Authors: Robert J. Randisi
“Jubal!” Evan shouted, and tossed his brother a rifle. Jubal caught the weapon and covered the sheriff while he removed the
man’s gun and tucked it into his belt.
“Watt, tell your deputy to drop his gun. He’s about to get himself killed,” Jubal said.
“Drop the gun, Willie.”
“But sheriff—”
“Drop it, damn you!”
Reluctantly the deputy slid his gun from his holster and dropped it.
“Kick it under the scaffold,” Jubal instructed, and the man did so.
“If there are any heroes in the crowd,” Sam called out, “I’d advise you to think twice.”
Sam turned Erin around to face him and kissed her fully on the mouth. He held her tightly to him, her breasts flattened against
his chest. Startled, she was just beginning to return the kiss when he broke away.
“Ma’am, it’s been a pleasure.”
Jubal kept the crowd covered while Evan brought Sam’s horse closer to the hotel. Sam stepped over the railing and dropped
down into his saddle. That done, he covered the crowd with Evan while Jubal descended from the scaffold and mounted up.
“Let’s go,” Sam said, and the McCall brothers spurred their horses into a full gallop before someone decided to go ahead and
play hero.
They rode hard for several hours and then stopped and checked their back trail. Even a hastily formed posse would have been
left far behind, and they took a moment to catch their breaths and rest their horses.
“Not that I ain’t glad to see you fellas,” Jubal said, “but just how did you manage to ride into Prosper right on time?”
“We were looking for you,” Evan said.
“When we heard that some young fool was about to get himself hanged,” Sam chimed in, “we figured it had to be you.”
“Well, thanks…I think,” Jubal said. “Now maybe you can tell me why were you lookin’ for me. Time for a family reunion
all of a sudden?”
“Sort of,” Sam said, and handed Jubal the telegram. Sam and Evan waited silently while their younger brother read the news.
“What the hell—” Jubal said, looking up at both of them.
“That’s what we intend to find out,” Sam said. “Are you with us, little brother?”
“You know I am, Sam,” Jubal said, handing the telegram back. “We’re all gonna be wanted in Wyoming after this, you know. I
think old Seth Folk was killed when he fell off that balcony.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Sam said, “but that’s something we can worry about after we find out what happened in Vengeance Creek.
Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Jubal said, and they both looked at Evan.
“Well,” Evan McCall said to his brothers, “sitting here isn’t getting it done, is it?”
Dude Miller stared out the front window of his store at the dusty main street of Vengeance Creek, Texas. It had been two months
since he had sent all those telegrams, hoping that one of them would find their way into the hands of Sam McCall. Each day
Dude spent a few hours watching the street, waiting for the tall figure of McCall to ride down Main Street, with or without
his brothers. Dude had the feeling that if Sam McCall did come back to Vengeance Creek, it would definitely be in the company
of his two brothers, Evan and Jubal.
Although the McCall boys were spread far and wide through the west—and sometimes the east—dude Miller knew that their sense
of family would remain intact. Up until their deaths Joshua McCall and his wife remained proud of all three of their sons,
speaking of them often to anyone who would listen.
The boys all decided to travel, led by the exploits of older brother Sam. Soon after Sam left Vengeance Creek, Evan followed,
to make his own name. Later, when he was old enough, Jubal followed in the footsteps of his brothers—or tried to. Jubal was
not the man Sam or Evan was; he had spent too much time in their shadows, trying to be like them, to develop his own personality.
Perhaps by this time he had.
Dude Miller’d had several motives for sending the telegrams. For one, he did not believe that the real solution to the deaths
of the McCalls had been found. Second, he was curious about what had become of the McCall boys.
Sam, of course, had become the stuff of legend, and Dude wondered just how much of it was true. He had heard less of Evan
and nothing of Jubal over the years. He had known them all as boys, and he’d known none of them as men—and he wanted to.
Miller’s business was on the order of a general store, except that he carried a wider array of goods. For that reason he was
often interrupted from his reverie about the McCalls to service a customer. The time he spent looking out the window, however,
did
eventually add up to hours.
Looking out the window now he saw Lincoln Burkett step from the bank. Over the past nine months Burkett had become the most
powerful man in Vengeance Creek. Just before the deaths of the McCalls he had purchased Joshua McCall’s ranch. Knowing how
much it meant to the McCalls to keep the ranch so that their sons would have a home to come back to, Dude Miller had been
suspicious of the sale ever since. He had been unable, however, to wrest the truth from Joshua McCall about the reason for
the sale. A month later, the McCalls were dead, under what Miller considered suspicious circumstances. The powers that were
in Vengeance Creek, however, led by Lincoln Burkett, had come to their decision fairly quickly, and there had been no investigation
into the matter.
That would change when Sam and his brothers arrived.
