accounts in those books that are overdue!"
"The records are accurate," said Simone. "And as for some of the accounts being overdue . . . it's not that easy to make a living out here. Miss Durand, especially for farmers and ranchers. A bad year can make money awfully tight for several years after that. Everyone I do business with makes an honest effort to pay what they owe, and I accept that on good faith."
"Good faith! Good faith doesn't pay bills, Mrs. McKay. Only cold, hard cash does that."
Simone leaned back in her chair. "You seem to know a great deal about business, especially for a woman."
"No more so than you." Brenda gestured contemptuously at the stack of ledgers on the desk. "Or perhaps I should say I do know more than you, judging from those records. I was a clerk for one of the leading attorneys in Baltimore."
"At your age?" Simone frowned in disbelief.
"I have a good head for numbers, and my employer represented many of the city's leading businessmen. It was somewhat unusual, I know, but women are doing more all the time." Brenda smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. "Why, in some places they're even allowed to vote and run for public office."
Simone ignored that last comment and asked, "What would you have me do about the accounts that are overdue?"
"Why, force the people to pay, of course! Either that or foreclose on them and take the land back."
"You wouldn't even give them a chance to get caught up when their farms are more well established?"
"Certainly not. Money is owed when it's owed, not later."
Simone shook her head. "I won't do business that way."
Brenda leaned forward and snapped, "You don't have any choice. I own just as much of this company as you do."
"True, but I'm the managing partner. You agreed to that . . . in the presence of witnesses, I might add." She held up a hand to forestall Brenda's angry retort. "Besides, what you want to do just isn't good business. This isn't a charitable institution. I have foreclosed on people when it became obvious that they had no intention of paying off their debt. But every case is different, and I intend to be making money here in Wind River for a long time." Simone came to her feet, her patience gone. "Pay attention, little girl, and you might learn something. But for now, get out of my office. I have work to do."
Brenda gaped at her, astonished and outraged by the tone Simone had taken. Finally she said, "You . . . you can't get away with this!"
"I'm just doing my job. I'm protecting this company and making it as profitable as possible. If you have a problem with that, I'll buy you out."
Simone hadn't really intended to make that offer yet. It was her trump card, the one she was saving for a time when she really needed it. But maybe it was better to play it now, she thought. Maybe she could get Brenda out of her hair once and for all, before Brenda did any real harm.
She wasn't going to be that lucky, Simone saw. Brenda's features were a taut, angry mask as she said, "I've no intention of selling out, to you or anyone else, Mrs. McKay. This is my home now, and I intend to make my fortune here."
"Then stay out of my way," Simone said, and there was something bleak and dangerous about her voice. Brenda must have heard it, because although the younger woman's expression remained defiant, she stood up and flounced out of the office without saying anything else.
Simone let out a sigh and sat down again. She wished that Brenda Durand had never come to Wind River.
Despite being upset by Brenda's visit, Simone was able to force her mind back onto her work, and she spent the rest of the day with it, grateful to have the opportunity to retreat into a world of numbers and documents. That was certainly easier than dealing with real life. She had intended to drop by Judson Kent's house and see how Jeremiah was doing, but by the time she left the office that evening, she was too tired to do so. Instead she started walking toward the big house on Sweetwater Street.
Judgement Day (Wind River Book 6) Page 9