A Man with a Past

by Mary Connealy

  But he had no need of a stretch of land from his pa. The land was his by law, but he had little enough interest in it.

  Again, he heard Kevin say, “Pa, is that you?”

  It’d struck him. Kevin had for one minute believed he was seeing his father again.

  Falcon knew what it was to long for him. To miss a man he could barely remember. To love someone he had just found out was a betrayer and a cheat, a man worthy of hate.

  That moment, that tone in Kevin’s voice, was what would keep Falcon here. He found he liked the idea of having a family. Even one as mixed-up as this one.

  He’d walk awhile. Maybe even for a few days. But he’d go back after that and sleep in the ramrod’s house. Get to know Kevin and Wyatt. See if there was anything to this family besides anger and betrayal.

  But not yet. For now, he walked on and let the mountains and woods call him home.

  FIVE

  Wyatt was afraid of her.

  The cowpokes were afraid of her.

  The cows were afraid of her.

  The horses were afraid of her.

  Truth be told, she was a little bit afraid of herself.

  When Cheyenne saw Wyatt come back, she saw in his eyes that he’d brought those land-stealing, sons-of-a-sidewinder to her ranch.

  Already working with the strength and speed of two, she threw herself into branding like a mad woman.

  Her land, her heritage, her whole world had been stolen.

  She’d prayed about it. She really had. Prayed and prayed and prayed to accept what she could not change.

  And still she was roping and throwing calves with a ruthless speed. Not hurting the calves, just fast and without ever allowing herself one second between. She wanted no time to think.

  Rope them, throw them, brand them. Rope another one.

  The branding was going double speed as everyone tried to keep up with her.

  And stay out of her way.

  “Hey, Wyatt, Cheyenne, Winona’s here.” Their foreman, Rubin Walsh, shouted at her. When she turned, he was looking somewhere else, like he was afraid to accidentally catch her eye.

  Cheyenne turned to see her friend Winona Hawkins come riding up. Wyatt didn’t speak to Cheyenne but strode out toward Win and whoever that brown-headed man was who came along.

  She knew who he was though, or had it narrowed down. Either Falcon or Kevin Hunt.

  The two men who’d stolen her ranch.

  Or rather their father had stolen it.

  Stolen it legally, but there was no justice in what had happened. Her land. Her ma and pa’s land. The ranch had been built and run by Nate and Katherine Brewster and was always meant for her, while her grandpa’s ranch was for Wyatt.

  And somehow the twisted laws of the land gave it all to Clovis Hunt. Grandpa’s, Ma’s, all of it. And he turned around and left it to sons she didn’t know existed. One-third to Wyatt, and one-third each to Falcon and Kevin.

  None for her.

  The Sidewinder. The name she and Win called Clovis Hunt until they’d almost forgotten he had another name.

  She clenched her teeth tight to keep from screaming that word at the newcomer. Her fingers itched to just start shooting. But the one who needed shooting was under the sod. And Cheyenne found an unadmirable part of herself that wished him to the devil. Oh, she had no doubt his twisted soul had been cast into eternal flames, but to wish for it was a powerful sin, and she fought it—with little success.

  Well, she’d refused to go to town to fetch them. She’d been gone from the house when the surprise brothers had come home. But she’d be hornswoggled if she’d cower here in the dust while one of the varmints came riding out to the branding. He probably wanted to claim one-third of the cows and drive them off to market right now. She walked out beside Wyatt to face the son of a thief. Of course, Wyatt was the son of a thief, too. And she had no desire to shoot him.

  The men kept on with the branding while Cheyenne and Wyatt took a break to have a palaver with their company. Maybe he wanted cookies and tea. Clovis had been fond of such.

  Cheyenne walked at Wyatt’s side. She had her rope in hand, coiled and tapping against her thigh.

  Win faced her, giving her a look that helped Cheyenne remember that no one knew how she felt as well as Win. Win’s loyalty was unshakable. That she brought this man out here was probably something she couldn’t avoid.

