Love on the Range

by Mary Connealy

  “It came from a very unexpected direction.” Wyatt stepped back into the entry, hung up his coat and hat, tossed his gloves on the floor under them, and came back in.

  Molly was up pouring him coffee. He always came in deeply chilled after long hours riding his land, working his herd.

  “Have you shown McCall your arm?” Wyatt asked.

  McCall’s blue eyes went sharp. “What’s this?”

  “Hawkins hurt her and Win. He grabbed Molly’s arm bad enough it was swollen and bruised. After a week, I’d reckon it still looks bad.”

  Molly refilled everyone’s coffee cup as Wyatt told about Hawkins’s treatment of her and the connection between Hawkins, Clovis Hunt, and Randall Kingston.

  “Your telegram to the agency mentioned that connection and the school. The Pinkertons notified me that the Jeffers House of Refuge for Young Men is a prison.”

  “What?” Molly almost dropped the boiling hot coffeepot on Wyatt’s lap.

  He dodged the pot, took it from her, and set it firmly on the stove.

  “Tennessee, like a lot of states, started opening special prisons to keep the younger criminals separated from the adults. The rule had been to just toss them all in together, but it’s an ugly business putting youngsters in with adult men. Often boys who might be reformed end up as hardened criminals before they’ve served their sentences.”

  “Do you know what they did? How they ended up there?” Kevin asked.

  “The details are supposed to reach me in a letter. I had a whole packet of information waiting for me in Bear Claw Pass, and they’ll send more as they find it.”

  McCall looked out the window at the swirling snow. “I hope it comes soon because I need to solve this and get out of here. My wife, Penny, is expecting our second child, and if I have to spend the winter on this side of the Rocky Mountains, snowed in away from her, she’s going to make me regret it for years.” Then he grinned. “The only reason she didn’t come with me is because she’s about seven months gone on a baby. She’s worked as a Pinkerton agent, too, from time to time. She enjoys tracking down bad men.”

  The grin convinced Molly he wasn’t all that afraid of his wife.

  “Can I study Rachel’s notes for a while? If there’s enough here, we can go arrest Hawkins, dig through his safe for the rest of his rotten poetry, and hang him high. Then I’ll send Rachel back to Chicago and go home.”

  He made it sound like he could accomplish it all today. Molly was glad to keep quiet, hoping he could manage that.

  McCall read Rachel’s notes quickly, taking notes himself. Then he read them again more slowly and reread the poetry from Hawkins, studying the contents of each packet.

  Cheyenne and Falcon came in just as McCall set the notes aside. They stared suspiciously at the newcomer while Wyatt introduced them and caught them up on the Jeffers House of Refuge.

  “It’s time to bring the sheriff in on it and arrest Hawkins,” McCall said. “We can do it tomorrow morning, and anyone who wants to ride along is welcome.”

  Everyone wanted to come.

  Twenty-Three

  The weather, colder every day, gave everyone an appetite, so they ate supper before they continued talking about the case.

  Molly set the cobbler and a stack of small bowls on the table, then she got a small pitcher of cream.

  McCall ate a bite of the cobbler, closed his eyes as a look of bliss crossed his face, and sighed with delight. “My wife is a fine cook, Miss Garner. But this is the best cobbler I’ve ever had.”

  “You should taste her custard,” Wyatt said. “There’s nothing else like it in this world.”

  Molly smiled.

  McCall ate a few more bites. “I was an experienced agent long before Rachel joined the Pinkertons. I worked with her a few times before I moved out west. We have very few women as agents, and we are protective of them. When they feared Rachel might be dead, I was closest, and they wired me and asked me to come. The telegram had a few particulars about the case, and Mr. Pinkerton himself sent a packet by the first train headed west in hopes it would arrive by the time I did. I picked it up in Bear Claw Pass before I came out to the ranch. It contained every fact they had, including the information about the Jeffers school, which was new, and the information Rachel had dug up about the other missing housekeepers. But we didn’t have the pieces of the puzzle you found, Miss Garner, or Rachel’s exact notes.”

