“Moreton, you do have investors in your ranch, don’t you?” Teasdale asked in an exasperated sigh. “Important men, back in England?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Don’t you think you owe it to them to be able to render accurate reports as to how just many cattle were rustled?”
“I suppose I do,” Frewen said. “But to be honest with you, William, when I learned of the death of two of my cowboys, that sort of pushed everything else out of my mind.”
“Yes, well of course it is a shame that they were killed. But you have investors back in England that you must answer to. You can’t pass that off by saying you are more concerned with the fact that you lost a couple of mere cowboys. Let’s face it, Moreton. The bottom line for both of us is business—cattle business. And the rate of our losses now has just about made our business unsustainable. This cattle rustling is beginning to get out of hand.”
“I agree. But I don’t have any idea what to do about it.”
“William, do come on, won’t you? I’m freezing out here.”
The summons came from Margaret, Teasdale’s wife, who was sitting in the Thistledown carriage wrapped in a buffalo robe. It was a beautiful coach, green with yellow wheels and the Teasdale crest on the door, the letter “T” with two crossbars placed on a shield and surrounded by gold wreathing.
“Yes, dear,” Teasdale replied. He started toward the carriage, then turned back toward Frewen. “My offer still stands,” he said.
“What offer is that?” Clara Frewen asked when her husband climbed into the backseat of their carriage, a more modest brougham.
“He wants to buy our ranch,” Frewen said.
“Has he made a decent offer?”
“Yes, unless you count all the cattle, the house and buildings, and all the horses and equipment. Then his offer is less than one quarter of what the place is worth.”
The driver snapped the reins against the team, and the brougham started out of the cemetery, pulling in behind some of the other vehicles.
“Why would he offer you so little? Does he really expect you to take it?”
“He knows that some of my investors are getting worried and he is gambling that I am ready to pull out of the venture altogether.”
Manny Sullivan lay on top of a flat rock, looking back along the trail over which they had just come. The rider was still following them.
“Is the son of a bitch still there?” Paddy McCoy asked.
“Yeah,” Sullivan growled. “We’ve done ever’ thing we could to shake the son of a bitch but he’s clung to us like a sandspur. I believe he could track a bird through the air.”
“They say Matt Jensen is that good,” McCoy said.
“You’re sure, now, that it is Matt Jensen?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Like I told you, I heard that Matt Jensen was askin’ questions about us.”
“Damn. That’s not good. That’s not good at all. You think he knows about the robbin’ and killin’ we done back in Livermore?”
“Of course he knows,” McCoy said. “Why else would he be comin’ after us?”
“I don’t know,” Sullivan said. “I’m just wonderin’ why he’s takin’ such a personal interest in us. And I’m also wonderin’ how he found out we’re the ones that done it.”
“How he found out don’t matter now,” McCoy said. “What does matter is how we are goin’ to get shed of the son of a bitch. We’re goin’ to have to do that, or we ain’t never goin’ to have any peace.”
“How we goin’ to get rid of him? We’ve done ever’thing we could, and we still can’t shake him off.”
“We ain’t goin’ to shake him off,” McCoy said.
“If we don’t shake him off, what are we goin’ to do with him?”
“We’re goin’ to kill him,” McCoy said. He pointed to a coulee ahead. “Let’s go up through there.”
“Ain’t you ever been up here before? That’s a dead-end canyon,” Sullivan said.
“I know it’s a dead-end canyon,” McCoy said. “One of the reasons I come this way is because I know this canyon real good, and I know it has a cave about halfway up the wall on the left side. And not only that, there is a bunch of rocks around the mouth of the cave so that if a feller don’t know it’s there, it ain’t likely that he will ever even see it. I figure we can hide in the cave till he passes underneath, then we’ll shoot the son of a bitch in the back. All we have to do is let him follow us in.”
“What if he don’t come in?”
“He’ll come in, all right. He wants us pretty bad, else he wouldn’t be doggin’ us so hard.”
The two men rode on into the canyon, ground-tied their horses around a bend and out of sight, then climbed up the wall to the cave.
“What did I tell you?” McCoy said. “Get ready. He’ll be coming by directly, and when he does, we’ll let him have it. He won’t even know what hit him.”
“We shoulda gone on up to Cheyenne with Plummer,” Sullivan said. “If we had, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”
