The Last Cahill Cowboy

by Jenna Kernan

  “In my office?”

  Chance pointed toward the ceiling. “You got two more floors.”

  “Chance, the girls stay upstairs.” Leanna spoke to him with the tone one uses on someone who is addled.

  Chance glanced out at the gaming hall, expecting Bowie to track him down any minute. Being town marshal, he’d need to speak to the man who’d killed a gambler at the Château Royale.

  His older brother was always good at finding the strays and cutting them back to the herd. Well, Chance wasn’t interested in rejoining the Cahill herd. He was in town for a reason. When he’d killed the man who did this to his family, he’d blow out of here as fast as the north wind.

  “Chance, you can’t stay here without ruining their reputations.”

  “They’re whores.”

  Leanna fisted her hips and Chance knew he’d stepped too far, again. Used to be he and Leanna got on without words.

  “Not anymore they’re not. Now they are respectable, working women and they deserve to be treated as such. They work the tables, play the piano, and that’s all they play. And, I’ll have you know, I’m in the process of turning this place over to them. Soon they’ll be business owners.”

  Leanna cared for her strays like family. Chance stilled with the recognition that she’d built herself a new family from the ashes of the old. She had sisters, true sisters, among these women, and now she had a husband and children, too. Where did he fit in?

  Like a lost calf in a blizzard, Chance saw himself drifting farther and farther afield.

  Leanna had built something to be proud of here. What had he to show for two years of work as a bounty hunter? He looked at the worn grip of his pistols.

  He only took the worst of the bounties, feeling certain that the world was a better place because of the removal of those outlaws. But the experience had changed him. Shooting a man will do that. It’s not the same as picking off tin cans from the tops of fence posts.

  “Chance? Are you listening?”

  He roused himself.

  Leanna was now leaning back on her desk. She pushed off, coming to stand before him. “I was inviting you to supper. Meet my Cleve properly. You sure are welcome to stay at our place for as long as you like. We’re renting a darling little house with plenty of room, until we get the ranch house built.”

  Oscar Jenkins’s words spun in his head. Leanna and Cleve were newly wed. The very last thing a new husband wants in his upstairs bedroom is his wife’s brother.

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Well, where will you stay?”

  “With Bowie?”

  “He’s sleeping at the jail until the wedding. Wouldn’t be proper for him to stay at the Morning Glory any longer.”

  Chance stared blankly.

  “What with them being engaged. You see?”

  He continued to stare, trying to understand her. “With who being engaged?”

  “Bowie, silly. He’s engaged to Merritt Dixon?”

  “Who’s Merritt Dixon?”

  Leanna flounced back in her chair. “Why, Chance, I told you he had a girl the last time we talked.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t say he was marrying her.”

  “He hadn’t asked her then. But now he has. She’s pretty and smart and just the best thing ever to happen to Bowie. Chance, soon you’ll be the only one of us not married.”

  Chance didn’t want a wife, but somehow Leanna pointing out that he was alone didn’t cheer him. In fact, it soured his mood still further.

  “Now that he and Merritt are engaged, he can’t very well stay in her boardinghouse, can he? I imagine it’s hard for him after keeping company with her. He’s been grumpy as an old bear since he moved out. Wedding can’t come quick enough for him, I think. It’s her second, and her first was a Texas Ranger. So she had some doubts about Bowie, him being a lawman, as well, you see.”

  Chance was still trying to get his mind around the idea of Bowie being someone’s husband. He sure was serious enough. He hoped the gal had some fun in her because his brother was as grim as death most days.

  “He still takes his supper there. But now that I think of it, his room is unoccupied. And Merritt would be happy to have you. I mean, you’ll be family soon.”

  Chance gave her a look.

  “Well, Chance, you’d have to give her time to get used to the idea. Bowie could take it up for you.”

  “I’m not taking up residence under his woman’s roof. I swear, Annie, you are just plain crazy sometimes.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  Plus he had only eight dollars and sixty cents to his name until Bullock wired him the money. “Oscar Jenkins said I can stay at the Royale.” Though Chance couldn’t pay for it until he got his bounty.

