Matt thought about it for a second and then nodded. “Sam!” he called. “Send Colton out! Paxton’s gonna come talk to him—alone!”
Matt didn’t know if Colton would agree to that, but a moment later the redheaded rancher appeared, stalking forward. With a jerk of the rifle barrel, Matt indicated that Paxton should go out and meet him. Paxton walked over the top of the hummock and started toward Colton. A muscle in his jaw was jumping from the strain of how hard his teeth were clamped together.
Matt followed Paxton on horseback. He hated turning his back on Paxton’s men, but he didn’t figure any of them would take a chance on shooting him out of the saddle, not with his Winchester still trained on their boss. They had no way of knowing how sensitive the rifle’s trigger was.
Colton and Paxton stopped when about ten feet still separated them. “I don’t know why these two crazy hellions wanted us to talk to each other,” Colton said. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Paxton.”
“And I wouldn’t want to listen to it if you did,” Paxton snapped in reply.
“Then talk to me,” Matt suggested from his position behind Paxton. “What in blazes is this ruckus all about?”
Paxton turned his head to look at Matt. “This bastard plans to fence off my cattle from that creek!”
“It’s my creek!” Colton insisted. “I got every right to put up a fence if I want to.”
“The creek belongs to both of us! That’s the way we split it up!”
“Not accordin’ to the paperwork at the county seat,” Colton said. “The boundary line is on this side of the creek. That means all the water belongs to me.”
Keeping his own voice calm and reasonable, Matt said, “Out here on the frontier, folks share water when they can. That’s just the way things are done.”
“My cows need it,” Colton snapped.
“So do mine,” Paxton said. “And no legal shenanigans are going to keep them from it!”
Colton’s hands clenched into fists. “Are you accusin’ me of bein’ crooked?”
“You must be trying to pull a fast one with those papers you keep talking about. I never would’ve signed over full ownership of that creek to you, and you know it!”
Matt frowned in thought. “What do those documents at the county seat say exactly?”
“They say that the boundaries o’ the Pax ranch run from Big Turtle Draw on the east to Garford Creek on the west.” Colton pointed to the tree-lined stream. “That’s Garford Creek, although folks don’t hardly ever use the name.”
“That the way you remember it, Paxton?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, but . . . but that doesn’t say that my range ends on this side of the creek. It says it runs all the way to the creek.”
“All the way to the creek,” Colton repeated with a note of triumph. “Not to the midpoint of the creek. To the creek.”
“Will you stop saying that?” Paxton shouted. He pointed a shaking finger at Colton. “You know damned well what it means! It means we both own the creek!”
Colton shook his head. “That ain’t what it says, so that ain’t what it means.”
“I’ve been watering my cows there for years! You never claimed I didn’t have any right to the water!”
“Didn’t care until now,” Colton said with a shrug. “Now I do.”
“You . . . you son of a . . . I never thought you’d stoop so low . . . you snake-blooded bastard!”
“Bluster all you want,” Colton sneered. “It don’t change nothin’.”
“Listen to me, Paxton,” Matt said. “It sounds like Colton’s got the law on his side. Maybe that wasn’t the way you intended for the deeds to read, and maybe nobody ever even thought about the way they could be applied, but Colton’s within his legal rights.”
Stubbornly, Paxton shook his head. “You’re not a lawyer, Bodine. You’re just a damned gunslinger!”
“If you want to fight Colton’s claim in court, you go right ahead,” Matt told him. “I don’t give a damn one way or the other about that, just like I don’t care who owns that creek.” His voice hardened. “But your daughters don’t want you two old pelicans fillin’ each other with lead, and I like to oblige the ladies whenever I can. So for today, both of you turn around and go home.”
“I got a fence to put up,” Colton protested.
Matt shook his head. “Not today. Let it go. Go home and cool off. See that whatever bullet creases your men got in this little dustup get taken care of. And for the rest of the day, damn it, try not to kill each other!”
