Blaze! Western Series: Six Adult Western Novels

by Stephen Mertz

  Chapter 11

  When J.D. and Ruckner came back up out of the gully, having found nothing of any significance, their attention was quickly drawn by new activity taking place in the back yard of the big house. This time four people, none of them Maria, appeared there. They immediately began heading at a brisk pace toward the small corral behind which J.D. and Ruckner now once again stood.

  "Uh-oh," J.D. muttered. "That don't exactly look like a welcoming committee."

  "I've seen friendlier faces on a pack of pissed-off Arapahoes," agreed Ruckner.

  Clay Braedon led the quartet, wearing a scowl that would have been the envy of even shaggy-browed Sheriff Walburton. His sister and two brothers marched behind him, each of them displaying their own fierce glower, like it was a contest for family honors or something.

  J.D. and Ruckner came around the corner of the corral to meet them.

  "You again," sneered Clay when he and his siblings had drawn to within a few yards. "What the hell do you think you're doing snooping around on private property?"

  "Doing no harm that I know of," J.D. answered. "Just looking over the site of the ambush."

  "Way I heard it, you had your own ambush in town last night. Why don't you stick to nosing around there, instead of showing up here where you haven't been invited?"

  "I got the okay from your stepmother."

  "My stepmother!" Clay spat out the word like it tasted bad in his mouth. Then his eyes jumped to Ruckner. "I see you're Johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to being mixed up with this interloper again. Don't you have ranch chores you're supposed to be doing?"

  Ruckner's expression stayed flat. "You gave me leave to lag a bit this morning on account of getting back from town so late last night. Remember?"

  "Lagging 'a bit' don't mean lagging half the goddamn day," Clay snarled. "Nor is it any kind of allowance for escorting around this—"

  "Best you yank your spurs back outta the meat, mister," J.D. cut him off. "If you got a beef with me, keep it between us. This man did nothing but show me a little friendly accommodation when I looked him up to ask a few questions."

  It was then that Chuck, the second oldest Braedon son, decided to join in. He stepped aggressively forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with Clay. He was leaner, slightly taller, but clearly stamped from the same mold, with the familiar pale yellow hair, lantern jaw, and ruddy complexion. He was reportedly the most hot-headed of the bunch and J.D. had no trouble believing that, the way his eyes flashed with intense anger.

  "Who the hell do you think you are, coming 'round here telling us how to act and how to treat our hired help?" Chuck demanded.

  This, in turn, got an unexpected rise out of Ruckner. "'Hired help'?" he echoed. "Why, you young pup, I was working this land and wrangling the cattle on it when you was barely off your ma's tit and still leaving piss puddles in your pants. In all that time I was never called or treated like just one of the 'hired help'. Your dad was alive to hear you spout off like that, he'd knock you flat on your ass."

  "Yeah, well the old man ain't alive. Not no more," Chuck sneered. "And that's just the start of the changes around here, some of 'em way overdue."

  "That's just plain disrespectful...to Father and Mr. Ruckner," spoke up Curtis, the youngest son.

  Chuck kept his eyes on Ruckner, and kept the sneer on his face. "In order to be dis-respectful, you got to have had some respect in the first place. And that ain't never been the case for me, not when it comes to this old slacker."

  "That's enough," barked Clay. "This ain't the time to get into any of that. I'll remind you, Chuck, that I ramrod the crew and if I need any help handling the men, I'll ask for it. In the meantime, keep your opinions to yourself." His eyes cut to Ruckner. "And if I were you, Sam, I'd get in the habit real quick of showing better judgment when it comes to who you side with around here."

  Ruckner narrow-eyed him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "You figure it out. But do it on your own time. You've had enough of a lag on your morning start, I'd suggest you go find something useful to do."

  Ruckner hesitated, glancing uneasily at J.D.

  "Go ahead, Sam," J.D. told him. "I'm done here anyway."

  "That tears it!" Chuck exploded. His eyes whipped wildly from Clay to J.D. to Ruckner, then back to Clay again. "You gonna just stand there and watch that old mossback take his orders from this so-called gunfighter, this slick who's obviously honeyed up to dear old Step Ma, angling to siphon off some of the Braedon money she figures to inherit?"

