Mary Connealy (34 page)

He shrugged and returned to the men lounging in the shade on the east side of the ranch house telling tall tales.

“It don’t suit me none, Clay, to sit back and let the sheriff handle this.” Whitey pulled out his bowie knife and began whittling on a whip handle he was making from cedar branch. “I say we find out where the rest of the gang is holed up and root ’em out. Let’s get this over an’ done.”

“It’s not just the sheriff, Whitey.” Clay pushed his plate aside and sat on the edge of the porch. He stared at the ground between his splayed knees. “The rangers are working on it, too. They’re good men. They know we’re here if needed, and if we go off hunting on our own, we may get in their way. Our job is to protect this ranch and the women. I don’t want to spread ourselves thin and leave this place unguarded.”

Whitey nodded. The smell of cedar cut the smell of Texas dust kicked up by the departed horse.

“A few of us could go.” Adam sat up straight on the porch steps a few feet down from Clay. His every moved reminded Clay of the wicked cuts on his back. “We’d leave plenty of men back here.”

“Reckon I could scout back up in the hills.” Luther smoothed his full, black beard in a motion Clay could remember from his earliest childhood. “I saw what direction those varmints come from.”

Clay knew how good Luther and Buff were on a trail. “Waiting pits me against my own instincts. It doesn’t suit me to sit by and wait while someone else takes care of a threat to my family. But I’ve got other instincts telling me to stay close to Sophie and the girls.”

“It’s a fearful thing to hear a man talkin’ ’bout killin’ a woman the way those polecats were.” Buff shook his head.

“It was the cold-bloodedest thing I’d ever heard,” Clay agreed. “And we know those men we caught weren’t ramrodding this operation.”

He looked from one man to the next. Every one of them got his meaning. If those men came for Sophie once, they would come again. Sure, they’d been after Clay, too, but a man learned to look out for himself. A woman was defenseless.

“I still owe those men,” Adam said. “And I mean to pay ’em back every penny.”

Clay heard the depth of rage in Adam’s simple announcement. He looked sideways at the gaunt, scarred man and felt the echo of his own anger. Adam had lost friends. Clay had lost a brother.

“Right now we’ve got to concentrate on the living, Adam,” Clay said. “We make sure no one else is hurt before we start taking old sins outta their hides.”

Clay saw Adam tamp down hard on his anger. Adam rubbed absently at the bullet wound on his side. “I reckon it don’t matter when.”

Clay felt the same way.

“Hating can eat away at a man.” Luther shifted his weight to get more comfortable. His boots scraped across the porch. “It can warp a man until his family don’t recognize him.”

Clay jerked one shoulder in a guilty shrug. “I’m working on it.”

“I wonder if hatin’s what turned Judd Mason into the monster he is?” Luther asked.

“I know the hunger I got in me to hurt him, hurt him bad, and all those he rides with is a powerful sin.” Clay clenched his hands between his spread knees.

The men sat silently and slowly they relaxed to contemplate hate and revenge and the whereabouts of a dangerous man. All but Adam.

After a long while Adam said, “It’s a powerful sin all right.” Quietly he added, “It won’t be my first.”

With Adam, Luther, and Buff working alongside the other men, Clay expected the cattle to all be brought in closer to the ranch house by the end of the day Monday, with plenty of men left for guard duty.

Sophie had tried to get Adam to spend the day being nursed and coddled, but he wouldn’t spare himself any of the hard labor. Clay marveled at Adam’s knowledge of the ranch and his ideas for its development. It was plain to see that Adam loved this place as if it were his own.

Clay laid the last brand on a stray and told the men he was riding up to the house for a spell.

Sheriff Everett came riding into the ranch later on that afternoon. He rode straight into the barn where Clay was hanging up his C B
AR
branding iron. The man was exhausted and carried more trail dust on his clothes than Clay.

“Howdy, Josiah. You look like you’ve had a hard day of it.”

“I’ve spent more time in the saddle than out of it since Saturday. The men we locked up all told the same story, and we rode straight out to the vigilante camp. They’d hightailed it.”

“As long as those men are running loose, Sophie is in danger. You heard what they said about her knowing too much.” Clay took off his hat, and with a dejected pass of his arm, he wiped a coating of sweat off his forehead. He’d worked up a sweat branding, but this wasn’t hard-work sweat. This was fear.

The sheriff swung down off his buckskin, and Clay walked alongside as the sheriff led his horse to the watering trough.

“That was before we caught these men, though.” Everett’s plodding feet sounded almost as loudly as his horse’s hooves. “Now that we have ’em, Mason has a lot longer list of people who can identify him. There’s no point anymore in comin’ after one little woman. And there’s no way he can buy this ranch now, so there’s no reason to go after you. My gut tells me they’ve started running and they won’t stop. I think they’ve quit the country. The rangers are still on their trail.”

They reached the water trough, and Clay stopped and crossed his arms. “It doesn’t set right with me to stand aside while someone else takes care of my problems.”

The sheriff hung his hat on the horse’s saddle horn and dunked his head in the water with a rough splash at the same time his horse was drinking. Everett scrubbed at his face, then came up dripping wet and brushed both hands over his streaming hair until it was pushed straight back. The water soaked his shirt, but the sheriff sighed with pure pleasure. “You’ve more than made yourself clear. I know you’re holding back because the rangers and I asked you to.”

“That’s not the only reason I’m holding back,” Clay said.

The sheriff asked, “Why else?”

