Frank didn’t say anything.
After a few more seconds, Brady jerked his horse around and cruelly raked its flanks with his spurs. The horse leaped into a pounding gallop that carried Brady toward the hotel where his mother and Gaius Baldridge had gone earlier.
Salty sighed and said, “Frank, you’re gonna have to kill that boy sooner or later.”
“I’m afraid you may be right, Salty.” Frank took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Right now, though, let’s go finish that stew before it cools off anymore. Don’t want Miss Storm having to feed us twice every time we come in.”
The four men turned toward the front door of the café, but they hadn’t reached it when more hoofbeats suddenly pounded in the street. Frank looked around and saw that the four men who had come to town with Brady hadn’t gone to the undertaking parlor after all.
Instead they were charging toward the Feed Barn with guns in their hands, and as the citizens scattered in fright, tongues of flame began to stab from the muzzles of those guns.
Chapter 15
Some of the slugs that whipped past Frank’s head struck the café’s front window and shattered it into a million pieces. Frank knew that shards of glass must have sprayed across the inside of the building, and he hoped that Katie hadn’t been standing anywhere near the window.
There was no time to check to see if she was hurt, though. Frank’s Colt was already in his hand. He hadn’t had to think about drawing it. Instinct had taken care of that. The same instinct brought the gun up with blinding speed, lined the sights on the man who was in the forefront of the attackers, and pulled the trigger.
As if swatted out of the saddle by a giant hand, the man went backwards off his horse as Frank’s bullet drove into his chest. One of the other men reacted automatically and jerked his horse aside to keep the animal from trampling the fallen man.
That sudden swerve caused the horse to lose its footing. With a high-pitched whinny of alarm, the horse tumbled to the ground in a welter of flailing legs and hooves. The rider sailed out of the saddle and vanished in the cloud of dust that boiled up around the panic-stricken horse.
Hal and Carlin had their guns out by now and were returning the fire, but Frank didn’t think they were hitting anything. He half-turned, aimed at one of the two men still on horseback, and pulled the trigger. The Colt roared and bucked, and the gunman dropped his revolver and slewed around as he clutched at a bullet-shattered shoulder.
That left just one man mounted, and by now he was probably wishing he and his companions hadn’t decided to disregard Brady’s orders and try to avenge Royal and Dobbs anyway. He tried to pull his horse around, but Hal and Carlin finally found the range and drilled him, the two bullets passing through his body only a second apart. He threw up his arms and slid out of the saddle, but his foot caught in the stirrup and his body dragged behind the horse as it bolted along the street.
That left the man who had been thrown clear when his horse fell, and as Frank turned to look for him, he heard Salty’s heavy old revolver boom. The man who had just emerged from the swirling dust with a gun in his hand clawed at his chest, doubled over, and collapsed.
“That’ll teach ya,” Salty said as gray smoke curled from the barrel of the hogleg.
Frank stepped down from the porch and moved quickly between the gunmen on the ground, kicking their weapons out of reach if any of them proved not to be dead. That didn’t appear to be the case, however. All of them lay limp and lifeless, including the man whose foot had finally slipped from the stirrup, leaving him sprawled in the street about fifty yards from the café.
The man with the busted shoulder sat slumped in his saddle, clutching the injury and whimpering in pain. Frank caught Salty’s eye and nodded toward the man, indicating that the old-timer should watch him to make sure he didn’t try anything.
Everyone who’d been out in the open had ducked for cover as soon as the shooting started. Now that the echoes of the gunfire were dying away, people began looking out of windows and doors again to assess the results of the violence.
Hal suddenly whirled around and cried, “Katie!” He plunged toward the door of the Feed Barn, obviously having just realized the bullets that had shattered the windows might have gone on to do some damage inside.
“Gage, go give him a hand,” Frank said.
The cowboy nodded and hurried into the café as if the fact that Frank had given him an order didn’t bother him at all.
“Got comp’ny comin’ from two directions, Frank,” Salty warned.
