“Out of luck, I reckon,” Rusty admitted.
Glory smiled and said, “Besides, you’re my new foreman while Gabe is laid up, so you need to be there to make sure things are done properly.”
Rusty’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Me, ma’am? You want me to take over as ramrod?”
“For the time being.”
“You sure about that?”
“I am,” Glory said. “Will you do it?”
“Well . . . Well, sure. It’d be an honor.”
“I want men riding guard at all times,” Glory said. “And you’ll all need to be prepared for trouble.”
“We’ll be honin’ for a scrap, ma’am,” Rusty promised. A worried frown creased his forehead. “But you’ll have to ride back out to the ranch by yourself tomorrow. That could be dangerous.”
“Mr. Jensen will be with me.”
Rusty turned a suspicious look on Luke and said, “We’ve been hearin’ some things about you, mister.”
“They’re probably all true,” Luke said, “but I’ll keep Mrs. MacCrae safe. You have my word on that.”
“You’d better mean it, elsewise you’re liable to have a heap of mighty angry ol’ boys lookin’ for your hide,” Rusty warned.
“We’ll be fine,” Glory said. “Come on, Luke. We’d better get over to the courthouse.”
Word hadn’t had time to spread much about this inquest, so it was sparsely attended compared to the earlier one. Harry Elston and his men seemed to have left town already. Luke wondered if Judge Marbright had instructed Whittaker to keep things as quiet as possible to diminish the chance of more fireworks.
As a result, the proceedings were just a formality. Another jury was sworn in, and Luke and Glory told their versions of what had happened. There had been plenty of witnesses to the gun battle, including some of the men on the jury, so their verdict that the killings had been justified was a foregone conclusion.
While he was testifying, Luke didn’t say anything about how he suspected a rifleman hiding on top of the courthouse had been part of the fracas, too. He was going to keep that card close to his chest until he figured out exactly what had happened and hopefully had proof of it.
As they left the courthouse, Glory said, “If you can take care of our horses, I’ll go on down to the Stafford House and get us rooms for the night. You can take the horses to Cramer’s Livery.”
“All right,” Luke said.
“Tell Mr. Cramer to put the bill on my tab.”
“You don’t have to pay my way, you know. I don’t work for the MC.”
“That’s right, you don’t. But you’ve involved yourself in my troubles, and you helped save my life this afternoon. Those gunmen were after me as much as they were you and Gabe. Maybe more so. I think that gives me some responsibility.” She paused. “You also lied to me . . . but we’ll talk about that later.”
With her usual brusqueness, she walked away, leaving Luke to deal with the horses.
He didn’t have any trouble finding the livery stable. The proprietor, a short, bald man with a sweeping mustache, recognized Glory’s horse right away and was impressed with Luke’s dun as well.
“This fella may not be as much for looks as Miz MacCrae’s horse,” Cramer said, “but I’ll bet he can run all day when he needs to, can’t he?”
Luke felt an instinctive liking for the stableman. He nodded and said, “That’s right. Take good care of him, will you?”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.”
From the stable Luke walked to the hotel, which he had taken note of earlier, and told the slick-haired clerk at the desk that Glory MacCrae had come in to get rooms for both of them.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Jensen,” the clerk said as he snagged a key from the board on the wall behind him. “Room Seven. Top of the stairs to your right.” A faint smirk tugged at his lips as he added, “Mrs. MacCrae is right next door in Room Eight. They adjoin.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Luke’s voice hardened as he said, “That connecting door won’t be getting any use, and I wouldn’t want to hear any gossip about the matter, either.” He leaned forward just enough to be menacing. “Is that clear?”
The clerk swallowed and moved back a step.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Very clear.”
“See to it you remember,” Luke said as he jerked his head in a nod. He picked up the key the clerk had placed on the counter and turned toward the stairs.
As he went up, he wondered what was in Glory’s mind. He knew she had been attracted to him, even though she hadn’t acted on that impulse and probably wouldn’t have. Ever since Whittaker’s revelation during the first inquest, though, any feelings Glory had been developing for him had undoubtedly vanished. As a fugitive from the law, she wouldn’t want anything to do with a bounty hunter.
And yet she’d insisted that he stay around so they could talk. Maybe the burden of guilt had gotten to be too much for her. Maybe she wanted to confess and get that weight off of her.
Luke couldn’t make himself believe that. Not from a woman as bold and straightforward and convinced of the rightness of her own decisions as Glory MacCrae. Whatever had happened in Baltimore, he doubted that she felt much guilt about it.
The best way to find out what she wanted from him was to wait and see, he decided. The hotel had a dining room. Maybe they could eat dinner together there, or over at the Elite Café, if Glory preferred.
The door to Room Seven was unlocked. Luke went in and found it to be a perfectly comfortable-looking, if undistinguished, hotel room. The window overlooked McDowell Street and had a balcony outside it, too small for any purpose other than decoration. Luke hung his hat on one of the bedposts, poured some water from the pitcher into the basin on the table, and splashed it on his face. He was rubbing it in, feeling the weariness of the years and a life lived for the most part in hardship and danger, when he heard a soft knock on the door between his room and the adjoining one.
