“Shut up, you fool,” Sturgis hissed in his ear. “You can’t expect a man to beat his fiancé’s uncle senseless and then show up in her parlor asking her to marry him.” Since neither boy knew how to talk in a voice quiet enough to be considered a whisper anywhere except on the open prairie, their exchange was heard by everyone in the room with widely different reactions: Cord with icy stiffness, Ira with a hot rage, Eliza with shocked indignation, and Sheriff Hooker with plain curiosity.
“Miss Smallwood, am I to understand that you and Mr. Stedman are engaged to be married?” Sheriff Hooker asked.
“No, they’re not,” Ira bellowed from his cell.
“Miss Smallwood has agreed to become my wife,” Cord said very formally, “but knowing her uncle’s opposition, we decided to withhold the announcement until she had had a chance to talk with him.”
“I forbid it,” shouted Ira. “I’ll stop it even if I have to take her to St. Louis.”
A welcome interruption occurred with the entrance of Croley Blaine. Cord wasn’t the only one to notice Blaine’s clothes were more than ordinarily dusty and that he was breathing too hard to have come from anyplace in town.
“What’s going on here, Joe? Iris tells me you’ve arrested Ira.”
“Mr. Stedman and his boys brought him in about an hour ago and swore out a complaint. His niece insists he’s innocent, but Ira just sits there calling Mr. Stedman names and being as uncooperative as a grizzled lobo.”
“If Ira was caught with a rope on one of Cord’s steers, he did it to get back at Mr. Stedman,” Croley said, crossing over to the cell and looking at Ira rawer than the others. “He didn’t take the news of his niece’s engagement very well.”
“That won’t wash,” Sturgis stated in a flat denial. “I don’t know how he felt about Miss Smallwood’s engagement, but there’s been some shady business going on on our range lately and he was there as a cover.”
“Are you accusing my uncle of being involved with a gang?” asked Eliza, incredulous.
“I don’t know what he’s involved with, Miss Smallwood, but he wasn’t out there taking one steer in a fit of anger. We’ve got cows wandering around bawling for their lost calves, and it ain’t wolves that took them this time.”
“Cord, are you going to let that man talk about my uncle like this?”
“Something is going on, and at least this time your uncle acted as a front. When we caught up with him, he started shouting and shooting his gun—”
“I was shooting at you, you coyote.”
“—and did his best to delay us. He didn’t even try to escape.”
“Of course he didn’t,” Croley said, “because he was angry. I’ve been Ira’s partner for nearly six months now, Joe, as long as you’ve been sheriff, and I can vouch for it he has a hasty temper. He has a particular grudge against Mr. Stedman for throwing him off a piece of property on Bear Creek and for showing an interest in his niece.”
“That’s true.” Eliza turned from Cord to the sheriff. “Anyone who comes to the saloon can tell you that.”
“Let him go, Sheriff, and I’ll stand surety he won’t bother Mr. Stedman’s herd again.”
“I intend to let him go, but I can’t stop his trial unless Mr. Stedman drops the charges.”
“You will drop the charges, won’t you?” Eliza said, turning hopefully toward Cord. “He wasn’t really trying to steal anything. Tell him you weren’t, Uncle Ira,” Eliza pleaded, whipping around to face her uncle.
For a moment it looked as though Ira was going to have another outburst, but under the steely gaze of his partner, his eyes dropped to the floor. “Yeah, I was only doing it to aggravate you.” He lifted his head, his eyes blazing, and pointed a shaking finger at Cord. “But I’ll never let you marry Eliza.”
“See, I told you. Now will you drop the charges?” Eliza implored.
Cord stood facing Eliza, his eyes staring at something beyond her.
“Cord,” Eliza entreated, unable to believe he would not immediately free her uncle, “tell the sheriff you’ll drop the charges.”
His gaze refocused on Eliza. “But I’m not going to.” He said the words in a quiet voice Eliza had never heard before, but one his men had experienced often enough to know Cord’s mind was made up.