“I see them,” Frank said. He had already spotted Roy Trask trotting toward the café from the marshal’s office. Trask had the double-barreled shotgun in his hands again.
Brady Morgan emerged from the Territorial House, and when he saw his men lying in the street, he broke into a run.
“Damn it, what did I say ... about startin’ a ruckus?” Trask demanded as he came up, slightly out of breath from hurrying.
“We didn’t start it,” Frank said.
“But like I told you we would, Marshal, we durn sure finished it!” Salty added.
Brady Morgan reached the scene of the gunfight and shouted, “What the hell happened here?”
Frank still had his gun in his right hand. He used his left to gesture toward the man whose shoulder he had broken with a bullet and said, “Maybe you better ask your men about that, Brady. They’re the ones who opened the ball.”
Brady glared at the wounded man. “What is this, Lew?” he asked. “I told the four of you to go to talk to the undertaker.”
“Yeah, but Peevey wouldn’t stand for it, Brady,” the man whined. “He said we had to even the score for Royal and Dobbs. Nobody around here would respect us anymore if we didn’t, he said.”
“So now three more men are dead,” Brady said disgustedly. He looked at Trask. “These killings took place in town, Marshal. What are you gonna do about them?”
Trask looked like he wished he was somewhere, anywhere, else, as he said, “I guess I’m gonna have to arrest these fellas until we can straighten everything out.”
“There’s nothing to straighten out, Marshal,” Frank said. “Those men came at us shooting, and we fought back. It’s as clear-cut a case of self-defense as you’ll ever see, and if you ask around town, I’m sure you can find plenty of witnesses who agree.”
“Yeah, but I could probably find just as many who’d say you and your friends started the whole thing, Morgan.”
Frank knew Trask was alluding to the situation he had thought about earlier, the splitting down the middle of Pine Knob’s citizens between Baldridge and Embry.
Trask went on. “Besides, there’s no gettin’ around the fact that if the four of you had ridden out of town when I told you to, none of this would have happened.”
The marshal was right about that, Frank supposed. . . but that still didn’t mean he was inclined to give up his gun and go sit in a jail cell just because he had defended himself.
“Where are the Embry boy and Gage Carlin, anyway?” Trask asked as he looked around.
“Right here, Marshal,” Hal answered from the open doorway of the café. He led Katie onto the porch with an arm around her shoulders. She looked pale and shaken, and she had a bloodstained cloth wrapped around her left hand. Gage Carlin and Solomon Storm followed them out.
“Good Lord!” Trask exclaimed. “How bad are you hurt, Miss Storm? Do we need to fetch Doc Hutchison?”
Katie shook her head. “It’s just a little cut from the flying glass, Marshal. It could have been a lot worse. I was standing fairly close to the window when the shooting started and it broke. So I saw those gunfighters attack these men, if you need a witness to what happened.”
Trask frowned and said, “So you saw the whole thing, did you?”
“That’s right, she did,” Solomon said, “and so did I! It happened just like Katie told you, you no-good, two-bit tin badge! Why, if you were any sort of a lawman, you’d hang that whole bunch of killers who work for B
aldridge, startin’ with that one!”
He pointed at Brady Morgan.
Trask didn’t seem bothered by the abuse Solomon heaped on his head. He was probably used to the way the mentally disturbed old man acted.
Brady didn’t react so well. He took a step toward the porch and said, “Why, you mangy buzzard! I’ll—”
“You won’t do anything, Morgan,” Trask snapped. He moved the shotgun slightly, so that the barrels pointed in Brady’s general direction. “You won’t do anything except take your man down to the doc’s office. That shoulder’s gonna need a sawbones to patch it up.”
Brady was white around the mouth with anger as he stood there stiffly, but after a moment he nodded. “All right. But what about the ones who were killed?”
“I’ll see to it that they’re taken over to Finnegan’s and things are handled properly,” Trask promised.
“Fine.” Brady turned away and took hold of the injured man’s reins. He started leading the horse along the street.
