No more, he thought. He would be trifled with no more . . .
Now he could catch glimpses of the sun- and shade-dappled horse and rider moving through the aspens toward the cabin. Lonnie tightened his grip on the rifle, hardened his jaws, and tightened his finger across the trigger.
CHAPTER 15
“Lonnie?” Casey yelled as she emerged from the trees, riding her chestnut mare Miss Abigail.
Lonnie’s heart was wrenched one quarter turn in his chest.
Ah, hell.
Casey stopped at the edge of the trees, on the far side of the small clearing in which the cabin sat. Lonnie stepped back inside the cabin door, lowering the rifle and drawing the blanket tighter around his shoulders, very aware that he wasn’t wearing a stitch beneath it.
“What the hell’re you doin’ here?”
Casey looked around at Lonnie’s clothes strewn between the creek and the cabin. Then she turned to Lonnie and gigged the mare into a trot, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry, Lonnie.”
“Stow it.”
Casey rode up to the cabin and dismounted, dropping Miss Abigail’s reins. She paused to pick up Lonnie’s longhandles, which she twisted in her hands, wringing them out, and then moved up to the cabin. She tossed the longhandles over the hitch rack and moved closer to Lonnie, her eyes large beneath the brim of her hat.
She raised her arms as though to hug him, but Lonnie stepped back.
“What’re you doin’ here, Casey? I’m just a boy from the mountains. A boy who gets in trouble a lot. Ain’t you just so nice befriendin’ such a troubled soul!”
Lonnie swung around, retreating inside the cabin, and sat down on the edge of the cot, keeping the blanket pulled close about him. He saw Casey’s shadow slide across the cabin floor as she stopped inside the doorway.
“Lonnie, I’m just awful,” Casey said. “If you want me to leave . . . if you don’t want to see me ever again, I understand. I’ll ride away right now. But I’d like to explain. I owe you that much.”
Lonnie glowered at the floor. “So, who’s the fancy Dan?”
“Niles Gilpin.”
Lonnie glanced at her over his shoulder. “Gilpin? That’s the banker’s name.”
Casey turned the corners of her mouth down, nodding. “Niles is George Gilpin’s son. He was studying at a college back east. He graduated last fall and came home to help his father in the bank.”
Lonnie chuckled without humor as he turned his head back forward. “Now it’s all coming clear to me.”
Casey moved into the cabin. She sat down on the cot beside Lonnie. She took one of his hands in her own. She was wearing riding gloves. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Lonnie didn’t look at her, but he could feel her gaze on his face.
“Lonnie, I think it’s time we faced facts,” Casey said finally.
Lonnie turned to her. His cheeks were warm with embarrassment, anger, and jealousy—a nasty concoction that neither the fire’s warmth nor the whiskey could alleviate. He steeled himself to keep from crying as he said, “You told me . . . you told me you loved me.”
For some reason, despite his need for Casey’s love, the word “love” only aggravated his humiliation. He wasn’t sure why it was such a wonderful and repelling word, but it was.
Casey squeezed his hand. “I know I did. And I always will, Lonnie. We’ve been through a lot together. We almost died together. But we have to face facts.”
“What facts are those?” Lonnie said with sarcasm. “That you found yourself a fancy Dan? The banker’s son. Hell, Casey, if money means so much to you, we had a whole passel of it last year. For a time, old Wilbur Calhoun had me convinced that we should keep Dupree’s loot and head to Mexico—don’t you remember? You’re the one who convinced me to turn it in!”
“Because that was the right thing to do, Lonnie. That money didn’t belong to us.”
“What is the right thing to do? To go skulkin’ around with some fancy Dan behind my back? I’m sorry you didn’t take what you said to me as serious as I did, Casey.”
“I did take it seriously. I still do. But we’re young, Lonnie. Too young to be making commitments to each other. The fact is, I’m going broke. Every month I get farther and farther behind. Soon, the county is going to sell my house because I can’t pay the taxes on it.”
“Gettin’ hitched to the banker would solve that problem, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I’m not sorry to say, it would.”
