She frowned. “Hunter, we can’t move Angus. Not yet. That wound could open up.”
“I know it’s a risk. But the place I got in mind isn’t far. The house ain’t safe. There’s only you an’ me to defend it. Our enemies could surround us and easily burn us out. We need high ground. Defensible ground. Hidden ground. Trust me, I learned a few things during the war.”
“Then what?” Annabelle placed her hand on his forearm and squeezed. She no longer tried to hide her consternation. “Say we reach defensible ground. Then what do we do? We can’t hold that high ground forever, Hunter. Eventually we’ll run out of food, ammunition . . .”
“We won’t need to hold it because they won’t find us there. At least, not right away. While you tend Pa, I’ll be off . . .” Hunter let his voice trail to silence, searching for the right words to convey his plan without unduly upsetting her.
“Off doing what, Hunter?”
On the other hand, Annabelle Ludlow was no shrinking violet. She was as tough as most men Hunter knew. “While I’m off doing what I did in the army. Bringing the war to the enemy.”
“Bringing the war to the . . . ?” Annabelle cut herself off, gazing up at him in shock. “Hunter, my father has between twenty and thirty men on his roll. The Chaneys have many friends in these Hills! They might even call in the federal law—the U.S. Marshals!”
“Annabelle I don’t know what else—”
Hunter stopped. He’d spied movement out the corner of his left eye. He whipped his head around, sucked air down his throat.
Bobby Lee barked three times, sharply.
Riders were moving along the wagon road from the west, heading toward the ranch yard. They were a couple of hundred yards away, just now entering the bottle neck in the forested hills at the head of the box canyon in which the 4-Box-B lay.
The sun was climbing above the opposite horizon from the riders, striping the hills and the yard with shadows and coppery light. The riders themselves were in shadow, though several of the lead men appeared to be waving white flags.
“Now what?” Annabelle rasped, staring wide-eyed toward the men nearing the ranch yard.
“I think we’re about to find out.” Hunter swung around and headed for the wagon. “Come on!”
Bobby Lee barked and ran ahead of them.
CHAPTER 19
Annabelle leaped up onto the wagon beside Hunter, and Bobby Lee plopped down between them. Hunter reined the mule around the two freshly mounded graves, heading back down the hill. He entered the yard as the approaching riders passed under the ranch portal at the yard’s west edge, near Angus’s brewing barn.
Hunter pulled the wagon up to the cabin’s rear door, set the brake, and leaped to the ground. Annabelle was close behind him as he pushed through the back door and stepped into the hall. He turned to his left. Angus’s door was cracked.
Hunter opened it wider, poked his head into the bedroom. Angus lay much as Hunter had last seen him, flat on his back under the mounded quilts, his frail, age-gnarled body consumed by the large bed, beside the photograph of his much younger self and much younger bride.
His mouth opened wide as he snored.
Hunter glanced at Annabelle. “Stay back here with him, will you?”
“No.” Anna shook her head, frowning. “I want to be with you.”
“I’d like that, too, honey, but if he wakes up and sees those men in the yard, he’s liable to start shooting, start something that maybe doesn’t need starting.”
Anna pulled the corners of her mouth down and nodded. “Right. Okay.”
As Hunter continued down the hall toward the front of the house, Anna called, “Hunter, be careful!”
Hunter threw up his arm in acknowledgment.
He hurried to the front door, beside which he’d left Shep’s fully loaded Henry repeating rifle. He rammed a fresh round into the breech, then pushed open the door and stepped out onto the broad front veranda. The riders were just then reining their mounts up in the yard, slightly to Hunter’s left and about thirty feet out from the house.
Bobby Lee ran out from the corner of the house, barking at them angrily, hackles raised.
“Stand down, Bobby!”
The coyote wheeled and ran over and sat down at the foot of the veranda steps, growling.
There were around seven men. A wagon now clattered up behind them. It was the undertaker’s buckboard wagon. The undertaker and his idiot son sat hunched in the driver’s box. The undertaker stopped the wagon behind the horseback riders, then cast his wary gaze through the riders’ sifting dust toward the cabin, where Hunter walked up to stand atop the veranda steps, resting the Henry casually atop his right shoulder, his hand wrapped around the neck, finger curled through the trigger guard.
