by B. J Daniels
“Everything all right over there?” Nate asked.
“Yeah. Just a little accident, but everything’s okay.”
Jacklyn recognized Buford Cole’s voice and could tell that things were definitely not all right. She hated to think what that last gunshot was about.
“Well?” Nate asked her with an odd tilt of his head. “You want me to give the order?”
“How do I know Dillon isn’t already dead?”
“Dillon?” Nate called.
Silence, then a surprised-sounding Dillon said, “Nate?” as if he’d been trying to place the voice, since it had to be the last one he’d expected to hear out here.
“Dillon,” Jack called to him.
“Jack!” His response came back at once.
She heard so much in that one word that tears burned her eyes. “Are you all right?”
“He won’t be if you say one more word to him,” Nate said in that calm, frightening voice.
DILLON TOOK A DEEP BREATH, weak with relief. Jack was alive and Buford seemed to be using every ounce of his self-control not to pull the trigger on the gun he was holding on him.
The overwhelming relief was quickly replaced with the realization that Jack was with Nate. And Buford seemed to be losing it by the minute.
So Shade Waters was behind the rustling, just as Dillon had thought. He found little satisfaction in being right though. Shade was dangerous enough. But apparently, he’d sent Nate to tie up some loose ends. Nate was unpredictable. Maybe even a little unstable. No way was this going to end well.
“Oh man, I can’t believe this,” Buford said again as he began to pace back and forth again, always keeping the gun aimed in Dillon’s direction. He looked more than nervous; he looked scared to death. Unfortunately, it only made him more dangerous.
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” he said, raking his free hand through his hair. His hat had fallen off during the skirmish, but he didn’t seem to have noticed.
“I think you’d better tell me what’s going on,” Dillon said, trying to keep his voice calm. “What’s Nate doing with Jack?”
“You’ve messed everything up,” Buford said, sounding as if he might break down at any minute. “You killed Morgan. What’s Nate going to do when he sees that you killed Morgan? Hell, man, he married her. They were going to go on their honeymoon.”
“You pulled the trigger,” Dillon said. “I didn’t kill her. You did.”
Buford stopped pacing. His eyes had gone wild, and he looked terrified of what Nate Waters was going to do to him. Nate Waters, a kid they’d all teased because he’d been such a big crybaby.
Dillon felt bad about that now. Worse, because he had a feeling that Nate Waters was going to kill him. He just didn’t want the same thing to happen to Jack. He tried to think fast, but his head ached and Buford was standing over him with a gun, acting like a crazy person.
“You’d better let me help you,” Dillon said. “Nate’s obviously going to be upset about his wife.” Dillon avoided looking at Morgan, lying dead on the ground. Even though she was obviously in this up to her sweet little neck, she didn’t deserve to die like this.
Buford was right about one thing. Things were messed up big time.
“I’m telling you, Buford, for old times’ sake, let me help you.”
The man looked as if he might be considering it, so Dillon rushed on. “Come on, old buddy. Things are messed up if you’re taking orders from Nate Waters, anyway. Whatever he’s gotten you into, Jack and I can help cut you a deal. But if you wait and he kills anyone else—”
“There a problem here, Buford?” Nate asked as he came out of the trees, holding a gun on Jack.
Dillon groaned inwardly. A few more minutes and he might have been able to turn Buford. Now there was no hope of that.
“It was an accident,” Buford said. “Man, I’m so sorry. I…”
Nate pushed Jack over by Dillon. She dropped to the ground next to him and he put his arm around her. He could see that she was scared, and her ankle had to be killing her. But he knew Jack, knew she was strong and determined. And with her beside him, he told himself, they had a chance of surviving this. She owed him a dance. Kind of.
Mostly, he couldn’t bear the thought that they’d found each other, two people from worlds apart, only to have some jackass like Nate Waters kill them.
Nate walked over to where Morgan lay dead on the ground.
Dillon heard a small wounded sound come out of Jack. He pulled her closer and whispered, “It’s going to be okay.”
Buford was pacing again, swinging the gun around. “Oh man, Nate, I’m so sorry. It was an accident. Dillon, man, it’s his fault. You told me not to shoot him, but he jumped me. Morgan… Oh man.”
“Shut up,” Nate said, sounding close to tears. “She was just a greedy bitch who slept with anyone and everyone.”
“She was your wife,” Buford said, obviously before he could think.
Nate turned to glare at him. “She tricked me into marrying her. I don’t want a woman who’s been with Dillon Savage.”
Oh, boy, here it comes, Dillon thought, as Nate swung the gun in his hand toward Dillon’s head. Next to him, he felt Jack press something hard against his thigh. Apparently she’d taken it from one of her boots.
A knife.
He slipped his arm from around her. “What? This is about Morgan Landers?” He shook his head and sat up a little, dropping his hands to the ground next to him. “Come on. There has to be more to it than that.”
Nate stepped closer. “What would you know about it? You have any concept what it’s like to grow up with Shade Waters as a father? To live your whole life in the shadow of the great Halsey Waters? You have no idea.”
“So all this is to show your father,” Dillon said, closing his hand around the knife handle hidden beneath his thigh. If Nate came any closer…
“It was bad enough that he idolized Halsey but when you started rustling cattle to pay back the ranchers who you felt had wronged you…” Nate took a breath and let it out on a sigh. “The bastard actually admired you the way you slipped those stolen cattle in among his.” Waters’s laugh held no humor. “You were a damn hero. Even the great stock detective here couldn’t catch you. I was the one who put up the hundred thousand dollar reward for your capture from the money my mother left me. He never knew.”
“Damn, I wish I had known that. I would have had my friend Buford here collect it.” He looked past Nate. “But then he already had, huh?” Dillon remembered the truck Buford had been driving when he passed them, headed for the W Bar. It had been an expensive ride—not the kind of vehicle a man who works at the stockyards could afford. “So it really was you, Buford, who betrayed me.”
