3
By the time that Ward showed up to relieve him, Solomon had calmed down enough that Jason figured to let him go. Not his gun, though, just him. He could pick up the pistol tomorrow.
Jason walked with him as far as the mercantile, then said, “I’ve got some business to take care of next door.” He indicated Abigail’s place. “See you tomorrow, Solomon.” Giving a last slap on the back to Solomon, he turned and walked over to Abigail’s.
You were brave enough to do this before, you lug head, he said to himself when he paused just outside the front door. It’s only talk, right?
He pushed open the door and walked inside.
There was no Rafe Lynch present. Just a few fellows from town and three girls, Abigail among them. He made no move to sit, but raised his hand to Abigail in a subtle wave. She came right over.
“What can I do you for, Jason?” she asked, more than surprised to see him. “A drink? A girl?” When he shook his head, she rattled on, “Your sister and Megan were in this mornin’, come in to get outta the rain. We had us a grand ol’ time, had sarsaparilla and the last of the ice, to boot!”
Jason was shocked that the girls had set foot over Abigail’s threshold, but instead said, “Rafe Lynch here?” Maybe he was up the hall with a girl.
But Abigail shook her head and looked annoyed. “Nope. He moved camp, down the street. To the saloon. I don’t know what they got that I don’t.”
Jason thumbed back his hat, relieved. “Likely bigger card games, Abigail.” If Lynch had changed his base of operation for the time being, there was less chance that Megan or Jenny would run into him. He didn’t want his little sister or his gal, Megan, having anything to do with a murderer.
He rubbed at his arms. Just the thought of it had him broken out in gooseflesh.
Abigail wasn’t paying any attention. Her eyes were on the three-man poker game a few tables away. Jason glanced that way, too, then cleared his throat to regain Abigail’s attention.
When he finally had it, he tipped his hat and said, “Thanks, Abigail. I’ll be goin’ on home then.”
“All right,” she replied, looking back toward the poker game again. “Ward on duty?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I might need him later on, that’s all.”
Jason cocked his head. “Why?”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Think I got a card cheat down there. Not sure yet, though.” Then suddenly, she threw her arm around Jason’s waist and turned him around, toward the door. “You go on home and have some’a that good supper I know Jenny’s cookin’ up for you, okay?”
Somewhat reluctantly, he nodded. “You sure you don’t want me to stick around for a while?” he muttered.
But she practically shoved him back outside. “You take care, now, you hear?” she called sweetly, and then she was gone, and Jason had nothing to look at but her outside wall.
Well, whatever it was—if it was anything at all—Ward could take care of it. He’d been wanting to make an arrest, single-handed, for ages now. And there wasn’t anybody in there that Ward couldn’t handle with one hand tied behind his back.
Jason shrugged and headed back up the street, toward home.
At home, the kitchen was buzzing with girl talk, giggles, and the clatter of pots and pans when Jason walked in. In fact, they didn’t seem to notice his passage into the house and back to his room.
He was glad that Meg was staying for dinner. And he was even gladder to find that the filthy pile of clothes he’d left on the floor had been picked up and laundered, and presently lay neatly folded in his bureau.
But he hadn’t escaped unseen.
Jenny appeared in his doorway, arms folded, and asked, “Well? Did you drag half the territory home in your clothes again?”
Jason played along. He doffed his hat and solemnly said, “No, ma’am, I decided to let Ward take a turn tonight.”
“Good. It’s only fair.” She turned on her heel and disappeared down the hall, calling over her shoulder, “Supper in ten minutes!”
Grinning, Jason hung his hat on the bedpost, and then slumped down into a sit. Jenny acted more like his mother than his little sister. But then, he supposed that came from a combination of her mother-hen instincts and his boyish looks and manner. He had never asked to be marshal. He’d never wanted to stay on, once everybody was settled in. His heart wasn’t in Fury: It was back east at Harvard or Yale, back where fellows carried books, not guns, and the closest thing to an Apache attack was a stray spitball in the hallway.
His father had promised he’d send him, and Jason had promised he’d go, but Jason had since learned that a promise was just as fleeting as the air it was breathed into.
He pinched the brim of his nose to help keep himself awake. The kitten. He had to remember to tell Jenny. He’d forgotten all about it until just now.
