"You were supposed to guard the place while we were away!" her father yelled. "Where were the dogs?"
Drummond hung his head. "We locked them in the barn so they wouldn't follow us."
Uncle Quinn seized the front of Welsh's plaid shirt and heaved him off the ground. "Drunken sots, the both of you." He raised a sinewy fist, then pinched his lips together and let Welsh drop to the ground. "You're not enough of a grown man to hit. I should turn you over my knee."
"We're not drunk," Drummond protested. "Sure, we had a few—"
"Not one word!" Rebecca's father warned. "Not unless it's to give me the names of who did it."
"Didn't see them," Welsh said. "We tried to put out the fire in the hay shed, but it was too late."
Corbett spat in the dust. "Idiots!"
Welsh glared back defiantly. "It was Saturday night," he began. "We went to a wedding at Beau Littleton's. We didn't think—"
"That's the trouble," Uncle Quinn snapped. "You two never think. You were out carousing while the MacCades had the run of Angel Crossing." He scanned the ground for tracks.
"We don't know it was MacCades," Rebecca said.
"Up to the house with you girl," her father said. "You're blind if you can't see that this is Murdoch MacCade's boys' work."
"But why?" she asked. "Why would he do such a thing?"
"He wants us out of Angel Crossing. It's what he's always wanted."
"I think we should wait for more proof before we accuse anyone," she argued. It couldn't be Shaw, she thought. She couldn't believe that Shaw had anything to do with this. But even as she spoke up to defend his family, she remembered the wild, drunken sprees that the MacCades had been involved in over the last few years, including that at yesterday's baptism.
"Use common sense, girl. Who else has a grudge against us?" He pointed an accusing forefinger at her, and his tone turned harsh. "Use your head, girl. If not the MacCades, who? Common trash don't linger to turn pigs into a man's house. They do their evil then ride like the devil's on their heels." His brow furrowed with strain. "Can't be nobody else."
"It was the MacCade bunch all right," Corbett agreed fiercely. "They saw us at the preaching, last night. We should have come home, but we figured that Drummond and Welsh could be trusted to defend the place." He glared at the twins in disgust. "Worthless shit-kickers," he muttered. "Noah's got more brains than both of them put together."
"Mind your tongue in front of your sister," their father admonished. "And you, Becca. I told you to get to the house."
She could still hear their hot words as she hastened to the house to help Pilar and her grandmother clean up the filth left by the pigs. Pilar had reverted to her native tongue and was cursing the intruders, their fathers, and their grandfathers back to the fourth generation.
"We'll tend to this mess," Grandma said. "You go and see if those egg-sucking dogs stole anything from the store."
There was no inside passage from the living quarters to the attached cabin that served as a mercantile. Rebecca went out the front door and around to the side. One window shutter on the storefront hung crazily, and two glass panes were broken, but the iron padlock on the door held fast.
She turned the big key in the lock and stepped into the dim interior. Two rocks lay in the middle of the floor amid shards of glass, but nothing else had been damaged. Still, Rebecca studied the room carefully for signs of the intruders.
A single counter ran the length of the structure, and that was heaped with blankets, bolts of material, and bags of seed. Tools, lanterns, halters, coils of rope, and traps hung from the ceiling and hooks along the front and right walls. There were barrels filled with flour, salt, cornmeal, and dried beans, and a glass-topped case containing needles, thread, scissors, and knives behind the counter. Buckets of nails, wood screws, and horseshoes were stacked on the left. Money and expensive items such as guns, bullets, and compasses, Poppa kept hidden in the cellar under the main house.
Rebecca gathered a hammer, a screwdriver, and several screws and fixed the shutter, bolted it from the inside, and re-locked the heavy wooden door. The store was closed on Sundays, and unless a traveler was desperate for some item she wouldn't open it again until Monday.
When Rebecca returned to the front porch, she found Corbett sauntering out carrying his good rifle and a box of shells. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Why do you need your gun?"
"We're going to pay a call on our neighbors. Uncle Quinn found tracks leading toward MacCade's. The five of us are riding over and—"
"No!" she protested. "This is wrong. If you go over there, someone could get shot. Even killed."
"Maybe that's the idea," Drum swaggered out of the house carrying a Kentucky rifle. A Colt pistol was jammed in his belt. "You women best lock up tight once we ride out," he said.
