Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (50 page)

      
Krueger fixed Rider with a measuring gaze and said icily, “What is the meaning of this? Surely you are not so stupid, my friend, as to throw your lot in with this woman?”

      
“Looks that way, don't it, Baron?” Rider smiled coldly. Damn the uppity foreigner! He wished he could stay and watch the show. With that he left, whistling as he closed the door behind him. Yes, it seemed as if Lola's plan was coming off without a hitch. Quickly he descended the back stairs and waited for the shot that would be his signal to head for the sheriff's office.

      
“Now, my dear baron, you were too greedy to marry a penniless fortune hunter—you wanted Circle S and that bitch. Well, you are going to lose.” Lola's voice was almost hysterical, yet the gun never wavered.

      
Krueger was sweating profusely. Great rivers of sour water ran down his arms and back. Nevertheless, he kept the implacable facade in place, staring at the venomous woman holding the pistol. “You cannot succeed with this amateurish plan; and even if you did, what would you possibly gain by it—nothing more than seeing your beautiful young rival hanged. Give this up,
Liebchen
.”

      
The offhand reference to her age and the empty endearment were all she needed to set her off. She heard Carrie begin to stir, and she fired point blank, twice. “Good-bye, Baron von Krueger. Too bad such an illustrious family name has to die out. But then, I plan to live a long time....”

      
Carrie felt nauseous. What had she eaten for breakfast? God, could she be pregnant again? The dim light in the room hurt her eyes, and everything was spinning. Two loud crashes jarred her into full consciousness. She sat up with a start, but then began to black out again and fell back against the pillows. Something heavy and cold was thrust against her side. She rolled over and tried once more to clear her head. It was chilly in this place. What place? Where was she?

      
Slowly Carrie sat up and looked around, focusing her eyes on a strange, expensively furnished room. She was clad only in a thin chemise and pantalets, shivering with cold. Then she saw the large crumpled mound of Krueger's body, seeping its lifeblood into the thick, dark-blue carpet. She screamed and collapsed once more in a sickeningly dizzy wave.

* * * *

      
The cell was cold and filthy, sour with the stench of tobacco and urine. Carrie huddled against the hard wooden bench on one wall, fearful of even touching the vermin-infested cot across the floor. Still disoriented and in shock, she reviewed the nightmarish day that was only now coming to a close.

      
After Sheriff Woods locked her up, she had pleaded for him to send word of this monstrous conspiracy to the ranch, but he only gave an ugly laugh and told her the news about her whoring and murdering would travel fast enough! Kyle was out on the eastern range for several days, keeping careful tabs on the rustling that had erupted recently. Hawk had ridden off three days earlier on some unnamed mission of his own. Lord only knew when he would return. Feliz would be frantic by now, and Perry—she almost broke down thinking of her son.
Please come home, Hawk. Please.

      
What had happened? Over and over she tried to make sense of the bizarre series of events beginning with Lola's obviously forged note that entrapped her at Grummond's dress shop. Lola must have killed Karl with her gun, but, of course, the note had vanished and no one believed her. She rubbed her head in sick disbelief, realizing the whole town had already tried her and found her guilty.

      
As if on cue, the embodiment of every hostile hypocrite in Miles City was ushered into the rear of the jail by the sheriff. Mathilda Thorndyke swished stiffly to the bars of Carrie's cell and glared in. “Well, I had to see you get your comeuppance, you filthy harlot! Not bad enough you drive a fine man like Mr. Noah to his death, now you go and kill Baron von Krueger in cold blood. Luring a man to a hotel room for a cheap tryst. Your kind should stick to trash like that half-breed!” Her face was contorted in purplish rage. Even her present triumph was insufficient to overcome the insidious cancer of jealousy. She had wanted to be Mrs. Sinclair, to own Circle S. Now she never would.

      
Holding her chin high and spine stiffly erect, Carrie stood and walked over to the small window on the opposite wall, turning her back on the raving old crone.

