“One of us should have shot him,” Jardine said, keeping his voice low. “That idiot Lowry and his friends would’ve gotten the blame if that happened.”
“I never got a clear shot at him, Zack, or I might’ve,” Hilliard said. “Those boys from the Devil’s Pitchfork were crowdin’ around him too much.”
Jardine grunted. Boyd, Lowry, and the other two-bit desperadoes from the Devil’s Pitchfork thought they were tough hombres. The people of Flat Rock believed that, too.
They had no idea who the really dangerous men among them were.
“At least we know the rest of the boys did their job and ran off those cattle,” Jardine commented quietly. He had split his forces the previous day, keeping half of his men here in Flat Rock and sending the other half to rustle some cows off the spread south of the settlement.
Jardine had told those men before they left that if they got a chance to ventilate some of the Devil’s Pitchfork hands, not to hesitate. Dead cowboys and rustled cattle would go a long way toward stirring up the whites in the area against the Navajo.
Once those rifles he had hidden here in town were in the hands of the Indians, a shooting war would be inevitable. The hotheads among the Navajo would see to that, and they would find the settlers more than willing to fight.
Then the army would come in to clean out the hostiles, the government would take back the reservation land it had granted to the savages, and Jardine and his partner would be ready to take full advantage of that.
Deeds had already been drawn up, just waiting for the proper developments in Washington. Once they were signed, millions of acres would belong to Zack Jardine ... the King of the Four Corners.
It had a nice ring to it.
Of course, most of those acres were flat, empty, and useless ... but they surrounded areas where cattle could be run, and precious waterholes, and mines producing small but still lucrative quantities of gold, silver, and copper.
Besides, there was talk of running a rail line through here, and if that happened, the so-called worthless land would be worth even more. No land where the railroad wanted to go was truly worthless.
“At least we know the half-breed’s here now,” Braverman said, breaking into Jardine’s grandiose thoughts. “We don’t have to watch the trail for him anymore.”
“It would be better if Joe and Three-Finger had done like they were supposed to,” Jardine snapped. “We could have set a trap that would’ve made sure the meddling bastard was dead by now.”
“We can still kill him,” Hilliard suggested. “He’s upstairs right now.”
“With that Englishwoman,” Jardine pointed out. “Lady Augusta’s the belle of this whole region. We don’t want anything to happen to her.”
That brought another idea to Jardine’s brain, one that had crossed his mind on previous occasions. In an area where most of the women were either washed-out whores or Navajo squaws, Lady Augusta Winslow was a shining light of femininity.
If he was going to be the King of the Four Corners, Jardine mused, maybe he could interest Lady Augusta in being his queen ...
With a little shake of his head, he put aside that appealing thought and told Braverman and Hilliard, “Keep an eye on the ’breed, but don’t let him know you’re watching him. If you get a chance ... get rid of him.”
“What about those two cowboys?” Braverman asked.
Jardine shrugged.
“I don’t have anything against them. But if they’re in the way ... well, the buzzards would be even happier with three bodies than they would with one, wouldn’t they?”
Chapter 18
When Sam stepped through the door of the suite, he wasn’t surprised to see that the sitting room was elegantly and sumptuously furnished, from the rug on the floor to the paintings on the walls to the ornate lamp on a gleaming table.
He had seen enough downstairs to know that the lady liked fine things.
“Sit down,” she ordered as she came into the room behind them. “That divan will do.”
Stovepipe took off his hat and said, “Ma’am, not to be argumentative, but that’s a mighty nice piece of furniture to have three galoots like us sittin’ on it. We’re liable to get it a mite dirty.”
“Never mind that,” Lady Augusta snapped. “Sit.”
The three men sat.
She lowered the shotgun as she faced them, but the weapon was still pointed in their general direction. She wouldn’t have to raise it much in order to spray them with buckshot if she pulled the trigger on the loaded barrel. Shotguns were heavy enough that some women had trouble handling them, Sam thought, but not this supposedly genteel Englishwoman.
“Now tell me what happened down there,” Lady Augusta ordered. She nodded at Sam. “You.”
“Pete Lowry and some riders from the Devil’s Pitchfork came in and started talking about how the Navajo raided their ranch last night, ran off some cattle, and killed a couple of hands.” Sam inclined his head toward Stovepipe and continued, “I commented to my friend here how that seemed unlikely to me. Someone overheard me and told Lowry that I called him a liar.”
Lady Augusta nodded.
“I can see how that would spark a confrontation. I’ve seen these other two around, sir, but not you. Who are you?”
“My name is Sam Two Wolves, ma’am. And before you ask, I really am half Cheyenne. No Navajo blood, despite