Eliza staggered as though struck a physical blow. “But you heard him say he was only doing it to get back at you. You can’t mean to bring him to trial in front of the whole town.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do. He’s lying and we caught him red-handed. This is the best chance I’ve had to get a conviction in three years.
“Don’t you love me enough to forgive him for my sake?”
“It’s not a question of my love. I can’t back down now, as much for the other ranchers as for myself. There’s a ring of rustlers operating out there, a gang intent upon stealing whole herds instead of single steers, and if the only way to get to the heart of it is by cutting off the arms one at a time, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Then you really mean to humiliate him in front of the whole town?” Eliza inquired, stunned. “It’s my uncle your trying to convict. Have you stopped to consider what this will do to me?” Eliza demanded, growing angry.
“I still say we should have busted him up. Then there wouldn’t have been any of this trial business,” Royce whispered. Sturgis stomped on his toe, hard, with the heel of his boot.
“You know I wouldn’t do this if I could help it,” said Cord. “The last thing I want is to hurt you.”
“Then have my uncle released,” Eliza snapped.
“I can’t. The sheriff has already set the day for his hearing.”
“Isn’t that awfully fast, Joe?” Croley asked.
“It can’t be helped. The judge will be in town next week, and if he doesn’t stand his trial now, it’ll be another six months before he gets his chance. You don’t want this hanging over his head all that time, do you?”
“No I don’t,” Eliza stated emphatically. “I want him tried as soon as possible so his innocence can be proved once and for all.”
“He ain’t innocent, lady” Royce protested, unable to keep quiet during what in his eyes was a miscarriage of justice. “He had his rope around that calf’s neck.”
Eliza’s indignant gaze didn’t flicker for one instant from Cord’s face. “I never thought you’d let a foolish misunderstanding blind you to all fairness. I’ve spent months trying to get Uncle to stop talking against you. Mr. Blaine even promised to do what he could, but you won’t do the same with your hirelings.”
“I don’t hide behind my boys,” Cord responded, his eyes hooded and his face impassive. “I lodged this complaint.”
“Then why won’t you withdraw it?” asked Eliza, deeply hurt and completely bewildered. “I even threatened to sing for the competition if he didn’t stop talking against you. Can’t you do as much for me?”
“That has nothing to do with you or me. It’s about gangs and rustling.”
“But nobody believes Uncle Ira was trying to rustle your cows, by himself or as part of a gang.”
“I do. If you can have so much faith in your uncle, why can’t you have a little in me?”
Eliza’s heart lurched at the bleakness of his voice and her anger faded. “Whatever Uncle may have been doing, I know he wasn’t trying to steal. I never thought you would accuse him unfairly, only that there was some sort of misunderstanding.”
“And if I still say I’m not wrong?”
“You must be,” Eliza insisted, feeling Cord slipping away from her. Why was everything going wrong? Why didn’t someone do something to stop it?
Cord stared at Eliza, the rigid cast of his features preventing his face from reflecting the struggle going on inside. The room waited for him to speak, but still he stared at her, his gaze unwavering and inscrutable.
“I can’t have the man I’m going to marry calling my uncle a rustler,” Eliza said finally, unable to stand the almost eerie silence. “Y
ou’ve got to drop the charges.”
“And if I don’t?”
Eliza searched Cord’s face for any sign of acquiescence, but his expression was more austere than ever. Would he force her to choose between them? Would he require her to make a decision that could ruin her life forever? The alternatives were cruelly clear: If she chose Cord, she must desert her uncle and break her death bed vow to her aunt; if she chose her uncle, she could not marry Cord and would condemn herself to a life of unutterable misery. The choice was so harrowing, her mind and tongue were reluctant to put it into words. “How can I continue my engagement?” she said at last, each word produced by strenuous effort. “I can’t desert my uncle.”
“You mean to desert me instead?”