The two cattlemen glared at each other for a long moment. Finally Paxton said, “I’ll sue you.”
“Go ahead,” Colton snapped. “See if that keeps me from puttin’ up my fence.”
“Oh, it will. It will. You can’t win, Colton. You can’t deny water to thirsty cows and get away with it.”
Paxton might have a point there, Matt thought. Even though Colton might have the letter of the law on his side, a jury made up of Westerners might well agree with Paxton. In this country, the needs of cattle came before everything else, even legal technicalities.
That was probably the way it should be, too. Lawyers could always twist everything around beyond all sense of reason.
The important thing was to keep these two from shooting at each other until they calmed down. The rest of it could be hashed out later. Matt prodded them. “Well, are you leavin’?”
“What if we don’t?” Colton asked.
“Then you’ll have to fight me and Sam.”
Paxton snorted. “Two men against twenty!”
“Oh, you mean you’d join forces?” Matt asked with a faint smile.
“Hell, no!” Colton burst out. “I mean . . . Hell, I don’t know what I mean!” He glared at Paxton. “I’ll be back tomorrow to put up that fence.”
“And I’ll be in court this afternoon to stop you!” Paxton shot back.
“If you’re goin’ to court, then I can go to court, too, damn you!”
“I reckon I’ll see you there then.” Paxton turned on his heel and stalked off, heading back to his men.
Colton did the same.
Matt heaved a sigh of relief.
Sam rode out to join him as both groups mounted up and got ready to ride out. Colton’s men left the posts they had already put up in place, but the wagon carrying the rest of the posts and the rolls of barbed wire rolled along after the riders as they headed for Double C headquarters. Paxton and his men rode east, toward the Pax ranch house.
“Well, that was mighty damned close to being a massacre,” Sam said as he reined in.
“Them or us?” Matt asked with a grin.
“I’m not sure. Wouldn’t want it either way. I heard Colton telling his men that Paxton is going to take him to court.”
“Yep. From what I heard, Colton’s got the law on his side, but that doesn’t always mean much.”
“At least they’re not shooting at each other. That’s something to be thankful for.” Sam pointed. “Here comes Jessie.”
Matt had already seen the young woman riding toward them. She reined in beside them and said, “I’m not sure how you did it, but thank you, Matt, and you, too, Sam. I thought for sure they were all going to kill each other.”
“It could happen yet,” Matt warned her. “I hate to say it, but I’m afraid this war between your pa and Esau Paxton isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.”
Chapter 6
There were no lawyers practicing in Sweet Apple, since there was no court there. All legal business was conducted in Marfa, the county seat located some twenty miles to the east of Sweet Apple. So for several days Shadrach Colton and Esau Paxton were kept busy traveling back and forth between the settlements. Each man engaged the services of an attorney, and Paxton made good on his threat to file suit against his cousin and former partner.
Matt and Sam didn’t really care how that played out. What was important was that the two sides weren’t shooting at each other, and peace reigned
in Sweet Apple.
Neither of the blood brothers expected that to last, however—and as usual, they were right.
As town marshal, Seymour made a habit of being at the railroad station whenever a train rolled in, either Eastbound or westbound. He considered it part of his duties to check out the passengers who got off in Sweet Apple.
So he was standing on the platform, talking through the barred opening of the ticket window with the clerk, Harvey Bramlett, when the two o’clock westbound arrived. It was 2:18, according to the clock inside Harvey’s little office, so the train was a little late, but not too much.
With a clatter of wheels, screech of brakes, and hiss of steam, the train came to a stop with the passenger cars lined up next to the platform. Smoke from the diamond-shaped stack atop the big Baldwin locomotive drifted back along the train’s length. Seymour turned from the ticket window and watched as the conductor appeared in the vestibule at the front of the first passenger car. The conductor lowered a set of portable steps to the platform, then went down them and turned to call, “Sweet Apple! Sweet Apple, Texas!”