  He had given Leanna every bounty he’d earned for two years. He hadn’t had much need for money, bedding out wherever he found himself. Now he found himself in the unenviable position of needing to ask for some of it back. He glanced at her but pride kept his jaw locked shut.

  Her dark eyebrows lifted. “Oh, well, if you prefer. You understand why you can’t stay above this place, don’t you? My goodness, the way Callie looks at you, I just don’t know. She’s young and impressionable.”

  “She’s no younger than you, I expect.”

  “But she seems younger. Doesn’t she?” Leanna reached out to him and clasped one of his hands with both of hers. “I’m so glad to have you back, Chance. I love Quin and Bowie, but they just don’t understand me like you do.”

  “You mean you can’t lead them around by the nose.”

  She giggled and released his hand with a soft little pat. “That’s true. Are you sure you don’t want to stay with us? We certainly have the room.”

  “I’ll stay at the Royale, for now.” Chance ambled toward the door and Leanna followed, walking at his side.

  “Well, I won’t stop you, though I don’t know what you can do in a hotel that you can’t do right under my roof.”

  He gave her the look.

  She straightened and flushed. “Oh, well. I see. But the Royale won’t abide drunkenness or loose women and you need a bath before you go over there again.”

  Chance brushed his hand over his forehead. He hadn’t had a headache in years, but Leanna seemed bound and determined to give him one.

  “Annie, I don’t want to stay with my baby sister and her new husband. It’s not right.”

  “That’s silly. We’re family.”

  “Is it? Then why didn’t you go and stay with Quin when you came back?”

  The color in her cheeks now spread down her neck. “That’s not the same. Quin and I have differences. And he did not approve of my status as an unwed mother.”

  “Your…”

  Leanna raised a finger to chasten him and Chance fell silent, reminding him of their earlier discussion about the child she called her own.

  “You’re going to have to explain this to me sometime.”

  She looked so sad that he was sorry he’d brought it up. “Sometime, maybe.” She patted his cheek. “I’m glad you’re finally here. We’ll figure this out now. I’m certain of it.”

  “We’d better, because I can’t stand to stay anywhere for long.”

  Leanna gasped. “But this is your home.”

  Chance snorted. “No, Annie. My home is long ago. It doesn’t even exist anymore.”

  “That ranch belongs to all of us.”

  “He can keep my share so long as I don’t have to see him to do it.”

  “But we have to work together on this.”

  He rose. “No, Annie, we don’t. I work alone. You know that.”

  He put his hat on his head, adjusting it low over his eyes. “Got to go find Bowie before he sends a search party after me.”

  “A search party? Why?” She must have read his look because her eyes widened. “Chance? What happened?”

  He told her about the gambler and Ellie. Leanna wobbled and Chance clasped her elbow to steady h
er a moment.

  She gripped his forearm tight. “Are y’all right?”

  He gave her a grin and a wink. “You know how fast I am.”

  Too damn fast, he thought. His words only served to earn him a lecture about being more careful and how much he worried her. She even gave him a little hell afterward. When she ran out of steam, he stepped through her door and she walked him out, her expression still troubled.

  “Dinner?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “You are not going to avoid me for long, Chance Cahill. I want you to meet Cleve properly.”

  He kissed her cheek and then headed out to find his brother. With any luck Bowie would arrest him and he’d have a place to sleep for the night.

  Chapter Four

  Chance found only Bowie’s deputy, Glen Whitaker, at the jail. Whitaker somewhat resembled an image Chance had once seen of General Custer because of his wide forehead and bushy mustache, which was fixed above a neatly trimmed narrow brown beard that covered only his chin. Unlike Custer, Whitaker had vacant blue eyes that did not indicate a deep thinker. He directed Chance to the undertakers, which was conveniently right next door.

