Mary Connealy

by Montana Marriages Trilogy

  The hall was about two feet wider than the door leading to where the sheriff and Dawson sat talking. Slipping up that hall, the sight of the iron bars sent a chill up Sid’s spine. He’d cheated prison so far, and he had no intention of ever spending a night in jail. If he ever found himself cornered by the law, he’d decided long ago to go down guns blazing rather than be locked in a cage like an animal.

  Harv lay snoring in the cell farthest forward; the other cage was empty and its door stood slightly ajar.

  Sid didn’t wake him, afraid the cessation of the deep roar of Harv’s sleep might be the same as sounding an alarm. Sid ducked behind the slightly ajar door and peeked through the crack between the door and the frame.

  The sheriff sat there, hands behind his head, feet propped up on his desk with the ankles crossed, talking cattle. Dawson’s chair was closer to Sid. He sat just inside the door, holding a cup of coffee in both hands, rocking his chair on its back legs.

  Sid knew his blow to Dawson’s head had to be brutally hard. Sid wanted him down and out with one quick move. Whether Dawson survived the strike or not didn’t matter much. A witness could bring trouble. Then Sid would get the drop on the sheriff and tie him up. Hoping to avoid the noise of gunfire, Sid knew he’d shoot ’em both, grab Harv, and run if he had to.

  Sid glanced at Boog then drew his gun and turned it so the butt end was forward. Boog nodded, understanding Sid’s plan. Dawson’s chair swayed as he sipped his coffee.

  Raising the gun butt, Sid prepared to storm into the room and strike.

  Dawson stood suddenly.

  Sid whirled his gun around to take aim.

  “I might as well get some sleep. It’ll be dawn in a few minutes.”

  The sheriff lowered his hands and took his feet down off his desk. “I’ll make it the rest of the night.”

  “Just remember he had a partner. Someone out there knows we caught him and could be looking.”

  “I appreciate the company. Stop by before you head out of town and we’ll try and get some information out of him.” Dawson left without a backward glance, and the sheriff settled back into his reclining position at his desk.

  Sid and Boog exchanged glances; then, less than a minute after Red’s exit, a soft snoring sound came from the front. Boog’s cold eyes gleamed. He slipped through the door into the sheriff’s front office.

  Sid heard the dull thud of something hard striking flesh and bone.

  Boog backed into the room, dragging a bleeding sheriff by his feet.

  Enough light came from a single lantern in the sheriff’s office that Sid saw the trail of blood. Vicious satisfaction uncurled in Sid to think of hurting any lawman. They were the enemy. “Harv, wake up.”

  Dropping Dean’s feet, Boog went back up front and returned with a key hanging from an iron ring as big around as a saucer.

  “Sid, that you?” Harv sat up, groggy but jumping to his feet the second his eyes focused.

  With a rasp of metal, Boog unlocked the barred door.

  Harv rushed out.

  “Let’s go. Get clear of town fast.” Sid led the way. The three of them scurried through the night to the horses—they’d brought a spare for Harv from the M Bar S.

  The three of them kept to the woods as they swung a wide circle around the town. “You and Boog go stay at the Griffin place. As soon as Boog is healed up, he can come back in. No one’s paying too close a mind to who’s there working because of Wade being back. He don’t know how things were before. So no one’s gonna notice you gone for awhile longer. Harv, you might need to lay low until I get shed of Wade and that wild woman he brought home.”

  Staring out of the thick trees of the rugged mountainside Sid studied the trail. It would split about two miles ahead—one trail well traveled, leading to the Sawyer place, and the other only a faint depression in the grass heading toward the abandoned Griffin house.

  “The going gets hard in the woods from here on.” Sid nodded at the tumbled stretch of slippery shale ahead. “Let’s get on the trail. We won’t meet up with anyone out this late.”

  “Hold it.” Boog’s quiet voice stopped Sid. “Look down the trail.”

  In the gray of predawn, Sid heard more than saw someone approaching from the direction of the Sawyers’. “A bunch of riders.”

