“Would you like to have some coffee, Gage?”
“I shore would.”
“Make yourself comfortable on the porch, Gage. I’ll go freshen up and hotten the coffee. I won t be a minute.” “Take your time, Liz. I’ll be here.”
She smiled. Her hair was graying and there were lines in her face. But to the foreman, she was as beautiful as the first day he’d laid eyes on her. “I’m counting on that, Gage.”
Fourteen
Cord heard the riders coming long before he or any of his men could spot them. It was a distant thunder growing louder with each heartbeat.
“Load up the guns, Mother,” he told his wife. “I believe it’s time.” He walked to the dinner bell on the porch and rang it loudly, over and over. Del and four hands came on the run, carrying rifles, pistols belted around them.
“Stand with me on the porch, boys. Mother, get your shotgun and take the upstairs.”
“I’m up here with a rifle, Daddy!” Sandi called.
“Good girl.”
Rifles were loaded to capacity. Pistols checked. A couple of shotguns were loaded up and placed against the porch railing.
Thirty riders came hammering past the gate and up to the picket fence around the ranch house, Hanks in the lead.
“I don’t appreciate this, Dooley,” Cord raised his voice. “You got no call to come highballin’ up to my place.”
“I got plenty of call, Cord. Where’s my daughter?”
Cord blinked. “How the hell do I know? I haven’t seen her in days.”
“You a damn liar, McCorkle!”
Cord unbuckled his gun belt and handed it to Dell. He swung his eyes back to Hanks. “You’ll not come on my property and call me names, Dooley. Git out of that saddle and let’s settle this feud man to man.”
“Goddamn you! I want my daughter!”
“I ain’t got your daughter! But what I will have is your apology for callin’ me a liar.”
“When hell freezes over, McCorkle!”
Two upstairs windows were opened. A shotgun and a rifle poked out. Sandi’s voice said, “The first man to reach for a gun, I kill Lanny Ball.” The sound of a hammer being eared back was very plain.
The sounds of twin hammers on a double-barreled shotgun was just as plain. “And I blow the two Mexicans out of the saddle,” Alice spoke.
Diego and Pablo froze in their saddles.
“Dooley,” Cord’s voice was calm. “Would you like to step down and have some coffee with me? You can inspect the house and the barn and the bunkhouse ... after you tell me your anger overrode your good sense when callin’ me a liar.”
Hanks’s eyes cleared for a moment. Then he looked confused. “I know you ain’t no liar, Cord. But where’d she go?” There was a pleading note in the man’s voice.
“I don’t know, Dooley. I didn’t even know she was gone.”
But the moment was gone, and Jason Bright and Lanny Ball and most of the others knew it. There would be no gunfire this day.
“The Box T,” Dooley said. “Liz wasn’t lyin’.”
“Dooley,” Cord said, “You go over there a-smokin‘, and if she is there, she’s liable to catch a bullet. ’Cause Smoke Jensen and them others are gonna start throwin’ lead just as soon you come into range.”
“She’s my daughter, dammit, Cord!” Some of the madness reappeared.
“She’s also a grown woman,” Alice called from the second floor.
Hanks slumped in his saddle. The fire had left him ... for the moment. “She don’t want my hearth and home, she can stay gone. I don’t have no daughter no more.” He looked at Cord. “It ain’t over, Cord. Not between us. The time just ain’t right. There’ll be another day.”
“Why, Dooley? Tell me that. Your spread is just as big as mine. I made peace with Fae Jensen. She ain’t botherin’ nobody. Let’s us bury the hatchet and be friends. Then you can fire these gunslicks and we can get on with livin’.”
Dooley shook his head. “Too late, Cord. It’s just too late.” He wheeled his horse and rode off, the gunnies following.
“Did you see his eyes, Boss?” Willie asked. “The man is plumb loco.”
“I’m afraid you’re right, Willie. Question is, when will it take control of him ... or rather, when will he lose control?”
“One thing for certain, Boss,” Del said. “When he does go total nuts, we’re all going to be right smack dab in the big fat middle of it.”
“Something is rotten,” Cord spoke softly. “Something is wrong with this whole setup.”
“Riders coming, Boss,” Fitz said.