Well, pinching his nose a few times didn’t seem to do the trick, because the next thing he knew, he was stretched out on the bed and Jenny was back in the doorway.
“Are you coming or not?” she asked, her toe tapping.
“Oh.” Supper, that was right, wasn’t it? “Be right there.”
She sniffed. “I swan, Jason Fury, I don’t know what you’d do if left to your own devices. Sleep straight through until you were sixty, probably.”
He raised his arm to make a point, but she had already gone. Oh, she could be a saucy little wench, his sister, he thought with a smile. He sniffed the air. Chicken and gravy? His mouth began to water, and suddenly he was standing up and on his way down the hall. Jenny’s gravy pulled at him like a magnet.
Things had surely changed since they left Kansas City, he mused. When they left, Jenny was more apt to blow up a kitchen than cook anything vaguely edible in it. But lately, she’d turned into one hell of a cook. Either that, or she’d just plain worn down his taste buds. . . .
He smiled as he sat down at the table. “Jenny, you’ve done it again. Smells great!” He snapped open his napkin and tucked it into his collar.
She carried a platter over to the table and slid it down beside him. Fried chicken, all right!
She muttered, “I can remember a time when you were afraid I was gonna blow up the kitchen every time I cooked.”
Megan looked up from her plate at that, and Jason gave her a wink. “Well, Jenny, all I had to go on was past experience.”
“One time! One time that happened, and that was clear back in Kansas City, Jason!”
He grabbed her around the waist, grinning, and said, “Now, sister, I admit it. You’ve improved tremendously! I actually look forward to coming home to your cookin’, and that’s the truth of it.”
She relaxed, but said, “Don’t go throwin’ those college words around, you ol’ show-off. ‘Tremendously. ’ Honest to gosh!”
Jason tried to look innocent, but failed miserably. He loosened his grip on Jenny, and she slipped away and into her chair. As she sat down and shook out her napkin, she said, “We almost had a guest for dinner. Besides Meg, I mean.”
He helped himself to the chicken, then reached for the mashed potatoes. “How so? And Meg isn’t a guest. She knows she’s welcome here any old time, right, Megan?”
Megan didn’t have time to do more than open her mouth before Jenny said, “It was the nicest man, Jason. We met him this morning, and he was just so . . . nice!”
“But we left before Jenny thought to ask him,” said Megan.
“And when we went back, he was gone,” Jenny said.
The girls were doing it again. They had him holding one conversation with two girls who seemed to be reading each other’s minds. He didn’t believe they even realized they were doing it!
“Who was he?” Jason asked as Meg handed him the gravy.
“Oh, he had the most beautiful name, too!” Jenny fairly squealed. “It was Rafe.”
“Rafe Lynch,” added Megan. “The first name’s prettier than the last.”
Jason froze, mid-pour. After the moment it took him to let this news sink in, he said, “You were at Abigail’s when you met him.” If he’d had access to a buggy whip, he would have taken it to Jenny right then and there.
Jenny, who seemed to be able to sense what he was thinking, said, “Now, Jason, don’t be cross. We just ducked in to get out of the rain, and when we went inside, Abigail was the only one there!”
“Still, you know you’re not supposed to be in there. Especially hangin’ around with the likes of Rafe Lynch! He’s a dangerous man, Jenny. And you pay attention, too, Meg. He’s wanted for eight murders in California. Eight! He’s a cold-blooded killer, and you’re not to go anywhere near him again!”
Jenny started, “But, Jason . . .”
“No!” he shouted, cutting her off more firmly than he wished, but less vehemently than he felt. Damn that Lynch! Why did he have to choose Fury in which to stop over?
He remembered the gravy then, and finished pouring out his share. And when he looked up again, Jenny was close to tears. He reached to put his hand on her arm, but she snatched it away and said, “Don’t!”
He switched his attention to Megan. “What?”
“You’re terrible, Jason!” she said, shoving away from the table. “He was just lovely, really nice. There must be two Rafe Lynches, that’s what it is, and Jenny and I met the good one! He couldn’t possibly be a . . . a k-killer! He’s well-spoken and he told us about beating the storm into town, and—”
“And he has little crinkles at the corners of his eyes!” Jenny added, as if this was a sure and certain sign of sainthood. Now, Jason knew full well that if there was more than one Rafe Lynch, this wasn’t him. They had the real, honest-to-God Rafe Lynch setting up shop—now down the street, at the saloon—and he was a very bad man.
