.45-Caliber Firebrand (8 page)

Her long, honey-colored hair was brushed straight down across her shoulders, the ends curled like a licking tongue. It fairly glowed in the umber light from the popping fire. A pearl necklace lent the girl—seventeen or eighteen at the oldest—an elegant, old-fashioned charm that accentuated her girlish, wholesome allure.

She favored her father with a demure smile as, entwining her hands at her waist, she said, “You know I don't approve of such barn talk, Father.” She cast her sparkling glance at the table. “I apologize for my tardiness, gentlemen. I'm Michelle Trent.”

Cuno and the other men in the room slid their chairs back and climbed to their feet.

As Logan Trent grumbled and chuffed behind his own chair, Serenity cleared his throat meaningfully and rammed an elbow into Cuno's ribs. He looked up at the brawny young freighter knowingly and winked.

“Forgive me, my dear,” Trent growled. “Got my blood up there for a minute. Friendly disagreement, I assure you. Come in and have a seat. Yes, gentlemen, this is my lovely, devoted daughter, Michelle . . .”

Trent let his voice trail off as more footsteps sounded down the hall behind Michelle. They were the tap of light leather shoes set down in a brisk, forthright step. And then, the owner of that step—a tall, ivory-pale lad with a cap of coal-black hair and matching mustache and goatee, and dressed to the nines in a black suit, glowing white shirt, and fawn vest trimmed with a gold watch chain—marched up beside Michelle and placed an arm around her shoulders. He lifted his dimpled chin to the room as though posing for a photograph.

Michelle smiled proudly and reached across her matronly bosom to squeeze the young man's hand.

All the blood in Cuno's body dropped into his boots. He thought he would vomit.

“And this,” Trent said with a courtly nod and a fling of his bony old hand, “is Michelle's betrothed, Mr. Jedediah H. Gallantly.”

7

JEDEDIAH H. GALLANTLY marched up to the table in soldierly fashion, still jutting that dimpled jaw, and shook everyone's hand. His hand, Cuno noticed, was as smooth as a baby's rump. It was as pale and waxy as fresh paraffin. The man wore a slim silver ring on his pinky and a giant onyx set in gold on his forefinger.

“Pleased to meet you, gentlemen,” the young man said, stepping back to pull a chair out from beside Kuttner for Michelle. “You're the, uh . . . the freighters, isn't that right?”

“That's right,” Cuno said, feeling as though he were wearing the tip of a Ute war lance in his belly.

Michelle folded gracefully into her chair, smiling demurely, celestially, her eyes bright but owning a vaguely distracted, bored cast, as well.

Young Gallantly slid her forward, then moved to the chair to her right. “Did the trip go well? No trouble with the Indians?”

“Oh, we had trouble with the Injuns, all right,” Snowberger growled, retaking his seat to the right of Serenity Parker.

“Lost a man,” Serenity said. “A good one . . .”

“Oh,” Gallantly said, frowning, “I'm sorry to hear that.” He slid his gaze between the freighters and Trent, as though the freighters' word alone could not be trusted. “Did the rifles make it?”

Trent sagged into his own chair, shaking his head with annoyance. “We've already had this conversation, Jedediah. I'll fill you in later.” Glancing at his guests, he said, “Gentlemen, my future son-in-law is of the Gallantly family of St. Louis, Missouri. Bricks is their trade, but young Jedediah's father, Mortimer, has a sizable ranch in Wyoming, as well. Not far from Ute. Jed grew up in St. Louis, but he learned the ranching trade after getting a degree in land and cattle finance back East somewhere . . .”

“Maryland!” Gallantly threw in with a proud grin, filling Michelle's wineglass from a demijohn.

“And he and Michelle are set to take over the place after they're hitched and”—Trent chuckled raspily and threw back a long swallow of his own wine—“after I'm planted in my favorite gooseberry thicket at the foot of Old Stone Face.”

“Oh, Father!” Michelle admonished, pooching out her bee-stung lips. “Such talk.” She brushed her glance across Cuno, Serenity, and Snowberger. “In truth, gentlemen, Jedediah and I are simply moving onto the ranch to
assist
Father in his later years. Mr. Logan D. Trent, I suspect, will be bouncing around giving the orders until well after all his grandchildren are out riding the range on their own cow ponies!”

