Paid in Blood

by William W. Johnstone

  Speaking of Joey, her father’s hard look may have been diverted from Buckhorn, but hers hadn’t wavered. She addressed him now, saying, “None of this explains why you’re so secretive, yet all-fired determined to meet with Uncle Dan, mister.”

  “And none of it is helping these poor boys, either,” added her mother.

  “All right,” said Buckhorn through gritted teeth. “I’m gonna state one more piece of my business and that’s it. The reason I’m being so-called ‘secretive’ is that it’s my damn business. A man has a right to conduct his own affairs—in private, if he chooses—don’t he? That’s what I’m lookin’ to do with Dan Riley.

  “The Widow Danvers convinced me to come here and now has stiffed me. I need a job, a payday. I have some information that I think will be of interest to Riley, so I’m aiming to parlay that into doing some work for him instead.”

  “My uncle’s not in the habit of hiring professional gunnies to do his dirty work for him,” Joey said.

  “That’s for him to tell me, not you,” Buckhorn responded. He paused for a beat, his eyes scanning, touching the faces of all before him. Then: “I don’t believe for a minute that Riley is gone on some kind of extended trip. I believe he’s somewhere not far from here—maybe holed up for some reason. Let’s not pretend we don’t all know about the suspicions of rustling and other outlawry where he’s concerned. But never mind any of that. For now, all I want to know is if one of you is gonna help put me in touch with him . . . or if I have to do it the hard way.”

  CHAPTER 28

  As they rode away from the Slash-Double R headquarters, Buckhorn was still having trouble believing he had gone along with this arrangement. The only thing that balanced it somewhat in his mind was the belief that Milt Riley must be wrestling inwardly with the same thoughts. Nevertheless, the agreement had been reached and now it was in motion.

  Riding at Buckhorn’s side as they put the ranch buildings behind them and angled to the north and west, was Joey Riley. She was the one setting the course—the course that allegedly would take them to her uncle Dan.

  That was the deal that had been struck. Buckhorn had refused to wait at the ranch like a sitting duck and have Riley brought to him. Milt had refused to simply tell Buckhorn where he could find Dan and then leave his brother the sitting duck for Buckhorn to go after unexpected and unannounced.

  Plus, the latter, from Buckhorn’s perspective, could have meant sending him on a wild goose chase that would have provided the chance to warn Dan so he could go on the defensive or perhaps even take up the offense. The compromise was someone accompanying Buckhorn, leading the way and also serving as an intermediary to make sure no traps were sprung by either side.

  Selecting Joey as said intermediary was not arrived at without a good deal of contention. Buckhorn saw her as a risk who might turn on him the first chance she got. Milt and Larraine were understandably not comfortable at the thought of their daughter riding out with a notorious gunman.

  But Milt himself was not an option; he needed to stay with the ranch and his diminished crew. Larraine was out of the question. Neither Slim Bob nor any of the other remaining able-bodied men would hold enough sway over Dan to ensure he heard Buckhorn out before possibly reacting rashly at the first sight of him—plus those men also needed to stay at the ranch, especially if it was deemed necessary to haul their injured pards into town to the doctor.

  So that left Joey, who knew how and where to reach her uncle, was a competent horsewoman, and was willing to fill the role. A little too willing, the way Buckhorn saw it. But, above practically anything else, he wanted to keep what he’d undertaken in motion and he wanted the face-to-face with Dan Riley. So he’d capitulated, said Joey was okay with him. After that, the others grudgingly gave in, too.

  Before they’d ridden out, however, Milt had leaned in close at one point and said to Buckhorn, in a low and very intense voice, “You may be out of my league as far as a fighting man and gunslinger and so on. But if you do anything to cause my little girl harm . . . I’ll come after you, no matter how long or how far it takes, and see to it you pay hard.”

  * * *

  The storm that was moving in was coming fast and they were riding straight toward the heart of it.

  “We gonna make wherever we’re headed before that thing hits us or we hit it?” Buckhorn wanted to know, his words tossed around on the buffeting wind that was growing steadily stronger.

