.45-Caliber Firebrand (9 page)

Her fair cheeks flushing slightly, she hiked a shoulder and rolled a potato around on her plate with a fork.

Cuno felt like a freak at a carnival sideshow. It was his own damn fault, allowing himself to be lured up here by his lust for a wet blonde in a buffalo robe.

Now he wished he were back in his wagon, huddled in his blankets beneath the stars. Or, better yet, on the trail back to Crow Feather. Anywhere but here, where Trent seemed to hold him up as some kind of primitive wild man while his daughter saw him as the essence of pure evil and Jedediah Gallantly passed him off as merely freakish and amusing, when all he'd done was play the cards he'd been dealt the best way he knew how.

He forked food into his mouth as the burn of anger rose up from the base of his spine. He heard himself reply to the girl's question in a flip, mocking tone. “Oh, 'bout fifty. Maybe sixty. I lost count sometime last summer, after I drilled ole Karl Oldenberg. Blew his lower jaw off, if I remember correct, on the main street of a little Wyoming town called Alfred. Or, was that Colorado Bob?” Cuno laughed. “There's been so many, I forget . . .”

“Good grief!” exclaimed Gallantly. “You blew a man's jaw off?”

“Blew an ear off a half-breed child rapist named Fuego.
Pop!
The man's ear was gone, silver hoop ring and all!”

“Oh!” Michelle put a hand to her mouth and turned her head to one side, as though about to evacuate her delicate little belly.

8

WHEN MICHELLE HAD recovered from nearly regurgitating what little of her meal she'd eaten so far, she turned her now-frosty, incredulous gaze back to Cuno. “You
didn't
? A man's
ear
?
Why
?”

“Michelle, you don't want to know,” advised Jedediah Gallantly, wrapping a protective arm around her shoulders.

“ 'Cause he'd just strangled a deputy United States marshal through the bars of his jail wagon,” Cuno said, his calm, offhand manner belying how much he was enjoying himself. “I knew, then, I'd have to pull the jail wagon through the mountains myself, when I had better things to do. Galled me so bad, I wanted to kill ole Fuego, sure enough.”

Cuno shoved a forkful of food, which he was now thoroughly enjoying, into his mouth. “Settled for shootin' an ear off.”

Beside him, Serenity was jerking with laughter while hiding his face behind his wineglass. Beside Serenity, Snowberger was shoveling food into his mouth as though afraid he'd soon be cut off and shaking his head darkly.

From across the table, Henry Kuttner regarded Cuno as though he were a problematic steer caught in a bog. The pewter-haired and mustachioed foreman had both his elbows on the table, and his empty fork was sagging in his right hand. His eyes were like dark green marbles set under ridged salt-and-pepper brows.

The rancher, Logan Trent, was chewing slowly while smiling patiently at his daughter and future son-in-law. He appeared a man who'd brought a bear onto the premises to give his loved ones a taste of the wild, to toughen them up a little, and the bear had performed even better than Trent had predicted.

He said nothing.

Michelle stared disgustedly at Cuno, both her delicate, white hands resting on her plate.

“Really, Mr. Massey,” objected Jedediah Gallantly. “You do realize there's very little place for that kind of behavior anymore, don't you? The West is filling up with people. The railroad has come through, and spur lines are being laid all over. The law is here and, thus, civilization!”

Chewing slowly, Cuno extended a fork toward the roast sitting on its platter in the middle of the table and glanced at Trent. “Do you mind . . . ?”

“Help yourself!” Trent encouraged, waving a hand at the elk. “Please feel free. Your men, as well!”

“What I'm saying, Mr. Massey,” Gallantly continued, as Cuno loaded up the plates of Serenity and Snowberger, “is that there is no longer any place for men who insist on taking the law into their own hands and living by the gun, so to speak! That breed is dying out, and you must conform to the laws of civilized society or end up . . . end up . . . in
jail
! Or be
hanged
!”

Cuno dropped a thick wedge of elk onto his plate, then poked his fork at Trent, then at Michelle. “What if someone came in here one night and killed your father-in-law and raped your wife and then killed her, too? What would you do about it?”

“Why, I'd send the law after them!”

“Out here?”

