His humor failed to lighten the mood. “Sleeping in a mite late for a ranchin’ man, ain’t yeh?” the sheriff asked. “Busy night last night, I’d wager.”
William’s smile slipped. So, they were here about Kate. But why such a show of arms? They’d already known he and Kate were something of a scandal, even before it was true. Surely they didn’t believe she was being held prisoner against her will?
“What’s all this about?” William said. “No harm’s been done.”
“I see yeh got some new cattle,” Grande said.
William blinked in confusion at the sudden change of subject. “Yes, sir. Just came back from auction a week ago.”
“Hmm.” The man looked less than convinced. “That so?”
It suddenly dawned on William that this visit might not be about the woman in his bed. “I got the papers inside,” he said, nodding back toward the door. “A receipt for fifty head, all right and legal.”
Lines around the sheriff’s eyes deepened into a frown. “There’s over a hundred head out there now.”
William shook his head. “No, sir. Count again. I only had a quarter head to start. There should only be seventy-five.”
The deputy spoke up, clutching his shotgun tighter. “I counted ’em myself, Tyler. Stopped at one hundred head. Last time we were out here, yeh only had but the twenty-five.”
One hundred head? William’s mind raced. “That’s just not possible. There’s been some mistake.”
“Damn straight there’s been a mistake,” Grande said, “but it ain’t my deputy’s. Tom may not be the town banker when it comes to sums”—the deputy shot Grande a narrow look—“but either way, there’s another problem with your herd.”
A queasy feeling settled like a lump of lard in his gut. “What’s that?”
“Some of ’em got a brand that don’t belong to yeh,” he said. “Just so happens, it’s the brand of a ranch that got hit last night.”
William’s head shook back and forth in rigorous denial. “No. The cattle I bought weren’t branded.”
“I’m sure those ones ain’t,” Tom said in a thin voice. “But a quarter head of the ones you rustled last night are sittin’ there with the Flying J brand, plain as day.”
William knew that brand. It belonged to Ed Johnson, the only rancher in the county that had somehow avoided getting raided. Up until now, it seemed. He swallowed.
“Which leaves the question of where the other twenty-five are hid,” the sheriff added. “Fifty head were stolen from the Johnson ranch.”
“Not by me,” William said. “I wasn’t at no raid last night, Sheriff. I was here.” He clamped his lips shut on the words with Kate. Best not to get her involved in all this—again.
“Save yer lies,” Jimmy said with high-pitched venom. “Yeh weren’t here all night. Did yeh forget I was in town last night, too?”
He raised a brow at the man. “Last time I checked, eatin’ dinner at the hotel isn’t a crime.”
“Robbin’ half the townsfolk to beef up yer stock is,” the man spat.
He bit off a reply when the men’s weapons lifted higher. Jimmy’s sneer turned into an ugly, crooked smile. “Well, lookie what we have here.”
William realized the men’s attention had shifted over his shoulder.
“Sheriff,” came Kate’s voice from behind him. “Harassing Mr. Tyler is getting to be a habit with you. Don’t you have criminals to catch?”
The man’s mustache twitched. “I figure I already done caught me some, Miss Kate. I’d tip my hat to the lady,” he glanced down at his gun, “but as you can see I’m a mite tied up at the moment.”
“She ain’t no lady,” Jimmy said, squinty brown eyes trained on Kate. “Can’t say I’m surprised to find yeh here. Waste of time startin’ over at yer Pa’s, if yeh ask me.”
William tossed a glance over his shoulder to find Kate standing rigid, her blue eyes wide and blazing with barely contained fury. She was dressed now. Her hair was still braided, but mussed from sleep and other things they’d done.
“What business do you have with my pa?” she bellowed into the tense morning silence. “You got no right bothering an ailing man like that.”
“Yer a fine one to talk,” Jimmy went on. “Trollopin’ around with the likes of a no-good—”
The sheriff cut him off. “That’ll do, Deputy.” He turned to Kate. “We went there lookin’ for yeh.”
“What for?” William cut in. “If you’re so sure I done it, which I didn’t, why involve her?”