  “Rachel told me what to look for.” Molly felt her cheeks turning pink. It was wrong to take credit while Rachel lay upstairs unconscious.

  “And you said there are more packets? Can you guess how many more?”

  Molly thought hard, then lifted her hands helplessly. “I just grabbed those you have and shut the safe. I don’t know how deep the safe is, so there’s no way to guess how many packets he had. He was coming fast. I should have gotten more. I should have—”

  “No, you did exactly right. Taking just a few increases our chances that your investigating hasn’t been detected by Hawkins. According to Rachel’s notes, the two new names you found are of his former housekeepers. And the objects he kept are mementos of those women. The poems about missing them, written as they are, this is the kind of thing we sometimes see in men who seem to live a fairly normal life, then kill for . . . well, for pleasure.”

  Cheyenne scowled. Win moaned and buried her face against Kevin’s arm.

  Molly gasped. “That’s just sickening. I can’t believe there are such people.”

  “One of the things that is off about this case is that men who do that don’t usually let years pass between victims,” McCall said. “That’s why I asked about the number of packets. If he is that kind of sick killer, then it’s very unlikely he’s killed only three women.”

  “Only?” Wyatt’s brows shot up.

  “Yes, according to this, we have multiple women who died or went missing while they were involved in some way with Hawkins.” McCall nodded at Win. “That includes your mother, Mrs. Hunt. I’m sorry to discuss such things in front of you.”

  Kevin’s arm came around Win. She turned, her face now resting on his shoulder, and said, “If it’s true, then I want him found out. I want him to pay for killing my mother.”

  McCall studied her expression for a few seconds then, reluctantly, nodded. “The Hannah he mentions most likely refers to Hannah Monroe, a woman who worked as a housekeeper for your father right after he sent you off to school, Mrs. Hunt.”

  “Please, call me Win. There are too many Mr. and Mrs. Hunts at this table.”

  With a quick smile, McCall said, “That’s true. Everyone, actually, except Miss Garner.”

  “Make it Molly,” Molly offered.

  “Then it’s John.” John referred to his notes. “She worked there until she moved on, according to Rachel, but there was no record of her after her time there.”

  “Then Lydia was employed there, too?” Win asked, her voice quiet but steady.

  “Yes, Rachel found a record of a Lydia Trenear. She was known a bit around town. A faithful church attender, and she wrote steadily to an elderly uncle back east. When her letters stopped, the uncle was in failing health, and though he made some inquiries, he died before he could find out what became of her. He talked with the police. He was sure she’d come to a bad end somehow, or else she would have written. He made enough noise there was a record of her connection to Hawkins.

  “Rachel has very thorough notes, including information from Amelia Bishop and from her own experience. Amelia most certainly believed she was in danger. Now we have your information, Molly, and the injury to your arm.”

  “I’m mostly healed.” Molly heard herself trying to diminish how badly she’d been hurt. She still felt ashamed. Trying to study that strange truth, she remembered how her ma had tried to have the house and meals just so to keep Pa happy. As if his violent treatment were her fault. Ma had felt ashamed, too. Molly knew it wasn’t right. This was not her shame, so she squared her shoulders and refused to tak
e any blame.

  John looked as if he could read all that flashed through her mind. “If your bruises aren’t healed after a week, then that tells us a lot about how bad they were. And we have an eyewitness account from your family of how serious they were. Yes, I’ve got enough to ask the sheriff to arrest him, and if the sheriff hesitates, then I’ll take him into custody myself. Through the influence of Amelia’s father, we have the support of the Wyoming territorial governor in this, and I’ve been sworn in to work with the authority of the US Marshal’s office. So I can make an arrest myself. Then we’ll search that safe, see what other evidence we find. That will bolster our case.”

  Molly’s spirits lifted. John McCall was going to handle this, and Hawkins would pay for his crimes.

  She looked forward to the day.

  “I didn’t ask questions in Bear Claw Pass. I thought it was wise to come out here first and talk to all of you, find out who I could trust. I’d like to get Hawkins arrested tomorrow. I’ll head home as soon as I’m sure Rachel is all right.”

