“He can’t help who he is. . . .” Victoria had laid her hand on his. “Any more than you can help who you are.”
“Who’s that? I’m not sure I know anymore.”
“You’re the man who loves me, even if I have to spend the rest of my life in this chair. And bitterness and self-pity don’t suit you, Tyler Beaumont. They don’t suit you at all.”
He looked at her then, still beautiful even though she was sitting in the wheelchair her father had had made for her. And he knelt and put his arms around her and held her, wishing that things were different, wishing that he could go back and change that one small moment in time when their world and all their plans had come crashing down around them.
Well, not all their plans, he supposed. They were still married, and there were times, like when they held each other in the dark, when he could almost forget that Victoria might never walk again. Those moments were what kept them going.
As the weeks had turned into months, they had grown more accustomed to her limitations. The pain of what she had lost was still with them, of course, but time had dulled it somewhat. With the resilience that was bred into the human animal, they had adapted.
Then Beaumont had gotten the word from Captain McDowell himself that he was being sent to Brown County to quash the trouble simmering there. At first he had thought about refusing, even though that might well have meant that he would have to resign from the Rangers. Once Victoria got wind of that idea, she put a stop to it immediately.
“All you ever wanted to be was a Ranger, Tyler,” she had told him. “You can’t just walk away from it. It may sound a little foolish, but . . . that’s your destiny.”
“You really think there is such a thing?” he’d asked her.
“I know there is.” Her smile was as brilliant as ever. “It was our destiny to be together, wasn’t it?”
He couldn’t argue with that.
So he had come to Brown County, and now here he sat beside a dying man, not knowing what else to do.
He wished Kane would get back.
Suddenly, Will Bramlett’s eyelids flickered open. The man gasped, and for a second Beaumont thought that death had come to him at last. But Bramlett’s chest continued to rise and fall, though in an erratic rhythm, and he turned his head to stare at the young Ranger.
“Chris . . . ?” Bramlett whispered.
“No, it’s me,” Beaumont told him. “Tye. Chris isn’t here, Will. He’s gone for the doctor.”
“Too late . . . too late . . .”
“Don’t talk like that—” Beaumont began.
The wounded man lifted his hand. It shook, but he managed to reach out and grasp Beaumont’s hand. “Tye . . .” Bramlett husked, “don’t let Chris get himself . . . killed . . . over me. Tell him . . . it ain’t worth it . . . not me . . . not the fences . . . not the ranch . . . he can’t fight . . .”
Beaumont knew he would be wasting his breath if he told Chris Kane those things. Kane just wasn’t about to back down now that he had made his decision to fight Duggan and the other big ranchers.
“Just rest easy, Will,” Beaumont said as he put a hand on Bramlett’s shoulder. “Chris will be back soon with the doctor.”
Bramlett shook his head. “No . . . you got to . . . promise . . . promise me you won’t . . . let him get killed.”
“I’ll look after him, Will,” Beaumont promised.
“Your . . . word . . .”
Beaumont bit back a curse. “You’ve got my word on it,” he said.
The breath went out of Bramlett in a long, exhausted sigh. His chest fell . . . and didn’t rise again. Beaumont stared at him intently, waiting for the sound of another breath, waiting for his chest to rise, waiting for any sign of life.
But the life was all gone. It had slipped out of Will Bramlett with that sigh. His eyes were still open, but they stared sightlessly at the roof beams and began to grow glassy. Carefully, the young Ranger closed Bramlett’s eyes.
Beaumont looked at his watch again. Three-fifteen in the morning. Just in case anybody wanted to know later on.
* * *
By the time the sun came up the next morning, Beaumont already had a grave half-dug on a hill overlooking the cabin and the winding course of Blanket Creek. During the time he had been in Brown County, Beaumont had already heard several conflicting accounts of how the creek had come by its name. The one that most people seemed to accept said that some of the earliest white visitors to the area, a party of surveyors that had passed through in 1852, had come across a band of Tonkawa Indians spreading their blankets on some bushes that grew along the creek in order to dry them and air them out. The Tonkawa were peaceful—at least they had been that day—and the surveyors had carried the story away with them and given the creek its name. That explanation sounded as good as any to Beaumont.
