“Well, I’ll be damned!” The lean man grinned, but there was no mirth in his hard, handsome face. “ ’Praise God’; now, that ain’t the Joe McBride I used to know. I don’t mind sayin’ I’m impressed!” He addressed the other two. “Trask, Mex, ain’t you impressed?”
His two partners muttered something but they didn’t look impressed. They looked mean as polecats and bored. Slade slid from his gelding and sauntered over to lean against the porch railing, his big Mexican spurs jangling as he walked.
Papa shook his head. “Never learn, do you, Bill? Someday those spurs are gonna get you killed. Anyone lookin’ to plug you could hear you comin’ even in the dark.”
Slade spat on the porch. “I ain’t worried. There ain’t many men who can outshoot me. But as I remember, you used to be one of them.”
The unshaven, heavier one, Trask, dismounted. His lame foot dragged a little as he came up the creaking porch steps, sitting on the top one. “Ain’t it something, though? Here we come into this sleepy burg on business, find out when we get here we got an old friend who’s the town hero and owns a fine ranch besides.” He looked over at the swarthy man on the buckskin horse. “Ain’t that something, Mex?”
“Si, amigo. After St. Joe, I never thought to see this one again.” He laughed loudly, tipping his hat back on his gray-streaked black hair. None of them were younger than forty-five or almost fifty, Lynnie thought as she watched from behind her curtain. Where had they known her papa?
“I don’t have any money if that’s what you’re thinkin’,” Joe said.
Slade lit a cigar. “Joe, you hurt my feelings! We come out to visit an old friend while we wait for our business deal to go through and you say mean things to us! We just want to stay and visit for a few weeks, Joe. Catch up on old times.”
The light reflected off Papa’s red hair as he shook his head. “I’ve closed the door on that part of my life, Bill. My life changed when my wife died, leaving me with five motherless children mor’n three years ago.”
“You’re breakin’ my heart!” Trask sneered, scratching his unshaven face. “With a nice spread like this, you don’t have plenty of money? How’d you get this ranch?”
Joe hesitated a long moment. “I married it,” he said slowly, as if he were ashamed of his confession. “After St. Joe, I decided being poor was the worst thing in the world.”
“Ain’t it, though?” Slade laughed. “I thought you married Molly. She disappeared the same time you left us.”
“Molly?” Joe mused, “Don’t really know what happened to that poor girl.”
“I shoulda killed you over her,” Slade snarled through gritted teeth.
Papa’s head turned toward the man. “Bill, I told you there was nothin’ between us; never was, although I reckon she would have liked there to be. You didn’t care two whoops in hell about that innocent, sad girl. You took advantage of her; let Mex and Trask have her whenever they felt the urge; forced her to use her charms to get information from that bank teller. . . . .”
“I didn’t say I cared nothin’ about her,” Bill Slade snapped. “But she was mine and I could loan her to my friends if I wanted just like I’d loan my horse. But I don’t like anyone riding what’s mine without askin’. . . . .”
“You’re lower than a snake’s belly!” Papa’s voice shook with fury. “No wonder Molly took off on her own!”
Slade snorted and went on smoking. “So you managed to rescue that wife who’d been carried off by the Comanche?”
For a long moment, Papa didn’t answer. She heard the porch steps creak under Trask’s weight, smelled the perfume of the pink roses and the stink of Slade’s cigar when the hot breeze blew through the open window she stood by.
Papa sighed. “No. The wife I’m talkin’ about was the child of a rich neighbor who owned half the land in the county near my poor little spread.”
The Mexican swore in broken English, glaring down at Papa from his buckskin horse. “You just tell us you have no money, hombre. You got all your wife’s inheritance? ”
“It’s a good enough spread, I reckon,” Papa agreed in his soft Kentucky drawl. “I know you won’t believe this, but I mortgaged it all, every inch of it, every bit of my bank account to help the town ransom hostages from the Indians a few months back.”
The Mexican chewed the end of his mustache. “One of them hostages kin to you?”
“We are all brothers in the Lord,” Joe said softly.
Trask sneered. “You sound like a preacher.”
“Would you believe me if I said I was.”
The three men hooted with laughter.
