Montana Kerr saw the rider first, and jerked his head at him. “Who the hell is that?”
Hull rode up a little, peering under his pulled-down hat brim. “Looks like Dan Taggart. Headed for the Lazy K, I reckon.”
“He's seen us.”
“Yeah.” Montana's voice was flat. “I never liked him anyway.”
Taggart's route intersected theirs within two miles. He glanced from one to the other, and his heart began to pound. He had never seen Rawhide riders on this range before. Something in their eyes warned him, but Dan Taggart was not the man to back up, and even had he been, he would not have had a chance.
“Howdy, boys.” His eyes shifted from one to the other. Their faces were all grim, hostile. Some sixth sense told him what was coming. “What's up?”
“Your number,” Hull said.
“Huh?” Taggart knew he was no match for these men. If he could get some cover, with his rifle, he mightâ¦but there was no chance of that. It was here and now. “You boys off your range, ain't you?”
“This is all our range,” Salter said harshly. “Startin' t'day.”
“I reckon other folks'll disagree,” Taggart said. “Tex Dowd for instance.”
“Dowd!” Salter spat the word. “I reckon I know him. I know him from Missouri, and I'd like t'hang his hide on a fence!”
Taggart shrugged. “Your business,” he told them. “You boys go your way, an' I'll go mine. I reckon I'll be ridin' on.”
He had his hand in his lap, only inches from his gun, but he knew Montana Kerr, knew the man was a killer, and knew that even leaving the others out, he wouldn't have a chance. He started his horse and rode on. For a moment, he thought he would get away with it. Then Kerr yelled at him.
Dan Taggart turned in his saddle and Kerr's hand flashed with incredible speed. Taggart grabbed for his gun, but two slugs hit him and he went down, hitting the ground in a heap, and dead before he hit it.
All three men emptied their guns into his body. “That'll be a lesson to 'em!” Salter's face was vicious as he spoke. “No use to botch the job like we did on McInnis.”
They swung wide and headed around the Lazy K, driving cattle ahead of them.
Behind them Dan Taggart lay sprawled in the thin prairie grass, his shirt darkly stained with blood, and the grass beneath him red. His gun was still in its worn holster.
His horse, after running away when Taggart's body fell from it, watched the three riders trot their horses from the scene of the killing. Curious, and lonely without its master, the cow horse walked back.
Taggart lay on the ground and the horse drew nearer. At the smell of blood, it shied violently, rolling its eyes, but impelled by a curiosity greater than its sense of danger, moved closer. The smell of blood was too much for it, and jerking its head away, it trotted off a little distance.
On the crest of a rise it stopped briefly, looking back. Then, turning away, it trotted toward home, pausing from time to time to crop a mouthful of grass.
CHAPTER 6
R
EMY KASTELLE SAT on the cowhide-covered settee in the great, high-ceilinged living room of the Lazy K ranch house. The room as always was cool and still, and for this very reason she had always loved it. There was something of a cathedral hush in the great room, and the longer she lived in the house, the more she understood why her father had built the room so large.
Kastelle had put his book aside and was idly riffling a deck of cards through his fingers. He had never cared for his onetime profession, and had no longing to return to it. Yet his life had taught him the uncertainty of things if no more, and he felt the necessity of retaining all his old skill.
The silence in the big room was unbroken save for the ripple and snap of the cards. Kastelle shuffled the deck quickly, ran his thumb over the edges, and in a few rapid, easy movements, all apparently part of his shuffling, he had selected the proper cards and run up a couple of good hands.
He in-jogged the top card, took off the bottom and shuffled off, then, locating the break with a finger, he shuffled off again and with a neat throw had his stack on top. Then he cut the deck, shifted the cut back, and dealt the hands, three fives showing up in his imaginary opponent's hand, three jacks in his own.
