Becker went silent, as though he pondered what Shawn had said to him. But the big man was playing for time, only that and nothing more.
A few moments ticked past and the saloon went as quiet as a tomb.
Then Shawn saw Becker’s flicker. Alarmed, his hand dropped to his gun. But he was way too late.
Strong arms grabbed him from behind and pinned his arms to his side. A moment later a powerful kidney punch dropped him to his knees.
Through a sea of pain, Shawn saw Becker step toward him, grinning. He was dimly aware that Hamp Sedley had drawn his gun, but then he, too, fell, downed by the bottle in the fist of a huge man wearing a black Mexican sombrero.
“Get him to his feet,” Becker said. He took a thick, metal-studded leather strap from his coat pocket and wrapped it around the knuckles of his massive right fist.
Two men dragged Shawn erect. But not for long. Becker’s fist drove into his belly with the force of a pile driver. Shawn gasped with pain and his knees turned to jelly.
He was forced to his feet again and Becker’s huge granite rock of a fist, made terrible by steel reinforced leather, slammed into his jaw. Shawn’s head exploded with the light of a trillion stars, and again Shawn felt himself falling.
Becker hit him again, a vicious uppercut that snapped Shawn’s head back in a scarlet fan of blood.
“All right, let him go!” the big man yelled.
Shawn dropped and Becker bent over, picked him up by the front of his shirt, and pounded blow after brutal blow into his face.
Finally Becker stood straight again and slammed a kick into Shawn’s ribs.
“If you’re still breathing, O’Brien, hear me,” he said. “Get out of Broken Bridle or the next time I see you I’ll finish the job.”
Through swollen, split lips Shawn said, “Go to hell,” and got another kick in the ribs for his pains.
A man laughed as Shawn got his hands under him and pushed up onto his knees. He stayed there on all fours for long moments as blood and saliva from his mouth formed long, scarlet strands and dropped onto the floor.
Finally Shawn found the strength to crawl out of the saloon and into the street. It was late, the town was quiet, and out in the darkness coyotes yipped at a waxing moon. He tried to get to his feet, but collapsed in a heap, blood welling from his split lips and broken face.
He heard footsteps, then suddenly Hamp Sedley kneeled beside him.
“Shawn,” he said, “you took a brutal beating and you’re sore hurt, maybe dead.”
Every breath Shawn took was a gasp of pain, and his head clanged like a hammer on an anvil. “Seems like,” he whispered.
“I’ll get you to your feet,” Sedley said.
Shawn was a big man, and it took a tremendous effort for Sedley to lift him. As it was, as soon as Shawn was standing they both staggered against the wall of the saloon and he heard the gambler’s labored breath.
“Where?” Shawn said.
“The livery. We’re getting out of town.”
“No,” Shawn said.
His hand dropped to his side. Good, his gun was still there.
“Help me back,” he said. “To . . . to the saloon.”
“You’ll get killed,” Sedley said. “Man, you can barely stand.”
“There must be”—Shawn’s head reeled and felt the sharp spike of broken ribs—“must be . . . a reckoning.”
“That will come later,” Sedley said. “Do you understand?”
But the sudden weight against him told him that Shawn O’Brien was no longer conscious.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Shawn O’Brien opened his eyes to darkness and the soft hiss of falling rain. He smelled damp earth and pines.
He tried to move, but the pain it caused discouraged any further attempts. His skull pounded, and he felt so weary his body seemed as though it was slowly sinking into the ground.
A voice, echoing from the far end of a long tunnel, penetrated his consciousness.
“Shawn, are you still alive?” Hamp Sedley’s voice.
His voice a croak, Shawn said, “Yeah. I’m only half-dead.”
“You’re a sight,” Sedley said.
“Thank you,” Shawn said. Then, “Where are we?” It hurt to speak.
“I don’t know.”
Shawn tried to sit up, but the effort was too much and he sank back to the damp ground.
“I found us a hole to hide in,” Sedley said. “That’s all we can do until first light.”