"Don't do this, Corbett," Rebecca pleaded. "Drum, this isn't like rabbit hunting. You could end up dead. Grandma! Can't you stop them?"
Her grandmother stepped onto the wide stoop, her capable hands knotted into fists and resting on her hips. "Save your breath, Becca. Men never listen to sense. But they needn't take Noah with them." She gestured to Quinn. "You leave Noah. He's one of God's innocents, a man with a child's brain. He shouldn't be sheddin' blood or sufferin' in this cursed feud."
"He'll be all right, Mother. You worry too much. Noah's a Raeburn, isn't he? And he's a far better shot than most of those godforsaken MacCades."
Rebecca grabbed Corbett's arm. "Go for the sheriff. Do you want to see bloodshed over a burned barn?"
Drum shouldered past. "They get away with it, Bee, they'll burn us out in our beds."
Welsh rode up leading his twin's gray gelding. "This is men's business," he said. "Leave it to us."
"Poppa!" Rebecca ran out into the yard. "Don't go, please."
"You see to your grandmother," he ordered.
Despite Rebecca's protests, the five mounted and rode out at a gallop amid the excited yapping of the dogs and the squawks of scattering chickens. Rebecca dashed into the barn, but she didn't heed Pilar's shouted demands that she return to the house. Instead, she hurried through the barn, mentally choosing and discarding mounts from those the men had left behind.
She found the horse she was looking for pacing restlessly in the back stall. "Echo," she called softly. The three-year-old, a spirited dun with four black stockings and a black stripe down her spine, was only green broke, but she was as fast as any horse on the place. If Echo didn't buck her off, she stood a chance of getting to MacCade's in time to prevent her hotheaded brothers from escalating mischief into a shooting war.
Seizing a bridle, she slipped it over the mare's head, threw a blanket and saddle on her back, and yanked the cinch tight Guessing that her grandmother and Pilar would be halfway to the barn to try to prevent her from following the men, Rebecca led the horse out a side door. She shoved her skirt and petticoats out of the way and thrust her foot into the stirrup.
Echo stiffened, put her weight on her hindquarters, and started to rear. "Easy, easy," Rebecca soothed, leaning forward. The mare straight-legged sideways, clamped the bit between her teeth, and ducked her head. Rebecca hauled back on the reins with firm hands. "None of that, now." She kneed the horse in the sides, and Echo broke into a trot.
"Get off that wild horse!" Pilar cried. "You come back here, Becca. Your grandmother says—"
"Don't worry," Rebecca shouted as she headed for the back gate. "I'm a woman, and I'm unarmed. No one will shoot at me."
When she reached the road, Rebecca was still in the saddle, and her father, uncle, and brothers were tiny figures silhouetted against the slope. She guided her skittish mount left, back toward the river. Her father and the others might have a head start, but she knew a shortcut through the woods.
She wrapped her fingers in the little dun's mane, crouched low over the animal's neck, and slapped the reins across the animal's rump. Wind streamed through Rebecca's hair as the fiery mare shot forward like an arrow from a bow.<
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Chapter 12
Despite a near fall and a frightening slide down a rocky incline, Rebecca clattered into the MacCade compound in one piece, well ahead of her father, uncle, and brothers. Echo was breathing hard, and her tan hide was streaked with mud and sweat, but she was still eager to run. When Rebecca reined her in, the little mare danced nervously in a tight circle.
Two barefoot boys tossing a ball stared wide-eyed at Rebecca for no more than an instant before darting around the corner of a building and vanishing from sight. "Wait!" she cried. "Come back!"
The children didn't reappear, but a one-eared, three-legged coonhound crawled out from under a porch and began to bark at her. Swiftly, a dozen or more fierce-looking dogs materialized. Baring their teeth and growling, they joined forces with the hound.
"Get away!" Rebecca shouted. Echo laid her ears flat against her head, turned her hindquarters toward the nearest dog, and lashed out with one iron-shod hoof. "Hello!" Rebecca hollered. "Is anyone at home?"
Keeping an eye on the circling pack and a tight hand on the reins, she glanced around. Although she'd heard plenty of colorful tales about the MacCade settlement, she'd never been here before.
