“If there is such a list, your name must be near the top.”
“Tie him to the wagon,” screamed Ira. The men surged forward, men stopped almost as quickly. Cord held a gun in each hand, one pointed at Ira and the other at Croley.
“There are too many of you, but I’ll get you two before anyone lays a hand on me. Those of you who are honest farmers and homesteaders look around. Do you recognize more than half a dozen faces? Do you wonder who these men are, and why strangers should be so interested in defending you? They’re Croley’s men, a paid gang of rustlers, who have been systematically preying on all our herds, large and small. They kill at night and sell the meat the next day. How many times have you have found a butchered cow or steer? These are the men responsible.”
Several pairs of eyes rolled nervously from side to side, but rustlers outnumbered honest men, and Cord’s guns held them as firmly in place as they did the rustlers. Then a shot sounded from behind Cord and he fell to the ground, his guns falling uselessly at his side.
“Shot in the back like he deserves,” crowed Ira, triumphant at last.
Croley bent over the body. “Your aim’s no better than it ever was, Roy,” he said to a man stepping up from a small depression where he had been asleep after standing the night watch. “You only hit him in the shoulder.”
“Tie him to the wagon,” Ira said. “He won’t escape this time.”
“We ain’t got no right to do that,” said one of the farmers, plucking up enough courage to speak up.
“Anybody who doesn’t like what he sees had better watch the fight from another ridge,” Croley said, facing the group around him. “And anybody getting in the way is liable to find himself sitting next to Stedman.” Nobody moved, but when Croley turned his attention to moving Cord’s inert body, several men wandered away from the group as inconspicuously as possible.
They had just finished securing Cord to the wagon when Eliza saw them. Her terrified scream and the confusion created by her riding her horse into the heart of the group arrested their motion.
“Stop!” she cried, falling from the saddle of the rearing horse. “This is murder.”
“Stay out of the way,” Ira ordered, attempting to grab hold of her. “He’s finally going to get what’s been coming to him.”
“You’ll all be hanged,” she called, evading her uncle’s clutches.
“There won’t be any evidence,” Croley said quietly. Eliza gaped at Croley and then her uncle, truly horrified at what they intended to do.
“Are all of you so heartless that you can watch a man be killed for no reason at all?” she implored, turning to the impassive faces around her.
“You’re wasting your time,” Croley told her. “These are my men.”
“You mean your rustlers, don’t you?” she spat, turning on him like a wildcat. “Men you pay to steal what other men work for.” Scorn dripped from her voice. “The money from the saloon wasn’t enough. You had to have more.”
“It started before you came, when the saloon was losing money. Just think, if you’d come a little sooner, you might have saved me,” Croley said sarcastically.
“No one can save you because no one made you steal.”
“We’re wasting time,” Ira said impatiently. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry,” Croley said. “I’d like to negotiate a little. Maybe your niece would like to bargain for her boyfriend’s life.”
“What do you want?” Eliza asked, dread in her heart.
“You, my dear.”
“I’ll never marry you,” Eliza shouted, recoiling in revulsion. “I’d rather die first.”
“But you won’t be the one to die. It’ll be your boyfriend.” Eliza looked at Cord, bound and bleeding, and knew if she didn’t do something he would soon be dead. She didn’t trust Croley to keep his promise, but nothing would matter if Cord were dead.
“I can give her to you if you want her that bad,” Ira said. “She’s underage. One of your crooked judges won’t mind hearing her say I do even if she is in a dead faint. Now come on. I’ve been wanting to see Stedman dead for close to a year now.”
“Looks like you’ve lost your bargaining chip,” Croley drawled, grinning wickedly. “Your uncle offers a better bargain.”
“You would murder him?” she asked Ira. “After he let you get away twice?”
“I would murder him with my own hands if necessary.” Eliza realized from the look in her uncle’s eye he didn’t know what he was doing. He had nursed his hatred for Cord so long, prompted by Croley, he couldn’t see reason. If he wasn’t completely mad, he was perilously close.