  Harv spoke up. “I heard Red Dawson sent men out to the Sawyer place and every other ranch around. He told ’em to put out the word that he’d brung in rustled cattle and to come claim their stock. The Sawyers must be sending a party into Divide to fetch their cows.”

  Either Sid’s eyes adjusted or the sky lightened or both, because he could make out one blazing white head in the midst of five riders. An unmistakable head of hair. That wild woman was riding with them.

  “There’s that woman.” Harv had a hungry tone to his voice.

  Sid didn’t like the sound. He’d gotten to thinking of that untamed woman as his. “Keep quiet until they pass.”

  As the group rode closer, following the trail, Sid realized they’d come within fifty feet of where he hid with Boog and Harv. He could take them now. With Boog’s gun and Harv’s and his own, they could end it in a blaze of bullets, then ride to the ranch, get rid of Mort, and settle into the Sawyer place right away.

  “Don’t do it.” Boog must have read his mind. Sid looked sideways and Boog nodded at the group of riders. “That’s the saltiest bunch on the Sawyer place, and look, the woman—she heard something.”

  “Quiet!” Sid hissed.

  The wild woman stopped. She sat on a barebacked pinto mare that few at the M Bar S ever rode because she was so feisty. The horse paused without any visible direction from that wildflower on her back, almost as if the horse had read her mind. The woman turned and stared into the woods straight into Sid’s eyes.

  He knew she couldn’t see him. The woods were too thick, and with the barely lightening sky, the forest was impenetrably dark.

  Impossible.

  But those eyes. Chills sprang up on Sid’s arms. Her eyes crawled over him then glanced left and right as if she not only saw him but made out Boog and Harv, too.

  All three of them sat their horses motionlessly. Even their mounts seemed frozen as if they knew danger lay in the slightest movement.

  At last, as the Sawyer hands left her behind, the wildflower looked forward and her horse, as if the two were one creature, started walking again.

  Spooky, that woman. Seeing into the dark, maybe seeing into Sid’s mind.

  After the Sawyer riders vanished from sight on the winding trail to Divide, the trio stayed still.

  “It’s safe.” Boog urged his mount forward. “Let’s go.”

  Deciding to trust Boog, because Sid was tempted to stay hidden for a good long time, the three moved on.

  “I’ll be in by the weekend. My arm’s almost healed up and I’m sick of sitting around. Should have spent the last few days driving those cattle south into Idaho. Now we’ve lost ’em.” They reached the fork in the road and Boog paused. “Maybe we oughta cut out of here, Sid, and go collect that gold. It’s been long enough for those Indians to bury their dead and go home.”

  “Forget it.” Knowing he had to face a long day’s work without a minute of sleep, Boog’s wanting to quit fired Sid’s temper. “Come back from Griffin’s when you’re ready, but the plan doesn’t change.”

  Sid spurred his horse toward the Sawyer place. As he rode alone toward the spread he planned to make his own, it occurred to him that Boog and Harv were free as birds. They could sleep the day away. They could even head out and collect that gold and make tracks for California.

  Refusing to look back, Sid decided this whole plan had taken too long. Mort was supposed to die outright. Arrogance had goaded Sid into letting the fall and the long cold night kill the old man. Now he needed to finish off the old man and the son and deal with that wild woman.

  He’d give Boog and Harv a few more days to heal up; then it was time to make his move.

  CHAPTER 19<
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  I have no wish to see your white village, Wade. I should have stayed with Gertie.”

  “I’m sending a telegram to Helena asking about settlers named Lind, from back a few years. They can pass it on to land offices, and maybe we’ll find where your pa lived. Don’t you want to be there if we get an answer back?”

  Abby scowled. She’d done more frowning since she’d come to live with the Sawyers than in her entire years with the Flathead. This long trail ride in the predawn darkness was unsettling. She’d smelled something back in the woods. Men. White men. Even riding with this group of them, she knew more were watching from the woods. But white men were always about. She’d learned to fear them, hate them, but mostly ignore them.

  They’d taken everything from the Flatheads, all tribes in fact, but her people had found fertile valleys and lived in remote places. They were far from the whites who spread like a disease across this land. Until that massacre of her village, they’d left Abby’s people alone in their rugged mountain valleys.