Buford Cole had looked frightened before. Now he looked petrified. “Kill him. Just get it over. You said nobody knows where they are. We can bury them with the cattle. Morgan, too. No one will ever have to know.”
Nate raised his gun, pointed it at Dillon’s head. Unfortunately, Dillon wasn’t close enough to reach him with the knife. Nor could he launch himself faster than a speeding bullet. He hoped his life didn’t pass before his eyes before he died. He wasn’t that proud of the things he’d done.
IT HAPPENED SO FAST that Jacklyn never saw it coming. She’d buried the hand farthest away from Nate’s view, grabbing a handful of fine dirt. She was planning to throw it in Nate’s face, anything to give Dillon a chance to use the knife.
But as she raised her balled fist holding the dirt, Nate swung around and fired. He couldn’t have missed in a million years. Not with Buford standing just feet behind him.
The bullet caught Buford Cole in the face. He went down with a thump.
But before he hit the ground Dillon was on his feet. He drove the knife into Nate’s side.
It took Jacklyn a little longer to get to her one good foot. She hit Nate in the face with the dirt and wrestled her weapon from him.
“Nate Waters? You’re under arrest for th
e murders of Buford Cole, Reda Harper, Morgan Landers—”
“Morgan Waters,” he corrected, holding his side and looking down at the blood leaking between his fingers, as if he’d never seen anything quite so interesting.
“Shade Waters and the attack on Tom Robinson.”
Nate looked up at her. “Tom died earlier this morning.”
“The murder of Tom Robinson,” she said, her voice breaking.
Nate looked up, his head tilted, as if again listening to something she couldn’t hear.
After a moment, he smiled. “Halsey said to make sure they spell my name correctly in the paper. Too bad Shade isn’t around to see it.”
Epilogue
Jacklyn hesitated at the door. She could hear the band playing. Glancing at her reflection in the window, she ran a hand over her hair, feeling a little self-conscious.
Her hair was out of its braid and floating around her shoulders. She so seldom wore it down that her image in the glass looked like that of a stranger. A stranger with flushed cheeks and bright eyes. A stranger in love.
She felt like a schoolgirl as she pushed open the door to the community center. The dance was in full swing, the place crowded.
For a while there’d been shock, then sadness, then slowly, the community rallied, and pretty soon even the talk had died down. And there had been plenty of talk. The gossips kept the phone lines buzzing for weeks.
The first shock was Shade Waters’s murder, followed by the news that his son Nate had confessed not only to killing him and the others, but also to having been behind all the cattle rustling.
Buford had been one of the rustlers Nate had hired but it was suspected that Pete Barclay and Arlen Dubois were also involved. Nate took full responsibility, though, for all the deaths and thefts, posing for reporters.
Jacklyn had wondered if he’d wished his father was alive to see it. Or had Nate told Shade everything before he killed him? She would never know.
On the heels of all the publicity came word that Shade Waters had been dying of cancer and had had but a few months to live, anyway. Everyone loved the irony of that, since few people had liked either Waters much.
The community had also taken Reda’s death fairly well—especially when it came to light that she’d been blackmailing nearly half the county, including Shade Waters. For years, the sinners in the county had lived in fear of getting one of her letters, letting them know she knew their secrets and what it would take to keep her quiet.
But probably the news that had tongues wagging the most was Shade Waters’s will. He’d changed it, unknown to Nate, about the time that Nate had taken up with Morgan Landers. In the will, Shade left everything to the state except for one ranch—the former Savage Ranch. That he left to a boys’ ranch for troubled teens, in his son Halsey’s name.
“I thought you might not come,” Dillon said behind Jacklyn, making her jump as the band broke into another song.
She turned slowly, feeling downright girlie in the slinky dress and high heels. She’d even put on a little makeup.
“Wow,” he said, his blue eyes warming as he ran his fingers up her bare arms. “You look beautiful, Jack. But then I think you always look beautiful.”
She smiled, pleased, knowing it was true. Dillon liked her in jeans and boots as much as he liked her in a dress. Mostly he liked her naked.
“You know, I didn’t exactly win the bet,” he said, feigning sheepishness.
“You said Waters was guilty. True, it wasn’t the Waters you meant, but I’m not one to haggle over a bet,” she said. “I just had to wait until my ankle was healed before I could pay up.”
“Well, in that case, I guess you owe me a dance,” he said as the band broke into a slow song.
She stepped into his arms, having missed being there even for a few hours. She looked up into his handsome face, wondering how she’d gotten by as long as she had without Dillon Savage in her life. The diamond ring he’d bought her glittered on her finger, his proposal still making her warm to her toes.
He’d bought a ranch up north, near a little town called Whitehorse, Montana. “I’m thinking we’ll raise sheep. Nobody rustles sheep,” he’d joked when he showed her the deed. “And babies. Lots of babies. I promise you I’m going to make you the happiest woman in northeastern Montana.”
She’d laughed. But she was learning that Dillon Savage was good as his word. The man could dance. And he’d already made her happier than any woman in central Montana. She didn’t doubt he’d live up to all his promises.
As he spun her around the room, she thought of the babies they would have, hoping they all looked like him. Except maybe the girls.
“You sorry?” he asked, his breath tickling her ear.
“About what?” She couldn’t think of a single thing to be sorry for.
“I just thought you might be having second thoughts about settling down with me instead of chasing rustlers.”
She smiled. “Darlin’, there’s only one rustler I want to be chasing.”
“We can both stop running then. Because, Jack, you already caught him. The question now,” he said with a grin, “is what you’re going to do with him.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6182-6
BIG SKY STANDOFF
Copyright © 2007 by Barbara Heinlein
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