      
“Don't you try to ignore me, missy! Sheriff told me, judge's coming tomorrow. You're gonna hang. Hang for murder! Hang!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

      
It had been a long but worthwhile ride to Helena and back. Hawk pushed hard for home, thinking about the expression on Lola Jameson Krueger's face when he told her the news he had gone to such lengths to secure in the capital. He chuckled. If she was the one behind the potshots at Krueger, this should take the wind out of her sails, and he would bet his best rifle she was guilty as sin. Hopefully he could avert a range war if he could confront Lola and the baron together, making the German see that his real enemy was his conniving sister-in-law, not Circle S and Carrie.

      
Carrie
. Every time he thought of her, he felt the same old ache begin. What should he do? He had asked himself the question a thousand times in the past months, especially since the bitter incident at the lake when he had once more lost himself in her sweet silken flesh. Then after giving in and joining him, she had turned on him like a tigress. She owned Circle S, free and clear. Kyle would run it for her. She didn't need him anymore. He should leave.

      
But he knew he could not. “I won't leave my son. I've lost my mother, my grandfather, Wind Song, all my ties with the only people I loved, the only place I belonged. I won't lose Perry!”

      
Even as he said it to himself, Hawk knew it was only a part of the truth. He loved Carrie too—quicksilver, aloof white woman. Ever since they had washed Perry at the pump that day, he had sensed a warming in her. Now they shared meals and talked of the ranch, joked with Kyle and Feliz, played with their son. If he asked her to marry him, would she turn on him and call him a filthy savage again? Could he bear another rejection? Could he stand to live at Circle S with her day in and day out, wanting her but unable to reach out?

      
“What I need is a good, live-in whore,” he ground out. If only things were that simple.

      
She is your father's wife.
He could still hear Iron Heart's ringing words. He could see the bitter disappointment in the old man's face when Hawk left the village for the last time. The ghosts of the past did not free him any more than his Firehair. He swore, and kicked Redskin into a gallop.

* * * *

      
“Evenín', Sheriff.” Caleb Rider smiled lazily as he sauntered into the small, cluttered office. “I want to see the prisoner.”

      
Sheriff Woods looked dumbly at Rider. What did he want with that dangerous hellion at this late hour? It was after midnight. The woman had killed his boss in cold blood. “Yew ain't gonna try nothin' like shootin' her, are ya?” He looked nervously at the sinister figure of the gunman. As if he'd try to stop Caleb Rider!

      
Rider laughed. “Never think of it, Woods. Believe me, it's the last thing on my mind!”

      
Shrugging, the fat man reached for the cell key and turned his back on Rider to pull the latch to the small cell block. It was a mortal error. With one swift, silent slash, Caleb Rider cut Wood's throat and shoved the body into a corner behind the rusty potbellied stove. He lay heaped on top of the wood pile, no neater than any of the other broken, filthy things that filled the depressing little room.

      
Taking the cell key, Rider slipped into the dark recess beyond the door. When he unlocked the cell, Carrie awakened, rubbing her eyes, trying to see in the dim moonlight filtering in the small window. It was nearly midnight, but she had slept little on the cold, filthy mattress, half sitting up to keep her hair from its putrid covers.

      
“Who is it? Hawk!” The breathless, hopeful quality in her voice infuriated the gunman. He reached over to grab her before she recognized him.

      
Placing one thin, strong hand around her throat, he said, “Wrong, your ladyship. Don't make a sound or I'll snap this pretty, soft little neck. You're coming with me. That'll beat hanging, won't it?” He jeered as he shoved her toward the back door of the jail.

      
“I'd rather take my chances with a rope,” she hissed at him.

      
His grip tightened ominously on her neck and on the arm he held twisted behind her back, but he did nothing more. “Open the door and...” he paused, flicking a wicked-looking blade up to her throat after he had freed her throbbing arm, “if you even think about screaming, you'll be dead meat just like the sheriff back there.” The knife gleamed evilly in the moonlight as he propelled her toward a sturdy brown gelding waiting patiently in the alley.