  The newcomer looked her straight in the eye and offered her the land back. It reminded her that she’d been acting like a rabid badger for a while now.

  Cheyenne felt her heart lift. It still wasn’t right, but this was a generous offer. She looked a little harder at Kevin Hunt. Maybe she could see past her anger with him.

  Kevin paused as if something was making it hard for him to speak. It was probably hard to give away thousands of acres of grazing land. “If we could, we’d just go, and leave you to this stupid ranch.”

  We? Cheyenne didn’t know what that meant, did he think the other brother, Falcon, would make the same offer? Or did he have a wife in tow? Or his mother?

  Cheyenne whacked the side of her leg with her lasso. “Listen, you son-of-a-sidewinder, you stole my land, and I’m supposed to be grateful that you give some of it back to me? Keep your stupid charity.”

  “Now, look here—”

  Cheyenne whirled around and stormed back to the branding.

  SIX

  Falcon had been wandering for a time when the shooting started.

  He thought of those men who’d come gunning for him back in Independence and headed straight for the new trouble. Not the way most folks would’ve acted toward shooting, but Falcon never could resist a fight. When most folks might’ve set out running for their lives, Falcon ran toward the action, not wanting to miss a thing.

  He got close about the time it stopped, and he slipped around, looking for signs. He found two horses with the RHR brand. That meant the trouble involved his family. He wasn’t overly fond of nor interested in his family, but in times of feuding back home, a boy grew up knowing you had to side with kin.

  He dealt with the horses while he listened and hunted.

  He found Kevin kneeling beside Win, that feisty woman who’d come to the train to meet him.

  He grinned when he thought of her sass, and then he saw her back was bleeding.

  His grin shrank away. The only thing he hated more than a back-shooter was a man who’d hurt a woman.

  Kevin noticed he had company when Falcon knelt beside him. The two of them braced themselves for trouble as footsteps approached.

  But instead of Falcon getting a chance to teach a back-shooter that he was a no-account polecat, the man coming down the trail stopped, turned, and ran. Getting away.

  “You see to her.” Falcon spoke in a voice no one could hear if they were more than two feet away. “I’ll go after whoever shot her.”

  He meant it with a rage that surprised him. “Get back on that trail where you left the horses.” Falcon pointed with his gun to the trail just ahead. “Keep going forward. I tied your mounts down the trail a ways. That trail will lead you to the ranch house. It’s not far.”

  Falcon moved with one goal in mind. To find out who was low-down enough to shoot a woman in the back.

  He was fast and silent as he put all his long-legged speed into catching up to the gunman. The back-shooter was running flat out and had a head start, but if a man lived who could lose Falcon Hunt in the woods, Falcon had not yet met him.

  He closed in on the man ahead, who was making enough noise to raise the long dead and deeply buried.

  This one was fast. Falcon was impressed, though maybe he shouldn’t have been. He was dealing with a dry-gulching coward. It figured when he ran, he’d do it right.

  Falcon kept going. A steady runner, he had no need to step carefully because his prey was far enough ahead—and the coward ran like he was stoked with fear, so he was hearing pursuit whether there was any or not.

  Suddenly the trees thinned, and
Falcon ran out into a clearing. A fast-moving stream with steep banks came twisting out of the woods just a few yards to his left. The man he was after was several yards ahead of him in the wide clearing divided in half by the stream.

  Falcon ran on, and then in disgust, he fired a warning shot and hollered, “Stop right there, or the next one goes through your spine.”

  The man stopped so suddenly he fell forward, then spun around, flat on his belly. No gun drawn. No fight. Only fear. Nothing but a yellow coward. A yellow coward Falcon had seen before.

  In Independence, Missouri.

  The Tree Climber. Where was the other one? The skilled one.

  Bright red pain exploded in his head. He tumbled into the water. He hit hard enough it could’ve been solid stone. Then he was under the icy surge, being swept along.

  Another bullet fired. The second man was unloading his six-shooter.

  Fighting for consciousness, shocked into it by the cold water, Falcon slammed against the bank closest to the firing. Then Tree Climber was on his feet, laughing, his gun pointed.

