“You are?” Red lowered his coffee to the table, clicking it hard.
Abby rounded the table to sit straight across from Red. “It would seem so. In fact, I believe I remember him. Of course, he was much younger.”
“No sister of mine is going to work for a living. And especially not for the Sawyers.” Tom headed for the seat beside Abby, but Wade beat him to it. Scowling, Tom went to sit on the bench next to Red, right across from Wade. Handy—now they could glare at each other full-time.
“Are you sure of this sister thing?” Red asked.
Cassie appeared with more cups and the steaming pot. “What sister thing, Red?”
“Abby and Tom Linscott are brother and sister.”
“Family.” Cassie smiled at Abby. “That’s so wonderful for both of you.”
“She’s not working for an outfit so worthless they haven’t even gotten spring roundup done yet.”
Abby snorted.
Tom bared his teeth.
The soft sound of pouring liquid and the chatter of others gathered in Libby’s Diner weren’t enough to draw Red’s attention from this new development.
“He has a pocket watch with a picture of my parents.” Abby’s brow furrowed. “I resemble my mother closely. And I…I remembered…earlier with Wade…that my last name was Lind. But now that Tom says Linscott, yes, I know that’s right.”
“Well, I’m happy for you. Finding out you’ve got a family has to be good.”
“Good? To have more white men wanting me? I do not see how that is good.” Red laughed.
Abby relaxed a bit from her frowning, and her eyes went to Tom, who was so busy arguing with Wade that his sister might as well have not existed.
Red had noticed the resemblance, the pure blue of their eyes, the white-blond hair. But now he saw that Tom had a lot of features similar to Abby’s, a more rugged, manly version of course, but no one would be surprised to find out they were kin.
“Well, you’re welcome to come out to our place.” Cassie was still serving coffee, but she’d heard the end of the exchange. “I need more help with my knife throwing. Belle spent a couple of days working with me, and I’ve improved. But I can’t seem to hit the target dead-on.”
Susannah reached for the blazing hot stream of liquid Cassie was dispensing into Abby’s cup. The two women moved together in a way music could have been put to it to keep Susannah from burning herself and still get done what they wanted.
The door swung open and Sheriff Merl Dean walked in with no color in his face and a bandage on his forehead. “I need a posse.”
“We already tried to track them.” Red stood and guided Merl, still pale and shaky, to the seat Red had just vacated. “We lost them in the foothills just west of town. Nowhere for a posse to go.”
“I want to check myself. Can you three help?”
“Wade can’t,” Tom said with his usual cocky smirk, his only real expression except for anger. “He’s still doing roundup.”
“You’re not done with roundup yet?” The sheriff’s brows disappeared into the bandage on his forehead.
“No.” Wade’s stony expression didn’t encourage further comment.
Red changed the subject. “Did you question the prisoner any more last night after I left?”
“No. I think I got hit minutes after you left. I don’t remember anything past you saying good-bye. Figured I’d have another crack at him this morning. Are you sure you didn’t find anyone in that stack of wanted posters we thumbed through?”
Shaking his head, Red said, “The man had no scars or anything else that would identify him. That cut on his chin is too new.”
Abby turned on the sheriff like a hungry cougar who’d just spotted a three-legged buffalo. “Cut on his chin?”
“Right here?” Wade asked as he sat up straight and ran a finger along his jawline on the right side. Then he rose and stood behind Abby, resting his hands on her shoulders.
“Yep.”
“Get your hands off my sister.” Tom half rose from his seat.
Wade’s hands stayed where they were. “Long beard, dark hair?”
Sheriff Dean shook his head. “His hair was dark, but short, looked like he’d hacked it off with a knife to me. And no beard.”
“He could have done all that to change his appearance.” Red looked at Wade and Abby. “Probably had to if his face needed stitches. What’s going on?”
“I told you about the man who tried to take Abby after the massacre.”
“Massacre?” Tom slammed his coffee cup on the table. “My sister was in the middle of a massacre?” He jabbed a finger at Wade’s nose. “You didn’t say anything about a massacre.”
