She walked outside to stand on the porch, waiting for the dust to settle from the fast-riding men. She noticed Gage and several of the other hands had not ridden with her husband.
The foreman walked over to the porch and looked up at the still attractive woman. There was open disgust in his eyes as he took in the bruises on her face.
“I ain’t got no use atall for a man who hits a woman,” Gage said.
“That’s not the man I married, Gage.”
“Yeah, it is, Liz. It’s the same man I been knowin’ for years. You just been deliberately blind over the years, that’s all.”
“Maybe so, Gage.” She sighed. She knew, of course, that Gage had been in love with her for a long, long time. And her feelings toward the foreman had been steadily growing stronger with time. She cut her eyes toward him. “You’re not riding with him?”
“Me and the boys punch cows, Liz. I made that plain to him the other day. He still has enough sense about him to know that someone has to work the spread.”
“What would you say if I told you I was going to leave him?”
“Then me and you would strike out together, Liz.”
She smiled. “And do what, Gage?”
“Get married. Start us a little spread a long ways from here.”
“I’m a married woman, Gage. It’s not proper to talk to a married woman like that.”
“I don’t see you turnin’ around and walkin’ off, Liz.”
She looked hard at him. “Mister Hanks and I will be sharing separate bedrooms from now on, Gage. I would appreciate if you would stay close as much as possible.”
“I would consider that an honor, Liz.”
“Would you like to have some coffee, Gage?”
“I shore would.”
“Make yourself comfortable on the porch, Gage. I’ll go freshen up and hotten the coffee. I won’t be a minute.”
“Take your time, Liz. I’ll be here.”
She smiled. Her hair was graying and there were lines in her face. But to the foreman, she was as beautiful as the first day he’d laid eyes on her. “I’m counting on that, Gage.”
FOURTEEN
Cord heard the riders coming long before he or any of his men could spot them. It was a distant thunder growing louder with each heartbeat.
“Load up the guns, Mother,” he told his wife. “I believe it’s time.” He walked to the dinner bell on the porch and rang it loudly, over and over. Del and four hands came on the run, carrying rifles, pistols belted around them.
“Stand with me on the porch, boys. Mother, get your shotgun and take the upstairs.”
“I’m up here with a rifle, Daddy!” Sandi called.
“Good girl.”
Rifles were loaded to capacity. Pistols checked. A couple of shotguns were loaded up and placed against the porch railing.
Thirty riders came hammering past the gate and up to the picket fence around the ranch house, Hanks in the lead.
“I don’t appreciate this, Dooley,” Cord raised his voice. “You got no call to come highballin’ up to my place.”
“I got plenty of call, Cord. Where’s my daughter?”
Cord blinked. “How the hell do I know? I haven’t seen her in days.”
“You’re a damn liar, McCorkle!”
Cord unbuckled his gun belt and handed it to Dell. He swung his eyes back to Hanks. “You’ll not come on my property and call me names, Dooley. Git out of that saddle and let’s settle this feud man-to-man.”
“Goddamn you! I want my daughter!”
“I ain’t got your daughter! But what I will have is your apology for callin’ me a liar.”
“When hell freezes over, McCorkle!”
Two upstairs windows were opened. A shotgun and a rifle poked out. Sandi’s voice said, “The first man to reach for a gun, I kill Lanny Ball.” The sound of a hammer being eared back was very plain.
The sounds of twin hammers on a double-barreled shotgun was just as plain. “And I blow the two Mexicans out of the saddle,” Alice spoke.
Diego and Pablo froze in their saddles.
“Dooley,” Cord’s voice was calm. “Would you like to step down and have some coffee with me? You can inspect the house and the barn and the bunkhouse . . . after you tell me your anger overrode your good sense when callin’ me a liar.”
Hanks’s eyes cleared for a moment. Then he looked confused. “I know you ain’t no liar, Cord. But where’d she go?” There was a pleading note in the man’s voice.
“I don’t know, Dooley. I didn’t even know she was gone.”
But the moment was gone, and Jason Bright and Lanny Ball and most of the others knew it. There would be no gunfire this day.