But in order to calm the girls, and also to avoid ruining a perfectly good meal, he decided to take the middle road. “All right. Maybe there is more than one Rafe Lynch. I’ll check it out first thing tomorrow morning. Everybody happy again?”
Megan scraped her chair back toward the table, and Jenny took the gravy boat from Jason’s hand. The situation was calmed, at least for the present.
However, it seemed that Jason was doomed to have a troubled suppertime. At just about the time that Jenny began to cut the apple pie into slices and serve it, the sound of arguing voices came to Jason’s ears, followed directly by a fist banging on the door. “Who in the hell . . . ?” he muttered as he rose and walked to the front door, after cautioning the girls to stay put.
The banging, which had kept up since it started, suddenly stopped as Jason opened the door to find Deputy Ward Wanamaker, fist cocked back and aimed directly at Matt MacDonald, whom he held by the collar. And who was also the last person Jason expected to find in Fury that day. Ward was a tall, string bean of a man and had about four inches on Matt, and Matt looked, well, afraid.
Without taking his fist down, Ward said, “I already told him about twenty times that we ain’t got no jurisdiction out at his place, but he kept shoutin’ as how he wanted to talk to somebody in authority, not no stupid deputy. And so I brung him here. This here’s the highest authority in Fury, Matthew,” he added, punctuating the statement with a shake of Matt’s collar that rattled the man’s teeth.
Once again, Jason pulled on the cloak of peacemaker. “Let go of him, Ward.”
Ward gradually loosened his grip and lowered his punching arm, and for just a second, Jason thought that Matt was going to rabbit. But he didn’t. With a glare of unadulterated rage painting his features, he snarled, “I imagine you’re gonna be as useless as usual?”
“If you got problems out at your place, you’re right,” Jason said. “What is it this time?”
“My cattle, godammit! Somebody stole two of my cattle!”
“Sorry to hear that, Matt.”
“You’re not sorry at all! You’ve got it in for anything or anybody attached to me, and I swear, I—”
“You swear what, Matthew?” asked Megan, who had just appeared at Jason’s side, her napkin in her hand.
Matt simply stood there, boiling, and then he snapped, “You get yourself home, young lady, or there’ll be hell to pay, you understand?”
“Don’t move, Megan,” Jason said quietly.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” she replied in the same light tone.
Matt glared daggers at her before he turned on his heel and marched, glowering, down the steps and across the yard to the street, where he turned and shook his fist. “I won’t forget this, Fury!”
“I s’pose he wants to rename the town ‘MacDonald, ’ too,” Ward quipped.
Matt disappeared around the corner.
“He can be my guest,” Jason said before he gathered himself and looked up at Ward. “What about his cattle, anyway?”
“Says somebody’s swiped two of ’em. You ask me, it’s a puma, or maybe a Mexican grizzly.”
Ward was probably right. They both stood there, heads shaking, until Jason said, “You want somethin’ to eat? Jenny did it again. Fried chicken and mashed, with gravy. Green beans. And pie?”
“Don’t have to keep yammerin’ at me, jus’ git outta the way!” Grinning, Jason stepped aside and Ward walked past him, hollering, “Hey, Jenny! Set another plate, ’cause a man with a powerful appetite’s comin’ to supper!”
He heard Jenny laugh as Ward disappeared into the kitchen. He turned back to Megan, who was vacantly watching the empty road.
“Megan,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
She held up her hand, quieting him. “It’s all right. I know he’s a jackass. I’ve known it for quite a while, now. But he’s my brother and I have to accept it. You don’t, thank God. Now, let’s go have some’a that apple pie!” She linked her arm through his and led him back to the kitchen, where Ward was already gobbling down fried chicken like somebody was going to toss it to the hogs if he didn’t rush.
Before the sun went down, Ezra Welk made camp. He’d been riding easy most all of the day, which had been largely uneventful, save for the unusually large herd of pronghorn which had crossed his path this morning.
And all day long, even while he sat there, wrists crossed over his saddle horn while he watched those pronghorns slowly graze and amble their way north, he’d been thinking about that lame-brain, Benny Atkinson.