The first passenger off the train was a white-haired man in late middle age who held himself stiffly and wore an expensive suit and hat. He carried a black, silver-headed walking stick in his left hand. When he reached the platform, he turned and extended his right hand to grasp the hand of the young woman who followed him down the steps. A whistle of admiration came from the ticket window as the clerk stared at the honey blonde in an elegant traveling outfit.
“That’s a mighty nice-lookin’ gal,” Bramlett said. “Wonder what she’s doin’ in Sweet Apple. And is that her pa with her, you reckon, Marshal?”
Seymour swallowed hard. His pulse pounded hard inside his head in pure surprise. Never in a million years would he have expected to see these two people in Sweet Apple.
“No, he’s not her father,” Seymour said in a voice that sounded hollow to his ears. “But he is my uncle.”
“Your uncle?”
If Bramlett said anything else, Seymour didn’t hear it, because he was already striding across the platform toward the train. The newcomers turned, saw him coming, and stopped in their tracks. They looked a little shocked, too.
“Hello, Uncle Cornelius,” Seymour said. He raised his hand to the brim of his hat and tugged on it politely. “Miss Jimmerson.”
He supposed his appearance had changed considerably since the last time they had seen him. Instead of the sober suit he had worn when he was a salesman for the Standish Dry Goods Company, he was now clad in black whipcord trousers, a white shirt, and a black vest. A wide-brimmed, flat-crowned black Stetson rested on his head instead of a derby.
And he certainly hadn’t had a gunbelt strapped around his waist with the butt of a Colt revolver sticking up from the holster. The only thing still the same about him was the spectacles he wore. Even his face had started to lose its pasty hue and was taking on a bit of a tan.
Cornelius Standish recovered from his shock enough to extend a hand. “Hello, Seymour,” he said as he shook hands with his nephew. “I don’t mean to stare. It’s just that—”
“You look like a character out of a dime novel!” Rebecca Jimmerson broke in. She looked around the platform. “All these people do.”
It was true, at least to a certain extent. The other passengers who had gotten off the train so far were people who lived in Sweet Apple or the vicinity of the settlement. They were Westerners, and looked it. The illustrations in the dime novels published back East were exaggerated, of course, but had a core of reality to them. Men in Texas wore big hats and packed iron. That’s just the way it was.
Seymour let go of his uncle’s hand and turned to Rebecca. She wore stylish gloves, of course. He grasped her hand and shook it as well. The relationship between them had always been polite and friendly, nothing more. Seymour had been quite impressed by her beauty, but he wasn’t the sort of man to press his attentions on a young woman. In fact, Rebecca had always made him nervous and tongue-tied whenever he was around her.
It was wonderful for Seymour to discover that that was no longer the case. He was able to smile at her and say, “You look stunning, Miss Jimmerson, despite what must have been an arduous journey out here.” Seymour turned back to Standish and went on. “What are you doing here, Uncle Cornelius?”
“I’m here because of you,” Standish snapped.
Seymour’s eyes widened again. “Me?” he repeated.
“That’s right. I received the telegram you sent resigning your position with the company as a salesman. I must say that I was disappointed you would abandon your responsibilities like that, Seymour. I believe your late father, rest his soul, would have been disappointed, too.”
“I . . . I . . .” Seymour felt his newfound confidence evaporating rapidly in the face of his uncle’s disapproval. Finally, he managed to say, “I’m sorry, Uncle Cornelius. I just discovered that I . . . I’m not suited to be a dry-goods salesman.”
“That’s all you ever were, until you took on this ridiculous job.” Standish gestured toward the badge pinned to Seymour’s vest. “I suppose you’re suited to be a Wild West lawman.”
The scorn and disbelief in his uncle’s voice sparked a surge of defiance in Seymour. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’ve done all right so far.”
“The newspapers call you The Most Cowardly Man in the West.”