  “Gonna be close,” Joey replied. Her long hair was streaming straight back from her stern and determined expression. Abruptly, she turned to face Buckhorn and flashed a crooked grin. “What’s the matter, Mr. Big Bad Gunman? You’re not worried about a little storm, are you?”

  “I worry about anything I can’t stop with a bullet,” Buckhorn answered flatly.

  For some miles, the terrain they covered was all good graze land, mostly flat with a few low, grassy hills that occasionally rose to sharper, pine-studded ridges. Here and there the ground was split open by shallow, washed-out gullies.

  Eventually, though, the land began to change. It became rockier and more rugged, the grass thinning. The rolling hills rose up sharper, turned ragged looking and only sparsely sketched with brownish-green scrub brush. The gullies deepened into narrow, twisting arroyos. Buckhorn calculated these changes were an extension of the same broken land he’d seen reaching away to the north of the hogback and lush meadow on Circle D property.

  “We still on Slash-Double R land?” he asked Joey.

  “Not sure,” she replied offhandedly. “It’s such crappy ground I don’t think anybody pays much attention.”

  A short time later, the storm hit. They saw it coming in time to reach shelter under a rocky ledge that protruded sharply outward near the top of a rubble-strewn slope. Even at that, they weren’t in time to totally avoid the first slashing waves of cold rain that blew flat and hard ahead of the main deluge.

  Dismounting, Buckhorn and Joey clambered as far back into the recess as they could and squatted there, sleeving the rain from their faces and shaking it off their hats. The horses were too tall to fit far enough under the ledge for complete protection, but they were still considerably better off than out in the open, so they munched from clumps of scrub brush and seemed content with that.

  Meanwhile, the black, boiling storm clouds had turned the afternoon nearly as dark as night. In contrast, the frequent pitchforks of brilliant lightning illuminated everything with crystal clarity. The wind-driven sheets of rain, caught in these bursts of light, looked like gleaming silver sword blades slicing across the landscape. The rapidly repeating peals of thunder rolled with a force of their own, at times shaking the ground so hard that having the slab of rock over their heads almost seemed like more of a threat than a salvation.

  From his war bag, Buckhorn pulled a heavy gray rain slicker that he proceeded to shroud himself in. Looking over at Joey, he said, “You got one of these?”

  She shook her head.

  “Didn’t think to grab one.”

  Buckhorn produced a second slicker, mustard yellow in color and showing some patches, that he held out to her.

  “Here. Pull this over yourself. Leaks a little, but it’ll keep you a lot drier and warmer than you will be otherwise.”

  Joey didn’t hesitate to pull the garment over herself. Then she said, “Thanks. But why do you care if I’m warm or dry or comfortable in any way at all?”

  “Don’t, particularly,” Buckhorn said. “But if you were to drown or catch pneumonia, it’d make it harder for me to link up with your uncle. Plus, I’d have your father on my neck.”

  “I should have known that plain old chivalry didn’t play any part.”

  Buckhorn gave her a look.

  “If I had any chivalry in me . . . and I’m not saying I do . . . it’d still be kinda hard to dredge it up for somebody who threatened to blow my spine in two when she had a Winchester aimed at my back. Sorry, Miss Riley, but, as a damsel in distress, you fall a little short.�
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  “Fine by me,” Joey declared. “I can ride and shoot as good or better than most men, making me plenty capable of taking care of myself. What’s more, all that fawning, moony-eyed junk that goes with a gal and a fella sniffin’ around one another has always been about as appealing to me as a case of saddle rash. So I’m glad to hear I fall short as the damsel in distress type.”

  The full intensity of the storm began to abate somewhat. The lightning pops and crashes of thunder came less frequently, but the rain continued to pour down and, by the look of the churning, still-bloated clouds, wasn’t likely to quit any time soon. The ribbon of flat, sandy ground they had been following along the base of the slope was swirling wildly with thick, muddy brown run-off.