Lonnie glared at her, hardening his jaws, trying not to cry though he felt on the verge of it. “I didn’t think you were like that, Casey.”
“Like what? Not wanting to be put out on the street? Listen, Lonnie, you’re a boy. You don’t understand how frightening life on the frontier can be for a young woman with no prospects. When Pa was killed, he left with me about fifty dollars cash and the house. He was behind on both house payments and taxes. In less than a year, I’ll be broke. Do you know what that means for a young woman to be broke on the frontier? Do you?”
Now, it was Casey who seemed angry. She squeezed Lonnie’s hand harder, until it hurt a little. Lonnie felt his own anger subside. He hadn’t been thinking about Casey’s welfare. Only his own.
Only his love for the girl.
Lonnie did know what happened to homeless girls on the frontier. They usually ended up either working as fry cooks for miserable hours on end in some sweltering café kitchen, or in hurdy-gurdy houses until they either died in childbirth or some disease took their lives much too soon.
Casey said, “It was easy to commit to each other a year ago. We’d been through a lot together—almost killed by Dupree multiple times, almost eaten by a bear! But we persevered and we did the right thing in returning the loot to the deputy US marshal in Camp Collins. But now we’re back home. It’s day to day. It’s real life. And I’m scared, Lonnie. Giles is a good man with a good job and a future. He’s warm and gentle and he likes me. You and I—what would we have to look forward to, once you were old enough to marry me? You yourself told me that you and your mother barely made enough to feed yourselves. And now she has a baby, to boot!”
Lonnie stared at her, his lower jaw hanging. He wanted to respond to all that she’d said with a reasonable argument of his own.
But the fact was, Casey was right. Lonnie hadn’t been able to see past his love for her, and her love for him, to face the hard, cold facts that he was just too young and poor to marry the girl. And she, being two years older and on the verge of going broke and losing her house, couldn’t wait around for him to get his ducks in a row.
Besides, Casey was a town girl. She’d probably never take to living on a remote mountain ranch even if Lonnie had enough money to build them their own cabin, which he did not. He’d need help and materials, not to mention time, to build that cabin.
Really, that cabin was merely a castle in the sky . . .
He just stared at her, unable to say anything. Finally, he closed his mouth, turned his head back forward, and stared at the flames leaping behind the stove’s open door.
Very softly, Casey said, “I’m sorry, Lonnie.” Then she kissed his cheek, gave his hand another squeeze, rose from the cot and went outside. When she didn’t leave right away, he glanced through the window behind him to see her gathering his clothes between the cabin and the creek.
When she’d gathered them all, she brought them in and hung them to dry from wall pegs and over chair backs.
“You don’t have to do that,” Lonnie told her, his throat tight with emotion.
Casey swung the chair, over which his denim trousers hung, closer to the stove. Then she turned to Lonnie, her gaze somber, her eyes veiled with tears. She brushed a hand across her cheek, cleared her throat, and said, “I wanted to.”
Then she strode out of the cabin, drew the door closed behind her, mounted her horse, and rode away.
Lonnie leaned forward, gnashed his teeth, and ground his knuckles against his temples.
CHAPTER 16
&nb
sp; Late that night, lying on the cot in the line shack, Lonnie opened his eyes.
Something had awakened him.
What?
Outside, the General whickered.
More accustomed to danger than most young men his age, Lonnie grabbed his rifle from where it leaned against the wall near his cot, and scrambled out of bed. Clad in longhandles and socks, he sidled up to the window.
The half-moon was kiting high above the clearing, shedding a milky light that sparkled off the frost-rimed grass. Lonnie looked around, but he couldn’t see anything.
Again, the General whickered. The horse’s hooves thudded as the General moved nervously around the corral connected to the stable.
The General might have only winded a skunk or a coyote, but Lonnie had to check it out. Could be a mountain lion, even a grizzly. Or, worse, it could be two-legged prey . . .