“The evidence we found,” Sheriff Grande said. He nodded Kate’s direction. “Yeh were a bit sloppy this time, ma’am.”
“Evidence?” William and Kate both said together. Then William went on, “What are you talkin’ about?”
“Show him, Jimmy.”
The deputy pulled something from his vest pocket. William squinted at the crumpled item, trying to figure out what it was. He shook his head with a shrug.
“It’s her flower thing,” Jimmy said with a note of impatience. “You know. The one I saw her wearin’ up on her shoulder at the restaurant last night.”
Kate sucked in a gasp, and William felt her come up beside him. “My corsage! I lost that somewhere on the road last night.”
“No, ma’am,” the sheriff said. “You lost it durin’ the raid. We found it at the Flyin’ J ranch.”
William’s mouth dropped open, and he didn’t need to look to know Kate’s had as well. “It couldn’t have gotten that far,” William said, frowning. “Ed’s place is clear to the county line. Unless maybe a horse got it caught in its hoof, dragged it there.”
Jimmy gave an indignant snort and waved the wilted corsage. “This ain’t been trampled.”
“Not likely a horse could trot yer posies underfoot all the way to Flyin’ J,” the sheriff agreed.
“What’s going on?” Kate whispered to him.
“Another raid last night,” he said. “They think I did it.”
“He can’t have,” she said. “He was with me.”
Jimmy’s laugh cut her off. “Lemme guess. He was with you all night. We heard that one afore.”
“You’re right on the one count, Tyler,” said Grande. “There was a raid last night. But I don’t think you done it.”
William narrowed his gaze. “You don’t?”
“No. I think you both have been in on it all along.”
“Me?” Kate launched into a rapid-fire assault of denials in a less-than-ladylike manner, but William had gone numb and heard little of it.
“Kate wasn’t even around when the raids began,” he heard himself say in a distant-sounding voice. “She was off trainin’ to be a hoss doc.”
“Then she got in on the deal when the two of yeh got together,” the sheriff said. “Either way, we got her flowers from the ranch, and here she is with yeh fer the second time after a raid. Right where we find the stolen cattle.”
“Half of the stolen cattle,” William said.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “A fifty-fifty split. Who knows where she hid her take?”
She started forward, but guns whirled on her. “Hold it right there,” Grande said. “Don’t do anythin’ stupid. I’d sore hate to shoot a lady.”
“This is ridiculous,” she said, now standing a few steps ahead of William with her hands on her hips. “I’ve lived here all my life. You can’t seriously think someone who devotes her life to doctoring animals goes around stealing them?”
“Hands in the air, Kate,” the sheriff said. After a moment’s hesitation during which William’s heart pounded in panic that she might do something stupid, she complied.
“Actually, I think it’s a fittin’ match,” Grande went on. “Tyler woos you into the game so if any of the herd gets hurt or sick afore bein’ sold off, you can fix ’em up.”
“I knew yeh was lyin’ back in that barn the last time,” Jimmy said, though his eyes glittered with a leering expression that suggested he believed good and well Kate had par
ted her skirts for William. “Just didn’t realize yeh was coverin’ up fer yerself as well.”
William could barely hear the rest over the thundering pulse in his ears. Kate’s corsage was found at the site of the raid? How? She’d been with him all night, and even if she hadn’t, he knew better than to think his pants-wearing spitfire was off rustling cattle at night.
Snippets of memory flashed through his mind of the last time he’d stood accused.
You don’t know I’m innocent.
Yes I do.
How?
I just do.
Kate had been dead certain he wasn’t guilty. Did she really have such blind faith in a man she barely knew, or did she know he was innocent by virtue of knowing who was really guilty?
He grunted under his breath. The idea was ridiculous. Besides, this time they really had been together all night.
Then something the sheriff had said to Kate that day flashed back. He might have slipped out while yeh were sleepin’.
His eyes shifted to where Kate had finally stopped arguing with the law. Her rebuttals had been lively enough that now he could see her shoulders heaving with deep breaths. She couldn’t have slipped out while he was sleeping. He’d have noticed. Wouldn’t he? He shook his head to clear the ugly thought.