Clay ignored him. He wasn’t about to get into a debate about the hate that ate inside him and how he was trying to battle the surge of pleasure he got when he thought of smashing Mason’s face with his bare hands. “I’m not about to relax my guard just because your instincts tell you Mason is on the run.”

The sheriff shrugged, plunked his hat back on his head, and threw his reins over the buckskin’s neck. “No man ever relaxes much in the West. It just ain’t a country that inspires relaxation.”

Clay had to admit that was true.

The sheriff mounted his horse. “We’re not giving up, Clay. I just thought it’d be neighborly to tell you what’s going on with the investigation.”

“’Preciate it, Josiah. While you’re investigating, you might remember that if Judd Mason killed Cliff two years ago and waited till now to kill the Meads, then he’s a planning man. He’s not a man who’s gonna give up easy.”

The sheriff looked unhappy with that obvious bit of truth. “Nothin’ worse than a patient outlaw.”

“Good luck.” Clay tugged on the brim of his hat.

“I wish I didn’t need it so bad.” Everett rode out of the yard.

Clay had been planning to go to the house, but he didn’t want to go in there and have Sophie start nagging him for details of what the sheriff had said. He was mad enough to tell her everything and not soften his words, even in front of the girls. Instead he spent another hour working around the ranch. By the time he was done with the grueling work, he’d settled down.

Clay didn’t like the fact that Mason had disappeared. They’d have to remain on guard. But the hard work of rounding up strays was over. He and the men would have more time to do just that.

It was time to start proving to his new wife that he was the best husband a woman ever had. Way better than Cliff. He thought she already believed that, but he wanted to make sure.

Smiling for the first time all day, he came in to supper, slung an arm around Sophie’s waist, and gave her a loud smack on the lips. “The cattle are settled in the summer pasture. Tomorrow I start working around the place, repairing and adding here and there. The men will be able to help, too. I hope you didn’t do all the man’s work yourself, Sophie darlin’. You did leave something for me, didn’t you?”

“Clay, you’re filthy.” Sophie slapped at Clay’s chest, but he could tell by her grin that she was pleased with his attention.

“It’s hard work and honest dirt, darlin’. Let me share a little with you.” Clay pulled her closer, but she jumped back, grabbed a ladle off the stove, and waved it threateningly at him, failing to suppress a smile.

The girls started giggling, and maybe for the first time, Clay didn’t mind it at all.

“Have you had a chance to inspect the traps I built, Clay? I don’t want you or any of the men to stumble on them and set them off by accident.”

“I haven’t gotten to your little surprises, darlin’. I’ll add it to my list of things to do tomorrow.” Clay turned away from his wife to wash his face in the basin full of warm water she always had waiting for him. He sighed as he scrubbed his face and hands. He thought of the sheriff dipping his head into the cold tank. Many’s the time he’d done that himself, but he hadn’t considered it today, even though he was as dirty as the sheriff. He’d purely gotten a taste for warm water in a clean basin.

He marveled at the hundred ways a woman made a man’s life better. He dried his face on a towel. “If I’d’ve only known how nice havin’ a wife was, I’d’ve gotten married when I was twelve years old.”

“Well, I would have been ten at the time.” Sophie poked him smartly with the ladle. “You wouldn’t have married me.”

Clay grinned and lunged at her. She didn’t have a chance to get her ladle up. He hoisted her in his arms and swung her around in a circle. “Well, I’m glad I waited then.”

He set her down and held her steady until he was sure she wasn’t dizzy, then he turned on the girls, growled at them, and charged.

They squealed and ran, but they didn’t run out of the room. They just dashed around in circles, colliding with each other. Clay snagged Mandy first, and while he held her and tickled her with his whiskery face, Laura toddled up and latched on to his leg. Being careful not to shake her loose while he dragged her around after the others almost made it a fair fight.

He grabbed Beth when she danced too close, then, with his hands full, Sally jumped on his back. By the time they were done, Clay was flat on the kitchen floor, buried under three sets of petticoats and one soggy diaper.

He remembered his first impression when he’d regained consciousness in that awful shed, that he’d died and he was surrounded by angels. He hadn’t been far from wrong.

Judd Mason pulled up on his black mustang, then wrenched the reins to turn the horse around. “We’re not shaking ’em. Whoever’s on our trail is a bloodhound.”

Eli rode up beside Judd. “It’s rangers, Mr. Mason. I worked up close enough to see their stars with my spyglass. They’re still a few hours behind us, but they’re reading the trail like it was the written word.”

Rangers! Judd had been smart enough in his life to fight shy of Texas Rangers. They were the toughest, most relentless lawmen the West had to offer.

“It’s time to cut our losses, Judd.” Harley reined in his horse to look back in the direction of the men hounding them. “The only way to leave a ranger behind is to leave Texas behind and not come back.”

“I’ve heard of ’em following someone clean across the country, chasin’ after ’em,” one of the gang said gloomily.

“We’re not quittin’,” Judd roared. “I’m not leaving this country without making McClellen sorry he ever tangled with me. And I’m not leaving that woman behind to live on a ranch that she stole clean out from under my feet.”

Harley rode up until his horse pressed against Judd’s mustang. “Let’s ride off a ways and talk this out, Judd,” he said under his breath. “There’s a few things the men don’t need to know.”

Judd wanted to refuse, but he wondered just what Harley knew that he didn’t want to talk about. With a terse nod of his head, Judd wheeled the mustang around, and the two of them rode off a fair piece.

Judd jerked on his horse’s reins viciously and turned to Harley. “This is far enough. Say your piece and let’s get back.”