From time to time he glanced at Remy, but said nothing. Her beauty always came to him with something of a shock. The fact that he had seen her grow from a long-legged, coltish girl, who lived only to ride, into a beautiful woman did nothing to detract from her beauty. Her mother had been lovely, and his own mother had been a beautiful woman, but neither of them could compare to the vivid loveliness that was his daughter.
He had never worried about her. Growing up beside him she had grown up singularly independent, choosing her own way always, and if guided by him, the guiding was so slight that neither of them were ever conscious of it.
Their relationship had always been more than that of father and daughter. They understood each other as people. She knew her father's pride in his appearance, his love of horses, his sensitive response to beauty. She knew what his life had been before he bought the first ranch back in Texas. She had never been ashamed that her father was a professional gambler. She knew what had led to it, and knew how he felt.
The war with Mexico had ended, and Kastelle, a major in the cavalry, had found himself discharged in a foreign country with no prospects except an agile mind and a willingness to embrace the future. He had no possessions other than the horse he rode and the clothes he wore. Gold had recently been discovered in the foothills of the California Sierras, and so like hundreds of other veterans he sold his horse and bought passage on a windjammer headed to San Francisco.
Within months the town was swarming with sailors, treasure seekers, merchants, mining speculators, and revolution plotters from Latin America. Many of them had money. Kastelle, from then on known as Frenchy, became a habitué of the cafés and gambling houses.
A skillful horseman and an excellent shot, he possessed only one other skill. He knew how to handle cards. Swiftly, in the months that followed, he learned more by applying his skill. For a professional gambler he possessed perfect equipment. Cold nerve, an unreadable face, skillful fingers, and a shy, scholarly manner that was deceptive. Best of all, he possessed no gambling instinct. He played cards to win.
A few years before the nation tore itself apart with the war against the Confederate States, Frenchy was briefly married. An outbreak of cholera carried off his young wife, along with thousands of others, and left him with a baby daughter to care for.
With no other attachments in his life, he was with Remy much of the time. They talked a lot, and he made no attempt to spare her the details of his career. He told her of the men and women he met, sketching them coldly with words as an artist might with a brush. It was not long until all these people lived and breathed for her.
Remy's conception of what was right and wrong, or when men and women were at their best and worst, came entirely from these accounts of her father's. His instinct for people was almost infallible, and she acquired much of it, growing up with a precocious knowledge of the world and the facts of life such as few children ever have.
No matter what her troubles, she always turned to him, and she had never found him lacking in understanding. He rarely reproved her. A suggestion from him, or his unspoken approval or disapproval, was all she needed. Gradually, as she grew older, she came more and more to handle her own problems.
On this day, Kastelle sensed that something was troubling her. Remy was restless, uneasy. Several times he thought he detected tears in her eyes, but he was not certain.
Remy had attracted men to her from the time she was fourteen. She was accustomed to their interest, and she knew how to handle them. The men she met had rarely attracted or interested her. Dowd seemed like an uncle or a friend, and it wasn't until she met Pierce Logan that love and marriage entered her mind.
Tall, handsome, and an interesting conversationalist, he had gone riding with her several times, and she had entertained him at home a bit more. Occasionally, when in town, she had eaten with him at Ma Boyle's. He was exciting and fascinating, but she had never discussed him with her father, nor he with her. Always, she had been a little hesitant about bringing the matter up.
Then had come the morning she walked into Ma Boyle's and asked about the black stallion. She had lifted her eyes and found herself looking at Finn Mahone.
She never forgot that moment. She remembered how imperiously she had swept into the room, her riding crop in her hand, so filled with the picture of that magnificent black stallion that she could think of nothing else.
His calm assurance nettled her, and she was actually pleased when she thought Leibman would whip him. Only Dowd had as much assurance as that, and knowing Dowd's abilities, she had never been put off by his manner.
The fight in the street, the ride across those awful slides, and the night in the cabin, all had served to increase her interest. Carried away by the excitement of the ride across the slate, and by the necessity for getting somewhere, Remy had not fully realized that she was trapped, that she must stay alone in the cabin with him.