“There’s no use arguin’ this time,” the sheriff was saying. “Come along quiet and there won’t be trouble.”
There’d be trouble all right, several feet of it—with one end twisted into a noose.
“What about the other one?” Jimmy asked.
The sheriff pursed his lips. “That remains to be seen. Bobby John?” he shouted. “Bring him around here.”
One of the guns swung to William’s left, where two men were coming around the side of the house. Jack was in front, his hands up. A shotgun muzzle followed a few inches from his back, carried by a stout, bow-legged man William recognized from the law’s last visit to his ranch.
“Sorry, boss,” Jack said, his eyes unreadable. “I went out to water the herd and saw riders comin’ in. Before I could warn yeh, I saw it were the law after us.”
“Not much of a lookout,” Jimmy said with a laugh. “Lucky fer us.”
“He’s no lookout,” William said. “He’s a ranch hand. Jack has nothing to do with this. And neither do we.”
“Save yer protest,” Sheriff Grande said. “We caught yeh red-handed with the cattle.”
“You didn’t see me steal the cattle because I never did. And if some of the stolen cattle got mixed in with my herd—”
“Oh, they’re out there,” Jack said, cutting him off. “Saw ’em myself when the sheriff rode up on the corral.” He was watching William with an odd expression.
“That doesn’t prove I took them. Anyone could have put ’em in there.”
He shrugged off a fleeting thought of Kate. The woman who seemed less than pleased with the amount of time it was taking for William to turn things around with his livelihood so he could start their life together. Perhaps she was trying to speed things up. Or maybe Jack was.
No. He couldn’t let shadows of doubt cloud his mind, especially when she’d backed him up, believed in him. Both of them. He knew Kate and Jack and loved them both. There was no way either of them were capable of this.
More men came around to the front, making eight guns total. One of the men shouted out, “Nobody else around, Sheriff.”
None of this nightmare made sense. William turned to his ranch hand. “You didn’t hear anythin’ last night, Jack?”
He shook his head and flicked a guilty glance William’s way. “I was a mite wore out.”
“We takin’ ’em all in, Sheriff?” Jimmy asked.
“Just the two of ’em fer now,” Grande said, and William felt relief and panic at the same time. Kate wasn’t going to jail, at least. But he and Jack were.
The Sheriff nodded, and the deputy along with three other men came toward William.
“Tie ’em up,” Grande said.
Too late William realized the two going to jail included Kate, who shrieked in protest when Jimmy Smith leveled his shotgun at her and gestured for a man with a drooping black mustache to grab her hands and wind rope around them. William’s hands were bound tightly, the rough hemp of the rope digging into his wrists. The thought of Kate being treated the same way magnified the rage already battering against his chest.
“You’re makin’ a big mistake, Sheriff,” he said. “We’re not guilty of this. Not any of it.”
“Will can’t be yer man,” Jack said, his dark eyes wild. The gun was still pointed at his back, but his hands were down at his sides now. William could see Jack struggling to hold back the same alibi that Kate had used last time. “He’s good folk and hardworkin’. He’s bled night and day to scrabble this ranch back from nothin’.”
Will studied the man’s panicked face and thanked him with a silent nod.
“But it ain’t been fast enough, has it?” The look on the sheriff’s leathery face seemed to hold a note of pity. “He got desperate enough to turn outlaw.”
Jack shook his head. “That ain’t the way of it. Besides, even Tyler ranch was one of the ones got hit, right early on.”
“Oh, I remember,” Grande said. “Not too long after Tyler got here, in fact.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy added, “a raid that gave Willy boy an instant promotion from cowpoke to ranch owner. Might want to rethink who yer backin’ up. Yer lucky we ain’t runnin’ you in, too.”
“We got nothin’ on Stone,” Grande said, but he leveled a sharp gaze on Jack. “Yet. Don’t get any ideas about leavin’ town. I’ll have more questions.”
Jimmy spit in the dirt. “Besides, bein’ such a good friend and all, I’m sure he won’t want to miss the hangin’.”