  "That's a lie," J.D. said. His voice was low, but the ice in his tone froze everybody to silence.

  Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

  Finally, Chuck gulped a ragged breath and then swallowed. The sound of his throat muscles working and his Adam's apple sliding up and down seemed unnaturally loud.

  "Nobody calls me a liar," he said, barely above a whisper.

  "I just did," J.D. stated calmly. "If you didn't hear it plain enough, I'll be glad to say it again."

  For the first time, Nora Braedon spoke. "This is ridiculous. We've heard all about you, Mr. Blaze. Goading Chuck into a gunfight would be just another form of murder. Don't you think we've already suffered enough of that? For God's sake, our father isn't even in the ground yet."

  J.D. kept his focus on Chuck. He'd already made his assessment of Nora. Seventeen, good figure, the family blonde hair. Same strong lines to her facial features but softened by femininity just enough to make her rather pretty in a bold, not dainty, kind of way.

  "You got no call to beg for me, Sis," Chuck said. "I ain't exactly a stranger to handling a gun, you know. This conniving meddler don't scare me. Just because he has a big reputation don't mean nothing. Hell, half of the gunnies like him roaming the West made their reputations as back shooters or from outdrawing drunks who couldn't hit their mouth with the next drink, let alone fumble out a pistol."

  J.D. smiled thinly. "You keep telling yourself that, son. When you get to Hell, you can swap stories with the other sorry jackasses I sent there who felt the same way."

  Suddenly, Clay Braedon twisted sharply to his right, the side Chuck was on, slashing up and around with his elbow, driving it hard against the side of Chuck's jaw. The younger brother staggered back, his knees starting to buckle. Clay turned the rest of the way and lunged after him before he went all the way down. He grabbed him by the shirtfront with one hand, cocked the other fist and drilled a punch to the point of his brother's chin, knocking him cold.

  "Clay! What are you doing?" Nora cried out.

  She and Curtis rushed to seize Chuck by the shoulders and ease him to the ground after Clay let go of him.

  Clay wheeled back to face J.D. He was breathing hard and his fists were still balled. His eyes fell to J.D.'s drawn Colt, which had blurred from holster to fist the very instant Clay had started to raise his elbow.

  "You still itching to shoot him, even now that he's unconscious?" Clay said.

  J.D. studied the man's face. There were many emotions darting in and out of the expression there. Clay was scared, scared for his younger brother's life. And he was angry—angry about the murder of his father; angry at the hot-headed foolishness of his brother; angry at J.D.'s presence. But most of all, in his eyes he was pleading, without saying it in so many words, for J.D. to show some mercy.

  J.D. spun his Colt then re-holstered it. "I can wait. I figure he'll sooner or later give me cause all over again, after he wakes up."

  "You wanted him to draw on you. You prodded him into it. And if he'd tried, you wouldn't have hesitated to shoot—maybe kill—him."

  "I disagree. I neither wanted what was about to happen nor prodded him into anything he wasn't already primed for. But when a man insults me, I call him on it. If it leads to slapping leather, a person in my position can't afford to take that lightly. So you're right on one thing...I wouldn't have hesitated to do what I had to."

  Clay continued to regard him. "Last night you were invited to dine at my father's
table. When he first mentioned it to me, I thought a measure of friendship was implied. Now I can only wonder what your true motive was."

  "Yesterday at this time," J.D. said, "my only motive to be in this valley at all was for enjoying a stay—along with my wife—at the Big Thompson Lodge. We decided we'd earned a little rest and relaxation after wrapping up a particularly tough job down near Denver. Taking the honeymoon we never had, she liked to call it...But the events of last night have changed things. Now it ain't about being here to relax no more. We aim to stick around and help get to the bottom of who killed your father. At the same time, we mean to make sure nothing happens to your stepmother."

  "Last night she introduced you as an old friend."

  "That's true."

  "So seeing to her best interests trumps everything. Is that it?"

  J.D. scowled. "Protecting her trumps everything. Way I see it, doing that and finding out who killed your father are two ends of the same rope."

  "Maybe, maybe not. In case you haven't figured it out, the four of us" —Clay made a gesture to include himself and his siblings— "don't necessarily harbor such warm, nurturing feelings toward Belle."

