“I expect so,” he said gently. “That’s a fact, sure enough.”
She stood gazing at him for a long moment before seeming to recover her composure. It was then that she noticed the blood soaking through the buckskin shirt he wore. Her eyes grew wide once more, and she scolded him. “Colt McCrae, you’re bleeding again!”
“Yeah, I caught one in the shoulder,” he replied. Drummond’s wild shot had not been far off target.
She handed the frying pan to Pearl and came immediately to him and made him sit down in a chair while she looked after the wound. “You’re going to the doctor with this one,” she admonished. “And then you’re going to let it get well before you make it worse again.”
He smiled at her. “I might need someone to look after me to make sure.”
She looked up to meet his gaze and held it for a moment. Watching from the end of the counter, Pearl shook her head, then commented, “Yeah, if anybody ever needed lookin’ after, it’s him.” They were still gazing into each other’s eyes when Burt and the others burst through the door.
Chapter 17
Frank Drummond was gone, and with him, the murderous gang of bushwhackers that rode for him. There were issues to be taken care of, and there was some discussion about who should be responsible for overseeing the equitable disposal of Drummond’s vast cattle empire. It fell upon Burt McCrae to handle that chore, so along with Tom and Bill, he rode over to the Rocking-D to see what had to be done. They rode up to the ranch house to find Alice Flynn sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch.
“I was wondering when somebody was gonna show up,” the acid-tongued woman said as a greeting. It had been two days since Frank Drummond had been killed, with no word to her.
“Yes, ma’am, Miz Flynn,” Burt said. “Somebody shoulda been out here sooner—you out here all alone like this. I’m sorry about that.”
“Drummond dead?”
“Ah, yes, ma’am,” Burt replied, taken aback by her indifferent attitude. “He died of a gunshot wound in the Whiskey Hill Kitchen.”
“That figures,” she said. “He ran with a rank crowd of riffraff. Had to happen sooner or later.”
Burt really had no notion as to the best way to settle Drummond’s holdings when he arrived at the Rocking-D. It had generally been assumed that since the McCraes won the war, they would automatically claim the spoils. But upon meeting the ramrod-straight old woman, a better solution occurred to him. “I expect you must be wantin’ to get away from this lonely stretch of prairie, maybe move into Whiskey Hill where there’s other folks around,” he said, testing the seemingly indifferent woman’s state of mind.
“Hell no,” she replied at once. “Why would I wanna move into the middle of that tomfoolery? I’ve been living alone for more’n fifteen years—same as, living with Frank Drummond. No, thank you, sir. I’ll get by fine living in one of the line shacks or the smokehouse. I don’t need nobody around me.”
Tom and Bill exchanged glances of astonishment at the salty old gal’s declaration. Burt grinned. He had never met the lady before, but he had heard she was hard as nails. He made his decision. “Well, now, it seems to me that with Drummond gone, you’re the only rightful heir to his estate. So I reckon this house, this ranch, belongs to you now.” The only indication of emotion he detected after that statement was a slight flicker of one eyelid. He continued. “Now, you’re gonna need some help runnin’ this place. It’s bigger’n the Broken-M and the Bar-M put together, and until you can hire on some hands, I figure me and my nephew can help out. We’ll be shorthanded, for sure, but we’ll manage through the winter. I expect we’ll lose a few head to wolves and coyotes, but we’ll do all right. Does that sound all right to you?”
Although the facial expression was not obvious, Tom Mosley would brag afterward that he was one of only three souls on the face of the earth to have ever seen Alice Flynn smile.
“We can help each other out,” Burt went on when there was no reply at once. “Whaddaya think? I know it seems like a helluva lot for a woman to take on.”
She got up from the rocking chair and walked over to the edge of the porch. Without a word, she spat in the palm of her hand and extended it toward him. Understanding, Burt spat in his hand, and they shook on it. “I’ll get Judge Blake to handle the legal part of it,” Burt said. She nodded.
Tom and Bill were left to look after the ranch while Burt and Vance, along with Susan, rode into Whiskey Hill for a meeting Roy Whitworth called to discuss the future of the town. Little Sammy begged to stay with “Uncle Tom” and “Uncle Bill,” which was fine with Vance since it would be far past Sammy’s bedtime by the time they returned.
“I’m glad you folks decided to come to the meeting, ” Roy said when the McCraes arrived at the Whiskey Hill Kitchen. “We’ve been talking about a lot of things that need taking care of if we’re gonna build this town into a respectable place to live and work. Now that Frank Drummond is gone, you folks, along with Miss Alice Flynn, of course, are the major landowners outside of town.”
“We were wonderin’ if Colt was plannin’ on stayin’ around, now that the trouble with Drummond’s done,” Barney Samuels spoke up. “We ain’t seen him since the shoot-out.”
“Can’t say for sure,” Burt replied. “You ain’t seen him ’cause he’s gone back to that Cheyenne camp. Mary Simmons went with him—said she was stayin’ with him this time till he healed up proper.” He shook his head and smiled at that. “Colt wouldn’t have come to the meetin’ anyway.”