“I told Red.” Wade dismissed Tom, which struck Red as very brave or very foolish. Tom Linscott was notorious for his bad temper and quick fists. A match in every way for that famous black stallion.
“He did tell me.” Red felt the need to back his friend.
“And where exactly were you when my sister was in the middle of a massacre?” Linscott rounded the table as if to put himself between Wade and Abby, as if it were Wade’s fault the girl had been in a massacre and she was still in danger. And just maybe Tom had some massacre plans of his own.
Wade, rather than backing down, which most sensible people learned to do when Linscott’s temper flamed, took a step forward, lifting his chin as if daring Tom to land a fist on it.
“Shut up, both of you.” Abby stood and, as if this was nothing new, shoved her way between the two men. “Red may have captured a murderer. You fight like squabbling children. We don’t have time for your foolishness.”
Tom jerked back as if Abby had cut him. Which she probably would, given time.
Wade smiled and moved out of Tom’s reach. “Yes, Abby fought back and managed to cut her attacker with her knife. She got in several good slashes. I think his clothing was cut up. His face she laid open bad. He let her go and ran. She saved herself. I only came along afterward.”
“That’s not true. You put a bullet into one of them.”
“One of them? How many men had their hands on my sister?” Tom’s face turned beet red.
“There were four,” Abby said.
“You shot a man?” The sheriff’s brows lowered and he glared at Wade. “You should have reported it.”
Wade shrugged. “He rode off. He couldn’t have been too badly hurt.”
“Which means you took a shot at him and missed, of course,” Tom sneered.
“This rustler I brought in could be the same man.” Red ignored Linscott. Everyone was used to his cranky ways. He pulled up a chair from another table and sat by the sheriff. “And if he had four men at the village, then there are more rustlers around than we figured.”
“What village?” The sheriff was looking irritated. Red couldn’t blame him. The man was finding too many things out by chance that they should have reported to him from the start. And all while nursing one beauty of a headache.
“Abby was living with the Flathead in a high valley past the Tanner ranch.” Wade settled back in his chair.
“It’s the Harden ranch,” Cassie said as she poured more coffee for them all.
All the men grunted.
“Oh, only Indians.” The sheriff turned to his coffee.
“Only?” Abby turned on the man, and Red thought her hand was going for her knife. “Only Indians?”
Wade grabbed her arm. “Don’t pull a knife on the sheriff, Ab. He can arrest you for it.”
“He’d have to be alive to arrest me, now, wouldn’t he?”
The sheriff was concentrating on his coffee and missed the ensuing struggle.
“Abby really liked her Flathead family,” Red told the sheriff, hoping to avert yet another massacre. “They saved her life. Found her when her family was dead from the fever and took her in. They treated her far better than many whites have.”
“Sorry for the insult, miss.” The sheriff rubbed his bandaged head. “I’m sorry about your vil
lage, too. I’d pick your village over the scum that are running these hills any day. And I’ll help you catch them, too, and see them hanged for what they did to your people.”
Abby quit trying to arm herself and sank with a disgusted snort into her chair. “Your prisoner destroyed my village, he and his three friends. And now he rides away from your jail cell free as a bird.”
Merl lifted the coffee cup and took a long sip. “I thought I could handle him. Red stayed for most of the night, but I should have brought my deputy in, too. We’ve never had a jailbreak before.”
Abby’s eyes softened as she looked at the battered man. It reassured Red some to note that the woman wasn’t always bloodthirsty.
“Maybe you oughta go on home, Merl.” Red studied the man’s ashen face. “You look white. You couldn’t stick your horse even if we did know which way to ride.”
Merl sighed. “No one reported this massacre to me. Where’d this happen?”
Red, Wade, and Abby took turns filling the sheriff in.
Tom seemed bent on yelling every time one of them added a new detail.