“You know I’ll never stop loving you,” Eliza said, a terrifying feeling of loss knifing deep into her heart with the swiftness and pain of steel. “I couldn’t if I wanted to, but how can I publicly choose you over my uncle when it would mean his utter humiliation? Can’t you see this is nothing but a pitiful attempt to strike back at you?”
“Can’t you see it’s much more than ill-tempered spite? It’s part of an organized attempt to hit at the very heart of what I’ve labored through twenty-hour days in the saddle to achieve. It’s not one man stealing one calf, it’s a dozen attempting to steal hundreds, to cripple me just when the Matador has become mine.”
“That can’t be true!” Eliza cried, thrusting aside the unwelcome picture Cord was painting. “You make him out to be a cold-blooded thief rather than the pathetically sad little man he is.”
“Pathetic! Sad!” erupted Ira, purple with rage.
But Eliza took no heed of him. “I can’t let him be portrayed as a criminal. You’ve got to see you’re wrong.”
“I’m not.”
“You won’t accept my word?”
Cord shook his head.
“You intend to press charges?”
Cord nodded.
“But how can I choose between you?”
“That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself.”
Unreasoning anger and heartrending pain united to destroy the last remnants of Eliza’s control, and it was all she could do to hold back the impending flood of bitter tears. “Come on, Lucy, there’s no reason for us to stay. Mr. Blaine will see that Uncle is released.”
She turned on her heel and swept out of the jail into the moonless night. She was unaware of the cold that turned her breath into steamy billows or the mud that soiled her dress and slippers. What did either of them matter when everything that made her life worth living had just been wrenched from her grasp? What did anything matter now?
Lucy glanced back at Cord, and the look of misery in his unguarded expression was so great she felt an almost overpowering desire to comfort him. Instead, she hurried after Eliza, already turning over in her mind how to bring them back together.
“Tell everyone to lie low” Croley growled furiously to Les. “That damned fool Ira nearly spoiled everything.”
“Did he tell on us?” asked Harker, quaking at the thought of Cord Stedman on his heels.
“No. At least he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. I hope I turned them off with that yarn about his being so angry at his niece’s engagement he tried to steal the steer for spite.”
“Say, that was clever,” Harker said admiringly.
“It’ll have to be to rescue this operation. Stedman knows something’s going on, and he won’t stop until he finds out what it is.”
“We’ll have to call off the whole thing,” said Les. “I never did like it.”
“No, we won’t,” Croley said mulishly. “The holidays are coming up, and not even Stedman’s men will stay on the range the whole time.”
Chapter 22
“But you can’t go on refusing to even speak to him,” Lucy said to Eliza. “The man has been here every day for the last week, and it’s nearly breaking my heart to have to look him in the face and say you aren’t here. Anyway, he knows it’s a lie.”
Since the evening in the jail, Eliza had experienced misery of a depth and kind she had previously thought impossible. It had been her words that had set Cord apart from her, and even though she felt she couldn’t go back on them, even though she nearly gave in at least three times an hour, the agony was no less severe. She moved though her days, eating, sleeping, and rehearsing with Iris without using more than a fraction of her mind. Often she had to be spoken to two or three times just to get her attention, and even then her answers might be totally meaningless.
“You know you love him and he loves you, so what does all the rest matter?” argued Lucy. “So your uncle gets angry and tries to steal a steer. You’re still speaking to him. But all Cord does is try to protect his own property, and you turn your back on him like he’s the one who did the stealing.”
“I wouldn’t have minded if he’d knocked Uncle down or even put him in jail for a short while, but not bring him to trial.”
“Mr. Cord is very jealous of his cows. He never lets anybody touch them.”
“People are more important than cows. If that’s how he treats my uncle before we are married, what can I expect him to do to me after we’re married? Will he arrest me, knock me down, or break my legs? There won’t be anybody to protect me then.”