Frank watched him go. He didn’t trust Brady not to spin around with no warning and slap leather.
But that didn’t happen. It looked like the violence was over for the time being.
Trask said to Frank and Salty, “I’d be much obliged if you fellas would holster those guns.”
“You’re not going to try to take them away from us?” Frank asked as he pouched the iron.
Trask sighed and shook his head. “I believe you about what happened. But there’ll have to be an inquest, and you’d better be there.” The lawman looked at Hal and Carlin. “All four of you. So plan on riding back into town tomorrow morning.”
“And if we don’t?” Hal asked.
“Then there’ll be a warrant out for your arrest the next time you set foot in the town limits,” Trask said. “So unless you plan on never coming to Pine Knob again, Embry, I’d suggest you do like you’re told.”
Hal glanced at Katie, and Frank knew what the young man was thinking. Hal couldn’t stay away from Pine Knob. Not as long as Katie was here.
Hooking his thumbs in his gunbelt, Frank said, “We’ll be here, Marshal. You’ve got my word on it.”
Trask nodded, evidently satisfied. “Fine. Now will you get out of town like I asked you to an hour ago before all this hell broke loose?”
“We might as well,” Frank said. “I’m sure our dinner is cold by now, and I don’t reckon Miss Katie needs to be worrying about dishing up some more for us.”
Salty opened his mouth, probably to say something about not being so hasty, but a look from Frank made him fall silent before any words came out.
“Are you going to be all right?” Hal asked Katie.
“Of course,” she told him. “It’s my left hand. I can bandage it just fine. Solomon can help me if I need him to. We’ll be open again for supper.”
“Well ... if you’re sure. But you need to take care of yourself. That cut bled pretty bad.”
“I’m more worried about getting that window replaced,” Katie said with a sigh. “A new pane of glass will have to be freighted up from Great Falls or maybe even Helena. In the meantime I guess I can get Danny Kyle to board it up.” She glanced at Frank and Salty and added by way of explanation, “He’s the town handyman.”
“You ought to make Baldridge pay for it,” Hal said. “When you get right down to it, he’s responsible for what happened here. He’s the one who brought those gunmen into the valley.”
Seemed like somebody always brought snakes into paradise, Frank mused a few minutes later as he and his three companions rode out of Pine Knob. He glanced toward the Territorial House as they turned west, and he thought he saw a curtain over one of the windows in the hotel lobby move and then fall back, as if someone had looked out at them.
Was it Laura? he asked himself. Just how much did she really know about what was going on in this valley?
And although he hated to think about it, he had to wonder if she’d had anything to do with it.
Chapter 16
“Come away from there, my dear,” Gaius Baldridge said as he rested a hand lightly on Laura’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t concern yourself with such terrible things.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Gaius,” she said as she let the curtain fall closed over the window in the hotel lobby. They hadn’t gone up to their rooms yet when the shooting erupted down the street, but by the time Laura reached the window, it was all over. Her son, who had been talking to her when the gunplay started, had already rushed out to see what was happening.
Brady was alive, she thought as she turned away from the window. He hadn’t been in the middle of this battle.
But there would be others.
She had long since learned to accept the fact that Brady was in a violent, dangerous profession. His life was at risk nearly all the time.
That was the way it had to be, if they were both going to get what they wanted. And they were so close now ...
It wasn’t like she could strap on a gun, stride into the street, and seize what she desired. Lord knew, she would if she could, and there had indeed been times in the past when she had taken direct action. In this world, though, a woman had to work behind the scenes for the most part. She had to find a man to do her bidding and provide her with the things she wanted and needed.
Or, in her case, she had to give birth to one.
Baldridge put a hand on her elbow and steered her gently across the lobby toward the stairs. The Territorial House wasn’t fancy. There were rugs on the floor, some comfortable overstuffed armchairs, a writing desk, and a few potted plants, but that was the extent of the amenities in the lobby. The rooms upstairs would be much the same, Laura knew: comfortably furnished but on the plain side. A person couldn’t expect any more than that in a Montana cowtown.