  Wade rode his horse a bit closer to Abby’s side and lowered his voice. “The more I think about it, the more I’m sure that arrow was aimed at you, not me.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Or maybe they were going for both of us. If that arrow was shot by the same men that massacred your village, then they might count both of us as witnesses.”

  “You’re just trying to scare me.”

  “Maybe you need to be scared. If I’m right, Abby, then we’re dealing with the worst kind of yellow dog.”

  “You’ve just described all white men.” Abby waited for Wade to defend his people. When he didn’t, Abby felt bad about it. Wade had been nothing but kind, even sweet, so all white men except Wade.

  Instead of defending his honor, he went right on pestering her to be more cautious. “We’re talking about a man who’d shoot at a woman from cover. When you’re in the house with Gertie, I think you’re safe. A coward like that wouldn’t storm the house. But that’s with me and my best hands working close enough to be here in minutes. But today I have to go to town and I needed to take my best hands with me. I didn’t want to ride off and leave you and Gertie without any protection. If they’re really after you, then Gertie’s in danger, too, as long as you’re there. I couldn’t ride off to town without you, so you had to come.”

  He’d used this same argument to nag her into going. She had agreed to come along and now she regretted it. Mainly because of that sense of being watched. “Fine, I will see this village and help drive your stolen cattle home.”

  His eyes narrowed as if she’d insulted him somehow, but he didn’t say why, and she made no effort to coax his reasons from him or soothe his feelings.

  “Let’s pick up the pace now that it’s light. We need to make a fast trip. The roundup is going well, but I want to get back.”

  As she guided her pony with her knees, Abby looked at the men, loaded down with their iron guns and their heavy leather saddles, and wondered how the poor horses stood it.

  “That’s Tom Linscott and his drovers.” Wade drew Abby’s attention toward a group coming into town the same time as the Sawyers.

  He and Abby and his cowhands rode into Divide just as the sun finally cleared the horizon.

  “Red must’ve sent word to him, too. Our range butts up against the Linscotts’. Pa and Tom have been wrangling over water holes and grazing land ever since Linscott came in here nearly eight years ago. The man isn’t an easy neighbor, but truth be told, Pa was always more at fault than Tom.”

  Abby gave the riders a disinterested look and turned back toward the corral ahead of them. Wade saw the yard full of cattle standing quietly as if they hadn’t gotten out of bed for the morning yet, but he turned back to study Linscott. Wade had picked up his father’s attitude toward the stubborn Swede, but now Wade was determined to be friendly if Tom would allow it. There was considerable bad blood between the families.

  It was easy to resent the blond giant because Wade knew Tom was the kind of man Mort wished Wade would be. Being a Christian now, Wade admitted that the hostility he felt toward Linscott had a lot to do with jealousy, and it wasn’t right.

  Wade rode up to the corral just as Tom got there. Tom had a wary gaze on Wade. It was hard to look the man in the eye, remembering drunken insults Wade had hurled at him only a couple of years ago. Wade knew God had forgiven him, but he had no such hope about Tom.

  “Morning.” Wade swung down off his horse and wrapped his reins around the hitching post. He noticed Abby swing one leg over her horse’s neck and drop lightly to the ground on her moccasin-covered feet. He saw her legs almost to her knees and looked away quickly just because he didn’t want to see any more. He could not convince the woman it was important to keep her ankles covered. But proper manners or not, all the gingham in the world wasn’t going to dull her skill as a horsewoman.

  “Sawyer.” Tom looked at Wade; then his eyes were drawn on past.

  Wade glanced behind him to notice Abby striding toward them. Abby was as white-blond as Tom, and it occurred to Wade that the two would make a likely pair. For some reason that reminded him of why he’d hated Linscott. “Looks like we’re on the same errand.”

  Linscott rode a black thoroughbred with a white blaze and white stockings on his front feet. The animal was huge and feisty, rumored to be so dangerous no one went near him but Tom, and no one else had ever been on his back. He’d made Linscott a fortune as ranches paid top dollar for stud fees. And Linscott used that fortune to buy up land and build up his herd.

