Bloody Sunday (7 page)

It was a lot more important what Glory MacCrae thought.

Luke didn't respond to Pendleton. After a moment, Pendleton turned and walked away, speaking quietly to several of the other men as he left the bunkhouse. Luke pulled on his boots and buckled his gun belt around his waist, then settled his hat on his head as he joined the others on their way to the mess hall.

True to Pendleton's prediction, Kaintuck was hustling around the room with its long table flanked by benches. The old cook filled coffee cups and set out platters of bacon—which as far as Luke could see was cooked just fine—biscuits, flapjacks, and fried eggs. There were bowls of gravy and molasses with spoons in them.

Luke sat down at one of the empty places and filled the tin plate in front of him. The food was simple but good. The coffee was better than good. Not as thick as axle grease, as the jocular cowboy had claimed, but plenty potent.

The crew ate without a lot of talking. Breakfast was serious business on a ranch, where hours of hard work awaited before the men would have a chance to eat again. Even then, their lunch was liable to be rather skimpy, maybe some jerky and a biscuit or two they would take with them from breakfast and stash in their saddlebags. So while they had the chance, they packed away the food to keep their strength up.

Luke didn't have that much work waiting for him today, as far as he knew, but he ate heartily anyway, because it was good and because there had been plenty of times in his life when he'd been hungry. Gut-wrenchingly, soul-crushingly hungry a few times. No one who had ever gone through that passed up the opportunity to enjoy some good food.

The eastern sky was starting to turn gold with the approach of the sun as the men left the mess hall and started drifting toward the barns and corrals to pick out their mounts for the day and get saddled up. The early morning air had a crisp, cool tang to it. Luke wondered if Glory was up yet.

He didn't have to wonder long. She came out of the house dressed in her riding clothes again and strode straight toward him. Getting right down to business as usual, she greeted him by saying, “Good morning, Luke. I'm on my way to Painted Post, and I'd like for you to come with me.”

Before Luke could respond, Gabe Pendleton said, “I can have one of the boys go into town with you, Mrs. MacCrae.”

Glory shook her head.

“No, I don't want to take any of the men away from their work,” she said. “Unless, of course, Mr. Jensen doesn't want to come with me.”

“I'd be glad to accompany you, Mrs. MacCrae,” Luke said. He and Glory had been using their first names with each other the night before, but since she had referred to him as “Mister” this morning he figured she wanted to maintain a certain level of formality in front of the crew. He didn't mind playing along with that.

Pendleton didn't look happy about the decision, but he didn't argue. Glory asked him, “Did you find out if anyone bothered the herds last night?”

“It was quiet out on the range,” Pendleton reported. “No run-ins with rustlers.”

“So the raid was just a blatant attack on us after all, not a distraction.”

Pendleton shrugged and said, “That's the way it looks.”

“Did you find the bodies of any other night riders?”

“No, ma'am. Either we didn't kill any more of them, or they took the rest of their dead with them.”

Luke said, “Some of them were hit. I'm certain of that.”

“Yeah, so am I,” Pendleton said. “We didn't knock anybody out of the saddle, though, so I don't see what good it does us.”

“You might keep your eyes and ears open in case there's any news of Elston's men suffering gunshot wounds.”

Pendleton grunted.

“Elston's not gonna let word of that get out,” he declared. “He'll make sure he's covered in the eyes of the law.”

“We'll see about that,” Glory said. “Where's the body of the man I killed?”

Pendleton jerked a thumb over his shoulder and said, “We put him in the barn. He's wrapped up in a horse blanket.”

“Put him in the back of the wagon. I'm going to deliver him to Sheriff Whittaker's office myself.”

“Are you sure that's a good idea, ma'am?” Pendleton asked with a frown.

“Mr. Jensen is going with me,” Glory replied as she nodded toward Luke. “I'm sure that between us we can handle any trouble we run into.”

Again Pendleton looked like he wanted to argue but didn't. He just nodded and said, “I'll take care of it.” He turned and started off toward the barn.

Luke told Glory, “I'll go get my horse saddled.”

“You don't want to ride on the wagon with me?” she asked.

“If you can handle the team—and to be honest, you seem so capable I'll be surprised if you can't—I'd rather be mounted so I can move around better in case of trouble.”

“So you can run out on me if any shooting starts?”

Luke felt a flash of anger. He said, “I won't dignify that with a response.”

“I didn't think you would,” she said. “But I wanted to be certain.”

“I wouldn't run out on any woman who was in trouble.”

