Once an Outlaw

by Raine Cantrell

  “You won’t.” Logan pocketed the money. “I want you to arrange for another payroll shipment at the Silver Belt. Give me five days to find Monte. Put the word out that you’re shipping ore, too.”

  “What are you planning?”

  Logan told him while he packed food in one of the wide linen napkins.

  “Simple plan,” Conner remarked.

  “Let’s hope it works.” Logan gently nudged the rocking chair, and Ty jerked awake. “Hey, little brother, I’ve got a date that won’t wait. You take care of that little lady.”

  “Logan, I wish…”

  For a moment regret filled Logan’s eyes as he looked at his brother. “Yeah. I wish I could be here, too, and dance at your wedding. Maybe you’ll dance at mine.”

  He was out the window before Ty came fully awake and realized what he’d said. “Conner, tell me you heard him, too.” He spun around. “Conner?” Shaking his head, Ty told himself he’d made a mistake and began cleaning up the food left on the bed.

  In her room, lit by two small candles, Macaria knelt at the elaborately carved wooden prayer bench she had brought with her from Mexico. Clutching her rosary, she offered prayers for her son’s safe return.

  From his darkened room’s window, Conner searched the garden’s shadows for a sign of his brother. He caught sight of him as Logan went over the gate. “Go with God,” he whispered, echoing his mother’s earlier words.

  As he stood there, a nagging thought rose in his mind. He’d meant to ask Logan…no! Not Logan, but his mother.

  Conner ran down the hall and burst into Macaria’s room. “Did Riverton question you about Logan?”

  “Calm yourself—”

  “Never mind me. Did he ask you about Logan? He had to hear the whispers about him. Everyone else has. Did you tell—?”

  “You go too far!” She rose from the bench and faced her irate son. “No, Charles asked me nothing about Logan.”

  “That’s it! Damn it, that’s it. He knows.” Conner tunneled the fingers of both hands through his thick hair.

  “You are not making any sense, Conner. How could Charles know about him? Yes, there are whispers, but if what you believe about him is true, why would he know that Logan—”

  “It’s the only reason why they dumped him. They know he’s a Kincaid.” Pacing the tiled floor, he sorted everything that Logan had told him, and revealed his reasoning to his mother.

  “He—Charles—didn’t ask you about the rumors that one of your sons was riding with outlaws. Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “No. A gentleman would not remind me of something so shameful.”

  “Wrong, madre. He didn’t ask because he knew. And he’d already sent word to have Logan killed before he could follow a trail back to him.” He stopped and faced her. “I know you don’t want to believe me, but this is the only thing that makes sense. And Logan—” He broke off and started to leave.

  “Conner! Conner, come back here.” Macaria ran after him. “Where are you going?”

  “After my brother before he gets himself killed.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Ty demanded, grabbing hold of Conner’s arm to stop him.

  “Logan’s gonna find Monte and tell him he’s got word that we’re shipping ore and a payroll next week.”

  “He won’t believe him after all the losses we’ve had.”

  “That’s just it. Logan’s to tell him that we figure the very same thing, that no one would expect us to do it, so the setup is perfect for them to rob us again. And they won’t have time to check it out with Riverton, if he’s behind it.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Conner, but I find a big hole in this plan you two put together. Where did Logan get this information?”

  “There’s ten, maybe fifteen small mining camps close to where they left him. Close enough that someone could have found him. You know how talk spreads. Whiskey’s loosened a lot of tongues. It all would have worked, too, with us being in place to trap them, but if Riverton knows that he’s a Kincaid, Logan’s life is worth less than the spit to say it.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No. Someone’s got to stay here and keep an eye—”

  “I’m coming. An’ while we stand here, Logan’s getting a lead on us.”

  Macaria pleaded with both of them as they hurried to dress. All Conner did was fire orders about how many men he wanted ready to ride at a moment’s notice if he couldn’t find Logan and stop him from setting the plan into action.

