by Martha Hix
“I can make it by myself. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“Safety isn’t a matter for discussion. Promise me you won’t do anything till I get back.”
“But–”
“No ‘buts’, Mariah. Just promise me.”
Chewing her lip, she glanced at the ground. Finally, she raised her eyes. “I promise.”
“Thatta girl.” He turned to Culpepper. “Take Miss McGuire home. Keep an eye on her while I’m gone. If she needs anything whatsoever, you make sure she gets it.”
“You bet, boss.”
Whit placed a too-quick kiss on Mariah’s cheek. “I’ll be back as soon as possible. Give me a rain check on that dance?” At her nod, he murmured, “I’m gonna miss you, Red.”
“Same goes for me. And good luck, cowboy.”
He turned to Bay Fire, hefted himself into the high-cantled saddle, and touched his spurs to the sorrel’s flanks. Already Whit was missing Mariah ...
And a fierce sense of loneliness filled Mariah as she watched Whit ride north. Yet that loneliness was superceded by a stronger emotion. Love.
She turned to her mare but caught sight of Culpepper in the process. This young ranch hand had flirted with her on the morning she’d met her beloved, but after all Whit’s jealous talk, he’d left her with this cowboy. Maybe her cowboy was more trusting than he realized.
She sat her mount. “Shall we go, Mr. Culpepper?”
Headed east, she recalled her promise to Whit. It would be difficult, not doing something about Taft. She was filled with zealous determination to bring law and order to the area. What would she do until Whit returned? Of course she had chores to tend, plus a social obligation. She had promised the Lamkins she’d tell them goodbye before they left Coleman County. Why not do it right now?
“Mr. Culpepper–”
“Call me Slim. When you say mister, I think you’re calling my pa.”
“We can’t have that, can we ... But, Slim, you needn’t see me home. I’m going to call on the Lamkin family.”
“The boss told me I’m responsible for you, and that’s what I’m gonna be. You wanna make a detour, it’s my job to go with you.” He reined in his gelding. “But what do you wanna go messin’ around with squatters for?”
“Do you make a habit of putting your nose in other people’s business?”
“No, ma’am. Leastways, I try not to.” He paused, then said, “Come on, Miz McGuire. I’ll lead the way.”
Silently they rode on. Dusk began to settle an hour later, but Mariah had no problem seeing trouble. A plume of smoke painted the horizon. The faint sounds of gunfire came from the same direction. Someone needed help.
Eschewing sidesaddle and skirts, she gave the mare her head. Topping a hill, Mariah cried “No!” and raced forward.
The roof of the Lamkins’ soddy was ablaze! Three riders were circling the dugout, their guns pointed at A.W. Lamkin, who flew backward from a bullet’s impact.
“Stay out of it, Miz McGuire!” Slim warned, trying to block her path.
She skirted the buckskin around his gelding. Reins in one hand, she dug into her reticule for her repeater pistol. The tapestry handbag fell to the ground. From a distance of about forty feet, she leveled her weapon at one of the riders and fired. She missed.
Two of the raiders jerked their intentions to Mariah, and bullets whizzed over her head, at her side, beneath her mare. “For God’s sake, Slim!” she ordered. “Use your rifle.”
He didn’t.
Susie charged toward the marauders, Mariah fired again, this time from thirty feet. Her bullet tore into a rider’s neck. Screaming, he grabbed for his wound and fell to the ground, his horse galloping away.
The injured man’s cohorts, one of them wearing an eye patch, turned cowardly and scudded in opposite directions.
Mariah was torn between following the two and helping the Lamkins. Crumpled over a water barrel, Patsy Lamkin was dead–there was no doubt of this. Aggie’s lifeless body was at her mother’s feet. A.W., his face on the ground, lifted his hand.
Sliding from the saddle, Mariah ground-tethered the mare and, skirting around the outlaw’s stilled body, she ran to the fallen farmer.
“Keep covered,” Slim yelled, at last shouldering his rifle. “That one’s not dead!”
The whiz of a bullet passed over her head at the same moment Slim’s shell exploded into the gunman’s face. The raider’s pistol fell from his hand.