“Joe, if you don’t beat all!” Slade wiped his eyes. “And then your red ’brothers’ tortured you when you delivered that ransom?”
Papa nodded. “I think the others would have kept their word. But there was one called Little Fox who seemed crazy. He would have killed me if Quanah Parker hadn’t ridden in at the last minute, forced him to set me free.”
Inside the house, little Lynnie leaned against the wall, remembering that terrible day. Cayenne and Hank had ridden off to deal with the trouble, leaving Lynnie and the younger children in the care of old Rosita. The days of waiting were long for the family.
Papa had been more dead than alive when Quanah Parker returned him later. At first the doctor had not thought he would live but Joe had been determined. Cayenne said he feared to leave a houseful of young, orphaned daughters.
Outside, Trask belched loudly. “I’m tired of all this palaver. Who’s on this ranch besides you, Joe?”
“Four of my five daughters. The oldest has gone to stay with an aunt in Wichita for a while because the old lady was sick and there was nobody to look after her.”
“That all?”
“An old Mexican housekeeper and a few gentle Mexican hands.”
“No foreman? No Texas cowhands?”
Joe shrugged. “Can’t afford any extra help.”
Slade smiled cruelly. “How good’s the sheriff?”
Joe seemed almost hesitant as he answered grudgingly. “I don’t suppose you ever lived in a place so peaceful we don’t even have a lawman.”
“What do you do about crime?”
“We don’t have any. This is a quiet, religious bunch of immigrants in this area, Slade. If you’re looking over our bank, you’ll be disappointed. As banks go, it ain’t much. Everyone in town spent all they had to ransom those hostages, except banker Ogle. He loaned his money at high rates.”
“Naw,” Slade shook his head, tossing away the cigar.
“We got something better than that. We got a friend in the telegraph office. . . . .”
“Here?” Joe said in surprise, “Why, old Mr.—”
“Naw, up in Kansas. He handles all the army telegraph messages. Something big’s in the makin’ with all those soldiers bein’ moved in to deal with Injun troubles. But as far as you and the locals are concerned, let’s just say we dropped in on this little burg to visit an old friend for a while.”
“But you just said you didn’t even know I was here until they mentioned me in town.”
Slade threw his cigar into the pink seven sisters roses by the porch. “Did I say that? Why, when I tole everyone in town you was an old friend, they was all pumping our hands, clappin’ us on the back. You’re well-thought-of in this town, Joe.”
Papa sighed. “That means a lot to me, Bill, being well-thought-of. My reputation’s all I got now.”
Trask belched again. “Wonder if over at St. Joe, they’d like to know where you are. . . ?”
“All right, all right.” Joe stood up with difficulty. The Comanches had held his feet over a slow fire, too.
Lynnie hid behind the curtain and considered what to do. It was a big responsibility for a nine-year-old. She wished Cayenne were here. Cayenne always knew what to do. There was probably a marshal over at the county seat but that was several days ride and who would listen to a little girl? None of the poor farmers in the area could handle
a gun well. She looked at the way the trio wore their pistols low and tied down, figured it would be murder to send any of the Lazy M’s poor vaqueros up against them.
The trio seemed to have some secret they were using against her father. It was unbelievable to her that her father might have done anything that was not noble and brave. What should she do? In the end, she did nothing at all because she was little and afraid.
No, that wasn’t true. She didn’t tell the old Mexican cook or any of the vaqueros because they were as helpless as she was. But a few days after the trio came, one day when Lynnie was with old Rosita in town for supplies, she wrote a letter to her big sister and mailed it, asking Cayenne to help. Later, she wondered if she’d done the right thing. She’d heard the trio laughing about the girls in the town’s one saloon. Lynnie didn’t tell them that her big sister was much more beautiful than any of them. Such men would probably want to kiss Sister if she came home, and who knew what other things men did to pretty girls? Besides, there was a lot of trouble with Indians right now and it might be dangerous for Cayenne to try to get back to Texas.
And suppose she’d been wrong? Suppose the trio weren’t outlaws or gunslingers, just rough old trail hombres who were more tough talk than action?
