The Vigilante's Bride

by Yvonne Harris

  Henry looked at the girls and then at Luke. “Want to go talk to them?”

  “Not today. Soon as I finish my drink, I’m going over to see the sheriff.”

  Henry beckoned to the girls.

  A minute later, a throaty voice purred in Luke’s ear.

  “Hi, pretty cowboy, my name’s Buffy.” She settled herself on the stool next to him as if she’d been invited and rearranged her skirt. A thinly plucked eyebrow rose. “My goodness, but you’re a big one, ain’t you?”

  Inwardly, Luke squirmed, feeling like a piece of meat on a block. She was younger than she looked, he decided, and unless he missed his guess, she had a lot of miles on her. Luke’s gaze traveled to her hair again – dyed. He wished it were any color but red. With a feeling of distaste, he looked away.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Sullivan.” Hoping she’d go away, he said nothing more to encourage her. Instead, he turned his glass around and around, pretending an interest in making wet rings on the bar in front of him.

  Henry, however, had lost no time. An arm wrapped around the dark-haired girl’s waist, he was nuzzling her neck and whispering to her.

  “Where you from?” Buffy asked Luke.

  “Up north.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “The strong, silent type, huh?”

  Luke grinned and tried to be polite. “No, ma’am. Not at all.” He rested his arms on the bar, deciding to finish his drink and then leave.

  Around her neck she wore a thin velvet ribbon with a white silk daisy nearly the size of his fist. She touched the flower and looked at his glass. “Eddie, bring me a ginger ale, too,” she called.

  When it came, she reached to take the drink and brushed Luke’s arm as she did. Smiling, she raised her glass in a small toast to him. Her other hand went to the flower again, stroking its petals, drawing his attention – deliberately – to the low cut of her dress. He looked away with a vague feeling of repugnance.

  She slid off her stool and lounged against the bar. He was aware of her eyes traveling the length of him, a heated gaze he recognized. Time to leave. He set his glass down, still half full, and started to get up.

  Buffy slipped her hand over his. “Don’t leave. Let’s go upstairs, and I’ll fix you a real drink, not this syrupy stuff.” Then, with a sly smile, she added, “How’s that sound?”

  Instead of being flattered, he was annoyed and a little insulted. He was just old-fashioned enough that he liked to do the asking.

  He tried to stave off a building frustration at being with the wrong woman. He was no prude and no stranger to bawdy houses, either. But the whole situation had unnerved him completely. Here he was in the biggest saloon and bawdy house in town, with a pretty woman waiting to take his money – and he just wasn’t interested. Feeling like the biggest fool in Montana, Luke looked down at Buffy. “Sorry for the misunderstanding. I came to town on business today. I’m only stopping in for a few minutes with my friend.”

  “Leave him alone, honey,” Henry cackled. “The man’s pining for someone else. He’s got another redhead on his mind today – L ittle Miss Perfect. Right, Luke?”

  “Maybe. And maybe not.”

  “No maybes about it.” Henry tightened his hold around the dark-haired girl’s waist. “I got you on my mind. Let’s dance, honey.” He headed her out to the dance floor.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Buffy asked.

  “No, I did. Coming in here was a mistake.”

  “Because of . . . her?”

  “Little Miss Perfect?” Luke chuckled and nodded.

  “Sounds like you care about her.”

  “She’s just a friend.”

  Buffy smiled at that and traced a fingernail back and forth along Luke’s sleeve. “Most fellers like my hair.”

  “I’m sure they do. You’re a very pretty lady. Now, why don’t you run along and find another customer?” he said in a low voice, easing his arm away. Glass in hand, he walked to the other end of the bar, away from her.

  Drawing a long breath, he turned around and rested both elbows on the bar behind him. The saloon had filled up. A haze of smoke hung near the ceiling. Through the rising level of men’s voices, he heard the sharp crack of billiard balls, the piano banging in the corner.

  Emily played the piano better, a lot better. Luke chuckled, trying to imagine her ladylike little figure perched on the red-fringed piano stool, instead of that dandy in the straw hat and striped shirt.

  “And you’ d be leaning against this bar every night, ready to pound the first joker that so much as talked to her.”