“The Box T,” Dooley said. “Liz wasn’t lyin’.”
“Dooley,” Cord said, “You go over there a-smokin’, and if she is there, she’s liable to catch a bullet. ’Cause Smoke Jensen and them others are gonna start throwin’ lead just as soon you come into range.’
“She’s my daughter, dammit, Cord!” Some of the madness reappeared.
“She’s also a grown woman,” Alice called from the second floor.
Hanks slumped in his saddle. The fire had left him . . . for the moment. “She don’t want my hearth and home, she can stay gone. I don’t have no daughter no more.” He looked at Cord. “It ain’t over, Cord. Not between us. The time just ain’t right. There’ll be another day.”
“Why, Dooley? Tell me that. Your spread is just as big as mine. I made peace with Fae Jensen. She ain’t botherin’ nobody. Let’s us bury the hatchet and be friends. Then you can fire these gunslicks and we can get on with livin’.”
Dooley shook his head. “Too late, Cord. It’s just too late.” He wheeled his horse and rode off, the gunnies following.
“Did you see his eyes, Boss?” Willie asked. “The man is plumb loco.”
“I’m afraid you’re right, Willie. Question is, when will it take control of him . . . or rather, when will he lose control?”
“One thing for certain, Boss,” Del said. “When he does go total nuts, we’re all going to be right smack dab in the big fat middle of it.”
“Something is rotten,” Cord spoke softly. “Something is wrong with this whole setup.”
“Riders coming, Boss,” Fitz said.
As the dot on the landscape grew larger, Del squinted his eyes. “Smoke Jensen and the Moab Kid.”
Sandi smiled and Alice said, “I’ll make fresh coffee.”
* * *
Beans sniffed the air. “Lots of dust in the air.”
“I think Cord’s had some visitors,” Smoke replied. “Look at the hands gathered around the house.”
The men swung down and looped the reins around the hitchrail. Cord shook hands with them both and introduced Smoke to those punchers he had not met.
“Fancy seeing you, Beans,” Cord said, a twinkle in his eyes. “It’s been so long since you’ve come callin’. Hours, at least.”
Beans just grinned.
“Gather your men, Cord,” Smoke told the man. “This is something that everybody should hear.”
Cord’s three sons had just ridden in. His other four punchers were out on the range. Everybody gathered around on the porch and listened as Smoke related what Rita had told him.
“Damn!” Max summed it up, then glanced at his mother, who was giving him a warning look for the use of profanity.
“Let’s kick it around,” Smoke said. “Anybody got any suggestions?”
“Take it to them ’fore they do it to us,” Corgill said.
“No proof,” Cord said. “Only the word of Rita and she didn’t even see the men; just heard them talkin’.”
“If we don’t do something,” Cal said, “we’re just gonna be open targets, and they’ll pick us off one at a time.”
Cord shook his head. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think they got to do everything all at once. At night. If what Rita says is true—and I ain’t got no reason to doubt it—they’l
l split their people and hit us at the same time. And they can’t leave any survivors.”
“I’ve got people bunching the cattle and moving them to high graze,” Smoke said. “They’ll scatter some, but they can be rounded up. From now on, we stay close to the ranch house.”
Cord nodded his head and looked at Willie. “Ride on out, Willie. Tell the boys to start moving them up toward summer graze. Get as much as you can done, and then you boys get on back here. We’re gonna lose some to rustlers, for a fact. But it’s either that or we all die spread out.” He glanced at Smoke. “When do you think they’ll hit us?”
Smoke shook his head. “Tonight. Next week. Next month. No way of knowing.”
Cord did some fancy cussing, while his wife listened and looked on with a disapproving frown on her face. “We may end up taking to the hills and fighting defensively.”
“I’m thinking that we will,” Smoke agreed.
“You mean leave the house?” Sandi protested. “But they’ll just move in!”
“Can’t be helped, girl,” her father told her. “We can always clean up and rebuild.”
“Or just go on over and kill Dooley Hanks,” Rock McCorkle said grimly.