To her left sprawled a large, rambling, multi-chimneyed house and three—no, four—smaller, tree-shaded cabins, all fronting on an open, hard-packed dirt courtyard. Behind the dwellings, scattered haphazardly, were a smithy, a wheelwright shop, and an assortment of stables, sheds, and corncribs. Horses, oxen, and mules milled in large corrals, and free-roaming poultry scratched, clucked, and fluttered everywhere.
Not counting pigeons and a mother duck and eight yellow ducklings, the open area was empty except for two horses and a half-grown calf. Those three animals were hitched in front of a low building boasting a hand-painted sign, which read simply MacCades. A thin thread of smoke drifted from a stovepipe chimney.
"Hello! Is anybody home?" Rebecca shouted again. The dogs bayed louder, and the calf turned and stared at her with wide, glassy eyes, but Rebecca didn't see or hear a sign of a human.
Then, a window in one of the cabins opened, and a dark-skinned woman's face appeared. She yelled something that Rebecca couldn't understand, and a boy dashed from an outlying shed to the largest of several barns.
Rebecca urged Echo toward the building at a trot.
Abruptly, a huge, hard-faced man stalked out. He was well over six feet tall, and dark and burly as a bear. The purple scar from an old burn twisted one eyebrow and curved down to vanish into the full, shaggy beard. Both his chin whiskers and shoulder-length hair were streaked with gray, but he strode forward with the vigor of a man half his years.
The giant stopped and rested the head of a massive broadax on the toe of one boot. "What do you want here, Raeburn woman?"
Perspiration trickled down Rebecca's forehead, stinging her eyes, and her mouth went dry as dust. "Mr. MacCade? Mr. Murdoch MacCade?"
"I know you. You're Campbell Raeburn's girl. You're not welcome here. Not you or your kin."
"Please," she said. "I have to talk to you."
"Pap, what's—" Shaw came out of the barn and stopped a few feet behind his father. "Becca? What are you doing here?"
Murdoch turned to his son and growled a flood of profanities. "This is your doing. You get her out of here, before—"
"Go home, Becca!" Shaw said.
"No!" Rebecca insisted. "You have to listen to me. Somebody raided Angel Crossing this morning. They burned our hay shed and turned loose our livestock."
Murdoch glanced back at her, black Cherokee eyes scowling from under shaggy gray brows. "What's that to me?"
"My uncle says the tracks lead here. They think you ordered it done. Did you?"
He slammed the ax blade against a post, and the blade bit deep into the wood. "Who the hell do you think you are, to come on my land, to my place, and accuse me of—"
"Pap." Shaw was suddenly between her and his father. "Did Payton and Tom come home last night? What about Nigel and Leslie? How do you know it wasn't them? Or Bruce?"
Murdoch's ham-sized fists clenched. "You know something you ain't tellin' me, boy?"
"What's goin' on here?" A tall, robust woman of indeterminate age strode across the yard, laying around her with a broom, scattering the dog pack. "Git!" she yelled. "Git, all of you worthless critters!"
"You leave my hounds be!" Murdoch shouted. "Don't be beatin' them dogs for doin' their job!"
"God save us, Mr. MacCade. Surely you don't need them hounds to protect you from one little gal." She marched up to Echo and stuck out her hand. "I'm Mrs. MacCade, although you'd think a body'd be shamed to admit it. Call me Fiona."
Rebecca gripped the offered hand. "Pleased to meet you," she said. "I'm Rebecca—"
"Know who you are," Shaw's mother said. "What I don't know is why you're here." She glanced suspiciously at her son. "Although I might have an idea."
"She's here claimin' Angel Crossing was torched this morning. And insinuatin' our boys did it," Murdoch said.
"I didn't say that," Rebecca replied. "I said the ones who did rode this way."
"What's wrong? Your daddy too chicken-livered to come and ask me hisself?" Murdoch asked. "He stoopin' to sendin' girls to do his dirty work, now?"
"Pap." Shaw's voice hardened. "I'll ask you kindly to talk to Becca like you'd speak to any other lady."
"You tellin' your own pa what he can say to a trespasser?"
"Stop it, you two!" Fiona snapped. "You're bad as them dogs. If what she says is so, and I reckon it is, she wouldn't be here if—"
"My father didn't send me to speak for him," Rebecca cried. "I came myself. He's on his way here with my uncle and my brothers. And I thought that maybe, if the two of you could just talk this out—"
"Talk to a Raeburn?" Murdoch sneered. "Might as well try talkin' to that barn over there. If your kin comes here lookin' for trouble, they'll find it."