Slowly night sounds introduced themselves to Shawn one by one.
A long wind rustled in the trees, pushing the rattling rain before it, and somewhere close by a stream talked and a night bird fussed in the distance.
“You did all right, Hamp,” Shawn said.
“Well, my brains are still scrambled. Somebody hit me with a bottle, empty of course, but it put me out for a spell.”
“Who held my arms?” Shawn said.
“A ranny I never saw before. It wasn’t June Lacour an’ them. Hired guns don’t do that kind of work. Might hurt their hands.”
Shawn was barely holding on. “I’ll meet . . . I’ll . . .”
His eyes fluttered closed and he slept again.
When Shawn O’Brien opened his eyes again it was midafternoon. He lay quiet, listening. The summer rain had stopped and the only sounds were the chuckle of the stream and the wind in the tall pines.
He raised his aching head and looked around him. There was no sign of Hamp Sedley, and the gambler’s horse was gone.
Shawn felt a spike of anger, but almost immediately realized it was unjustified. Hamp Sedley owed him nothing, was beholden to him for nothing. If the gambler had decided to ride away and leave him to his fate, well, that was his prerogative. Hamp had no need to ask anybody’s permission.
Still, it was a small betrayal, and it hurt.
Shawn listened into the day and pinpointed the whereabouts of the stream. It was somewhere off to his left, where a bare rock ledge lifted straight up from a green meadow. A few fat and lazy cattle grazed at its base, knee deep in grass and wildflowers, and close by so did a couple of whitetail deer.
Gingerly, Shawn placed his hands over his face. His lips were split in several places and both his eyes were hugely swollen. His jaw hurt and he found it difficult to breathe, and when he did catch a breath pain stabbed at his right side. A broken rib he guessed, or maybe two.
An attempt to get to his feet that set his head spinning and landed him flat on his back convinced Shawn that walking to the stream was out of the question.
He’d have to crawl.
A raging thirst driving him, he set out slowly, like a stricken animal. A pitiless sun hammered him, and pain was a constant companion that drained his strength and will. Still he kept going, teeth bared, each tortured breath hissing in and out of his bloody mouth like a steam engine.
Shawn crawled for an hour, the burning sun on his back, the fresh fragrance of green grass and wildflowers lost to his swollen, bloody nose. He’d covered a hundred yards, maybe less.
As far as he could tell, the stream ran along the base of the ridge where the pines gave way to cottonwoods, a few willows, and wild oak. By his reckoning, it was at least a quarter mile away.
Shawn groaned and sank to the ground. His thirst was a ferocious thing that gave him no peace.
He’d rest here for a few minutes in the warm grass, surrounded by the drone of insects and the faint sound of grazing cattle.
He closed his eyes and let the drowsy day lull him . . .
And fell instantly asleep.
The man’s voice carried from far off. “Shawn! Shawn O’Brien! Where the hell are you?” It was Hamp Sedley’s voice.
Shawn tried to call out, but the words clogged in his throat.
“His horse is still there,” a woman called out, light and young.
“He’s wandered off somewhere,” Sedley said. “After the beating he took, he can’t have gone far.”
After unsucc
essfully trying to yell a second time, Shawn raised his hand and waved it vigorously above the grass.
“There he is!” the woman said.
A sound of a horse swishing through greenery, then the face of an angel swam into Shawn’s vision. Sky blue eyes met his and the girl said, “How do you feel?”
“Never better,” Shawn croaked.
The girl smiled and cradled his head in her arm. She tilted a canteen to his lips, and Shawn drank greedily.
“That’s enough for now,” she said. “You can have more later.”
Hamp Sedley took a knee beside Shawn and said, “You look even worse than you did last night, and that’s saying something.”
The water had washed down dried blood and lubricated Shawn’s throat. He said, “Where the hell were you, Hamp?”
“I rode out to see if there was anywhere around I could find help. That’s when I met Miss Campbell here.”
The girl looked down at Shawn and smiled again.