His heart thudded heavily, hotly, as he eyed the seven horseback riders sitting their dusty, sweat-lathered mounts before him. Three men sat out front of the others. Those three were none other than Graham Ludlow himself and Luke Chaney’s two brothers—Billy and Jason, or “Pee-Wee,” as he’d been called all his life.
The origin of the nickname was unknown to Hunter. While not as big a man as Luke was, Pee-Wee wasn’t all that small. However, he owned the small pig eyes and rabid demeanor of his older brother, now deceased. But then all the Chaneys had the thuggish temperaments of Brahma bulls.
Ludlow and both Chaneys held rifles with white handkerchiefs tied to their barrels.
The four other saddle-mounted men were common townsmen, none particularly known for his cold-steel savvy. They were friends of the Chaneys, loyal also to Ludlow. Yankees, of course. Two wore thick beards; the two others wore mustaches. All wore angry scowls but they also looked hesitant, fearful.
Not Ludlow, however. He looked as angry as Hunter felt. The rancher—Annabelle’s father—was the best attired of all of them in his fleece-lined buckskin vest, bolo tie, black whipcord trousers, and pearl-gray Stetson. He wore a big Colt on his hip, and he held a fine Winchester butt-down against his beefy right thigh. His horse was a handsome dun with three white socks. It was dusty and sweaty but its eyes were bright. It looked like it could gallop all day.
No one said anything for nearly a minute. The only sounds were the horses blowing and whickering and shifting their hooves. One of the men—a barber by the name of Glavin—snorted up a chunk of phlegm from his throat and hacked it into the dirt beside him.
“We’re not here for trouble,” Ludlow said finally, but he didn’t look like he was all that averse to the notion, his blazing eyes riveted on Hunter, who in turn stared back at him with his own brand of barely bridled rage.
“What are you here for, then?” Hunter said tonelessly.
“The dead. Their friends have come for them. They want to load them into the undertaker’s wagon.”
Hunter hadn’t done anything with the men he’d killed yesterday. They all still lay where they’d fallen. Scavengers had likely chewed on a few of them overnight. The hills around here teemed with carrion-eaters of all kinds. They were almost as dangerous as some of the men in the Hills.
“They can take what’s left of them,” Hunter said, curling his upper lip in a defiant, jeering sneer.
“No trouble?” Ludlow said tightly.
“I wasn’t the one that started the trouble in the first place, Ludlow.” Hunter looked at the Chaney brothers sitting their horses to the rancher’s left. “Luke Chaney was.”
Pee-Wee Chaney thrust an arm toward Hunter, poking an accusing finger. “You shot Pa up bad, you weasel! He damn near lost the whole side of his face! Turned his right eye to jelly!”
“Blinded!” added Billy Chaney, a wad of chaw making one brown-bearded cheek bulge. He poked at his own eye. “Blinded in that eye!”
Hunter didn’t respond to that. At least, not with words. He just stared gimlet-eyed at the two Chaneys while he opened and closed his hands around the cocked Henry. Both Chaneys looked cowed by his silence, the steeliness of his blue-eyed gaze. They knew they didn’t have much of an argument. They kn
ew Hunter had lost two brothers here yesterday.
Killed in a gutless ambush.
“We’re not here for that,” Ludlow told the two Chaneys while keeping his eyes on Hunter. “We’ll deal with that later. Right now, we’re just here for the bodies.” He paused, staring at Hunter, his gaze a little apprehensive now. “You’ll yield?”
“I’ll yield today,” Hunter said. “Fetch your dead. What the scavengers left. They’re nothing but vermin to me. I was going to drag ’em into a ravine. Feed for the wildcats.”
“That smart-ass Grayback son of a bitch,” growled a man flanking Ludlow, glaring at Hunter.
“I yield today,” Hunter said. “But if I ever see another man on the 4-Box-B who don’t belong here, I’m gonna kill him. No questions asked. No warning. No nothing. Then I’m gonna feed him to them wildcats. They’re hungry too.”
Pee-Wee Chaney, who wore a bowler hat, a pinstriped shirt with a poet’s collar, and suspenders, looked as though his head was about to explode. “Just who in the holy hell do you think you . . . ?”
