Slocum 329

“You did this?” Slocum said to Miranda. They stood in her uncle’s bedroom, staring at the body.

“I already confessed, Slocum. I did it with that little derringer of yours.” She spoke calmly, as if she were telling him what they were having for supper.

“I did it to save my virtue,” she added, somewhat coolly, “and most probably my life as well. In case you’re interested.”

The plan to take Abel’s body and dump it out by the dead horses might have sounded like the perfect setup to Miranda and Carmelita, but it wasn’t passing muster with him.

Additionally, they now had a second body—Marcus’s—that needed to be explained. Not for the first time in his life, Slocum wondered where in the hell all the witnesses were when you needed them.

Her brows flew up and her jaw dropped, shattering her previous cool and calm demeanor. “The sheriff? Are you crazy?”

“I met your town sheriff last night, Miranda, and he seems like a fairly reasonable man. If your uncle Abel spoke bad of him, well, I’d be disinclined to agree with his assessment.”

She stared at the floor for a few seconds before she raised her head and looked into his eyes.

“All right. I’ll go with anything you say, Slocum. I’ll call for Berto, but then I have something to show you.”

Slocum sat at the little dressing table in Miranda’s room, poring over the papers she’d found in the safe, while Miranda watched from the bed.

It all made sense now. At least, most of it. Abel Cassidy, anyway, and why he was so set on keeping Marcus and Foley on the place. Eighteen seventy-three had been the year of the big stage robbery up by Flag, and everybody knew that the owner of the Double Aces mine—Milton Carmichael, a man for whom Slocum had once done some business—had a bug up his ass about always paying his men with freshly minted coins in gold and silver denominations.

So the letter, the dates of the coins, and half the gang being on the ranch all dovetailed. And so did the horse killings. If Abel had raised sheep, it would have been sheep that were killed. If he’d raised cows, it would have been those. Just so happened that Abel raised horses.

Or at least, Abel’s brother, Judah, had. Slocum had never met Judah Cassidy, but it sounded, from the tone of his letter and the strength of his business dealings, that he had been on the up-and-up.

It also sounded as if Abel had been nothing but a hired hand all along. At least, his name didn’t appear on the deed anywhere.

He’d been riding on his older brother’s coattails all along, and even tried to get the ranch for himself by not breathing a word of this arrangement to Miranda.

But still, there should have been other records, duplicates of the will and the survey papers and the mortgage and so on, kept in the bank or the lawyer’s office. Duplicates that should have been investigated upon Judah Cassidy’s death.

When Slocum asked Miranda about the lawyer who drew up the will and the other legal papers, she said, “Oh, that was old Mr. Clark, poor darlin’. His office burned to the ground about ten years ago, with him in it. The whole town mourned him. He was a nice man, kind of like everybody’s grandpa. Always kept peppermints or licorice for the kids, you know?”

Slocum had a few questions about that all too convenient fire, but they could wait until Sheriff Robertson arrived.

He stood up from the dressing table, pushing the little chair back as he did, and keeping his balance on the edge of the table.

“My pleasure, ma’am,” he said as he hobbled over to it, leaning on Miranda. “Boots first, if you don’t mind.”

Miranda shook her head and said, “You know I do, but I’m going to take pity on the wounded today.”

Slocum took off his hat and tossed it, tardily, to the bed poster. “On behalf of the wounded, we are certainly grateful, Miss Cassidy, for this sacrifice on your part.”

She put her fists on her hips. “And if you don’t stop bein’ so damned formal, Slocum, I’m gonna search and probe for that slug till Tuesday with my papa’s rusty old Civil War knife!”

She turned her back to him and took one booted foot betwixt her knees, then the other. “I trust you can take care of the pants yourself?” she asked, tossing the last boot across the floor. “I’m gonna go get a fresh basin of water and some clean rags.”

By the time she returned, Slocum had not only scrambled out of his britches, but also the rest his clothing. He lay on the bed, belly-side down, with a sheet casually cast over his backside.

Miranda came in, took a look at him—and the expression on his face—and closed the door softly behind her. She smiled. “Slocum, m’darlin’, you’re in too weakened a condition to be thinkin’ about such things.”

“Just patch up my cut, Miranda,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ll be the judge of the other.”

Miranda poked and prodded around in his calf until he was ready to holler, and then she suddenly stopped. “Well, you were right. Bullet passed clean through.”

“Ah,” said Miranda, in a bemused tone that told him she’d remembered all along, the little sadist. “That’s right.”

She patted his backside through the sheet. “Now, now, dear. Let’s not get testy with your very own Clara Barton.”

She was infuriating—but not so maddening that he didn’t have a gigantic erection hidden between his body and the mattress. It thudded and throbbed with impatience.

At last, he felt a damp cloth against the skin of his calf, dabbing and washing it clean, then the cool of one of the white cotton bandages she’d brought along being wrapped around his calf and shin.

The moment he felt her finish tying off the bandage, he rolled over and took her in his arms. “Now, Miranda,” he said.

Smiling coyly, she pushed his hands away, saying, “By my reckoning, we’ve got at least three, maybe four hours before Berto gets back with the sheriff.”

She went to the dressing table and opened a music box, which began to tinkle out a slow version of one of Slocum’s favorites since his war days, “Lorena.”

Then, swaying from side to side to the plaintive melody, she began to work at the buttons of her bodice.

Berto was, in fact, just riding into town. He went up to the sheriff’s office first and, finding not a soul in residence, made himself at home in one of the rockers on the front porch.

Berto had been at the Bar C for years and years. He’d signed on with Miranda’s father, liked him very much as a fair man and a good boss, and when Abel had taken over . . . well, by then, he was pretty attached to Carmelita and the little girl.

This whole business bothered him a great deal. It was bad enough about Miss Miranda shooting her uncle. Not that he hadn’t deserved shooting, but preferably by another hand. Not Miranda’s.

Berto really would have preferred that they dump the body out with the poor slaughtered horses and pretend innocence of the whole matter.

But then Slocum had ridden in with Marcus’s corpse. Berto had thought that exceedingly strange. Two bodies in less than twenty-four hours.

And then, on his way into town from the ranch, he had come across a third. Foley. Granger had been his first name, Berto thought. He had ridden out with Marcus last night. Had Slocum killed them both, and only claimed to have shot Marcus? But why?

He was still sitting there, scratching his head, when a loud voice said, “Mornin’, Berto! What brings you into town?”

Berto looked up, then stood up, sweeping off his hat. “Sheriff Robertson. I came to see you, actually.”

The sheriff opened the jailhouse door. “Well, c’mon in and pull up a chair. Help yourself to the coffee, son.”

Once they were both inside and settled, and each had a tin cup of coffee in his hand, Berto started talking. And despite his misgivings, he left nothing out.

The sheriff listened in silence, keenly hanging on every word Berto had to say. And when Berto was finished, he asked a simple question: “What time did Slocum ride in with Marcus’s corpse?”