Scarlet Sunset, Silver Nights

by Leigh Greenwood

  “He’s still alive,” she exclaimed coming to her feet in a swift movement. “Bring him to my wagon. We may be able to save him yet.”

  The next hour sorely tried her fortitude. After they moved Mongo to her wagon, she stripped him to the waist. Angus cut the bullet out—Pamela couldn’t do that—she cleaned and bandaged his wound and did her best to make him comfortable. She couldn’t tell if the bullet had touched any vital organ, but he had lost a lot of blood. His heart beat erratically.

  Odd that the man who had seemed so impervious to danger, so much the master of his own destiny, the invader who had shattered the peace of their range, should lay helpless before her, his life hanging by a slender thread. This could happen to her, to her father, to Slade. She had told him she would fight, but Death hadn’t come so close then. Was it worth it? Could any land be worth a man’s life?

  She tried to ignore the babble of angry voices, but the mention of Slade’s name riveted her attention. Now she couldn’t possibly ignore what they were saying.

  “There ain’t nobody else except Slade Morgan,” a voice she didn’t recognize shouted. “Everybody knows they argue every time they come near each other.”

  “Just this morning I heard him tell Morgan they were going to settle things this evening. Looks like Morgan didn’t want to wait that long.”

  “Morgan doesn’t have to shoot nobody in the back. He’s too damned good with a gun.” That was Pete Reilly. She wondered what had happened to Mercer. She hoped he had gone to warn Slade.

  “Mr. Shepherd could kill him in a fist fight.”

  “Maybe, but in case you didn’t notice, they didn’t use no fists this time.”

  Pamela opened the flap and stepped down from the wagon just in time to stop the two opposing camps from starting a free-for-all.

  “Slade couldn’t possibly have shot Mongo,” she said to the men she recognized from Mongo’s crew, the ones who had brought him in. “Mongo was shot several hours ago, and Slade has been in camp all morning. Quite a few people saw him.”

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but nobody heard the shot. He could have been shot just before we found him.”

  “That’s impossible. The blood on his clothes has dried.”

  “I don’t say Slade did it himself,” the man continued doggedly, “I’m just saying he’s the only one who had any trouble getting along with the boss. He’s the only one with a reason to do this.”

  There was a stir at the edge of the crowd. “And what might that reason be?” Slade asked. It seemed only natural for the men to fall back so he could approach the center of the group.

  “Slade.” The name slipped involuntarily from Pamela’s lips. “Where have you been?”

  “Not far,” he replied, but his eyes remained on Mongo’s men. “I’m waiting.”

  Accusing a man of murder face to face is not a thing to take casually, especially when that man can hit six coins in the air at the same time. Pamela could almost see the steam go out of those boys.

  “I didn’t say you shot him, just that you and him had a lot of dustups.”

  “Sure, I didn’t much like him, but that’s not a reason to shoot a man.”

  “You and him almost came to blows this morning.”

  “Mongo couldn’t seem to remember the location of his own campfire,” Slade said. “I was just reminding him.”

  The men didn’t say any more, but they looked like they would have liked to have said plenty. “How’s he doing?” Slade asked Pamela.

  “I don’t know. He could die any minute.”

  “Keep him here where you can watch him.”

  “We’ll take him back with us,” Jud Noble said. He was Mongo’s foreman.

  Slade’s gaze returned to the men, but this time it contained none of the sympathetic understanding of before. “If you move him now, you’ll kill him. Besides, there’s nobody in camp better able to nurse him than Miss White.”

  “But…”

  “If you boys are so afraid I’ll put a bullet in a sick man, one of you can stay with him. If he does die, I want you to be damned sure I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Now I’ve got to stay in camp,” Pamela said. “It looks like you always get your way.”

  “If I had, Mongo wouldn’t be shot. I’ll be back. Pete, I want to talk with you and Mercer,” Slade said and walked off with the two men.

  Pamela watched him go. All of her previous anger had disappeared. She would have given all she owned to run after him. For the first time in her life she was scared. Slade had been telling her all along there would be serious trouble, but she hadn’t believed him. He had told her that he thought someone had set Mongo up, and she hadn’t believed that either.

  Now Mongo had been shot, nearly killed. If Slade was right, somebody would be trying to kill her, too.

  The commotion was enough to rouse the Devil himself.

  A horse whinnied in pain as the barbed wire cut into his chest; the sheets of tin buckled and boomed like thunder as iron-shod hooves danced upon the brittle surface; a dozen crystal bells jangled wildly in the night; two men cursed bitterly as they turned their horses and raced back through the canyon opening.

  Gaddy came out of a sound sleep with a painful start. Grabbing up both guns, he fired wildly into the night. One bullet ricochetted off the canyon wall and smashed into a crystal bell. It shattered with a single shriek of shrill protest. The other clipped a delicate red flower off a tail cactus.

  “It worked!” Gaddy exclaimed as his brain cleared sufficiently for him to understand what had just happened. “My barricade worked! Somebody tried to get in and it kept them out.”

  Jumping up in a burst of exuberant happiness, Gaddy danced across the protesting tin sheets, firing off shots into the air like a high-spirited cowboy riding into town after a long drive.

