“And that would be?” Aaron asked Asa with a superior smile.
Asa’s smile reflected the same arrogant superiority. “Why, a back-stabbing, ruthless, yellow-bellied S.O.B, of course.”
“There’s no need for name-calling.” Sheriff Mulden interjected.
If he’d hoped to head off this confrontation, Elizabeth could have told him to save his breath. When Asa got a bee in his bonnet, there was no stopping him.
Aaron was no better as he said, “I’d be glad to drop the subject, Sheriff, but Mr. MacIntyre seems reluctant to allow it.”
Asa pushed his hat back and shrugged. “Go figure.”
This was getting ugly. Elizabeth turned to Asa.
“You have no proof,” she reminded him. Without proof, they couldn’t do anything except embarrass themselves. She stared at him, willing him to let it go until they did have it. Asa didn’t seem to be getting the point.
“I have enough to know there’s no way you’ll be safe until he’s six feet under.”
“That’s pretty harsh words,” Sheriff Mulden said.
“It’s a harsh world.” Asa pushed away from the building. He encompassed the crowd in his gaze as he continued. “Of course, I wouldn’t have to dig up false proof against Ballard if Jimmy here would just confess.”
Never at a loss for words, Jimmy’s “You’re crazy!” was as immediate as his bluster.
Elizabeth shook her head. He would have been better served by making a run for it, because, while he was sputtering, Aaron moved in and locked his arms behind his back.
His “Hello, Jimmy,” was eminently cordial.
Red-faced and struggling, Jimmy demanded an explanation.
“Yeah,” Sheriff Mulden echoed. “I think that might be timely, seeing as you started by accusing Mr. Ballard and now have this one hog-tied.”
Asa pushed away from the wall. Elizabeth lost sight of him when someone jostled her. She surged forward with the crowd, trying to get a good look.
“I apologize for that, Sheriff. Needed to pass a little time while I waited.”
“Your idea of passing time is getting town folks worked up?” Sheriff Mulden didn’t sound pleased.
“He’s goddamned loco,” Jimmy protested.
Sheriff Mulden didn’t appreciate the interruption as evidenced by his scowl. “I’ll thank you to remain quiet, Jimmy. I’m basing my listening on how many times I’ve had the pleasure of a body’s company in my jail. Those that don’t disturb my Saturday nights get first shot.”
A titter of uneasy laughter rippled through the crowd. Jimmy was a regular at the tiny jailhouse. Sheriff Mulden turned back to Asa. “You said you were waiting on something, son?”
“Yeah.”
Elizabeth waited with the same breathless anticipation as everyone else.
Sheriff Mulden shifted his feet. “You planning on getting to the point before lunch?”
“You might want to hurry it along,” Aaron agreed.
She couldn’t see, but Elizabeth bet the reason for the tension in his voice was because Jimmy was objecting to being restrained. Bullies rarely enjoyed being subjected to the treatment they handed out.
“He was waiting on me,” Cougar called from somewhere behind her.
Like a scene from the bible, the crowd parted. He passed within two bodies of Elizabeth, carrying a branding iron, a bag of something, and an aura of grim purpose.
She followed his progress until he stopped in front of Asa, who asked, “That what I think it is?”
Cougar twitched the bag. “If you’re talking about this, it’s pure poison. The kind a man might want to drop in a watering hole if he’d a mind to do some damage.”
The crowd’s united gasp stirred a little breeze. The person on her left jostled Elizabeth again. She stuck out her elbow in self-defense, but she didn’t take her eyes from the drama unfolding.
Sheriff Mulden pointed to the other objects in Cougar’s hand. “Could I see that brandin’ stick?”
Cougar gave it a toss. The sheriff caught it. He studied it briefly, then frowned. “Where’d you boys find this?”
Cougar jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Stashed under Jimmy’s bedroll at the hotel.”