Lonnie dressed quickly, pulled on his boots, pumped a cartridge into his Winchester’s chamber, and went out, closing the door quietly and then stepping to his left, around the cabin’s left-front corner and out of the moonlight. Pressing his back against the cabin’s log wall, Lonnie dropped to a crouch and edged a look back around the front of the cabin and into the clearing beyond.
He glanced over to where the General stood, staring over the corral gate toward where the trail led up out of the trees. The General was nervously switching his tail.
Lonnie dropped to a knee and held still as he stared out toward the trail and the moon-silvered forest. There wasn’t a breath of wind. The night was still and silent. It was darker over there at the edge of the clearing, down low where the trees shielded the moonlight from the clearing floor.
It was over there, however, that Lonnie saw a shadow move.
He pulled his head back a little closer to the cabin corner. He held his breath when he saw a man-shaped shadow run out from the trees and into the moonlight. The man was crouched low, his breath pluming in the chill air. The moonlight reflected off something shiny that he was holding down low in his right hand.
A gun.
Lonnie’s heart skipped, fluttered.
He licked his dry lips and watched the man take cover behind a boulder where the trail curved up out of the forest and angled toward the cabin.
As Lonnie stared at the boulder, he spied another flicker of movement in the corner of his right eye. He swung his head around to catch a glimpse of what appeared another man-shaped, pearl-limned shadow run out of the forest. Frost-stiff grass crunched softly under the runner’s boots. The man ran at an angle toward the back of the cabin, and out of Lonnie’s field of vision.
Lonnie’s heartbeat increased. The mountain air was cold, but his hands were sweating as he squeezed the Winchester. The hair on the back of his neck pricked with the fear that the second man might circle the cabin and move up behind him.
Lonnie looked toward the boulder behind which the first man had taken cover. The man’s hatted head slid out slightly from behind the boulder. The man raised a hand to his mouth. He made what sounded like a soft birdcall though it really didn’t sound much like any night bird Lonnie had ever heard.
The second man returned the call with another call that sounded more like an owl. An owl that had smoked too many cigarettes.
Something told Lonnie that the man behind the boulder was going to stay put and let the second man make the first move on the cabin. What they wanted, Lonnie had no idea, but a voice whispered the warning in his head that these two might be from the same pack that had ambushed him yesterday and had set his life spiraling into the hell he now found himself in.
Lonnie pulled back away from the cabin’s front corner, swung around, and stole quietly back to the rear. He edged a look around the back of the cabin.
The second man was walking through the moonlight toward Lonnie. He was maybe forty yards away and moving slowly on the balls of his feet, almost hopping. He wasn’t wearing spurs, or Lonnie would have heard them trilling. He appeared a big man wearing a bullet-crowned black hat and fur jacket.
He held a rifle in both hands up high across his chest.
Obviously, neither of these men was up to any good.
Lonnie stepped out away from the cabin, raising his rifle to his shoulder and taking aim at the big man walking toward him. “Stop right there.”
The man stopped, jerking back with a start. He froze for a second then snapped up his rifle and fired, the explosion cleaving the silent night, red flames lapping from the rifle’s barrel. The bullet screeched over Lonnie’s right shoulder and hammered the cabin wall behind him.
Jerking back, Lonnie fired his Winchester. He was surprised to hear the big man yelp, for Lonnie had been moving when he’d fired and he hadn’t expected to hit the man. Lonnie fell back against the cabin wall, got his feet beneath him again, and saw the big man lying on the ground, writhing, clutching his left thigh.
“Walleye!” the other man yelled. “Walleye, you hit?”
The wounded man twisted around and shouted with hoarse exasperation, “That loco kid just shot me!”
Pressing his back against the cabin’s rear wall, Lonnie muttered, “Walleye?”
Inside the boy’s head, another voice said, “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!”
Lonnie Gentry, you just shot another lawman!
Chick Bohannon shouted, “Kid, you hold your fire, now, you hear? You done just shot Walleye Miller! Deputy Sheriff Walleye Miller!”
Lonnie slid his gaze around the cabin corner, gazing toward the boulder that the moonlight touched and behind which he could see the head of his other stalker.
