Judgement Day (Wind River Book 6)

by James Reasoner

  Visibly moved by their generosity, Jeremiah put the men to work, and by late that afternoon, the major damage to his forge had been repaired.

  His hammers needed new handles, since the old ones were all broken, and Simone McKay donated the items from the general store she owned. She also provided the canvas Jeremiah needed to repair the bellows.

  Amateur carpenters replaced the shelves inside the shop, which had been torn down by the vandals. When Cole stopped by the place a little before dusk, Jeremiah was thanking the men who had shown up to help.

  "I hope all of you will be as eager to lend your strong right arms to the cause of the Lord when it comes time to raise the roof of the new church, brothers," he told them.

  "You're still going to build a church, Jeremiah?" asked one of the men. "I heard that was why those gents jumped you last night. They were trying to discourage you, weren't they?"

  "They don't know me very well, do they?" Jeremiah said, drawing grins from the other men. "The Lord's told me to build Him a house of worship here in Wind River, and that's what I intend to do. And I don't care who wants to stop me."

  "That's a mighty fine sentiment, Jeremiah," Cole said from the doorway of the shop, where he stood with one shoulder leaning against the jamb. "But you'd better keep your eyes open, or the warning might be worse next time. There might not even be a warning, just a bullet in the back."

  "The Lord watches over His servants."

  "I don't doubt it for a minute," Cole said, "but be careful anyway."

  One of the men said angrily, "I think we ought to go down to the Pronghorn with some tar and feathers and teach Hank Parker a lesson. We all know he's to blame for what happened to Jeremiah."

  Cole straightened, but before he could say anything, Jeremiah responded, "I'd ask you not to do anything like that, brother. More violence isn't going to help matters. If there was any proof that Hank Parker was behind the attack on me, the law would deal with him."

  "That's right," Cole said. "We haven't had any vigilante justice around here since I've been marshal, and I intend to keep it that way. Don't worry, I'll be keeping my eye on Parker. If he moves against Jeremiah in the open, he'll regret it."

  "The marshal's right," another of the men said. "Besides, once Mrs. McKay's elected mayor, she's going to run Parker and his kind out of town, so it'll be safer here for honest, God-fearing citizens like us."

  That brought nods of agreement, and a couple of the men said, "Amen!" Cole didn't say anything. He still wasn't sure Simone was on the right track with her idea of banishing Parker and his ilk from Wind River, but he didn't want to get into a political argument right now.

  He waited until the men had all left, then said to Jeremiah, "If you have any more trouble, let me know right away. How's your head?"

  Jeremiah grinned. "As I told Brother Kent, the Lord blessed me with a thick skull. It hurt some when I got up this morning, just like the doctor said it would, but I'm feeling much better now. Hard work and the companionship of good men can do wonders."

  Cole just nodded, lifted a hand in a casual wave of farewell, and moved on. He was unsure what to hope for. He didn't want to wish for any more trouble to befall Jeremiah, but on the other hand it would be nice to catch Hank Parker in the act sometime, instead of just having to suspect him of mischief.

  If Parker was behind the trouble—and Cole had no doubt that he was—sooner or later he would overplay his hand.

  And when he did, Cole intended to be waiting.

  * * *

  Waiting was exactly what he was doing the next morning about eleven o'clock. Hank Parker had nothing to do with Cole's current chore, however. There was a westbound train due this morning, and as usual, one of the town's lawmen was on hand at the station to greet it and see who got off.

  Today it happened to be Cole lounging against one of the posts that held up the roof over the depot's platform. He had left Billy Casebolt in the office a little while earlier. The deputy had been trying to clean out the coffeepot, a task that Cole was more than glad to leave to him.

  The whistle on the big Baldwin locomotive blew when the train was still half a mile out of town. Cole listened to the shrill sound becoming louder, and he could also hear the rumble of the engine and the hum of the rails as the train approached.

  He leaned out a little to peer along the tracks and in the distance saw the thick black smoke rising from the diamond-shaped stack. There were a few passengers on the platform waiting to board, mostly traveling men with their worn suits and heavy sample cases.