Speculation ran rampant through the crowd, starting with a murmur and rolling into an annoying roar that drowned out everything but bits and pieces of the conversation between the Sheriff, Asa, Aaron and Cougar, but Jimmy’s howls of innocence kept overpowering the parts she really wanted to hear. And what they didn’t drown, the crowd’s repetitions did. The best she could determine, the men were doing the same as the crowd, indulging themselves with drawn out speculation when the person with the answers sat right before them.
Finally, unable to contain her frustration, she called out, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, someone ask him why!”
The crowd chose that moment to fall silent, leaving everyone in no doubt as to who’d given the order. Well, spit!
The reactions of the men concerned were predictable. The Sheriff and Aaron frowned repressively at her. Cougar wore that halfcocked grin, and Asa merely offered, “I guess we could do that.” He said it like she was taking all the fun out of his day.
“If you don’t mind, son,” Sheriff Mulden interrupted, “I’ll be handling the questioning.”
Asa surrendered his role of interrogator with an open gesture of his hands and a nod.
The sheriff accepted the invitation and turned to Jimmy. “You got an explanation for all this?”
“I ain’t got no explanation for nothing.” Elizabeth still couldn’t manage a glimpse of his face, but his voice sure sounded sullen. “I don’t know how that stuff got under my bed, but I sure as hell didn’t poison good beef and didn’t shoot nobody.”
The crowd shifted to get a better view. Elizabeth didn’t move with them, held up by the disgust in Jimmy’s voice as he talked about poisoning good beef. It was genuine. Elizabeth knew it as surely as she knew she was going to have a raw spot from the darned corset. She bounced on her toes, trying to get Asa’s attention, but the undertaker took advantage of her dawdling and moved in front of her, leaving her with a bird’s eye view of his black wool jacket. She fingered her hat pin, and scouted for a parting in the crowd.
“You saying you didn’t run off any cattle or change any brands either?” Sheriff Mulden asked.
“Or terrify my wife?”
That was Asa’s voice. She’d recognize that low drawl anywhere, and, from the careful way he was shaping his words, he was furious.
She shifted to the right, but the opening she’d been aiming for closed up as Jimmy shouted, “I branded a few cattle, scattered a few cows, but that’s all.”
The precisely spoken “I don’t think so” belonged to Aaron.
“All right. I hassled Miss Coyote, but only until she married up with him. After that, there wasn’t much point.”
Now that, Elizabeth thought, was an interesting way to phrase it. The subtlety was lost on Asa. “Bothering my wife was a huge mistake.”
“We’re already square on that!” Jimmy hollered. The edge of desperation in his voice made her wonder if Asa was advancing on him.
“If we want to nail this,” Cougar jumped in, “I got Clint fetching the railroad man.”
Clint must have ridden like the devil to get here before she did. She wondered if he’d been given the job of watching her again and, as soon as she’d left the ranch, he’d headed for the shortcut she couldn’t take in the buckboard.
“What good will that do?” Sheriff Mulden asked, interrupting her speculation.
“He can verify who told him Rocking C cattle were diseased,” Aaron pointed out.
The crowd shifted, and, for a brief moment, Elizabeth had a glimpse of Jimmy, Aaron, and half of Asa’s face. Aaron was having all he could do to hold Jimmy. Asa was wearing the quirk-of-the-lips smile that boded ill, and Jimmy—well, he just looked desperate.
“I didn’t talk to no railroad man!” Jimmy hollered. “Let go of me
, damn you.”
“I think we’ll wait until Mr. MacIntyre’s witness gets here before we do that, son,” Sheriff Mulden said congenially.
Elizabeth bounced on her toes again. She poked the undertaker, but he didn’t move. Since there was no hope of catching Asa’s eye, she settled for shouting, “Ask him why there wasn’t any point in hassling me after I married Asa!”
“Yeah!” someone shouted. She thought it might be Millicent. “Why was marrying up with her so important?”
The person behind her bumped Elizabeth again. She spun around to give him or her a piece of her mind and froze. Brent!
“I can answer that for you,” Brent said to Elizabeth only, yanking her to him so hard, her hat pin went flying out of her hand. “I was paying him good money to drive you into my arms.” He tossed her up and around, slapping his hand over her mouth, cutting off her cry.