Lynnie looked at the answer to that letter that she’d just picked up at Billings General Store. Was Papa going to be angry because she had written Cayenne? No, Papa never got angry. She smiled, watching two little boys stop by the buggy and strike up a conversation with Papa. He handed them each a willow whistle and showed them how to play it.
Maxwell’s braes are bonnie, where early falls the dew, and that’s where Annie Laurie . . .
Lynnie liked that song. Once, when she was very small, she had asked him if he had ever known a girl by that name and tears had come to his eyes. “Yes, I did,” he whispered. “But it was a very long time ago, before I married your mother. . . .”
She waited for him to say more but he didn’t, the green eyes staring into space as if remembering another time. The expression on his face told her that he had loved Annie very much, maybe even as much as he loved her big sister, Cayenne. She wondered if maybe it had been a little daughter who had died. When Lynnie mentioned it to her mother, Hannah had lost her temper and slapped her ’til her wire-rimmed spectacles fell off.
Don’t ever mention that name again, Mama had shouted, and Lynnie never did. But when Papa saw the bruises on Lynnie’s face, he cornered Mama and there was shouting and angry words.
Lynnie watched Trask come out of the hardware store, where he’d bought a new pair of spurs, and go into the town’s one saloon. Banker Ogle owned that, too, even keeping it open on Sundays. He didn’t go to church anyway.
Had Trask seen the letter in her hand? No, all he was doing was getting some whiskey. Slade would be mad if he knew Trask didn’t stay with the McBrides like he had been told to do when they went into town. He always sneaked off to the saloon.
The two little boys sauntered away from the buggy, happily playing the willow whistles.
One of them turned back to yell at Papa. “Ma says come to dinner sometime, Reverend, and bring the girls. There’ll be chicken-fried steak.”
Chicken-fried steak. There were four things Texans liked to eat better than anything. barbecue, Mexican food, fried chicken, and chicken-fried steak, dipped in egg batter and fried all crusty brown and served with cream gravy.
There’d been chicken-fried steak for dinner that first night the trio sat down at the long family dining table. Old Rosita was proud to welcome Senor McBride’s friends with a good dinner, pleased when Papa explained they’d be staying a few days to visit.
The three younger sisters, Stevie, Gracious, and Angel, stared down the long table, thrilled to have company at the isolated ranch.
Gracious twiddled with the untied ribbons of her sash. She never had learned to tie a bow. “Where do you know my daddy from?”
“Now, Gracie,” Papa said. “It isn’t polite to ask so many questions. Mr. Slade and the others were all friends in another place a long time ago.”
Slade turned his most charming smile on the youngster. “That’s right, kid. Too bad I never married. I’d have liked to have had a pretty kid like you.”
Gracious turned brick-red with delight. Lynnie sighed audibly.
Slade gave her a nod. “And you’re the smart one, ain’t you? Why, your dad tells me you’re smart enough to go back east to school.”
Primly, Lynnie pushed her wire-framed glasses back up her nose. “If we ever get any money by then.”
Slade clucked sympathetically. “Be a shame if you didn’t get to go. I’m expecting to come into an inheritance, maybe I might give you—”
“Papa wouldn’t allow that,” Steve pulled at her pigtails. “He wouldn’t think it honest.”
Trask paused in stuffing his face with buttered corn pone. “And your papa is right,” he said. “But maybe we could loan the money and your papa could pay it back when he could.”
Lynnie tried not to smile with delight. She dreamed of school, of buying all the books she wanted. If only it were true. . . .
The Mexican gestured down the table. “Now what about that pretty little Senorita there with the long pigtails? How old are you, muchacha?”
“Seven,” she lisped. “I’m Stevie.”
Trask belched. “A little girl named Steve?”
Joe answered sheepishly, embarrassed, “We were planning for a boy.”
Slade leaned back in his chair, patting his full belly. “You got a nice family, Joe, beauties every one.” He looked over at the toddler in the high chair. “If that little one keeps suckin’ her thumb, she’ll have crooked teeth, though.”
Angel took her finger out of her mouth and looked around guiltily. “Will not!”
“Will, too!” Steve said. “Now, Angel, you know what Cayenne told you. . . .”
