Dorothy Garlock (21 page)

“What on earth are you doing on the floor?”

Hallie glanced up to see Fawn standing before her, a look of utter puzzlement written on her face.

Before Hallie could answer, before she could come up with yet another lie to pass off to Fawn, she was once again grabbed roughly by the arm and pulled to her feet.
The mysterious attacker had returned!
She was about to scream out, to ball up her fists, and attack the man, when she looked over and found that the hand that had grabbed her belonged to Eli.

“Oh, Eli! What are—” she managed.

“We’re leaving.”

“But—”

“Right now,” he said gruffly.

He pulled her toward the door of the mercantile so quickly that she could only stumble along. It wasn’t until they had passed out into the sunshine that she noticed the blood that soaked the sleeve of his shirt.

“Eli, you’re hurt,” she gasped. “What happened to your arm?”

“Never mind that,” he snapped, unwilling to do anything but herd her to the wagon. “We don’t have time now for talking.”

“But what about—?”

“Just get in the wagon, Hallie!” he barked.

She did as she was told, unable to keep herself from looking for some sign of the man who had accosted her, but he wasn’t to be seen on the busy street. When Eli dragged himself up to the seat with a noticeable wince of pain, she held her tongue. As she looked at him, his eyes spoke not of anger but of caution. They shifted from one side of the street to the other.

What happened to him?

As they rode out of Bison City, she looked back over her shoulder to watch as the town disappeared behind them. The sight that held her gaze the longest was Fawn Billings standing on the steps of the mercantile, her red dress bright, watching them intently.

Chapter Nineteen

A
NGRY AND IRRITATED
, Seth McCarty walked quickly down the dusty main street of Bison City, his brow drenched in sweat. Absently, he shot his cuffs and wiped a mote of dirt from his sleeve, silently cursing his untidiness. All around him, the town’s citizens went about their day, the streets full of laughter, sweat, and swearing. To it all, he paid no heed, his mind as heavy in thought as the revolver that was tucked in his belt, beneath his coat, lying snugly against his back.

“Afternoon, Mr. McCarty!”

“Mighty fine day, don’t you think, sir?”

Greetings flew toward him from all sides. Even though he deflected them all with little more than a wave of his hand or a curt nod, he had long ago grown accustomed to receiving such attention. After all, he
was
the public face of the town’s bank, a figure known to all. Men and women alike curried his favor, hopeful that they wouldn’t be turned down in their moment of need all because they had failed to give a smile or simple acknowledgment.
And why shouldn’t they grovel to me?
He was a man with power, quite used to getting all that he wanted.

He’d been stepping out of the bank on business when he’d first spotted Eli and then Fawn rushing to put her arms around the man’s waist. In a split second, his heart raced with hatred and thoughts of vengeance.
How dare that cowboy interfere with the life I’ve built!
He’d retreated into the bank, retrieved his pistol from the desk drawer in which it was locked, and then followed as his enemy parted from Fawn at the mercantile and set off, his path leading out of town and toward the cemetery. He had hung many steps back, careful lest Eli turn and discover him; but the man’s thoughts had been elsewhere and he’d blindly led the way, stopping only occasionally to wipe his brow.

At the cemetery, Seth had hid in the thick woods, waiting patiently for his moment to strike; like a spider spreading out its web, waiting for the fly to deliver itself to his bite. He’d watched as Eli knelt before the markers; he had been too distant to make out the words Eli spoke, but he was mindful of the opportunity Eli’s back presented.

Do it now
, he thought.
Do it while he’s distracted!

He leveled the gun, his sweaty hand as steady as he could manage, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger. The pistol bucked hard in his hand, but he held it tight, staring through a puff of smoke, expecting to find Eli grasping at a chest wound; but to Seth’s chagrin he’d missed the chest and hit Eli’s arm.

Fighting a sickening feeling deep in his stomach, Seth tried to remain as calm as he could, waiting for his target to reveal himself from behind the tombstone where he had flung himself after the shot. But as the seconds ticked by, Seth began to worry. He’d watched Eli spring from his hiding spot and hurtle into the woods beyond, and he had fired as quickly as his finger could pull the trigger, but to no avail; he might as well have been cursing at the man for all the damage he had inflicted. There was no way in hell that he was going to follow Eli into the woods in the hopes that he’d achieve what he set out to do, so he left the bastard to his own devices.