“Then you’ll have to kill me too,” she informed him, and began to climb up on the wagon. A gathering audience watched from a distance. They were horrified when Eliza climbed up on the wagon, but no less so when Croley pulled her down so roughly she stumbled and fell.
“Keep her out of the way,” Croley ordered one of his men, and a large, burly man pulled Eliza to her feet and held her firmly while Croley attached fuses to a dozen sticks of dynamite. “Now let’s get this thing to the top of the ridge. We can’t light it till it’s rolling down the other side.”
Eliza begged and pleaded, but the men laboriously pushed the double wagon up the incline. The gathering circle of onlookers followed, muttering among themselves; Eliza’s efforts only seemed to drive Ira to greater frenzy.
“You ought to be ashamed to let people know you prefer Cord Stedman to your own flesh and blood,” Ira told her.
“I’d prefer a rattlesnake to you,” Eliza shouted at him. “You’re a liar, a thief, and now a murderer. I’ll tell the sheriff. I’ll even go to the governor if I have to go to.”
“You’d better give some thought for your own safety,” growled Croley, his beady eyes full of evil.
“I don’t care. Nothing, do you hear me, nothing will stop me!”
“Everyone can be stopped, one way or another,” Croley snarled dangerously, and turned back to his work; no one took notice of two more horses arriving at a gallop. People had been coming and going for days; the most compelling drama of the siege was happening right before their eyes.
“Halt!” The order was given by a voice used to being obeyed, and even Ira paused. The garnering looked up in shocked surprise to see Colonel Davis, commander of Fort McKinley, dismounting from a badly lathered horse; Iris O’Sullivan was right behind him.
“The United States Army is in charge now,” he said, “and no one on either side will be harmed.”
“And how do you proposed to enforce that order, you being but one man among twenty?” Ira demanded, infuriated by the unexpected interference.
“That’s how,” Colonel Davis said, pointing to a long column of soldiers coming across the ridge a mile or so distant. “Now clear away that dynamite, and untie that man.”
“No,” screamed Ira. “I won’t be cheated now.” He sprang for the wagon and released the break, snapping the handle as he did so. Then as the wagon started to roll down the hill, he lit the fuses; at once they began to sparkle brightly.
“You’re too late,” he yelled, a fanatical light in his eyes.
With a scream that raised the hair on the necks of everyone present, Eliza bit into the arm of the man holding her, and the instant his grip relaxed she broke away and raced down the hill after the runaway wagon.
“Eliza, don’t!” screamed Iris.
“Somebody stop that woman,” Colonel Davis ordered, but no one wanted to risk his life chasing after a wagon careening down a hill and loaded with a dozen sticks of dynamite. They watched incredulously as Eliza raced after the wagon until she was able to grab hold of the low rail. Heedless of the stones and brambles that bruised and tore at her flesh, Eliza pulled herself up on to the wagon bed. It was almost impossible to stay on the wagon as it lurched over stones and uneven ground, but she clawed her way toward the sparks, moving ever closer to the dynamite. With one clean jerk, she pulled the fuses out,
caps and all, and flung them to the ground, where they went off in a series of harmless pops. Then, after having thrown the dynamite from the wagon, she stood up and embraced the still-unconscious Cord, ready to die at his side.
Chapter 35
Eliza sat propped up on five pillows in Ella’s spare bedroom while Lucy fed her a thick soup. Standing guard at the end of the bed with arms akimbo, Ella superintended the proceedings, a look of motherly pride on her broad face.
“For a gal who used to be too shy to open her mouth in public, you sure set Buffalo on its ear this time. Every household in three counties is talking about what you did.”
“They’re not talking of anything else in the saloon either,” added Lucy. “There’s almost more people down there now than used to come hear you sing. You’re more popular than Annie Oakley.”
“But are you sure Cord’s all right?” Eliza asked, arresting Lucy’s spoon long enough to get the question out.