And they would arrive.
Eventually.
Lincoln Burkett stepped from the bank and took a moment to slip his wallet into his jacket pocket. As he did so he looked
across the street and saw Dude Miller watching him from the window of his store. Burkett frowned, staring back at the man,
but that did not deter Miller, who stared back boldly.
Dude Miller was one of the few people in VengeanceCreek who resisted what Lincoln Burkett could do for this town. The man
didn’t realize that the more powerful Burkett became, the more he could do for the town, and the faster the town would grow.
Burkett knew that Miller was one of those people who worried about how to get there, while Lincoln Burkett merely worried
about getting there, period. That was why Dude Miller would always be a storekeeper, and why Lincoln Burkett would eventually
become one of the most powerful people in Texas—and maybe in the whole damned country.
Burkett stepped down from the boardwalk in front of the bank and started walking toward the saloon, where he was to meet his
son, John.
Lincoln Burkett was a big man, still robust enough at sixty-three to give the town whores a ride or two. It was to his everlasting
consternation that his twenty-two-year-old son seemed to be most interested in those same whores than in following in his
father’s wake.
John Burkett was Lincoln Burkett’s only child, a child who came along late in life to Burkett and his wife. The birth had
been very hard on the forty-year-old Virginia Burkett. She had survived it, but had never been the same after it, and eventually
died when the boy was four. At that time the Burketts had a ranch in the Dakotas, and Lincoln had too much to do building
his empire to spend much time with his son. The task of raising the boy had fallen to a governess, and too late Burkett realized
his error. A boy raised solely by a woman would have a woman’s values. When the boy was fourteen Burkett dismissed the governess
and took charge of the boy himself. Unfortunately, in his efforts to make up for his earlier error, he rode the boy too hard,
and ended up with a defiant young man who resisted his father’s ideas of what constituted manhood.
The Burketts eventually were forced by circumstances to leave the Dakotas’through no fault of their own, of course—and had
come to Texas. Here, Burkett hoped to build himself a more lasting empire. He also hoped that his son, in this new environment,
would come around and realize where his future lay.
So far, all the boy was interested in was what lay between the thighs of the whores in the town cathouse.
Of late, though, Burkett had decided that he could reverse that by buying the cathouse, and that was the deal he had just
completed in the bank.
Of course, the madame, Louise Simon, had resisted his offers to buy, but he had finally made her an offer she found impossible
to resist: sell, or be burned out.
Burkett magnanimously allowed the woman to retain ten percent of the business, and was also allowing her to continue to run
it, on the condition that she turn John Burkett away each time he tried to make use of the establishment.
To aide her in this he had hired two bouncers who ostensibly worked for Louise, keeping her girls safe.
Lincoln Burkett smiled. He wished he could be on hand the first time young John met those bouncers.
That night Dude Miller locked up early and walked to the home of his friend Ed Collins. There was a bite in the air and he
pulled the collar of his topcoat close around his neck.
Miller and Collins were trying to find more people to oppose Lincoln Burkett and his attempt to own everything he could see.
They had some supporters, but not enough to make a difference. Burkett seemed to have won over the people who counted in Vengeance
Creek, including the mayor and the president of the bank. Three months ago a new sheriff had been appointed, and it wasthe
opinion of both Miller and Collins that the man had been handpicked by Lincoln Burkett.
When Ed Collins admitted Dude Miller to his house he offered his friend a drink, and Miller accepted.
“Have you had dinner?” Collins asked.
“Serena is waiting dinner for me, I’m sure.”
“She’s a good girl, your daughter,” Collins said, handing Miller a glass of sherry. “I wish Ada and I had been able to have
children.”
Miller and Collins were roughly the same age, early sixties, and had been widowed within the past ten years. Both men sorely
missed their wives, but Miller had his daughter, Serena, to keep him company. At twenty-eight she was the spitting image of
her mother, a true beauty. Collins envied Miller unabashedly, and Miller felt sorry for Collins. All he had was his gunsmith
shop, and he spent as much time there as possible.
Sitting together on the sofa Collins asked, “So, how do we stand?”
“As we did yesterday, last week, and last month,” Miller said.
“Then Burkett will go on,” Collins said, “and absorb everything around him, until he owns everything…and there’s nothing
we can do about it.”
“I’ve done something about it, don’t forget.”
Collins made a face.
“Those damned telegrams. Do you really expect Sam McCall to ride in here to the rescue?”
“I expect Sam and his brothers to ride in here to find out what happened to their parents,” Miller said.
“Those boys have long ago forgotten they even had parents.” Collins’ distaste for such sons was plain in his voice.
“You’re wrong, Ed,” Miller said. “They’ll be here, all right.”
