Autumn Lover

by Elizabeth Lowell

“About twenty.”

  “How many Culpeppers?”

  “Five, including Ab,” Case said. “He got here just before I did.”

  “I’ve seen Gaylord. Who are the other three?”

  “Erasmus, Horace, and Kester.”

  Hunter ran through his mental list of Culpeppers. Norbert and Orville had been killed by Texans just before the rest of the Culpepper clan ran amok.

  Sedgewick and Tilden had been foolish enough to stick around Texas, raiding banks, mule trains, and settlers until Case and Hunter returned from the war. The two Culpeppers drowned in the Rio Grande trying to escape to Mexico. As the river was only knee-high at the time, the boys would have lived if they hadn’t been too drunk to lift their faces out of the water.

  That left five of the Culpeppers who had been involved in the Texas massacre unaccounted for.

  “What happened to Ichabod and Jeremiah, and Parnel, Quincy, and Reginald?” Hunter asked.

  “Ichabod and Jeremiah drew cards in the wrong game down toward Spanish Forks.”

  Hunter’s black eyebrows rose.

  “The other three are still looking for Spanish treasure,” Case said.

  “Jeremiah was supposed to be greased lightning with his six-gun,” Hunter said neutrally.

  “So I hear,” Case said. “Ichabod was faster, though. He damn near got me.”

  Hunter whistled softly through his teeth.

  “Watch out, brother,” Hunter said. “You’ll get yourself a reputation as a gunslick. Then every kid with a six-gun and a yen to swagger will hunt you.”

  “Nobody knew me when I walked into that whiskey emporium. Nobody knew me when I walked out.”

  “Where was Ab?” Hunter asked.

  “Already headed for the Rubies.”

  For a moment Hunter studied the ragged patches of moonlight that made their way through the cottonwoods.

  “Ab, Erasmus, Gaylord, Horace, and Kester,” Hunter said finally. “Any other raiders worth mentioning?”

  Case shrugged. “The rest of the men are all gun handy, when they’re sober, but nothing to keep a man awake nights worrying.”

  Hunter snorted. He couldn’t imagine anything that would keep Case awake nights worrying.

  “How many men do you have?” Case asked.

  “Seven, plus some cowhands. Eight, counting you.”

  “Almost four to one.”

  “That’s the way I figure it,” Hunter said.

  “Well,” Case drawled, “don’t count out Bill Moreland. He may look drunk, but that old boy is shrewd as a hungry bear.”

  “That son of a bitch has tried to kill Elyssa at least three times that I know of.”

  One of Case’s dark eyebrows rose. He whistled very softly through his teeth. Then he shook his head.

  “No,” Case said quietly.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Bill wouldn’t hurt his Sassy.”

  “The hell he wouldn’t. I saw him draw a bead on her with a gun!”

  “When?” Case asked.

  “Three nights ago.”

  “Then it wasn’t Bill.”

  “How can you be so damned certain?” Hunter asked angrily.

  “I played cards with him from sundown to dawn.”

  “But…”

  Case waited for Hunter to finish.

  “Damn!” Hunter said.

  “Something wrong?”

  “If it wasn’t Bill Moreland—”

  “It wasn’t,” Case interrupted.

  “—then there’s traitor on the Ladder S payroll.”

  “That’s what I’m figuring,” Case said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “There’s a man out there somewhere who keeps bringing information to Ab and Gaylord.”

  “What kind of information?” Hunter asked.

  “How many hands the Ladder S has. How many of them are gunmen.”

  Hunter muttered something unpleasant.

  “How many cows you’ve collected,” Case continued neutrally, “what kind, and where they’re being held. How many mustangs.”

  A hissed word was Hunter’s only response.

  “How many branded horses,” Case said. “How many green-broke broncs. That kind of thing.”

  “The kind of thing you used to do during the war. Information.”

  Case nodded.

  “Damn!” Hunter muttered. “We’ve got enough going against us without having a spy in the bunkhouse.”

