The Renegades: Cole (20 page)

Or was it to confess everything and ask for Ellie’s forgiveness? To try to make himself a better man, one more deserving of Aurora?

God help him if that’s what it was.

After the nooning, Aurora remounted and waited for Cole to catch his fresh horse. The men were throwing the cattle back onto the trail, Cookie and Nate were breaking camp, and, after a hot meal and a rest in the shade, everybody seemed ready for a long afternoon’s drive. If they drove far enough, fast enough, could they outrun the rustlers?

The very question made her furious. She had to think of something. She had to
do
something.

Monte came trotting toward her and jarred her out of her reverie.

“I’ve done a quick, rough count,” he said, “and I’d say we’ve lost another ten head or so.”

“You mean since we’ve been
here?
”

“Since sunup. I counted then.”

Monte was known for his ability to ride through a herd and estimate its number to within a cow or two. Some men could do that, just as some men could throw a rope onto anything that moved and some men could ride to a standstill every bronc they climbed on. Monte was not mistaken.

A chill ran through her. Her cattle were being
spirited invisibly right out from under her nose.

Cole rode up to them.

“From the looks on your faces I think I know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Ten head,” Aurora said. “Since sunup.”

But Cole was looking at Monte.

“What position did Skeeter ride this morning?”

Monte immediately cocked his head and gave Cole a sharp look. Aurora’s breath stopped.

“Cole!” she said. “There’s no call for that! I told you, Skeeter’s been with us …”

Cole held up his hand to hush her, but that wasn’t the reason she closed her mouth.

Her mind whirled, trying to think of a way to smooth over the fact that he’d asked one of the men such a leading question before. It was one thing to voice his suspicions of Skeeter privately, and entirely another to say something to Monte when the very question was an insult to one of his crew. Among the Slash A riders, as among the cowboys of any ranch or trail drive worth the name, an insult to one was taken as an insult to all.

But Monte didn’t take offense. He didn’t bristle with indignation. “Drag,” he said, eyeing Cole as if trying to read his mind. “He ain’t one of the newest men, but he likes to eat dust, I reckon.”

Cole nodded. Skeeter had been volunteering for one of the two drag positions, which most cowboys hated to ride. Monte had told them that without actually informing on Skeeter.

So. Monte must have his own suspicions.

A sick feeling spread through her.

“Right drag?” Cole asked.

“Right.”

Cole nodded, and the two men exchanged a look she couldn’t quite read before Monte wheeled his horse and rode away.

“Let’s lope on out to our own usual position,” Cole said, “and once we’re over that ridge yonder we’ll double back.”

“To the breaks over there to the south.”

He gave her a long, straight look that held a warning. And sympathy.

“Let’s ride,” he said.

She worried in silence while they followed his plan, passing the front half of the herd, riding off to the southeast as if on their usual scout, then doubling back under cover of the roll in the land so that when the Slash A riders came on, she and Cole would be out of sight. Then she started worrying out loud.

“We have to be very careful what we say to Skeeter or about him until we know for sure,” she said. “I still can’t believe it.”

He didn’t answer for a minute.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “But if you can drive a herd to Texas, you can face life. It’s a hard fact that sometimes people you trust will betray you.”

“If we accuse Skeeter without proof, though, the whole crew might quit.”

“We’ll be careful about that.”

His tone held so much empathy for her that
she felt foolish. Cole could handle this.

But she didn’t know whether she could, no matter how much noise she had made about being the trail boss. She forced her mind into the present moment.

“You guessed right drag because of the broken country over there,” she said.

“Yes. The trees are thick in spots and, in the low places, somebody could hide quite a little herd.”

“So you think Skeeter is cutting them out or letting them stray …”

“Or even driving them into cover when it’s handy,” Cole said encouragingly.

“Then Gates’s men are gathering them and changing the brands.”

“That’s about the way I picture it.”

“That would explain no tracks to or from the herd in the morning dew,” she said.

“And Skeeter calling you to walk in front of the fire the night they shot up our camp.”

She turned in the saddle to stare at him. She felt sick, sick enough to throw up.

“We can’t prove that,” she said. “And how can we prove he’s in on this, even when we find the cows? He’s long gone with the herd.”

“Somebody’ll talk,” he said. “A noose in a rope does wonders for loosening tongues.”

They had to be quiet, then, because voices carried on the wind and bounced back and forth against the rocky land. They kept to dirt footing so as to save the noise of hooves scraping
on stone, and they kept their eyes on the sky, looking for smoke.