“Judy Campbell. My father owns the Four Ace ranch down by Dry Creek.”
“Right pleased to meet you,” Shawn whispered.
“I can see he’s taken a terrible beating,” Judy said to Sedley. “We’ll take him to the ranch.”
“Shawn, can you ride?” Sedley said.
“No. But I think I can grab on to a horse.”
“We’ll help support you, Mr. O’Brien,” the girl said.
“Call me Shawn, huh?”
Judy smiled.
“Then Shawn it is,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Shawn O’Brien had little memory of his ride to the Four Ace.
Later Hamp Sedley said that he’d fallen off his horse three times. “Once into cactus and twice into cow shit.” But he didn’t know if that was true or not.
When he woke he slowly became aware that he lay in a soft feather bed. Around him the bedroom furniture was dark-stained and heavy in the Victorian style. The walls were covered in artichoke wallpaper, and a chandelier holding five small oil lamps hung from the ceiling. On the wall to Shawn’s right, draped in somber crepe, hung a portrait of Robert E. Lee. The opposite wall bore a painting of old Queen Vic wearing a crown and the robes of empire and seemed to be an original.
Shawn made a mental effort and remembered what had happened.
There had been a girl, real pretty, who had held his head in the long grass and she’d smelled sweet, of lavender water. And Hamp had been there.
Shawn became aware of a pain in his right side. He was tightly bandaged there, probably for broken ribs. He didn’t touch his face, but it felt tight and rigid, like a wooden mask.
He’d never been one to lie in bed, unlike his brother Jacob who usually woke with the lunchtime gong when he visited Dromore. Looking around him, Shawn reckoned his duds were in the armoire. Now all he had to do was chart a course there and launch himself.
Easier said than done. When he tried to move, his side punished him so suddenly and so badly he sank back into the bed, sweat beading his forehead.
After a couple of minutes, he managed to sit up, propped on pillows.
“Right, Shawn,” he said, fighting pain as he swung his legs over the bed. “Let’s try that again.”
But his plan was foiled when the door opened and Judy Campbell stepped inside. She carried a steaming bowl with a spoon sticking out of it and a folded napkin across one arm.
“What are you doing, Shawn O’Brien?” the girl said.
“Getting up, or trying to.”
“Get back into that bed instanter,” Judy said. A frown gathered between her eyebrows. “You’re not well enough to get up yet.”
“I’ve got things to do,” Shawn said. “People to have hard words with.”
He tried to get to his feet but his weakness betrayed him. The room spun around him and he collapsed back on the bed.
“Oh dear,” Judy said. “I knew this would happen.”
She laid the bowl and napkin on the side table and lifted Shawn’s legs into the bed and made a great show of covering them with the quilt.
“Don’t do that again,” she said. “If you do I’ll be very cross.”
“Damn it all, you’re a hard, unfeeling woman,” Shawn said, irritated.
“Please, no profanity,” Judy said. The frown fled her face and she smiled. “Are you hungry?”
Shawn swallowed his wounded pride. Being bossed around by a slip of a girl was new to him. And he was hungry. Starving in fact.
“Yes, I am. Burn me a steak and smother it in half a dozen eggs with a bushel of fried potatoes on the side,” he said.
“Good, I’m glad to hear that your appetite is returning,” Judy said. She lifted the bowl and the napkin. “I have some nice beef broth for you.”
“But I want a steak,” Shawn said, aware that he sounded like a spoiled child.
“And later, if you can chew, you may have two lightly boiled eggs for lunch.” Then, spoon poised. “Open wide.”
“I can feed myself, thank you,” Shawn said.
“Every drop now,” Judy said, handing him the spoon. “It’s good for you.”
“It needs salt,” Shawn said, making a face.
“I’ll put salt on your eggs.”
Shawn ate in silence for a few moments while the girl fussed with his pillows. Then he said, “I got in last night, I guess.”
Judy shook her head. “Shawn, you’ve been here for three days.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Nevertheless, it’s a fact.”