“I'd ride to the army outpost and notify the authorities. I'd send soldiers after the killers. They'd be run down, given a proper trial, and hanged!”

“By the time you got to the fort, those men would be halfway to Mexico. Your wife and father-in-law would die unavenged. And those savages would be free to wreak the same havoc on others.”

“All right, that's enough!” ordered Michelle Trent, putting some hard steel into her voice, her face flushed with anger. “We get your point, Mr. Massey. We're deeply sorry for what happened to your family, but you must know that civilized men do not live for revenge. Only barbarians live for revenge.”

“But men—and women—are basically barbarians,” Cuno said. “From what I've seen and experienced, I firmly believe we're all savages. Some more than others. And you're right—the West
is
filling up . . . with savages. They outnumber the lawmen and the folks trying to keep a leash on their own inner savage about a hundred to one. And the only way to fight savages who've turned their horns on you or your family is to become one yourself.”

Trent cocked an eyebrow, fascinated. “To let yourself become who you—or
we
—really are. To let your true nature take over . . .”

“That's how I see it,” Cuno said, slicing his second helping of elk.

“I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, Mr. Massey,” Gallantly said tonelessly.

Trent suddenly pounded his fist on the table and leaned forward, pinning his future son-in-law to his chair with a vicious stare. “He's right, don't you see, Jedediah? You and Michelle were both educated back East. Yes, there's law in the East. Plenty of savages there, too, but there's some semblance of law and order.” He shook his head slowly, darkly. “But not out here. If you two are gonna live here at the base of Old Stone Face and raise your family amongst the savages—and I want that very much; my daughter is all the family I have left—you've got to be ready to defend what's yours!”

“If you think I'm going to lynch squatters and rustlers, Mr. Trent . . .”

Cuno said, “Squatters and rustlers are the least of your worries at the moment, Gallantly.”

Silence fell like a burial shroud. Both Michelle and her betrothed shuttled questioning frowns between Cuno and Trent, who colored slightly and tried to cover it with his wineglass.

“Father said the Indians have become a nuisance, yes, but they're not posing any
real
danger.”

Serenity snorted. “Tell that to Dutch Rasmussen!”

“Who's Dutch Ras—” Michelle's frown cut deep lines into her forehead as both she and Gallantly looked at Trent. “Father, what's going on?”

Trent didn't meet his daughter's gaze as he forked a small chunk of gravy-drenched potato into his mouth and growled sheepishly, “The freighters were attacked by a small party of bronco Utes. One took an arrow.”

“They turned him into a human pincushion, Mr. Trent,” Serenity said, slamming his own bony fist on the table. “Make no mistake!”

Michelle jerked back in her chair, dropping her fork with a loud clang and slapping her hand to her heaving bosom. “What's made them so angry, Father?”

Trent looked for a moment like he had a chunk of meat caught in his windpipe. His furtive gaze flickered toward Cuno, and then he busied himself with brushing his napkin across his beard, loudly clearing his throat, and sliding his chair back from the table. “Like I told you, Daughter, they've been aroused by the army somehow.”

The old rancher gained his feet and raised his voice, changing the subject abruptly. “Since Run has no doubt retired for the evening, Michelle and I shall cut the pie. You men look like you're ready for dessert and coffee—a little cognac, perchance?”

Cuno wiped his mouth with his own napkin and, bored and disgusted by the conversation as well as the company, including that of the spoiled, judgmental Michelle and her oily eyed beau, he slid his own chair back and stood. “Much obliged, Mr. Trent. It was a long pull from Crow Feather, and I think I'll call it a night.”

“Me, too,” Serenity said. “That elk didn't leave much room in my belly for pie.”

“But this isn't just any pie, Mr. Parker,” bellowed Trent, swaying a little on his feet, glassy-eyed from the wine. “This is pie from the peaches off Run's own tree in the backyard!”

Cuno made his way around the table, followed by his men. He stopped beside Michelle's chair and extended his hand to her. “Miss Trent, it's been a pleasure.”

“The pleasure's been mine, Mr. Massey,” she said, her blue eyes again politely demure though her tone was coolly disapproving.