Now I’m returning with my tail between my legs!

“Fine day for a walk now, ain’t it, Mr. McCarty!”

Seth could only grunt a reply.

The bank soon loomed before him. Without slowing for a moment, he shot in through the front door, passed where the fat sow of a teller peered at him through sleepy eyes, and was in his office, the door slamming shut behind him. He’d be alone until he wished otherwise; all his staff knew far better than to knock on his door when he was in a snit. Two fingers of brandy were soon burning a path down his gullet as he dropped the pistol back into its hiding place and collapsed into his desk chair, cursing his bad luck.

I did it for Fawn!

From the very first moment that he witnessed Fawn rushing to Eli’s side in front of the doctor’s, Seth knew he would have trouble. From the way she spoke that day to the way her eyes embraced Eli, Seth realized that Fawn Billings was still in love with Eli Morgan—or, to be more exact, that she had never fallen
out
of love, even after all these long years. Since then, when they were together, she talked of nothing but Eli, regaling her intended husband with tales of their youth, about how charming Eli could be, even about how he had spurned her advances. It had simply become more than Seth could bear.

Given enough time, there was no telling what could happen, what damage could be done. Fawn would keep on and on and on, needling and pestering until she finally managed to break down Eli’s defenses, getting him to understand that it was
she
that was meant for him and
he
for her. Then, all the hard work he had done, all the time he had spent building a life for himself at the bank, would be lost as if it were nothing more than smoke.
Gone in an instant!
And that, when it was so close to the old man’s finally retiring and his becoming the most powerful man in all Bison City, was something that would not do.

He poured another glass of liquor, and it quickly followed the first into the fiery pit of his stomach. Rising from his chair, Seth went over to the window and looked upon the town.

In all his life, he had never feared taking a risk; from his dealings with his drunk of a father to how he conducted his business at the bank, he’d taken every advantage offered to him without a second’s pause, ready to make his way or to die trying. What faced him now was no different. Whether she truly knew it or not, Fawn
belonged
to him. She had been blinded by the wily ways of that stupid cowboy who certainly didn’t give a good goddamn about her. In the end, the only impediment to life with Fawn, to the future he demanded, the only obstacle that stood in his way, was Eli Morgan. Just as Caleb Morgan had received exactly what he deserved, so, too, would his good-for-nothing brother! Once Eli had been eliminated, no one would ever again threaten what he had worked for.

“Next time you show yourself, you son of a bitch,” he threatened, already feeling better about what had happened in the cemetery, “I will kill you.”

Just like your goddamn brother.

Chester Remnick leaned heavily against the tavern’s long bar, his shoulders sagging and his eyes boring holes into the bottom of a glass of whiskey. Outside, dusk slowly crept up upon the day, the high sky stained a deep purple as the sun clung tenaciously to the horizon. Chester paid no heed to the changing of the guard; night and day had little meaning when you spent all your time in a bottle.

A dull, hot ache still pulsed its way up and down his leg. Even with the bullet removed, pain remained a constant, stinging reminder of what had happened to him at the hands of those whores. Sleep also eluded him; every time he closed his eyes, he could see the flash of the rifle quickly followed by the searing pain in his leg.

Still, no matter how badly his leg bothered him, it was far less than the pain of loss and embarrassment he’d suffered. It galled him no end that he’d been done in by a couple of women. If only the shooter had been a man! While the wound was still painful, he could have held onto the scraps of his dignity and kept his head up. But no amount of wishing would make it so; it had been two women who had brazenly taken what was rightfully his, had stolen his Mary.

When he had asked about for help in finding the runaway women, he’d had no trouble finding volunteers; there were enough men in his debt or in fear of him to stock a small army. But he’d seen the looks, the glances down at his leg mixed with a small curling of the corners of a mouth for him to know jokes were being made at his expense. He was certain that
someone
would find those bitches, but what price would he pay for that success? How much of the fool would he look?