“Who’s Cayenne?” The Mexican looked up from the hot peach pie he was shoveling in as fast as he could.
“Just the oldest of my daughters,” Joe said quickly. “But as I told you before, she’s in Kansas looking after a sick aunt. Afraid you’ll never get to meet her.”
Something in his tone let Lynnie know Joe didn’t want the trio meeting his oldest child.
Slade smiled expansively at all the children, at old Senora Rosita who had just entered with more coffee. “You’re a lucky man, Joe McBride,” he smiled expansively. “You got the prettiest daughters in all Texas and probably the best cook this side of the Rio Grande.”
Rosita paused and the Mexican caught her hand, kissing it. “Senora, my mother never made such food, I swear by all the saints!”
Rosita blushed like a school girl. “Senor, you flatter me! I’ve made better,” she said, flustered, but she beamed at the Mexican.
It didn’t take but a couple of days before the charming Slade had everyone but Papa and Lynnie wishing aloud the friendly trio would stay on the Lazy M forever. Papa said little but sat in his rocker on the squeaky porch for hours at a time, whittling. Sometimes he played a whistle as he finished it. He always played that same haunting folk tune. She thought about it now, wondering if it were the only one he could play or if he just loved it so.
She didn’t tell him she’d overheard his conversation with Slade that first day. But when she tried gently to pry a little information out of Papa about the trio, he grew cool and distant. “You know what happened when Pandora opened the box and let loose a world of trouble because she was so curious? Don’t open that box, Lynnie. If you love me, don’t ask any more questions. They’ll be gone in a few weeks and things will be as they were.”
“But, Papa, who are they?”
“They’re just old friends passing through, nothing more to it than that. I knew them a long time ago. . . . .”
Hank Billings’s thoroughbred nickered again and Lynnie decided she’d better let Papa know about the letter from Cayenne before Trask came out of the saloon. Had she done the wrong thing i
n asking her big sister to take action?
Lynnie readjusted her wire spectacles on her freckled nose, shook back her red hair, and walked purposely toward the buggy. Depending on what Cee Cee’s letter said, Papa would have to make the decisions now. Lynnie had done all a nine-year-old girl could do about that trio!
Chapter Fourteen
Joe McBride sat in the buggy tied in front of Billings General Store and waited for Lynnie to return. The July sun beat hot on his bearded face and he shifted a little so he would be shaded by the buggy top.
He closed his eyes and yawned. The sounds and smells of the sleepy hamlet drifted to him and he smiled contentedly. Joe was not one to curse God for what had happened; what might have been. He said a silent prayer that he was alive and wondered if the Almighty intended to do anything about the trio of outlaws who had been staying at the Lazy M the past couple of weeks.
He wasn’t sure just exactly what he could do about them himself. Even if he weren’t so handicapped, a top gun would be loco to take on all three of those gunslingers. Besides, there was the safety of his beloved little girls, the gentle Mexicans on his ranch, and the harmless townspeople to consider. Maybe Slade’s gang was just hiding out and would move on when things cooled down. That way, Joe wouldn’t have to make any decisions about what to do. Yep, soon maybe, Slade’s boys would head up to the old hideout in the Indian Territory known as Robber’s Roost.
“Papa, there’s a letter from Cee Cee.” He jerked around as Lynnie’s high-pitched voice brought him out of his musings. Lynnie, so small and serious for her age, so bright. He had always hoped to send her away east to some fancy college but there was no money for that now.
“A letter from Cee Cee? That’s nice; I miss her. Did you see Trask?”
“He’s gone over to the saloon.” Lynnie climbed up next to him in the buggy and tore open the letter.
Slade always sent Trask with them when they went to town. What nobody told Slade was that Trask didn’t watch them at all; he sat in Ogle’s saloon and drank. Not that there was anything to worry about, Joe thought bitterly. Joe couldn’t turn them in, get help, without revealing his own past. He was proud of his fine reputation here, and maybe saving his reputation meant even more to him than the possibility of going to prison or even being hanged over that poor teller who’d been killed in the St. Joe bank. Who then would look after his orphaned daughters?
Comanche Cowboy (The Durango Family) Page 24