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Button reined in the horse and brought the buggy to a stop, glanced back to make sure Mr. Dobbs stopped as well.
Justin pointed ahead. “There it is. Looks like they still haven’t gotten around to repairing it yet. The road was open that way when we took Francis to town just yesterday.”
Button turned back around, looked ahead at the gap in the barbed wire fence. “I hope they never do. It’ll be miles out of our way if we have to go out and around just to get to town. That was done out of just plain meanness.”
Justin nodded. Part of growing up had been learning how bad some people are to their wormy cores.
The fence stretched off in both directions from the road, the coiled ends of the cut wires still lay bunched up beside the post that Francis had removed and tossed to the ground as if it had been a straw. Cattle dotted the rolling grass of the estate Justin still thought of as the Kenedy spread, though he supposed everyone would soon come to call it the KXT.
Button clucked, twitched the reins, and the horse picked up its pace again. Justin had let her drive the buggy because she never had before. They had a load of produce to take to Mister Morton at the general store. The garden had been growing right through all the shooting and Aunt Sara had said there was no sense letting it go to waste. Besides, they had to return the buggy to the livery. It would be a long ride back, the two of them on Mr. Dobbs, but Button said she didn’t mind. He knew he wouldn’t either.
They went up the wooden stairs together and stepped off into a hallway. Justin looked for Room 11. This was his first time in the hotel. He glanced toward Button, saw she was soaking in everything the way he was. This was probably her first time in any hotel.
Justin spotted the right door, just cattycorner across the hall. He stepped to the door and knocked.
“Come in.”
He swung the door open and let Button go through first.
“Well, now aren’t you two a pleasant sight.” Francis lay in the bed. He wore a robe over the tape across his chest, and had the sheets pulled up to his waist. A pile of newspapers covered the top of the end table by the head of the bed. He tried to sit up, sighed, and plopped back as he had been.
He looked even bigger sprawled out in a bed that way, and he was a pretty darn big man to begin with.
“Sara baked you some bread.” Button held up the loaf wrapped in a towel. She eased forward to put it on top of the papers.
“I could smell it. I don’t deserve such kindness from her.”
“You were wounded helping defend our home. It’s the least she could do.” Button didn’t look right at him. She glanced toward Justin.
“The least,” Francis repeated.
Justin was about to ask how Francis was mending when the door opened behind them and a woman came bustling into the room. She wore a white blouse and red skirt that set off her curled blond hair. Her grin was the sort he wanted to grin back at, natural and bubbling. She set a basket down next to the bread. Its contents were covered with a red and white checked linen napkin. Justin caught an intoxicating sniff of fried chicken.
“Justin, Button, I’d like you to meet Miss Annabelle Lee Highwater. She’s a young lady I met on the stagecoach coming here.”
“Yes. We were robbed by the same men.”
“But they didn’t take anything from you,” Francis said.
“Just as well. I have little. But you outfoxed them as well, you rascal.” She reached to tweak Francis’s nose.
Button’s head snapped to Justin, her mouth open and her eyes wide. She hadn’t mastered being subtle yet. Justin noted that Francis turned a pink that made him look even healthier.
“Seems Doc Willis did a pretty good job on you,” Justin said to cover his own embarrassment.
“He’s strong as a horse,” Miss Highwater said, straightening the sheets around him. As she moved closer to the window the sunlight from outside caught her and Justin adjusted his estimate of her. She might well be nearly his Aunt Sara’s age.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Good heavens. Who could that be?” Miss Highwater went to answer the door.
Justin thought the room already seemed crowded. But two grown men entered. One of them was Jobe Jenkins, the Texas Ranger sergeant. The other was Sheriff Cawley.
“I thought you two had both been fired,” Francis boomed as they went up to the bed to shake his hand where he lay.
They stepped back to stand beside Justin and Button.
“Well, that’s certainly the way it looked,” Jobe said. “But don’t you know I got a wire from Captain Mayberry that I was to ignore his previous telegram and to make Mr. Grintly adhere to the law like everyone else.”
Cawley took off his hat and held it in his hands. “Yeah, someone wired a story back east to a newspaper there and the whole thing got written up. Seems it even had your byline on the article. Not only that, every other paper grabbed at the story and it made its way to Texas, splashed in every paper we have. It plain embarrassed the plumb out of the governor and he was hemming and hawing for days. Hints of corruption were flying every which way, favoritism, and a just un-Texas way of doing things.”