William heard Kate’s gasp of shock. Before any more could be said, he and Kate were given a shove in the direction of nearby horses. The ends of each of their ropes were lashed to a different saddle—the sheriff’s and deputy’s—and the posse rode off, forcing the bound captives to walk behind the horses all the way to town.
With horses between them, he couldn’t catch many glimpses of Kate along the way. When he did, her expression was one of dazed, wide-eyed shock. He felt much the same way. Twice now he’d been accused of thieving, only this time they thought they had solid proof, instead of vague claims of a spotted horse being seen at the raid.
The five-mile trip from Tyler Ranch to Tanner’s Grove took much longer than usual with the two prisoners on foot. By the time William spotted the small grove of trees just outside the town proper, the sun had burned off the overcast early morning and turned the day into an atypically blazing autumn day. The group remained quiet for the most part, just the sound of horse hooves and birds overhead. He kept far enough behind the sheriff’s chestnut mount to avoid the tail swishing away the horseflies, and trudged along while the clouds of dust kicked up by the horses dried his throat into desert. The posse never stopped to let them rest, which wouldn’t have bothered William except the bastards were all but dragging a woman behind them as well.
Soon, he was lost in a whirlwind of thoughts that grew more dark and dire with each mile they traveled. Just where would the journey ultimately lead? At the town jail, or swinging from the end of a rope? While Sheriff Grande seemed a reasonable sort, more than one matter of law had been settled around Tanner’s Grove well before a trial was ever held. Frontier justice was still meted out regularly by those who defended their settlements with a passion, and horse thieves were shown little mercy.
Whether he and Kate would survive long enough to see the inside of the county courthouse was anyone’s guess, but if he had to wager on it the odds weren’t in their favor. Whoever was responsible for the raids had hit a dozen ranches and homesteads in the area over the past couple of years. The townsfolk would want their pound of flesh if they thought for a moment that the felons had been caught.
He was trying not to picture being served up as the main attraction
to a lynch mob when he heard a small cry and a scuffle. His head whipped over to the left to see a cloud of dust and Kate’s skirts on the ground. She had tripped and hit the dirt, and yet they were still moving.
“Stop!” he shouted. “The woman fell, don’t you see? You’re draggin’ her.” He could hear her groaning and crying out in distress. “Damn it. Kate!” He dug in his boot heels, yanking on his ropes in a futile attempt to stop the sheriff’s horse. He shot an arrowhead-sharp glare at the back of Jimmy Smith’s head, who hadn’t yet twisted around or given any indication that he’d heard what was going on.
William ignored the searing protest from his shoulders and wrists while he fought against his bonds. He raised his voice to a shout. “Pay her proper mind, you deadbeat blowhard. Your captive is draggin’ on the damn ground.”
That got the men’s attention, and they pulled up their reins to stop. Rather than checking to see whether Kate was hurt, however, Jimmy fastened a rabid gaze on William.
“Best yeh shut that big bazoo,” he said. “Or we might just hold up right here and now in the grove and find a nice tree for you to swing on.”
“Hold yer spit, Deputy,” the sheriff said. “I have every intention of seein’ these two to the calaboose, not the pearly gates. Not yet, anyway.”
Jimmy twisted around in his saddle to peer down at Kate. “Guess yeh ain’t made of such strong stock after all, even if yeh do try to act like a man. Git on up.”
“Don’t you talk to her like that,” William spat out.
Tied fast as he was, he couldn’t get to Kate and couldn’t quite tell whether she was bleeding or hurt. He could see she was struggling, and frustration burned through him. He continued to yank on the rope holding him in place, but it was no use.
“Hurry up, gal,” Jimmy went on. “We ain’t got all day.”
“Why don’t you get your sorry hide off that high horse and help the lady?” William asked. “You can see she can’t barely get up wearin’ those long skirts with her hands all trussed up.”
“She ain’t no lady. I figure she managed to help steal dozens of head of cattle. I think she can git up on her own two feet.”
To Tame a Wild Mustang Page 18