She was not too disturbed by it. She carried a .41 derringer that her father had given her, and would not have hesitated to use it. She fully expected to have to warn him away, and then he hadn't even come near her door. She had never decided whether she was pleased or angry about that.
Texas Dowd's disclosure of his reason for hating Mahone shocked her. She wanted to know if the picture of the beautiful woman that she had seen in Finn's bedroom had been Dowd's sister, but his dour and forbidding reaction denied any possibility of further talk.
His statement seemed utterly at variance with every conception she had formed of the character of Finn Mahone. Murder of any kind seemed beyond him, and murder of a woman was unthinkable. Killing, yes. Childhood familiarity with war and sudden death allowed her to accept that. To kill in defense was one thing, however; murder was another. Yet the statement had been made, and there was something in the flat finality of it that had her believing, even while she refused to admit to herself that it was true.
Staring out the door where the shadow of the porch cut a sharp line across the brightness of the morning, Remy tried to analyze her feelings for Finn, and could find no answer. She was nineteen, a young lady by all the standards of her time, and her own mother had been married well before that age. Yet Remy had had no serious romantic dealings with boys or men. The idea of love, while always in her mind, had never become quite real to her.
Kastelle riffled his cards and waited. Sensitive to all the nuances of Remy's feelings, he knew she was going to talk to him, that she was troubled. It was the first time in almost two years that she had come to him with a problem, and the interval made the silence harder to break.
She picked up a book, then put it down. She got up and crossed to the fireplace and idly toed a stick back off the hearthstone. She looked out the door again, then back to him. “Did Dowd ever tell you about his sister being murdered?”
Kastelle nodded. “Why, yes, he did. It was a long time ago.”
“Tell me about it.”
He shrugged and put the cards aside. “There is very little I can tell you. Louisiana was in bad shape right then; the whole South was in a turmoil. Carpet-baggers were coming in, the freed slaves were wandering about, uncertain of what to do, and there were renegade soldiers from both armies on the loose.
“Riots and outbreaks were common in New Orleans, houses were burned on plantations, and there was a lot of looting going on. More than one man decided it was a good chance to get rich, and they weren't all carpetbaggers by a long shot. Renegade southerners were just as bad in many cases.
“Dowd was living with his sister, who was about as old as you are now, on a farm just out of New Orleans. It had belonged to his uncle, and wasn't a large place, at all.
“It was on a bayou, and was quite lovely. He didn't tell me much about it, but it seems there was a friend living there with him, a chap he had met in Mexico right before the war. They had both fought in revolutions down there, and had become friends.
“Dowd went to New Orleans on business, and while he was gone one of those riots broke out, and he was overdue in getting home. When he did get back, his sister had been murdered. From what he said it was pretty ugly.
“He found a button in her hand that had come off a coat this friend was wearing, and the friend was nowhere around. The house had been thoroughly looted. Three men who lived nearby swore they saw the friend riding away on a horse, and he was, they said, bloody as could be.
“Dowd started after his friend, and swore he would kill him on sight. The chase followed clear to Mexico, and Dowd lost him there, was nearly killed by some old enemies, and returned to Texas. That was when I met him.”
“He told me the friend was Finn Mahone,” she said.
Kastelle looked at her quickly. Her eyes were wide and she was staring out the door.
So that was it! He had noticed how different Remy had been acting of late, and had wondered about it. He recalled, then, how Remy had stood up for Mahone at the Cattleman's meeting.
“I didn't know.” Remy had grown up, he realized that with a pang. He had known she would, and had known that when she did, she would fall in love. Now it had to be with this manâ¦a murderer.
“You've met Mahone?”
“Yes.” Without taking her eyes from the door, she told all that had transpired. He listened attentively, and realized when she had finished that his pipe had gone out. He refilled and lit it.
Kastelle stared at the floor. He never knew what to say at a time like this because there simply wasn't anything he could say. He raised his eyes to look at Remy, and found she was gone. She had walked out of the room and he had not noticed.