Dorothy Garlock (43 page)

“Odell! Oh, God! She’s been shot!”

Logan saw Odell fall, heard Rosalee scream, and a furious, unearthly cry tore from his throat. He lunged toward Shorty, whirled and kicked. The blow landed beneath the shorter man’s chin and snapped his head back. Logan spun on his toe. His foot lashed out again and he kicked him in the groin. Before Shorty could double up, Logan delivered a powerful blow to his windpipe with the side of his hand and Shorty dropped dead at his feet. It was over in less than a minute.

The crowd was stunned again. They’d never seen such a display of killer strength used in such a vicious way. Frightened by what they’d seen and not understanding it, the men surged forward. The redhead, who had sneaked into Mary’s and had taken pride in taunting Logan, jumped on his back and a dozen others followed to bear him to the ground under their tremendous weight.

“He’s a killer!”

“He killed Shorty with his feet and hands!”

“Hang ’im!”

The words penetrated Rosalee’s dazed senses. She was torn with the decision of whether or not to stay with Odell or go to her husband. Bessie knelt beside her and Mrs. Parnell hovered over them.

“It’s just a crease,” Bessie said. “Look.” She lifted the hair from Odell’s temple. “She’ll be all right. I’ll take her down to Mable’s and take care of her. Scotty,” she called. “Come over here and carry this youngun. Go on,” she said to Rosalee. “Go to your man. There’s more trouble brewin’ for him.”

Rosalee jumped to her feet and looked frantically for Logan. Mary stood helplessly nearby and Case stood against the wall with a gun pressed to his side. Cooper Parnell was on the edge of the porch beside his mother. Adam Clayhill was shouting to the men.

“Shoot him. Shoot the murderin’ sonofabitch.”

“No!” Rosalee screamed, but her voice was lost in a volley of shots that came from the back of the crowd.

“Let ’im up,” Josh shouted. “Let Horn up, or by Gawd, we’ll open up on ya.”

Men peeled off the pile holding Logan. The last man off was the redheaded man. He held a gun to Logan’s back and a man hung onto each of his arms.

The crowd was ringed by six mounted, armed men, and Josh and Minnie stood in the buggy with guns in their hands. Ben and McCloud stood on the walk with rifles pointed toward the porch. Five of the mounted men were strangers, the other one was Frank, the drover who had worked for Clayhill.

“Are you goin’ to let a bunch of strangers and a wet-eared kid come in here and back us off from our duty?” Adam shouted. “The Indian killed Shorty. You all saw it.”

“Shorty had it comin’,” Case said. “He drew on my back ’n shot a little girl who was arunnin’ to her sister.”

“We’re not givin’ him up.” Adam shook his fist at the newcomers. “Ride on out of here. This is none of your affair.”

“I’m athinkin’ it is. Mr. Horn’s our boss. I ain’t alikin’ to have my boss shot down by a piss-poor outfit like I see here.” The lanky man let go with a stream of yellow tobacco juice. “You be all right, captain? Me’n the boys here’ll do a bit of turkey shootin’ if’n you say the word. I’d not have no trouble a’tall pluckin’ the tail feathers of that big’n with the snow on top.”

“We’ll give you as good as you give.” Adam’s aroused voice quivered. “Back off, or I’ll shoot him myself.”

“It’ll be the last shot you’ll fire.” Cooper spoke from the side.

Adam looked at him and his lips curled in a sneer. “You again? Get on back to that piddly ranch of yours and tend your own business.”

Sylvia took off her stiff-brimmed bonnet and moved stiffly out into the street between the two groups lined up against each other.

“Ma . . .” Cooper said and started after her.

She turned to look at her son. “Stay back, Cooper. I’ll handle this.” She walked up to within a few feet of where Adam stood beside the red-haired man who was holding the gun on Logan. “Adam Clayhill, put a stop to this,” she said softly.

Adam had been watching the mounted men, and he beetled his brows and looked at her. “Get out of the way. This isn’t a woman’s business.”

It suddenly occurred to Logan what was happening. “No, Mrs. Parnell! Cooper,” he yelled. “Come get your ma!”

Sylvia ignored him and looked Adam in the eye. She was a tall, slender woman, her blue skirt flapping in the wind, standing between two groups of armed men. She stood firmly in front of the man she’d hoped never to face, determined that there would be no more killing. Adam looked closely at Sylvia and his mouth sagged.

“Sylvia?”

