Esperanza Herrera had gone back into her small house and closed the door. Lassiter was riding toward the headquarters of Box C, the big adobe in the cluster of cottonwoods. He had just dismounted in front of the house, hurrying up the veranda steps, when his ears picked up the distinctive clack of a shod hoof on rock. His head jerked around in the direction of the sound. He froze at the sight of men riding up through the cottonwoods by the barn.
Spinning around, he started running back down the veranda steps, intending to grab his rifle from the saddle boot. But he had only taken two steps when he heard a squeak of hinges as the door at his back was suddenly opened.
“Hold it, Lassiter!” It was Brad Sanlee’s amused voice.
Lassiter looked over his shoulder. One of Sanlee’s arms was tight around Millie’s slender waist, his fingers gripping a .45 aimed at Lassiter. The other hand was across his half-sister’s mouth. Her eyes were wild with mingled fury and alarm. She tried to struggle there in the doorway of the big house, but Sanlee was too strong.
As Lassiter stood frozen on the veranda step, Doane and Pinto George came riding around one corner of the house. From the opposite direction appeared Joe Tige, the upper edge of a dirty bandage at the open collar of his shirt. At his side was Jeddy Quine with the drooping left eyelid, and the new Box C hand, Pete Barkley, the turncoat. As they rode up through the cottonwoods by the barn, there was a smug look on Barkley’s face. He chewed tobacco and spat a brown stream.
“Stand hitched, Lassiter,” came Sanlee’s voice at his back. “Don’t even twitch a finger. You’ll do that if you think anything at all of my kid sister. If not, well . . .” He let it hang there with all the ugly connotations.
Lassiter clenched his teeth. Everything flashed across Lassiter’s mind like a streak of lightning: to come all this way, fight all the battles and have it end like this. And just as quickly it was gone. He straightened his shoulders and spoke firmly.
“Leave your sister out of it. This is between you an’ me.”
“Yeah, it sure is, Lassiter.” Sanlee chuckled. “You got that part of it right, anyhow. Now you back up the steps. Slow an’ easy. An’ don’t look around. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Lassiter eyed the men who were watching him with tight amusement from their saddles—all except Joe Tige, whom he had shot the day Rooney died. Tige glared.
Knowing he had no choice, under the circumstances, Lassiter backed slowly until Sanlee called a halt. He felt a gun rammed against his spine. Although he did not look around, he could hear the strangled sounds of anger made by Millie against the hand pressed over her mouth.
At Sanlee’s order, Pinto George dismounted and ran lightly up the veranda steps. The pale eyes were mocking as he gingerly reached out and unbuckled Lassiter’s gun belt. Then he stepped back, wrapped the belt around the holstered revolver and threw it over the railing into some geraniums that Millie had been trying to grow.
“With your fangs pulled, you’re kinda harmless-lookin’,” Sanlee said jovially. He had removed his hand from Millie’s mouth. She turned on him in rage, but he only laughed.
Then she said to Lassiter, “He came sneaking in the back door before I knew what happened.” She seemed close to tears of anger and frustration. “Now he’s got some crazy idea. . . .”
“I told her she’s gonna marry Marcus Kilhaven,” Sanlee said bluntly. “An’ she is.”
“No!” she cried. “It worked once with Rep Chandler, but not again!”
“It’ll work again, sis.”
“Damn you, Brad, you can’t force me. . . .”
“I can an’ I will.” His voice hardened. “You know how things are done around here.”
“Don’t bother to tell me.”
“You’re a widow lady an’ I’m your brother. An’ I step in an’ take over. An’ I say what’s best for you. You marryin’ Kilhaven is best.”
“Best for you, you mean!” she screamed and tried to claw his face. But he gripped her two wrists in one large hand. His smile was ugly through the beard. “Spitfire, that’s what you are. I reckon Kilhaven will sure appreciate that in a wife.”
When she tried to run, Sanlee grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. Her hair swung wildly and the shoulder of her dress ripped down to the top of a white camisole. A nipple and the upper part of a breast showed through the thin material.
“Keep an eye on Lassiter!” Sanlee shouted angrily at the ring of staring riders around the veranda. Five of them Lassiter remembered from roundup, but he didn’t know their names. But they had the mark of toughness in lean faces as did the others.
Then Sanlee pulled Millie back into the house and threw a coat over her shoulders. He pushed her back to the porch.
“Two of you hitch up a wagon an’ be quick about it!” Sanlee ordered. Two of the men hurried to the corral.