“He’s left me shorthanded,” Oscar Anderson complained. “Pearl’s had to do all the work with Mary gone.”
“The way I heard it,” Burt replied, “she didn’t give Colt much choice in the matter.”
“We sent word through Pearl for Colt to come to the meeting,” Roy said. “The town ain’t been too friendly to him since he got out of prison. I don’t reckon I blame him for not coming.”
“In fact,” Barney said, “some of us think we could do a lot worse than Colt to take J.D.’s job.”
“Colt as sheriff? I don’t know about that.” Burt shook his head slowly.
“We only talked about it,” the mayor said. “I don’t know if we could have a sheriff that’s been to prison.”
“Hell,” Barney insisted, “he didn’t shoot that bank guard, he was just involved in the robbery.”
“Well, he was part of the bank robbery. That’s pretty serious,” Oscar commented.
“He wasn’t even there when it happened.” Startled by the comment, all three turned their heads at once, surprised that it had come from Susan McCrae.
Her husband was more surprised than the others. “Why do you think that?” he asked.
“I don’t think—I know,” she replied. “He was twelve miles away at that little creek between my daddy’s land and your father’s place.”
Confused, Vance asked, “How could you know that?”
“I was there,” she stated softly. Her confession left the room silent, waiting for details. Vance, completely bewildered at that point, was struck speechless.
“That’s right,” a voice from the doorway sang out. “She saw me, all right.” So enthralled by Susan’s statement, the gathering had failed to notice the appearance of the broad-shouldered mountain lion in the buckskin shirt. “Caught me butcherin’ one of her daddy’s calves just for somethin’ to eat.”
A common thought ran through everybody’s mind at that point. Vance was the first to express it. “If that’s true, why in the world didn’t you come forward?” he asked his wife.
Again, before Susan could answer, Colt said, “I told her if she told on me for killin’ that calf, I’d slip into her room one night and slit her throat. She was awful young then. I guess she believed me.”
“Ten years in prison for killin’ a calf,” Burt uttered, then swore softly, “Damn!”
Vance, finding it hard to believe his wife could be so vindictive, looked at Susan in disbelief. “Susan, how could you let Co
lt sit in that prison and not tell somebody? ”
Again, Colt stepped in. “ ’Cause I scared the hell out of her. She thought I would cut her throat. Hell, Vance, don’t blame Susan. It was my fault, and I’d just as soon drop it.” He glanced at his sister-in-law to discover her gaze locked upon his face. A tear slowly formed in the corner of her eye and she lowered her chin slightly, a nod of gratitude that only he could see.
Impatient to get on to more important business, Barney Samuels interrupted. “Well, there you go! He wasn’t even guilty, just like he said. Ain’t no reason he can’t take the sheriff’s job now. Right, Roy?”
“Well, I reckon that’s true,” Roy said. “How ’bout it, Colt?”
Colt couldn’t help but smile at the irony of the offer. He still harbored ill feelings toward the fickle little town that shunned him. He looked over at Vance and his uncle Burt. They were both grinning like dogs eating briars. Lawman would be a helluva stretch for him. It had certainly never occurred to him. Finally, he said, “I’ll think about it, but right now I’m gonna lie around Red Moon’s camp till my shoulder heals up. I’ll think on it, though.” He left them with this final word. “If you find somebody before I get back, go ahead and give it to him.”
Two weeks had passed since the town meeting, and Colt’s wound was healing nicely under the care of Mary and her grandmother. It was a peaceful time for Colt, a welcome respite from the trouble that preceded it. His only concern was that he had been captured again, this time by a pretty young half-Cheyenne maiden. And he had to admit that he had no thoughts of escape.
Returning from hunting one frosty morning, he was surprised to find a buggy tied up beside Walking Woman’s tipi. As he stepped down from the saddle, Mary came out of the lodge to meet him. She was accompanied by a thin, ramrod-straight woman dressed in a long woolen coat, wearing a bonnet that concealed most of a silver-gray bun. “Colt,” Mary said, “this is Alice Flynn. She wants to talk to you.”
“Oh?” Colt responded. “What about?” He was well aware of who Alice Flynn was, even though this was the first time he had ever actually laid eyes on the lady, other than one brief glance while she lay sleeping.
As was her nature, Alice cut right to the point. “About you doing something besides lying around this Injun camp,” she blurted. “I’ve got the biggest spread in this valley, and I need somebody to run it. I want you to be my partner. Whaddaya say? It beats sheriffing.”
Astonished, Colt didn’t know what to say. He looked at Mary, who was beaming happily, waiting for his response. Looking back at Alice, he said, “I’ll think on it.”
“Burt said you’d say that,” Alice huffed. “Yes or no?”
Colt looked at Mary again, flustered. “I reckon,” he finally said.
Range War in Whiskey Hill Page 23