Lady of the Gun (28 page)

"Mmmm?" she responded lazily
.

"Have you ever thought about what your family would
have wanted for you if they'd lived?" he asked carefully.

"Sometimes," she said.

"Well?"

"Mother would have liked to see me get more education.
She wanted that for all of us, especially the boys, but for Becky and me, too."

"She must have been a re
markable woman."

Cass turned and gave him a grateful
smile. '"She was. She had to be. We kids were a handful."

"You were never naughty," he teased.

"Not me," she agreed playfully. "I painted one whole side of our barn pink once," she said. "At least as high up as I could reach."

B
rett grinned. "Why on earth would you do such a thing?"

"The boys dared me to. They were a
lways daring me to do one crazy thing or another."

"And your father? What did he want for you?"

"To get married and settle down. To give him twenty grandchildren."

"Twenty?"

"He'd have loved it. He loved kids."

"But you're not married, and you didn't get educated,"
he said.

Cass stared at the ground
. "Things changed. I had something else to do."

"Don't you ever regret it?"

She met his gaze. "What are you getting at?"

"What if you never get the last man, Cass? What then?
Will there come a day when you say it's over?"

"I
will
get the last man. That's when it'll be over."

"
But.."

"No buts. It'll be over when I get the
man with the silver gun." She stood up and walked away. "I'm going to visit my family," she said over her shoulder.

Brett got
up and followed her, catching up as they passed the burned barn. "I'll help you get started on cleaning this up in the morning," he said, dropping the subject of her future for the time being.

Cass gave him a sidelong glance. "I don't expect manual
labor from you," she said.

“
I know, but you need the help, and as long as I'm here I might as well keep myself busy."

"Suit yourself."

Cass knelt beside her mother's grave a short time later. She'd managed to wipe all the charcoal from the headstone, but the flowers and grass were still missing. "I'll make your grave pretty again, Mama," she whispered. Staring at the words on the stone, "Beloved wife and mother," she felt all the tears she'd never cried pressing to get out. She would never let them. She couldn't let herself start.

Seeing Brett on the hill, she gazed at her father
’s grave. "You'd have liked him, Papa. He's a good man," she said. Letting her head fall forward, she pictured her little sister. "You would have been fifteen this summer, Becky. The age I was when you were murdered." She sighed and glanced once more at Brett, sitting patiently on the hill. "I'll bet you'd have had a crush on him," she said.

She sat for a while longer, remembering and talking
, then she said her goodbyes and started back up the hill. It was almost completely dark when she reached the top.

"Okay?" Brett asked. He was always surprised to see her
come back from the graves dry-eyed.

"Fine," she answered.

The sound of the first shot rang through the air. Brett grabbed Cass and threw her to the ground, covering her body with his own.

"Brett, where did it co
me from?" she yelled.

Brett raised his head slightly and looked around them.
More shots broke the night's silence, and it took him a second to locate their source. It took a few more to discover they weren't the target. "The cattle!" he shouted.

Cass struggled beneath Brett. "Let
me up!"

Brett pushed himself up quickly, bringing Cass with him.
“They're after the cattle, Cass,"

"Let's
go," she said, taking off at a dead run toward the Losee.

Brett ran after her, anger welling up in his chest.

"Remember to jump," Cass said as they neared the wash.

Brett flew over it with her this time, nearing the Losee,
and ducking under the trees for cover. "Stay down and follow me," he said.

More shots rang out, and Cass could hear the pained
bawling of some of her cattle. "The bastards are shooting my cows!" she hissed. "Damn them to hell!"

Crawling on all fours, Brett led the way along the bank
of the river toward the sound of the shots. Pulling his gun, he got to a place where he could see the dark shadows of several riders on the opposite bank.

Cass pushed aside some brush and saw the men o
n horseback. Drawing her gun, she began firing. Her gunshots exploded through the dark. Brett took her cue and pulled the trigger.

"Jesus Christ, I'm hit!" one voice yelped.

"Someone's over in those trees! Hell, I ain't gettin' paid enough to get shot at," another voice said.

Cass continued to shoot until her gun was emp
ty. She then pulled the other.

"Oh, God, I'm bleedin'!" someone else shouted. "Let's
get the hell out of here."

"
Like hell," another voice ordered. "You all get down and fire back."

"I can't tell where the shots are comin' fro
m," a voice wailed.

"Brett, it's getting too dark to see," Cass whispered.

"Wait until you see the report when they fire. You'll be able to tell where they're at," he told her.

"I don't care what the boss says,
I'm gettin' out of here!" someone yelled.

Cass heard
hoof beats retreating in the distance.

"I'm gettin' outta here, too. Hell, I think Charlie's dead!"

More hoof beats retreated.

The zing from a bullet overhead kept Cass and Brett
down. Cass pinpointed where it carne from and fired again.

"You can stay and get killed if you want to. I'm leavin'!"
another voice called.

"Damn you. Damn you all to hell, you cowards."

"We was only hired to shoot some mangy cows. We wasn't hired for no gunfight!" Another rider left.

Cass held her breath. Brett listened intently. Minutes
passed before they heard what they thought was the last rider take off.

Cass started to stand up, but Brett pulled her back down.
"Me first," he said.