Along about the middle of the afternoon, they saw it, both of them at almost the same instant.

“By their reckoning, we’re too far gone to see the smoke,” he whispered. “I’ll bet they brand this time every day.”

Then, as the smoke grew clearer and closer, he said, “No more talking from here on in.”

Thirty yards later they dismounted and tied the horses, crept on in closer to the fire. Aurora found them the best cover, while Cole led her to the most secure spot to see out of it.

Two men, which made sense because Gates was notoriously cheap, were working over a branding fire. Grazing in a small, creek-fed valley were the missing Slash A cattle. Aurora recognized several head of them. Silently, they watched for what seemed to be hours.

Finally, Cole nodded.

“Looks like there’re only the two,” he whispered. “We’ll creep down close and round them up. Yours is the one in the blue shirt. All you have to do is be ready to shoot if he goes for his gun.”

She swallowed hard.

“I can do it.”

“Play it as it goes. Stay close to me until I signal.”

And so, with Aurora’s blood roaring in her ears and her heart pounding out of her chest, they made their way closer to the unsuspecting
thieves. Finally, Cole waved her away and pointed to a small tangle of bushes. She crept to it, into it, and began to watch and wait some more. Sweat trickled between her breasts and down her spine although the afternoon was a cool one.

She took her gun from her holster and held it in both hands, muzzle trained on the middle of the blue shirt shining in the sun. Trying not to breathe so as not to shake, she prayed that whatever Cole was about to do, he would do it fast.

The rustlers’ voices muttered low, the branding iron clinked against a rock when the blue-shirted one turned it in the fire. The other started toward his horse, building a loop to catch another calf.

“Hands up and turn around!”

Cole’s voice rang like iron on an anvil.

The roper dropped his rope and whirled, she heard a shot fired, but she didn’t let herself look toward the sound even though it jangled everything inside her. The
other
one was her man, and she could only help Cole by taking him out of the fight.

Blue Shirt threw down the branding iron and went for his gun, whirling around to face Cole as he started to stand up. She sighted down the barrel of her gun and jerked the trigger. It seemed to take forever to do that, much less squeeze the trigger slowly, as Cole had taught her.

Blue Shirt fell.

The next thing she knew, she was running, she was out of the bushes and running toward Cole, who was already standing over the man he had shot, bending to pick up his gun. He was taking Blue Shirt’s gun when she got to him.

“Are you hurt?” she cried.

“No,” he said, looking down at her target.

“I killed him,” she cried, following his gaze. “Oh, Cole, I’ve killed a man.”

“Not quite,” he drawled, “it’s more like you’ve stunned him.”

The fall had knocked the man’s hat off, the bullet had left a barely bleeding crease across the back of his neck. But Cole had hit his target more seriously—blood was spreading fast over the man’s chest, running down his sleeve.

For a long moment Aurora couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think what to do. Cole stuffed both rustlers’ guns into the waist of his pants.

“Can you go get their horses?” he asked. “Aurora?”

She looked directly at him. His coolly satisfied expression jolted her back to herself.

“Y-yes.”

And she forced her trembling legs to carry her toward the horse saddled and tied to a tree a dozen yards away. The other one saddled for the roper to ride was the other she was supposed to take to Cole. That’s all she had to do before she could sit down: get two horses and take them to Cole.

By the time she had done it, though, her heartbeat had slowed, her legs had stopped shaking, and she had realized completely that these cattle with the ugly, messed-up new brand that she couldn’t even read were her cattle, part of the only thing she owned and the only livelihood she had. She welcomed the anger that swept through her.

The man she had shot was stirring slightly while Cole tied his hands behind him. The bleeding man was already tied.

“You best git me some help,” he said, “ ‘fore I bleed plumb to death.”

“And send the doctor bill to Lloyd Gates?” Cole said. “Reckon he’ll take it out of your pay?”

The way he sounded so friendly, so conversational, was a wonder to Aurora, considering the hard set of his jaw. He jerked the last knot tight and dragged Blue Shirt to his horse, threw him over the saddle, and tied him on.

“I may be dyin’,” the bleeding man said.

“You ain’t that lucky,” Cole said in that same nonchalant way. “You’ll have to decorate a Cottonwood tree before you turn up your toes.”

He ripped the man’s shirttail from his pants and tore strips of it off. Very quickly, so fast her eyes could hardly follow, he competently packed some of the cloth against the wound and tied the bandage on.

“Too tight,” the man gasped.

