Agraciana Morenos chided her husband, who sat by the fire toasting his toes. “Maria Gomez has a husband who would walk with her to the big house in the snow.”
“Juan Gomez is a rotten vaquero. Everybody knows that.”
“But a good husband. Everybody knows that also.”
Agraciana’s husband shrugged, his eyes on the flames of the burning log. “You baked the churros for the patron. You should deliver them.”
“Ach. It is a trial and a tribulation to have such a husband.” She took her battered hat from the rack on the wall near the door and shrugged into her husband’s sheepskin many times too big for her. Stepping into the kitchen, she retrieved the colonel’s churros, the sweet Mexican doughnuts he loved to dip into his morning coffee.
Many times the patron had told her she made the best bear sign he’d ever tasted and Agraciana had made a habit of taking a batch to him two or three times a week.
After one last, frowning glance at her husband, the woman stepped outside. The morning was cold and snow tossed around in a whipping wind. The walk from her house to Dromore was not such a long one, but in the freezing weather she decided it was quite far enough, especially for one who was quick with child.
The snow crumped under her booted feet as she drew nearer to the house. A sullen sky grayed the crest of Glorieta Mesa and the stiff breeze stirred the branches of the pines.
Agraciana reached the door of the house and rapped the brass knocker, the rat-tat-tat loud in the morning quiet.
But louder still was the flat statement of the rifle shot that slammed a large-caliber bullet into her slender body.
Drinking coffee in the kitchen when he heard the shots, Jacob leaped to his feet and grabbed his holstered Colt from the gun rack by the front door on his way outside. Behind him, he heard people running.
Once outside, he glanced at the wounded, groaning woman, then to the drift of smoke lifting from the trees on the rise fifty yards from the house. The range was too great for a revolver. To Samuel and Lorena at the door, he yelled, “See to her!” and headed toward the stable, buckling his gun belt as he ran.
“Jake!” Samuel shouted, but Jacob ignored him.
He saddled his black, swung into the leather, and left the barn at a gallop, sparing a quick glance at Agraciana. Lorena kneeled in the snow beside her, and for a second time Jacob ignored Samuel’s yell to stop. Wearing neither coat nor hat, he headed for the rise at a run, the Colt in his upraised hand.
The bitterest of cold and freezing snow was borne on an icy wind. Jacob, dressed only in shirt, jeans, and boots, knew he would need to find the bushwhackers quickly. He could not survive long in such weather.
The black slowed to a canter for the last few yards to the trees, then Jacob reined him back to a trot. He rode into the pines, his eyes wary. There were tracks aplenty—two different sets of boot prints in the snow, one large, the other smaller—but no sign of the men who made them.
Beyond the ridge the ground sloped to a large meadow and the dirt beneath the black’s hooves was iron-hard as he galloped down the rise onto the flat. A few white-faced cattle foraged for grass along creeks fringed with ice and in the distance dull gray clouds hung so low there was no delineation between earth and sky.
Two pairs of parallel horse tracks angled across the meadow’s virgin snow, the riders seemingly in no hurry, riding at a walk. That irritated Jacob. Had those two such a low opinion of Dromore that they didn’t fear a pursuit?
It seemed that way—unless they rode toward a place where others of their kind waited.
Then another possibility occurred to him. It could be the bushwhackers had mistaken the Mexican woman for a man, dressed as she was in masculine clothing. They were in no hurry to leave because they planned other killings . . .
To avenge their brother killed by Jacob O’Brien.
The more Jacob thought about it, the more he decided that was the case. It was no random act. It was the start of the wolfers’ campaign of vengeance.
Anxious to get out of the cold wind for a few moments, Jacob angled toward the stand of mixed spruce and ponderosa pine trees a hundred yards to the right of the tracks. Shivering in the thin shelter, he pulled a sack of tobacco from his pocket and managed to build himself a cigarette, but half of it spilled on the ground. His forehead felt like a chunk of frozen steel and he couldn’t feel his toes in his boots. Ice clung to his eyebrows and shaggy mustache and his breath smoked like damp firewood.
After only a short respite, he rode out of the trees and followed the trail again. His head bent against the wind, he urged his horse forward, figuring he was getting close.
But an hour later he still followed tracks that showed no sign of ending.
Stiff with cold, Jacob’s head ached and his ungloved hands were frozen into claws. The long-legged black plodded on gamely and Jacob knew he would give out long before the horse. He began to dream about finding a spot out of the wind where he could build a fire and get warm.
And drink coffee, steaming hot, black as night and sweet as sin, poured from a sooty pot just off the fire . . .
Jacob jolted upright and lifted his great beak to the wind. Yes! He smelled it. Smoke. And close enough to be strong. Surely it was only a little farther now.
To Jacob’s north rose the craggy bulk of Hurtado Mesa and around him in the timbered, broken country snow was piled in treacherous drifts, a trap for the unwary. The smell of smoke hung heavy in the thin air. He was close. Very close.
A man on a horse was a target and Jacob swung stiffly out of the saddle. He tethered his horse to a piñon and cleared snow away from a patch of grass. It wasn’t much but the black seemed grateful as he lowered his nose and began to graze.
It was the last thing Jacob wanted to do, but it had to be done. He unbuttoned his shirt at the neck and shoved the frozen fingers of his right hand under his armpit. The shock took his breath away.
