Pete looked like he’d been held captive and had maybe just broken free as O’Reilly spied Josiah and Scrap coming along. Feders wasn’t wearing his gun belt, and his hands and feet had obviously been bound. There was a gun belt hanging over the saddle of the black stallion that Mrs. Fikes had given Pete, the gun still in its holster.
Feders unwrapped the last of the rope from his ankles, tossed it off into the darkness, and walked over to his horse.
“He’s lying,” Feders said, grabbing the gun belt off the saddle.
“Why in the hell would I lie?” O’Reilly yelled. “You and I—”
The Irishman didn’t have time to finish the sentence. Pete Feders pulled out a gun, a very familiar Peacemaker, from the holster hanging over the saddle, and fired one shot, hitting O’Reilly square in the solar plexus. Another rapid shot caught the man in the shoulder, sending him reeling backward, knocking Scrap off balance.
Feders fired one last shot to finish off O’Reilly, shooting him in the throat, right above his Adam’s apple, before the Irishman collapsed to the ground with a solid and unmoving thud.
Scrap continued to stumble backwards. “What in tarnation?”
Pete Feders turned to face Josiah, pointing the gun directly at his heart. But Feders had not counted on Josiah being fast enough to pull his own gun, Charlie Webb’s Colt Frontier.
“You better explain what’s going on, Pete, or you’re going to die right along with your friend here. You shoot me, Elliot’s got a bead on your head, and you know he won’t miss.”
Feders’s hand trembled. The scar above his eye twitched, and sweat ran down his face, cutting through the trail dust like a mud puddle lining out its way after a quick spring storm. “How’d you know?”
“O’Reilly gave up way too easy. I’ve been in a cat-and-mouse game with him more than once, and he’s no quitter. Coming in, on your suggestion, didn’t seem like enough unless you got some power over him. If that’s the case, then I had to wonder who was really in charge. O’Reilly was always a follower, but I never figured you’d be the one he would let tell him what to do. You’ve been giving O’Reilly the orders all along. Sound about right?”
“Something like that,” Feders said, still holding the gun on Josiah.
“You step in after Charlie met the rope, Pete? I figured O’Reilly filled that role, but I was wrong. I just don’t know why a man would throw away everything good he’s done with his life to saddle up next to a lowlife scoundrel like O’Reilly.”
“You’ve got no right to know,” Feders said.
“He moves an inch, Scrap, you shoot him without asking, you understand?”
Scrap nodded his head, biting his lip all the while, an astonished look on his face, as he was starting to figure out what was going on.
“You set Overmeyer up, didn’t you? He must have figured out somehow that you were giving orders to O’Reilly. So you sent him out to make a deal with those Comanche, and they killed him to keep his mouth shut, on your orders. That’s why they left Scrap. He was innocent of your plan. Knew nothing about it. That was honorable of you.”
“If you say so.”
“That’s my gun, Pete. Why are you carrying it?”
“I took it off the Comanche you killed. I thought you might want it back.”
“You had a chance to give it to me in Austin. More like a trophy, isn’t it? Proof when you go back that I’m really dead?”
“Maybe.”
“Why, Pete? After all of these years, why?”
“You know why.”
Josiah exhaled deeply. “Pearl.”
Feders nodded yes.
“You need my gun to prove to her mother that I’m really dead and out of the way.”
“Major Jones will need proof,” Feders said. “Pearl’s mother has nothing to do with this.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Doesn’t matter. You have no proof of anything. I am doing what I’m doing for love, nothing more.”
Josiah tensed up, glanced over at Scrap out of the corner of his eye to make sure he still had Feders in his sights. He did. The boy hadn’t moved a muscle.
“For the love of money,” Josiah said.
“It’s all the same.” Another bead of sweat cut a rivulet through the dirt on Feders’s face. He flinched.
Josiah pressed the trigger of the Colt just a little harder, just to the edge of pulling it.
“No,” Josiah said, “it’s not.”
Pete Feders blinked, swallowed hard, and his left hand twitched. Josiah pulled the trigger before he did.
The bullet caught Pete Feders solidly in the chest. Blood exploded outward onto Josiah as the Peacemaker flew out of Feders’s hand. He fell to the ground in a heap.
Josiah stumbled, then regained his footing, shocked at what he had done, certain that Pete Feders had been going to pull the trigger and shoot him.
But even now, seconds afterward, Josiah was already questioning himself, whether he had just killed a man he’d known for a long time over simple jealousy. He had no answer . . . but knew the question was not going away anytime soon.
Feders groaned and rolled on his side, curling up in a fetal position, grabbing the wound. The gun was well out of his reach.
“Damn, Wolfe,” Scrap said.
Josiah shot Scrap a look that was not hard to mistake: it meant keep quiet.
“I was never going to have her as long as you were alive, Wolfe,” Feders whispered.
“Why O’Reilly?”
“I needed him to help me grow the herd once I had the Fikes ranch. I needed to prove to Pearl’s mother I was worthy, that I had the kind of money Pearl was accustomed to—without money I would never have her as my own, as my wife. The old woman needs money, Wolfe; the financial collapse and Captain Fikes’s death have left her nearly penniless. Her way of life is at stake, and the only true asset she has left is Pearl; she has mortgaged the estate to the hilt, with little means to pay her debt. I was willing to do anything to have Pearl, to have that land, and the life I have always dreamed of. I was never good at being a captain, you know that.
“I needed the bank money from Comanche to give to Cortina as a down payment for a large herd, and that was the fastest way to get it. I gave O’Reilly a generous cut, and he knew as long as he was riding with me that he would always be protected by Rangers. He was free to do whatever he wanted, and I didn’t have to do the dirty work. I am no Charlie Langdon. Surely, you understand that I wanted nothing more than Pearl’s love in the end?”
Josiah shook his head no. He didn’t understand that kind of love and greed. All he knew was the difference between right and wrong, and the whole thing concerning Pete was . . . wrong. It didn’t make any sense to him. “Did Pearl’s mother put the bounty on my head to get me out of the way?”
“She’s desperate, Wolfe, but she’s not a murderer, though I often thought it would be easier to kill her than you. You have a talent for staying alive.”
“You would have killed me for Pearl? Left my boy an orphan?” Anger was coursing through Josiah’s veins upon hearing the cold truth.
Feders tried to answer, but he didn’t have the energy. Blood was leaving his body quicker than it could clot. He struggled to breathe, then gasped, clutching his heart. His hand fell to the ground, his eyes fixed on the sky, and in the blink of an eye, Josiah knew that Captain Pete Feders was dead.
CHAPTER 43
The cold November rain pelted Josiah’s face as he rode up to the grand Fikes house. It was late evening, darkness coming earlier and earlier in the day as winter bore down on Austin. Gloomy days lay
