Mary Connealy

by Montana Marriages Trilogy

  Silas nodded. “Gonna go cut our cattle out of that herd.” He rose from the table, the legs of his wooden chair scraping against the floor. “You womenfolk gonna help or sit in here having tea and cookies while I work?”

  Red watched a brave, brave man leave his house, Belle and Emma right on his heels.

  Silas and his family were soon heading down the trail, pushing their cattle toward home.

  The Jessups found a few of their own herd, and Red cut out the ones that belonged to him. It was a smart operation, taking a few cattle at a time. Red wondered if the rustling hadn’t been going on for years.

  Three of the Jessups drove their recovered animals home. Red was left with around fifty head to drive into Divide.

  They were ready to set out by midmorning. Cassie rode well enough now to actually help with the drive, but she had Michael strapped on her back and Red had Susannah on his lap, so the Jessups got to do more than their share of the work.

  The normally three-hour ride took the rest of the day, and as they confined the cattle in a holding pen, the Jessups hit the trail in three directions to area ranches with the news that cattle had been recovered. A man was in town from the Linscott place and rode out for his boss.

  Before Red escorted his prisoner to jail, he turned to Cassie. “Cass, honey, go get us a room at Grant’s, okay? We’ll have to stay the night in town and wait for the ranchers to ride in and sort out their cattle.”

  “Yes, Red.” The polite obedience was like sweet balm to his soul. There once was a time the little woman would hardly say anything other than “Yes, Red.” Ah, he loved remembering those days. Cassie scooped Susannah off his lap; then, loaded down with children, she skillfully turned her horse toward the hotel. Watching her reminded Red how far his wife had come since they’d married. His overly submissive, fumble-fingered little wife had turned into about the best rancher’s wife in the whole world.

  He noticed the knife sheath at her waist and felt a little chill of terror.

  Later, Red got his family settled in Grant’s Hotel and gave them each a good-night kiss, going down the row, sweeping Susannah up to eye level and listening to her giggle. Red next gave Michael a noisy smack on his drooly chin then ended with a longer kiss for his pretty wife.

  “I’m going to stay with the sheriff, at least for a while. He’ll need to keep watch all night, and we can spell each other.”

  Enviously, he watched Cassie tuck the children into bed then join them. If he stayed, he could climb in, too, and be surrounded by comfort and warmth and love.

  Instead, feeling a mite sorry for himself, he went to jail.

  CHAPTER 18

  Harv’s in jail.” Boog slipped into the small cabin Sid was allowed as foreman. Chester had yet to kick him out.

  Sid looked up from his whittling. “What? How?”

  Judging by the way Boog moved, Sid knew his arm was still hurting him, but no one else would have noticed. Boog wasn’t a man who showed weakness.

  “Someone must have tracked us.” Boog positioned himself so he wasn’t visible through the single small window in the shack. “I didn’t stay around to learn their names. They posted marksmen on top of the canyon wall and pinned Harv down. I could see I’d never be able to pick them off from the angle I had, so I told Harv to keep his mouth shut and we’d bust him out of jail as soon as we could. Then I climbed out on foot over the west wall.”

  Sid felt his throat tighten at the memory of that treacherous trail. He and Boog had scouted it, knowing a way out might be necessary. But that trail was a terror. And Boog had managed it with only one good arm. He’d had to go out on foot; no horse could make the passage. Then he’d made it all this way. Sid raised his already sky-high respect for his saddle partner’s toughness.

  “I walked ten miles before I found a horse. I rode hard then set it loose and swatted it toward home. I hope it just goes on back and no one asks too many questions.”

  “So the cattle are gone, too?” The very careful cattle thieving they’d done was a prison offense, but a man could get hanged for stealing a horse. Sid steered clear of hanging offenses until he had no choice. That was one of the reasons Sid hadn’t killed Mort Sawyer that night. A decision he’d regretted ever since.

  “I didn’t stay around to watch, but we gotta figure they took the herd.” Boog wasn’t so squeamish about killing, but then, he’d ridden a hard trail for a long time and was a known outlaw in parts of the West. Boog figured he could only hang once and he’d done his worst, so nothing he did now made any difference. His only goal was to stay out of the hands of the law.

