“Why’d your father fire him? Because of that ruckus in town last night?”
Sandy nodded. “That’s right. Everybody had strict orders not to cause any trouble, no matter what.”
“The same was true for the Double C riders,” Jessie said. “My pa gave Tom Danks a good, old-fashioned chewing out this morning, since it was Tom that Riley almost drew on . . . but he didn’t fire him.”
“Riley cussed my father,” Sandy went on. “I thought for a second Pa was going to have him horse-whipped and then thrown off the ranch. But Riley left on his own.”
“I reckon he was pretty mad, all right. He got knocked out by Matt Bodine last night and then lost his job this morning.”
“He’d better be glad he didn’t try to draw on Matt or Sam,” Sandy said. “If he had, he’d be dead now.”
Jessie gave a solemn nod. She and Sandy had seen a first-hand demonstration of how well Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves handled their guns, right after they’d first met the two handsome, charming drifters.
They had figured Matt and Sam for no-account gunslingers at first, but Shad Colton and Esau Paxton both had heard of the vast ranches that the blood brothers owned in Montana and had set their daughters straight. Matt and Sam might look and act like saddle tramps at times, but that was hardly what they were.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about Riley,” Jessie said, “and anyway, your pa can take care of himself. Besides, there’s something else that’s bothering me.”
“What’s that?”
“How come that blasted Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves didn’t ask us to dance last night? What’s wrong with them?”
Sandy laughed. “Some girls would be asking what was wrong with themselves if a couple of boys they liked didn’t ask them to dance.”
Jessie gave a defiant toss of her head. “There’s nothing wrong with us, and you know it.”
“I reckon they must’ve thought they shouldn’t be dancing, since they were there to help the marshal.”
“Marshal Standish danced with that little schoolmarm. I saw him.”
“Yeah, but Matt and Sam didn’t dance with anybody,” Sandy pointed out. “At least not that I saw.”
“Well, Matt Bodine just missed his chance, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
“Yeah, sure,” Sandy said with a smile. “If he asks you next time there’s a social, you’ll fall all over yourself saying yes, Jessie.”
“I will not! Why, Matt Bodine can go climb a stump as far as I care—”
The swift rataplan of more hoofbeats silenced her and made both young women turn in their saddles to look in the direction of the sound, which was back toward the headquarters of the Double C. Half-a-dozen riders were coming toward them, trailed by a wagon carrying posts, rolls of wire, and several more cowboys.
“Oh, Lord,” Jessie breathed as she recognized the big figure leading the party. “What’s Pa up to now?”
Shadrach Colton was the source of the red hair that Jessie and her younger brothers and sisters had inherited, although Colton’s still-thick and shaggy mane was shot through with gray. He had the burly build and rugged face of a man who had worked outdoors and worked hard most of his life. As he and the other riders came up to the creek, he reined in and looked at his daughter and Sandy with hard, pale blue eyes.
“Miss Paxton,” he said as he gave Sandy a polite nod.
“Hello, Uncle Shad,” she replied. Even though Colton wasn’t really her uncle, as a child she had referred to him that way, just as Jessie had called Sandy’s father Uncle Esau.
“You’d better ride on back home now,” Colton told her.
“Sandy doesn’t have to go if she doesn’t want to!” Jessie flared.
“It’s all right,” Sandy said. “I’m on Double C range on this side of the creek, after all.”
With gruff courtesy, Colton said, “It ain’t that, Sandy. You’re welcome over here any time. You know that. So’s your ma.”
“What about Royce and Dave?” Sandy asked, referring to her twin brothers who were two years younger than her.
Colton’s mouth tightened. “They stand with your pa, I reckon. Couldn’t be any other way, with Esau raisin’ ’em.”
“What are you going to do?” Jessie demanded. “What are all those posts and wire for?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” her father said. “Get on back home now.”