Cuno released the girl's tender hand and shook that of Jedediah Gallantly, who stood, knocked his heels together like a Russian soldier, and dipped his chin in a courtly half bow.

“You're certainly welcome to the beds upstairs,” Trent told Cuno as the rancher shook his hand. “Like I said, I've plenty of room.”

“The bunkhouse will do just fine, Mr. Trent. Thanks again for your hospitality.”

“Kuttner will see you out,” the rancher said to Cuno's back.

“We know the way.”

Once outside, still buckling or adjusting their gun belts or donning their hats, the three freighters stepped off the porch into the dark, silent yard in which scurried an icy breeze touched with the fragrance of mountain pines.

“I've had better sit-downs in a dentist's chair,” Serenity grouched as they began moseying down the grade toward the bunkhouse, its windows the only lights in the yard.

“The elk was a mite stringy,” Snowberger said, plucking a sliver of meat from between his teeth. “That big Injun would do better to shoot a younger critter next time.”

“Me, I prefer beef,” Serenity said. “They got enough of 'em around here.”

Snowberger snorted. “Less'n the Injuns took more than their snare.”

Cuno walked in brooding silence with Serenity and Snowberger to the middle of the yard. Then, as the other two continued toward the freight wagons for their bedrolls and war bags, he angled left toward the stables.

“Gonna check on the mules before I call it a night,” he said.

The other two, yawning and moving sluggishly with all that Trent food in their bellies, bid the younger man good night and continued tramping off to the wagons. “Hope there's a couple o' free bunks in there,” he heard Serenity say as the two silhouettes dwindled against the bunkhouse lights. “I'd like to sleep warm tonight. I ain't as young as I used to be, and my bursertitus is actin' up. Must be the altitude . . .”

Their voices and foot thuds faded. Cuno paused at one set of stable doors. Something caused him to look back toward the big house looming, its lower windows glowing, against the black velvet mountain wall behind it.

Smoke from the big fieldstone hearth unspooled from the chimney, like gray gauze. Cuno's mind was a mix of confused emotions, but at the heart of it lay the image of the girl's eyes regarding him with her cool, faintly mocking, vaguely horrified reproof.

Who the hell was Michelle Trent to judge him? Had she lived his life?

Hell, she'd spent most of her years being educated at some fancy finishing school back East, swapping dry smooches in a city park with the pasty-faced privy snipe, Jedediah Gallantly, whose family cooked bricks for a living without, no doubt, having ever touched a single one.

What really frustrated Cuno was that, when he'd first discovered her sopping wet and only half clothed on the dark stairs, he'd seen something in her eyes that had intrigued him and had compelled him to want to know her better, only to discover that she was someone else entirely.

A pretty shell.

Just another rich man's spoiled girl corrupted by privilege and easy prejudices.

Not that it mattered. She belonged to Jedediah Gallantly, and he could have her. They deserved each other.

Voices rose from Cuno's right. He turned to see Serenity and Snowberger again, heading back toward the bunkhouse with their gear on their shoulders, rifles in their hands—a bandy-legged little man limping along beside a taller, stoop-shouldered gent, both men speaking in desultory, tired tones as they mounted the bunkhouse porch. Their boots clomped dully and out of sync.

Serenity pulled the door open and there was a moment of good-natured gibing as they skirmished over who should enter first. Then, chuckling, Serenity followed Snowberger inside and closed the door behind him.

Cuno pulled one of the stable's two sliding doors open and slipped inside. He closed the door, fumbled around in the dark to light a lamp, then tramped down the broad, straw-strewn alley toward the back, where his twelve mules stood, two to a stall, on either side of the alley.

“Hello there, fellas. Ladies. How're you doin' this evenin'? Those Double-Horseshoe oats go down all right, did they?”

Cuno chuckled to himself. If he wasn't careful, he'd end up growing old alone; horses, mules, and dogs were the only folks he ever felt truly comfortable around.

He hung the lantern on a post and entered one of the stalls, giving the mules a closer inspection than what he'd had time for earlier. A half hour later, after having reset two shoes, pried gravel out of a couple of frogs, and given one more of the beasts a thorough curry, combing out its burr-laden tail, he checked their water and headed for the door.