Whatever had possessed Benny to track him to Los Angeles, and why had he been dumb enough to call him out, right in front of God and everybody? It boggled him that anyone—even a so-called bounty hunter like Atkinson—would be dumb enough to try that. Especially when he had to know damn well that he was an inferior gunman to Ezra.
Well, apparently he hadn’t, because he’d called out Ezra loud enough that they could have heard him down by the docks, and sealed his own fate, just like that.
Ezra had left him lying in the street, his pooling blood catching the dust sent up by Ezra’s pony’s heels as he beat it out of town. What law there was in Los Angeles didn’t like him much to begin with, and he didn’t figure to stick around and wait to see how they liked him now.
Now, Ezra had been riding out of Arizona, and it was a pretty dumb thing for Ezra to be headed back toward its border, but he was. At least Arizona was pretty much wide open. If you could steer clear of Indians and skirt the cities—of which there weren’t many, unless you counted all those little-bitty, here-today-gone-tomorrow mining towns that popped up every sixty feet—you were in the clear. Same thing went for New Mexico and most of Texas, but then, he wasn’t wanted in Texas. Yet.
Well, there was time. And he was still youngish, he thought with a snort.
Matt MacDonald made it home before nightfall and had one of the hands walk his horse, for it was sweating like it would never stop and lathered like a visit to a two-dollar barber. That’s all he’d need right now, he thought. A messed-up horse, and all on account of that damned Jason Fury!
He slammed into the ranch house, then changed his mind. He walked outside again. “Send Curly up here!” he called to the human hot-walker, and then went back inside, the door banging behind him so hard that it broke one of the hinges.
The knock came less than five minutes later.
“Get your lazy butt in here, Curly!” Matt shouted, and Curly stepped in, grabbing the door by its latch and forcing it back up into position.
“What the hell happened, boss?” he asked, staring at the broken door.
“Never mind the damn door,” Matt snapped. When Curly turned toward him, he added, “Got your attention, now?”
“Sure, boss. What you want?”
“Tomorrow, I want everybody to stop what they were workin’ on and start buildin’ a new corral next to the barn. A big one. I’m not going to lose any more cattle, you hear me? I want it big enough to hold every single cow, steer, and bull we’ve got on the place, with plenty of room for them to move around.”
Curly screwed up his face. “What we gonna feed ’em, boss? I mean, out on the range they got forage, sorta. . . .”
“We’re gonna feed ’em hay and corn, you dolt,” Matt said. He was still angry, and he didn’t think he was going to calm down anytime soon.
Curly looked like he knew it, and said, “Yeah, boss. First thing.”
“All right then. You can go, now.”
Curly tipped his hat, struggled once again with the door, and said, before he left, “You want I should send somebody up to fix this?”
Matt poured himself a glass of bourbon, took a drink, and barked, “Of course!”
“Yessir,” Curly said as he closed the door. “Right away, sir.”
And he was gone.
Matt sat down at the table, clenching his bourbon so tightly that the glass broke. Cursing, he found a cloth and wrapped it around his bleeding hand, then found another to pick up the broken glass and soak up the whiskey. It was all Fury’s fault! Everything was Fury’s fault, from the stolen cattle, to this mess, to the ingrown hair on his chin!
The glass picked up and the whiskey sopped, he threw the whole mess in the trash basket beside the sink.
And Megan, the ungrateful little wench! She was too old and too big to spank, but he’d think of something—something that would put her in her place for once and all. He’d had enough of her habit of hanging around with Jenny Fury, and worse, Jason. He’d had enough of her running his bank.
Well, on second thought, he’d best leave that one alone. Megan had a keen head for figures, better than his, and there’d been no complaints about her work. But he’d fix her wagon, all right, fix it so that there’d be no more back talk and no more crossing him. He’d show her!
But first, he had to gather in his cattle and he had to figure out what to do about that damned Jason! Why did Jenny have to be his sister? Why did she have to be related to him at all?
A new knock on the door caved it halfway in, and exposed a wide-eyed and blinking ranch hand. Matt noted the sky was dark behind him before he said, “Curly told you what to do?”
The fellow was still staring at the door. “Y-yes, sir.”
“Well, get to it, then.”
And then, his hand still bleeding into the wrapping towel, Matt stalked off to find himself some dinner. He thought Megan had made cookies or a cake or something the last time she was here.
He thought there was a chance it was still edible.