  Once there, Chance was greeted by Wallace Druckman, the undertaker, a short barrel of a man in a clean white shirt, paper collar and a resplendent peacock-green waistcoat complete with gold watch chain and a fob. At first glance it looked like a gold nugget, but on closer inspection, Chance decided it was a human skull. Druckman’s trousers also looked new and sported a narrow gray-and-black striped pattern. Business, it seemed, was good.

  “Mr. Cahill. A pleasure to meet you at last.” He took up Chance’s hand in two of his before Chance offered it. Then he shook it in a deferential, disingenuous way that Chance despised. Chance came away smelling of chemicals. “I have just been admiring your work. A clean shot, sir, very clean, indeed. I see you are not undeserving of your reputation and tales of your deadly accuracy are surprisingly, well, accurate, if you don’t mind the pun.”

  He didn’t mind a pun when he heard one, which he still hadn’t.

  “Bowie?” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Right this way.” He motioned to a curtain, still grinning. “He’s in the back. We’ve just received another delivery. A child. Very sad for all concerned.” His face went from jubilant to regretful in an eye blink. “Even someone as hardened by death as I am is still touched when I see one so young taken from this world by…”

  Chance stepped past him, leaving him to finish his speech without the benefit of an audience. Druckman’s words trailed off and he hustled to follow.

  “Yes. Right this way,” he said from behind him. “I wondered, Mr. Cahill, if you would object to my public display of the gambler’s remains.”

  “Do as you like.”

  Chance ducked past the red velvet curtain and into the storage room, surprised to find the back wall completely missing so the space more resembled a barn than mortuary. The man he’d shot was already laid out on a board, balanced between two sawhorses, his fancy coat and clothing in perfect order, but his mouth was open and his eyes seemed to stare fixedly at the bullet hole that marred his otherwise unblemished complexion.

  “Shouldn’t aim your pistols at women,” he muttered as he continued on to Bowie, who stood beside a man he didn’t recognize.

  As he drew near he saw the body of a young Mexican girl of perhaps seven, her long black hair wrapped about her like ropes and her pretty green dress now sodden and clinging. Unlike the other corpse, this girl’s eyes were closed and her mouth tipped in a smile. If not for her pallor and the blue tinge to her lips, she might have been asleep. Chance wondered if her death had been hard. Drowning seemed to him a bad end, as you had time to see it coming, time to fight and then realize you were not going to win. Still, she was at peace now and Chance felt a familiar but still unsettling twinge of jealousy.

  He flanked the table and Bowie glanced up at him.

  “Chance, meet Doc Lewis.”

  He offered his hand over the body to a man with kindly brown eyes and a welcoming smile. The doctor’s handshake was firm, but he did not try to impress Chance with either his grip strength or his demeanor. Chance liked him.

  “Also the town coroner,” said Bowie as the men dropped hands as if both had just realized they were clasped over the remains of a child.

  “I’ve examined Mr. Rogers over there.” He indicated the other corpse. “Told the marshal that you shot from close range, that the man was facing you at the time and that the bullet was the cause of death.”

  Chance nodded and then caught Bowie glaring at him. His brother was just dying to lay into him, but the doctor’s presence checked him. Chance considered following the doctor home.

  Lewis drew a long intake of breath and then lowered his gaze to the girl. He placed a hand on the child’s stomach and pushed. Water gurgled from her mouth.

  “Looks like a drowning to me,” he said to Bowie.

  “Fell in the river according to her father,” said Bowie, his expression as grim as Chance had ever seen it.

  Chance had seen more dead men than most, but he felt queasy now. He’d never looked at a death like this.

  “She didn’t fall.”

  Chance looked up to see a dark-skinned man in jeans, a checked work shirt, yellow kerchief and a sombrero who was standing at the wide opening in the back of the building. He lifted his head to reveal skin browned by the sun, dark brown eyes and a thick black mustache that did not completely hide his frown.

  “Miguel,” said Bowie, acknowledging the man.

