Last Chance Cowboys: The Drifter

by Anna Schmidt

  “You’re running away with him? And taking the baby and Ezma as well?”

  “No,” she admitted softly. “I thought you would give me more money if I said they were going. Roger says we can head east to Kansas City or even St. Louis. He has a friend who runs a riverboat on the Mississippi, and he thinks we could—”

  “Where’s Turnbull now?”

  “I don’t know. He was here but left after he told me to be ready as soon as it gets dark.” She looked around the room at the overstuffed luggage. “What do you think I should wear?” She sounded like a lost little girl.

  “Loralei, I can’t let you do this. Turnbull is not the man you think he is. He’s using you.”

  Her nostrils flared as she stood up and faced him once again. “You’re a fine one to talk about somebody not being the man I thought he was,” she growled as she returned to her packing. “Now get out, and I am warning you, Chester Hunter, if you say one word to that woman about any of this…”

  “That woman paid for your ticket out of here, Loralei. And I’d be real careful how you talk about her when you’re with Turnbull. My guess is that as much as he’s capable of caring for anybody other than himself, he’s in love with Maria Porterfield.”

  “Get out,” she screamed, flinging clothes and her hairbrush at him as he left.

  “With pleasure,” he muttered.

  The sun had set over the distant hills, and the shadows made it hard to see what was going on around the ranch. Light spilled into the courtyard from the kitchen, and he saw Juanita standing at the window, but she was focused on kneading dough, not him. From the bunkhouse he heard some of the men reminiscing about the drive, and as he passed by the corral where saddles lined up along the fence, he saw a figure emerge from the latrine set back in a cluster of cottonwoods.

  The man’s actions were odd, and that made Chet pause and watch. He recognized the man, saw him fumbling with something in his hands when he should have been tucking in his shirt or adjusting his trousers. The money box.

  Chet closed his hand around the hilt of his whip and eased it free of the saddle horn. Slowly he advanced, circling around until he was behind the cowhand. He hesitated when it occurred to him that maybe Bunker had asked the man to collect the money so they could take it to Maria. But when he saw Slim take a handful of bills and stuff them down the front of his shirt, he had no more doubt about what was happening. He let the tail of his whip uncoil on the ground as he moved closer.

  “Evening, Slim,” he said, and when the man whirled around, that’s when Chet struck.

  * * *

  As soon as Maria rode up to the courtyard and gave Javier her horse to unsaddle and brush down, Amanda came running. “Please tell me we can still have the party. Everything is arranged, and Mama is all excited about it and—”

  “Sure, let’s have the party,” Maria said as she kept walking toward the house. She was so drunk with exhaustion and worry that she would have agreed to anything as long as it did not prevent her from getting a glass of Juanita’s lemonade and pulling off her boots. We can make it a farewell to Clear Springs Ranch party, she thought and had to swallow hard to keep the tears of bitterness and defeat at bay.

  Amanda squealed, gave her a hug, and then ran back inside. Juanita waited for her to sit on one of the benches in the courtyard and pull off her boots, then handed her the lemonade. “You took your own sweet time getting home,” she fussed. “We do worry, you know.”

  Maria drained the glass in a most unladylike way and held it out for more. “Is Roger back?”

  “Haven’t seen him. The boys came back earlier. Eduardo told me about the sale.” She refilled the glass and handed it back to Maria. “What are you going to do?”

  “What can I do short of robbing a bank?” She laughed. “I could rob the bank that we owe a good deal of money to that is due at noon tomorrow and then hand the money back to old Clyde.” Her laugh turned to a cackle and then to tears. “Oh, Nita, we are going to lose everything, and it’s all my fault.”

  Juanita set the pitcher down and knelt next to Maria. “Now you listen to me, mi hija. You have done everything you could to keep this place going. If you lose it, then that’s the way life goes sometimes. We will all find another way. Now come inside and clean yourself up and have some supper.”

  Juanita was giving her what she needed most—she was giving her normalcy. In the worst of times, it had always been easy to believe that everything would be all right once Juanita started giving orders. “Well, come on,” the housekeeper said, and when Maria pushed herself to her feet, Juanita linked arms with her and headed back inside.

  It was amazing what a plate of tortillas served with Juanita’s rice, beans, salsa, and roasted chicken could do to restore a person’s energy and outlook. Maria was not beat yet. She had a little money from the sale of the stock and she hadn’t used up all of the loan, so she had that to give back as well. She sat at the kitchen table long after she’d finished her supper, juggling the numbers. If she could just…

  From out near the bunkhouse, she heard the shouts of angry men and knew a fight was in the making. She was tempted to let them blow off steam by carrying through with the fight. After all, they’d worked so hard, and for what? Though of course, Roger said he’d paid them, so what did they have to be upset about?

  Frustrated, she slammed down her pencil and hurried outside. “What’s this about?” she shouted, but even as she said the words, she saw Slim with the tail of Chet’s whip still wrapped around his arm and a box filled with money on the ground at his feet. In fact, there were bills scattered around that the other men were trying to gather.

  “You thievin’ little…” Bunker growled as he ran at Slim.