And sure as hell not one who's worth five grand
, he added silently to himself.

“If we're going to be spending the day together, let's not get off on the wrong foot,” Glory said. “I see now I shouldn't have asked you that. I didn't mean anything by it, honestly. It's just that in my experience, men often promise one thing . . . and deliver another.”

Luke didn't know what she meant by that, but he nodded and said, “It's all right. I'll be ready to go in a few minutes.”

He had been pushing the dun fairly hard in recent days, and he wanted to give the horse more time to rest if he could. When he went into the barn he found Vince there and said, “I'm riding into Painted Post with Mrs. MacCrae. I was wondering if I could use one of the ranch's saddle string and let my horse take it easy today.”

“Sure,” the solemn-faced youth said.

“Well . . . you know the horses a lot better than I do. Maybe you can recommend one.”

Vince shrugged. He seemed to be a young man of few words. He and Luke went out to the corral and Vince pointed to one of the horses.

“Nobody's using that roan gelding today. Want me to put your saddle on him?”

The offer took Luke a little by surprise. He said, “That would be fine. Thanks, Vince.”

The wrangler just shrugged again, wordlessly.

A few minutes later, he led the roan out of the barn and handed the reins to Luke, who had been watching a couple of the hands hitching up a team to the wagon. A grim, blanket-shrouded shape was already in the back of the vehicle. Rope had been tied around the corpse to hold the blanket in place.

Luke checked the cinches on the saddle before he mounted. He noticed Vince watching him and saw the frown creasing the young man's forehead.

“I always check my saddle when I don't do it myself,” he explained. “It's just a matter of habit. Nothing against you, son.”

Vince turned away without saying anything.

“Don't mind him,” Ernie said quietly as he sidled up next to Luke. “He's that way with everybody. His folks died when he was young, and he got shuffled around from relation to relation. That's a hard way to grow up.”

“I suppose it is,” Luke said. At least when he was a kid he'd had his ma and pa, as well as his younger brother and sister, so he had known what it was like to have a loving family before he went off to war and everything changed.

His parents were dead now, and Smoke had told him that their sister, Janey, had passed away several years earlier, too. Luke regretted never seeing her again after he enlisted. She had made some foolish decisions in her life and had come to a bad end, and he thought that if he'd been around he might have been able to help her avoid that fate.

She had left home before the war was even over, though, so logically he knew that wasn't the case. Nothing he could have done would have prevented Janey from following her own trail in life, no matter where it led.

When the wagon team was ready to go, Glory came over and climbed onto the high seat. Luke swung into the saddle, and they set out for Painted Post as the sun rose over the hills to the east, on the other side of Sabado Valley.

Luke didn't think Elston's men would try anything else so soon after the attack on the ranch, especially not anything as blatant as bushwhacking the MC's owner. But as he rode beside the wagon, his gaze remained in constant motion anyway, roaming over the rangeland around them in search of anything that might signal danger. Such caution was a requirement in his line of work. Without it he might not live long.

To make conversation, he said, “I was told that you came west for your health. If you don't mind my saying so, you appear to be a remarkably healthy individual.”

“I don't mind,” Glory answered, “but who told you that?”

“I heard it on the ranch,” Luke said. “I don't recall exactly who mentioned it.”

He didn't want to take a chance on getting young Ernie Frazier in trouble with the boss, even though Glory didn't seem bothered by the question.

“It doesn't matter,” she said. “It's common knowledge. I had a problem with my breathing, but it got better almost immediately in the drier air out here.”

She would have had trouble with her breathing if she'd stayed back in Baltimore, Luke thought. It was hard to breathe past a hang rope.

“That's just one reason I'm glad I came to Texas,” Glory went on. “The other is that I met Sam, of course. The day we were married was the happiest day of my life.”

“Is that so?”

She looked over at him and smiled.

“You sound skeptical. Don't you believe in marriage, Luke?”

“I believe it exists.”

“But not in its benefits.”

He shrugged and said, “I can't really testify one way or the other. I've never indulged in the state of wedded bliss, myself.”

“You've never been married?”

“Never even came close.”

She flicked the reins and clucked to the horses, then said, “That's a shame. I'm sure you'd make some woman a fine husband.”

That caused a genuine laugh to erupt from his lips. He shook his head and said, “Lady, you are about as far wrong on that score as you could be. I'd feel sorry for any woman who got herself saddled with the likes of me.”

“Maybe you underestimate yourself.”

“I don't think so,” he said.

