Lynna Banning (22 page)

“You’re sure about all this, are you?”

Ben grinned at his deputy. “Not positive. Just sure. Only a fool believes everything his gut feel tells him.”

“Only a fool’d try to smoke a man out the way you plan to, Ben. And you never been a fool.”

“I’m not wrong very often, either,” Ben responded in a matter-of-fact voice. “That’s why we’re so unpopular with the jailbird set.”

Jeremiah studied the sheriffs sun-weathered face. “One big mistake is enough,” he said softly. “I got a bad feeling about this, that’s all. Wish I could talk you out of it.”

“You’d rather not ride straight into Copperblossom, is that it?”

“Hell, Ben, I got to go!” Jeremiah swallowed. “Just not at night, maybe. Trail’s faint, weather’s changeable as a woman’s heart, and…”

Ben grinned. “And Walks Dancing is at Widow Boult’s. I know. For God’s sakes, man, go tell her goodbye. We saddle up in an hour.” He rose, slapped six silver coins onto the table and strode through the saloon’s swinging doors.

Shaking his head, Jeremiah watched the tall man stride away. “Troublous,” he muttered under his breath. “Just plain troublous.”

Jessamyn laid her pencil aside, stretched her arms up over her head and massaged the tight muscles at the back of her neck. She’d been working since dawn, alternately writing stories out in longhand on pads of scratch paper and then, when her index finger cramped, moving to the high stool before the slanted worktable under the window, composing type in the stick and locking it into the frame.

The measured
tick-tick
of the wall clock sounded overloud in the quiet room. Almost midnight. She would not
admit to Ben that she had again worked, alone, into the late evening hours. The sheriff had enough on his mind as it was.

Her nerves on edge, she rose and paced back and forth in front of her desk. Every creak in the plank floor beneath her leather shoes made her start. Her pacing took her into the back room, where she stretched out full-length on the cot.

With a sigh, she let her lids drift closed. A newspaper editor carried a heavy responsibility, she reminded herself. “A newspaper,” her father had always said, “should be society’s mirror and a force for moral improvement.”

A tall order, Papa.
Feelings among the ranchers and townsfolk ran high on most issues, and she knew in her heart that one editor could not go to war alone. That’s what had gotten her father shot in the back.

Still, she couldn’t give up. The philosophy of one century was the common sense of the next, she remembered Papa saying. Jessamyn believed every word. Tired as she was, and uneasy ever since that rock had crashed through her front window, she mustered up her reserve of courage. She’d just have to do the best she could under the circumstances.

Opening her eyes, she gazed at the ceiling.
What do I myself value most?

The first image that floated into her mind was the two-story white frame house she shared with Cora Boult. Her own home. That represented security, the opportunity to be safe in this topsy-turvy world.

But after security, then what? She thought hard for a moment. She needed to work at something that mattered, something that made a difference in people’s lives—not just today and tomorrow, but generations from now, when she would be dead and gone.

And then her thoughts settled on Ben Kearney, and a silent finger touched her heart. Tall and capable, blunt spoken,
hurting on the inside yet oddly gentle, Ben Kearney was a man for all the challenges life offered. A man she.”

A burst of gunfire and a crash from the front office brought her upright, one hand clutching the throat of her white lace blouse.

“In here,” a gruff voice shouted. “Hurry it up!”

Jessamyn bolted off the cot and ran into the front office. Four men surrounded her printing press. With their hats pulled low, she didn’t recognize any of them.

“Just what are you doing here?” she demanded in the loudest voice she could command.

The apparent leader of the band ignored her. “Load it, boys,” he growled.

He’d been drinking, she realized. They’d
all
been drinking. The reek of whiskey hung in the air. One of the men could barely stand up.

“Get out of my office this instant!” Jessamyn ordered. She snatched up a type stick and took a step forward.

“Not so fast, ma’am. Me an’ the boys here have some business.”

“What business?” she snapped. She brandished the wooden stick in the face of the man closest to her. “The news office is closed. Now if you’ll kindly—”

The click of a pistol safety catch cut her words short. Horrified, she stared into the barrel of a blue steel revolver pointed straight at her chest.

Her heart hammering, she closed her mouth and lowered the type stick. “What is it you want?” she said as calmly as she could.

“Your press, ma’am, if you’d be so kind as to step aside. The Talking Paper,’ them Indians are callin’ it.”

“And what do you intend to do with it? Do any of you know how to run—”

She broke off as the gun barrel waggled.

“We’re not gonna run it, lady. We’re gonna get rid of
it! Lately it’s been printin’ some stuff certain parties don’t want to hear about.”

Jessamyn jerked. “You can’t do that. I own that press. I inherited it from my father. Just tell me what you men are upset about and I’ll—”

“’Fraid you won’t have a chance, ma’am.” At the leader’s signal, one man secured a rope around the black iron press and then three of them heaved and grunted until they got the machine through the doorway and into a dilapidated freight wagon.