  J.D.'s eyes took on a trace of flintiness. "Uh-huh. All the more reason she needs somebody around with a different outlook."

  From where he lay on the ground, head resting in his sister's lap, Chuck stirred faintly and emitted a pained groan. Nora lifted her face and glared at her oldest brother. "Damn you, Clay. I think you broke his jaw!"

  "I highly doubt it. His skull and everything attached is too damn thick to break that easy," Clay responded. "But, even if you're right, he's better off alive with a busted jaw than he would have been if I hadn't stopped him from doing something that was sure to get him killed."

  Cutting his eyes back to J.D., Clay said, "All the same, I expect he'll be a whole lot easier to keep tamed down if his eyes don't fall on you the first thing he comes around. Plus, I think you and me have said about all there is to say to one another. At least for the time being"

  J.D. returned the man's gaze for several beats. At the same time, he could feel the heat of Nora's glare having shifted to him. The youngest brother, Curtis, merely seemed to hover on the periphery of things, uncertain what to say or do.

  Finally, J.D. nodded. "All right. I'll be on my way then." He turned his attention to Sam, who also had been standing quietly by ever since Chuck's angry outburst that nearly ended in gunsmoke. "See you around, Sam."

  "Yeah, reckon you will. I'll be ridin' out with you, if you don't mind," Sam came back.

  Clay's face clouded. "What's that? What do you mean?"

  "You heard me plain enough. Just like I heard that young pup plain enough a couple minute ago." Ruckner stabbed a finger in the direction of the still-sprawled Chuck. "Lot of changes coming around here now that Boss Braedon is gone. Don't expect none of 'em are gonna favor me, or that I'm gonna like 'em much in return. So I figure it's time for me to dump the coffee grounds, kick out the fire, and move on."

  "I'd expect you to keep a cooler head, Sam. Act a little more sensibly," said Clay.

  Ruckner cocked his head to one side and gazed back stubbornly. "A body expects a lot of things in life. Sometimes you flat get disappointed...I'll be taking my good saddle, my two ponies, and whatever personal belongings I got in the bunkhouse with me when I leave. I'll be around town for a while. You can figure up what I'm owed in wages and send it in with one of the boys next time one of 'em heads that way."

  Chapter 12

  It took next to no time for Ruckner to get his things in order. He said his goodbyes to Porkchop but no one else. Looking on, J.D. could see signs of regret and sadness in the parting of the two old pards. Shortly after that, with Ruckner leading his spare horse, they were putting the Bar OB ranch headquarters in the dust behind them.

  The size of the sparse bundle that constituted the total of Ruckner's personal belongings, tied now on the back of his second horse, struck a chord in J.D. A man's whole life summed up in two nags and a bundle of items that included little more than a battered envelope of personal papers and photographs, a winter coat, a new pair of boots not yet broken in, and a handful of clean clothes—most of them worn and washed, some already with patches.

  J.D. wondered how many other wranglers and drifters scattered across the West could claim little more, maybe not even as much. Hell, up until he'd met and married Kate, he hadn't fallen very far out of that category himself. Yeah, he'd made good money selling his gun all over Hell's creation. But then he'd spent it damn near as fast...Until Kate came along and set him to thinking about planning for the future; to a time when they could eventually quit doing gun work and roaming from job to job, instead settling down comfortably together in a spot where they could spend whatever time they had left just enjoying their memories and each other.

  J.D. shook off these ruminations and brought his mind back to the present. That "settled down" time was still a long ways off, especially now that he and Kate found themselves unexpectedly plunked down in the middle of this situation full of bitter feelings and an ambusher (or ambushers, plural) who had already killed once and—judging from the attempt in the lodge horse barn—was ready and willing to strike again.

  In his own mind, J.D. was convinced that, whoever shot and killed Oliver Braedon, it was not Hiram Woolsey or either of the two gunnies who were part of the attack on the Blazes. That didn't rule out the possibility Hiram might have hired a fourth shooter, a rifleman, to do the job on Braedon...but J.D. wasn't ready to buy that, either. Not for a minute.