“That’s enough!” Ludlow admonished him.
The rancher glanced behind him at the others, then jerked his head to indicate the dead men around the yard. As they rode off, the wagon rattling along behind them, to gather the dead, Ludlow turned to Hunter.
“My daughter?”
“What about her?”
Ludlow drew a deep breath, puffing up his chest. “She’s here, I take it.” He cut his embarrassed eyes toward the Chaneys, who sat their saddles stiffly, tensely glaring at Hunter.
Hunter didn’t say anything. He stood atop the porch steps, holding the Henry on his shoulder, one boot cocked before him.
“Send her out here, damn you!” Ludlow finally bellowed, standing up in his stirrups, his face bright red now in the sunlight angling over the hollow from the east. “Send her out here now! She is going home with me!”
The Chaneys looked at the rancher in wide-eyed surprise at his passion. The other men, just now loading into the wagon the three men whom Hunter had shot between the barn and the blacksmith shop, turned toward him now too. Ludlow cut his eyes around in humiliation, then eased himself back down in his saddle.
Boots thudded behind Hunter. The heavy-timbered door opened and Annabelle stepped out. She had a pistol wedged behind her wide black belt, and she held one gloved hand over it now as she stepped up to stand beside Hunter atop the porch steps.
“Annabelle!” Ludlow said, flaring his red nostrils. “You’re coming home with me!”
Annabelle let the man’s order hang there in the yard between them, losing its teeth with each second that passed.
“I am home,” she said finally, with quiet defiance.
“What are you talking about?” Ludlow looked around, his thick gray-brown brows beetled with incredulity. “This is not your home!”
“It is now.”
“Nonsense.”
“This is my home until we have a ranch of our own, Hunter and I. He’s my man. I’m his woman.”
Ludlow switched his gaze to Hunter. “This man has one boot in the grave! Do you know how many men he killed? He’s a killer! That’s all he is! That’s all he’ll ever be!”
Hunter’s gut tightened at the accusation. At one time, he’d believed that himself. Maybe now after yesterday he still did . . .
Through gritted teeth, Annabelle said, “He was defending his home. Those men you and Chaney sent killed his brothers and wounded his father.”
Ludlow’s pursed lips were a knife slash across the bottom half of his face, beneath his bushy gray mustache. His eyes fairly glowed with raw fury. “Do you know what you did to your brother? You should see him. He’s badly burned, and the barn is no more than ashes!”
“He took a blacksnake to me!” Annabelle fairly screamed, bending forward at the waist.
That jolted Ludlow slightly back in his saddle. Both Chaneys looked at him, more surprise showing in their cow-eyed gazes. Ludlow’s horse must have sensed its rider’s roiling passions. It crow-hopped slightly, whickering, so that the rancher had to draw up tight on the reins to prevent it from throwing him.
Ludlow kept his shocked, exasperated gaze on his daughter. “That’s a lie!”
“He said I was a traitorous whore, and he was going to whip me naked!” Annabelle repeated, her voice less shrill this time. “My own drunken waste of a brother tried to bullwhip me in the barn. I hit him with the lantern to repel the sick snake, as I would do to any man who tried to do that to me. I should have let him burn up in the fire. It would have been no less than he deserved.”
“That’s a lie!” Ludlow bellowed, cutting his eyes at both Chaneys regarding him hang-jawed. Again, he had to bring the dun under taut rein. “That’s a filthy lie!” To the Chaneys he said, “Don’t listen to her. She’s crazy. She’s as crazy as her mother ever was.” To Annabelle again, he said, “Your brother may be many things, but Cass would not bullwhip his own sister! How dare you make that accusation, Annabelle! How dare you!”
Keeping her own taut voice low with barely restrained fury, Annabelle said, “I never want to see him again. As for you, Pa—after you sent men to kill the man I intend to marry, to kill his whole family and likely to burn his ranch—I don’t ever want to see you again either. I’m going to bear Hunter’s children. We’re going to have a whole house full. And I promise you this: Not one of them will ever hear your name. Not once. Your name will never pass over my lips again. They will be Buchanons only—without the taint of the Ludlow name.”