Cuno swallowed down the dry knot in his throat and leaned forward, entwining his hands on the table and making an effort to keep his eyes off the girl's pale, swollen bosom enhanced by the pearls. “When will you and Mr. Gallantly be married, Miss Trent?”

“June first,” Gallantly answered for his promised bride, locking a faintly challenging gaze with Cuno.

“Ah, a June wedding,” Cuno said, spreading a smile that he thought would crack his cheeks and break his molars.

Just then, to Cuno's relief, the stout oak door opened and a big man with long black hair and flat, broad Indian features rolled a cart into the room from the kitchen. He moved with a limp even more severe than Trent's.

“Ah, Run!” the rancher exclaimed, clapping his big hands together. “Not a moment too soon. Michelle was about to lay into us with her wedding plans, and it's far too early in the evening to start yawning!”

Trent's laughter boomed around the room.

“Oh, Father!”

The big Indian in a calico shirt, duck trousers, suspenders, and a brown leather vest wheeled the cart up to the table, between Trent and Kuttner.

Trent said, “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce my cook, Runs-with-the-Ponies. Run has been with me since I first came here—just me, two horses, and a half dozen longhorns, two Durham studs, and a Springfield rifle. Met in the army, we did. Run once cooked for General Sherman. Best damn grub slinger in the West, to my mind. And after you've enjoyed a few bites of this delectable elk, I'm sure you'll agree!”

Somehow, in spite of feeling sick to his stomach, Cuno was hungry. His belly grumbled and his mouth watered as the big Indian produced the platter containing the huge, smoking roast covered with dark red chokecherry sauce and surrounded with steaming potatoes, carrots, and turnips. The Indian never said a word as he dutifully carved up the roast, filled everyone's plate in turn, then shuffled around on his moccasined feet—one of which seemed to be clubbed—and nudged his squeaking cart back into the kitchen, the oak door flapping on its springs behind him.

“Now, he'll get into the chokecherry wine, and we won't see him for the rest of the evening,” Trent whispered, holding a hand to his mouth. The old rancher shook his head as he cut into a half-inch-thick wedge of elk, bloodred in the middle, charred around the edges, and sopping with the heavy sauce seasoned with garlic, onions, and several herbs including mint. “I don't begrudge him. His only home is here. We, his only family.”

Trent suddenly set down his fork and lifted his wineglass in salute. “Gentlemen, milady,” he said with a courtly nod at his daughter, “to warm fires, hot meals, and fascinating company.”

After the toast, and favoring Cuno with a soft, blue-eyed glance, Michelle Trent said, “Speaking of fascinating company, Father informs us you've cut quite a path for yourself, Mr. Massey.”

Cuno's ears warmed slightly as he impaled a carrot chunk with his fork. “Not sure what you mean, Miss Trent. I've made my way as best I could, I reckon.”

“Oh, come now, Cuno,” Trent said with a mouthful. “You don't mind if I use your first name, do you? It's such a rare one, indeed!”

“Been called a lot of things, Mr. Trent.”

Trent, well into the wine and enjoying himself, laughed overloud. “Come now, Cuno, you mustn't be shy. I've told my daughter, Jedediah, and Mr. Kuttner about your exploits—those I've learned about via the moccasin telegraph, that is, or read about in the papers. They were quite impressed, as was I—a man so young, barely a teenager, taking to the blood trail to avenge his family.”

“Blood trail, indeed, Father!” admonished Michelle. “You've read too many dime novels.”

Serenity chuckled as he shoveled the delectable food into his mouth.

“I have to agree with your daughter, Mr. Trent. That's gilding the lily just a tad.”

“Maybe just a tad.”

Trent grunted as he dropped an arm to reach beneath his chair, his broad, bearded face reddening with exertion. When he raised his arm again, he was holding the yellowed newspaper he'd been reading when Cuno and the other men had first entered the room. He tossed it onto the table in front of Cuno.

“But only just a tad,” Trent added, “and no more than Mr. Hiram A. Crutchfield did in his article there in the
Ute Tribune
.”