  Cole looked at the drummers and shook his head. A life such as they led would drive him crazy in a week. Not to mention what those tight, stiff collars would do to a neck accustomed to a soft, open-throated buckskin shirt. Cole smiled faintly, glad that he had always been able to lead the sort of life that made him happy most of the time.

  Of course, nobody was satisfied all the time, he reflected. He had waited for long months, hoping Simone McKay would show some sign of returning the interest he felt in her.

  So far it hadn't really happened. She was friendly enough toward him, and there had been a time or two when he had thought she might be ready to carry things beyond that, but somehow the opportunities had never materialized. It was like every time she caught herself moving too far out of her shell, she retreated a little again. It was damned frustrating, Cole thought.

  And here lately he had found himself thinking more and more about Rose Foster, the pretty strawberry blonde who ran the Wind River Cafe. Rose had had some trouble in her past, the sort of trouble that had made her leery of getting too close to anybody wearing a tin star, but that was behind her now. She was making a fresh start.

  Maybe Roses fresh start ought to include him, too, Cole mused as the Union Pacific locomotive rolled into the station and past the platform. He'd have to give that some more thought, he told himself, but right now it would have to wait. He concentrated instead on the people who got off the train.

  The first few passengers to climb down from the train on steps put in place by the conductor were most likely salesmen, like the men waiting to get on. Several families followed. Cole was on the lookout for tinhorn gamblers, gunslicks, and other troublemakers of that ilk, and he was pleased to see that nobody like that was disembarking at Wind River. All the passengers seemed to be completely normal and innocuous, in fact.

  Then the young woman in the red dress appeared on the rear platform of one of the passenger cars and started down the steps, and Cole straightened out of his nonchalant stance. This woman was worth a closer look.

  She was young—seventeen, eighteen, no more than that—but obviously already mature. Although she was slender, the red dress fit snugly enough to show that her curves were those of a woman. Her traveling outfit was expensive, and its stylish cut softened somewhat the impact of its bright color.

  A small hat of the same shade sat on her hair, which was thick and dark as a raven's wing and piled on her head in an intricate arrangement of curls.

  Her features had a faintly exotic cast to them, and she was made even more striking by the small dark beauty mark just to the right of her mouth. Her eyes were dark, her gaze keen and intelligent as she glanced around the platform and then started toward the double doors that led into the lobby of the station.

  She was followed by another woman who might have seemed more attractive if her companion had not been so lovely.

  This woman was much older, in her early fifties perhaps, but still quite handsome. She had obviously lived a life of comparative ease, probably back East, because a frontier woman of similar years had usually had most of her vitality drained by hardship by the time she reached this woman's age.

  Her traveling gown was as expensive as her companion's but much more sedate, befitting a woman of her age and standing. Soft brown hair touched lightly with gray peeked out from under her hat. She went into the station behind the young woman in the red dress.

  The two women seemed to be traveling
alone, and Cole wondered who they were and why they had come to Wind River. He started toward the station lobby, intending to see what they were doing inside, but before he reached the open double doors, the woman in the red dress appeared again, and this time her dark eyes fastened on him immediately.

  "Are you Marshal Tyler?" she demanded.

  Her sudden appearance and her attitude took Cole a little by surprise. He nodded and said, "Yes, ma'am, I am. What can I do for you?"

  "I asked the clerk inside where I could find the local authorities," the young woman said, not really answering Cole's question, "and he said he thought you were out here on the platform."

  "Yes, ma'am. Do you need some help from the law?"

  The older woman came out of the lobby in time to hear Cole's question. She smiled and said, "What my granddaughter and I really need, Marshal, are some directions. We're looking for someone."

  "I'll be glad to help if I can, ma'am," Cole said. "You are . . . ?

  "I'm Mrs. Margaret Palmer," the older woman said. "And this is my granddaughter Brenda."

  "Brenda Durand," snapped the woman in the red dress.