Ludlow’s eyes blazed even brighter. With quiet, savage menace, he said, “You ungrateful trollop. You ungrateful lying trollop!”
Annabelle sidled up close to Hunter, wrapped both her arms around his left one, and gave a cold smile. “This trollop stands with her man. When you send more men, I’ll be fighting against them. I’ll be fighting against you, Pa. And Chaney. And Stillwell. And anyone else. No matter how many.”
She paused. Hunter felt her draw a deep breath as she leaned against him.
“You started this war,” she said. “It will be my man and I who finish it.”
Again, Ludlow’s anxious horse turned a full circle, arching its neck and its tail. As it did, the rancher swiveled his thick neck to keep his blazing eyes on his daughter. He puffed up his cheeks and opened his mouth to speak, but he seemed to be at a loss for any more words with which to parry the dressing down he’d taken from his daughter.
“So . . .” he sputtered, gritting his teeth and tugging on the dun’s reins with his black-gloved hands. “So . . . so be it!” He lowered his fiery gaze to the dun’s head. “Damn you, horse!” Lifting his eyes again to Annabelle and Hunter, he shouted, “You will rue this day!”
With that, he glanced once more at the Chaneys, said, “Stay with the wagon!” Then he gave the dun its head, and horse and rider galloped back across the yard of the 4-Box-B headquarters. It galloped under the portal and around the northward curve in the wagon trail, passing between two rows of aspens whose leaves now glittered green and gold in the summery light of the rising sun.
Man and rider disappeared into the low hills before the thunder of the dun’s hooves dwindled to silence.
Pee-Wee and Billy Chaney stared at Annabelle in shocked silence.
“Why don’t you two help the others gather your dead?” Hunter told them in a voice taut as piano wire. “Then get the hell off the 4-Box-B—for the last time!”
The Chaneys looked at each other, then did as Hunter had ordered. When all the bodies had been recovered from the brush and trees around the headquarters, the undertaker turned the wagon back onto the trail, heading westward out of the yard. The townsmen, stained with the blood of the fallen, their horses jittery from the smell of so much carnage, followed the wagon.
Several men looked warily back over their shoulders at Hunter and Annabelle before passing under the portal and then galloping out of sight.
Hunter looked down at his girl. At his woman. She looke
d up at him. Color had climbed into her cheeks.
His own heart thudded heavily, warm blood pooling in his belly.
“Let’s go inside,” he said thickly.
Annabelle squeezed his hand. “Let’s.”
CHAPTER 20
As the dun galloped hard in the direction of Tigerville, Graham Ludlow felt a tightness grow in his chest.
It was like a clenched fist of fury, swelling and swelling, sending sharp waves of pain up into his left shoulder and down that arm. The arm grew heavy and sore, so that he had to let it flop down over his leg. He gritted his teeth against the pain.
He drew back on the dun’s reins, bringing the horse to a leaping halt, dust billowing up from behind.
Ludlow leaned forward over his saddle horn, drawing sharp breaths through his teeth. Each breath caused more pains to shoot up from that clenched fist in his chest, into his shoulder and down his arm until the arm felt like a raw nerve hanging stiffly at his side.
“Oh hell,” he muttered thickly, looking down at his claw-like hand, which he could not get to open. “Oh hell . . . am I . . . having a . . . heart attack?”
The ground spun around him. The low hills spotted with pine forest pitched this way and that. Thin dark curtains rippled in front of his eyes.
A stream gurgled off to his left. Suddenly, he was both cold and hot and very thirsty. Cold sweat streaked his broad, fleshy face.
He slid down from his saddle. As he put weight on his left foot, the ankle gave. He cursed and threw his right, gloved hand—the only one that worked—toward the dun, trying to break his fall. His fingertips only brushed the saddle.
He plopped heavily into the middle of the trail on his butt and rolled onto his right side, his left side partly paralyzed.
He groaned, cursed again, heaved himself up into a sitting position, and cradled his sore left arm in his lap.
“She’s . . . she’s killing me,” he wheezed. “That girl is killing me . . . slow. The lies.” He ground his back teeth until he could hear them cracking. “The lies she told in front of the Chaneys!”
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