Deborah Camp (38 page)

“Whatzamatter? Did I stir up some fond memories, pretty boy? You homesick for your boyfriends?”

Drew stopped the horses, planted one knee on the wagon seat for balance and planted one fist in Wilhite’s face. The man fell backward with a grunt, then went limp. Out cold. Blood dribbled down his chin.

Satisfied, Drew sucked on his stinging middle knuckle and sat down again. He picked up the reins.

“Come along, boys,” he said, the beast in him purring with contentment after that release of brute strength. “Step lightly.” Then, pursing his lips, he whistled a merry tune.

S
ince Cassie was nowhere in sight, Drew assumed she must be inside with Oleta and Andy, or around somewhere doing chores. He parked the wagon near the front of the barn and checked on Wilhite. Still out cold.

At the horse trough he filled a bucket with murky water and carried it back to the wagon. He grabbed Wilhite by the boots and pulled him none too gently out of the wagon and onto the ground. Then he poured the bucket of water directly into Wilhite’s face and open mouth.

The man sputtered and squirmed, but with his hands tied behind his back and his feet bound together, he couldn’t move out from under the sudden waterfall. Drew dropped the bucket, then reached down and grabbed fistfuls of the man’s wet shirt, hauling him to his feet.

“Rise and shine, horse dung,” Drew growled.

Wilhite coughed and ran his tongue across his front teeth. “You broke my tooth, jailbird.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t break your neck.” He yanked him toward the barn. “Get in there.”

Owls fluttered in the rafters, startled by the scuffling and deep voices below. A barn cat streaked across the floor, hot on the trail of a mouse. Drew nudged his own prey toward an empty stall, or what he thought was an empty one. The gray mare and her long-legged baby filled it.

“Damn,” Drew muttered. “I forgot I put them in here.” He grabbed the back of Wilhite’s shirt and directed him to the middle of the barn. “Stay there while I clear out a stall to put you in until the sheriff can collect you.”

Wilhite shook his head, flinging water and mud from his hair and face. “Do you know you’re living with a whore?”

Drew sent him a black look. “Shut up.”

“No telling how many men have had her. Her whore name is Little Nugget. She fetched a high price for her favors.”

“You want to talk? Tell me why you were aiming to kill Ice. He hasn’t done a damn thing to you.”

“He’s an Indian and I hate Indians. Especially Blackfoot. I worked for one Indian in the Territory, and he almost got me killed. He was crazy. Them Indians are all crazy and dumber than dirt. I ain’t got no use for them.”

“I’m not Indian, and you said you wanted to kill me, too.”

“Kill you or put you back where you belong—behind bars where you can’t get in the way.”

“In whose way?”

“Not mine.” Wilhite grinned, giving Drew a glimpse of the tooth he’d chipped. “Your neighbors. They don’t cotton to having a cattle thief living near them.”

“I know what you’ve been up to, Wilhite.” Drew went into the next stall, where a few bags of feed were stored, helter-skelter. He began moving them to one side so that he’d have room to shackle Wilhite to a post in the comer. “You hired Reb Smalley and Dan Harper, two thieves drifting through this area, and paid them to rustle cattle and make it look like I was doing the rustling. You got your orders from Monroe Hendrix.”

“Yeah, you’re one smart fella. Guess your smarts is what landed you in prison.”

“I can understand why you keep wanting to talk about prison, seeing as how that’s where you’re headed.” Drew glanced over his shoulder from time to time, but Wilhite wasn’t moving. He stood erect, his one eye glinting with malevolence.

“Roe wants my cattle,” Drew continued. “And my land. But mainly my cattle. My old man wasn’t good for much, but he did know his steers, and he raised the best stock in the state. I never paid much attention to that until lately, when I was trying to figure out why Roe would be so desperate to pack me off to prison or watch me swing from a rope.”

“I vote for the rope,” Wilhite rasped.

Drew leaned down to pick up the final bag of feed, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Wilhite lean sideways to scratch his ankle. Biting flies, Drew thought, waving aside one that was trying to light on his neck. In the next instant Drew’s mind registered that Wilhite wasn’t scratching, but grabbing at something.

Tensing, Drew turned his head for a better view and found himself staring at the small gun that had been tucked inside Wilhite’s boot and was now firmly in his hand. Wilhite chuckled, aiming the gun as best he could
with his hands tied behind his back. His aim was good. Too damn good.