  Cole's eyes widened in surprise. He couldn't help the reaction. Durand was still a well-known name in these parts. William Durand, in partnership with Andrew McKay, had founded Wind River. Then he had entered into an alliance with a notorious outlaw called Deke Strawhorn, an alliance which had ultimately led to the kidnapping of Simone and Delia Hatfield, Michael's wife.

  The resulting shootout had cost both Strawhorn and Durand their lives. Durand had been gunned down by Simone McKay, in fact, avenging her husband's murder.

  Those memories flashed through Cole's mind as he looked at the young woman, and he hoped he was wrong in his guess as he asked, "Any relation to a fella named William Durand?"

  "There certainly is," the young woman said. "William Durand was my father."

  * * *

  Simone was at her desk in the office of the Wind River Land Development Company, record books spread open before her. Her features were drawn more tightly than usual as she tried to force her mind to focus on the numbers written in the journals.

  Weariness wrapped around her like a shawl thrown across her shoulders, and her eyes felt gritty, as if the sockets were lined with sand. Even though she'd had no more ghostly visitations from her late husband, she had not slept well the previous two nights.

  The lack of rest was catching up to her.

  What she needed, she had decided this morning, was something else to think about, something to get her mind off what had happened in the parlor of her house a couple of nights earlier.

  Providing material to help Jeremiah Newton repair the damage done to his shop in the attack on him was a distraction, but only a fleeting one. So was brooding about the campaign being waged against her by Hank Parker, but that wasn't enough to make her forget, either.

  She had come down here to the office and started poring over the company's books as part of her continuing effort not to think about her spectral visitor. So far she hadn't found anything except plenty of evidence that the enterprise founded by her late husband and his partner was thriving.

  But she had known that already, and in frustration she slapped one of the books closed. A second later, footsteps in the corridor outside her office made her look up in annoyance. She had given the clerk in the front room strict orders that she was not to be disturbed.

  From the look on the man's face as he poked his head in through the half-open door, he was reluctant to disobey her command, but something was compelling him to do so. He said quickly, "I'm sorry to bother you, Mrs. McKay, but Marshal Tyler is here to see you. He said it was important."

  Simone's stern expression relaxed slightly. "That's all right, Ben. Send the marshal in."

  "Well, ah, he has some people with him. A pair of, ah, ladies . . ."

  Simone couldn't help but be curious whom Cole might be bringing here to her office. She said, "Do you know these ladies?"

  "No, ma'am," the clerk replied in a low voice. "I never saw them before. They look like they might've just gotten off the westbound train."

  Simone glanced at the banjo clock on the wall. It was half past eleven in the morning, she saw, and she recalled that a westbound did indeed pass through Wind River at eleven today. She nodded and said, "All right, Ben. Send Marshal Tyler and the ladies in."

  The clerk's head disappeared, and a moment later the door opened all the way. Cole came into the office first, stepping aside so that he'd be out of the way of the young woman who followed him. An older woman entered last.

  "Good morning, Simone," Cole said as he nodded to her. "There's somebody here I'd like for you to meet."

  Simone nodded politely to the two women. "Hello," she said. "I'm Mrs. McKay. What can I do for you?"

  Without introducing herself, the young woman in the red dress said, "I believe you have something that belongs to me, Mrs. McKay."

  "Oh?" Simone murmured. As far as she could remember, she had never seen either of these women before. "And what might that be?"

  "Half of this town," the young woman said flatly.

  Cole moved forward smoothly as Simone stared at her visitors in surprise. He said quickly, "You'd better hear her out, Simone. This is Miss Brenda Durand and her grandmother, Mrs. Palmer."

  Simone might as well not have heard anything after the mention of Brenda Durand's last name. She looked at the young woman for a long moment, then said hoarsely, "Durand?"

  "That's right. William Durand was my father."

  For several long seconds, Simone said nothing. She was as stunned as she had been .when she first heard her husband's voice again in the parlor of the big house on Sweetwater Street. Finally, though, she was able to speak, and she said firmly, "That's impossible. William Durand left no heirs when he—" Her voice broke.