“Try and describe these men more carefully.” The sheriff looked between Wade and Abby. “Do better than heavyset, thin, masks. Think hard. Picture them. You’ve left a scar on my prisoner and a bullet wound in another one of them. Did they have any other marks, scars, anything we could use to identify them? Did you notice their horses? Were they branded?”
Wade considered things quietly for a time. “One of them had a funny way of holding a gun. I can’t put my finger on just…Wait! His fingers, that was it. He held his six-shooter in a stiff way.” Wade pulled his own Colt and checked the load to make sure the hammer was on an empty chamber. Wade pointed the gun at the ceiling and stared at his hands. “Two fingers on his left hand stuck out.” Wade demonstrated. “Usually they’d be curled around the gun butt, like this.”
Wade seemed to be looking into the past, trying to picture the scene. He closed his fist, his index finger on the trigger, the next three fingers wrapped around the gun handle to meet his thumb. The normal way to hold a gun. “But instead his little finger and the one next to it stuck out straight. He had leather gloves on, tight, not like the buckskin gloves you see. Normally a man would take his gloves off to handle a gun, but this one didn’t. Of course, it all happened so fast, and the massacre was over. Maybe he was leaving and it was a cold morning. He didn’t have time to remove his glove when they came upon me.”
As they finished the telling, Abby added, “I smelled the stink of a white man in the woods this morning. I believe there were three of them, certainly more than one. Maybe it was the escaped prisoner heading north.”
“You smelled a man?” Tom looked at her as if she’d sprouted elk antlers.
Red would have looked at Abby strangely, too, except Red saw right away that Tom’s comment made Abby mad. So Tom’s big mouth saved Red from making himself a target.
“What did you learn living with those savages all these years?” Tom asked. “It’ll take me forever to teach you better.”
“Teach me better?” Abby’s voice got so high it threatened to shatter glass. “A white man teach me? I will fight learning the white ways to my death!.”
Cassie reached for Michael, probably to save the little tyke’s hearing, and she started choking.
It took some doing before Red was satisfied Cassie had recovered enough to hand over the chubby little boy. He helped tuck the boy into Cassie’s carrier on her back then kissed the child on his cheek and spared a quick kiss for Cassie, too.
She smiled, ran one finger down Red’s nose, and then went back to waiting tables.
“What do you mean a white man stinks?” Tom demanded.
Red couldn’t imagine the idiot really wanted to hear Abby’s answer.
Red noticed Wade’s eyes followed the exchange between him and Cassie. He knew Wade envied the Dawsons’ happy marriage. There’d been a time when Wade’s interest in Cassie was an obsession. Wade had gotten past that when he’d put his faith in God. But Wade was lonely. He’d told Red he wanted a family, a wife like Cassie who would be gentle and funny and sweet. Then Red watched Wade’s eyes go to beautiful Abby, and Red thought maybe his friend had finally found himself a woman.
“You are a fool, brother”—
Well, maybe not quite as sweet.
—“to ask me what I mean when I say white men stink.”
And not really all that gentle.
Abby drew her knife and tested the blade. “Better to live amid skunks.”
But she was pretty funny, Red had to give her that.
CHAPTER 21
Sheriff Dean rose from the table. “I’ll ride with you partway home, Wade. Abby can show me where she thought she…uh…smelled…someone.”
“You should bring more riders.” It made Abby furious to see how the man doubted her. Her fingers itched to reach for her knife, but she knew that was getting to be a bad habit. At least the sheriff was going to check. “You’ll find tracks and maybe catch these murderers before they harm more of my people or steal more of your cows.” It sickened her to think of these brutes running free while her Flathead family lay dead.
Wade came to her side, and his hand rested whisper-soft on her lower back.
Abby wasn’t sure if he was showing his support and offering her comfort or blocking her from getting to her knife. “Tell me, Sheriff, what are you really hunting for, rustlers or murderers? Would you even stir yourself from your chair if there weren’t cows missing?”
“Now, miss”—the sheriff’s brow beetled and he pulled his hat from his poor wounded head—“I didn’t know about the village massacre. Someone has to report a crime before I can arrest someone for it.”