In the next instant Drew saw the end of his existence, and simultaneously he saw with certain clarity that the best thing in his life had been Cassie. His love for her filled him, absorbed him, lit him from within. He wished he had told her he loved her, told her that she was the first person he had ever truly loved. He wished he’d confessed his love for her son, his half brother, the baby he wished was his own.

Cassie
. Her name blanketed his mind and erased everything that had come before, everything that was happening now. He knew no fear, only regret. Profound, drenching regret that he had not told her what she’d meant to him and how she had made him believe that he could be loved, that he could have a wife and a family of his own.

He cursed himself for not checking Wilhite for more weapons. A man hired to kill would most likely be armed to the teeth.

These thoughts swarmed on him in a blinding moment of time but arrived too late. Drew straightened slowly, wanting to leave this world standing up instead of crouched over.

The gunshot cracked like a whip, sending the animals in the bam into a frenzy. Horses reared, owls swooped, chickens squawked, a cat screamed. Drew stumbled backward, clutching his chest, rocked off his feet by the roar of the blast rather than its impact. That little gun sure had barked loud! He looked down at his hand and saw no blood seeping through his fingers, felt no pain. He’d been shot before, and it hadn’t felt anything like this.

Wilhite fell forward, sending up a cloud of dust and dirt. His head struck the toe of Drew’s boot. Blood poured from his cracked skull, staining the ground. Drew pulled his foot out of the way and looked up. He found himself staring at Cassie’s pale face and the shaking, smoking Colt .45 in her hand.

“Good God, Cassie!” He sprang toward her and gripped her gun hand, pulling the warm weapon from her cold fingers. “Where’d you come from, honey?”

“I saw you…” She stared down at the man she’d killed. “It was like back in Whistle Stop. He was going to kill someone, and I hit him over the head with a bottle then. Should have shot him dead in Whistle Stop, and he wouldn’t have brought trouble here… to you and me.” Her brown eyes seemed oddly vacant. “He’s like a black shadow following me, dogging my footsteps, disappearing for a spell only to turn up again when I thought I was rid of him.”

“He won’t be bothering you anymore,” Drew said, draping an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go to the house.”

“What about him?”

“I’ll take care of him later. I sent Ice for the sheriff. When he gets here, I’ll tell him what happened, how you saved my life.”

“I did.” She nodded, walking woodenly by his side. “He would have killed you, Drew. Killing is second nature to that man.”

“I know.” He hugged her closer, wanting to protect her, shield her from a life that seemed to heap too much woe on her narrow shoulders. Happiness over being alive flooded him, brought a mist to his eyes. He’d been given another chance! Another chance to tell Cassie that
she was a miracle, that she had changed the rock in his chest into a beating heart. “I’m obliged to you,” he said, and his voice sounded hoarse. He cleared his throat. “I mean it, Cassie. Cassie, honey?”

She went limp, and he scooped her up into his arms before she could fall to the ground.

“Cassie?”

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted dead away.

Drew paced restlessly in the front room, pausing when Oleta came out of Cassie’s bedroom and closed the door softly behind her.

“She is resting,” Oleta said. “She came to and heard Andy crying, so I gave him over to her. He works like a cure on her. She will be fine.”

“Yeah. That’s good.” He closed his eyes, experiencing a moment of drenching relief. “Cassie’s tough.”

“And tender,” Oleta said, smiling, but her dark eyes were troubled. “Why did you bring the one-eyed man here?”

“He tried to kill Ice. We caught him, and I sent Ice for the sheriff.”

Oleta moved to the window and looked out. “Is this them coming, you think?”

“No, can’t be them already.” Drew stood behind her and looked outside. Surprise bolted through him when he saw Ice riding up with the sheriff, a deputy, and between them Monroe Hendrix. “Well, I’ll be damned! It is them.” Satisfaction surged through him when he saw that Hendrix was in handcuffs, looking like he could spit bullets. A short distance behind them rode two others, men whose familiar faces earned a grin from Drew.

He stepped onto the porch, and Monroe began to bluster like a windstorm.

“You son of a bitch! You think because you’ve got two broken-down cowhands lying for you that I’m going to roll over and play dead? The hell I am!”