  "When you killed him," Brenda Durand said sharply. The older woman put a hand on her shoulder, as if to hold her back. Brenda shrugged it off and continued, you are the one who shot, aren’t you, Mrs. McKay? You killed him and then took everything he owned."

  "That . . . that's not the way it was," Simone managed to say. The iron control she normally imposed on herself was rapidly slipping away.

  "Listen, Miss Durand, I was there when the man you say was your father died," Cole said. "If Mrs. McKay hadn't shot him, I would have about two seconds later. He had turned outlaw, and he and his partners took Mrs. McKay and another lady hostage when the men were trying to get away from the law. I'm sorry to have to tell you these things, but that's the way it was."

  Simone came to her feet. Cole's intervention had given her a moment's respite, and she had recovered some of her self-possession in that time. She said, "I mean no offense, Miss Durand, but what proof do you have that you are who you say you are? I always understood that William Durand was unmarried and had no children."

  The older woman stepped forward and said, "Please, Brenda, let me talk to Mrs. McKay for a moment." To Simone, she went on, "My name is Margaret Palmer, Mrs. McKay, and I can assure you that William Durand was indeed married to my daughter Nancy. He . . . left her a few months before Brenda here was born. But we have this birth certificate . . ."

  She opened her bag and took out a piece of paper that she extended across the desk toward Simone. Simone hesitated, then took the paper and looked at it. The document was a birth certificate from Baltimore, Maryland, stating that a daughter, Brenda Elizabeth Durand, had been born to William Howell Durand and Nancy Palmer Durand on May 16, 1852. As far as Simone could tell, everything about the certificate looked authentic.

  "I had a look at that paper, too," Cole said, "before I

  brought the ladies over here. It looked like the genuine article to me."

  "It is," Margaret Palmer said. "I can swear to that, Mrs. McKay. I was with my daughter when Brenda was born." Her voice shook a little. "Just as I was with her a week later when she died of complications from the birth."

  "I'm
sorry," Simone murmured. She handed the document back to Mrs. Palmer. "But I'm afraid I still don't understand—"

  "What I'm doing here?" Brenda cut in. "It's simple: I've come to claim my birthright. What was my father's is now mine."

  Simone felt a tiny flame of anger kindle to life inside her. "That's ridiculous! Surely you don't expect me to hand over half of Wind River to you. Your father—if that's who he really was—forfeited all his rights to any of this town when he murdered my husband!"

  Brenda took a step forward, and for a second Simone thought the young woman was going to lunge across the desk at her. Then, with a visible effort, Brenda controlled herself and said, "Show her the letter from Judge Evans, Grandmother."

  "Judge Abercrombie Evans?" Cole asked, sounding surprised.

  Mrs. Palmer nodded as she took another piece of paper out of her bag. "That's right. Do you know him, Marshal?"

  "I don't reckon we've ever met, but anybody who's been in this part of the country for very long has heard of Judge Evans. There's not a better-known lawyer this side of San Francisco."

  "Nor as esteemed a legal mind," Mrs. Palmer said as she handed the second document to Simone.

  "The man's just a lawyer, not a judge anymore," Simone said crossly.

  "Nevertheless, you can see from that letter that it is his considered legal opinion—an opinion he is prepared to argue in court on our behalf if necessary—that whatever William Durand's misdeeds and crimes may have been, they in no way affect his ownership of legally acquired assets."

  "He took over my husband's half of the company after he killed him," Simone shot back.

  "And as I understand it, those assets fell back under your control when William Durand died," Mrs. Palmer said calmly. "Yet, you killed him."

  "It was never proven in court that my father had anything to do with your husband's death," Brenda said. "Maybe it ought to all be mine."

  Simone bristled again. Cole moved in front of the desk, his hands up, the palms held out. "Why don't we all just settle down until we can sift through this?" he said. "Simone, let me see what Judge Evans has to say."