“Rock!” his mother admonished.
Cord put a big hand on her shoulder. “It may come to that, Alice. God help me, I don’t want it, but we may have no choice in the matter.”
“Here comes Jake,” Del said. “And he’s a-foggin’ it.”
The puncher slowed up as he approached the house, to keep the dust down, and walked his horse up to the main house, dismounting.
“What’s up, Jake?” the foreman asked.
“I just watched about fifteen guys cut across our range, comin’ from the northeast. Hardcases, ever’ one of them. They was headin’ toward Gibson.”
Alice handed the puncher a cup of coffee and a biscuit, then looked at her husband. He wore an increasingly grim expression.
“The damn easterners talk about law and order,” Cord said. “Well, where is it when it comes down to the nut-cuttin’?”
Smoke pulled out his right-hand Colt and held it up for all to see. “Right here, Cord. Right here.”
* * *
“The Cat Jennings gang,” Charlie said. He had been to town and back while Smoke was talking with the men and women of the Double Circle C. “He’s been up in Canada raisin’ Cain for the past few years.”
“This here thing is shapin’ up to be a power play,” Pistol said.
“Yeah,” Lujan agreed. “With us right in the middle of it.”
“Damn near seventy gunslingers,” Silver Jim mused. “And the most we can muster is twenty, and that’s stretchin’ it.”
“One thing about it,” Smoke stuck some small humor into a grim situation, “we’ve sure taken the strain off of a lot of other communities in the West.”
“Yeah,” Hardrock agreed. “Ever’ outlaw and two-bit pistol-handler from five states has done converged on us. And it wouldn’t do a bit of good to wire for the law. No badge-toter in his right mind would stick his face into this situation.”
“Must be at least a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of reward money hanging over them boys’ heads,” Silver Jim said. “And that’s something to think about.”
“Yeah, it shore is,” Pistol said. “Why, with just a little dab of that money, we could retire, boys.” There was a twinkle in his hard eyes.
“Now, wait just a minute,” Smoke said.
The old gunfighters ignored him. “You know what we could do,” Charlie said. “We could start us up a retirement place for old gunslingers and mountain men.”
“You guys are crazy!” Lujan blurted out the words. “You are becoming senile!”
“What’s that mean?” Hardrock asked.
“It means we ain’t responsible for our actions,” Charlie told him.
“That’s probably true,” Hardrock agreed. “If we had any sense, none of us would be here.” He looked at Lujan. “And that goes for you, too.”
Lujan couldn’t argue with that.
“Cat backed up from me a couple of times,” Charlie said. “This time, I think I’ll force his hand.”
Smoke and Beans had stepped back, letting the men talk it out.
“Peck and Nappy is gonna be with him, for sure,” Pistol said. “That damn Nappy got lead in a friend of mine one time. I been lookin’ for him for ten year. And that Peck is just a plain no-good.”
“No-Count George Victor’s got ten thousand on his head,” Silver Jim mused. “And he don’t like me atall.”
“Insane old men!” Lujan muttered.
“Well, I damn shore ain’t gonna try to stop them,” Beans made that very clear. “I ain’t real sure I could take any of them . . . even if I was a mind to,” he added.
Smoke stepped back in. “You boys ride for the Box T,” he reminded them. “You took the lady’s money to ride for the brand. Not to go off headhunting. You all are needed here. Now when the shootin’ starts, speaking for myself, you can have all the reward money.”
“Same for me,” Beans and Lujan agreed.
“Aw, hell, Smoke,” Charlie said, a bit sheepishly. “We was just flappin’ our gums. You know we’re stickin’ right here. But Cat Jennings is mine.”
“And Peck and Nappy belong to me.” Pistol’s tone told them all to stand clear when grabbin’-iron time came.
“And No-Count George Victor is gonna be lookin’ straight at me when I fill his belly full of lead,” Silver Jim said.
Hardrock said, “Three-Fingers Kerman and Fulton kilt a pal of mine over to Deadwood some years back. Back-shot him. I didn’t take kindly to that. So them two belongs to me.”