“Shut up,” Cole said.

He dragged the man to the horse Aurora held
and practically threw him into the saddle.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Each of them leading a horse, they started toward the spot where they’d left their own.

“I kin tell you one thing,” the conscious rustler said, “I don’t aim t’ hang fer Lloyd Gates, the tightfisted son of a bitch. I’ll never work fer him agin.”

“You’re as good as hanged already, son,” Cole said. “Save your breath.”

They reached their horses and untied them.

“Turn us loose, little lady,” the thief said, “and we’ll take that snake in the grass Skeeter with us. I’ll git rid of him fer you. I never could abide a man that signed on and then wouldn’t ride for a brand.”

Aurora’s eyes met Cole’s. Her heart sank like a stone through the soles of her feet. Cole had been right.

But he didn’t say so. He only looked at her to see how she was taking the proof she’d demanded.

Never, in all her life, had she wanted to touch him so much as in that instant. She wanted him to kiss her hair and press her head to his chest, cradle her cheek in his big, calloused hand. She wanted it desperately. She wanted him to hold out his open arms and take her in to safety, because her childhood and the world she knew had just been cut out from under her.

She knew by his eyes that he saw that need in her face. But he turned away from it.

“Nice shooting, pardner,” was all he said.

“L
ucky
shooting, you mean.”

He chuckled.

“After you’ve shot a thousand rounds you’ll know just
how
lucky.”

“
You’re
the salty shooter.”

But she still couldn’t think enough to actually have a conversation. As if the whole experience with the rustlers and the disappointment about Skeeter wasn’t enough to overwhelm her, the devastating longing for Cole was hollowing her out inside. It was all she could do to turn her back and walk away. She made it to her horse and, after two tries, swung up into the saddle.

“Speaking of rounds,” Cole called to her, “always reload as soon as you can.”

Her hands were shaking, but she fumbled in her saddlebags for the box of bullets and broke open her gun.

“I hope I never have to shoot at anybody again.”

“So do I,” Cole said, sympathy in his voice, “but that’s not too likely.”

It was true and she knew it, but she couldn’t worry about it now. And she couldn’t bear to think about Cole. Or to look at him. If she saw the same understanding in his eyes that had been in his voice, she’d fall out of her saddle into his arms.

Painful as it was, the best she could do was concentrate on Skeeter to keep her mind off everything else. That thought brought back the sick feeling full force.

Skeeter was Slash A, he was one of her crew, and he had ridden for her father’s Flying B ever since she could remember.

She balanced the box of ammunition in front of her and forced her trembling hands to finish loading her rounds. This was life. This was the way things were, sometimes, for no credible reason, like her father killing himself over losing his money. She was a grown-up woman, and she had to accept some facts that made no sense to her.

But her heart and her memory weren’t that easily convinced.

“How could he steal from me, day after day? How could he put his buddies to so much trouble riding all those extra miles looking for the missing cows?”

Cole met her anguished look as he stepped up into his saddle.

“Some men ride for a brand with everything in them,” he said. “Some don’t. Some men tell the truth and some lie. Now you know which kind Skeeter is.”

“After twenty-some
years?
Cole, I would’ve sworn I knew him.”

“I’m telling you, one person never truly knows another.”

But I know you. You’re still trying to scare me away but I know you. You’re good, even if you think you’re bad. Even if you can kill your enemies without compunction. You’re a good man
.

She replaced the gun in her holster and made sure it was seated safely, slipping the belt around so that the six-shooter was under her hand.

“Skeeter chopped wood for me all last winter. He made me a beautiful headstall and reins to match. He always saddled Shy Boy for me when he was around headquarters.”

“And he tried to get you killed,” Cole said as he turned his horse and headed back toward the herd, leading one outlaw’s horse as Aurora led the other.

“I want to talk to him,” she said. “I want to ask him why.”

“I want to be there when you do,” he said, “but even a woman of your persuasive powers will be wasting breath. I doubt he’ll say a word.”

She never had a chance to reply. A shot cracked, the bullet whizzed angrily past her ear, close enough to make a breeze against her cheek, near enough to make her scream, and she threw herself prone along Shy Boy’s neck. He began to run, the outlaw’s horse bumping
against them because she’d jerked it up by instinct.

From the corner of her eye she glimpsed Cole pulling his rifle from the saddle scabbard and working the lever in one long, smooth motion. He fired so fast it didn’t seem possible. He fired again.