Kane still hadn’t come back from Brownwood, and Beaumont was convinced by now that something had happened to him. Later, after he had buried Will Bramlett, he would have to saddle up his horse and ride the fourteen or fifteen miles to town so he could find out why Kane hadn’t returned.
The shovel rasped in the dirt as he kept digging. Despite the early morning chill, the exertion made him warm. He paused to sleeve sweat off his forehead. While he was stopped, he heard hoofbeats in the distance. As he listened, the sounds drew nearer. Several riders were coming, he judged.
His gun belt was already strapped around his waist. He drove the shovel blade into the dirt and left it standing upright as he stepped over to the tree where he had leaned his Winchester. As he picked up the rifle and started down the hill toward the cabin, he saw four horsemen ride up. Three horsemen and a horsewoman, he corrected himself. Even at this distance he had no trouble making out the fiery red hair that tumbled from under one of the horsebackers’ Stetsons. The ripe curves of her body were a further indication of her sex. Had to be Callie Stratton, Beaumont thought. Nobody else around here looked like that.
By the time he reached the cabin and walked around it to meet them, they had dismounted and were standing there holding their horses’ reins. Al Rawlings was one of them, of course; Beaumont had expected that as soon as he saw Rawlings’s sister. He recognized the other two as Simon Clark and Vern Gladwell, both of whom owned small spreads and were friends with Kane and Bramlett.
“Tye’s your name, ain’t it?” Rawlings asked harshly without any preamble.
Beaumont nodded. “That’s right. What can I do for you?”
“Where’s Will Bramlett?”
“In there.” Beaumont inclined his head toward the right-hand side of the cabin. “I was just up on the hill back yonder, digging his grave.”
“He’s dead?” Callie Stratton exclaimed.
“Yes, ma’am. I did everything I could for him, but he died a little after three this morning. You know about what happened?”
“We know,” Rawlings said curtly. “Vern here was in Brownwood last night and heard about it. He brought the word to my place this morning and we decided we’d better head into town. Picked up Simon along the way.”
“We wanted to check on Will first, though,” Callie said. Her voice had softened a little. She was normally a brash, outspoken woman, but the news of Bramlett’s death appeared to have subdued her somewhat. “I’m sorry we didn’t get here before he passed on.”
“When we heard how bad he was shot, we knew he didn’t have a chance,” Rawlings said, and Beaumont thought that was a mite callous. Rawlings was haggard, as if he’d had a bad night. Probably hung over, Beaumont decided. Although the way he held his right arm so stiffly, he looked almost like he’d been hurt.
“We’ll help you finish up the burying,” Simon Clark offered. “Then we got to get on to town and see about Kane.”
“What about Kane?” Beaumont asked sharply.
Rawlings used his left hand to rub his beard-stubbled jaw. “You ain’t heard about that, have you?” Without waiting for an answer, he went on. “No, of course not. You been ou
t here with Bramlett all night. Kane’s been shot, too.”
Beaumont’s eyes widened in surprise. “Shot!” he repeated. “By who?”
“Skeet Harlan, Marshal Keever’s deputy. Kane went into town to look for Doc Yantis—”
“I knew that.”
Rawlings looked a little irritated by the interruption. “When he couldn’t find Doc, he went to the marshal’s office. I guess he thought maybe somebody there could tell him where Yantis was. Harlan already knew about that dustup along the Slash D fence line last night, so he tried to arrest him. Kane didn’t want to give up.” Rawlings shrugged and then winced. There was definitely something wrong with his right arm, Beaumont thought. “When Kane went for his gun, Harlan shot him three times.”
“Is he dead?”
“Nope,” Vern Gladwell replied. “Shot up pretty bad, of course, but still breathin’. When Doc got back to town from the Slash D, he took a look at Kane and said he might live. Maybe.”
“What was the doctor doing at the Slash D?”
“A couple of their men got hit when they were bushwhacked along Stepps Creek.” Rawlings stared hard at Beaumont. “You know all about that, do you, Tye?”