  Sid’s pockets were empty of cash money. He’d enjoyed himself a bit too much after their last sale, with whiskey and women and poker. He’d been counting on those cattle. “Okay, give me a minute.” Sid set his knife and the sharpened stick aside. “Mort’s son and that wild woman are here to stay. The only way we’re gonna take possession of this ranch is by getting rid of Mort and his son. Getting to that old curly wolf, Mort, took some planning, but Wade’s a weakling. I can swat him like a fly.”

  “Don’t count Mort out. He ain’t dead yet, and even busted up, he’s dangerous. Worse now that he’s got his son to back him.” Boog eased toward the window and took a long, careful look out through a crack in the shutter.

  “He’ll be dead soon enough. No one lives long with a broken back. As for Wade, I just need some time to set it up, make it look like an accident or blame it on someone else.” Sid didn’t admit that he’d tried once already and he’d missed. He didn’t want to hear what Boog had to say about that. “Are they taking Harv into Divide?”

  “Yep. I reckon.”

  “Someone there will recognize him as being a hand here. We need to get him out of there fast.”

  “He don’t look like himself without the beard.”

  Sid met Boog’s eyes. The two men knew each other well. Their thoughts traveled the same lines. Harv knew too much.

  “Easier just to put a bullet in him,” Boog said as if he was discussing the weather.

  “We’d lose the gold.”

  “Yep, ‘less’n we find it ourselves.”

  “Harv said it’s where no one would ever find it. He stumbled on it by accident.” Sid pondered. “We’ll make one try for him. If we run into trouble, we won’t leave him alive to talk. We need to go as soon as it’s dark and bust Harv out. I told Wade you were at the line shack, the old Griffin place, so he hasn’t asked any questions, but if I’m not here for work in the morning, he’ll notice sure enough.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a few minutes with the Sawyer kid. I owe him for this bullet.” Boog’s eyes burned with hate. He rubbed his shoulder hard as if to stir up his pain and feed his desire to get revenge for being wounded.

  “You’ll get your chance to pay him back.”

  A quiet shake of the head was Boog’s only answer. “Go wake up Paddy.”

  “Leave him. If I go into the bunkhouse, the hands will remember we left the place.”

  Nodding, Boog said, “Let me get down the trail a ways and into the woods. Then you catch up.” Boog left the cabin as silently as he’d come.

  Sid moved furtively to the corral, saddled up, and made tracks for Divide, doing his best to keep the barn between himself and the bunkhouse until he was out of sight. If they were careful, no one would even know Sid had been gone tonight. As he rode, Sid considered that it might be time to just cut his losses and move on. Instead of riding toward Divide, he could head for Helena, hop on the train, and make tracks for Denver. Boog would probably go, but it might be best to travel alone. Sid would have done it if he had enough money to pay for the train ride. Instead he’d have to go on horseback, live off the land, find some way to make money as soon as he got to Denver, because no one lived without money in the city.

  The M Bar S was going to be hard to claim now. The gold was lost if they didn’t pull Harv out of that jail. Sid was probably going to lose his job by the end of the week anyway, unless he brok
e his back working for Wade. And working that hard for a young whelp grated until Sid wanted to start unloading his gun at someone.

  This had seemed like a way to strike it rich when he’d ridden in. One old man working a huge, successful ranch. Easy pickin’s. But there wasn’t much easy about it now. He should just ride out, leave Boog, Paddy…Harv, too. Start over in California. Easy pickin’s out there, he’d heard.

  But he thought of Wade coming in here and taking what Sid thought of as his, and it made him mad clean through. No, he’d stay, and he’d get Harv out, too. He wanted the ranch, the gold…and at that instant greed took him by the throat, and he decided that he even wanted that pretty wild girl. He’d break her spirit, crush her for causing all this trouble, bringing Wade home, being in the way when they’d attacked that village. She was the only survivor, and if she hadn’t been there, no one would know what had happened. The massacre, if it was ever discovered, would have been blamed on one tribe attacking another. Yes, he owed that spitfire of a girl, and he’d make sure she paid.

