Slocum 329

Miranda slept fitfully on her father’s wide bed, the one he’d shared with her mother all those years ago.

She must have had fever dreams, because she was certain that someone came and sat on the side of the mattress beside her and soothed her head with long, lean fingers. And in her dream, she was certain that that someone was her father.

“It’s all right, girl,” he whispered, in her head. “You’re gonna be just fine, my darlin’.”

But when she forced herself to fully come awake, there was no one there.

She thought on this for a time, then softly smiled. “Papa, you do still look over me, don’t you?”

She felt a good deal better than she had, although her face still stung and her head still thudded. She discovered she could stand unaided. Her gaze traveled over the room and its contents, things she hadn’t seen for years. Not since her uncle Abel ordered the room locked up.

There was Mama’s dressing set: silver, inset with mother-of-pearl. Her Papa had never put it away. He said it gave him comfort, as if she might be coming back. They had been so much in love, those two.

Miranda found that just being in the room again had brought silent tears to her eyes, and she rubbed them away with the back of her hand.

This wasn’t the time for tears. It was the time for a little snooping.

She crossed the room to the oil portrait of her mother, painted when Mama was a young woman, before she had married Papa and come west with him. She looked lovely, seated on a park bench in her old-fashioned clothes and wonderful pearls and holding a parasol, amid banks and banks of blooming flowers and trees. She’d had red hair, like Miranda.

Miranda eased the heavy frame away from the wall, to one side. There was the safe, all right.

Miranda tried to open it, but it was locked. Little scratches—and a few gouges—etched the metal around the dial and the handle, and when she looked more closely, the edges of the door. Someone had tried to force his way into the safe, apparently to no avail.

She attempted to open it herself. She tried her father’s birthday, her mother’s birthday, and her birthday, but not one combination worked. Sighing, she let the portrait swing gently back into place, and began to search for the combination.

Her daddy hadn’t been a slipshod kind of man, not like his brother Abel could be. He would have written that combination down someplace!

Slocum set out on Abel’s trail. Not that there was much to see, but at least he had a general direction to follow, and the moon was nearly full in an almost cloudless sky.

At least Cougar had had a chance to eat, and he’d had a break. He was fresh as a daisy.

Slocum moved at a walk or a slow jog-trot, keeping his eyes open for any sign of movement that was out of the ordinary. He’d checked the bunkhouse before he’d gone into the barn. The man reported that Marcus and Foley hadn’t yet come in, and when he got to the barn, their horses weren’t there.

It was a pretty safe bet they wouldn’t be coming in at all. And he was beginning to think that Abel wouldn’t be, either. Probably end up camped somewhere with those two owlhoots, once he figured out he wasn’t going to find Miranda.

And then he heard it: somebody shouting, “Miranda! Miranda, girl!”

Abel. It was pretty far off, but the land here was flat for miles, and sound carried. Slocum started off toward the calls, his hand on the butt of his gun.

Miranda sorted through her father’s chest of drawers, then her mother’s, looking for a scrap of paper. Anything with numbers on it!

But no. Nothing. She went through her mother’s dressing table, drawer by drawer, carefully replacing all the contents just so—and once stopping to dab on a bit of her mother’s perfume.

That done with no results, she went to the tall chifforobe in the corner and gave it the same treatment she had given the bureaus.

Nothing! Just a few dresses and her father’s old duster. She’d gone through the pockets of that, too.

Dejected, she sat down on the bed, her face in her hands. “Where’d you put it, Papa?” she whispered. “Where on earth?”

And then, almost miraculously, she had an idea. She rushed to her mother’s dressing table once more, pulled the center drawer all the way out, and dumped its contents on the top.

There, taped to the bottom of the drawer, was the combination. Or a combination, anyway.

Miranda struck her forehead with her knuckles, and was immediately sorry. It took her a moment to regain her former clarity, but when she did, she was up and headed for her mother’s portrait.

This time, she put the drawer down, bottom side up, in the chair beneath the painting, and once again moved the frame to one side. With trembling fingers, she moved the tumblers in the fading light, and heard a soft, satisfying click with each one.

When she pulled on the handle, the door swung easily outward. She gasped, and put a hand over her mouth. It was just like in a play or a book, wasn’t it? What would she find?

She rigged the open safe door to hold the painting to one side, then picked up a candle and held it close to the safe’s dark interior.

Papers. A smallish needlework bag. A few more of those pipestone pieces. That was all, and her grin faded. But she removed everything, closed the safe, and righted the picture.

Then she carried her plunder to the bed, where she could look it over at her leisure.

Abel Cassidy had ridden a big loop in his search for his niece, but he wasn’t going to find her. Not tonight. It crossed his mind that she might have straggled into the Bar C already.

That thought got him halfway hard, and he grinned. Yes sir, she just might.