“Not until you tell me what this is all about,” Jessie shot back. Her jaw was tight, too, and her green eyes blazed with defiance. She was her father’s daughter, no doubt about that. She jerked a hand toward the wagon and went on. “You always said you’d never have any truck with that . . . that devil wire, you called it. This is open-range country. Always has been and always will be.”
Colton sat stiffly in his saddle for a moment, then spit and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth as if he were trying to get rid of a bad taste. “I wish it was still that way,” he said, “but the time’s come to put up a fence.”
“Where? The creek’s always been the boundary line between the two ranches.”
Colton shook his head. “Nope. Accordin’ to the papers filed at the county seat, the boundary is the east bank of the creek, and then a line due north from the spring where it rises.”
Sandy’s eyes widened with surprise as his meaning sunk in. “You’re going to put a fence on the other side of the creek? On my father’s land?”
“Pax range stops where the creek starts. That’s where the fence is gonna go.”
“But . . . but then our cattle can’t get to it!” Sandy protested. “What’ll they do for water?”
“You got a creek on your range,” Colton said with a nod in that direction.
“But it dries up half the year! It’s almost dry now! Our stock has always used this creek!”
Colton shook his head. “Not any more.”
Jessie spoke up again, saying hotly, “Pa, this ain’t right—”
“Good Lord, gal!” her father exploded. “What kind o’ talk is that? Didn’t I send you to school so you could learn how to talk like a proper lady?”
“All right then,” Jessie said through gritted teeth. “Father, this isn’t right. It isn’t proper behavior. And it certainly isn’t fair to Mr. Paxton.” She took a deep breath. “It’s a bunch o’ damn bullshit, that’s what it is!”
Colton flung a hand toward the Double C headquarters, several miles to the west. “Git!” he shouted at Jessie. “Go on home before I forget that you’re damned near growed and paddle you like the spoiled brat you’re actin’ like!”
Jessie folded her arms across her chest and glared coldly at him. “I’d like to see you try it,” she grated.
Father and daughter glowered at each other for a moment before Colton turned and bellowed at the hands who had accompanied him, “Get to work! I want a good stretch o’ that fence up before sundown today!” He swung his horse toward Sandy again and went on. “Sandy, gal, you got to go now. I’m sorry.”
“I’m going, Uncle Shad,” she said, “but I don’t believe you’re really sorry, or you wouldn’t be doing this. I’m going to see what my pa has to say about it. I can’t believe he’d ever agree to this!”
She heeled her horse into motion and splashed back across the creek. “So long, Sandy!” Jessie called after her, but Sandy didn’t acknowledge the farewell.
The Double C hands who had ridden out on the wagon hopped down, and the ones on horseback dismounted. They showed an obvious reluctance for working with the newfangled barbed wire, which had been introduced several years earlier but was still quite unpopular in Texas. The fact that Shad Colton would resort to using the devil wire was a sign of just how deep his ill feelings toward Esau Paxton really ran.
Jessie watched in dismay as the cowboys began sinking posts along the far bank of the creek and stringing wire between them. Shad Colton dismounted and worked alongside them. He had never been the sort of hombre to ask his men to do anything he wouldn’t
do himself, which was one reason they felt such fierce loyalty to him.
The work was slow and hard, and it hadn’t progressed very far by late morning. That was when Jessie spotted the dust cloud in the distance to the east, on Pax range, and unbent from her anger long enough to say, “Riders comin’, Pa.”
Colton lowered the fence post he was holding and looked where Jessie was pointing. He grunted and took off the work gloves he had donned earlier. Then he came over to where Jessie still sat on her horse under the cottonwoods and put a hand on the animal’s shoulder.
“Jessie, I mean it now,” he said in a soft but urgent voice. “I want you to go home. There’s liable to be some trouble, and I don’t want you anywhere around here.”
“Gun trouble, you mean,” Jessie said, trying to keep her voice from trembling with the nervousness she felt. That tension had been growing ever since Sandy rode off. Jessie knew Esau Paxton well enough to be certain that he wouldn’t sit still for having his cattle fenced off from water. He would ride out here with some of his men to see for himself what was going on . . . and they would come armed.