She glanced around frantically for help, but her previous hesitation had left her at the back of the crowd. Unless Millicent really did have eyes in the back of her head, no one was going to notice Brent carrying her off, which was what she thought he intended from the way he was backing up.
Her heart pounded in her ribs, leaving a thundering pulse in her ears. She’d been right! Brent was the mastermind behind this. He’d used Jimmy, Aaron, and herself, but the plan and its implementation were all his. She bit down on his fingers just as Jimmy hollered, “Brent Doyle asked me to scare her so she’d look favorably on him. He wanted to speed up the courtship!”
Brent hissed and shook his hand free. He wasn’t as bulky as Asa, but he was lightning quick. Her “why” was smothered before she could get it past her throat. So was her scream as he hauled her back against him, crushing the corset into her waist. It turned out she didn’t need to scream to get the crowd’s attention. As soon as Jimmy yelled, they’d started searching for the new face in this drama. In another one of those biblical moments, the crowd shifted, searched, and then parted when they found their quarry.
For the first time, she had a clear view of Asa’s expression. It wasn’t encouraging. Along with the dismayed realization as to what was going on, there was also a certain amount of accusation. No doubt, to his way of thinking, her being here was tantamount to walking up to Brent and inviting him to take her hostage. She met his accusation with a glare of her own.
“Let her go, gambler.” The drawl was low, more like a growl than speech. Elizabeth had never seen Asa so cold. So dangerous.
Cougar’s “You can’t hope to get out of here,” all but covered Aaron’s “You’re a dead man.”
Brent shook his hand free of her teeth and countered, “Like hell I can’t.”
Taking a desperate breath, Elizabeth redirected her glare to Aaron. “This isn’t the time to be making threats.”
“You can think of a better one?” Asa asked conversationally, one eyebrow winging up, shifting his position so he was clear of the door and his hands hovered near his guns.
She felt the cold muzzle of a gun press against her temple. She swallowed carefully. “Yes.”
She tightened her grip on her reticule, closed her eyes, and prayed.
“Get back!” Brent warned the crowd, twisting her about as he made sure everyone saw the gun. He switched his grip to her throat, pulling her back against his chest. He waved the gun at Asa before snapping it back against her temple.
“You ruined everything,” Brent snarled at Asa, who stood, gun drawn, his face a calm mask of determination. “I would have had the ranch, my revenge, and Elizabeth if you hadn’t come along.”
“You most certainly would not,” Elizabeth protested, testing Brent’s hold but finding no weakness. “I don’t care how desperate I became; I never would have stayed with a no-account wastrel like you!”
“Shut up, Elizabeth!” Aaron and Asa bellowed simultaneously.
While she couldn’t see Aaron’s face, Asa’s eyes were flat gray with tension and worry. Brent’s forearm around her throat made it hard to talk, but she wanted this point clear. “I am not shutting up. This is my reputation the man is smearing!”
“I’m going to smear a hell of a lot more than your reputation if you don’t shut up,” Brent growled.
No he wouldn’t. She knew that. Not until they were clear of the crowd at least. She gathered the cord on her reticule and closed her mouth. Brent started backing away. Behind him, the crowd must have parted because he didn’t slow down. She stumbled once and he dragged her until she found her feet. She twisted, but accomplished nothing more than losing her balance and getting dragged again.
“For God’s sake, Elizabeth,” she heard Asa call. “Don’t fight.”
She ignored him and tried pulling Brent’s arm from her throat. She might as well have been tugging on a tree. As Asa had pointed out before, her weight was nothing to a man.
She checked the crowd for signs of rescue and found no comfort there. All the men had guns drawn and were searching for a shot. Unfortunately, few of those guns were in sober hands. The best she could hope for was that some drunken idiots wouldn’t let off a shot by mistake.
She tried to tangle her feet in Brent’s. “If you don’t lay off, you’re going to meet the same end as your mother.” He hauled her higher, choking her in the process.
Time stopped. Hardly caring about her lack of breath, she wheezed, “My mother?”