The girl sat on the bed. She wore a pale blue gingham dress and a hair bow of the same color, and Shawn thought she looked as pretty and fresh as a spring morning.
“Burt Becker gave you a vicious beating,” she said. “I don’t think you know how close you came to dying.”
“He had help,” Shawn said, the girl touching the raw nerve of his male pride.
“Stay away from him, Shawn. The talk around Broken Bridle is that he plans to shoot you on sight.”
“He’ll get his chance. Depend on that.”
Judy was silent for a while. Then she said, “Shawn, there’s more involved. If Becker is killed, another person, an innocent person, will pay the price for his death.”
“Maybe I recently took too many blows to the head, Judy, but I’m not catching your drift.”
“There’s a girl involved, a friend of mine, and . . . and she’s Becker’s life insurance policy.” Judy saw the question still remained on Shawn’s face and said, “It’s too complicated to explain right now. I—”
A tap on the door, then, “May I come in?”
“Of course, Pa,” Judy said.
“How is the patient?”
“Testy. He wants to be out of bed.”
“A bit too early for that.”
The tall, white-haired man stuck out his hand. “I’m Duncan Campbell. Judy’s father.”
Shawn took it and began, “I’m—”
“You’re Shamus O’Brien’s son, Shawn.”
“You know my father?”
“For a time Colonel O’Brien and I served in the same regiment during the war. He was a fine and gallant officer.”
“Thank you,” Shawn said. “I’m sure my father will say the same of you.”
“That would be an honor indeed,” Campbell said, giving a little bow.
His sweeping mustache was as white as his hair, but his skin was burned a deep mahogany brown, his eyes the same sky blue of his daughter’s. The old rancher stood a couple of inches over six feet and was as lean as a rail, but he looked tough and enduring, a man who’d ridden many a hard trail.
“Your friend Mr. Sedley told me what happened,” Campbell said. “I don’t know the man personally, but from what I’ve been told Burt Becker is a harsh and dangerous man who cuts a wide path everywhere he goes.”
“I plan to cut him down to size,” Shawn said. His attempted smile was a pained grimace. “I know, big talk from a man who can barely stand.”
“Why is he in Broken Bridle, Mr. Campbell?”
“Please, call me Duncan. Mr. Sedley says he’s running some kind of protection scheme, saving the town from its enemies.”
“Becker is, but that’s penny ante stuff. He’s hired some named Texas draw fighters, and you don’t need gunmen like those to scare a bunch of storekeepers, do you?” Shawn could tell by Campbell’s expression that the rancher had drawn a blank and he said, “Tell me about the Rattlesnake Hills.”
“What’s to tell? It’s an empty wilderness. You can’t run cattle there, no decent graze.”
“Gold?”
Campbell shook his head. “The hills have been prospected for years. Nobody has ever struck pay dirt, not even a quartz seam.”
“Then what am I missing?” Shawn said. “There’s got to be something.”
“Maybe you’re missing nothing. Becker will squeeze Broken Bridle until the money dries up, and then he’ll move on.”
“Duncan, have you ever heard of Thomas Clouston?”
The rancher shook his head. “Can’t say as I have.”
“He was a doctor once, but now he’s camped out in the Rattlesnake Hills with a bunch of hired gunmen.” Shane laid his bowl on the table beside him, then said, “Why?”
“Well, it’s pretty clear that Clouston is the reason the town is paying for protection,” Campbell said. “A doctor you say?”
“Psychiatrist.”
“And he’s turned bandit?”
“Seems like.”
“Then he plans to raid Broken Bridle but right now he’s afraid of Burt Becker and his Texicans.”
“I guess that could be the case,” Shawn said. “There isn’t another major settlement within fifty miles in any direction.”
“And that brings up an obvious question,” Campbell said. “Why did Becker choose Broken Bridle in the first place?”
“Because of the Rattlesnake Hills,” Shawn said, surprised by his own answer.
“All right, that’s enough, you two,” Judy said. “Shawn, you must rest now.”
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