Colton shook his head. “I don’t reckon it’ll come to that—”
“You know better, Pa.”
Stubbornly, Colton repeated, “I don’t reckon it’ll come to that, but if it does, I want you safe, girl.”
Jessie reached for the butt of the Winchester that stuck up from the sheath strapped to her saddle. She never went riding without a rifle. She would have felt naked out on the range without a gun.
“I’m a Colton, too,” she said as she drew the Winchester. A simple statement, but it spoke volumes.
“Jessie, Jessie,” Colton said, shaking his head. “What if Sandy’s with them?”
Jessie’s blood seemed to turn to ice water in her veins.
But it was too late to ponder what her father had said. With a rattle of hooves, the riders swept up on the other side of the creek and reined in. The air was thick with dust and a sense that all hell was about to break loose.
Chapter 4
During Sandy Paxton’s ride back to the headquarters of her father’s ranch, she had pondered long and hard about whether or not she ought to tell him about what was going on at the creek. If she did, he was liable to fly off the handle, and then there was no telling what might happen . . . but chances were, it wouldn’t be anything good.
When she reached Pax, she spotted her father walking out of one of the barns with a couple of ranch hands, including Gil Cochran, the foreman. A few yards away, Sandy’s brothers Royce and Dave perched on the top rail of a corral fence, watching as one of the cowboys tried to break a mustang. Pax would miss the services of Jeff Riley, who had been a top-notch bronc-buster despite the fact that he wasn’t very pleasant to be around. Esau Paxton wouldn’t abide a man who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—follow orders, though.
Sandy’s mother Julia sat in the shade of the porch that wrapped all the way around the main house. She had her apron full of ears of corn from the vegetable garden and was shucking them, putting the roasting ears in a basket on the porch beside her and tossing the shucks to a pair of goats who stood in front of the porch, waiting for the bounty. Julia waved at her daughter, and for a second Sandy thought about riding over and talking to her first, asking her advice about what she should do.
But she was old enough to make up her own mind, she told herself, and she decided that her father needed to know about the problem at the creek as soon as possible. She turned her horse so that she could intercept him and his two companions.
Esau Paxton knew his oldest child well enough to realize that something was bothering her. “What’s wrong, Sandy?” he asked as she drew her horse to a halt.
When you had bad news, it was best to just spit it out. That was what he’d always taught her. So she said, “Shad Colton’s fixin’ to fence off the creek.”
Paxton looked confused. He took off his hat and ran his hand over his mostly bald head. “Fence off the . . . what creek? Not the one between his place and ours?”
Sandy nodded. “That’s right.”
“Dad-gum it, he can’t do that! That creek belongs to both of us! We’ve always both used it, as long as the spreads have been split up!”
“I know, but he says it’s his, and he’s going to put up a fence along the east bank.”
“You mean barbed wire?” Paxton’s tone of voice made clear the loathing he felt for the very idea.
“Yeah. He’s got a wagon full of posts and rolls of wire out there.”
“Where exactly?”
“That spot between Rattlesnake Ridge and the prairie dog town, where Jessie and I always meet.”
Paxton’s head jerked in a nod. “I know the place. We’ll just see about that.” He turned to Cochran, his foreman. “Gil, round up half a dozen of the boys. We’re ridin’ out.”
Cochran looked almost as angry and upset as his employer. “Sure thing, Boss,” he said. “Should I tell ’em to bring along plenty of ammunition?”
“Damned right you should.”
Worry shot through Sandy. “Pa, Uncle Shad’s got eight or ten men out there with him. If you go storming out there with a burr under your saddle, there’s liable to be a fight.”
“What do you expect me to do?” Paxton snapped. “Our cattle need that creek for water.”
“I know, but maybe you should go to town and let your lawyer handle this. In school we learned that it’s better to trust the legal system—”
“Back East maybe. Not out here.” Paxton turned and stalked toward the house. “I’ll get my rifle.”