  “Was I you, I’d start dropping Culpeppers where I found them.”

  “Too dangerous. If we don’t get all of them at once, it will be Texas all over again. The survivors will kill every man within reach of their guns, rape and kill the women, poison the land, and set fire to anything that burns.”

  Case didn’t deny it. The Culpeppers had fully earned their reputation as ruthless, brutal raiders.

  “Then you’d better find your traitor and hang him,” Case said bluntly. “He knows too much.”

  Hunter didn’t say a word. He was thinking fast and hard.

  None of his thoughts brought comfort.

  Case waited for his brother to talk again. There was no impatience in Case as he stood there. Impatience meant that a person had a weakness—he was looking forward to something.

  After a few years of war, Case had looked forward only to going home to Texas. Then he had gone home and discovered that his beloved niece and nephew had been sold to Comancheros.

  After Case found what was left of Ted and little Em, he had stopped looking forward to anything at all.

  Even vengeance.

  To Case, bringing Culpeppers to justice was something that had to be done, like slaughtering pigs or digging a new hole for the privy. No man enjoyed the duty, but no man worth the name shirked it.

  “Well, that ties it,” Hunter said savagely. “What does the man look like?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t get close to him.”

  “I didn’t think there was anything you couldn’t sneak up on.”

  “Neither did I. Live and learn. He knows that marsh the way a hawk knows the sky.”

  “Is he big?” Hunter asked, thinking of Mickey.

  “I don’t know. He’s real careful not to leave tracks.”

  “Figures. Who does he talk to?”

  “Gaylord or Ab,” Case said.

  “When?”

  “Whenever he feels like it. As I said, he knows the territory real well.”

  “And the dogs know him,” Hunter said, disgusted.

  “I wondered about that. I keep hearing how he comes and goes from the Ladder S any time he pleases.”

  “It must be Mickey, Lefty, or Gimp. No one else has been here long enough to know the land as well as this damned ghost does.”

  “I don’t think a man with a limp could have shaken me off,” Case said. “That marsh gets real rough, real quick.”

  “That leaves Mickey or Lefty,” Hunter said. “Frankly, I’m thinking it’s neither.”

  “Why?”

  “Mickey is mean enough,” Hunter said, “but I doubt that he knows the land well enough to shake you off his trail. Lefty knows the land, but he isn’t mean enough.”

  “Someone sure to God is.”

  “Are you certain it isn’t Bill?” Hunter asked. “He’s mean enough and he knows the land.”

  “He’s mean,” Case agreed, “but not mean enough to kill his own daughter.”

  “His daughter?”

  Case made a small, swift motion that demanded silence. He drew his gun with frightening ease and started toward the underbrush.

  Hunter breathed in fast. The scent of rosemary came to him on the wind. His hand shot out, holding Case back. Hunter shook his head slightly.

  “Sassy,” Hunter said.

  His voice was too low for anyone but Case to hear.

  Hunter had halfway expected to find that Elyssa had followed him. Part of him even had hoped that she would come to him in the night.

 
; The thought of walking Elyssa back in the darkness made his body tighten and his blood sing.

  Without a word Case holstered his gun.

  “What makes you think Bill and Sassy are related by blood?” Hunter asked.

  “Bill got drunk and talked about a woman called Gloria,” Case said bluntly. “Said he loved her. Said he was her lover.”

  “No wonder Sassy wants to protect Bill,” Hunter muttered. “He’s her father.”

  “She doesn’t know. At least, that’s what Bill said.”

  Hunter turned toward the willows.

  “Well, Sassy,” he said, raising his voice just enough to carry to Elyssa. “Is Bill right?”

  For a few moments there was nothing but silence and the wind.

  “Come on out,” Hunter said in a low, impatient voice. “You might as well meet my brother Case.”

  The willows shivered and parted. Elyssa walked out into the shadows at the base of the big cottonwoods. She didn’t even look at Case. She looked only at Hunter.

  There was enough shifting moonlight to show the shock on Elyssa’s face. Her expression told the men she was trying to get used to the idea that Bill Moreland claimed to be her father.