“Chris told me he and Will went down there to cut Duggan’s fence. Then some of Duggan’s riders jumped them and all hell broke loose. I never really got the straight of it. Chris didn’t seem all that sure himself what had happened.”
“You weren’t there?” Rawlings asked.
Beaumont shook his head. “No, if Chris and Will had somebody with them, it sure wasn’t me.”
The men looked at each other, clearly puzzled by something. Simon Clark shook his head and said, “I’ll ask around, Al, but as far as I know everybody in our bunch was close to home last night. I don’t know who could have bushwhacked those Slash D boys.”
“Well, we’d better find out,” Rawlings snapped, “because we’ll damn sure get the blame for it.”
“Where’s Kane now?” Beaumont asked.
“Locked up in the jailhouse,” Gladwell answered. “Doc said he could take care of him just as well there, and it’d be better not to move him.”
“What are they going to do with him if he recovers?”
“Probably string him up from the nearest tree,” Rawlings said. “That’s what those high-and-mighty bastards think of as justice. But it won’t happen if we’ve got anything to say about it. You ridin’ with us to town, Tye?”
Beaumont nodded. There wouldn’t be any lynching. He would see to that, even if it meant revealing his identity as a Ranger.
“Let’s get Bramlett in the ground, then,” Rawlings said. “Time’s a-wastin’.” His voice lost a few of its rough edges as he added, “I don’t want to find that another friend o’ mine has died before I got there.”
19
The hour was early and not many people were stirring on Brownwood’s streets when Ace McKelvey emerged from the Palace and strolled around the downtown square. The saloon keeper had an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth. He hadn’t been to bed yet—well, not to sleep, anyway, he thought with a faint smile as he remembered the enjoyable time he’d spent with the blond whore called Annie—and he was tired. Before he turned in and slept away most of the day, though, he had to check on some important business.
He paused across the street from the marshal’s office and waited for a few minutes, chewing on the cigar. The door of the office opened and Skeet Harlan stepped out and stretched. The little deputy spotted McKelvey across the street and gave him a miniscule nod. Then both men moved off, heading in different directions.
By the time a few minutes had passed, however, they had circled around a couple of blocks, and each had headed for the same destination. They met in an alley behind a hardware store that wasn’t open for business yet. No one else was in sight, and all the nearby windows were tightly closed.
Harlan frowned worriedly anyway and said, “I don’t like this meetin’ in broad daylight.”
“There’s no reason to be concerned,” McKelvey assured him. “You’re an officer of the law and I’m an honest businessman. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t exchange a few pleasantries if we happen to run into each other.”
Harlan snorted. “Honest businessman. Now that’s a good one.”
McKelvey’s face flushed with irritation. “Never mind that. Where’s Kane?”
“Locked up in the county jail,” Harlan answered with a jerk of his head in that direction.
“Is he going to live?”
“Doc Yantis says he might.”
McKelvey rolled the cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “It might be better if Kane was dead,” he said slowly. “That would just stir up Rawlings and the others that much more.”
Harlan shook his head. “I hope he ups and dies, too, but I ain’t goin’ in there to make sure of it, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at, McKelvey. You got me in your pocket and Keever’s an idiot, but Sheriff Wilmott and his deputies are too damned honest to let something like that pass.”
“Well, we’ll hope for the best,” McKelvey said with a shrug. “Or the worst, if you want to look at it from Kane’s point of view.”
Harlan spit in the dust of the alley and said, “I ain’t lookin’ at nothin’ from Kane’s point of view. He was a damn fool to think he could buck Duggan and the other big dogs in the first place.”
McKelvey smiled thinly. “He might have been successful if not for all the hard feelings caused by the fence-cutting. That was a good idea you had, Harlan.”
“It wasn’t all my doin’,” Harlan said. “Once Flint and his boys cut a fence or two, Kane and the other little ranchers got the idea, all right. All we had to do was prime the pump, and the trouble’s been flowin’ ever since.”
