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Grintly heard the approaching hooves. From the rear of his men he stood to see who or what was coming. Even before the riders arrived his men started shooting. Then came returning shots from the riders.
“Stop it! Hold your fire!” he yelled. He started to rush toward them, waving his arms, a rifle held in one hand. A shot from the house dug a furrow in the dirt right beside him and he dove to the ground.
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop shooting!” he screamed from where he’d sprawled.
Slowly the sporadic fire came to a stop, first from his end, then from that of the approaching riders.
As the riders came up to them and reined in, guns still drawn and ready, Grintly stood. “This has all been a misunderstanding.”
Jobe Jenkins and Sheriff Reagan Cawley rode at the front of the men. They looked down from their horses at Grintly.
“It looks pretty clear to me. Tell me what we’ve misunderstood.” Cawley put away his pistol as he spoke, but the others kept theirs out.
Grintly thought fast. Sir Rodney Jollep always said the ability to think fast on his feet was Grintly’s best feature, that and a crafty ruthlessness. “We followed Gabe Bentley to this place. He’s inside there.”
“Gabe Bentley was none of your nevermind. We said we’d see to him,” Jobe said.
“I thought you were after that bunch of redskins you can’t seem to lay hands on.” Grintly started to grin, thought better of it.
“Bo, go ask those people in the Bolger place if they’re hiding Gabe Bentley.”
Bo rode off. He stopped to wave at the house, then rode closer so they’d know he was friendly.
Grintly saw that woman Sara at the door speaking to Bo, then the Ranger rode back.
“What’d she say?” Jobe asked.
“She said that man, Gabe, once had rape in mind for the girl who lives there. She wouldn’t give him water if he was on fire, much less a place to hide, and anyone who says different is a blamed fool and a liar.” He looked at Grintly as he said it.
“What brought you this direction anyway?” Grintly sought to shift the subject.
“We were following two men who we did think knew something about Gabe’s whereabouts. You sure as blue thunder don’t.” Jobe holstered his gun and leaned on his saddlehorn.
“If you mean the same two I’m thinking of I’d like to find them too.”
“They rode hard up to us at dawn and gave us a merry chase, but led us this way. Why would you like to find them?” Jobe asked.
“They killed two of my best men.” Grintly glanced back the way the Rangers had come in.
“And you’d like to return the favor and kill them?”
“No. I’d like to offer them jobs. They’re the kind I’m looking for.”
“Even after they kilt your best?” Jobe tilted the front of his hat up an inch.
“Because they did. I figure it earns them the job.”
“I doubt they’d take it. I suspect they’re getting good money from a cattleman’s association to keep certain newcomers from getting too big.”
“Look, you’re plain to rights breaking the law here shooting at a helpless homesteading family,” Cawley said.
“They’re not helpless by a long sight. I see I’ve lost two men here today, though your boy’s might’ve done some of the harm.” Grintly stared at Jobe. “Aren’t you under orders to support me?”
Jobe shifted in his saddle, looked away. He and Cawley exchanged glances. Any other time they’d have put irons on Grintly and hauled him into town. That they didn’t, couldn’t, gave Grintly more confidence. Jobe nodded toward a bundle of Comanche arrows tied to the saddle of one of Grintly’s men. “I suppose you were going to see that the redskins caught the blame here.”
“Look, I have wounded and dead to tend to.” Grintly nodded to one of his men being lifted to lay face-down across the saddle of a horse.
“Well, you’d better take them with you. We’re running you off this patch of land for trespassing again. I could think up a half dozen other charges if you want to linger and argue the point.” Cawley looked eager for Grintly to do something stupid.
Grintly spoke through his teeth. “I cautioned you two to be careful, that you didn’t know the power of those with money to whom you should kowtow.”
“I think you’ll find we mean for the laws here to protect everyone, Mister Beadimus Grintly, even from the likes of you.”
“I am far too well-connected to be bothered by your piddly laws. You have no idea who you’re messing with. I swear that by this time next week I’ll have you both out of your jobs and I will bloody well see to it that you can’t even get jobs on a ranch on a chuck wagon. Mark my words. You two are both finished.”
With as regal a wave as he could manage he ordered his men to their saddles and to pick up the other dead man. He watched as they put him across a saddle.
In an effort to show no hurry, he rode his men away from there at a pace he hoped looked sedate and in full control.
Jobe watched them ride away, waited until they were out of sight over the far hill.
“Do you think he has as much clout as he says?” Cawley asked.
“He had our Captain Marberry stepping lively, and I’ll tell you that old Chance doesn’t hop for just any old one, so he’s getting the squeeze all the way from the governor. I ‘spect we’re pretty much fried meat out here.”
“What’ll you suppose you’ll do if we’re handed our hats the way he says?” Cawley asked.
“I have a friend with a ranch down Matagorda way who says I always have a spot there if I ever want it. The cook there’s an old timey fella used to work on Goodnight’s ranch and serves beef and bison steaks, calls bacon ‘chuckwagon chicken’, calls beans ‘Pecos strawberries’, and biscuits ‘sourdough bullets’. You’d be welcome to come along.”
“I guess for now I’ll just head back to Bentley and see where these chips fall.”
“Let’s see to this family first. Seems they’ve had a pretty rough day of it.”