"Please," Rebecca said. "You must listen to me. I—"
Her words were drowned by the pounding of hooves, the renewed barking of the dogs, and the warning shouts of riders. Rebecca twisted in the saddle to see Bruce and Ewen gallop pell-mell into the yard. Ewen was slumped forward in his saddle, clutching a blood-streaked arm.
"Ewen's been shot!" Bruce cried. "Quinn Raeburn shot Ewen! And the whole Raeburn clan is right behind us!"
* * *
Shaw's first thought was to get Becca to safety. Seizing the dun's bridle, he shouted, "Get down and take cover!" From the corner of his eye, he saw Bruce helping Ewen out of the saddle. The gunshot wound was bleeding freely, but from the way Ewen was cussing as the two of them bolted for the house, Shaw doubted the wound was mortal.
To his surprise, Rebecca ignored his order to dismount. Instead, she yanked hard on the reins, twisting the mare's head back and around to the right. "No!" she cried. "I came here to stop the killing, and that's what I'm going—" The rest of her words were cut off by the dun's frantic squeal as the animal reared and spun away on her hind legs.
Swearing, Shaw clung tight to the horse's head, fighting her to a standstill. But while he was avoiding snapping teeth and flying hooves, Rebecca kicked free of her stirrup and slid off the other side.
Once she was out of range of the dun's hind feet, Shaw let the animal go and took off after Becca as she sprinted past Ewen's riderless horse, heading toward the lane. "Damn you!"
Shaw shouted. Over his shoulder, he yelled to his mother, "Ma! Get inside!"
Behind him, he heard his father barking the same order. "Fiona. Get in the house!"
Shaw pounded after Becca, caught her by the shoulder, and jerked her around. She stumbled, slammed against his chest, and they both went down onto the hard-packed dirt. "Becca! Stop it!"
But she was beyond reason, yelling, kicking, and lashing out at him with balled fists. One well-aimed blow slammed into his left eye, rocking his head back. She was a lot smaller than he was and not nearly as strong. If she'd been a man, he'd have lain her flat in seconds. But he
couldn't bring himself to chance harming her, no matter how badly she was tearing him up.
"Becca!" He finally got a grip on her wrists, straddled her waist, and pinned her to the ground. She stopped fighting him. Absolutely still, she stared into his eyes with defiance.
At that instant, the Raeburns thundered into the yard, guns drawn and ready. "Let go of my girl!" Campbell yelled.
Shaw scrambled up, keeping an arm firmly around Becca's waist and dragging her with him. He raised his free hand, palm up to show that he wasn't holding a gun. "Stop!" he yelled.
Noah threw himself off a gray horse and charged, rifle in hand. "Don't hurt Becca!"
A shot rang out from the far side of the compound. The boy stopped dead and stared down in shock. His features twisted in disbelief as a scarlet stain bloomed on his right thigh. Uttering a frightened whimper, he staggered forward. The weapon dropped from his hand, and he fell, clutching the injury.
Welsh Raeburn stood in his stirrups, took aim, and fired a pistol. Shaw heard the ominous whine of the bullet whiz past close to his head. Instantly, an answering rifle shot cracked from a cabin doorway.
Shaw shoved Rebecca down and threw himself over her, protecting her with his body as a volley of shots ricocheted through the yard. Then, directly over his head, came the deafening boom of a scattergun. Horses whinnied in fear, dogs bayed, and Rebecca struggled to break free from his grasp. With each breath, Shaw sucked in the hot, pulsing scents of dust, blood, and black powder. Seconds crept by with the methodical intensity of hours.
"Hold it, all of you! Drop down your irons, or I'll shoot the both of them!" a woman's purposeful voice called.
His mother's patched skirt brushed against his cheek, and Shaw felt the chill of cold steel against the nape of his neck. "Ma?" he demanded incredulously.
"Shut up, Shaw! Don't move a muscle." She spoke louder. "Murdoch, you know I'm crazy enough to do what I say! Believe me! I swear to almighty God! I'll squeeze off this second blast and blow them both to kingdom come, if you fools don't back off."
"Fiona! No!" his father shouted.
The Taming of Shaw MacCade Page 13