Seymour shook his head. “Not any more. Not since the battle with Deuce Mallory’s gang and the raid by Diego Alcazarrio and his bandits.” He paused. “Mallory’s dead, by the way, and Alcazarrio was sent limping back across the border into Mexico.”
Standish waved a hand as if to dismiss those accomplishments, but Rebecca was looking at Seymour with a mixture of respect and interest, two things she had never seemed to feel for him before, Seymour thought.
“It doesn’t matter now,” Standish said. “What’s important is that the company has been left high and dry by your rash actions, Seymour, and I’ve been forced to come out here myself to set things right.”
“You want me to come back to work for you?” Seymour was prepared to argue vehemently against that idea.
“Hardly,” Standish said in a cool voice. “You’ve made your choice, and I suppose I have to accept that. No, I’ve brought someone to take your place. Three men, in fact, since Texas is such a vast territory.”
He half-turned and held out a hand, motioning forward three men who had climbed down from the train after him and Rebecca. They wore Eastern suits, too, although not as expensive and stylish as the one Standish sported.
“These are my new salesmen,” Standish went on. “Warren Welch, Daniel McCracken, and Ed Stover.”
Welch was a very clean-cut young man with a friendly smile, but as Seymour shook hands with him, he thought there was something wrong with Welch’s eyes. It took a moment for him to realize that they reminded him of a lizard’s eyes. Well, perhaps not a lizard exactly, but something similar.
Daniel McCracken made no pretense of being friendly. He barely shook Seymour’s hand and gave him a curt, sullen nod.
The bearlike Stover wasn’t very effusive either. Seymour supposed that his uncle knew what he was doing—Cornelius Standish had helped Seymour’s father build the dry-goods company into a very successful business—but it didn’t seem to him that these three men would make very good sales representatives, not even Warren Welch.
Seymour no longer considered that any of his business, even though he still owned half the company. He was content to let his uncle run things as always, and Seymour would just collect his share of the profits. His real work now was keeping the peace here in Sweet Apple.
“I wish you luck,” he told his uncle, then nodded to the three salesmen. “All of you. If there’s anything I can do to help you, I’d be glad to. I can introduce you to the merchants here in town. I know all of them now.”
“That would be fine,” Standish said. “But later. We’ve all had a long journey, and w
e’re tired.” He looked around. “I assume there’s a hotel in this . . . town?”
He said it as if he thought that Sweet Apple didn’t really deserve to be called a town.
“Certainly, there is. Of course, it’s not what you’d call fancy. You’d have to go all the way to El Paso for that.”
“Take us there,” Standish said, falling right back into the old pattern of snapping orders at his nephew.
Seymour let that pass. He knew from experience that it wouldn’t do any good to argue with his uncle.
He told one of the porters who worked at the station to gather the bags belonging to Standish, Rebecca, and the three salesmen and have them taken down to the hotel. Then, as he ushered them off the platform and through the lobby of the depot, Rebecca surprised him by slipping her arm through his. Nothing like that had ever happened before, and as Seymour’s pulse began to pound again, he felt the pressure of the soft curve of her breast against his arm. His mouth was suddenly dry.
And as they left the station, he found himself thankful that their route wouldn’t take them past the school. He wouldn’t want Maggie O’Ryan to look out the window and see him walking along arm in arm with the beautiful, smugly smiling Rebecca Jimmerson!
“Why were you playing up to that young fool?” Standish snapped after he had come into Rebecca’s hotel room without knocking. Of course, considering their relationship, propriety was hardly required. Still, he could have been more discreet, she thought.
“I wasn’t playing up to him,” Rebecca said. “I was just being polite.”
Standish grunted. “That’s not what it looked like to me.”
Rebecca smiled and said, “What, are you jealous of your own nephew, Cornelius?”
He snarled as he stepped over to her and grabbed her arms, taking her by surprise. His grip was tight enough to be a little painful, but she didn’t let that show on her face.
She had long since mastered the art of not letting anything show on her face unless she wanted it to.
“I have no reason to be jealous, do I?” he demanded.
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