  Maybe Henry was right.

  He glanced down the bar at Buffy, another girl on his mind. He didn’t know what to do about Emily anymore.

  Henry was laughing and shuffling around the dance floor with the dark-haired girl, his arm seesawing the air.

  Luke turned back to the bar. For reasons he never could fathom, women found him boyish and sweet, mistaking his clamped control for shyness, drawn by the slow-talking, easygoing manner he used with the ladies. Other girls wanted to mother him, bake for him, knit things for him.

  All except Emily.

  Hunched over, he absently turned an ashtray around. An angry exchange of voices on the dance floor interrupted his thoughts.

  Luke looked up to see Bud Schmidt shove Henry away from his dancing partner. Henry swore and stumbled backward a few steps.

  “Get away, Bud,” the girl piped. “I’m dancing with him.”

  Bud laughed and swung her against him, moving in time to the music, rising up on the balls of his feet in the peculiar pigeon-toed gait of his. “Not no more,” he said.

  “Says who?” Indignant, she pushed him away.

  Arms flailing, Henry waded in and grabbed Bud’s arm. Schmidt was fast. A quick punch to Henry’s midsection doubled him over and sprawled him facedown on the floor.

  Luke pushed away from the bar. “Come on, Henry, time to go,” Luke said, intending to drag him out of there while Henry could still walk. Something cold and hard pressed into the back of his neck.

  “Stay out of it, Sullivan,” Stu Bronson’s voice growled in his ear.

  Luke heard the click of a hammer drawing to full cock. Before the sound had fully registered in his brain, his reflexes spun him around, ducking, shoulder dropping, right hand going for his gun. Stu fired first. The blast rocked the room. Glass shattered. The wood bar alongside Luke splintered. A second explosion followed as Luke’s Colt cleared leather, spitting flame as it came up. Stu clutched the front of his shirt and looked down at the bright red stain spreading under his hand. An expression of shock spread across his features as he slid to the floor.

  At the sound of gunfire, Bud shoved the girl away. Bronson lay on the floor by the bar, his head resting at an odd angle on the brass footrail. Luke stood over him, his gun smoking. Bud whirled, facing Luke across a cleared dance floor. A wild, crazy light leaped in his eyes.

  “Don’t do it, Schmidt,” Luke yelled. “Don’t draw!”

  Bud Schmidt wasn’t listening. He clawed for his gun and drew on a man with a .45 pointed right at him. Luke let him get his gun out, an instant, no more. Risky, but he gave him that much. Bud swung his pistol up and aimed. Luke fanned the hammer back and blew Bud Schmidt off his feet.

  At the first shots, half the men in the room had dived to the floor. Now the other half sat rigid, still as statues. In the glow of the overhead lamps in the back, a billiard player froze motionless over the green felt, a lit cigar clamped between his teeth. His elbow and his cue stick pointed at the ceiling.

  The room held its breath.

  A muscle convulsed along Luke’s jaw. So fast! But then it always was – fast and dirty and ugly.

  Steel blue wisps of gunpowder curled in the air and coated his teeth. Stomach knotting, he thrust the Colt into its holster and stepped over Stu’s body.

  I didn’t want to do this.

  “Eddie, I’m sorry,” he said to the bartender. Alert and
wary, looking for other Axel hands, he headed for the door and fresh air and sanity.

  “Hold it, mister. Hold it right there!” Hatless, coatless, and out of breath, Sheriff Sam Tucker crouched in the doorway, a heavy old Smith & Wesson cavalry pistol covering the room in general and Luke Sullivan in particular.

  “What happened here?” he demanded.

  The bartender broke in. “Not his fault, Sam. The other man drew first. Was self-defense. Sullivan had no choice unless he wanted to get shot in the back. And that light-haired fellow there” – he pointed to Bud, spread-eagled on his back, staring up at the ceiling – “well, he never was too bright. Sullivan warned him not to pull. I guess you could say that one kinda killed hisself.” There was a chorus of assent. All around the room, men nodded.

  “Don’t suppose it’ll do any good, but get Doc Maxwell over here anyhow. And you” – the sheriffleveled his pistol at Luke’s chest – “I want you in my office. Now.” He jerked his head toward the street.