  Conner stifled his impatience while Ty went to kiss Dixie goodbye without waking her. There was going to be hell to pay in the morning when she found out he was gone. Leaving her to his mother’s care, he ran with Conner to saddle their horses.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Miz Jessie, you lookin’ for him again?”

  Turning around, Jessie grinned at Kenny. “Caught me. I can’t seem to help myself from looking. Hope, I’ve discovered, dies a hard, slow death.” Climbing down from the jutting rock shelf that gave her a view of the flat below, Jessie looked around. “Where’s the little one?”

  “Marty’s still down by the creek. He didn’t finish cleanin’ the fish we caught.” Digging the toe of his boot into the dirt, Kenny hunched his thin shoulders. “Logan’s been gone nigh on a week now. Don’t recall him makin’ any promises ’bout when he’ll come back.”

  “I don’t recall him making any promises at all.”

  “Now you got that sad look in your eyes again. Didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She reached out and tousled his hair. “You didn’t. What say we go join Marty? I’ll fix a picnic lunch for us. We couldn’t ask for a more beautiful fall day.” Jessie glanced up to find the sky a blue bowl overhead with thick white clouds that looked like puffs of clean picked cotton. But when she started to walk back to the cabin, she saw that Kenny stayed behind.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

  “Me an’ Marty’ve been talkin’, ya know, ’bout what’s gonna happen to us.”

  “Happen to you? Nothing is going to happen to you. Not while I have a breath in my body.” Jessie felt a little alarmed at the way Kenny avoided looking at her. The boy was always so direct, with his words, his manner and sometimes disconcerting gaze. “Have you held back telling me something I should know?”

  “No. No,” he repeated. “It’s jus’ like I said. Me an’ Marty are cousins. We ain’t got no kinfolk back home.”

  “Then what is the problem, Kenny? I guess I assumed that the two of you would live here with me. If that’s not what you want, tell me.”

  Kenny glanced beyond Jessie toward the cabin where they had made their home this past week. For the first time in months he did not have the total responsibility for himself and Marty. But he didn’t trust that they could just go on as they were. Fears built at night, and they weren’t leaving him during the day.

  “Ain’t folks gonna talk ’bout you havin’ us?”

  “Why should they, Kenny? I’m a widow, that’s true, but I am a grown woman perfectly capable of taking care of you and Marty.” Jessie gnawed her lower lip for the lie. Until she found a way to sell her cattle, she had forty dollars between the three of them and losing it all.

  “But what if someone comes an’ tries to take us away?”

  Frowning, Jessie walked to his side. He barely tolerated her hugging, but he appeared in need of more than verbal assurances. Dropping to her knees, she drew him close. “Honey, I won’t let anyone take you and Marty away from me. I know how hard it’s been for you, but I think of you two as mine. Family, Kenny. The three of us make our own family.”

  She held him, closing her eyes when he accepted her by wrapping his arms around her neck. And Logan, a little voice whispered in her mind, would complete the circle perfectly. Jessie, too, closed her eyes for a moment. She dreamed of him, and tried hard to banish the dreams upon waking. She was unable to stop them, the way she couldn’t stop searching the land for a sign of
a lone rider returning.

  Jessie roused herself. She was determined not to allow her longings to sour the day. And that’s all she had left for Logan, she told herself as she released Kenny and stood, foolish longings for a traveling kind of man.

  “You and I,” she said, touching the tip of her finger to his nose, “have a picnic to get ready.”

  His smile was all she hoped for, and if her own was a little less than genuine, Kenny didn’t know as he ran for the cabin.

  She followed him, but at a slower pace, looking over her shoulder once. Wherever you are, Logan, I hope you’re safe. And I hope that you miss me just a little. Just enough to draw you back to me so I can put a name to the feelings you awakened.

  “Jessie!”

  “I’m coming, Kenny.”