“It’s been months…”
“Two months,” Miller said, “but don’t forget, Sam would have to find both Evan and Jubal and then they’d all have to find
their way back here. They’ll be here, don’t you worry.”
“Come on, Dude,” Collins said, “give it up. What makes you so sure they’ll come?”
“Serena.”
“What? What about Serena?”
“She says that no child could let the death of their parents go uninvestigated,” Miller said. “She says the bond between child
and parent is too strong, too deep to ignore even if the child wanted to—in this case,
three
children.”
“That may be,” Collins said, “but the McCall boys are not children any longer, Dude—especially Sam.”
“Serena says they’ll be here,” Miller said, “and I believe her.”
“Well,” Ed Collins said, grudgingly, “both you and she would know more about this subject than I would, wouldn’t you?”
Dude Miller laid his empty glass aside and stood up. His friend was about to descend into a well of self pity, and he had
no desire to stay and watch.
“I’ve got to get home to Serena, Ed,” Miller said. “We’ll talk again.”
“Sure,” Collins said, “when the McCall boys get here.”
“Goodnight, Ed.”
Dude Miller left the Collins house. Even though he knew Ed Collins was inside, he felt as if he were leaving an empty house
behind.
He wondered how it must feel from the inside.
As Dude Miller entered the wood-frame, two-story house he shared with his daughter Serena his nostrils Texas Iron were assailed—no,
rewarded
—With the smells of Serena’s wonderful cooking. If she had succeeded in replacing her dead mother in no other way, Serena
was almost as fine a cook as her mother was.
Actually, Miller wished that Serena would stop trying to replace her mother. At twenty-eight she was much too old to be living
at home with her father. True, at that age she was considered something of an old maid in Vengeance Creek, but to Miller she
was still a beautiful young woman who should be married and giving him grandchildren.
“Father?” Her voice came from the kitchen.
“It’s me,” Miller said, removing his top coat and hanging it on a wall rack that he had built.
Serena came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. A tall woman, she needed only to lift her chin slightly to kiss
her father, who was six feet tall. Along with being tall she was slender, almost rangy. To his prejudiced father’s eye she
was a beauty, with hair the color of corn, smooth, unblemished skin, naturally rosy lips and very white, even teeth. He was
glad that he made enough money at the store that she didn’t have to work unless she wanted to, and then it was not work that
would weather her skins or her hands, or give her a weary look. Her mother, God rest her, as beautiful as she was, had to
work hard almost all her life, and paid for it. When she died she was tired looking, and slightly stooped; her hair had lost
its natural luster and her flesh its resiliency. A finer woman had never lived, though, and Miller loved her with all his
heart to the day she died—and more that day than ever before.
“What smells so wonderful?”
“You should be able to tell,” she said, smiling. “It’s your favorite.”
“Yes,” he said, sniffing the air, “it is’meat loaf!”
“It’s ready,” she said. “Just go upstairs and clean up and I’ll put dinner on the table.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.”
“You should have.”
“I knew you’d be home soon. Go and clean up.”
“All right, all right,” he said. “Next you’ll want to check behind my ears.”
“I’m not trying to be your mother.”
“No,” he said, “you’re trying to be yours.”
Her smile disappeared and she said, “Let’s not go through that again, please?”
“You’re right,” he said, raising his hands in a gesture of supplication. “I’m sorry. I’ll wash up.”
While cleaning up he chided himself for the remark. They had had many hours of arguments over her staying to live with him,
and he should have known by this time that further argument was futile. Just like her mother, Serena was doggedly stubborn
when she set her mind to something.
At sixty-three Miller felt he still had many years on this earth. He despaired at the thought of Serena staying with him for
every one of them. Once he was gone she’d be in her late forties or early fifties, and it would be she who was alone. The
thought of his beautiful daughter wasting her youth and then living the final thirty or forty years of her life alone made
him shake his head. If only he could think of a convincing argument.
If only she’d fall in love…and all right, old man, he told himself, that’s another reason you want the McCall boys to
come home. None of them would remember Serena as anything but a little girl. Maybe when they met her now, all grown up, she’d
fall in love with one of them. Lord knew they were strong men and would certainly not beunattractive at this point in their
lives. Sam had to be in his early forties, Evan in his late thirties. Jubal, the youngest, would only be several years younger
than Serena; it was certainly not an insurmountable age difference.
Miller could imagine the kind of grandchildren a union between Serena and Sam McCall would produce.
“Father,” her voice called from the kitchen. “Dinner is on the table.”
“I’m coming,” he called out.
Drying his hands, he thought,
and so are the McCall
boys…I hope.
The taste of the steel gun barrel frightened him, but he left it there, in his mouth, lying on his tongue. His finger tightened
on the trigger, and even as it did he knew he would not have the nerve to give it the last, final twitch that would fire the
gun, ending his life.