It seemed that his comment to the clerk about that door not getting any use wasn’t going to turn out to be true, after all, he thought as he straightened. He dried his face, went to the door, and opened it.
Glory stood there, still wearing the clothes she had been in earlier, except for her hat. She hadn’t expected to spend the night in town, so she probably hadn’t brought along anything else. She said, “May I come in?”
Luke nodded and stepped back.
“Of course. I don’t have anything to offer you to drink—”
“That’s all right. I didn’t come over here for a drink.”
“I thought maybe we could have dinner in a little while—”
She interrupted him again by saying, “We’ll have to see about that.” Her right hand dipped into a pocket on her buckskin vest and came out with a two-barrel, over-and-under derringer much like the ones Luke carried. She pointed it at him, eared back the hammer, and went on: “That’ll depend on what you have to say.”
CHAPTER 15
If a man had pulled a gun on him like that, Luke would have taken it away from him before the hombre even got it pointed at him, let alone cocked. Glory had taken him a little by surprise, though.
He shouldn’t have been shocked that she would threaten him like this. He knew from experience that she reacted quickly to danger and did what had to be done. Clearly, she felt that he was a danger to her . . . and considering the mission that had brought him to Sabado Valley, she was probably right about that.
Things had changed since his arrival here, though. At least for now, he was more interested in the truth than he was in the bounty on her head. He said, “Take it easy, Glory. You don’t have to point a gun at me.”
“No? Am I supposed to think that you don’t give a damn about five thousand dollars? We haven’t been acquainted for very long, Luke, but I already know you better than that.”
“What do you want me to do, stick my hands in the air and beg for my lif
e? That’s not going to happen.”
She looked at him intently and said, “I could shoot you, you know. I could put a bullet in your head, drag your body through that door into my room, and claim that you attacked me. Some people might not believe me, but they wouldn’t be able to prove I wasn’t telling the truth.”
“You’re not going to do that,” Luke replied with a shake of his head. “You’re too smart to kill the one person who’s definitely on your side.”
“On my side?” She laughed. “How in the world could I think that you’re on my side? You know who I really am, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do . . . Mrs. Jennings.”
Luke knew he was taking a chance by saying that. Maybe she hadn’t really been convinced that he was aware of her true identity and was trying to trick him into admitting it. But he was willing to run the risk because his instincts told him it was time for both of them to put their cards on the table.
Her reaction wasn’t exactly what she expected. Angry lines tightened the muscles of her face as she said, “Don’t call me that. I was legally married to Sam MacCrae. I was a widow when I married him.”
“Only because you killed Alfred Jennings back in Baltimore.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“It’s what the wanted poster I read back in San Antonio told me. The one with that five-thousand-dollar bounty you just mentioned.”
“And wanted posters never get anything wrong,” she said contemptuously. “Lawmen never make mistakes.”
“That thought did occur to me,” Luke said.
“And greedy bastards never . . . never lie. . . .”
Unexpectedly, her face crumpled as she began to cry. That surprised Luke almost more than anything else she could have done. He had never seen anything from Glory except strength and determination. As her shoulders shook, she lowered the hammer on the derringer and tossed the little gun onto the bed.
“There!” she said in a voice choked with despair. “I’m unarmed. You can take me in now. You can take me back to Baltimore and watch them hang me, for all I care!”
Luke asked himself if she was acting, putting on a show for his benefit. He didn’t think so, but it was hard to be sure of anything where this woman was concerned. She started to turn away. He put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Glory . . .”
She whirled back toward him. He tensed, ready to duck if she struck out at him, but instead she threw her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest as she sobbed.
He felt like telling her that it was too much, that she was overdoing it, but the way her body shook felt genuine. He supposed anybody could break sooner or later, no matter how strong they were. The strain of maintaining a tough façade could get to be too much.
Or maybe she was just skillfully playing on his emotions. It might take time to figure out what was really going on.
The best way to find out, he decided, was to play along with her.
He lifted his arms and put them around her. With one hand he stroked the fragrant, dark masses of her hair.
“It’s all right,” he murmured, the meaningless reassurance of any man trying to comfort a crying woman. “It’s all right.”
“N-No, it’s not,” Glory said. “He framed me, the son of a bitch!”
Now that sounded more like her, Luke thought. He said, “Who? Alfred Jennings?”
“No.” Glory lifted her head and raised her tear-streaked face so she could look at him. “Alfred was a kind, wonderful man. I’m talking about his son, Hugh.”
“I don’t understand,” Luke said.
She slipped out of his embrace, turned, and walked across the room before turning back toward him. She was pacing like a caged animal, he realized.
“Do you really want to hear the story?” she demanded. “Or are you just humoring me?”
“I really want to hear it,” Luke told her. “I’ve got to know the truth before I decide what to do.”
“You mean whether or not to turn me over to the law.” Her voice was flat, hard.