  Chet pulled the whip free as the two men collided. Slim couldn’t put up much of a fight because he was still nursing his bleeding arm where the whip had struck, not to mention that Bunker was nearly twice his size.

  “Stop this right now,” Maria demanded, wading into the thick of things just as Bunker reared back to throw a punch. “Seymour, that’s enough.”

  The big man looked down at her and slowly lowered his hand. Then he bent down and picked up the box. “This is for you, Miss Maria.” He motioned the men who had been gathering the scattered bills forward. “It’s from us,” he added as the men stuffed more money into the already-full box.

  “I don’t… You can’t… We couldn’t possibly…” She had no words to express the feelings that threatened to overpower her. “Why?” she managed finally.

  “Because we don’t want the Tiptons to win,” Rico said softly. “This place is our home too, Miss Maria.”

  “But you attacked R. J. here. Why?”

  “He was trying to steal the money. Hunt here got suspicious and kept an eye on him. We’re pretty sure he’s Tipton’s man, and I’d be happy to take him in the barn there and get the whole story out of him,” Bunker said.

  Slim looked first ashamed and then defiant. “I wasn’t going to take it all—just enough to leave you short.”

  “And how would you know what amount that might be?” Maria asked.

  “I ain’t no squealer. Just sayin’ I had my instructions.” He folded his arms and then grimaced as a shot of pain apparently ran through him.

  And that’s when Maria noticed the ring.

  “Where did you get that?” she demanded grabbing his hand with no worries for whether or not she might be hurting him. “That ring belongs to my father. He always wore it—he was wearing it the day he died.”

  Slim started to back away but Chet, Bunker, and the others surrounded him.

  “It was given to me,” he said. “I swear. All I did that day was fool with the saddle and shoes—nothing more. They said they were just teaching your pa a lesson, miss. He told me—”

  “Who? Who is ‘he’?”

  “Marshal Tucker.”

>   Marshal Tucker. Marshal Tucker was responsible for the death of her father.

  “What do you want us to do with this varmint, Miss Maria?” Bunker looked as if he might happily string the man up.

  “I want you to keep him safe until we can get him to the fort and into Colonel Ashwood’s custody.”

  Two of the cowhands grabbed Slim and hauled him off to the bunkhouse.

  “And Tucker?” Bunker asked.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Maria said, and the way she said it, there wasn’t a man standing who was going to debate the matter with her.

  A single bill fluttered to the ground, and she realized she was still clutching the money box.

  “I just hope it’ll be enough,” Seymour said.

  She touched his whiskered face and then stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Even if the numbers do not add up, it already is more than enough. Thank you.” Her voice broke as she looked around the circle of men. “Thank you all.” When she turned to head back inside the house, she brushed past Chet and murmured, “I need to see you.”

  Eighteen

  Chet waited near the creek until the windows in the house went dark and nothing stirred except the occasional night bird. Sometime around what he judged to be midnight, he heard the creak of wagon wheels and saw a buckboard slowly roll to a stop some distance from the house. He heard a whistle that could have been mistaken for a birdcall and then saw Loralei, struggling to carry her overloaded carpetbag, make her way to the wagon.

  The driver—he assumed it was Turnbull—climbed down to meet her. He had words with Loralei, gesturing angrily toward the anteroom, Turnbull finally taking her bag, throwing it in the back of the buckboard, and then lifting her none too gently onto the seat before taking his own place as the driver. With Loralei still yammering at him, he pulled away. If she’d had any notion Turnbull would go back for her trunk, she was wrong.

  Chet was so engrossed in watching them go that Maria was almost beside him before he realized it. She tugged at his sleeve.

  “I came as soon as I could,” she said. “I wanted to say good-bye to Roger before he left.”

  “But he—”

  “He had nothing to do with my father’s death, but he’d gotten so tangled up with the Tiptons that he just kept getting in deeper. He explained everything about the dam and why he kept trying to get me to sell out. He was trying to help, but he just didn’t know how to go about it. And now he’s gone for good.”

  He touched her cheek and pushed a strand of hair away from her face. “The men got Slim to the fort, but he’s refusing to say anything—he’s that scared. Now, come sit and tell me why you asked me to come here.”

  She did as he suggested and sat on a flat boulder near the bank of the creek. “The money—even with the men giving up their pay—won’t be enough.”

  “I figured as much. So now what?”

  She sighed and looked off into the distance. “I hate losing this place, but what I hate even more is somebody getting away with murder.”

  Chet sat beside her and pulled her close. “There’s not a man in that bunkhouse who wouldn’t be happy to take care of that for you.”

  “I don’t want revenge, Chet. What I want for my father and for Oscar is justice. I want those responsible arrested and brought to trial.”

  “That may not work out if Slim doesn’t cooperate.”

  “He as good as told us that it was Tucker who killed my father,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  “Tucker is still the law,” Chet reminded her.

  “In town,” she argued. “Neither Papa nor Oscar were murdered there,” she added softly.

  Chet realized she was not really talking to him. She was just thinking out loud, and the direction her thinking was headed made him mighty nervous. “Listen to me, Maria. You need to stay out of this—if not for yourself, then for your ma and Amanda and Trey.”