Laughter sounded from behind him.

Chester turned slowly to glance at the tavern’s front door. A portly man, his belly hanging heavy over his trousers, his cheeks red with cracked blood vessels, staggered in and nearly fell. He would certainly have succeeded in pitching forward onto his face had it not been for the tramp on his arm. She wore a gaudy shade of green, her blond hair bouncing at her tits, and she was nearly as drunk as her companion. She seemed to be hanging on his every slurred word, even if she was only half his age.

In his own booze-induced haze, Chester had half a mind to slice the whore’s throat from ear to ear, so poisoned was he toward her gender. Instead, he settled for another belt of liquor.

Somebody was gonna pay, goddamn it!

Even when he lay on the floor of his shack, sick out of his mind with delirium from the gunshot, Chester had dreamed of the punishment he would dole out. The bitch who shot him would get what all fat sows got: be gutted and hung up to bleed out. The other one, well, she was a mite on the pretty side, so he couldn’t be blamed for having a bit of fun with her before finishing her off. Neither would get less than she deserved.

As for Mary . . .

Chester had come to believe that Mary’s leaving with those two cunts wasn’t anything less than a betrayal. Even though they’d most certainly coaxed her off, enough time had passed for him to believe she’d chosen
not
to return at all. Part of him wanted to do unto her what he’d inflict on the other two, but something held him back. In the end, he’d let her live, but she’d have to be punished; black and blue from head to toe.

“I reckon you’ll be wantin’ this,” a voice spoke from his side.

Chester turned to find a man loosely holding a scrap of paper in one hand. It took a moment for his eyes to clear through the liquor, but he finally managed to recognize the man as the telegraph operator at the train depot. When he’d spoken to the man earlier in the week, he’d given him explicit instructions of what to do if he were to receive a communication. On that occasion, the telegrapher hadn’t seemed so sour, but now it was a different matter entirely; annoyance was clearly written on his lined face at being made a delivery boy.

Chester waited for the operator to hand him the message, but he did not.

“I’ll be by to pay up later,” he mumbled.

The man simply stared.

“I said I’ll be by,” Chester said again, the edge of a threat lining his voice.

“Ain’t good enough.”

Drunkenly, he dug into his pockets and fished about for some coins. He finally managed to gather some which, not bothering to count, he pounded down on the counter as if they were nails to be driven.

The telegraph operator smiled at his impending payment, placed the message on the bar, and reached for the coins. His fingers had no more than touched metal when Chester snatched at his wrist. The grip was as tight as a vise; the man’s bones were like twigs waiting to be broken.

“Now listen to me, ya no good son of a bitch,” Chester snarled. He tugged on the soft flesh of the man’s arm until he relented and turned a sweat-beaded face toward his own. His bloodshot eyes held the operator’s, practically daring him to look away.

“Don’t ever think I ain’t a man of my word,” he threatened, the whiskey hot and sour on his breath. A few heads in the tavern turned to watch the show, but Chester paid them no mind; he had words that would be spoken, audience or none. “I ain’t the sort that takes to bein’ spoken to like a no-good bum. I done killed for less. Don’t doubt my word again, or it’ll be the goddamn last mistake ya’ll ever make.”

The telegraph man could only nod and shake, his fear making him mute.

“You understandin’ me?”

Chester held the man’s gaze a moment longer, finally making certain that there was no doubt as to the truth of his words. The operator’s lower lip quivered. Somewhere in the pools of the man’s eyes, he could see tears forming, from fear or pain he could not say. When he finally released his grip on the man’s wrist, the operator scurried away as if he were a rat, rubbing at his wound, never bothering to retrieve the payment he had once thought so precious. Chester let him go without even a look.

He plucked the message from the bar top and found it to be only two words:

BISON CITY

Suddenly, the pain in his leg that had at one time threatened to pull him under, to drown him, vanished. The cloud of drunkenness that he’d been living under over the last week broke as if it were a storm split by a radiant sun. Even the anger in his gut ceased to roil. A thin smile split his craggy face as he stared at himself in the mirror behind the bar.