“I don’t imagine it’s too comfortable to be going around with a bullet hole in his shoulder, but he was tied so tight to that contraption nothing could have pried him loose. It was you who went flying through the air and has been lying here with a concussion for three days.”
“I shouldn’t be lying here at all,” she said with a vain effort to sit up. “Who’s going to take care of him?”
“Ginny Franklin, and she can do a better job of it than you can in your condition,” Ella stated uncompromisingly. “If I know Cord, he’s already up and around. You lie back and eat your soup. If you don’t stay quiet, you’ll have scrambled brains for the rest of your life.”
“What about the invaders?”
“The soldiers hauled them off to the fort. But the colonel says he can’t do anything except keep those gun-toting renegades in protective custody, just like they weren’t the ones who started all the trouble in the first place.”
“What did they do to Uncle Ira?” Eliza had to know.
“Not a blessed thing!” Ella declared, utterly disgusted. “There’s not a man in Buffalo who seems to know how Cord got tied to that rig. To hear them tell it, he must have tied himself up before he passed out, and that hole in his shoulder just appeared by magic. Spineless cowards is what they are, afraid of I don’t know what. The colonel and Iris saw Ira light the dynamite, but the colonel insists he has his hands full with the invaders, and it’s up to Joe Hooker to deal with Croley and your uncle. But the sheriff didn’t do a thing when he had the chance, and now that the county’s gone crazy all around him, he can’t do anything.”
“What do you mean, gone crazy?”
“I don’t know what I mean because I don’t stick my nose outside the store unless I have to, but I hear tell a lot of shiftless scalawags are coming in from all around and running off whole herds and nobody dares stop them. They also ransacked a few ranch houses and stole anything that took their fancy. You don’t see our good sheriff—or the marshal, for that matter—trying to put a stop to it. I’m afraid some of the local boys have joined in on the scavenging, but then I’m not too surprised. If they’re going to be taken for rustlers, they figure they might as well act like it.”
“Are they stealing Cord’s cows?”
“Nobody’s that crazy. Cord’s men are so spitting mad at what Croley and Ira did, not to mention feeling guilty over letting Cord go out there by himself, they’d shoot anybody who came near one of their steers and forget the questions altogether.”
Eliza settled back. “It seems things are no better than they were before.”
“They’re worse, but that was to be expected. The Army taking those killers away when everybody had the smell of blood in their nostrils made just about everybody crazy. They’re getting even any way they can.”
“And then getting drunk,” added Lucy. “The Sweetwater’s never been so full.” A knock sounded at the door.
“It’s open,” thundered Ella, as though the door were a half mile away.
“I thought I’d drop by to see how you were doing,” Iris said, presenting Eliza with a small bouquet of spring flowers. “Lucy told me you’d finally come around.”
“I’m glad you came,” Eliza said, smiling warmly. “I’ve been wanting to thank you for bringing the colonel in such a hurry.”
“Forget it. I was there when the boy reached the fort, and I knew that if he really had seen you riding at a gallop, matters must be in desperate shape. I didn’t know you could ride astride!”
“I never had before, but I got in a lot of practice in a hurry,” Eliza said, smiling shyly.
“When’s that colonel going to string up those foreigners?” Ella demanded, referring to the Texas gunmen. “He ought to hang every one of them.”
“He doesn’t have that kind of authority—that’s for the civil courts to decide—so he’s transferring them to Fort Russell for greater security.”
“Great jumping Jehoshaphat,” Ella exclaimed. “I never heard the like before. I hope I get that kind of treatment if I ever take to murdering honest people just because I’m paid to.” She paused in midthought, and fixed her keen gaze on Iris. “And just what were you doing so handy to that Fort, Miss O’Sullivan?”
“I was visiting my little girl. She stays with the wife of one of the enlisted men.”
“Seems to me she stayed in town when you first came here. And don’t give me that old song and dance about fresh air. You had other fish to fry that day, and don’t think I don’t know it.” Eliza was surprised to see Iris turn pink.