  “This water goes straight over a cliff,” Tree Climber shouted. “Let the waterfall get him.”

  Falcon got dragged under. The stream was surprisingly deep for a waterway so narrow. He heard more laughter. This time both men.

  He surfaced well past them and behind a stand of trees at the far side of the clearing.

  His head roared with pain. Or maybe the water roared.

  And then he went flying out into space and hurtled into a free fall.

  Cliff.

  He’d heard that. A cliff and a waterfall. Falcon soared like a diving eagle.

  He struck the water and was swept into a pond or a lake, but it had a current blasting through it. Then he was out the other end, and instead of flying, he was hammered. Stones and drowning water. Agony in his head that kept trying to send him into darkness.

  He struck a jagged rock, then another, too many to count.

  Until the darkness won.

  SEVEN

  Here came that son-of-a-sidewinder again. This time Cheyenne was going to ignore him and keep branding.

  “Wyatt, Cheyenne, Win’s been shot!”

  His words hit Cheyenne like a lightning bolt. She dropped everything without seeing what was in her hands. It might’ve been a calf.

  “She’s not bad hurt. She’s been doctored. But she needs someone with her.”

  Cheyenne ran for her horse, slapped a bridle on it, and swung up bareback. “Where is she?”

  “At the ranch—”

  She spurred her horse and was riding for home between one heartbeat and the next.

  Bent low over her horse’s neck, she heard hooves pounding behind her and glanced back to see Wyatt was astride, taking out after her. Kevin barely a pace behind.

  She faced ahead and left them in the dust.

  “She’s not bad hurt.”

  Those words echoed in her head, helping her fight the terror.

  “She’s not bad hurt.”

  It was impossible not to think that somehow, in a land that had gotten purely peaceful in recent years, this shooting didn’t have something to do with these surprise brothers.

  When she reached the ranch, a blond, gangly kid came running out like he’d seen a gunshot wound.

  “She’s all right.” The boy waved his hands at her and broke off the mad dash. “You go on in. I’ll put your horse up.”

  That was mighty neighborly of him. Maybe he was making himself useful because he knew he was as wanted as a swarm of locusts.

  “I tend my own horse.” She just could not stop snarling at everyone. She made a dash for the barn and stripped the bridle off her mare, and turned her into the corral. Then ran for the house. The kid stayed at her side, yammering about a scratch and a few stitches.

  It helped her to enter the house in less of a panic.

  As she went in, she heard Wyatt and Kevin coming into the yard.

  Cheyenne surveyed Win. “You’re sitting up?”

  “Yep, and near ready for supper.” Win sounded unsteady, and she was milk white. She sat straddling a chair so her arms were crossed on the back of it. But she wasn’t, in fact, hurt badly. Cheyenne could see that.

  “I’ve got a shirtwaist on that buttons down the back so you can check it.” Win reached up and grabbed Cheyenne’s hand, and their eyes met. An anchor. Cheyenne realized something that threw her like a branded calf.

  Win was the strong one of the two of them.

  It’d never been like that before. Win had always preferred the RHR to her home. She stayed in Bear Claw Pass teaching school when it was in session, but the rest of the time, ever since she’d returned from finishing school, she’d been out here. She didn’t even go home for holidays. Her pa came over here instead.

  Her pa seemed like an easygoing man to Cheyenne. Lazy but harmless. A tiny part of her admitted he was a man who looked like he needed someone to run his life.

  Cheyenne and Oliver Hawkins had spoken a few times, and he’d let it be known he admired her.

  Since this . . . this disaster of having her land stolen, she’d talked to him a number of times.

  Whatever Win’s reasons for being over here all the time, Cheyenne had viewed her oldest friend as needing support. And Cheyenne had been that support.

  But looking into Win’s eyes, Cheyenne felt like she was looking at solid ground in the middle of a raging flood. Win had been that solid ground since the will. And Cheyenne had let Win shelter her as best as Win was able.

