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“Then I’ll get rid of Calder. That’s what we should of done in the beginning, then we wouldn’t be wonderin’ where we’re gonna put all them cattle.”
“You can forget about the cattle. I’ve sent Webster a wire instructing him to unload them and get the best price he can.” He moved to his desk and dabbed the handkerchief to his forehead again.
“You did what?” The gray eyes narrowed to cold slits.
“I told him to sell,” Boston repeated, and began moving papers around on the desk. “We’re going to have to pull back, lie low for a while, and hope to hell all this blows over.”
“What about Calder? Ain’t you goin’ after his range?”
“Forget about Calder. We’re leaving him alone.” Boston snapped the order.
“You’re scared to take him on face to face, aren’t ya? That’s why ya hired me to do your dirty work for you. ‘Cause you ain’t got the goddamned guts to do it yourself,” Janes spat.
Incensed, Boston struck him across the face with the back of his hand. “That’s enough out of you!”
Janes’s hand trembled on his gun. “You ever do that to me again and I’ll kill you.”
Boston drew back, staring at the faithful dog that had suddenly showed signs of turning on him. He pivoted away. “Go back to the ranch. And try not to foul up anything else,” he added sarcastically.
For a long second Janes wavered with indecision before he went to the door and turned the lock. As he opened the door and breathed in, he smelled the fear in the air. He cast a look at the sweating man by the desk. He felt nothing but contempt for Judd Boston, who talked big and tough until someone threatened him, then cowered like a whining pup with no teeth.
“Better lock the door, Boston. The boogeyman might get ya,” Loman Janes taunted with a snicker. He didn’t bother to shut the door when he left.
He heard it close and the key turn, and it deepened his disgust. When he reached the street, he untied his horse from the hitchrack and swung onto the saddle. Instead of riding out to the ranch, Janes angled his horse down the street to the nearest saloon. It didn’t matter what he’d been told to do. He’d get to the ranch when he damned well pleased.
There were three other Ten Bar horses tied outside the saloon. Janes put his horse in alongside them. He needed a drink to get the bad taste out of his mouth, and he needed to think. And he wasn’t all that good at thinking. He was a man of action and reaction, black and white.
Somebody was banging away on a piano as Janes entered the saloon. Stepping to one side of the doorway, he paused to look the place over. Raucous laughter came from a back corner. Off to the side, a poker game was in progress. A half-dozen cowboys were standing at the bar. Smoke hung over the room like a haze, mingling with the smell of alcohol.
A cowboy at the end of the bar accidentally kicked a tarnished cuspidor sitting on the floor and cursed. “Somebody better move this damned thing before I spit in it.” He turned and spat a stream of yellow juice onto the floor.
Janes spotted Trace Reynolds and another Ten Bar cowboy halfway down the bar. He crossed the saloon and shouldered his narrow body in to the bar beside them. “Whiskey,” he told the bartender.
“Didn’t know you was comin’ to town, Janes,” the Texan Reynolds drawled with mild interest.
“I had to talk to Boston.” Janes didn’t say he’d been summoned. “Might be trouble with Calder.” He lifted the glass and threw part of the contents down his throat, then slid a cold gray look at the cowboy with the oiled holster.
“Boston step on his toes again?” Reynolds asked with an easy smile.
“Ya could say that.” Janes finished his drink and ordered another.
The town sat before them, a sprawl of dark shapes with little squares of light spilling from them. Benteen straightened in the saddle and winced from the smarting wound in his side. With the nest of renegades wiped out, that left only the man that hired them. He glanced at his little band of riders—Jessie, Woolie, Bob Vernon, and Bull Giles. The rest he’d sent to the ranch with the wounded.
“Woolie, ride ahead and see if Boston’s buggy is behind the bank,” he ordered. “We’ll meet up with you in front of the land office.”
With a nod, Woolie swung his horse away from the main road to enter town by one of the back streets. The darkness soon swallowed him up, with only the receding sound of his horse’s hooves marking his path into the night.
Benteen nudged the tired grulla forward, letting it settle into a slow walk. The rage had gone out of him. The fight at the river had slaked his thirst for revenge. Now it was just a job to be finished. He was hardcaught in a pattern that didn’t leave him any alternative. It was the way of things until time changed them, if it ever did.
Lorna had been on the porch that ran the length of the two-story house, conferring with the crew foreman of the finish carpenters when she’d seen the straggling band of cowboys ride into the ranch, some of them slumped in their saddles. She had murmured a quick excuse and hurried down the knoll to meet them. Their numbers were fewer than those that had left. Alarm had rushed through her when she failed to see Benteen among them.
Rusty and Shorty were already on hand to help the wounded from their horses when Lorna reached them. Shorty had kept muttering, “I shoulda been there.”
Cornering Barnie, she demanded, “Where’s Benteen? Where’s the rest of them?”
“Nothing to worry about. He’s all right,” Barnie had assured her. “They went into town after Boston.”
Webb had caught at her hand, troubled by the sight of all his injured friends. “What happened, Mom? How did they get hurt?”