Cuno brushed at his mouth with his cloth napkin and picked up the folded paper open to page five, at the top of which large black letters boldly announced, “Man-Hunting Sprout from Nebraska Powders the Vengeance Trail!” Slightly smaller type continued: “Blood-Hungry Young Mule Skinner Straps on Six-Guns to Hunt the Killers of His Beloved Family.” And below that, in type like cursive handwriting and abutted by the sketched likenesses of two crossed Colt pistols: “Notorious Thieves and Killers Rolf Anderson and Sammy Spoon Would Rue the Day They Ruffled the Feathers of Cuno Massey!”

There were sketches of Anderson and Spoon—mouths drawn wide in whooping, kill-crazy laughter—as well as one of Cuno himself, looking grim under his flat-brimmed plainsman hat, his young, grave features framed by his long blond hair. The sketch favored him well enough, though he'd never known himself to narrow his eyes like that, as though he were perpetually staring into the blinding sun. In both of his raised fists, a six-gun blazed.

At the very bottom of the page, beneath four columns of dense text, there was one more sketch—of Cuno standing with his feet spread wide, crouching, his long hair blowing back behind him as he shot down Anderson and Spoon with a smoking pistol in each hand. Both outlaws looked utterly horrified and flabbergasted as Cuno's bullets lifted them off their feet and threw them straight back toward the paper's left fold.

Both men had only begun to raise their own revolvers before the young firebrand, twice as fast as his foes, had triggered lead through their hearts.

“Well, look there,” Serenity said, leaning over to peruse the paper in Cuno's hand. “You're fy-muss!”

“Where'd this come from?” Cuno muttered, frowning down at the yellowed paper.

He'd never heard of the writer, Hiram A. Crutchfield. Whoever the scribbler was, he hadn't been with Cuno in that remote range along the Bozeman Trail when Cuno had turned Anderson and Spoon toe down before they could sell rifles to the rampaging plains tribes. The only other person there at the time was the half-breed girl Cuno would later marry, July Summer.

Crutchfield was probably just a Ute newshound who'd heard a few rumors from folks who'd been part of the same wagon train as Cuno that summer, and he'd scribbled out a lascivious tale full of gun smoke and blood, to raise his circulation.

Cuno tossed the paper down with a caustic chuff, took up his knife, and cut into his slab of elk meat. “A Dead-Eye Dick faker,” he said. “Nothin' against Mr. Dick. Used to read his books myself . . . back before I found out what life behind the gun was really like. I'd pay no attention, Mr. Trent. There's no way the man could have got it right.”

“Do tell, Cuno,” Trent urged, chewing a mouthful of meat and potatoes. “I admire nothing more than a young man standing up for himself and his murdered family! For taking his own fledgling gun against those of seasoned killers, and the devil take the hindmost!”

“No,” Cuno said, feeling uncomfortable. He hadn't set his hat to become a gunslick—he'd been forced into it by the killings of his father and stepmother—and he wanted nothing more than to put that bloody past behind him. “Not the time or the place, Mr. Trent.”

“Tell me, Master Cuno,” said Jedediah Gallantly, swabbing up chokecherry sauce with a chunk of elk meat, “how many notches do you have on your gun . . . if you don't mind the question?”

“Jedediah, please,” said his betrothed. “You're sounding like Father.”

“No, I'd like to know.” Gallantly smiled mockingly at Cuno across the table, his pasty cheeks glistening waxlike in the candle- and firelight. “Call it a prurient interest.”

“I value my forty-five too highly to carve notches in the handle, Mr. Gallantly.”

“Cuno Massey here killed Franklin Evans,” Trent said to Kuttner. “And the notorious bounty hunter Ruben Pacheca at the same time!”

The foreman nodded gravely and raised his eyes from his plate, which he'd already nearly cleaned. “Much obliged, son.” His eyes slitted with a devilish grin. “I've got a few enemies need killin', too, if you're interested. Can only pay in hardtack and jerky, of course, but . . .”

“Obliged, Mr. Kuttner. I'll stick with mule skinnin' for now.”

“How boring!” said Logan Trent.

“Depends on who you're workin' for,” quipped Serenity.

Dallas Snowberger, who'd been eating in customary silence, laughed.

“Do tell me, Mr. Massey.” Michelle cleared her throat and frowned down at her still-full plate, as though the words were coming hard for her. “How many men
have
you killed?” She looked up then suddenly, staring at Cuno as though he were a riddle she was having trouble unraveling. “How many lives have you taken?”

Logan Trent chuckled. Jedediah Gallantly looked down at his lovely wife-to-be in bemused surprise.