Abby had to admit that the sheriff couldn’t arrest a man for a crime that no one had even told him about. And from the look of his bloody bandage, the lawman had his own reasons to want these men caught very badly. It wasn’t all about cows.
“You and Wade didn’t even bother to ride into town and tell me about it.” The sheriff shifted his eyes to Wade. “I saw you in town, Sawyer. You’ve ridden in at least once since you’ve been back. You didn’t say a word about murder.”
“You don’t go out to the countryside, Sheriff. And Abby’s village was located at least two days’ ride away from town. I didn’t even consider telling you about it.”
“I reckon you’re right. I wouldn’t have gone out to try and catch an outlaw that far from Divide.” The sheriff sighed and rubbed his head. “I’m sorry to admit that’s true, Miss Linscott. But I don’t really have jurisdiction in the countryside. I don’t worry about trouble unless it comes into my town.”
It burned Abby to hear him say it, but she had to admire the man for looking her in the eye and admitting the truth. How was she ever going to find her place in this white world? Abby’s eyes went to Tom Linscott. “You really are my brother, aren’t you?”
“I do believe I am, Abby girl.” Tom turned to Wade. “I’ll be riding out to your ranch with you, Sawyer. I want to spend some time with my sister. Meanwhile, I’ve told my men to start building a cabin.”
“She’s working for me, Tom.” Wade got that bulled-up look in his eye, and he had the same tone she’d heard when Wade had snarled, “She’s mine,” to Tom.
Insulting. Yet Abby felt a softening in her heart to have two men wanting to take care of her. She didn’t need them for protection, but maybe she wanted them to care just a little.
“Come on out, though. We’d love to have you.” Wade’s hand stayed on her back, more firmly pressed against her spine now. Definitely support, since she suspected Wade wouldn’t mind one bit if she pulled her blade on Tom.
Abby thought of Mort Sawyer and sniffed in disgust. A clear lie—Wade wasn’t even bothering to fake honesty. She marveled at finding a brother, even an arrogant, unpleasant one. Couldn’t she have found a better family than him? Wade would have made a better brother to her. But thinking of Wade as a bro
ther wasn’t comfortable. She didn’t care to examine why.
“Come in to services on Sunday morning.” Cassie gave Abby a huge hug.
Abby found herself nose to nose with the little redheaded boy on Cassie’s back while receiving her hug. The boy blew a spit bubble at her and smiled. Abby smiled back. After receiving the prolonged hug from Cassie, which Abby found she rather enjoyed, she mounted her horse and they headed for the M Bar S.
Wade, Tom, the sheriff, and five others from town rode along.
“This is the place.” Abby pressed her knees into the sides of her pinto and turned the horse to the wooded area by the trail. “Judging by the stench, I’d say there were three of them.”
Tom shook his head a bit hard. Abby had seen dogs around the Flathead village shake themselves that way when they’d come out of the river, and yet Tom was bone dry. White men made no sense.
When Abby reached the edge of the woods, she saw immediately the tracks of three men coming out of the forest onto the trail. A trail that had been trod heavily by the cattle Wade’s cowhands had driven home.
Tom and the sheriff and his men all swung down and began studying the tracks.
“They could have shot us dead, three men. We had some riders with us, but we’d have been sitting ducks.” Wade rode up to her side, his eyes examining the ground. Then he looked sideways at Abby and spoke softly, his words only for her. “If these are the men who kidnapped you after the massacre and attacked us at the ranch, why did they pass up a chance to finish things this morning?”
Abby looked from Wade to the tracks and back again.
“Cowards, I’d say. They could probably have killed us all shooting from cover and not gotten a scratch, but they didn’t want to take that chance. These men have proven themselves to be cowards with every move they’ve made. Attacking defenseless women and children, kidnapping a lone woman.”
“You weren’t exactly defenseless.” Wade smiled at her. “I’m glad you fought them. I’m glad you hurt the man who put his hands on you.”
“Are you glad you put a bullet into one of them?”
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