Sara opened the front door wide when she saw them coming. “I can’t say thanks enough, fellas. We were close to being plumb worried in here.”
The girl came scampering down off the roof to join them. Button, if Jobe recalled her name right. She was in pretty good spirits for someone half covered in grit and her red hair going in a dozen directions.
The first thing Jobe noticed when he entered the dimmer light of the room were bullet holes that had peppered the far wall. Then his eyes tracked down to where Francis lay stretched on Sara’s bed on the floor. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Took a bullet early on. Didn’t tear him up much, but he managed to get infected.”
“Is he fit to travel?” Cawley came through the door and looked around.
“I ‘spect he’ll have to be if he wants to make it.”
“You gonna rig up a travois like you did for that Butch Lyndon?” Scamp looked eager for Francis to bump all the way to town that way.
“Naw.” Jobe shook his head. “The man has one of the livery’s buggies. We can get him in to Doc Willis on that.”
“Well, we’d best get him on it and rolling or daylight’s gonna get away from us.” Cawley turned to Sara. “Is there anything else we can do for you while we’re here?”
“We’ve got a lot of patching up to do. Lucky I’m the only one got winged. Leastwise the kids are okay. She went to pick up Missy, who still seemed confused and frightened at seeing men after all the shooting. A bit of blood trickled out from the bandage Sara had put on her own arm, but she didn’t seem to mind. “Justin?”
“Scamp, come give me a hand rigging the buggy.” Justin took off for the outside with Scamp on his heels.
Riding to town in the buggy, with Francis stretched out in it as best they could get him comfortable, Justin felt none of the apprehension of his previous trip. With Texas Rangers and the Sheriff riding escort it would have to be a pretty wild bunch to give them any trouble this time.
Up ahead Jobe halted and Justin kept the buggy rolling to where he could see too. He stopped it.
Cawley was pointing at the large hole cut in the fence. It looked to Justin like Grintly hadn’t stopped long enough to mend it. “Who would cut a hole in a fence like that?”
“Someone who wanted through, I reckon,” Justin said before he thought.
“It’d have to be a mighty strong someone. I doubt I could pull one of those fence posts out of the ground if I used my horse.” Cawley looked at Francis who was conscious, barely, but in no shape to respond.
Justin looked away.
Jobe was pointing not to the road, but to the far left where a pillar of black smoke was rising from what had been the former Kenedy spread. “That’s no campfire.”
Bo, who’d been scouting ahead, came back to them. “Grintly’s tracks go out and around his property and on toward town. I doubt he even saw this hole.”
“I ‘spect he’s in a fever to fire off about forty dozen telegrams to make sure Cawley and I never work again,” Jobe said.
“He must have rode hard and fast, and gone by before the fire got this big or he might’ve just natural wanted to go have a look at what was causing all that much smoke,” Cawley said.
“I reckon it’s those redskins again, Bo. What do you think?” Jobe took off his hat and rubbed his forehead.
“That man specifically told us not to chase Injuns across his land, that he could deal with such things himself.” Justin thought Bo got a lot more amusement out of saying this than Jobe seemed to get at hearing it.
“By rights a band of renegade redskins should bother us.” Jobe put his hat back on.
“I guess you’ll come to like ranch life as a hand down there in Matagorda.” Cawley smiled.
“Just hope that chuck cook’s as good as they say he is.”
Grintly looked around at his ragged band as they trotted along following the road back toward the KXT ranch house much later in the day after making their trip into town. The sun was hot and beat down on him, and he’d lost his hat, and his temper with it. His insides felt like a constant roaring furnace stoked into high flames. It was hard for him to believe he’d started out this seemingly easy campaign with twenty stout and ready men. Now his little group, counting himself, numbered only eleven.
He saw small wisps of smoke in the distance. That could be campfires, or anything. But, suspecting the worst, his heart sank down into his boots. Then that was replaced by seething rage when he saw where the fence had been cut away to free the road ahead. “I want this fixed by tomorrow,” he snarled.
He whipped his horse into a gallop, riding through the gap in the fence, the men behind struggling to keep up.
Grintly reined in as he spotted the first of fallen cowhands he’d left behind lying on the ground, and behind them the smoldering embers of what had once been the Kenedy spread’s ranch house, bunk house, and stables. Now he saw only flat black ash-covered ground with the bodies of dead men all around. He couldn’t see a single horse in any direction.
“I swear I will get the better of these bloody Indians before I am done. I’m glad I saw to ruining the careers of Cawley and that Texas Ranger Jenkins. I just wish these blasted redskins were as easy to deal with. If those Rangers could just do their jobs and clear out these Comanches.”
He realized his men were staring at him, one or two with open mouths. “Find something to dig with and get these men into the ground.” He waved a hand that took in the whole blasted mess.
“You.” He pointed to a man half off his horse. “Go find us a spot to camp for the night. It’s too late to head back to town. Come dawn we’ll go back for supplies, ammo, and more men. Real men this time. Capable ones.”
They sulked, but they went about their chores. He sat his horse and watched, drafting a telegram in his head to Sir Jollop about how carving a cattle empire out here might just take a bit more time than expected. But he would do it in the end, and with as ruthless a hand as it took.