She rolled A.W. to his back. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. “My baby,” he choked, “in the–” His eyes moved in the dugout’s direction. A shudder lifted his wounded chest, and he went limp in Mariah’s arms.
She rushed to the soddy. Smoke belched from the open door. Choking, she tried to fight her way into the flame-filled room, but Slim’s fingers dug into her arm, yanking her backward. She lost her footing and fell to the ground.
“There’s a little girl in there,” she shouted.
“Stay put,” he ordered. “I’ll get her.”
The young cowman covered his face with a bandanna and rushed into the inferno. A half minute later a mighty crash sounded as the roof fell in, but Slim, Molly in his arms, managed to escape the holocaust and gave the limp child into Mariah’s waiting arms.
Clutching the soot-covered girl to her chest, she hastened away from the heat, placing Molly on the ground. The girl didn’t move. Crouched down, Mariah put her mouth to the young, blue lips.
She had to save her! Mariah tried to breathe life into the young body. Over and again, she pushed the heels of her hands against Molly’s diaphragm. “Breathe, sweeting, breathe!”
“Miz McGuire ...” Slim put his hand on Mariah’s shoulder. “It’s no use. She’s gone to her Maker.”
“Not true!” She wouldn’t allow the entire family to be lost. “I haven’t given up!”
“Look at her, Miz McGuire. You done your best, but she’s gone.”
“No.” Mariah closed her eyes to the little girl’s sightless eyes and took her into her arms, rocking her back and forth. “She was too young to die. She wanted to learn sums, and wanted to read the Bible. And Aggie–” Tears poured down Mariah’s cheeks. “She was so shy, so shy.”
“You’ve had a shock, ma’am. Let me put the lass with her family,”
“Get away! If you’d been quicker to help.”
“If you feel the need to blame somebody, it’s okay to blame me.” He knelt, pulling Mariah’s hand from the girl’s arm. “She’d want to be with her parents.”
Through her tears, Mariah touched Molly’s singed hair. “Heavenly Father, take care of this lamb and her family.”
Slim patted Mariah’s shoulder. “Guess we’d better get word to town,” he said.
“Yes.” Her thumb closed the five-year-old’s scorched eyelids. “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget this sight,” she said raggedly, honestly. She looked up at the ranch hand. “I hope you never forget it, either. This is how low man can sink in his inhumanity to others.”
“I won’t be forgettin’, ma’am.”
Gently, the lanky cowboy carried Molly away.
Mariah huddled in grief.
Slim gathered some horse blankets from the Lamkins’ shed, and came back to cover the dead. He was ashamed of himself for not going to Miz McGuire’s aid right away.
A fellow needed to feel and care for others down deep in his heart, and shouldn’t hesitate to ride into a band of no-goods when they were after a family. Slim hadn’t been frightened to charge into that melee, he just hadn’t been of a mind to. But Miz McGuire hadn’t let nothing stop her.
For all of his twenty-five years, Slim Culpepper hadn’t let nothing get under his skin. He had witnessed killings and hangings and a lot of hell in the middle. He wasn’t one to ruminate over life’s ups and downs or about people’s deeds. To his way of figuring, one accepted others however they were–good, bad, or in between.
During all that, he had fashioned himself among the good. He had k
ept his nose clean. He’d never shot nobody before today, had never done no woman wrong, and had always ridden hard for the brand.
After this business with the Lamkins, though, and seeing how Miz McGuire had reacted to all of it, David Walter Culpepper would never be smug again. He was going to take action and if he ended up half as courageous as Miz McGuire, he’d consider himself fortunate.
At peace with himself, he loaded the Lamkins into their old wagon for the trip to the undertaker, then walked over to Miz McGuire, who was standing over the dead outlaw.
“Do you recognize this man?” she asked.
Slim scratched his head. “Well, it’s kinda hard to figure out, his face being torn up like that, but I don’t reckon he’s familiar. ’Course I’m new around here.”
“He didn’t materialize out of nowhere to do all this harm. Maybe someone in town will know who he is.”
“It’s Zeke. He’s dead. Some woman rode up while we was burning out that Lamkin vermin, and she opened fire. Musta gotten lucky, I’ll warrant, ’cause she got him from a good distance.”