Desperately, Jessamyn tried to memorize their faces. None of them looked even remotely familiar. The minute they were gone, she’d sit down and sketch their features. Of one thing she was certain—they weren’t going to get away with this, not as long as she had breath in her body.

She watched the wagon rattle off down the dark street and disappear around the corner. Oh, God, they were heading for the river.

Heartsick and shaking with fear, Jessamyn grabbed up a notebook and a fistful of pencils, stuffed them in the pocket of her navy sateen skirt. She wasn’t going to stay here one minute longer than necessary.

With trembling fingers she turned down the lamp wick, blew out the flame and marched out into the night air on legs that felt like rubber.

She stopped at the livery stable, where a light still shone.

“Gus,” she said in a determined voice when the stable owner answered her knock, “first thing tomorrow morning, I need a team of horses to pull my printing press out of the river.”

C
hewing one of the crumbly fresh biscuits Jessamyn had pressed on him, Ben urged his mount down the tortuous, rock-strewn trail into the upper end of the canyon, ominously quiet in the graying morning light. A niggling thought floated just at the edge of his mind.

Something didn’t fit. What would a man gain by supplying rifles to Black Eagle? What profit could a gunrunner hope to reap from an impoverished band of renegade Indians?

Something was wrong. He didn’t know what for sure, but over the years he’d learned to recognize the uneasy feeling in his gut when something didn’t add up. Under ordinary circumstances, once he knew what he had to do, he shut everything else out of his mind until he got the job done. This time his brain kept trying to make a connection that hovered tantalizingly just out of reach.

If a man stole cattle, why not just sell them and pocket the money?

He shot a glance back at Jeremiah. The deputy appeared to be half-asleep on the surefooted mare, the shapeless brown felt hat obscuring his face. Ben knew he wasn’t asleep. Underneath that battered hat ticked a brain more like a machine than a human organ. Jeremiah would be focusing his mind on the cabin layout, determining the angle
of the sun when they got within hearing range, weighing the odds. He’d be figuring how many guns they might be facing, and what kind. Long ago he’d learned never to underestimate Jeremiah.

They took the cutoff, circling around on the unused Indian trail to approach the cabin from the back, unseen. Ben hoped the shack would be deserted. Then he and Jeremiah could take their time, move in and set up a trap.

The trail narrowed to a faint path snaking through anklehigh goosebush and quack grass, the delicate stalks doubled over by the recent rainstorm. Behind him, Ben heard Jeremiah’s mare break into a canter, closing the distance between them.

“This place gives me the spooks, Ben. Always has.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Another mile and we can see the roof. Check for smoke.”

Jeremiah was silent.

“I saw only one rider,” Ben continued. “Plus a packhorse and a mule. Might have been more behind him, but I didn’t wait to find out.”

“Did he see you?”

Ben thought for a moment, nosing the gelding along with knee pressure as he twisted toward Jeremiah. “Don’t know. Maybe. We were quiet enough, but he could have seen one of the horses. No woodsmoke, though. We didn’t keep up the fire much past nightfall.”

Jeremiah chuckled. “Didn’t need it, most likely,” he said dryly.

Ben let the remark pass. Some things were best kept private, even from his lifelong friend.

“Ben.” Jeremiah brought his mount to a halt and pointed beyond Ben’s shoulder.

A hundred yards below them, a lazy curl of blue smoke wound into the sky. In the next moment the blackened metal chimney came into view, just visible through the screen of cedars and sugar pines.

“How many, do you think?”

“Can’t tell yet,” Ben replied. “Just beyond that tree stump, you can see the back side of the cabin. The horses will be tied there. The window’s around to the front.”

Jeremiah grunted and stepped his mare forward.

“Cover me,” Ben directed.

The deputy slid his shotgun out of the rifle scabbard and laid it across the saddle in front of him. Ben did the same. Then he nudged the gelding into motion.

Despite the evidence of smoke from the cabin chimney, Ben saw no sign of life, heard nothing but the raucous call of an emboldened blue jay and the nattering of a woodpecker in a sugar pine high above his head. He walked the gelding ahead a few yards, then dismounted. Jeremiah followed suit. With slow, deliberate footsteps, the two men crept noiselessly forward until the cabin came into full view.

Three animals—two horses and the pack mule—were tethered to a log hitching post. Ben breathed out in relief. Only one rider. They could take the man easily. He shoved a cartridge into the chamber of his rifle.

Motioning to Jeremiah, he crept around the side of the structure to the front wall and stationed himself beside the plank door. It was not bolted. The door hung slightly off center unless pinned from the inside by the thick iron rod.

Jeremiah moved into position, pulled back both hammers on his shotgun. Ben sucked in a lungful of air and held it. In the next instant he smashed one booted foot against the metal hasp and sprang into the entrance as the heavy plank door swung inward.