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “But it explains…”

  Elyssa’s voice died.

  “Explains what?” Hunter asked softly.

  “What went wrong between my father and Bill,” Elyssa said simply. “And why Bill was like a father to me whenever my own father was gone. Which was most of the time. Father was a prospector.”

  Hunter’s eyes narrowed. He, too, had been gone a lot during his marriage. He had been soldiering rather than hunting gold, yet the result was the same.

  Belinda had been left alone long enough to get into trouble with the neighbor man. And, if rumor was to be believed, others as well.

  “But still,” Elyssa whispered, “it’s hard to believe that my mother and Bill were that…close.”

  “It happens,” Case said calmly.

  “A faithless flirt of a woman,” Hunter said, his voice rough. “Like Belinda.”

  Elyssa flinched. “Mother wasn’t…”

  Again her voice faded to silence. Given what Bill had said, she could hardly argue that her mother had been faithful to her father.

  “She wasn’t a flirt,” Elyssa said. “She must have loved Bill very much. Yet she loved her husband, too.”

  “At least you have a friend in the Culpepper camp,” Case said.

  For the first time Elyssa really saw Case. She looked from his fringed moccasins to Hunter, who also wore moccasins. The resemblance between the brothers didn’t end there. The men were the same size, the same build, and they walked alike.

  The difference between them was subtle, but very real to Elyssa. Case was a dark, brooding, motionless presence. Even in sunlight, Elyssa doubted that laughter would light his eyes. Hunter had been like that when he first arrived at the Ladder S.

  But no longer.

  Now Hunter smiled. Sometimes his eyes even gleamed with laughter. Often they smoldered with passion.

  Elyssa had made a difference in Hunter. He could deny it, he could rage at her, he could call her a flirt, but she had gotten past his guard.

  The realization made Elyssa almost dizzy with relief. Only then did she understand just how much of her heart belonged to Hunter. She had been so afraid that he wouldn’t be able to love her in return.

  Elyssa looked away from Hunter, afraid that her new knowledge somehow would be revealed in her eyes. Then Hunter would find an excuse to push her away.

  She couldn’t take that right now.

  She was too raw over discovering who her real father was, and wasn’t.

  “Case,” Elyssa said. “You’re with the Culpeppers.”

  “They think so,” Case said.

  “I see.”

  She took in a deep breath and let it out.

  “What are our chances?” Elyssa asked Case bluntly.

  “They’ll be a sight better as soon as I figure out where your cattle are being held.”

  “They haven’t been sold?” Hunter and Elyssa asked as one.

  “No. The breeding stock are being held in one place and the steers in another.”

  Hunter’s teeth gleamed in the moonlight.

  “That’s good news,” he said.

  Case grunted. “Maybe. Depends on who owns the Slash River brand.”

  “Ab Culpepper,” Hunter said.

  “Not according to what passes for a brand register in Nevada.”

  “What?” Hunter said.

  “Some man by the name of J. M. Johnstone registered the brand,” Case said.

  Hunter looked at Elyssa. “Do you recognize the name?”

  “No. The only Johnstone I know around here is Mac, and he’s dead.”

  “When did he die?” Case asked.

  “About three months ago.”

  “Could be the same one. The brand was registered in 1863.”

  Elyssa frowned.

  “That was the year my parents died,” she said.

  “Of what?” Case asked.

  “Lung fever took Mother. My father walked out into a storm and never came back. He’s buried with my mother.”

  Hunter gave Case a swift look.

  “Did Mac ever mention having his own brand?” Hunter asked.

  There was silence while Elyssa tried to remember the few conversations she had had with the late, laconic foreman of the Ladder S.

  “Mac never said anything about it to me,” she said after a few moments.

  “Did you father let Mac run his own cattle and horses on Ladder S land?” Case asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you give permission?” Hunter asked Elyssa.

  “The question never arose. Mac was a difficult man for a woman to talk to.”