“He didn’t need all that on top of all the fence wars starting up.” Jobe grinned.
“Fence wars?” Justin asked.
“There’s been fence battles all over the state,” Jobe said, “even talk of gunslingers being hired as ranch hands.”
“Hard to believe,” Francis said.
Cawley raised one corner of his mouth at that. “People cutting the fences were seen as the real culprits. Lucky we didn’t have none of those around here.”
“Right,” Jobe agreed. “Tell him, Sheriff.”
“The governor even called a special assembly of the state legislature, and they passed one bill setting up prison sentences for those caught fence cutting. But more to the point here, he ordered property owners to remove any fences placed across property they didn’t own, or across established public roads. He said they had to provide gates every three miles, and keep the gates in good repair.”
“So that spikes Grintly’s cannon, then, for now.” Francis beamed. “I suppose the tasks you set out to do are done, then?”
Justin was thinking how the tiny room felt absolutely filled with people. Miss Highwater stood back against the wall, but close enough she could reach out and touch Francis.
“Oh, far from done,” Jobe said. “We both still have jobs, and work to do in them. I still haven’t laid hands on that slippery Bent Feather, although we did get back the horses that were stolen. And the Sheriff still has Gabe Bentley to round up.”
Cawley glanced out the window at the street below. “Oh, there are moments when I suspect that might be a tougher job than I thought.”
“If he doesn’t show up they can’t put the property up for sale and Grintly can’t grab it then, right?” Francis said.
“Well, true enough for about seven years or so, unless Gabe turns up.” Cawley only shared half a smile.
“What do you intend to do about Grintly?” Francis said.
“I ‘spect we’ll ride out that way to see how he’s faring, or if he’s still around,” Jobe said. “If he is, we’ll let him know the conditions of staying and cattle ranching in these parts.”
“What do you mean if he’s still around?”
“Well, it seems that while Grintly and his men were away, those Comanches Jobe was after rode through a stretch of cut fence and went and burnt down the former Kenedy ranch house and bunkhouse as well. They finished off the few cow hands who’d been left behind. They had quite a little fracas. The black cook and her two kids took off for town in a buckboard wagon and those Comanches let them go.”
“Way she put it,” Jobe said, “was ‘them redskins got the rifles, ammo, everything they could want. Last we seen of them they was having a big roast with a downed steer and was a waitin’ fo’ anyone to come and disagree with them.’ Since they let her go, she got out of there as fast as she could go.”
Cawley fixed his gaze on Francis. “We really came to thank you as the person responsible for pulling our bacon out of the fire and saving our jobs. By my book, you did more with a pen to stop Grintly than all of us with our guns.”
“Well, pencil really, and a stub of one at that. All they had at the telegraph office.” He beamed, though. Hard for him to be all the way modest. He looked at Justin. “But I do hope this demonstrates to young Mister Scamp the power of the written word.”
“Oh, I’ll tell him alright,” Justin said. “He’s eager enough to learn, if there’s a way.”
“Yeah, what about you, then?” Cawley said. “Are you heading back east, or going back out to Sara Bolger’s place?”
“Well, I got to thinking that what this town needed, with all its young ones growing up not able to parse a sentence or multiply to nines, is a schoolhouse. Young Miss Highwater came out here thinking to do that, but found no school or anyone to pay.”
She blushed this time when he said “young.”
“She’d been misinformed and ended up working in the saloon to get by. So I wired my publisher and he said he’d be willing to pay her salary for a year if we could find a place for schooling. We looked around and found an empty house next to the livery where a blacksmith who has passed away lived. I’ve purchased it myself so she can teach in it by day.”
“Does that mean you’re staying?” Jobe asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Justin thought Miss Highwater blushed even brighter.
Button stifled a giggle, then laughed out loud when Justin gave her a stern look. She must have been remembering Francis’s advice about being aloof and playing hard to get.
Francis ignored her outburst. “Do you think Sara would let Scamp attend such a school?”
“I suppose. If his chores are done. Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind coming myself,” Justin said.
“And. . .and. . .”
Justin turned to see what Button was struggling with.
“Do you think it would be okay if I attended the school too?” she asked.
Francis and Miss Highwater locked eyes. “Of course it would,” they both said at the same time.
Mr. Dobbs was plodding along at his “I’ll get there someday” pace when Justin tugged on the reins and brought him to a stop.