Resting against the pillows of her sickbed, Temperence Tullos grimaced as she listened to T-Bone Hicks’s account. “Was she . . .” A fit of coughing racked her weakened chest, and she tried unsuccessfully to expel the congestion.
T-Bone blew his stubbed nose on a soiled handkerchief, then handed her a glass of water. Too sick to protest the lack of hygiene, she downed the liquid. The fluid eased her distress to some degree and she wiped a wet rag across her feverish brow. “Was the woman alone?”
“There was a feller with her,” Spider Black, a single-eyed ruffian with a knife scar slicing through his weathered left cheek, supplied. “I didn’t get a good look at his face. We was sort of occupied.”
Temperence tossed the rag at his sardonic grin. “Of course you couldn’t get an eyeful of him, you one-eyed sidewinder. You were too busy making a run for–” Again, painful hacks wracked her. Finally, she was able to wheeze, “Be gone with you. Now.”
The hired guns backed out of her chambers, leaving her alone in her miseries and boiling temper.
She was almost as mad as the night Lord Joe had announced that he had called off his wedding. He had been through with Temperence, too. “Remove yourself from my property, you disgusting cow!” he had shouted at her.
Well, he was dead now. Was anyone more deserving?
Temperence blew her nose and continued to pity herself. Nothing had gone right since she took sick with influenza. Her plans for Lord Joe’s property were yet to be accomplished, Leroy Smith was no closer to Trick’em than before, and she couldn’t even count on the Hicks gang to rid the area of white trash without bringing in witnesses. Nothing got done unless she gave personal supervision along the way.
Was there no justice in this world? Right then, she had never been more furious at Charles. Everything was all his fault. How, she wondered, could she gain vengeance against her husband for banishing Leroy to Pennsylvania?
At this point, she wasn’t certain, but, no matter her weakness of body, she did know one thing for certain. She wouldn’t be indisposed forever.
Then heads would roll. Whoever got in her way!
The afternoon following their deaths, the Lamkins were buried in the churchyard. Reverend Pickle said a few words. Mariah and Slim, the only mourners, placed bluebonnets on their pine coffins. The preacher took his leave, and Slim shoveled dirt over the Lamkins’ graves.
Mariah hammered wooden crosses into the ungiving ground. Since me murders, a maelstrom of emotions had beset her. Grief, anger, frustration. No one in Trick’em had claimed to recognize the dead raider. Beyond herself and Slim, no one seemed to care that a family of four had lost their lives. And naturally, Sheriff Taft had been as apathetic as usual.
She was anxious for Whit’s return, not simply for his presence. Why did I make him a promise not to go forward with my plans? Something needed to be done, and now.
Finished with affixing a cross to Molly’s grave, Mariah straightened and turned to Slim. “Thank you for everything. Especially for becoming my friend.”
He blushed to the roots of his sandy-blond hair. “ ’Tweren’t nothing. I’ll see you home now.”
They rode toward her farm. Slim whistled a mournful tune, no doubt in deference to the dead. Deep in her own mournful thoughts, Mariah was quiet, until Mukewater Pond came into view.
“Good gracious!” she said. “Look at that.”
About fifty Longhorns were amassed around her water supply. From a distance of a couple of hundred yards, she made out the figures of three drovers and their horses.
“They’re stealing your water!” Slim drew his rifle. “I’ll get rid of ’em.”
“Put that away. There’s been enough trouble.” She nudged Susie’s flank. “Let’s see what they have to say.” Nearing the skinny herd, she called, “What are you men about?”
“Don’t mean no harm, miss.” The trail boss rode toward her. He was a scrawny young fellow wearing ragged clothes and a general air of defeat, she observed. He couldn’t have been a day over eighteen. His cowboys, along with a scabrous brown-and-black dog, were closing ranks around him. Assessing the pitiable lot, Mariah said, “You’re trespassing.”
The youngest of the bunch, a lad of about twelve whose big hat rested on his ears, pulled a rusty Colt .45.
“Thom!”
Slim extracted a pouch of smokes from his pocket. “Put that away, son.”
“You ain’t got no right to keep them cows from water!” Thom shouted. “Our cows has gotta drink. And we gotta make camp fer the night.”