“Yes. Sylvia Williamson.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Your sins have caught up with you, Adam Clayhill. You’re a poor excuse for a man, and I’ll not let you get innocent people killed and grind this man down in the dirt as you have so many before him. You’ve treated Logan Horn as if he were less than human. You don’t know or care who he is. You’ll just kill him in order to get his land.”

“Mrs. Parnell! I forbid you—” Logan almost choked.

“You’re Mrs. Parnell?”

“I’m Cooper Parnell’s mother. Logan Horn’s mother was Morning Sun, a beautiful Cheyenne woman. Look at Logan’s finger. It’s crooked. Like yours. You deserted a little boy with a crooked finger years ago. That little boy has grown into a man. He’s ten times the man you are, Adam Clayhill. You left Morning Sun in disgrace and ruined her life. You left me, but I survived because a good man loved me. You had your way with both of us and then sneaked off to escape your responsibility.”

Sylvia drew back and struck his cheek with the palm of her hand. “I’d just as soon kill you, but this will have to do.” The sound of the slap resounded in the hushed silence. Adam staggered back, not from the blow, but from the realization of what she was saying.

Excited voices passed the news.

“My Gawd! Did ya hear that? The Injun’s old Clayhill’s son! Folks, did ya hear that?”

“If that ain’t the damndest thin’ I ever heard of!”

“I thought there was more to it than him just wantin’ to run off a blanket ass.”

“It ain’t no wonder he was tryin’ to run him off! He didn’t want nobody to know he’d been a
squaw
man!”

Snatches of the talk reached Adam. He was stung to action. He grabbed Logan’s wrist and stared at the crooked forefinger before Logan could jerk his hand away. Adam looked into his eyes—eyes that looked back unflinchingly, as venomous as those of a rattler. Logan shook free of the hands holding him. The men stepped away from him as if an invisible hand had pushed them. He took a step forward and thrust his face close to Adam’s.

“If you ever put your hands on me again, I’ll kill you!” he warned in a tone that quivered with hate.

The men moved farther back, leaving Logan and Adam Clayhill facing each other.

“It was Henry! Henry sent you to bedevil me,” Adam accused and stumbled back a step.

“You’re not fit to say his name!” Logan’s hand flashed out and hooked into the front of Adam’s shirt. The other hand lifted of its own accord, and he had to restrain himself to keep from chopping the life out of this man he had hated all his life. He was shaking with fury and took a long, slow breath to steady himself. He spoke in a low, controlled voice, but every word came out and found its mark with the exactitude of an artfully placed arrow. “I’ll say this one time: I never want to look on your face again. If you see me coming, get out of my way. Cross my path, and it’ll be the last path you cross,
Wasicun
! And you’d goddamned well better believe it.” Logan spat the words out as if they were something nasty in his mouth. He stood for a long moment, his muscles tense, his mind fighting his desire to kill. His face was filled with lethal hatred. The cords in his neck stood out, and it clearly required all his self-restraint to hold himself in check. His mouth opened and closed as if strangling. “If I see you again, I’ll kill you. So help me God, I’ll kill you!”

“Logan—” Rosalee’s voice reached into his mind. Her hand was on his arm. He shoved the big man from him contemptuously, turned his back, and put his arm around her.

Adam Clayhill had turned dead white. For an endless moment he had thought the Indian was going to kill him as he had Shorty Banes. “Damn you to hell,” he whispered in a shaking voice. He swiveled his head and saw the men staring at him. It jarred him back to the present.

“What’a ya want us to do, Mr. Clayhill?”

“Nothin’, you fool!” he growled. “Shorty drew down on Malone’s back.” Then, “Get Shorty out of the street!”

“Yes, sir. Ah, Mr. Clayhill, about our pay—”

“Tell the bartender to pay ya. And you men get on back to the ranch.”

Rosalee stood in the street with her arms around Logan’s waist. “Oh, Logan! Oh, my love!”

“How is Odell?”

“She’s going to be all right. The bullet just creased her scalp. Bessie and Mable are taking care of her.”

“Thank God!” He grinned at her. “Either your God or mine, sweetheart, I don’t care which.” He stretched his neck to see his men who sat patiently waiting.

“Logan . . .” Rosalee tugged on his arm to bring his attention back to Cooper. He was standing beside his mother. His puzzled eyes were going from her to Adam Clayhill.

“Come on, son. Let’s see about Odell.” Sylvia took his arm.

“Ma? I’ve got to know if—I heard what you said!” There was a paleness beneath Cooper’s sun-browned skin and determination in every line of his face.

“It’s not important, son. Nothing has changed. You and I are the same as we’ve always been.”

“Is he my . . . pa?” Cooper demanded.