  “Looks like we won’t be going anywhere for a while yet,” Buckhorn noted as he reached once more into his war bag. He brought out a handful of beef jerky strips wrapped in oilcloth. After taking one for himself, he placed the open pack on the ground between him and Joey and said, “Help yourself, if you’ve a mind. Probably won’t gain any favor for myself if I let you starve, neither.”

  “It’s hardly been that long since breakfast,” Joey said. But she nevertheless took a piece of the jerky. After snapping off a bite, she added, “What would really go good right about now would be a cup of coffee.”

  “No argument,” Buckhorn agreed. “Unfortunately, what little bramble there is within reach is too wet to burn and wouldn’t make enough fuel to boil a pot anyway.”

  They sat quietly for a spell, chewing and gazing out at the rain.

  At length Joey looked over at Buckhorn, and for the first time her expression was one more of curiosity than annoyance or anger.

  “What is it you’re really up to with all of this, Buckhorn?” she said.

  Buckhorn wagged his head and told her, “I’ve explained it as clear as I know how and about as damn often as I intend to. What’s so hard to understand? Getting fired by the widow left me in a tight. I need a job, money. I figure I’ve got something to offer your uncle in return.”

  “Because you believe the stories about him being a rustler and an outlaw.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Well, in case you didn’t notice, I didn’t pitch my services to your pa. It’s not cowpuncher work I’m looking for.”

  Joey took another bite of jerky and regarded him some more. Buckhorn decided it made him less uncomfortable when she was glaring at him. He’d gotten used to that.

  “I just might believe you,” she said, “if it wasn’t for one thing.”

  “And that would be?”

  “You mentioned Micah Danvers. Everybody knows what a jackass he is. But what about his brother—Jeff?”

  Buckhorn sensed this was some kind of test. And how he responded was going to go a long way toward how far Joey would be willing to trust him from here on out—and, in turn, how far he might be able to trust her.

  “The young fella who’s gone missing, you mean?” he said simply, aiming to coax out a little better idea of what she was angling for.

  “That would be the one, yes. Pamela’s youngest. Hard to believe she’d hire you to look into her rustling problem without including Jeff’s disappearance as something also for your consideration.”

  “She mentioned it, naturally. I could see she was plenty distraught over it, and she made sure I knew most of the details so I could keep an eye peeled for the boy.” Buckhorn spread his hands. “But you’ve got to remember, I was only part of the picture for a pretty short time, and doing detective work isn’t exactly my strong suit. Maybe she meant to crowd me more into searching after the missing boy but just never got around to it before everything fell apart.”

  “You’d think a missing son would be her first priority.”

  “If that was the main part of why she sent for me. Like I said, detective work isn’t exactly what I’m known for. Especially now that she’s got a Texas Ranger on the scene. Kidnapping is one of the many things that are right up their alley.”

  Joey’s eyebrows lifted. She said, “Is that what they’re calling Jeff’s disappearance now? Kidnapping?”

  Buckhorn gave it a cautious beat before saying, “I guess I can’t claim to have heard anybody else use that word. But the son of a rich ranching family suddenly comes up missing . . . Am I the only one who thinks of kidnapping as something that’s likely behind it?”

  Now it was Joey who hesitated before responding. Buckhorn was pretty sure she was trying to get him to admit he knew something about her cousin Eve and how she might be connected to Jeff’s disappearance. But Buckhorn was holding fast to his pretense.

  Finally, Joey said, “From what I understand, Jeff has been missing for several days. If it was kidnapping, don’t you think a ransom note would have shown up by now?”

  Buckhorn frowned and said, “You’re right. I guess I didn’t think of that.”

  “So Pamela never mentioned anything about a note?”

  “Not to me.”

  Joey turned to look at him full on, eyeing Buckhorn more sharply than ever.

  “You’re either denser than I’m ready to believe, or one hell of a good actor who’s got something up his sleeve. Or maybe you’re actually on the level. I can’t make up my mind which.”

  Buckhorn tried a disarming grin.

  “Take your time. Maybe you’ll find I’m a little bit of all three.”