  Logan guided his horse around the saguaro cacti that rose in contorted shapes from the valley floor. Some had the form of massive candelabra that beckoned a rider’s eyes to follow their height to the tops and view the majestic and haunting mass of rock known as Superstition Mountain. But he wasn’t heading for Apache Junction; his goal was the mining camp at Florence. The place where he’d first linked up with Monte Wheeler and the others.

  He remained aware that when men desired to hide in this broken land of desert and mountains, the Apache were about the only ones who could find them. But he was determined to hunt them down. His family’s holdings were at stake.

  And he never forgot the personal score he intended to settle with whoever had stolen his gear and left him for dead.

  Doggedly trying to keep his mind focused on what he had to do, Logan didn’t have much success in keeping Jessie out of his thoughts. At odd moments he would remember her smile, or hear the tartness of her voice, or the wondering whisper of his name when she had trembled in his arms.

  Last night, when he’d made camp in a dry wash, a cactus wren defending her nest of grasses and twigs high up in the thorny branches of a cholla cactus had caught his eye. Jessie was like that, all tawny shades, defending herself and all she claimed with the same single-minded devotion.

  A man could do worse than to have a woman like Jessie at his side.

  An ache he’d never quite subdued since he had left her began to grow. How could she have worked herself so deeply into his mind in such a short time?

  Women had come and gone and he never let his thoughts dwell on them. Why Jessie?

  He attempted to shrug it off, but the question remained. And all he could do was blame its lingering on seeing his younger brother, who had previously desired no shackles, suddenly ready to settle down.

  He couldn’t make any plans. But if he did…

  Sensing the turn of his thoughts, Logan drew back mentally from the subject of Jessie. To distract himself, he considered Conner’s report that Riverton had his men file on the land and then deed it back to him. It was by no means an uncommon practice. Most of the larger ranchers used this method to hold on to more land after the government began passing land acts.

  Funny how someone else’s doing it riled Conner, when Logan remembered Santo telling him once that their father had done the very same thing to claim land where there was water.

  Any man who controlled water in the territory was the man who controlled the range.

  He rode up a loose scree slope of a dry wash, keeping the horse down to a plodding walk.

  This was Apache country, and if a man intended to survive he took his time to study the land before him. Logan had found places of incredible beauty, and others so barren it was hard to believe that life managed to exist there.

  Shaded in rusts, copper and dusty gray flecked with the green of cacti and brush, it was a rough, broken country. Water was priceless, for every predator needed it to live.

  He had pushed himself and his horse these past few days. Logan dismounted, ready to share the warm water in his canteen with his animal.

  And the horse had to drink first, for without him, a man could die.

  No land held death so close, waiting for a careless mistake, as the one he called home.

  He led the horse toward a large rockfall, hoping to find a tinaja. Rainwater collected in these small pools in the rocks, but there hadn’t been rain for weeks. Far to the west he spotted the circled flight of buzzards and a chill walked up his spine. There but for those two boys and Jessie went I.

  As he leaned close to peer down into the crack between the rocks, his hand accidentally brushed against the stone. Logan jerked his hand back. The rock was as hot as a branding iron from the sun’s baking heat.

  Taking the canteen off his saddle horn, he poured some water into his hat and gave the horse his drink. All the while, his gaze moved in a steady searching pattern, ever alert to danger.

  When the animal finished, Logan replaced his hat on his head, enjoying the coolness of the wet felt, then sipped the warm canteen water to quench his own thirst.

  He had to push on if he was going to reach Florence by nightfall. The desert came alive when the sun went down, with predators in need of water, in need of food. It was one reason a smart man didn’t make his camp close to a watering hole. The other had to do with allowing nature’s cycle to play out its methods of ensuring survival of the fittest. If a man’s scent kept the thirsty animals away from life-giving water, he broke the circle.

  Yet he was reluctant to mount, despite the need that drove him.

  Once more he sent a searching gaze over the land. Nothing moved but a heated breeze. He canted his hat brim low and slung the canvas strap of the canteen back over the horn. Gathering the reins in his hand, he started to mount.