“You men are incorrigible!” Parnell finally spoke.
“Damn right,” Pistol said.
“Whatever the hell that means,” Hardrock muttered.
Fae walked out to join them. “Rita’s up, having breakfast.”
“How’s she feeling?” Smoke asked.
“Aside from some sore feet—she’s not used to walking in men’s boots—she’s doing all right. I think she’s pretty well resigned that her father is around the bend. I told her what you said about Dooley saying he no longer had a daughter. It hurt her. But not as much as I thought it would. I think she’s more concerned about her mother.”
“She should be. There is no telling what that crazy bastard is liable to do,” Silver Jim summed it up.
FIFTEEN
He had looked into their bedroom and came stomping out. “Where is all your clothes, Liz?” Dooley demanded, his voice hard.
“I moved them out. I no longer feel I am married to you, Dooley.”
“You don’t . . . what?”
“I don’t love you anymore. I haven’t for a long time. Years. I cringe when you touch me. I . . .”
He jumped at her and backhanded her, knocking her against a wall. She held back a yelp of pain. She didn’t want Gage to come storming in, because she knew that she had absolutely no rights as a married woman. She owned nothing. Could not vote. And in a court of law, her husband’s word was next to God’s. And if Gage were to kill Dooley during a domestic squabble, he would hang.
She leaned against the wall, staring at Dooley as the front door opened, her sons stomping in.
Conrad, the youngest of the boys, grinned at her. “You havin’ a good time while Pa’s usin’ you for a punchin’ bag?”
Sonny and Bud laughed.
Dooley grabbed Liz by the arm and flung her toward the kitchen. “Git in there and fix me some dinner. I don’t wanna hear no more mouth from you.”
Liz walked toward the kitchen, her back straight. I won’t put up with this any longer, she vowed. I’ll follow Rita, just as quickly as I can.
A plan jumped into her head and she smiled at the thought. It might work. It just might work.
She began putting together dinner and working out the plan. It all depended on what Gage said. And the other hands.
* * *
/> She had gone out to gather eggs in the henhouse. Dooley and her sons had left the house without telling her where they were riding off to. As usual. All the hired guns were in town, drinking. Gage had ambled over, as he always did, to carry her basket. She told him of her plan.
“I like it, Liz. Go in the house and pack a few things while ever’body is gone. I’ll get the boys.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You mean . . . ?”
“Right now, Liz. Let’s get gone from this crazy house ’fore Dooley gets back. Move, Liz! ’
She went one way and Gage trotted to the bunkhouse. He sent the only rider in the bunkhouse out to tell the others to meet him at the McCorkle ranch.
“We quittin’, Gage?”
“I am.”
“I’m with you. And so will the others. Hep me pack up their stuff, will you? I’ll tote it to them on a packhorse. How about ol’ Cook?”
“He’ll go wherever Liz goes. He came out here with them.”
The hand cut his eyes at the foreman and grinned. “Ahh! OK, Gage.”
Working frantically, the two men stuffed everything they could find into canvas and lashed it on a packhorse. “I’ll tell Cook to hightail it. Move, Les. See you at the Circle Double C.”
Ol’ Cook was right behind Les. He packed up his war bag and swung into the saddle just as Liz was coming out of the house, a satchel in her hand.
“You want me to hitch up the buckboard, Gage?”
“No time, Cook.”
“Wal, how’s she fixin’ to ride then? We ain’t got no sidesaddle rigs.”
“Astride. I done saddled her a horse.”
Ol’ Cook rolled his eyes. “Astride! Lord have mercy! Them sufferingetts is gonna be the downfall of us all.” He galloped out.
Gage led her horse over to the porch. “Turn your head, Gage. I don’t quite know how I’m going to do this. I have never sat astride in my life.”
Gage turned his head.
“You may look now, Gage,” she told him.
He had guessed at the stirrup length and got it right. She sure had a pretty ankle “Hang on, Liz. We got some rough country and some hard ridin’ to do.”
Live by the West, Die by the West Page 11