A dark, wiry man looked up from the weathered kitchen table as Ben strode into the room.

“Kinda early for a visit, aren’t ya, Sheriff?” Jack Larsen’s thin lips curled into a smile. “Sit down, why don’tcha, Ben? Coffee’s still hot.”

“I’ll stand.” Ben noted the three-day growth of dark stubble on the railroad man’s narrow jaw. “Been here long?”

“Yeah. Came in after that storm. How’d you know that?”

Ben didn’t answer. Instead, he gestured with his gun barrel at the four boxes of Spencer rifles stacked up in the corner.

“Where did those rifles come from?”

Larsen shrugged. “Beats me.”

Ben nudged his rifle against the top button of the man’s patterned silk vest. “Come on now, Jack. Give me some straight talk.”

Larsen’s dark eyes flicked to Jeremiah, then back to Ben. “I packed them in, goddammit.”

“Where’d you get them?”

Nervous, Larsen eyed the steel barrel poking his chest.

“Where?” Ben repeated, his tone hardening.

“They’re bought and paid for, Ben. What the hell does it matter where they came from?”

“It matters. Who bought them—you?”

Larsen shook his head.

“Who, then? Someone’s in this with you. I want to know who it is.”

“Can’t say,” the sharp-faced railroad man barked back. Again his gaze drifted from Ben to Jeremiah and back. Uneasy, he shifted position on the hard chair.

“Talk to me, Jack. Where were those rifles bought and who bought them? I think I know where the money came from—you rustled cattle from ranches all over the valley, didn’t you? You, or somebody working with you, drove them to Idaho to sell, then used the money to buy guns.”

He shoved the gun hard into Larsen’s sternum. “Give me some answers, Jack.”

Larsen squirmed. “Honest, Ben, I only took a few beeves at a time. I figured they wouldn’t hardly be missed. Anyway, it wasn’t my idea to buy guns. Hell, I needed the money for my railroad!” He sent a desperate look at Ben and then at Jeremiah, behind him.

“For your railroad,” Ben echoed. “You damn fool. You turned cattle thief to finance a railroad?”

The thin face whitened. “I had to, Ben. I ran out of money, and… Well, there’s twenty years of my life gone. I had to do something!”

“I’d say you made a very bad choice. You ended up with rifles, not railroad shares. I figure somebody pressured you to change your plans. Come on now, Jack—you know in the end I’m going to find out who it was.”

“I—I got a partner, it’s true. But that doesn’t mean I got to go down on his ship, does it? If I tell you who it is, will you go easy on me? Maybe let me ride out of here?”

Jeremiah’s gravelly voice rose at Ben’s back. “Why, you lousy son of a—You oughtta be shot!”

Larsen flinched. “No! Don’t shoot me! I—I…uh…won’t say any more. But look at it this way, Sheriff.” A crafty glint surfaced in the black eyes. “The dumber people think you are,” he said, pronouncing each syllable with care, “the more surprised they are when you kill them.” His gaze flicked to Jeremiah. “Isn’t that right, Jeremiah?”

Jeremiah said nothing.

Ben swore under his breath. “You killed Thad Whittaker, didn’t you, Jack?”

For a long minute, no one in the room moved. Then Larsen slumped forward, his face in his hands. “God help me, Ben, I didn’t mean to. The old man just never stopped writin’ those things in his newspaper. He was gettin’ closer and closer to the truth—I had to shut him up. I was only gonna threaten him, but Thad went yellin’ across the street to the sheriffs office, and—”

“You shot him in the back,” Ben finished for him. “I’ve got to take you in, Jack. You’ll hang for killing Thad.”

Larsen’s narrow shoulders sagged. “I’m not goin’ alone, you hear?” he muttered. He looked up, staring at something over Ben’s right shoulder. “There’s two of us, only one of you.”

Ben glared at the small man cowering at the table. It
made sense now. The pieces were falling into place. Larsen had a partner, someone who had blackmailed him into buying rifles instead of railroad stock. Someone who knew it was Jack who had murdered Thad Whittaker.

Something clicked into place.
There’s two of us.
The other person, Jack’s unnamed partner, was the one supplying rifles to Black Eagle. In exchange for what? The only thing the Indian chief had left of any value was…

He closed his eyes in anguish as the realization hit him. In that instant Larsen came to life, knocking Ben’s rifle aside. He grasped the gun barrel and yanked it out of Ben’s momentarily loosened grip.

Jeremiah.
It was Jeremiah who was supplying guns to Black Eagle. Ben suddenly felt sick.

A shotgun pressed against his backbone. “I had to have her, Ben,” his deputy rasped in his ear. “This was the only way.”

Ben jerked. “God in heaven, man, it couldn’t have been the only way. There’s got to be more to it than that.”