Never had Lassiter felt so completely helpless. If he turned and tried to give Millie a hand, he’d likely take a bullet in the spine. And at the same time his very move could endanger Millie. During the interval while a team was being hitched to one of the buckboards, Lassiter stood stiffly, his back to Sanlee. He was trying to calmly talk Sanlee into letting Millie go and settle the score between the two of them, man to man.
“You claim you saw me stand up to Doc Kelmmer that time in Tucson,” Lassiter reminded. “Let’s you and me go at it the same.”
“You been takin’ laudanum for those wounds of yours, it seems like. An’ it’s made your head soft. I don’t aim to stand up to you. I aim to beat you to your knees. We oughta have a velvet collar for you, Lassiter. ’Cause the hang rope might tear open that cut on your throat. That’d be a shame now, wouldn’t it?”
All of the men laughed and some slapped themselves on their thighs with glee.
Millie’s face went dead white as she stared up into her half-brother’s face. “You didn’t mean what you said . . . surely you didn’t. . . .”
“I aim to hang him.”
Millie screamed.
At Sanlee’s order, Doane came up and seized Lassiter from behind and lifted him off his feet. It made Lassiter feel like a small boy being embraced by a madman. He lashed out with his feet all the way down the steps. But with one of Doane’s thick arms around his waist, the other pinning his chest, he was helpless.
Doane’s breath smelled of stale whiskey and tobacco. “I aim to finish what I started with the knife,” Doane said softly through his teeth.
Then Doane swung Lassiter up and sat him on the saddle as easily as he might handle a baby. Lassiter tried to kick him in the face. But Doane seized an ankle and twisted it so hard that Lassiter felt a stab of pain shoot up his leg. At first he thought the powerful twisting motion might have snapped a bone. But after a moment the throbbing pain subsided and he could move his foot.
“You can’t get away with this, Sanlee!” Lassiter shouted. Someone had taken his rifle out of the saddle boot. With his revolver gone, all he had left were his fists, which he waved in the air for emphasis. “The sheriff will—”
Sanlee cut it off with a bellow of laughter. “I’m the sheriff here, Lassiter.” Grinning through his beard, he took a badge from his pocket. He pinned it to the front of his faded work shirt: DEPUTY SHERIFF, TIEMPO COUNTY.
“An’ I got here a legal posse,” Sanlee continued with a sweep of his long arm. “Every man is deputized by me!”
“That’s not legal.” Lassiter was clutching at straws. “A sheriff has to do it.”
“Why, damn me, you just might be right.” Sanlee laughed. “But by the time we argue it out, you’ll be in the ground.”
Holding Millie in the vise of one arm, Sanlee pulled out a bandanna as Millie began to screech at him again, sobbing. While two of his men gripped the struggling Millie by the arms, Sanlee gagged her. Then he bound her wrists with a length cut from a catch rope. He walked her down the steps and to the buckboard that had just pulled up, boosting her onto the seat of it. One of the men sprang up beside her and gathered in the reins.
“Four of you go along with her,” Sanlee said as he leveled a finger at them. “If any one of you puts a hand on her, that man is dead.” The warning was given quietly. But the men assigned to escort her to Diamond Eight were obviously impressed.
“Mrs. Dowd can handle her easy enough, once you get her home,” Sanlee said. “Now clear out.”
As the buckboard team sprang forward, hitting their collars, Millie turned her tear-stained face to Lassiter. Only for an instant did their eyes meet. Then he lost sight of her in the trees. Dust raised by the team and wagon and escorting riders drifted above the trees. . . .
Esperanza Herrera, who had remained out of sight during the invasion of the Diamond Eight men, made the sign of the cross when they pulled out. With her heart pounding, she hurried to the bedroom. She had to have riding clothes and she had none. So she exchanged her dress for a pair of her husband’s trousers. They were too tight around the middle and she had to roll up the legs. And one of his shirts was too long. She tied the ends of it around her waist. Then she saddled a horse and started east to try and find her husband and the other men.
As she rode fast through the thickening heat, her lips murmured desperate prayers. The town of Santos was not too far and it was named for saints. Perhaps one of them would be nearby and hear her plea. She spurred the horse in a dead run toward the western boundary of Marcus Kilhaven’s ranch. It was where her husband, Luis, had taken the crew. She prayed she would arrive in time. Poor Señor Lassiter was in the hands of the enemy. . . .