  “I’m better every minute.”

  Everyone whirled to look at the door to the stairway. Rachel, pale and wobbly, stood there in her nightgown. It should have been outrageous for her to appear dressed as she was, but instead the whole room broke into motion.

  Molly charged forward to lend an arm. John was up and at Rachel’s side in seconds.

  “John McCall, our agent from the Wild West. They sent you?”

  “Yep.” He slid an arm across her back. “Are you up to sitting?”

  Rachel nodded, but neither Molly nor John quit supporting her.

  John guided her forward. “Come join us at the table.”

  “The food smells wonderful, Molly. If you think I dare risk it, I’d love some.”

  “You’re long overdue for a good meal.” Molly smiled. Her relief was matched only by her delight. “Come and join us. We had chicken stew, which is just a bit up from chicken soup. I think you can have some.”

  Rachel sat down in the chair John had been sitting in.

  “I’ve been on a train and now at the table for so long it feels good to stand,” he said. He quickly ran through all he’d found again.

  Rachel listened and added a few details that she hadn’t yet written down, especially about Randall Kingston.

  “He’s being held in Casper,” Cheyenne said. “They already arrested him for shooting you, but they were waiting to see if the charges would rise to the level of murder.”

  Rachel paused her eating and scowled for a bit. “Glad I couldn’t accommodate them about the murder. But I’d like to know how much he knew about Hawkins. We might be able to question Kingston in a way that makes it possible to charge him as aiding in all of Hawkins’s crimes, including murder.”

  Silence fell as Rachel ate. John retrieved his cobbler and leaned against the kitchen wall.

  Into the silence, Molly asked, “So which one of those men shot Wyatt?”

  That got everyone’s attention.

  “I’ve sort of figured it was one of the outlaws Cheyenne and Falcon shot,” Wyatt said. “Two men died when they brought those rustlers in. They weren’t all accounted for when we were hunting Ralston.”

  “I thought so, too,” Cheyenne said. “It’d be real tidy if the man who shot you was dead. But the way Kingston shot Rachel was so similar to how you were shot, it really made us wonder.”

  “If Kingston and Clovis are brothers, Kingston should have been loyal to Wyatt,” John said. “Clovis managed to have three sons, and he cared enough about you all to leave you land. Why would his brother try to kill you?”

  “Did Pa really care?” Kevin asked quietly. “Or did he want to flaunt how he’d fooled everyone? What better way than, after he was dead, to let his big secret out of the bag. It was a way to hurt Cheyenne, too, and take a big old gouge outa Katherine Hunt, his third and final wife, who made no secret of her contempt for him.”

  “So Clovis left the land to his young’uns,” John said. “That still doesn’t explain why they’d hurt Wyatt. Or which one of them did it.”

  “My dislike of my pa was no secret. Could that be enough?” Wyatt asked.

  John came to Rachel’s side of the table. “You’re one of the best agents we have. How do you read this?”

  “Kingston might admit to my shooting under questioning. Shooting a woman is a serious business out west and nowhere more so than in Wyoming Territory, where women have the right to vote. If we convince him he’s going to hang, he might be willing to admit to a second shooting—again with no one dying—to escape the noose.”

  “Especially if we can prove he knew about Hawkins being a murderer and covered it up. Those would be hanging offenses.” John took his last bite of cobbler.

  “He might turn on Hawkins to keep from having his neck stretched.” Falcon looked at Wyatt. At Kevin. “We’ve all been shot in this mess.”

  “But you and Kevin were shot by the rustlers.”

  That gained another lengthy silence.

  “Hawkins couldn’t have been in on rustling his own cattle, could he?” John asked.

  “Except, did he rustle his own cattle, or were the bulk of them from the RHR, and he just ran some of his cattle in with them?” Wyatt asked. “Or maybe turned a blind eye when his men did it, as long as they left his main herd alone?”

  Shaking his head at all the pieces that needed to fit together, John said, “We’ll arrest Hawkins tomorrow and see about bringing Kingston over here to face charges. While Hawkins is in jail, we’ll search his house and see what else is in that safe.”