He headed back toward the ranch, going a different way than he had come. In fact, it was much the same route he’d taken the night he killed Miranda’s father.

They said it was a terrible thing to kill your brother, but when your brother has everything—including a fine ranch and an even finer daughter—and you have nothing, then sometimes it’s justified.

At least, that’s what he’d been telling himself all these years. He pretty much believed it by this time, too.

He had bounced a rock off his brother’s temple just as hard as he could, and he was dead—and Abel was a landowner—just like that. Easy as pie.

No, easier. He could never figure out why they said that pie was easy. Damn hard to make, if you asked him! All that nonsense with crusts . . .

At last, the Bar C came into dim view, and grew closer and clearer with every step of his horse. Pretty soon he’d be home. And Miranda, that curvaceous little minx, would be waiting for him.

Probably be tired after her long walk, too. Wouldn’t put up too much of a fight . . .

After he had his way with her, he’d put her out of the picture. Permanently.

Tomorrow, he’d take care of Slocum, too. He wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the big man wasn’t hanging around Miranda for the same reason. He just wanted to get under her petticoats, that was all. Well, Abel would be damned if he’d let that happen!

He’d kill Slocum, all right, then arrange everything to look like Miranda had killed him while he was raping her at gunpoint. And of course, Slocum’s gun had gone off with the blast of her shot.

Miranda’s eyes had grown as round as saucers when she read her father’s will.

This place had never belonged to Uncle Abel at all, either in whole or in part! It had been her papa’s, and he had left the whole thing—buildings, livestock, and all—to her!

By the time she finished reading, she was trembling. She’d show him! Tomorrow, she’d fire Marcus and Foley, and fire Uncle Abel’s ass, too. She was willing to bet that their absence would put a quick stop to the horse killings.

She hadn’t gotten to the needlework bag yet, but she was so thirsty. Maybe finding out you’re rich did that to a person. Well, finding out you have property, anyway. Uncle Abel had never done much more than break even on the ranch.

But then, she didn’t play cards! She wouldn’t be throwing money away by bucking the tiger’s odds!

She went to the door, opened it, and called softly, “Carmelita? Could I have a glass of lemonade, please?”

There was a pause before Carmelita answered, rather stiffly, “In a moment.”

“Thank you,” Miranda replied, and closed the door again, wondering who had put the burr up Carmelita’s bustle.

She had just reached the bed again and was starting to reach for the mysterious bag, when she heard footsteps approaching. Not Carmelita’s, though. Carmelita didn’t wear spurs—or boots—or walk with such a heavy tread.

The door abruptly swung in. Abel Cassidy stood in the doorway, his eyes sweeping over Miranda, the papers, the bag, then flicking toward the painting. The upside-down drawer still sat in the chair beneath it.

“After I turned this whole place upside down and sideways, you found it!”

“Yes.” Miranda swung her legs off the bed and faced him. “This is my ranch Uncle Abel. Mine. All mine, lock stock, and barrel.”

“No, you,” he said, taking a step into the room and shoving her down, flat on her back. And on the bag from the safe.

He forced apart her knees with his and began to unbutton his britches. “Fine,” he said as he yanked her skirts up to her waist, “take your stupid ranch for the time being. But after tonight, you’re gonna be mine—and then you’re gonna be dead!”

Miranda tried to twist away, but his legs between hers and his hand on her chest held her prisoner. And then he dug his gnarly old fingers into the material of her bodice and ripped it away.

He bent, lowering his torso near. “Oh, she can’t hear you, girl. Or if she can, she can’t do nothin’ about it. I left her tied up on the cold-keep porch.” He smiled. “Ain’t nobody comin’ to help poor little Miranda.”

She raked her nails down his face, but it didn’t faze him. She knew if he was that bent on doing her mischief, she only had one recourse.

“One thing first, Abel,” she said, fishing frantically in her pocket.

“That night. When you led my papa’s horse in with him across the saddle . . .” Her fingers found what she sought, and she brought it out, hidden first by the material of her skirts, then the bedding. “Did you kill him?”

Abel had the nerve to smile. “That’s for me to know and you to find out, doll-baby. Now look out, I’m a-gonna kiss you!”

His head lowered, only to meet Miranda’s derringer. He just had time to look a little surprised before she pulled the trigger.

Slocum had lost Abel: He finally had to admit it. And now clouds had moved across the sky to cover the moon.

He climbed down off Cougar to take a long, satisfying piss against a barrel cactus, and Cougar responded by taking a piss of his own.

He poured water from his canteen into his cupped palm, and the gelding drank, then Slocum repeated the process until there was no water left.

“That’s it, old son,” he said, patting the gelding’s neck. “The well’s gone dry.”

Cougar snorted, as if he objected to this oversight on Slocum’s part, and Slocum said, “Don’t blame you. Guess we’re gonna have to find our way back to the ranch by feel.”