  His horse, apparently deciding his situation had become unsafe, tore its reins loose from the tree limb where he had been tethered and returned to the barn at a gallop.

  Chapter 14

  For the next several days, Slade never left the sight of at least a half dozen people. He mixed with the men from all six crews, took his turn watching the herd at night, and slept in the middle of the Bar Double-B camp.

  On one hand Pamela felt relieved she didn’t have to worry about where he might have gone. After his challenge to the ranchers, she had been afraid he might ride out one morning and not come back. She didn’t think anyone would dry-gulch him, but with the survival of their herds at stake, she didn’t know how far these men might go.

  On the other hand, his sticking so close made her uneasy. Why did he make such a point of being visible at all times? Avoiding trouble is easier than having to fix it, she told herself. Nothing prevents problems like seeing the boss on the job all the time. Her father had held the same philosophy for years, but still a tiny doubt nagged at her mind. She tried to drive it away, but it wouldn’t go. She finally had to face it.

  Could Slade be afraid of the ranchers? Pamela reproached herself for even thinking it. Hadn’t he fought Mongo on her behalf? Yes, her perverse mind replied, but you had a rifle. Hadn’t he laid down his challenge to the other ranchers in front of their crews? Yes, but he had them surrounded by his own men.

  The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that she had missed something important. Slade had never been afraid of Mongo. He just didn’t think that way. There had to be something about this she didn’t understand. But what she didn’t understand, she couldn’t help but doubt.

  She’d ask Slade when he came in that evening. As long as he stayed her foreman, he was obliged to share his thoughts with her.

  Why, a little voice asked? You’ve pooh-poohed everything he’s told you so far. You didn’t back him up when he sent Gaddy back to the ranch. You didn’t support him when Dave said nothing would happen to the ranch, and you didn’t believe him when he said it was unsafe for you to ride alone. That man would be crazy to tell you anything more. No poin
t asking for trouble.

  He already has a lapful of your trouble Pamela reminded herself. If he’s willing to put his neck on the line, you ought to at least listen to the man. Nobody ever accused him of being crazy, and only a crazy man would stir up a nest of hornets without a very good reason.

  My God! What if she had been wrong all along? Suppose there was someone they didn’t know about pulling the strings.

  How much more did she know about Mongo than she knew about Slade? For that matter, what did she know about the other ranchers? The answers didn’t matter because the question that followed hard on the heels of the first two was much more important. Who’s being right meant the most to her? Which did she want to believe?

  There was no question. It was Slade.

  As soon as she realized that, everything turned itself around, and she wondered how she could have doubted him for so long. Three times in one week he had put his life on the line for her without any promise of reward. She doubted he would have done differently even if she had been paying him. If Slade saw something as his duty, he didn’t weigh costs or look for consequences. He just did it.

  The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if the trouble they had earlier hadn’t been a ruse to get her father to go to Santa Fe. He owned the largest ranch in the area. People listened to him. As long as he held firm, the other ranchers wouldn’t be anxious to start trouble.

  A shiver of fear knifed through Pamela. Could something have happened to her father? But almost immediately she dismissed the idea. Her father had survived the Civil War and more than twenty years of fighting Indians and rustlers. If they hadn’t caught him by now, they never would.

  But the notion that someone wanted her father out of the way had taken a strong hold on Pamela’s imagination. When she combined this with Slade’s suspicions, it made sense of several things she hadn’t been able to understand before.

  But who could be behind this and what did they want?

  Pamela made up her mind to listen to Slade in the future, but right now they needed someone who knew more about the area, the ranchers and their crews than either of them did. Turning abruptly, she went in search of Dave.

  His wagon had disappeared.

  “He said he was going to take a nap,” Angus said without looking up from his stew. “He got Sid to drive his wagon off into the trees so the noise wouldn’t bother him. He’s been doing it regular each day.”

  “I guess it’s cooler, too,” Pamela said. Poor Dave, she thought, he never needed naps before. It didn’t surprise her he didn’t want the men to know he had to rest during the day. It would make it all the harder to take over again after Slade left.

  After Slade left!

  He couldn’t leave. She had to find some way to keep him at the Bar Double-B. She knew her father would give him a job, but could she convince him to take it?

  “Tell me something, Angus.” She had to know how the men felt. He would work with them, not her. “What do you think of Mr. Morgan?”

  “I ain’t paid to have opinions about the boss,” Angus said, slicing potatoes into a heavy iron pot.

  “Dave is your boss,” Pamela said. “Mr. Morgan is just filling in until he’s back on his feet again.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “Not quite. You see, I thought I might offer Mr. Morgan a permanent job after the roundup, and I wanted to know what the men thought about him.”

  “That man ain’t no ordinary cowboy,” Angus said, his hands not moving now. “I’ve no doubt you can talk him into just about anything you want, but he don’t belong in a bunk-house. It ain’t that the boys don’t like him, they do, but he just ain’t one of us. He’s a natural born leader.”

  “You don’t think he would agree to work for Dave?”

  “He might and he might not, but I can tell you one thing. No foreman will ride comfortable in the saddle as long as he’s around.”