There were more of them! That was the only thought she could hold for more than an instant while she tried to bring her horse around. Gates hadn’t been as cheap on hiring help as she’d thought. There were more of them.

She wrapped the reins of the horse she was leading around her horn and reached for the gun in her holster. No telling how many of them Cole was fighting all by himself.

But when she got Shy Boy turning, she saw that Cole would have to fend for himself. There were even more of them.

Two men came on at a high lope, headed straight for her out of some trees, directly to her right, directly behind Cole. She couldn’t resist one more glance in his direction. Two. He was fighting two men, two more were coming, so Gates had paid six long riders to come after her cattle.

Gates
. Rich as a new mother lode and still determined to take everything she had. She lifted her chin as she lifted her gun. She’d show him the meaning of “determined.”

Way too soon, she fired one shot, but then she got control. No time to reload, so she had to make the rest of her rounds count.

The one in the lead half-turned in the saddle and yelled, “Hold your fire. Take her alive, remember!”

So. What did dear Lloyd have in mind next? Torturing her until she signed a false bill of sale?

She saw the surprise on the grizzled face of the first outlaw when he realized she was keeping on coming, that she was riding toward instead of away from them. Then she leveled the gun, holding it against her thigh for balance, veered sideways, and fired, wishing she could stop still and use both hands the way Cole had taught her.

The shot missed. A shiver of fear ran through her, then the cry of pain shocked her. The
second
outlaw fell forward, reaching out with both hands as blood spread over the shoulder of his tan shirt. She had fired at one man and hit the other!

Immediately she cocked the gun and levelled it at the first rider again, because he was coming closer, faster. But before she could fire, in the very next instant, he was jerking his horse around, bumping into his partner’s horse, and the partner was coming headlong out of the saddle.

When she got there, holding the gun on them with both hands, they seemed to have forgotten her. The man she’d shot had dived off his mount and grabbed onto the tail of his friend’s horse, maybe to keep him from riding off and leaving him, and the horse was turning in a
frantic circle to get rid of him, his rider trying to help.

“Hands up!” Aurora shouted. “Get your hands
up!
”

The uninjured man complied. The horse kicked the other man, who let go and dropped, unmoving, into a heap at his partner’s feet. The horse ran away a short distance to join the other one, taking their long guns out of reach.

Aurora sat her horse, stunned, trying to take it all in while holding her six-shooter as steady as she could. Guns fired and men shouted behind her, but she didn’t dare take her eyes from her captives.

“Take off your gunbelt and toss it away,” she said, “or I’ll shoot.”

The unshaven man did as he was told, and not a moment too soon, because in the next instant she had to risk a glance away from him. A horse was pounding toward her, fast.

“Aurora!”

Cole
. A great terror she had barely recognized gave way to pure relief.

“Still lucky, I see,” he said dryly, but that same intense relief was in his voice, underlying the cool nonchalance.

That unfathomable connection between them grew stronger in one leap.

“I shot at this one,” she whispered, as he rode up beside her, still leading the horse carrying the first trussed-up rustler, “and hit the other.”

He chuckled as he tied the reins he was holding
to the saddle horn of the horse Aurora was leading.

“Keep that between us,” he said, “at least until I get him tied up.”

She held the new rustler in her sights while he went through the process of tying the man’s hands behind him.

“Pretty soon you’ll be trying to borrow my Chickasaw name,” Cole said, and from his tone she realized that he was intending to calm her, to soothe the wild beating of her heart.

“Which is?”

“Shoots-Like-Striking-Lightning.”

“It is
not!
You tell me a different story every time.”

“But not about the scalping,” he said loudly, and threw a fierce look at his captive before he turned him toward his horse. “That story’s always the same, right?”

“Right,” she said, perversely enjoying the terrified look that flashed across the thief’s face. “I think I know how to do it now that you’ve explained it all.”

“Hey!” the man shouted. “You can’t do that! This here’s not Indian country!”

“It is if I say it is,” Cole said, dragging him to his horse. “Do exactly what I tell you if you want to hang with your hair on.”

“
Hang!
What’re you talking about? All my partner and I are doing is riding through.”

“We’ll see about that. We’ve got one of your buddies, who’s just itching to tell the sheriff all about it.”

“I don’t know why you’d believe him instead of me! Ol’ Carlile’s so windy he’ll blow you away.”

“You know his name, you know what he’ll say, sounds to me like you all are in cahoots.”

“Who? Know whose name?”

Cole and Aurora laughed.