They rode on in silence for a few seconds. Then Glory said, “Well, I believe in marriage. I've been married twice, in fact.”

He was a little surprised that she would admit that, but he kept his face and voice only casually curious as he said again, “Is that so?”

“Yes, I was married back East, before I came west. My husband . . . passed away.”

“I'm sorry.” He figured she might think it odd if he didn't comment on what she had just said, so he went on: “It sounds like you haven't had very good luck when it comes to husbands.”

“On the contrary. I've had very good luck. Both of them were fine men. Wonderful men. They were the ones who were unlucky.” A trace of bitterness tinged her voice as she added, “Unlucky enough to have married me.”

“I don't see how you figure that.”

“It's obvious, isn't it? I'm a jinx. At least my first marriage lasted for several years before something terrible happened. With Sam, it was only a matter of months.”

Luke wondered just how much she would confess to, now that she had started talking. He said, “What happened to your first husband?”

Glory shook her head, though, and replied, “I'm sorry. I don't want to talk about it. It's still too painful.”

“All right,” Luke told her. “I didn't mean to open up old wounds.”

“That's all right. I'm the one who brought it up. Perhaps we should talk about something more pleasant . . . like this blasted range war.”

“You mentioned the sheriff in Painted Post. You reckon he'll step in and do anything about Elston?”

“I think it's highly doubtful. Jared Whittaker is a politician, first and foremost, and I think he's betting that in the long run Harry Elston will be more powerful and influential in the county than I will. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that he's in Elston's pocket, but I don't think he'll go out of his way to help me, either.”

“He's a lawman,” Luke said. “It's his job to do what's right and legal.”

Glory laughed and said, “You're not such a babe in the woods as to believe that, are you, Luke? Carrying a badge is like any other job. In the end you wind up working for whoever has the most money.”

Luke thought that was a pretty cynical attitude, but in most cases she was probably right.

Not in all of them, though. There was such a thing as justice in this world, and in his occasional philosophical moments he liked to think that he served that end. Hunting down fugitives wasn't just a matter of collecting the bounties on their heads.

The road followed the hills, and as the ranges on both sides of the valley petered out, it continued southeast across semi-arid, chaparral-dotted flats that ran all the way down to the Rio Grande and the Mexican border. Luke had come through Painted Post the previous day, so he knew it lay only a few more miles ahead of them.

It wasn't long before he spotted the elevated water tank at the railroad station and a couple of church steeples. Those were the highest structures in town.

Painted Post owed most of its existence to the railroad and to the ranches in the hills to the north and west. It was also close enough to the border to serve as a supply point for the gold and silver mines in the mountains across the river in Mexico. So it was a dusty, sleepy little settlement most of the time, when the ranch crews or the miners weren't there on payday, spending their wages on a blowout of whiskey, women, and cards.

The town's main avenue was McDowell Street, which ran north from the railroad depot for several blocks. It was a wide, sun-blasted road crossed by several smaller streets lined with businesses for the first block before becoming residential neighborhoods where the town's inhabitants lived in a mixture of frame and adobe houses.

Most of the businesses on McDowell Street were frame as well, some with false fronts, but the bank was constructed of large blocks of sandstone, as was the county courthouse and jail. A few cottonwood and aspen and willow trees struggled to grow here and there. This region was more suited to cactus and bunch grass when it came to vegetation.

It was midday when Luke and Glory reached the settlement, so quite a few people were moving around. In another couple of hours, as the temperature began to heat up more, a lot of those folks would disappear until late afternoon when things began to cool off. Right now, though, wagons were parked in front of the stores, horses were tied at hitch racks, and people made their way along the boardwalks in front of some of the buildings. Many of them paused to turn and look as Glory drove by with Luke riding beside the wagon.

He was a stranger in town, having spent only a few minutes there the day before. Some of the citizens probably recognized Glory, and they would have looked at her anyway, especially the men.

Luke didn't get the feeling that Painted Post was overly friendly toward Glory MacCrae.

She kept her gaze directed straight ahead and her chin up. If the stares bothered her, she wasn't going to show it. Instead, she drove to the courthouse and pulled back on the reins to bring the two horses to a stop there.

Luke reined in as well and dismounted. As he looped the roan's reins around a hitch rail, he saw two men lounging in the open double doorway of the courthouse. One was a burly hombre whose hat looked a little too small for his block of a head. His face was sun-blistered, and the hair that poked out from under his hat was prematurely white.

His companion was smaller, but still broad-shouldered and well-built, with a black Stetson thumbed back on reddish-brown hair.