  As he savored his hate, he felt fire for a second, fire in his soul. Painful fire telling him, not for the first time, his life fit him only to spend eternity in a burning lake.

  Even knowing that, he heard a whisper from his black heart that it was his right to take by strength. This was the West. Strength won in the West. And he was strong. The feeling of fire in his soul had been with him for years. He remembered long ago; the first few times he’d felt it had scared him, made him doubt the path he’d chosen.

  Not anymore. As he spurred his horse toward Divide, he basked in the warmth.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep, Red. No sense both of us being up all night.” Sheriff Dean had his feet up on his desk and was rocked all the way back in his heavy wooden chair. His hands were folded over his stomach, and Red suspected that with about ten minutes of silence, the sheriff would be fast asleep. He wasn’t used to much trouble here in Divide. It was a quiet little town for the most part.

  Red was tempted. Of course, he’d have to lie down on the hard floor. “It’s been a long day, Sheriff. I think we both need to stay alert. I’ll keep you awake and you do me the same favor.”

  “Fine, let me get a stack of wanted posters, then.”

  “I thought you went through them already.”

  With a dry laugh, the sheriff pointed to a stack of posters knee high against one wall. There was an ankle-deep stack right beside the bigger one. “I set the ones to the side I’ve looked at.”

  “Tell me it’s the short pile we have to study.”

  “Nope, ‘course not. I’ve looked at the ones on the left.”

  Red sighed and thought of Cassie, asleep and warm and sweet. And his beautiful children. “Catching outlaws is almost more trouble than it’s worth, Sheriff.”

  “Tell me about it. I thumbed through ’em until my eyes crossed and all the men started looking alike.”

  “Fine.” Red got up and picked up all the posters he could get in his hands. He took them to the desk.

  The sheriff sat up straight, the hinges of his chair shrieking like he was killing them. “Give me half and pull your chair up to the desk.”

  Red dragged his chair over, and as he got it in place, he felt a little rush of cold chill. Not from a gust of wind so much as from nerves.

  “You ever had a jailbreak from this place, Sheriff?”

  Shaking his head, Sheriff Dean said, “Nope. I’ve mostly just arrested cowpokes that drank too deep in their monthly pay. Let ’em sleep it off and sent them on their way with a scolding. Usually half-grown boys get into nonsense like that.”

  “You checked that the back door is locked, right? That man we arrested has a partner out there.”

  “Like as not his partner ran for the hills. It’s a cowardly bunch that rides the outlaw trail.”

  “They struck me as a savvy bunch. I’ll ride you out to that canyon sometime. Hard to believe a man ever found it.”

  “If they were real savvy, they’d be honest. Being a rustler is just plain stupid.”

  “Well, I’m not saying they’re wise, but they just might be smart. I think we need to stay on edge all night. I’ll feel better when we’ve had a chance to question the prisoner a little better.”

  “Well, he’s asleep for the night. He’s cut up and so exhausted from being hauled over a horse for two days that he ain’t makin’ no sense.” Nodding, the sheriff said, “In the meantime, let’s see if one of these posters looks enough like him to give us a name.”

  Red’s neck still felt cold, like God in heaven was sending a warning. He bent over the posters but kept his ears wide open.

  Sid rode side by side with Boog, and the moon was high in the sky by the time they reached the sleeping town. A light shone in the window of the sheriff’s office. Sid nodded toward it. “Sheriff Dean must be keeping watch.”

  Boog muttered in the cool spring night, “Looks to be the only light in town.”

  “Let’s circle around. Come in through the back. You still got that key that works on most doors, Boog?”

  “I got it.”

  “Then let’s go in quiet, get the jump on the sheriff, then knock him cold and leave him in a cell. No shooting if we can help it.

  We’ll be in and out before he knows we’re there.”

  Pulling their kerchiefs over their faces, the two men circled like patient vultures. There was no sign of life anywhere in town. It was long after midnight and even the Golden Butte had closed up.