“So that was Frank Morgan,” Baldridge mused as they started up the stairs. “I wonder what his real reason was for lying about his identity at first.”
“I’m sure what he said about his reason was the truth,” Laura replied. “Frank isn’t in the habit of lying.”
“He lied about who he is.”
“That’s true,” Laura murmured, “but I’m sure he thought it was necessary. Frank can be a very practical man in some ways.” She smiled. “In others he’s wildly romantic and idealistic.”
“I don’t think I’d care to know the details that prompted that statement,” Baldridge said dryly. They reached the landing, and he took her along the corridor to the adjoining rooms he had gotten for them. He opened one of the doors, swung it back, and said, “Here we are.”
Yes, it was just as she had expected, Laura thought as they went inside. A sturdy four-poster bed, a wardrobe, a dressing table with a basin and pitcher on it, a ladderback chair, and a single, blue-curtained window that looked out on the decorative balcony running along the front of the building.
“I’ll see to it that your bags are brought over shortly from the stage station,” Baldridge said. “We can eat in the dining room downstairs, or I can have something sent up.”
“It might be better to have something sent up in a while,” Laura said. “I really am tired.”
“Of course.” Baldridge paused. “I’m sorry there’s been so much trouble since your arrival. This business with Embry is coming to a head. Did you bring any new word from our lawyers?”
Laura unpinned her hat and took it off, setting it carefully on the dressing table. She shook her head and said, “No, they’re still working on the case down in Helena.” She managed not to smile at the way Baldridge referred to them as our lawyers. It was her money that paid them, not his.
Well, her late husband’s money, to be precise, she thought. Or it had been.
But it was hers now, and it always would be as it continued to grow.
Frederick Wilcoxon had been a decent man, a widower in his sixties who had been canny enough—and lucky enough—to amass a considerable fortune in the railroad business. He had built a number of spur lines across the c
ountry, and all of them were quite profitable.
But with his wife gone, he was lonely, and when he had met a beautiful society widow who was wealthy in her own right, it hadn’t taken much effort at all on Laura’s part to get him to fall for her and convince him that it had all been his idea, not hers.
Of course she wasn’t a widow—she had never been married until she wed Frederick Wilcoxon, in fact—she wasn’t a member of society, and she had just enough money to put on a good act. Frederick hadn’t discovered any of that during the six months they’d been married. Then he had died, quite conveniently, in fact, and she hadn’t even had to ease him out of this life, although she had considered the idea. She had never actually killed anyone, though, and didn’t particularly want to start down that path.
That was one reason she had Brady, after all. He was quite good at killing and didn’t seem to mind doing it. Laura was sure he would have gotten rid of Frederick if she’d asked him to, but fortunately her husband’s heart had given out one night when he was paying one of his occasional visits to her bedroom in his Denver mansion.
Frederick Wilcoxon died happy, and the money and power she inherited from him made Laura happy, so everything had worked out well all around.
But there was always more money to be made, more power to be seized, and once she had talked to Frederick’s lawyers and business managers about his plans, she had seen that she could carry them out, probably even better than he would have been able to. Because Frederick, may he rest in peace, had had scruples.
Laura had known for decades just how useless those things were.
“You really must be tired,” Baldridge said. “You look like your mind is a million miles away.”
She turned to him with a smile. “I’m sorry, darling. I think I’ll rest for a bit, then if you want to have some dinner sent up, we can eat together.”
“I’d like that very much,” Baldridge said. He had taken off his hat. Now he settled it back on his head, and Laura thought, not for the first time, that he really was a handsome, distinguished-looking man, not at all the sort you’d expect to be a Montana cattle baron who had spent years fighting Indians and outlaws. Gaius Baldridge had a certain class about him that he clung to stubbornly, refusing to allow the rude lifestyle of the frontier to take it away from him.
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