“What is it?” Button sat behind him with her arms around his waist. “Is something bothering you? You’ve been pretty quiet so far.”
They had barely gotten past what Justin would call the edge of town. He could look back and see the straggling few homes on the outside reach of Bentley. When he did so, Button’s face seemed quite close to his own.
“It’s something Francis said to me.”
“Just now?”
“No. A while back, at the house, when we all thought we might...when we were defending the place and you weren’t there.”
“But you came and rescued me.”
“I came, but you pretty much rescued yourself.”
She gave him a soft punch low in the ribs. That meant that she knew they were both starting to try to understand each other better.
“What is it?’ she said.
“Well, it’s just after seeing him there, with Miss Highwater, after he’d been telling me how he felt about Aunt Sara, I just have to wonder about what he said.”
“I can’t know what that was unless you tell me.”
“I don’t remember it all just the way he said it, but it’s kinda about how it’s up to each of us to sort out what matters most to us and do everything we can to go after it and take care of it. We need to forget about what we think is some outside force or curse affecting us and act on what most drives us.”
“And?”
“Don’t you think he gave up kind of easy on Aunt Sara?”
“He did the right thing if he’s as smart as you say he is.”
“I just wish I understood how his head worked.”
“I doubt if he knows. Elsewise he’d have found something and clung to it better.”
Justin realized Button’s arms were still around him when they didn’t need to be.
“Anyway, we might get some schooling out of it. Scamp, you . . . and even me” She paused. “I know we’d have to get up even earlier for chores, or Aunt Sara would have our hides. But think of it. You may not know it, but the only good thing she felt about Francis was him trying to teach Scamp to read, even if it was with those shoot-‘em-up books he writes. She said we have too much of the real thing to dwell on here.”
“But when we tell her Francis is spending his love pinings elsewhere . . .?”
“Oh, she might like that a lot,” Button’s voice crackled with eagerness. “And we could still get some schooling too.”
“Let’s not get our hopes up too soon. We might not get to go to any school until we don’t have to be around to defend the house all the time. The Comanche troubles may go away someday, but as long as people like that Grintly are around...”
“Yeah, I know.” She sighed. “But didn’t that Jobe say Grintly has to obey the laws like everyone else now?”
“Do you think he’s the kind of person who will?”
“No.” Some of her joy faded. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
“Hey.” Justin glanced back toward town. “Do you think she’d be horribly upset if we picked up just a few sweets at Mister Morton’s store for Missy? We still have a nice credit there.”
“You decide.” She leaned forward and let the side of her face rest on his shoulder.
He turned Mr. Dobbs and started them plodding their way back toward town.
The chatter of birds above his head grew maddening. All he could hear was the din of cheep, cheep, cheep, chitter, caw. Annoying, but not what bothered him most.
Grintly looked up the hill at the line of Comanches who had him pinned down with the last three of his men. He’d climbed out of his bedroll to find that the others had lit out for it first chance they had in the night, the rotten cowards. And they’d taken all the horses with them. He would bloody well tell Sir Jollop that it was bloody damned hard to get good help here. He had still been cussing that when he’d looked up the hill to see nothing but redskins. At last check he and the remaining men were down to about three bullets each.
The ranch hand he’d sent forward to parley with them came back shaking his head. He was a fellow the others called Peppy, who at least could make sign with Indians.
He plopped down next to Grintly, and in a resigned way started checking his pockets again to see if he’d missed any bullets.
“What was all that jibber-jabber about?” Grintly asked.
“Something about a blasted buffalo skull.”
“That’s the best you could get from all that? Where are those bloody Texas Rangers when we need them?”
“Weren’t you the one told them not to chase Comanches on your land?”
Grintly drew his pistol and shot the man in his side. Then he shook his head. Bloody waste. He reached over and took the man’s pistol. He could see no ammo in the man’s belt. For a moment he tried to recall if he’d ever know the man’s real name. He looked up to the other two men, not sure if they’d run or stay. They’d already risen, had lit out, running the other way, away from the Comanches, as fast as their boots could carry them.
He spun and pointed the two pistols at their fleeing backs, but he didn’t dare fire. He would need every shot.
Unshod hooves pounded the ground behind him amid the kind of screams only Comanches in battle can make. He turned to look up the hill where it seemed to him at the moment that every gun-waving Indian in the world was riding right down toward him.
OTHER BOOKS BY RUSS HALL