  Chance recognized him now as Miguel Martinez stepped from the harsh sunlight and into the shade of the morgue. This was the tanner’s son. His father, Jose, had been tanning hides from all the area ranches for years, just for local use. Miguel brought them downriver to town or sold them elsewhere. That meant this child was one of his sisters.

  Chance looked again, recalling a younger version of this girl playing with her siblings outside their adobe house up on the South Kiowa across the river from the border between the 4C and Fitzgerald spread.

  “You see something?” asked Bowie.

  Jose arrived, trotting into the room, his shirt stained with sweat as if he’d run all the way from the river. He was a shorter, darker version of his son with muscular arms and thick calloused hands. Jose grabbed his son in a bear hug as he shouted in Spanish. Miguel wrestled with his father as the smaller man pulled him out into the sun.

  “You check her body, Doc,” shouted Miguel. “You’ll see.”

  Father and son faced off. Bowie followed them out into the yard trailed by the undertaker. The shouting grew louder. Chance was about to follow when the doctor pulled the girl’s dress up over her head. Chance stilled. There across the child’s torso were the clear marks left by a rope. The men exchanged looks.

  “Someone lassoed this girl,” said Lewis.

  Chance scratched his whiskered cheek. “Maybe to haul her out?”

  “Or drag her in.”

  Bowie had sent his deputy out to the Martinez place to talk to the family and find out what had happened. Chance thought it a fool’s errand, since Jose wasn’t talking and Miguel had gone dumb after his father had gotten hold of him.

  Now Bowie sat tilted back in his office chair with one boot resting on his scarred wooden desk, eyeing Chance, who leaned against a window frame, arms folded tight across his chest.

  “I haven’t had a single unnatural death since Saul Bream and now you show up and I got two bodies in one day,” said Bowie. Thanks to Leanna, Chance knew that Bream was the last of the three hired murderers to die.

  “You telling me you would have done different?”

  Bowie dragged his foot off the desk and his boot heel struck the floor hard. He looked tired. “Just an observation.”

  “Annie left me the telegram Quin sent. She said Ma’s and Pa’s deaths were no accident.”

  Bowie pressed his lips together and his blue eyes turned cold. All three of the
m had inherited various shades of their mother’s blue eyes, except Quin, who had their father’s gray eyes.

  “We looking at a murder here?”

  “Appears so. Made to look like a robbery gone bad, but it’s much more than that. Three men, hired by Marshal Hobbs to make their deaths look like an accident.”

  “Vernon Pettit, Huck Allen and Saul Bream.”

  “All dead. The first one tried extortion on Quin.”

  Chance raised his eyebrows and Bowie nodded as if to confirm someone would really be that stupid.

  “Quin shot him. That was Allen.” Bowie paused.

  Chance shook his head. “Don’t know him. Never seen a dodger on him, either.” A dodger was a wanted poster, most of which Bowie would also have seen.

  “Addie K. stabbed his accomplice, but he got away with two thousand dollars.”

  “Who’s Addie?”

  “Quin’s wife. Adrianna McKnight Cahill.”

  “See, I wouldn’t think a bleeding man with that kind of money would be hard to find.”

  “Quin was also shot in the exchange.”

  Chance pushed off the wall. Surely Leanna would have mentioned if Quin was…

  Bowie lifted a hand. “He’s all right. Mostly healed up and gone to Dodge with the fall cattle drive at present. Should be back anytime. I know you two can’t wait to catch up.”

  “I can wait.”

  The two exchanged a smile.

  “He got married?”

  “She owns the ranch adjoining the 4C just north of Fitzgerald’s spread. She’s from Boston.”

  Chance scowled at this piece of information.

  “When she moved in, cattle went missing, fences got cut. They each thought the other one was behind it.”

  “Who was?”

  “Not sure. But the trouble seems to have stopped for now.”

  “He still as bossy as God Almighty?”

  Bowie didn’t ask who he meant. “His wife has settled him some.”

  “Like to see that.”

  “You will, I guess. You stay around long enough.”

  “Only staying to see this through.”

  Bowie nodded.

  “What about the other two? How’d they die?”