  “Well, I can’t just let them get away with murder.”

  “I get that, but you don’t know what these men are capable of.”

  “Oh, I think it’s pretty obvious what they’re capable of.”

  “All right, but let’s work out a plan together—one that makes sure you are never alone with Tucker or the Tiptons.”

  “Well, I have to go into town tomorrow to meet with the bank,” she said. “I’m sure that the Tiptons as well as the marshal will be in town as well.”

  “Okay. Not sure what that accomplishes but…”

  “I was thinking you could come with me, and before we go to the bank, we could stop by the Wilcox place and talk to Doc. Doc is not only the town doctor; he’s also the mayor, meaning he’s the one who appointed Tucker as marshal—and that means he can fire him as well.”

  “I still don’t see how—”

  “I was thinking that while we were in town, maybe Bunker and a couple of the other men could ride over to the fort and let Colonel Ashwood know the marshal’s been fired and will likely be leaving town.”

  Chet grinned. “So Tucker walks free in town, thinking he’s won, and the militia picks him up the minute he sets foot outside the town limits. Remind me never to cross you, Miss Maria.”

  She snuggled closer to him. “I’ve missed you,” she admitted. “Maybe once you’ve dealt with Loralei, we could—”

  “Loralei left with Roger, so whatever you’ve got in mind, lady, don’t be holding back on their account.” He bent to her. “So now can I kiss you?”

  She tilted her face to his. “Yes, please,” she whispered. And when she opened her mouth to meet his, he was lost.

  He had dreamed of kissing her every night while they were on the cattle drive—dreamed of kissing her and so much more. Remembering the beauty of their afternoon in the field of flowers, he’d replayed every kiss, every touch, a thousand times over. He had allowed himself to fantasize about what it would be like next time.

  She moaned and deepened the kiss they were sharing, threading her fingers into his hair as her tongue sparred with his. And then he felt the dampness on her cheeks and pulled back.

  “You’re crying.”

  “Don’t leave me, Chet.”

  “Hey, now.” He smoothed back her hair and wiped her tears away with his thumb. “I’m right here, okay?” He held her close. “Remember that first day I got here, and you asked if you could trust me?”

  “You said I had to decide that for myself.”

  “Well, in case you haven’t yet decided, the answer is ‘yes, ma’am. You can trust me.’”

  * * *

  Maria’s plan worked perfectly. The militia had both Tucker and Slim—who had finally gone on record—in custody before noon the following morning. She would have felt victorious were it not for the fact that any way she looked at it, they were going to lose the ranch. She had counted the money again and again, but the total did not change. Still, she was her father’s daughter, and her father had always been an optimist. “Something will come along, Maria,” he had told her whenever it seemed to her that her world was about to fall apart.

  On the other hand, as she crossed the street with Chet on one side of her and Doc Wilcox on the other, she could not help feeling that indeed the world as she and her family had known it was about to come to an end. She was wearing the gray dress she had worn for Oscar’s funeral and that seemed appropriate.

  “Maybe Clyde will extend the deadline,” she said hopefully. Doc patted her hand, but the expression on his face told her that an extension was about as likely as a blizzard in July. “Well, it won’t hurt to ask,” she muttered defiantly.

  Inside the bank lobby, she was not surprised to see George Johnson and three of the other small ranchers. It was hardly unusual for these men to be in town or in the bank. The confusing thing was that they seemed to be waiting for her.

  “You doing all right, Maria?” George
asked.

  “I will be once this is over,” she replied, glancing at the large wall clock that pointed to fifteen minutes before noon.

  “Well, if you wouldn’t mind stepping over here for just a minute before you see Clyde…”

  “But—”

  “This will just take a minute,” Doc urged and led her to where the other ranchers waited.

  “We have a proposal to make, Maria.”

  She was so focused on the ticking clock that she barely heard the preliminaries until finally George Johnson said, “So in effect, we would all own our combined land—a cooperative arrangement that would be managed by a contract and bylaws drawn up and approved by each member of the cattlemen’s association.”

  “You’re buying Clear Springs Ranch?”

  “No, we’re suggesting you and your family become a part of the Cattlemen’s Cooperative. The cooperative will pay off your loan here and give you a new loan for the balance after we pay what you need to give the bank today. That loan would of course be interest free. Once that is paid off, you and your family will be full and equal members of the co-op.”

  “You’re not taking the offer the Tiptons made?”

  George grinned. “We took a vote, and that business you said about sharecropping had stuck in our minds. If we’re gonna share the land, then we’ll choose to share with folks we know—and trust. So, are you in or not?”

  Maria hesitated. Was this her decision to make?

  “Clock is ticking, Maria,” George said softly.

  She glanced up and saw that it was indeed seven minutes to noon. “In,” she said firmly and then she laughed. “All in,” she added as if this were one of her father’s poker games and the stakes were high—which in this case, they certainly were.

  “Then let’s go make this deal.” On their way across the bank’s lobby, Johnson handed her an envelope. “This covers what you owe,” he said.

  “But I have…” She gripped the envelope containing the money she’d brought.