  Case and Hunter looked at one another again. Both were thinking the same thing.

  Mac might have been branding Ladder S mavericks with his own brand. It wasn’t unheard-of, although most ranch owners understandably saw the practice as little better than outright rustling.

  “Sounds like Gaylord came along,” Case said, “saw a good thing, and decided to cut himself in on it.”

  “You think the Culpeppers deliberately killed Mac because he had registered a brand they wanted to use?” Elyssa asked.

  “A brand, and a bunch of mavericks handy to use it on.”

  “You think Mac was stealing from the Ladder S?”

  “It wouldn’t have been the first time a foreman branded a few calves on the side,” Case said calmly.

  “It’s not theft, in some eyes,” Hunter said. “Back in Texas, there was so much livestock on the loose after the war that men killed cattle for their hides and let the meat rot.”

  “I see,” Elyssa said slowly. “Well, I suppose Mac might have seen the Ladder S as his own after my parents died. I was in England, and Bill wanted me to stay there.”

  Hunter turned to Case.

  “Have the Culpeppers said why they settled on taking over the Ladder S?” Hunter asked.

  “About what you’d think,” Case said. “They’re tired of running from us. They’re hunting a hole, and the Ladder S is a well-built, well-watered ranch.”

  Elyssa swallowed hard.

  “Running from you?” she asked tightly.

  “Hunter and I have been dogging their tracks since Texas, two years ago,” Case said.

  “I see.”

  She gave Hunter a swift look.

  “No wonder you didn’t ask about pay,” Elyssa said to Hunter. “You would have hunted Culpeppers for free.”

  “If you don’t think I’m earning my pay as ramrod—”

  “I didn’t say that,” she interrupted quickly.

  “What are you saying, then?”

  “You’re the best ramrod the Ladder S has ever had,” Elyssa said. “But you have no interest in the ranch beyond the fact that the Culpeppers want it.”


  Hunter started to say something, looked at Case, and shut his mouth.

  “Looks like I’ll need a new ramrod after the Culpeppers are taken care of,” Elyssa said, her voice strained.

  “No point in crossing a bridge before you get to it,” Case said. “We could all be dead before we ever get to the river.”

  Elyssa closed her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “We could die. All of us.”

  “Let’s not start hanging crepe,” Hunter said. “Once we figure out who the spy is, we’ll be all right.”

  “Maybe,” Case said. “But I have a bad feeling.”

  Hunter’s attention switched instantly from Elyssa to Case.

  “What is it?” Hunter demanded.

  “Those boys are getting impatient,” Case said.

  “They were born impatient and lazy,” Hunter said coldly. “That’s why they’re raiders.”

  Case nodded. “That means the Culpeppers might not wait until you have everything rounded up and greenbroke for them.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” Hunter said.

  “I figured you had. What preparations have you made?”

  “Enough water and food to withstand a siege,” Hunter said. “Gimp is filling burlap bags to soak up stray bullets.”

  “What if they burn you out?” Case asked.

  Elyssa’s breath came in with an audible rush. She hadn’t thought of that.

  “They wouldn’t,” she said.

  “They would,” Case countered matter-of-factly. “They’ve done it before.”

  “Are they planning to?” Hunter asked.

  “They haven’t said anything to the men about it either way.”

  “I’ve set up a place to retreat to, if it comes to that,” Hunter said.

  “Where?” Case asked.

  “A cave in the foothills about half a mile from the house. There’s a spring. I’ve laid in supplies.”

  “Who else knows about it?” Case asked.

  “You, me, Elyssa.”

  “Keep it that way,” Case said bluntly.

  “I don’t think we’ll need it,” Elyssa said.

  Case looked at her.

  “Why?” Hunter asked.

  “Gaylord said he was tired of being hunted, remember?” she asked.

  Hunter nodded.

  “They’re lazy,” Elyssa said. “They want the ranch intact, ready for them to move in. Ab even tried to buy the Ladder S from me this morning.”

  Surprise showed clearly on Hunter’s face.