“You are wanted on a murder charge. You came to Painted Post to hide out from it, didn’t you?”
“I was hiding because I didn’t want to hang or spend the rest of my life in prison for something I didn’t do.”
“Quite a few of the men I’ve taken in have tried to convince me at some point that they were innocent.”
“But you didn’t believe it, did you? That would have stood in the way of you collecting your blood money.”
“If you really want me to help you,” Luke said, “you might start by not insulting me.”
“I didn’t ask you to help me,” Glory said. “I just asked if you wanted the truth.”
Luke gestured to indicate that he was listening.
“All right.” Glory raked her fingers through her hair, and even though that emotional gesture left it disheveled, she wasn’t any less attractive for it. “I was Alfred Jennings’s second wife, just as I was Sam MacCrae’s. He was married for a long time to a woman named Prudence. Hugh’s mother. She was a terrible woman, and she passed it on to her son.”
“Is that what Jennings told you? Men sometimes aren’t very objective when it comes to describing their wives. They’re seldom really as good—or as bad—as their husbands make them out to be.”
“No, Prudence Jennings really was awful. I saw it with my own eyes. I was . . . acquainted with them socially.”
Something about the way she said that made Luke think there was more to the story, but he was willing to pass that over for now and get to her marriage to Jennings and his subsequent murder.
“Prudence made Alfred’s life a living hell,” Glory went on. “And Hugh was a real trial as well. He was always getting in some sort of trouble with women or gamblers or assorted lowlifes. Alfred had to come to his rescue with money many times. Prudence insisted that Alfred take him into the business, and that just made things worse. Hugh wasn’t just incompetent. He was a thief.”
“But Jennings couldn’t get rid of him because he was flesh and blood,” Luke said.
“That’s right. Then Prudence got sick and died after a short illness. Alfred couldn’t fire Hugh then, of course, so soon after his mother died. So things went along the way they were.”
“Until you moved in,” Luke guessed.
Glory’s chin jutted out defiantly. She said, “I didn’t pursue Alfred or set a trap for him with my wiles, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was all his idea. But eventually, after a suitable time had passed, yes, we were married, and I planned to do my best to make sure the rest of his life was happy. I thought he deserved it.”
“So what happened?” Luke asked.
Glory drew in a deep breath and blew it out. She said, “Alfred discovered just how much money Hugh had embezzled from the company. Without Prudence there to torment him anymore, he was ready to wash his hands of Hugh, ready to turn him over to the law. Hugh knew that . . . and he killed him.”
Luke looked at her for a few seconds, then said, “Wait a minute. You’re saying that Hugh Jennings killed his own father?”
“That’s right.”
“Then why did the police blame you?”
Glory began to pace again. She said, “I was upstairs. I knew that Alfred had summoned Hugh to the house to tell him that it was all over, and I suggested that I should be with him when they met. I didn’t think Alfred needed to go through that alone. He said it wasn’t a good idea, though. He knew that Hugh resented me, and he thought if I was there it would just agitate Hugh that much more.”
She stopped, breathing hard again. If she was acting, Luke thought, she was one of the best at it he had ever seen, good enough that she ought to be on the stage.
“Too much time had passed,” Glory went on. “I started to worry, so I went downstairs thinking that I ought to look in on them no matter what Alfred had said. But when I came into his study where he had been talking to Hugh, he . . . he was lying on the floor . . . with a letter open
er stuck in his throat . . . and there was blood everywhere. . . .”
She put her hands over her face and began to cry again. Luke kept his distance this time and let her get through it on her own.
Finally, Glory was able to say, “I . . . I ran to him, of course, and I tried to see if there was anything I could do for him—”
“Which got his blood all over your hands.”
She glared at him and snapped, “That’s right. If you’ve already made up your mind you’re not going to believe me, why are we wasting time with this?”
“I didn’t say I’ve made up my mind. But I want to make sure I have all the facts straight in my mind.”
“Yes, I got blood all over my hands, and my dress, too, while I was trying to see if he was still alive and if I could help him. That was when Hugh came in with some of his wastrel friends and acted shocked and yelled that I had killed his father. But I hadn’t, of course. He had. Then he went out and found some of his crowd and came back with them so he could pretend to discover the body. I’m sure he planned to claim that I must have killed Alfred, but I’d unwittingly made it even easier for him. Now he had witnesses to swear that they’d found me kneeling beside Alfred’s body with his blood all over me.”
Luke nodded slowly and said, “I can see where that would look pretty bad, all right. What did you do?”
“Oh, I knew immediately what must have happened and what Hugh intended. He and one of his friends rushed at me. Hugh said they had to hold me while someone went for the police. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I knew that Alfred had a loaded gun in his desk. I got to it first.”
“You shot them?”
Glory shook her head.
“I didn’t have to do that. Hugh and his friends weren’t brave enough to charge a gun. I got out of there with nothing but the pistol . . . and Alfred’s watch that I had slipped out of his pocket. I . . . I wanted something to remember him by.”
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