After a few moments, Jacob withdrew his hand, bent and stretched his fingers, and buttoned up his shirt again. He worked his fingers again and decided they were flexible enough—if he moved fast.
He left the shelter of the piñon and, within minutes, picked up fresh tracks. The smell of smoke grew stronger. Gun in hand, he topped a shallow rise between two massive boulders and almost stepped onto the wood-shingled roof of a lean-to.
Crouching, his frozen knees aching, he took the lie of the land. The lean-to had been built on the other side of the rise and backed up to a shelf of bare rock. The horse tracks angled twenty yards to his right, where they followed an eyebrow of game trail and ended at a graveled talus slope. A small pole corral was built next to the lean-to and held three horses, two of them saddled.
Jacob frowned. Three horses. Did that mean there were three men in the cabin?
Cold and stiff as he was, he didn’t like those odds, but he was damned if after all he’d been through he’d turn tail and run.
The talus slope was icy, but the gravel held as Jacob walked down to the flat on stiff knees. His gun hand was cramping again and he knew he had only a short while to get the job done.
The lean-to had no windows to the front and he stood three yards from its sagging pine door.
Never a man to study too hard on the right or wrong of a thing, Jacob cut loose. Three fast shots slammed through the door, splintering wood, and then he ran for the corral and took cover behind a fence post.
Outraged cries followed the racket of the shots and two men ran outside. One was the man with the horribly bullet-scarred face he’d seen at Dromore, the other was an old-timer in a ragged plaid shirt and miner’s boots.
Scarface spotted Jacob instantly and the rifle in his hands came up fast. He fired . . . too quickly . . . but close enough to scratch Jacob’s left arm. Jacob stepped away from the fence post and fired. Scarface took the bullet square in the chest and dropped to one knee, working his rifle. Aware that it was his last round, Jacob fired again. Another hit. The man stared at Jacob for an instant, showing his shock at the time and manner of his death, then pitched forward and lay still.
Jacob swung his empty Colt on the miner.
The old man wore a belt gun, but Jacob hoped he wouldn’t make a play.
He didn’t. “I ain’t in this, mister. Just lookin’ fer a place to hole up fer the winter.”
“Drop the hardware,” Jacob ordered. “Where’s the other one?”
The old man unbuckled his belt and it thudded to his feet. “Inside. Maybe gut shot. Maybe dead.” The miner looked into Jacob’s eyes. “Mister, you’re pure pizen with Doobie Colt’s gun, ain’t you?”
Jacob ignored that. With fumbling, cold, rigid fingers, he reloaded his revolver, filling all six chambers. If the old-timer was a tad disappointed he didn’t let it show.
Jacob said, “I didn’t catch your name.”
“That’s because I didn’t put it out. But it’s Lem Cook of the Parker County, Texas, Cooks. Yours?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jacob answered and smiled. “Now Lem, walk into the cabin and I’ll follow you.”
“I wouldn’t want to do that, mister.”
“Figured that.” Jacob, his left hand flexing, picked up the dead man’s revolver. “Stand away from your gun, pops.”
Lem scuttled backward as though he’d just stepped on a rattlesnake nest as Jacob hammered shot after shot through the thin walls of the lean-to. Despite his frozen hands the shots sounded as one, and he was rewarded by a scream from inside, followed by a string of curses.
Jacob reloaded as quickly as his stiff, fumbling fingers would allow. His guns up and ready, he charged inside the lean-to. A dying man lay on his back on a bunk, his face and chest bloody.
“You’ve done for me, damn you,” the man said. “I’m shot all to pieces.”
“Things are hard all over,” Jacob said, feeling no sympathy at all. He stepped to the potbellied stove where a coffeepot smoked, found a tin cup, filled it, and took a drink. “Good coffee.”
“Where’s my brother?” the man croaked out.
“Outside.”
“Is he dead?”
“As he’ll ever be.”
“Your name is O’Brien, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, and the woman you shot today is no relation.”
“I thought she was a man.”
“You thought wrong.”
The cabin was warm and Jacob felt the frost melt in his joints. The coffee was good and hot and his fingers were finally supple enough to build a cigarette.
The wounded man groaned. “You got brothers, O’Brien, just like I had.”
“They’re nothing like you had.”
“Don’t you want to know my name?”
Jacob shook his head. “Mister, I don’t give a damn.”
“Then listen to this, O’Brien”—the wounded man grimaced as a shock of pain hit him—“your brothers will die, all of them, just like mine did.” He spat blood at Jacob’s feet. “A dying man’s curse on you and yours.”
Jacob hurriedly crossed himself then raised his Colt. But he looked into the eyes of a dead man and lowered it again.
Lem Cook stood at the door, his face stricken. “A dead man’s curse is a terrible thing, young feller.”
“So I’ve heard,” Jacob acknowledged.
“I mind a tinpan by the name of Deacon Mac-Gyver up Denver way. He stabbed his partner one day an’ the dying man cursed him. Tole Deke he’d die soon. The very next day ol’ Deke was killed by a rockfall. An’ that’s a natural fact.”
“You don’t say?”
“I do say, young feller, so you watch your step.”
Jacob poured himself coffee, thinking. Worrying. He wondered where Shawn was and what had happened to him. Suddenly he had a bad feeling about his brother.
And he knew that what his Irish mother had called his sixth sense would give him no peace.