  The horse sidestepped toward the rock. Logan’s curse died as his foot slipped from the stirrup.

  Four Apache warriors were crossing the dry wash about three hundred yards ahead of where he stood. Although he’d just satisfied his thirst, his mouth was suddenly parched.

  He saw the jerky fall of the horses’ hooves, telling him the animals were tired. His gaze focused on the knife slashes that had forced the horses to lengthen their stride.

  He ran one hand over the brown’s muzzle, silently thanking him. If he had moved out they would have seen him.

  Logan slid his rifle from the leather scabbard that protected it from trail dust. He waited, rifle ready, standing very still.

  If those Apaches spotted him, he wouldn’t take any bets on what his life would be worth.

  His breathing was shallow. He didn’t look directly at the Indians. There were some who said that an Apache could feel a white man’s eyes upon him.

  Logan wasn’t about to test the truth of it.

  They disappeared in the juniper and ocotillo that grew on a slope up ahead of him. Logan blew out the breath he’d been holding.

  “Snakes in purgatory!” he hissed, feeling the coil of tension that gripped him. “Damn if that didn’t shave a year off my life, horse.”

  Sliding his hand up and down the animal’s neck, Logan praised him. “You done good, boy, real good. ’Course, I realize you were protecting your hide as much as my own. We could’ve ended up over those Apaches’ campfire, you for supper and me providing the entertainment.”

  The horse flicked his ear, and Logan quickly scratched the area directly behind it.

  “Jessie picked a winner when she chose you to buy. Didn’t flick an ear when you saw them, did you? When this is over, I’ve a mind to find more stock like you, but your brand’s been worked over so many times that it’s hard to tell what it ever was.”

  As he lifted the corner of the saddle blanket, Logan thought he might have been army stock. Using one finger, he traced the burned hide.

  “Lazy three, or running M, a boxed M or a boxed three,” he murmured, then paused. A deep frown creased his forehead. “Damn! Hot damn! That’s it!”

  He swung away from the horse and dropped to his knees. Switching the rifle to his left hand, Logan marked the Rocking K brand in the dirt with his fingertip. The capital initial K had a half circle beneath it to indicate
the rocking letter. If the K had been tilted slightly, it would have been a tumbling K.

  It took him only seconds to close up the top of the K and form an R. More slowly, he finished drawing a closed circle around the new letter.

  He stared at the new brand he’d just drawn. “From Rocking K to Circle R and none the wiser.”

  Including him. He might be wiser about how it was done, but it didn’t end his problem. Without proof, the law wouldn’t touch Riverton. Even with proof, they might not if the man had the money and political power behind him. But Logan had one solid clue that pointed to the man being the one behind the robberies and the rustlings.

  And the only way to justify a necktie party would be to catch him with his crooked brand heating over a fire and a hog-tied animal wearing the Rocking K brand beside him.

  Men like Riverton wouldn’t soil their hands with working over another’s brand to claim the cattle as his own. He had the money to hire men to do the dirty work for him. And he could always claim that he didn’t know.

  Once again, Logan reasoned, who would stand and call him a liar? His own mother had defended him by reminding her sons that he didn’t need the money or the cattle.

  But appearances were so deceiving. He had arrived with a large herd of cattle for his ranch. How could they prove he’d stolen the cattle from them, had had men hole up in any one of a hundred blind canyons, change the brands, smudge them with dirt and run the cattle on his newly claimed land?

  The choice was to catch someone in the act, or get someone to talk who had actually done the deed.

  Logan rose and wiped out his scratchings in the dirt with the toe of his boot. After another sweeping gaze over the land, he mounted.

  “Horse, you just earned yourself all the shiny red apples you can eat.”

  Five hours later Logan rode into Florence with his rifle across the saddle in front of him. The town was old, almost eight years in the making, and might last for another eight. A huddle of shacks and tents gave way to the weathered wood buildings.