  On the way outside, Tucker slipped the Colt from Luke’s holster and shoved the barrel hard into the small of his back.

  “Just take it nice and easy, Sullivan, and don’t try nothing smart, or so help me I’ll shoot you with your own gun.” The door closed.

  The billiard player straightened and removed the cigar stub from his teeth. “I’m lookin’ right at him, and I swear I missed it,” he said. “Anybody see Sullivan draw?”

  Five cardplayers shook their heads. “Nobody saw him draw,” one said.

  “He’s either very lucky or very good.” The billiard player plugged the cigar back in his mouth and leaned over the table to line up his shot. “Like me,” he said, and cracked the ball neatly into a corner pocket.

  Across the street, Tucker fixed Luke with a hard look. “By any chance either of those men you killed involved in the beating you took a while back?”

  “Both of them were, but – ”

  “Kinda thought that might be the case,” he said tightly. He stacked the papers Luke had just signed. Without bothering to blot them, he tossed them into a cluttered basket on the corner of his desk. He got up and went to a potbellied stove in the corner and poured himself a cup of coffee from an enameled pot. He returned to the desk and sank heavily into his chair again.

  Outside the office an excited knot of people congregated on the sidewalk. The town was all upset. There hadn’t been a shooting in Repton in five years – longer, if you considered one on a Saturday afternoon in broad daylight.

  Voices rose. A shielded face peered in through the window.

  “Mr. Sullivan, why don’t you go back where you came from? Until you showed up, this was a nice, quiet little town. Most excitin’ thing here last year was two dog bites and one outhouse fire. Since you been back, I got a stage robbery, a kidnapping, a beating, and now a double killing.”

  Tipping back in his chair, Tucker cocked his boots on the edge of the desk and blew into his coffee. With a long-suffering look he waved a hand at the overflowing file basket and sighed. “Mr. Sullivan, you got any idea how much paper work there is when a federal bank loses money – like a thousand dollars? At least I had sense enough not to report the kidnapping. If that’s what it was,” he added. Tucker pulled out a red bandanna and honked his nose. The swivel chair protested as he raised a hip and stuffed the kerchief back into his pocket.

  “ ’Course you weren’t involved in neither one of those. Right?” He looked at Luke.

  Luke stared back, silent.

  “To my way of thinking, this feud between you and Axel is a personal thing because of Miz McCarthy.”

  “Shouldn’t be,” Luke answered.

  “This ain’t Sunday school, Mr. Sullivan. Don’t give me no shouldn’ts. Is it or isn’t it?”

  “Sheriff, I did not start this.”

  “Somebody did. Let me give you some advice. Lots of people round here don’t much like Bart Axel because of how he runs his herd, but far as I know, he’s legal. Someone tried to beat your head in once. And today, two of them tried to shoot you. Sooner or later, they just might succeed. But that’s your worry. Now you take that .45 of yours there and get yourself out of here before I change my mind and lock you up for your own protection.”

  Luke shoved the Colt into his holster and started for the door.

  “Mr. Sullivan.”

  Putting his hat on, Luke turned.

  “What was your business in town today?”

  “I came in to see you,” Luke said. “I had a couple of things to talk about. New Hope’s herd is down. Someone’s stealing our cattle.”

  Unblinking, Tucker stared at Luke. The chair squeaked. Slowly, Tucker uncoiled his long legs and swung around. “So it’s rustling now, is it? Why not? Not much else left, is there, Mr. Sullivan?” He rubbed his eyes as if they burned with weariness. “Tell Molly I’ll be out next week sometime. What else is on your mind?”

  Luke’s temper crept up another notch. He fought it down, not answering until the first hot flash of anger faded. This man wouldn’t help him. He was back to doing it alone again.

  “Forget it. I’ll handle it myself.”

  “Not in Repton, you don’t. This isn’t Lewistown. You catch anyone, you bring ’em in to me. You hear?”

  Luke went out and slammed the door after him. Silently, the crowd outside the sheriff ’s office parted to let him through. A woman wrapped an arm around her toddler and pulled the child close to her side, her eyes on Luke’s face.

  “Aw, lady . . .”