“Maybe,” Jeremiah breathed. “Yeah, just maybe.”

Larsen edged toward the open door, keeping the rifle pointed at Ben’s heart. “I don’t want to hang for Thad Whittaker’s killing. Your deputy was there—he could’a stopped it, but he didn’t. He let me walk away afterward, so the way I figure it, he’s in it as deep as me.”

He gestured with the rifle barrel. “So you just move on over to the stove, real easy-like.”

Ben took a single step forward. A sickening sense of futility washed over him. Of what value was law, or truth, or even love if it could so easily be swept away by greed? Simply disregarded by someone willing to betray a friend for gain? What value then lay in the bonds of human friendship, the kind he had known with Jeremiah all the years of his life, if in the end one man turned against another?

Ben loved Jeremiah like a brother, had thought of him as family ever since they’d fished and gone swimming and learned how to read together back as boys in Carolina. His
throat thickened. It was harder to swallow in some ways than Lorena had been.

He reached the stove and turned to face his deputy.

Jeremiah’s soft, chocolate brown eyes shone with tears. “I’d give anything if I hadn’ta done it, Ben. God knows I never wanted you to hurt over it.”

Ben studied the familiar square visage of his old friend. “It was because of Lorena, wasn’t it? Because you loved her, too, and I—When she wouldn’t have me, after the war, I left Carolina for good.”

Jeremiah nodded, his face stricken. “I loved her all my life, Ben. I never once woke up in the mornin’ without seein’ her face, rememberin’ how good she smelled.”

He shook his head as if to clear away a memory. “I couldn’t never have had her—I knowed that all along. I wasn’t the man you was, Ben. My daddy was poor. Miss Lorena, she never looked twice at me, even when we was growin’ up. You could’a convinced her to marry you, though. Stayed in Carolina after the war. And then I could’a just been near her sometimes, like when we was young.”

Ben shut his eyes for a brief moment. “Lorena didn’t want me after the war. She wanted land. Money. My God, how you must have hated me, Jeremiah. I never knew.”

The stocky man drew in an unsteady breath. “I didn’t hate you, Ben. God knows I wanted to—for years I wanted to. But I just couldn’t. I guess I loved both you and Miss Lorena ‘bout equal.”

He lowered the shotgun. “Then we found Walks Dancing by the river that day, and Black Eagle said he needed rifles. I figured another woman’d help me get over Lorena.”

Ben’s chest tightened.

By the doorway, Larsen made an abrupt motion. “What the. hell does all this talk matter, Jeremiah? Shoot him and get it over with!”

Jeremiah stiffened. “Shut up, Jack.”

“One of us has to do it!” the wiry man snarled. “If
you’re not up to it, I’ll—” he raised the rifle, pointed it at Ben’s chest “—do it myself.”

“Jack, no!”

Larsen’s forefinger squeezed the trigger, and a blaze of orange fire erupted from the barrel. Frozen, Ben waited for his body to feel the bullet. At that range, he was a dead man.

A hot, white pain blasted into his chest. For a fleeting moment he felt relief. It was over now. He thought of Jessamyn, hoped desperately she had conceived his child. He sank to his knees and braced himself for death.

Instead, Jack Larsen crumpled to the floor, a bloody hole gaping in his throat. Smoke curled out of Jeremiah’s shotgun.

The deputy hurled the weapon away from him and knelt over Ben. With his big, gentle hands, he stripped off Ben’s shirt, ripped away the blood-soaked underwear and pressed his fist hard against the gushing wound.

Ben groaned. “Damn, that hurts!”

“Won’t be the first time I tended a bullet wound in yer hide,” Jeremiah muttered. Hurriedly he tore Ben’s undershirt into strips and packed them against the flesh. Suddenly his large hand stilled. “But prob’ly be the last, won’t it?”

For a moment Ben could not speak. His gaze locked with his deputy’s. At last he nodded. “Jack?” he managed.

“Dead.”

“Thanks for that,” Ben murmured.

Jeremiah made no response. He bound Ben’s shoulder and immobilized his useless arm using his own belt as a sling. “Can you ride?”

“Not sure,” Ben replied through gritted teeth. “Maybe.”

Jeremiah caught him under the armpits. “Try,” he ordered.

Ben struggled to stand. A wave of dizziness drove him down to his knees.

“Again,” Jeremiah demanded.

“Can’t Ben gasped. “Leave me here. Go for help.”

The deputy snorted. “What makes you think I’d come back instead of skedaddlin’ to Colorado?”

In spite of his pain, Ben gave a tight laugh. “You wouldn’t dare. I know Colorado as well as you.”

“You make it mighty hard on a man, Ben.” Jeremiah’s voice shook, and he hardened it before he spoke again. “Somebody hits me, I’m gonna hit him back, even if he is a friend. You know that, Ben.”