“This is foolish talk and you know it,” scolded Lucy impatiently. “Mr. Cord loves you. He’d never hurt a hair on your head.”
“There’s more that needs protecting than the hair on my head. I practically begged him to let Uncle go, but he wouldn’t. He can’t love me nearly as much as I thought if one steer is more important to him than my happiness.”
“I don’t think you understand Mr. Cord very well. That steer stands for everything he’s worked for, and he means to defend it against anyone who tries to take it from him.”
“But it is just a cow. Surely he can learn to see that.”
“I don’t think so. It’s something that comes from way down inside, and I doubt he can change it. All you see is one cow, but he sees everything he has worked for being threatened. To him, it represents what he is, what he has to offer you.”
“But I would love him just as much if he were nothing but a plain cowboy or dirt farmer.”
“No, you wouldn’t. If he had been content to remain a cowboy, he wouldn’t be the man he is now. And he wouldn’t be the man you fell in love with.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Eliza protested.
“You’re surrounded by cowboys, but did any of them bother to build you a schoolhouse or fill it with students? Who paid a fortune for the privilege of eating dinner with you, and talked Ella Baylis into virtually letting you live at her place?”
“What difference does that make?”
“You like Sam, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Do you love him?”
“Of course not!”
“Only because he’s married?”
“I wouldn’t love Sam no matter what he was.”
“How about all those cowboys?”
“None of them either.”
“Just Cord?”
“Yes.”
“Then there must be something special about him, and whatever it is that made him special enough for you to fall in love with made him rise from being a cowboy to a rancher, made him determined to hold on to his own and see it increased. You can’t take a man apart, keep the pieces you like, and toss the rest away. Men come with the good and the not so good, just like women, but it all comes together.”
“How do I know you haven’t been blinded by Cord’s smoldering eyes and muscled shoulders just like every other female in town?”
“I’ve lived in almost every city from New York to San Francisco, and I’ve seen every kind of man there is. I’ve seen handsome creeps who would sweep you off your feet, use you, and discard you all in the same night. I’ve seen honest Joes with hearts of gold, but no backbone and no ambition, and I’ve seen all the k
inds in between. Mr. Cord belongs to the group at the top. Only in his case, he’s the best of the cream. He got where he is by being tough, and he’s going to be tough on you. This is only the first of many times, and probably not the hardest. He’s a man worth having, worth fighting for, but he’s going to cost you a lot.”
“He’s already cost me too much,” said Eliza, struggling to hold back tears that swam in her eyes.
“Give him a little time,” Lucy urged, giving Eliza a hug. “You’ll find a strong man is a mighty nice thing to have around.”
The trial was a mockery, and Cord would have been the first to admit he was a fool to have bothered with it at all.
“He got off with a warning,” Royce muttered in disgust. “We could have done that without bringing him in.”
“What are you going to do now, boss?” Sturgis asked. “You can’t leave things like this.”
“I’ve got to. I knew I was handing him over to the judge when I had him arrested. I have no other choice now but to abide by his decision.”
“But you’ve got to do something.”
“We will. I intend to keep a twenty-four-hour watch on every foot of my land until we catch whoever is stealing those calves.”
“And this time we don’t waste time with the courts?”
“I’m not sure what I’ll do, but no, I won’t waste time with the courts.”
“I want a word with you, Cord Stedman.” Ella Baylis’s sharp voice cut through the crowd. “And I want it away from the sharp ears of your hired guns.” She glared at Sturgis and Royce, who held back, unsure of how to deal with a woman as forceful as Ella. “Come back to the store with me. Everybody’ll be at the saloon getting drunk, and well have the place to ourselves.” Ella marched off without waiting to see if Cord followed.
“There’s that Liza Hanks, made up like one of Lavinia’s hussies, giving you the eye,” she said as they walked.
“I can’t say I remember her,” Cord responded, nodding to a woman obviously trying to attract his attention.
Wicked Wyoming Nights Page 22