  It struck hard for Cheyenne to see herself as weak, but there was truth in it. She couldn’t get her feet under her. She’d fight to do it, then before she knew it, off she went, raging along with the floodwaters again. Win had helped her, at least kept her head above water.

  “Molly did a great job tending me.” Win gestured toward a young blond woman. “This is Kevin’s sister. And his brother, Andy.”

  Molly stood at the stove, wearing a tidy calico dress, blue splattered with white flowers. A young woman so feminine and pretty she made Cheyenne feel like an uncivilized savage.

  Andy stood beside Molly where they both cooked. Something about them seemed strange, like they were all three, Win, Molly, and Andy, trying to appear unnaturally calm when there was a gunshot woman in their midst.

  “Kevin’s ma remarried when she heard the Sidewinder was dead,” Win said. “And that means their parents weren’t legally married, and it caused no end of trouble for them back in Kansas.”

  Cheyenne studied them. Molly and Andy. Just perfect. Kevin hadn’t just come here to steal her land, he’d brought his whole family with him to aid in the invasion.

  Cheyenne nodded because the only words she wanted to speak were ugly enough they were better left unsaid. She peeked at the wound but didn’t remove the bandage. It was too tidy, and anyway no one tried to stop her. If they had, just to be fighting against someone all the livelong day, she’d’ve probably insisted on unwrapping the bandage and checking for herself.

  “Molly’s had some practice doctoring. She sewed me up and bandaged my back. She’s very skilled.”

  “You know doctoring?”

  Molly had turned away and was getting a meal. Doctoring, cooking, what was there this little beauty couldn’t do? None of this was her fault, and Cheyenne felt plenty of shame at her anger. That didn’t make her any more cheerful.

  Wyatt came charging in and wanted to know Win’s version of what had happened.

  “I’m fine, Wyatt.”

  “Where were you? Where exactly did—”

  As they bickered, Molly set a meal on, and after a lot of fussing, they all sat down at the table. Kevin began a prayer, but suddenly Wyatt broke in, “Where’s Falcon?”

  Cheyenne had been trying to forget the third brother.

  Kevin quickly explained how Falcon found him and Win in the woods and had gone after the man shooting at them. Kevin and Wyatt looked hard at each other, then shoved back from the table, gr
abbed what food they could tote along, and rushed for the door.

  “Be careful,” Cheyenne warned grimly. “If Falcon’s as good as you say he is, and they got him, then we’re all in terrible danger.”

  After Wyatt and Kevin left, the rest of them ate, but the meal liked to have choked Cheyenne.

  As Molly finished her stew, she said they weren’t going to take Kevin’s full third of the land, like they were giving her a nice generous gift. Kevin had said it earlier, but it made Cheyenne’s jaw clench tighter and tighter and tighter. She held herself in control, fought for it.

  Win got Molly and Andy talking about their lives back in Kansas, which sounded miserable enough Cheyenne could see why they didn’t pass up a chance to steal her land.

  “You two need to sleep in here tonight,” Win said. “Wyatt will be in here, but we should get Kevin in here, too. There is safety in numbers.”

  Cheyenne had been holding up through all the talk until Win invited these fools into the house. She slammed her fists hard on the table.

  Win jumped and gasped in pain from the sudden movement.

  “I’ll not take charity from such as you all.” Cheyenne shoved her chair back hard, knowing she was acting the fool, but the hurt inside churned until she couldn’t keep it in. She wanted to cry, but that was a weakness she couldn’t let them see. So instead she erupted.

  “I told your brother, and I’ll tell you—that land is mine. You’ve stolen it from me. To give me a good chunk of it back as if it’s a kindness? Well, that makes me want to pull a gun and start firing.”

  Molly moved to put herself between Cheyenne and Andy. Cheyenne fought the urge to roll her eyes. As if Molly could stop her if Cheyenne was really of a mind to do violence.

  With a mean kind of laugh, Cheyenne made her decision. “I’m not going to shoot you. Hanging would be the result, and that would probably just make things easier for everyone.”