McKelvey nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, and that ambush Flint pulled off last night on MacDonald and the rest of those Slash D riders will just throw more fuel on the fire. It’ll soon be an all-out war.”
“Good thing you were able to get word to him in time to set it up,” Harlan commented.
McKelvey frowned a little. He had sent the swamper from the Palace with a message to Flint Coburn, who was camped with his men on Pecan Bayou north of town. Then Coburn and the other hired guns who rode for him had trailed the Slash D cowboys out of Brownwood toward the home ranch. It had been sheer luck that MacDonald and his companions had stumbled over Chris Kane and Will Bramlett trying to cut the Slash D fence. Nobody would ever believe now that it hadn’t been some of the small ranchers who had opened fire on the cowboys.
Yes, everything was working out perfectly for his plans, McKelvey thought . . . so perfectly that he was getting nervous. Something was bound to go wrong.
But right now, he couldn’t see what it might be. Both sides in the clash drank and gambled in his saloon, so he was able to keep track of what they were planning. Men ran off at the mouth when they had been putting away the booze, and they talked to the whores they bedded, too. McKelvey was able to get vital information from Midge and Annie and the other calico cats who worked in the saloon without them even being aware of what he was doing. And if events didn’t go exactly the way he wanted them to, he was able to manipulate them subtly by dropping a word here and there to the leaders on both sides. Al Rawlings probably regarded him as a friend. That was ironic, McKelvey thought. Rawlings was nothing to him but a tool to get what he wanted.
Now that redheaded sister of Rawlings’ . . . that might be a different story, McKelvey mused. He enjoyed his times with Annie, but Callie Stratton was twice as much woman. He wondered what it would be like to bend her to his will, to make her do whatever he damned well pleased....
Skeet Harlan broke into that pleasant reverie by asking, “You know when the rest of the gunmen will be here?”
McKelvey shook his head. Flint Coburn had about fifteen men riding with him. Thirty or forty more were on their way down from Colorado and Wyoming, veteran Coltmen, hardened killers who had been summoned by the telegrams
Coburn had sent them. Once they got here, McKelvey would have a small army at his command, and it would be time for the big dustup, the inevitable showdown.
“Sometime in the next month, that’s all I know,” he told Harlan.
The gunslinging little deputy chuckled. “This town won’t know what hit it. Nobody around here is a match for what we’ll throw at them.”
McKelvey nodded his agreement. “We’d better get on about our business. If you do happen to get a chance to dispose of Chris Kane . . .”
“Don’t worry. If I get the chance, he’s a dead man.” Harlan stroked his chin in thought. “It might be better, though, if he lives.”
“How do you figure that?”
An ugly grin stretched across Harlan’s rawboned features. “Then he could get strung up by a lynch mob. Think how Rawlings’ bunch would take to that.”
McKelvey nodded slowly and said, “Skeet, you have a positive genius for coming up with these things.”
They went their separate ways then. McKelvey was ready to get some sleep. It would probably be a busy night at the Palace. By evening, the whole county would know what had happened out at the Slash D fence line and would know that Chris Kane was wounded and locked up in the Brown County jail. Folks would choose up sides. Tempers would run high.
And the big blowout would be that much closer to happening.
* * *
With the ease of a true frontiersman who knew he had to take his slumber where he could get it, Frank had gotten a good night’s sleep in the Slash D bunkhouse. First he’d had to spend some time talking to the cowboys, of course, as Duggan had warned him he would. They had all wanted to know what the famous Frank Morgan was doing in their neck of the woods. Frank had told them that he was just passing through the area and needed some work. They didn’t know that he probably had as much money as their boss and all the other big ranchers in Brown County put together.
Like the others, he was awakened before dawn by the ringing of an iron triangle on the porch of the main house. The cowboys stumbled out of their bunks, washed up, and got dressed by lantern light, then trooped over to the house for breakfast. Duggan’s Chinese cook and majordomo, Wing, had the dining room table groaning under platters piled high with flapjacks, bacon, and thick slices of ham, as well as bowls full of scrambled eggs and fried potatoes. A full pot of coffee sat at each end of the table, along with a pitcher of buttermilk.
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