“Speaking of dead.” Drew nodded toward the barn. “Your fancy sharpshooter is lying out there in my barn, dead as a beaver-skin hat.”

“Wilhite? You killed him!” Monroe turned toward the sheriff. “You hear that? What are you going to do about it, let him get away with murder? What kind of lawman are you?”

“He didn’t kill him. I did.”

Drew whirled around to find that Cassie, pale-faced and haunted-eyed, had left her bed and joined him on the porch.

“Cassie, go on back inside. I’ll handle this,” Drew said, placing a hand on her shoulder, wanting to shield her from further ugliness. She swayed slightly, and Drew braced her with an arm around her waist.

“You should never have brought that m-man here, Roe. I warned you,” she said, her voice strong with anger.

“Ice filled me in on how you caught him,” the sheriff said. “What happened? Did he get away from you?”

“He had a gun hidden in his boot, and he was on the verge of murdering me when Cassie shot him.” Drew squeezed her waist.

Suddenly Cassie stiffened, and Drew glanced at her to see that her face had gone still and her eyes were burning in their sockets.

“What are they doing here?” she demanded, pointing at the other two men. “You aren’t welcome here anymore!”
she shouted at them, shaking a fist. “Get off my land and stay off!”

“Hold on there, Cassie,” Drew admonished. “You don’t know the whole story.” He smiled at the two cowhands. “Gabe and T-Bone left here to help us, not harm us.”

“They’re lying, no-good varmints,” Monroe declared, his face flushing scarlet. “Sheriff, you’ve got to see that these people are all in this together. They’re out to ruin me. They want my land and my cattle.”

Drew barked a laugh. “Your cattle? Hell, Roe, nobody wants your pitiful cows. And your land isn’t all that great either. Plenty of it, but you’ve overgrazed it and you cut down so many of the trees, you destroyed your windbreaks. Most of your top soil has blown away.”

“You’ve always been envious of me,” Monroe charged, jutting out his chin. “Everybody in this whole county is envious of me. I’m a respected man and you won’t be able to get away with this, Sheriff. The folks around here will be in an uproar when they hear how you’re trying to pin this cattle rustling ring on me.”

“What’s T-Bone and Gabe got to do with it?” Cassie asked, eyeing the two men with open suspicion.

“We never believed that Drew was stealing cattle,” Gabe said.

“Didn’t believe it the first time and sure didn’t believe it this time,” T-Bone chimed in. “But this time around I couldn’t sit by and let Drew go to prison for something I knew he hadn’t done. Gabe fell in with me, and we decided to try and get hired on at the Star H, since we’d seen tracks and such that made us think that the Star H had something to do with the thieving going on.”

Cassie looked from T-Bone to Drew. “Is this true?”

That she sought truth from him touched Drew deeply. He gave her a quick hug. “It’s true, darlin’. Old T-Bone and Gabe have always been our friends. Always will be our friends.”

“Why did you lie to me the other night?” she asked, looking at T-Bone for an explanation.

“If things didn’t work out, if one of us got killed, you see”—T-Bone shrugged—“I didn’t want you to bear the burden of that guilt.”

“How long have you known that they weren’t against us?” she asked Drew.

“Since the night I shot at those men who were driving Star H cattle onto our land. Gabe and T-Bone came riding up a few minutes later. They’d been following the rustlers. They knew the thieves were Harper and Smalley and that Ben fella Oleta knows. They helped me drag the dead horse to a place where I could hide it. I wanted to be sure the sheriff got a chance to see the animal for himself.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Sheriff Nelson said. “I was wondering about that.”

“Why did you keep it from me?” Cassie asked. “Didn’t you trust me?”

“No, it wasn’t that. We were… well, we were having our differences and—”

“You didn’t trust me.”

“No, Cassie, it had nothing to do with—”

“These two cow ropers are regular Pinkerton detectives,” Sheriff Nelson declared, reaching out to pat Gabe on the shoulder. “They’re going into town with me to sign sworn statements about what was going on at the Star H and how they saw with their own eyes Smalley
and Harper stealing cattle and driving them onto Square D land.”

“They’re liars,” Monroe said, jerking and twisting at the cuffs binding his wrists. “If Smalley and Harper were stealing cattle, I sure didn’t know anything about it. How can I be held responsible for something they did? I’m not their keeper!”

“You knew everything that was going on,” T-Bone said.