      
Without warning, he struck her a sharp, hard blow on the back of the head with his gun handle as soon as they reached the horse. When she collapsed silently, he dumped her unceremoniously across the saddle and tied her unconscious form down.

      
“Not as neat as Lola's knockout drops, but it'll serve till I get you where I want you.” He swung up on his roan and pulled the gelding behind him, riding into the darkness.

* * * *

      
Kyle Hunnicut nearly broke his neck getting from Circle S into Miles City that night. When he had arrived home that afternoon he had found Feliz nearly hysterical, saying Carrie had ridden to town with two hands for supplies that morning. The men had brought the loaded wagon back. Carrie had sent them ahead and said she would catch up later. She never arrived. When the men went in search of her, they came back to the ranch with an incredible tale. Carrie was being held by the sheriff for the murder of Karl von Krueger!

      
The ride to town was dangerous as the moon dipped capriciously in and out of dense banks of fall clouds. Several times Kyle lost the road and his horse stumbled in the darkness. He arrived around one o'clock in the morning to find the town asleep. Not knowing where else to begin, he went to Sheriff Woods's office. Maybe the old buzzard slept with his drunks. He must get Carrie out of that hole.

      
When no one answered the knock, the Texan almost headed for the nearest cheap rooming house, thinking it the most likely place to find Bert Woods. Then he saw through the office window that a dim kerosene lantern was flickering on the desk. Woods must be about. He turned the doorknob and opened it, stepping cautiously inside. Gut instinct told him things were not right.

      
The blood from the fat sheriff's throat had begun to congeal in a long, thin river that ran from the woodpile, beneath the desk, and into the center of the filthy plank floor. Few people ever thought there was so much blood in one human body. Kyle knew it was so, and also knew Bertram Woods was quite dead.

      
It took him only three strides to cross the floor-to the cells, desperately afraid of what he would find there. He almost passed out with relief. Thank God, the cell was empty, its door standing ajar! At least someone had taken her alive. But who? Where?

      
Kyle Hunnicut was almost as good a tracker as his young half-breed companion, who had taught him. By the first dim light of dawn he had made some headway because of that skill—and a bit of luck. One of the horses at the rear of the jail had left familiar tracks—the distinctive mark of Caleb Rider's big roan. The Texan knew who had Carrie, but it did little to console him as he trailed them through the night, cursing the fool's errand that had taken Hawk to the capital.

* * * *

      
Hawk was unshaven, dusty and tired, but determined to face down Lola and Krueger before he returned to Circle S. It was about nine o'clock, Lola's late-rising breakfast hour, if he recalled her habits. With any luck the baron might be home as well.

      
As he rode, he speculated about whether Kyle had been able to nail Rider and his cattle-thieving companions yet. Hunnicut had shown him a base camp located in the eastern foothills, only a few days' drive from the Dakota railhead. Neat operation. Hawk hoped they could spring the trap soon. With Rider and Lola gone, perhaps the baron could be made to see reason. He was a lot like Noah, however, and that thought made Hawk's hopes dim. No, it might come to a range war yet, he considered grimly.

      
When he approached the garish rock pile Krueger called a house, Hawk noticed how still everything seemed down at the corrals. No one seemed to be working in midmorning. Odd. As he swung down from Redskin, reflex habit made him place one hand over his Colt. After that punch in his fat gut, the baron would likely not be in a hospitable mood.

      
Looking once more around the eerie, deserted yard, Hawk sprinted up the wide stone steps to the big double doors. The knocker was a gargoyle that Hawk had always thought a particularly appropriate decoration for Karl von Krueger.

      
The horse-faced German maid who answered the door looked at him as if he were dressed in breechclout and full war paint. Her blunt, doughy face grew even more floury and her pale eyes bugged from their sockets. “You! You dare come here, now!” The thickly accented English was emitted in a strangled voice.

      
Impatiently, he shoved her aside and stepped into the vast stone-floored foyer. His booted footsteps echoed on the cold, hard surface as he crossed to the big curving staircase that led to the second floor. A butler was coming down the stairs. Maybe he could raise someone.