  As Wade stepped close, the stallion snorted and shook his head, jingling the metal of his bridle. The bared teeth were ample warning for Wade to stay back.

  Linscott rode the black to a hitching post well away from the other horses and lashed the reins tight.

  “Can I talk to you for just a minute, Tom?” Wade knew Linscott was a brusque, short-tempered man, a good match for his horse.

  “Make it quick.” Tom walked toward Wade, his spurs jingling, his stride long and impatient. He faced Wade almost as if squaring off for a shootout.

  Wade couldn’t blame Tom for expecting the worst, but Wade wasn’t going to give the man trouble. “I spent most of the years since we’ve met being a first-class coyote and I’m sorry. There, that fast enough?”

  Linscott’s shoulders slumped a bit, and his eyes narrowed. “That’s what you wanted to talk about?”

  “Yep, that’s it. I don’t expect you to trust me after some of the things I pulled, but I’ve changed. I quit drinking. I’m back on the ranch with Pa. I’d like there to be peace between us. No more pushing Sawyer cattle onto your range, no more fighting about those two water holes Pa liked to wrangle over. They’re yours and always have been. I’ll keep my cattle away.”

  Linscott scowled. “I’ve wanted to put my fist through your face for years.”

  “You have a few times, if I recall.”

  “It wasn’t ever enough.” Linscott crossed his arms as if to keep his fists from flying.

  “It’ll take time to prove to you that I mean what I say.” Wade made a point of looking Linscott straight in the eye. If there was anger, even fists, Wade intended to take it as his due. Linscott wasn’t an evil man, just a grouch with a short temper. “But I do. After a time, you’ll believe me, I reckon.”

  A soft nicker from Linscott’s stallion drew Wade’s attention.

  “Such a good boy.” Abby caressed the beast’s nose, standing directly in front of the horse.

  “Get back!” Wade took one step.

  Tom’s hand clamped on his arm like a steel vise. “Don’t move!” Releasing Wade, Tom eased himself the ten feet or so toward Abby. “Miss, step away.”

  Abby looked up from the horse’s muzzle. “Why?”

  “He’s dangerous. Step slowly back.”

  Abby smiled then gave the stallion a kiss on his nose. “Dangerous, are you, boy? I’d say you’re just looking out for yourself. I know how you feel.”


  She stepped away from the horse and walked toward Tom without a bit of fear or caution. She was easily within reach of the stallion’s iron-shod hooves.

  Wade held his breath until she was far enough away from the horse to be out of biting and kicking range.

  Tom took two long strides toward her, put that iron vise of a hand on her arm, and jerked her nearly off her feet. “Are you crazy?” He dragged her about half a step before she kicked him in the back of the knee, twisted her arm loose, and rammed a fist high into his belly. Tom was flat on the ground on his back, sucking in breath like a backward scream, with Abby kneeling on his chest with her knife pressed to his neck.

  It all happened so fast Wade hadn’t even reacted before it was over.

  “You put your hands on me again, white man, and I’ll see you don’t get your fingers back.”

  Linscott was too busy trying to breathe to do much else.

  Several of the Linscott drovers turned to defend their boss.

  Wade was at her side and raised a hand to Linscott’s men. They might not obey a hand gesture from him, but they might hold off on shooting the woman who was threatening to slit their boss’s throat. “Don’t hurt him, Ab. Tom was afraid his horse would attack you. The animal’s got a reputation as a killer.”

  “Hey, my stallion’s never killed anyone.” Linscott defended his horse from his position flat on his back.

  “Not for lack of trying.” Wade prodded Tom with his toe, not too hard, to remind the idiot that he was one swift knife slash from death. Not that Wade thought Abby would kill him. Unless she really had to. Or Tom was really stupid in what he said in the next few minutes.

  “The horse never put his hands on me.” Abby leaned forward and put all her weight on the knee she had rammed into Tom’s chest. “He never dragged me around or shouted at me. I’d say the stallion has better manners than his owner.”

  “He was trying to save you.” Wade knew Abby was just having fun now. The time to cut was long past.