  Luke headed down the street for his horse, feeling lower than dirt.

  CHAPTER

  12

  “Two of my ranch hands were murdered doing my business in town. And it was murder, Sheriff, cold-blooded murder,” Bart Axel said. “I want to know what you intend to do about it.”

  Tucker looked up from his desk and raised his eyebrows. “Nothing yet. I got no reason to arrest Luke Sullivan. It ain’t murder, not unless he shot your men with their guns still in their holsters. Mr. Sullivan didn’t do that. A dozen witnesses say your man shot first.”

  “It was a spite killing, and you know it.” Axel’s face darkened.

  “A saloon full of men say otherwise. If it was a spite killing, Mr. Axel, appears to me the spite was on Stu Bronson’s part.”

  “Of course Sullivan would deny it. And you believed him?”

  “Nope. Don’t believe nobody involved in a killing. But half the men in Eddie’s saw Bronson shoot first; other half heard Sullivan warn Schmidt not to draw. Near as I can make out, it was self-defense.”

  Axel hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets and rocked back and forth. Staring at the sheriff, he said, “I want him arrested, convicted, and hung, and not necessarily in that order. This time you better bend a little, Sam. I mean it.”

  The threat in the gray-haired rancher’s voice came through clearly to Tucker. Deep inside, a slow burn started. So long as he was sheriff, any man had a right to keep himself alive. His jaw set. “Then I reckon you’ll just have to wait till Mr. Sullivan does something to deserve that.”

  “You disappoint me, Sam.” Bart turned on his heel and left.

  Tucker watched him leave, his mind filled with sour thoughts. Luke Sullivan was turning out to be one real pain in the tail.

  Riding through the outskirts of Repton on the way back from the sheriff ’s office, Bart Axel fumed. Repton was a pretty little town, but he was too mad to notice the huge old cottonwood trees lining both sides of the road or the houses with their gardens, still brown but plowed and hopeful. “I got a notion to go to Billings about this,” he said to Clete.

  “Won’t do no good, the way those lawmen stick together. Billings ain’t got jurisdiction down here anyway.” Clete looked over at his boss. “Speaking of Billings, Jupiter Jackson was in town today.”

  “That old man still kicking? He ought to be dead by now.”

  Clete nodded. “He was in the dry-goods store, buying a new hat. I heard him tell Ezra Bobbins he’s goi
ng to Billings with Sullivan.”

  Bart’s jaw dropped. “What for?”

  “Something about their deed. Old Jupiter strutted around like a peacock, trying on hats and saying as how Sullivan was taking him to the land office about New Hope’s deed. Seems Sullivan thinks that west section of land into Billings never was open range. Says New Hope goes all the way to the Yellowstone.”

  Bart’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the reins. He felt the blood drain from his face. Trouble. The worst kind.

  Years ago he’d studied the maps of the territory, tracing his finger along the valleys and rivers and plotting where he thought the tracks would go when the railroad came through. He began acquiring land in a checkerboard pattern any way he could, a ploy which gave him control over the land between that he didn’t own. Sometimes he bought land outright; sometimes he applied for homesteads in other men’s names.

  Sometimes he misjudged, and the Northern Pacific laid miles north or west of where he’d hoped. He consoled himself with the knowledge his property lay twenty miles on a straight shot to the tracks at Billings – an easy two-day cattle drive. When meat orders came in from the big Chicago markets or the army, Bart drove his steers into Billings and had them in cattle cars and on their way east before smaller ranchers could round theirs up.

  What Molly didn’t realize was the open range he drove through was, technically, New Hope land. He knew it, and so did the Crows, but nobody listened to them.

  Evidently that was about to change.

  Molly wouldn’t be trouble, but so long as Sullivan bossed New Hope’s herd, there’d be no more driving through, not without a fight. And that meant an extra day added to every X-Bar-L drive to swing north around New Hope, a day Bart didn’t have to get his steers to the railroad ahead of the others.

  “You talk to Jupiter?” Axel asked.

  Clete shook his head. “I was in the back room getting shirts.

  He left before I came out.”

  “Did he say when they’re going to Billings?” Bart kept his tone casual.

  “A week from Tuesday.”