“It sounds like you have a lot of respect for the man.”
“I do. I’d damn sure hate to have him for an enemy.”
From inside the house, they heard the sounds of Sandi’s giggling. She was entertaining her young man this evening, as
she did almost every evening. The Moab Kid was fast becoming
a fixture around the place.
Cord and Alice sat quietly, smiling as they both recalled their own courting days.
Smoke leaned against a corral railing and thought about Sally and the babies. He missed them terribly. One part of him wanted this little war to come to a head so he could go home. But another part of him knew that when it did start, there would be a lot of people who would never go home ... except for six feet of earth. And he might well be one of them.
Charlie Starr walked up and the men stood in silence for a moment, enjoying the peaceful evening. Charlie was the first to break the silence.
“I’d like to have seen that fight ’tween Cord and Jason.”
Smoke smiled, then the smile faded. “Jason won’t ever forget it, though. The next time he sees Cord, Cord better have a gun in his hand.”
“True.”
They stood in silence for another few moments. Both men rolled an after-supper cigarette and lit up.
“You were in deep thought when I walked up, Smoke. What’s on your mind?”
“Oh, I had a half dozen thoughts going, Charlie. I was thinking about my wife and our babies; how much I miss them. And, I was thinking just what it’s going to take to blow the lid off this situation here.”
“What don’t concern me as much as when.”
“Tonight.”
Charlie looked at him. “What are you, one of them fortune-tellers?”
“I feel it in my guts, Charlie. And don’t tell me you never jumped out of a saddle or spun and drew on a hunch.”
“Plenty o’ times. Saved my bacon on more than one occasion, too. That’s what you’re feelin’?”
“That’s it.” Smoke dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out with the heel of his boot. “It’s always something you least expect, too.”
“I grant you that for a fact. Like that time down inTaos this here woman crawled up in bed with me. Like to have scared the longhandles right off of me. Wanted me to save her from her husband. Didn’t have a stitch on. I tell you what, that shook me plum down to my toenails.”
“Did you save her?”
Charlie chuckled softly. “Yeah. ’Bout two hours later. I’ve topped off horses that wasn’t as wild as she was.”
Thirteen
Rita had cropped her hair short, hating to do it, but she had always been a tomboy and, besides, it would grow back. She had turned off the lamp and now she listened at her bedroom door for a moment, hearing the low murmur of her mother talking to her father. The front door squeaked open and soon the sound of the porch swing reached her. She picked up her valise and swung out the window, dropping the few feet to the ground. She remained still for a long moment, checking all around her. She knew from watching and planning this that her guards were not on duty after nine o’clock at night. It had never occurred to her father that his daughter would attempt to run away.
Sorry, Pa, Rita thought. But I won’t be treated like a prisoner.
Rita slipped away from the house and past the corral and barn. She almost ran right into a cowboy returning from the outhouse but saw him in time to duck into the shadows. He walked past her, his galluses hanging down past his knees. The door to the bunkhouse opened, flooding a small area with lamplight.
“Shut the damn door, Harry!” a man called.
The door closed, the area once more darkened. But something primeval touched Rita with an invisible warning. She remained where she was, squatting down in her jeans.
“It’s clear,” a man’s voice said.
Rita recognized it as belonging to the shifty-eyed gunslinger called Park. And the men were only a few yards away.
Rita remembered something else, too: she had heard that voice before. The sudden memory was as hot and violent as the act that afternoon. While she was being raped.
Fury and cold hate filled the young woman. Her father’s own men had done that to her. She thought about returning to the house and telling her father. She immediately rejected that. She had no proof. And her father would take one look at her close-cropped hair and lock her up tight, with twenty-four-hour guards.
She touched the short-barreled .44 tucked behind her belt. She was good with it, and wanted very badly to haul it out and start banging.
She fought back that feeling and waited, listening.
“When? ” the other man asked.
“Keep your britches on,” Park said. “Lanny gives the orders around here. But it’ll be soon, he tole me so hisself.”