  In that moment, a burst of lightning cast the hawklike features of his face in a pattern of contrasting brilliant light and inky shadows that made Buckhorn look more threatening than disarming. And yet, judging by the look in her eyes, Joey no longer felt threatened by him. Not at all.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Well, there they are. Finally,” Micah Danvers said. “Where we’ve been wanting to get ’em for two blasted days.”

  “I wish it had been two days ago,” Hank Boynton lamented. “Or yesterday . . . or even tomorrow. Any time but right now with this frog-strangler of a storm pourin’ down on us.”

  “Aw, quit bellyachin’,” Micah said. “If this all works out the way it’s shapin’ up to, then a little rainwater down the back of your neck is gonna be a minor inconvenience. It’ll be worth this and more.”

  They sat their horses under an overhang of dripping cottonwood branches on a slope of high ground. Below them, spread across the oval meadow, shiny and slick looking from the sheets of rain being wind-whipped across their backs, were just short of seven hundred longhorns milling and bawling under a sky of roiling dark clouds cut by forks of lightning.

  Dave Millard came riding up and joined them under the minimal cover provided by the cottonwood canopy. Thunder rolled around his words when he spoke. “They’re good and tired from the drive up here. The men will stick with ’em for a while, but I think they’ll hold in place pretty good, even with the storm.”

  Micah nodded.

  “I think so, too. The rain may last for a while, but the bluster of the storm will move on fairly soon. That’ll help keep ’em settled.”

  Dave grinned in the dim afternoon light.

  “And once they get a taste of that sweet graze down there, they ain’t ever gonna want to leave.”

  “For sure not on account of no stinkin’ rustlers. Us and that Texas Ranger are gonna see to that. Right, Micah?”

  Micah didn’t answer right away. He was gazing out across the meadow, and for a moment his expression shifted into a strange, faraway look, like he could see something through the rain that the others couldn’t. Then he said, “Indeed we are, Hank. Indeed we are.”

  * * *

  On the far side of the meadow, Lyle Menlo squatted warm and dry under the canvas tarp he had spread between clumps of bramble brush in anticipation of the storm’s arrival. As was his habit, he had taken up his position well in advance of both the first drops of rain and the first heads of cattle to show up. From where he was, he could not see the three men on the slope across the way. He expected they were present somewhere, involved in driving the
cattle, but didn’t know exactly where. For their part, they were unaware of his presence at all.

  In the pops of lightning, as the arriving herd spread wider and wider across the meadow, Menlo caught glimpses of wranglers on horseback passing near him as they worked the cattle. But none were Micah Danvers or his two closest cohorts whom Menlo had never caught the names of.

  Not that the ranger cared one way or the other. Especially not right at the moment. He was in no hurry to confab again with Micah, though he knew he had to eventually. For now, though, he was simply enjoying the show being put on by the longhorns filling up the meadow.

  One of these days, when his badge-toting was behind him, Menlo aimed to have a small cattle ranch of his own. Nothing big, just a few head to chase and raise; to move back and forth between the best graze until they were sufficiently fattened up for shipping off to market, and then start all over again with a new bunch.

  Although the cards that laid out his fate had never turned up a chance for Menlo to work on a cattle ranch, that had always been his dream. He loved the notion of ranching and working cattle. That was why he hated the notion of sneaky, lowdown rustlers and why he’d earned a reputation for shutting down more rustling rings than practically any ranger on the force.

  Looking at the fine bunch of young beef accumulating before him now—slick and mud spattered and rain blurred though they might be—only strengthened the old ranger’s resolve to keep his rep intact by chopping short the ropes of any wide-loopers looking to strike again here.

  That he would succeed at this, Menlo was confident. The areas where he was less certain lay with those he’d allied himself with. To say he had some reservations when it came to Micah Danvers would be an understatement of no small proportion. Nor was his fellow lawman, the dense-seeming Sheriff Tolliver, particularly inspiring.

  Ironically, the individual he was counting on the most—his hole card, so to speak—was Joe Buckhorn. A hired gun. A man with his own reputation—one that, until not so very long ago, ranked him as little more than a paid assassin. And yet, in the here and now, there was something about him that Menlo found . . . solid.