“No, son. Oscar Parnell nurtured a seed that was sown in the wind. He was your pa in every sense of the word except for a minor one.”

Cooper looked deeply into his mother’s eyes and finally, after a long hesitation, he said, “I see what you mean, Ma.”

Adam stood stone still and stared at Cooper Parnell. His bushy brows drew together as his mind tried to absorb the fact that this was his son. He felt sudden pride. Goddamn! He could’ve made a real man out of him if he’d gotten hold of him in time.

The eyes Cooper turned on Adam Clayhill were as blue as a cloudless sky reflected in an icy pool. Slowly and deliberately, he drew back his fist and smashed it into Adam’s nose, knocking him off his feet. He looked down at him sitting in the dirt, blood spurting down over his white mustache. He spat on him, as Logan had done. “I promised myself that if I ever found the man who caused my mother so much pain I would kill him,” he said. “And someday, I probably will.” His mother pulled on his arm and they moved away.

“Don’t be angry with me, Logan,” Sylvia said when they were away from where Adam was picking himself up out of the dust. “He wouldn’t have backed down and there would have been killing.” She put her hand on his arm and he covered it with his.

“I know. My men wouldn’t have backed down either.” His dark eyes looked over her head and met Cooper’s. He waited.

Cooper held out his hand. “You knew?”

“About him?” He jerked his head toward Adam, who was dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief. “I’ve always known who he was. His brother raised me. They were as different as night and day.”

“I guess it’s something we’ve got to live with.”

“You get used to it after awhile.”

“Did you know about me?”

“Your ma told me a few days ago. How does it sit with you having a brother of mixed blood?”

Cooper’s face broke into a smile. “Pretty goddamn good, brother! Pretty goddamn good!”

The two tall men stood grinning at each other. The miracle of having a brother was so new. Cooper slapped Logan on the shoulder with one hand and clasped his hand with the other. For a long moment dark eyes looked into blue ones. The respect and growing affection they had for each other glowed in unspoken communication.

Tears slipped from Sylvia’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks as she watched her son and his newly found brother.

Adam Clayhill, followed by his drovers, rode out of Junction City with his back ramrod straight and his head high. He had just suffered the most humiliating defeat of his life, but damned if he’d let anyone think he cared. It had taken a few minutes to get himself together after being knocked off his feet, but he had a lifetime of experience in turning defeat into victory. He would do it again.

He tried to shut his mind against thoughts that plagued him. He hadn’t thought of Morning Sun or Sylvia Williamson, the skinny, little daughter of the missionary down at Fort Bent, for years. God, he thought now, Preacher Abernathy came from Fort Bent, but he wouldn’t have known that he was connected in any way with the Williamson girl.

And . . . goddamn Henry! That interfering, sanctimonious, Indian-loving bastard! That’s where the redskin got the money. He got it from my own brother! He wondered if Henry had left him everything. If he had, Horn had enough money to buy half the territory. Then he remembered Henry’s practical side. It wasn’t likely he’d turn a fortune over to a breed. He’d want to be sure the money wouldn’t be squandered. Goddamn! If he’d left the snot-nosed kid with the Indians where he belonged, none of this would have happened.

“Jesus!” he muttered. “I’ve got two boys and they both hate my guts.” He laughed a mirthless laugh. “Hell! Who needs ’em? I’ve still got the biggest and best ranch in the territory, and own most of the town besides. I can’t do anything about the Indian right now, but he isn’t going to come waltzing in here getting everything his own way. I didn’t get to where I am by sitting on my ass!”

Adam had an instant of regret about Cooper Parnell. “Big, like me,” he muttered to himself. “Blond hair, where mine was more red. By God, he came from my seed; there’s got to be something of me in him somewhere . . . It’ll take him a little time to get over the shock of finding out I’m his pa, but then he’ll come around. It might not be a bad idea to have him on my side. He’ll knuckle under quick if he thinks he’ll get a piece of the ranch when I’m gone. Hmmm . . . That boy might be some real use to me.”

His thoughts turned to Della and he spoke them aloud. “Damn her little twat! What the hell did she tell me that cock-and-bull story for? Why did she want the Indian hung? I’d bet my bottom dollar he turned her down for the Spurlock woman. If that’s what he did, she’d have been furious. She’s ruined herself before the whole town. But she’s like a cat, she’ll land on her feet. She can live down there in Denver. She isn’t cut out for ranch life anyway. After awhile, after we’ve both had time to cool off, I’ll go down and see her. Hell, she needs me more than I need her. I’ve still got Cecilia.”