“Not here you ain’t,” Slim said calmly. “This is Miz McGuire’s watering hole.”
“We ain’t scared of you.” Thom peppered the air with a round of shot, and the dog jumped.
“Thom, don’t,” exclaimed the trail boss.
“Yes. That will be enough.” Mariah called up her best schoolmarm’s voice. “Thom,” she said evenly, “I don’t approve of violence.” Only yesterday she’d shot a man! “You don’t appear to be a young man who’s been reared to bring harm to others,” she commented, playing on male pride, or at least on guilt. “Kindly holster your gun so I might speak with your leader.”
Shamefaced, the lad did as suggested. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Thank you.” She directed her next words to the trail boss. “Do you have a name?”
“Andy Floyd.” He gestured toward his crew. “These be my brothers, Thom and Luther. We’re outta Nueces County. These cows be our ma’s.”
Mariah nodded to the ragged boys, then centered her attention on the oldest one. “Andy Floyd, didn’t your mother teach you it’s wrong to steal?”
Resting a palm on the saddle horn, he replied, “Meaning no disrespect, miss, but I done thunk the Western Trail was wide open to cows.”
“This stretch isn’t. Kindly move your cattle on north.”
“Yes, miss.” Andy Floyd started to rein his horse to the right, but stopped. “Miss, we’ve been a long ways since water, and our cows be mighty thirsty. Could we buy some of that water from ya, please?”
Her eyes drifted to the cattle who were crushing to the water’s edge. In all conscience, she couldn’t let them go thirsty, and she’d wager the Floyds hadn’t had a decent meal in days. What would it hurt to show a little compassion? After all, somewhere between here and the Indian Territory, Whit’s herd was in trouble. She hoped someone would do them a good turn.
Trouble was, how could she give the Floyds that water without injuring their pride? “Your herd may drink their fill, Andy.”
Thom heaved a sigh of relief, and he smiled.
“Follow me to the house,” Mariah continued to Andy. “I’ll fix us all some supper, and we’ll speak about how you and your brothers can work off the compensation.”
Not ten minutes after the shaggy-haired young trail boss had sat down at the log cabin’s table, he mentioned coming across a family of Mexican vagabonds not three day
s earlier.
“They was doin’ real poor-like,” Andy said, shaking his head with pity. “Their horse done died, and they’s outta food, so me and my brothers decided to butcher one of our steers. Figgered our ma’d approve; she’s a Christian lady, you understand.”
“That was kind of you,” Mariah replied sincerely, then touched a match to the fireplace kindling. “This family you encountered, what was their name?”
“Don’t know their proper names, ‘but I heard the wife call her man Pablo.”
Barely able to keep from jumping with glee, Mariah got an idea. “Andy, can one of your brothers handle your cattle by himself? At graze, of course.”
“Yes, miss. Luther’s right fair at it.”
“Good,” She gathered the makings of cornbread, “If I let your cattle graze my pasture for a few days, would you and Thom be willing to bring the Martinezes back to Trick’em?”
“Well, sure, miss,” Andy’s expression was uncertain. “Iffen they’ll come with us.”
“They will. Tell them Miss McGuire . . .” She paused, thinking they might well refuse to help her. “Tell them the sheriff wants to talk with them about a murder case,” she amended. She glanced at Slim. “Mr. Culpepper, I’d appreciate your accompanying Andy and Thom. If the Martinezes balk, will you make certain they return?”
Surprise widened Slim’s eyes. “What am I supposed to do? Hogtie ’em?”
“No. I imagine that wouldn’t be workable.” Deep in contemplation, she added a pinch of salt to her cornbread mixture.
What would Whit recommend? Whit. Her promise to stay out of trouble nagged at Mariah. No doubt he wouldn’t approve of her taking this action, but what was she to do? Trouble had come to her. The Lamkins had died since Whit had left, and here was a chance–a slight one, but a chance nonetheless–to solve Joseph’s murder. Surely Whit would understand her reasonings.
Drastic times required drastic actions. “Ride for Brownwood and ask for the Ranger Captain Big Dan Dodson. Get him to accompany you. And if the Martinezes don’t cooperate, have Pablo arrested as an accessory to murder.”