“She wouldn’t cooperate either. Killed herself when Coyote Bill caught me at the ranch. Stupid bitch fought me for the gun.” As he spoke, he continued to drag her uncompromisingly backwards, toward his safety. Toward her death.
“Why?” She had to know. Even if she died, she had to know.
He shrugged against her back, then she felt his muscles pull as he scanned behind him. “I would have had the ranch years ago. All I had to do was seduce your mother, kill your father, and I could have married into the best piece of property this side of the Mississippi.” He stumbled on a rock. The gun rapped her on the temple; pain slammed her eyes closed, but not her ears. “A place like that could fund a man for a good many years.”
In her mind’s eye, she pictured her gentle mother’s face. She remembered her father’s devastation upon her death. The suspicions she’d harbored against him. “You killed my mother because you didn’t want to work?”
“No.” Grunting, he picked up the pace, dragging her around a water trough. “I killed her because she didn’t have the sense to appreciate what I offered.”
“My mother was a very smart woman.”
She whispered a prayer to her father, asking for forgiveness for thinking he had killed her mother, before she opened her eyes.
The first thing she saw was Asa. He was behind Cougar and Aaron, staying back, but following. Waiting. Watching. She met his gaze through the dust kicking up at their passage, and shivered. The man she was looking at bore no resemblance to the easy-going man she’d married. The man she saw now was pure warrior. This was the man who would follow her to the grave if they allowed it.
A strange calm settled over her. “Let me go, Brent.”
“In a minute.”
“Now.”
“You never did as you were told.” He made it sound like a failing.
He swore as he tripped in a rut. She could smell the acrid sweat of his fear. Or maybe it was hers. There were a couple of things she was sure of in her life. One of them was she wasn’t prepared to die since she’d just discovered how much fun life could be. The other was she was done being tossed about like dandelion fluff on the capricious breeze of a man’s whim.
“I’m not going with you, Brent.”
“You might want to wait until you’re asked,” he grunted as her weight began to tell on his strength.
“I mean now,” she said calmly, sliding her hand into her reticule. “I’m not going any further with you now. You have to let me go.”
“Not likely.” He yanked viciously on her throat, hauling her to the left. “Seeing as how you’ve made a habit of ruining everything, I
’ll be making the decisions.”
“No. You won’t,” she said softly before letting her body twist into his, closing her eyes, and pulling the trigger on the derringer she’d hidden in her purse.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Three things happened at once. Her gun went off. Brent jerked backward and the world around her exploded in a hail of bullets. When her shoulder slammed into the hard ground, she opened her eyes. The first thing she saw were the worn soles of a man’s boots. Brent.
She closed her eyes, rolled to her side and retched violently. Hands on her shoulders tried to pull her back. She fought. They tugged harder. She moaned, but it was a soundless protest. She couldn’t hear anything beyond the ringing in her ears. The hands firmed their grip and willy-nilly, she went up and over.
Something hard propped up her shoulders. That was better. At least the world stopped spinning. Fingers patted her cheeks. She thought she told them to go away, but she couldn’t be sure if her lips just shaped the words or she actually said them. The annoying ringing persisted. God! Her head hurt!
She said so.
“I know, darlin’, but I’d be mighty grateful if you opened your eyes.”
She should have known it was Asa irritating her when she wanted to be left alone.
“How grateful?” she asked, keeping her eyes closed because the sun through her lids was enough to have her gritting her teeth.
Her perch bounced under her shoulders as he laughed, sending more pain shooting through her skull. She moaned. He was properly contrite, immediately stopping, smoothing her hair off her forehead, kissing her brow, whispering things she’d never thought to hear a man say. Sweet things. Ridiculous things. Love things.
She reached up blindly and wrapped her fingers in his hair. She pulled his head down and asked in a hoarse whisper, “Do I look a fright?”
“You look beautiful.” This time, his kiss landed on her lips.
“Save that for later, young man,” a gravelly voice interrupted. “And lay that young woman flat. Don’t you know better than to disturb a patient with a head wound?”
Promises Linger (Promise Series) Page 37