“Pa!” Sandy called after him, but he didn’t stop or even slow down. When he reached the porch, he brushed past his wife, who had gotten up by now, setting the corn aside.
“Sandra, what’s going on?” Julia asked when Sandy rode over to the house. “What’s your father so upset about?”
Quickly, Sandy filled her mother in on what was happening out at the creek. Julia’s face grew more and more worried as she listened.
Paxton came out of the house carrying a rifle. Julia turned to him and reached out to stop him with a hand on his arm.
“Esau, where do you think you’re going?”
“To set that damned Shad Colton straight,” he replied. “He can’t get away with such high-handed behavior.”
“Why not let the law handle—”
Paxton jerked away from her. “Lord, woman, you’re as bad as your daughter!” Without looking back, he went down the steps and headed toward the barn, where several cowboys were already leading out saddled horses.
Sandy watched, her alarm growing, as her brothers hurried over to their father and spoke to him. Paxton jerked his head in a nod and gestured toward the horses.
“Oh, dear Lord,” Julia breathed. “He’s taking the boys with him!”
Sandy turned to her. “Can’t you do anything to stop this, Ma?”
Julia bit her lip and shook her head. “When your father gets all het up like this, there’s no stopping him. He won’t listen to me or anybody else. He’s always been that way.”
As the two women watched, the men mounted up and galloped out of the ranch yard, heading west toward the creek. Dust hung in the air from their leave-taking.
Julia turned to Sandy and gripped her shoulders. “Can you ride to town?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Then get there as fast as you can and tell the marshal what’s happening. Maybe he can do something about it.”
Sandy wasn’t sure about that. Seymour Standish had handled himself all right during that showdown with the outlaws and the Mexican bandits, but she wasn’t confident in his ability to head off this trouble. Besides, he was the town marshal. His jurisdiction ended at the edge of Sweet Apple.
But there were two men in the settlement who might be willing to take a hand, and they had a lot more experience with trouble than Marshal Standish did.
Sandy flung herself back in the saddle and galloped h
ell-for-leather toward Sweet Apple, hoping against hope that she could find Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves.
Sandy wasn’t with the group from Pax, Jessie saw to her great relief. But Sandy’s father Esau was there, along with the twins, Royce and Dave. All of them looked tense and angry, as did the seven cowboys who were with them. The odds were just about even between the two bunches.
Esau Paxton broke the taut silence by demanding, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Colton?”
With a defiant jut of his jaw, the redheaded rancher answered, “Only what I have a legal right to do. I’m fencing the boundary between your land and mine, Paxton.”
“The creek is the boundary!”
Colton shook his head. “Not accordin’ to the deeds that were drawn up when the CP was divided.” The ranch that had been jointly owned by both men had been called the CP, for Colton and Paxton. “The deeds say that the boundary line is the east bank of the creek. You can go to the county seat and look ’em up if you don’t believe me.”
Paxton glared for a long moment, then shook his head. “That can’t be. I looked that paperwork over before I signed the agreements. That’s not what it said.”
“Go see for yourself.”
Jessie thought she detected a little uncertainty on Paxton’s face, as if he thought there was a slim chance that her father’s seemingly outrageous claim might be right. The breakup of the CP had been a trying time for everyone involved. It was just possible that Paxton could have overlooked a small detail like that. He could have glanced over the deeds, seen the creek mentioned in conjunction with the boundary line, and assumed that the stream itself formed the boundary and not the eastern bank.
And in the years since then he wouldn’t have had any reason to think otherwise, because the Pax cattle used the creek for water just as the Double C stock did. That unopposed access to the creek would have reinforced Paxton’s belief that the creek belonged equally to both ranches.
“It . . . it doesn’t matter!” Paxton sputtered, so angry that he could barely force the words out. “This is Texas, for God’s sake! Nobody fences off cattle from water, no matter what it says on some damned pieces of paper!” He glanced at the young redheaded woman on the other side of the creek and added in a growl, “Sorry, Jessie.”
Ride for Vengeance Page 3