  Rachel finished her chicken stew and managed a small bowl of cobbler. Then she said, “After a week in bed it feels foolish, but I need to get some rest.”

  “Let me help you back upstairs,” John said. “I’d like a moment of time talking in private.”

  Kevin and Win began washing the dishes. Molly cleared the table and wondered what John McCall didn’t think he could say in front of all of them.

  Twenty-Four

  Wyatt hitched up the buggy the next morning. They didn’t use it often because they usually either rode horseback or needed a wagon to bring home supplies. But Rachel, worn down but determined to go, needed the easiest ride they could find for her.

  When they arrived at Sheriff Corly’s office, Wyatt was surprised to find him talking to Sheriff Gatlin from Casper.

  Both men greeted them in a friendly way, but whatever they were talking about ended.

  “We’ve got an investigation going that concerns Randall Kingston, the man who shot Rachel Hobart,” Sherriff Corly said.

  Gatlin’s eyes shifted to Rachel. “I’m glad you’re doing well, miss. Real glad.”

  “How’s Kingston?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’m over here for.” Gatlin nodded at the jail cell. Stretched out, sleeping like an innocent child, was Randall Kingston.

  “We would’ve come back to talk to you, Greg. You didn’t need to haul him over here.” Cheyenne stepped forward and offered her hand to Gatlin. “But I’m glad you did. We’ve got some serious questions for Kingston, and they concern our interest in having Oliver Hawkins arrested.”

  Wyatt noticed both John McCall and Rachel eased back and let Cheyenne do the talking. It was smart of them. Let the locals, who were well known to both sheriffs, open this ball.

  “Hawkins?” Corly leaned forward and placed both hands flat on his desk. “What did he do?”

  Cheyenne did some fast talking to explain why they were after Hawkins. She showed them the notes Molly had found.

  Wyatt noticed the word found. Which skipped over some important details.

  Corly had some sharp questions for Rachel, and she took over. Wyatt noticed her clear, calm way of talking about all she’d found. She produced her notes and talked about the Jeffers House of Refuge.

  “And Kingston is connected because we’ve found proof he, Clovis, and Hawkins knew each other, might even be brothers. They’ve been real
careful to keep that a secret,” Cheyenne said.

  “I can tell you right now, Hawkins was a regular visitor to Kingston and so was Clovis,” Gatlin said. “I never thought much of it, but now that Kingston shot someone, and with your suspicions about a connection between them, brothers makes sense. A connection they kept quiet.”

  “We’re expecting a letter with more details about Jeffers, but it’s not here yet,” Rachel said.

  “We haven’t checked this morning. I’ll go.” John darted out of the building.

  “The letter will tell us what sent them to prison as youngsters. What we do know is that they filtered into this country one at a time. Hawkins first with his young wife and child.” Rachel gestured at Win. “Then Clovis, who took up with Katherine Brewster and married her faster than was wise. And a while later, Randall Kingston with his wealth and no real ability to explain where it came from. Their goal was to cheat people, and all three of them have been real successful at it.”

  “Kingston wasn’t much liked in Casper,” Sheriff Gatlin said. “Finding out he’s gotten his money in a dishonest way wouldn’t surprise none of us.”

  John came in carrying a packet of papers. “I’ve been reading as I walked and found out Clovis and Randall Hunt and Jethro Pervis were brothers sent to the boys’ prison—and make no mistake, that’s what it was, not some school for orphans or such.”

  “Pervis?” Wyatt asked. “One of the brothers had a different name?”

  “Looks like it. It doesn’t say why.”

  “Jethro must’ve changed his name to Oliver,” Falcon said.

  “You said Randall had eyes that matched Pa’s and ours,” Kevin said. “I bet we’ll find out their pa married a woman with a son. Oliver doesn’t look like the other two.”

  “Randall was a known thief in his small town.” John went on reading. “Clovis had cheated a few honest folks, and they’d forgiven him. But all three of them got arrested at once when it was . . . was . . .”

  John looked up. His eyes locked on Win.