“Must shore have been a funny fight,” someone shouted. “Sorry we missed it.”

Monte and Frank came riding up and swung down to help Cole with the captives. Again, Cole was bandaging the wound with the speed and dispatch of long practice.

“It was a mite serious fight right there at the beginning,” Cole said, “seeing as how my partner ran off and left me.”

“I did
not!
Shy Boy got spooked having another horse slapping his side at every step, that’s all.”

Cole turned and grinned at her as he helped tie the man onto his horse, since the rustler obviously couldn’t ride, although he was coming around.

“Best to get your horse good broke, then, before you go out gunning for trouble, ma’am.”

Monte and Frank laughed with them, everyone needing the relief.

“You can put that hogshooter up now,” Cole said to Aurora. “Reckon it’d be safer for us if you’d holster it.”

He told Monte and Frank about her missing her target, and they immediately started the inevitable teasing.

She had shot a man and she had meant to do it, although she’d hit the wrong one. It was a strange feeling. But they would’ve shot her if they hadn’t been ordered to take her alive. They had been stealing her cattle with no compunction at all.

Yet the groans of the man she had wounded made her feel terrible.

Gathering the rustlers and their horses, they all started back toward the scene of Cole’s battle. Abruptly, he changed directions.

“Let’s head for the herd,” he said. “Those two aren’t going anywhere, and we need to let the trail boss here give out the orders about getting her stolen cows back.”

Aurora shot him a grateful look. He was reading her mind again.

“I wanta see that low-down Skeeter with his hands tied, too,” one of the rustlers said. “That skunk is guiltier than we are, since we don’t even know you, ma’am.”

Monte jerked around in the saddle and sent a questioning look at Cole, who answered with a quick nod.

“They mentioned him first thing,” he said. “Reckon he’s in on it.”

Monte and Frank both looked quickly away, embarrassed to hear such a thing about a member of their crew.

“Surely not,” Frank drawled in protest.

“Looks bad for him,” Cole said.

“I never done such a thing as hanging a compadre of mine,” Frank said.

Aurora’s heart stopped and then sank. She couldn’t imagine hanging anyone, especially not Skeeter.

“We won’t hang them,” she blurted. “I … I want them to stand trial.”

Cole looked at her with disbelief.

“You can’t spare men from the herd to take them to the nearest law, wherever that is …”

“I have to,” she said, shocked to think that the fate of these outlaws, their very lives, in fact, rested completely in her hands.

She tried to think.

“Gates isn’t here. Are you going to let him off scot-free?”

“No. I’ll kill him the next time he crosses my path.”

“But what if he doesn’t? I can’t hold the herd here while you ride back to Pueblo City to find him, and I can’t go on without you.”

She couldn’t break down, not now, not here, but her voice trembled with emotion. Cole heard it, too.

“Sure you can,” he said, teasing her with his irresistible grin.

The message in his dark eyes was plain: Buck up. You’re doing fine so far. You can get through this.

It made her feel stronger, strong enough to steady her voice and explain herself.

“If there’s a trial, the truth will come out about Gates, and maybe he’ll be arrested, too.”

“Nobody’ll believe these waddies against upstanding
citizen Gates,” Cole said with a gesture of disgust.

“I’m thinkin’ they will,” said one of the rustlers, the one whose horse Cole was now leading. “I know plenty on Gates, and I aim to tell it all t’ try t’ save my own skin.”

“I’m with you, Petey,” said the other fully conscious one. “I’ve worked for the son of a buck for a lot of years.”

“Always as a brand artist?” Cole said.

“No. Everything from salting gold mines to stolen horses sold under a false bill of sale.”

“There might be some proof on paper of some of that,” Cole said, “but Gates is smart, and he’s had a lot of practice at rubbing out his backtrail.”

They fell into their own thoughts as they picked up the pace. Aurora’s heart grew heavier still with dread as soon as the wagons came in sight. She hated so much to confront Skeeter, yet she had to know why he would betray her after all their years of friendship. The very thought made her want to cry.

Cookie had built a fire and had coffee ready.

“Sounded like a war out there,” he said, looking Aurora over with sharp concern in his eyes. “You ain’t hurt?”

“Only my feelings,” she said. “Where’s Skeeter?”

The same embarrassment as Frank’s and Monte’s passed over the old man’s face. He turned away.

“I reckoned we’d need stout coffee and boilin’ water, both,” he said.

“You were right,” she said. “Where’s Skeeter?”

“Skeeter’s gone. Skedaddled.”