  No, he felt sure there was some whole other angle—or motive, as Clay Braedon would put it—behind the Braedon murder. The fact it came at a time when Hiram Woolsey happened to also have shown up in the valley, seeking to settle an old score with Belle, was only a misleading coincidence.

  J.D. had plenty of opportunity to mull these things over as he and Ruckner rode along. The old wrangler was understandably in his own reflective mood, leaving neither man much inclined toward making small talk.

  After they'd covered about half the distance to Elk City, though, an exchange of words became warranted.

  "Something wrong?" J.D. asked when Ruckner reined his mount down from the easy canter they'd been maintaining.

  Ruckner pointed off to the north, the direction his head was turned. "Up there. That twist of smoke...it don't belong."

  J.D.'s eyes tracked to where Ruckner was pointing. Just short of a mile away, rising up from a tree-smothered ridge of higher ground, a curl of grayish smoke was spiraling skyward.

  "That's still Bar OB land, lessen I'm off on my calculatin'," Ruckner continued. "No call for any of our riders—which means nobody with a legitimate reason—to be up that way. Especially not stopping to build a fire."

  "The overnight camp of a drifter passing through?" J.D. suggested.

  "Possible," Ruckner allowed. "But somebody just passin' through would more likely stick down lower, where the passage is flatter and emptier. All rugged ground up there, and choked with lots of trees. Why pick the most difficult route available?"

  J.D. set his jaw. "If not somebody passing through, then maybe somebody with cause to find an out-of-the-way spot to lay low, do a little wound-licking and re-grouping."

  "Whoever it is, for whatever reason," Ruckner said, "can't help thinking it seems a mite strange."

  J.D.'s mind raced. Once back in town, he'd been figuring to go in search of trying to pick up some kind of lead on the elusive Hiram Woolsey. Hit the saloons, hotels, boarding houses and so forth, do some asking around, some arm-twisting if he had to. Elk City wasn't especially big as far as its permanent population, but it got a lot of folks passing through, some staying on a temporary basis—prospectors, miners, and cow punchers looking for work, as well as those who came for the hunting, fishing, or just plain sight-seeing to be found in the surrounding mountains and lakes.

  Those who could afford it stayed at the lodge and utilized the services of the
old mountain men who lingered in the area to hire out as guides. The rest, those less flush or some who considered themselves savvy enough to venture out on their own, either pitched outlying camps or stayed at one of the town's cheaper establishments for their time in the vicinity.

  J.D. had reckoned Hiram, due to his big city background, as somebody who'd choose the latter. Now, however, having been foiled twice and with his accomplices blasted out of the picture, could it be he'd feel desperate enough to retreat to the wilderness in order to avoid exactly the kind of thorough, in-town search J.D. had in mind?

  Once the thought cropped up, there was no way to ride on without checking it out.

  "A-course," said Ruckner, scratching vigorously under his whisker-stubbled chin, "since I no longer ride for the Bar OB brand, it ain't no skin off my nose, not no how."

  J.D. cut him a sharp sidelong glance. "Cut the bullshit. You know you still care and you also damn well know what I'm thinking."

  Ruckner sighed. "Yeah, I expect I do. You got more of a one-track mind than a man with his britches on fire headed for the nearest watering trough."

  "So," said J.D., eyeing him, "you know the best way for us to maneuver up close to that smoke with the least chance of being seen?"

  "Son," Ruckner answered loftily, "I first set foot on this land when there was Arapaho everywhere, thicker than fleas on a buffalo herd. Notice I still got my hair? Way I kept it was from knowing the terrain like the back of my hand and because not even a beetle bug skittering between blades of grass can get around quieter and sneakier than I can...Follow me."

  * * *

  Little more than half an hour later, J.D. and Ruckner were picking their way quietly, cautiously through underbrush and trees as they eased up on the campsite from which a curl of smoke was still rising.

  Ruckner had first led the way down into a shallow draw and then angled over to a tree-lined creek in order to take them out of sight from anyone who might have been watching from the high camp. It would have looked like they were merely leading their mounts to water. Once obscured from sight, however, the pair had stayed under the cover of tree foliage. Cutting back, they ascended quickly until they reached a point where they had to abandon their horses and cover the rest of the distance on foot.