  Sid saw a dim light showing under the back door of the jail. Sid had made a point to know the layout of every building in Divide he could gain access to, always planning for a robbery or escape. He silently swung down off his roan and hitched him beside Boog’s gray mustang and the horse for Harv.

  They moved toward the door. Boog quietly produced the key he’d filed down until it would open all but the most expensive locks. The jail hadn’t bothered with expensive.

  The lock gave with a single scratch of metal on metal. The door opened with an almost inaudible creak. Boog slipped in. Sid knew his saddle partner well and let Boog lead the way. The man knew more about sneakin’ and thievin’ than anyone Sid had ever known.

  It was what Sid liked best about him.

  “What’s that?” The voice coming from the front of the jail froze them in their tracks.

  A second later, trying to be silent, they slipped out the back, and Boog swung the door shut. He turned the lock with aching slowness, and then they hurried into the shadows, pulling their horses along. An outcropping of rocks that edged the town about a hundred feet to the south was the nearest cover. Sid led his horse with Boog right behind him and they waited.

  Looking carefully around the rocks, Sid saw the back door open.

  Red Dawson poked his head out. The town parson.

  Sid had seen the man once, right after he’d struck Mort down and taken the job. Hard to forget the preacher with his flaming red hair. Sid had heard of the Dawson ranch, too. A well-run operation, and he knew of Cassie Griffin Dawson because the Sawyers used that fancy, neglected Griffin house as a line shack. The older cowpokes on the Sawyer place liked swapping stories about what a worthless, no-account Lester Griffin had been and how beautiful and spoiled his wife was. The stories were laced with envy that Red had gotten her and apparently taken a firm hand, because now she was the hardworking-est woman any of them had ever seen.

  Boog nudged Sid then spoke in an almost silent whisper. “He’s who came into the canyon and took Harv. I could look back once I got myself clear. They had two men scale the cliffs outside the canyon and pin Harv down. Sharpshooters, the best riflemen I’ve ever seen. Probably fought in the War Between the States.”

  Sid had fought in that, too. Then he’d stayed on and fought after Lee had surrendered because he’d gotten a taste for shooting men, and it suited Sid to take what he wanted. Let weaklings work for their bread.

  “I wasn’t on watch, or they’d have had us both. I
yelled to Harv to lay low and if they caught him I’d bust him out of jail; then I ran. I saw that red hair for sure.”

  “Name’s Red Dawson,” Sid said. “He’s a rancher, but he’s the town parson, too.”

  Boog grunted in disgust. “He must be staying the night with Sheriff Dean.”

  “You sure it was him in the canyon? Preachers don’t run with riflemen.”

  “This one does. Maybe he converts people by threatening to send them to Hades. It was him for sure. How could it be anyone else? You think there’s any chance someone else would offer to stay with Harv, someone with bright red hair?”

  Dawson, the sheriff just behind him, stared into the darkness. It was too far to see Red’s eyes, but his whole body spoke of alertness. He wasn’t going to let Harv go without a fight.

  “Let’s ease back and wait ’em out.” Sid thought of the long, brutally hard day of work he’d had and another one coming tomorrow. He needed that gold. He was sick of breaking a sweat to earn a living. But to just go charging in there with guns blazing would bring the whole town down on them. “They’ll be easier to take when they’re asleep.”

  Sid and Boog faded a bit farther under the trees and settled in.

  “I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep. You can spell me later.” Boog sat and leaned his back against a tree so he could keep an eye on the back door.

  Sid dozed until Boog jarred his arm. “It’s gettin’ on toward daybreak. We’ve gotta move on the jail now or forget it.”

  “Let’s go.” Both men pulled their handkerchiefs up and eased forward in a silence so thick the hoot owls didn’t even breach it.

  Boog led the way back to the rear entrance of the jail. Again he unlocked the door with his filed-down key. They stepped into the quiet murmur of voices and the loud roar of Harv’s snoring. Sid stayed close. Despite the narrow confines of the hall running along the front of the two cells, with Dawson and the sheriff to deal with, it was a two-man job now.