“Well, it’s not general knowledge yet, but Colonel Davis has asked me to marry him,” said Iris.
“So you did get your claws outa Mr. Cord,” Lucy said.
“I never got them in, not even with Eliza’s permission. If I hadn’t grown up eight miles from Cord’s hometown, he would never have bothered to speak to me except to ask about you,” she said, turning to Eliza. “I know I’m nowhere near as pretty as you are—”
“Miss Eliza is beautiful,” Lucy stated emphatically.
“Beautiful then. But it’s not good for a girl’s morale to know she can do her best and a big hunk like Cord wouldn’t notice whether she was male or female. I can take rejection, but I don’t crave it.”
“I suppose that means you’ll stop working in the saloon?”
“Not right away, but it wouldn’t be suitable for a colonel’s wife. And of course there’s the possibility he’ll be given a new post.”
“Then you make sure you get the knot tied first” Ella advised her. “Men have a mighty poor memory when they can’t keep their eye on what it is they’re supposed to be remembering.”
“It didn’t seem to bother Cord.”
“Cord’s just the opposite. The only thing he can see is what he wants, and telling him he can’t have it is only going to make him try harder. But that’s just like a man, always blowing too hot or too cold for comfort.”
“Looks like we both get what we wanted,” Iris said to Eliza.
“Looks like you did,” agreed Ella, “but it’s time we let Eliza get some rest, or she won’t be leaving this bed for a month.”
“I’ll be up tomorrow,’ Eliza promised.
But Eliza was mistaken. Both Cord and Ira came to see her the next day, and the visits so depleted her strength she was thankful to have Ella announce she would have no further visitors until she was stronger.
Cord looked worn down and worried. “I’m glad I was out cold,” he said with the reluctance of a man who made it a habit not to be indebted to anyone. “I would have blushed like a girl to see what you were put to to save my hide.” Eliza tried to demur, but he wouldn’t let her.
“I’ve had your exploits described by nearly every man at the Bar-T, and a few I suspect were safe at home, so you can save yourself the trouble of denying you took an awful risk. I’d give a lot to see you leap on a moving wagon, but I hope you never have any more dealings with dynamite. Do you know how close you came to getting killed?”
“All I could think of
was getting rid of the dynamite.” She didn’t add that nothing would have mattered if he had died; he could see that in the way she stared at him and in the way her hands gripped the sheets.
“Apparently you have greater strength than you know. That first dynamite stick landed in a group of Croley’s men. They scattered like a flock of prairie chickens, all the while straining their necks to see what you were going to do next.” Eliza tried to smile, but Cord didn’t miss the signs of fatigue.
“How is your shoulder?” she asked. “It’s not good for you to be up so much.”
“It’s still a mite stiff, but as long as I don’t try to spend the whole day in the saddle, it doesn’t pain me too much. I was forced to use a buckboard for two days.” A ghost of a smile lightened his expression. “I was almost ashamed to be seen in such a contraption, but the worst was when Ginny offered to drive me about.”
Eliza’s grin of response was a weak imitation of her usual smile.
“You need your rest,” Cord said, bringing his visit to an end, “and I need to get back to the Matador before they send out a search party.” He took Eliza’s hands in his. “I don’t want to embarrass you with my gratitude, but it’s the first time anyone ever put my life before theirs, and I won’t forget it.” He kissed Eliza roughly and quickly, leaving her shaken but radiant.
Ira did not show similar restraint. Less than five minutes after he’d closed the door behind him, his upraised voice brought Ella and Lucy down upon him, and their combined fury drove him from the room, Ella giving him the strictest orders not to “set foot on my property again, or “I’ll take a shotgun to you faster than to a coyote in a henhouse.”
“I have a right to see my own niece,” he objected.
“As far as I’m concerned, Eliza doesn’t have any relations,” Ella decreed. “She sure doesn’t need one that acts like a mad dog, biting and snapping at her until she’s worse off than when she arrived here.”
“I want her home where I can watch her.”
Wicked Wyoming Nights Page 35