"Don't be ridiculous." She started to stand again, only to
feel Brett's strong fingers on her arm.

"Sit your ass down and wait until I say it's safe to get
up," he ordered her.

Cass's eyes widened with surprise. "So you can get shot
instead of me?" she demanded.

"Exactly." Brett didn't wait to listen to any more of her
arguments. Standing slowly, he watched for movement in the dark. After a few minutes, he signaled to Cass to let her know she could move. "Is there any way across this river?" he asked when she stood beside him.

“
Yes. There are some large stones farther up river that we used when we were children," she told him.

"L
ead the way, but stay low. Someone might still be playing possum over there."

Cass slipped
through the trees and brush with Brett right behind her, and soon they were crossing the river. When they reached the other side, Brett took the lead, stopping now and then to listen. When they finally reached the site of the shoot-out, they found several of Cass's cows lying dead in the grass. They also found two men. One dead, one moaning from his wounds. The other gunmen had fled.

"Cass, go back to the house and get my horse. We've got
to get this man to the doctor. He's gut-shot."

"Ask
him who hired him, Brett."

Brett knelt beside the injured man. "Mister, what's your
name?"

The man just cont
inued to moan.

Cass fell to her knees next to him
. Touching him on the forehead, she leaned over and looked into his eyes. "Who are you? Who hired you to do this?" she demanded.

"Cass, go get my horse," Brett told her again
.

"I need to get him to talk, Brett," she answered.

"We will, but we can't ask him anything if he dies on us."

"All right." Cass stood up reluctantly and turned back
toward the river. She'd only gone a few feet when Brett called her back.

"What is it?" she said,
running the short distance back to where he knelt beside the man.

"Never mind," he said solemnly
. '"He's dead."

"Damn it," Cass swore. She turned her back on the body
and stared up at the newly emerging stars in frustration.

"Damn it!" she shouted to the heavens.

"Cass," Brett said softly.

She turned back around.

"Do you recognize either man?"

She walked back to the man who'd just died
. Searching his features in the dark, she shook her head. "Not this one. I'm sure of it""

"What about the other one?"

She went to his side. A bullet had found the side of his head. She looked at what was left of his face. "No, I've never seen him before, either." Twisting to face Brett once more, she grimaced. "Tylo hired men from out of town to do his dirty work," she said.

"If it was Tylo."

"These sure as hell aren't any of my neighbors, Brett," she fumed. "And my neighbors can't afford to hire guns."

Brett glanced at the bodies. "Maybe you're right," he
murmured.

Chapter Fourteen

A week later Cass stepped out the front door of her house to see the first of the townspeople arriving for the barn raising. She was still astonished that it was happening, but she couldn't have been more pleased, not for herself so much as for her uncle who'd stopped drinking completely since the preparations began.

“
Looks like things are getting started," said Brett behind her.

"
Looks like," she answered, glancing over her shoulder at him.

They'd
spent a grueling week tearing down what was left of the old barn and dragging away the burned wood. They'd also hit a dead end on trying to identify the members of the raiding party who'd been killed. No one, it seemed, had any idea who the two men were. Hunt Tylo had laughed in their faces when they’d questioned him about it.

"So
ony's been tending the beef all night," Cass remarked, looking to where a whole cow was roasting over an open fire.

"
It smells good."

"He told me he uses some kind of secret sauce to season
the meat while it cooks," she said.

Brett studied Cass's profile. He was worried about her.
She'd worked hard with him on the old barn this past week, she had helped with the preparations for the barn raising, and she'd even called on Mrs., Wettle to let her know that one of the cows killed in the raid would be roasted for the meal, but while she'd done these things she'd seemed a million miles away. And often he'd seen a profound sadness filling her beautiful eyes. Even now, with people arriving and shouting their greetings, she seemed distracted. He longed to get back to where they'd been before the barn had burned. He'd been sure they were close to coming to some kind of terms on how they felt about each other. Now Cass seemed to have distanced herself from him, and during the past week, whenever he'd tried to broach the subject of a relationship, or tried to touch her affectionately, she'd managed to pull away or change the subject. His heart ached with frustration. "Are you all right, Cass?" he asked softly, willing to try again.

"Sure, I'm fine," she answered,

"You've been acting . . . different," he said, placing his hands at the base of her neck.

Shrugging
her shoulders, she began to walk away from him. "You're imagining things," she told him.

Brett
took one long step and stopped her with a touch on the arm. "I don't think so. Won't you talk to me?"

Cass gazed up into the gray of his eyes. "There's nothing
to talk about." She gently pulled her arm away from his fingers. "I'd better go get everyone started," she said, once more walking away from him.

Cass saw the hurt in Brett's eyes before she left him. She
felt a pang of guilt over it, but she couldn't yet put what she'd been feeling into words. She was beginning to think she'd never catch Tylo, and this doubt had filled her with a sense of loss. Her sole purpose for existing the last five years had been to exact revenge for the death of her family. If she wasn't able to complete the task, what would she do, just sit on her ranch for the rest of her life and feel that she'd failed them? Brett's entrance into her life didn't change things. She wouldn't let him or anyone else stop her from finishing what she'd started.