  “Why? He’s no trouble maker.”

  “No, ma’am. But people just naturally look to him to tell them what to do. The men fell to doing that without so much as a question. As long as he’s around, it wouldn’t make no difference who’s got the top job. They’ll still look to him.”

  “What about my father?”

  “That’s different. He owns the place, but then your father ain’t hired him yet. I don’t think he would either.”

  “Because you can’t have your men looking to two different people for leadership?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Pamela strolled back to her wagon, her mind in a ferment.

  “I need to talk with you,” Pamela announced when Slade walked up to the campfire.

  Slade poured himself a cup of coffee and squatted. “I’m listening.”

  She wondered why she’d never noticed the way his jeans glued themselves to his body when he squatted at the campfire. All the creases disappeared and his firm, muscled flesh was molded into one tight package.

  “I need to speak to you privately,” she said, tugging furiously at her thoughts to get them off his powerful loins. “Why don’t we take a walk like we used to?”

  Pamela hoped Slade couldn’t hear the entreaty in her voice. Apparently he didn’t. He didn’t even look up.

  “What do you have to tell me you can’t say in front of Dave and Angus?” Both men acted like they were deaf, dumb, and blind.

  “You won’t know until I tell you, will you?” She tried to smile provocatively, but she’d never tried that before. She didn’t know if she could. She probably just looked foolish.

  “I don’t have time to play games.”

  “Neither do I.” At least she could speak provocatively. Her voice had always been seductive.

  “Supposing I decide to stay right here?”

  Pamela gave him an impish smile that almost brought him to his feet by itself. “I’ll mount up and ride out of camp. Then you’ll have to follow me.”

  Angus checked the contents of several pots and checked on his bread. Dave pretended to be dozing.

  Slade sighed what he knew was the sigh of every man who has just given in to a woman for the umpteenth time. “I don’t know who said a woman always finds a way to get what she wants, but he sure knew his stuff,” he commented as he got to his feet.

  Pamela didn’t know why she’d been so struck by the fit of his jeans when he squatted. They were even more revealing now. They were loose enough to allow his body to assume its own contours but tight enough to accentuate them. Funny how she’d never paid much attention to the shape of a man’s body before. If she had, she might not be so devastated by Slade’s physical effect on her. Her mother thought all men were obsessed with the female body, but she hadn’t even hinted that a woman could be just as interested in a man’s body.

  Pamela wondered what her mother would have thought of Slade. Then she shuddered. She really didn’t want to know.

  “I didn’t want to threaten you, but it seemed the only way to get you to come with me,” Pamela said when they were out of earshot of Dave and Angus. She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t concentrate when she did.

  “That wasn’t why I came.”

  Pamela looked questioningly at Slade.

  “Bob Sprevitt is watching you today. You wouldn’t get a hundred feet.”

  Pamela struggled to control her spiraling temperature. “Then why did you come?”

  “You obviously had something you wanted to say.”

  “And?” Pamela knew there was more. There always was with this cowboy.

  “I wanted to,” Slade said, letting the words out like a big gush of pent-up air. But once free of restraint, the words tumbled out like pecans out of a broken sack. “I was tired of practically sitting on my hands for fear I’d touch you or biting my tongue so I wouldn’t say the things I was dying to say. Hell, I’m practically blind from staring into that fire.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “You know.”

  Pamela hoped she did, but she s
aid, “I won’t make any more assumptions. You still haven’t forgiven me for the last one. Or accepted my apology.”

  Slade was disgusted with himself. Now that he had let down and allowed himself to say what he had been wanting to say for three days, he was right back where he started. Still panting after a woman who wanted someone else.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. He didn’t want to go into it. He just wanted to get this over with.

  “Yes it does. I know I was wrong—I had plenty of proof to the contrary—but I let my temper cause me to say things I didn’t mean. I told you once before I had never been a good judge of people.”

  “Okay, apology accepted,” Slade said with a crooked smile he didn’t feel. “Now what was so important that you had to go to all this trouble to get me out here?” He held her at a distance, marking time until she would leave.

  Pamela wanted to convince him of her sincerity, but instinct told her to wait. She had fallen into a pattern of wanting his attentions and then rejecting him when she got them. It would take more than words to convince him that anything had really changed.

  “I wanted to tell you that I agree with you. I mean I believe you. About Mongo and all the rest,” she added when his expression remained blank. God, he was handsome, even when he looked like he’d been hit between the eyes with a brick.

  Slade hadn’t misunderstood. He just couldn’t believe his ears. But he restrained his enthusiasm. There might be severe qualifications to Pamela’s new-found faith in him. So far the only thing without limit was her disdain for drifters.

  “It was Mongo’s getting shot that did it, wasn’t it?” Okay, so she believed in evidence rather than him. It was still a beginning.

  Pamela nodded. “He didn’t want Dad to go to Santa Fe. Dad used to like Mongo. He thought I ought to marry him. But somebody wanted Dad out of the way. They knew that as long as he owned the Bar Double-B, the other ranchers would listen to him.”

  Slade doubted her father carried quite that much influence, but it fitted with all the rest. “Do you have any idea who it could be?”