“What the hell are you two doin’ skulkin’ around out here, Bohannon?”
“You step out here where I can see you and put your rifle down, Gentry!”
Lonnie needed only two seconds to think about that. A year ago, he might have followed this lawman’s order. But he’d grown a lot in a year. He’d learned a lot about men including lawmen. “So you can shoot me?”
“You’re in big trouble, kid!”
“Walleye fired first!”
“He’s a deputy sheriff!”
“Get over here and haul him away or I’ll shoot him again!” Lonnie shouted, anger beginning to burn brighter than his fear. “Get over here and take him away, or so help me, I’ll shoot him again!”
Gritting his teeth in fury, remembering the “swim” he’d taken in the stock trough for all to see in Arapaho Creek, Lonnie swung his rifle toward Walleye, who lay writhing and clutching his leg. He’d lost his hat and his long hair was spread across his shoulders.
“Bohannon!” Walleye shouted, voice pinched with pain. “I’m gonna need a doctor. Bad!”
“Kid, I’m comin’ over. Don’t shoot!”
“Raise your rifle above your head!” Lonnie shouted, suddenly enjoying the power he found himself wielding.
Slowly, Bohannon emerged from the behind the boulder. He raised his rifle in his right hand above his head. He moved slowly out away from the boulder and moved toward where Walleye was writhing and cursing through gritted teeth.
Lonnie kept his rifle leveled on Bohannon, but he kept an eye skinned on Walleye, as well.
The big deputy jerked his enraged, moonlit eyes toward Lonnie. “Kid, if I die, I’m gonna haunt you to your last livin’ day—you hear me? I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna watch you hang!”
“Talk’s cheap,” Lonnie said, feeling calmer now, knowing he had the upper hand. “What the hell are you two doin’ out here, anyways?”
“We come to have us a little chat about that man you said you found in Skull Canyon,” said Bohannon, approaching Walleye.
Lonnie frowned. “What about him?”
“He wasn’t there!” Walleye shouted. “You sent us on a wild-goose chase, you lyin’ little devil!”
CHAPTER 17
Lonnie stared at the two deputies, incredulous. “What’re you talkin’ about? What wild-goose chase?”
“You know what wild-goose chase, you little fang-toothed
snot!” barked Walleye, throwing his head back in pain. “Ah, god—it hurts. This little boardwalk cur shot me!”
Bohannon glared at Lonnie as he said, “Yeah, well, you ain’t the first lawman he shot, neither!”
“He wasn’t in the cave where I left him?”
The two deputies were ignoring Lonnie.
“Can you stand, Walleye? I’ll help you back to your horse,” Bohannon said, crouching over his partner.
While Bohannon draped one of Walleye’s arms around his neck and helped him rise, Walleye said, “I gotta get to a sawbones, get this bullet dug out of my leg.” He looked at Lonnie and snarled, “If I don’t bleed out first!”
Lonnie’s mind was with Cade McLory. “I left him in a cave. Did you see a cave?”
“We seen a cave, all right,” Bohannon yelled as he helped the badly limping Walleye back toward the trees where they must have tied their horses. “The cave was there—the only cave around that part of the canyon. But there wasn’t no dead man there. But you know that, don’t you? If you think you’re gonna make fools of me an’ Walleye, you got another think comin’, kid!”
Walleye whipped his head toward Lonnie once more. “I’ll be back to show you how smart you are, you little cur. You can bet the seed bull on that!”
Lonnie stared at the two as they shuffled off into the darkness of the trees then lowered his rifle and drifted back to the front of the cabin, pondering what the two deputies had told him. How could McLory not have been in the cave?
That wasn’t possible. Unless some predator had dragged him out. But if that had happened the deputies would have seen some sign of him. They’d have known a dead man had been there. No predator would have dragged him off intact.
The only explanation Lonnie could figure as he moved back into the line shack and closed the door was that the cork-headed fools, Bohannon and Walleye, had investigated another cave. Apparently, there were at least two caves in that part of the canyon, though Lonnie had only seen one.
Curse of Skull Canyon Page 7
