AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I didn’t know I was supposed to care,” Boone replied with sarcasm. “But he couldn’t have been hurt all that bad. Tandy saw him behind the wheel of his pickup, driving out of the lot. Odds are, he got home under his own power.”
With that concern eliminated, Max’s thoughts went down another road. “I wonder why Echohawk went to Tillie’s in the first place,” he mused aloud. “Was he hoping to invite the kind of trouble he got? I wonder.”
“Now you’re giving him credit for being smarter than he is.” Boone smiled without humor and downed some more of his hangover cure.
“Am I?” Max countered in open doubt. “Then maybe you can tell me what he was doing there? And don’t give me any nonsense about just stopping in for a beer. Echohawk didn’t strike me as the type who goes carousing just because it’s Saturday night—like somebody else I won’t bother to name.”
Boone reacted to the none-too-subtle dig with more sarcasm. “He had a drink there, all right, with Dallas.”
“Dallas,” Max repeated and frowned. “You mean Empty Garner’s granddaughter?”
“There’s no one else around here named Dallas that I know of,” he retorted and drained the tall glass, ice clinking against its sides.
“I wonder how he met her,” Max murmured thoughtfully.
“Could have been the café, or the feed store—or both.” As far as Boone was concerned, it didn’t really matter.
“She works both places, doesn’t she?” Max said in idle recollection. “It’s our bad luck that he hooked up with the Garners so soon after he hit town. But it could explain why Echohawk was so quick to look our direction for the source of the Cee Bar’s problems. It’s odd though,” he added on further thought.
“What is?”
“Let me put it this way—Empty will likely go to his grave still nursing a grudge against us, but I thought the girl had let go of the past.”
“She met with Echohawk, didn’t she?” Boone reminded him.
“But why at Tillie’s? Why at a place where she had to know we would be told about her meeting?”
Boone shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t care if we know.”
“If she doesn’t, she will,” Max stated with a finality that suggested that matter was settled in his mind. He picked up his spoon and dipped it into the oatmeal. “As for the three men who jumped Echohawk, right after dinner you can go tell them to pack their bags and head for the feedlot outside Plano. I don’t want them showing their faces around here until all their bruises have disappeared.”
“If you say so.” But Boone regarded it as a needless precaution. “You should know, though, that they’re hoping for a bonus.”
“I’d say they’ve already gotten one. They aren’t fired. Maybe they’ll get the message to do what they’re told—and nothing more than that.” Max scooped more oatmeal into his spoon. “What have you learned about Echohawk’s hired man? Is he from the Triple C?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then find out,” Max ordered with thinning patience. “I want to know who he is, what he drives, and where he’s staying. And I want to know it yesterday!”
“I wish you’d make up your damned mind,” Boone muttered, pushing the words through tightly clenched teeth. “First you’re telling me to do something about that semi load of hay he’s got coming. Now it’s the hired man.”
Max threw him a scornful look. “What’s the matter? Can’t you do two things at once?”
The words were a verbal slap. “Of course I can!” Boone asserted in a voice that vibrated with pent-up fury.
“Then do it,” Max snapped in return.
Saddle leather creaked, a companion sound to the muffled thud of hooves on hard-packed ground. Overhead, the afternoon sun sat at a high angle, its yellow glare shining in a milk-blue sky. An idle breeze wandered over and down the Texas hills, its breath carrying the warmth and faint tang of the gulf shore.
Quint sat easy in the saddle, his hand light on the reins. The bruise along his cheekbone was a colorful swirl of purple and green, but the swelling had gone down. A simple bandage covered the cut above his eyebrow. Other than a lingering puffiness around one corner of his mouth, he looked none
the worse for his run-in with the trio in Tillie’s parking lot.
A quick drumming of hoofbeats came from his right. Quint glanced that way as Empty Garner flushed two cows out of a draw and sent them trotting after the rest of the herd. Twenty feet beyond him was the fence line, every inch of it without cover and empty of cattle.
His job finished, Empty reined his horse away from the cows and took aim on Quint, lifting his mount into a lope to rejoin him. Quint pulled up to wait for him and dug the notepad and pencil out of his pocket to add the last two animals to his tally.
With a short tug on the reins, Empty checked his horse’s gait and swung alongside Quint. “Like it or not, that’s the last of them in this pasture.” He eyed the marks on the notepaper in Quint’s hand. “Is the tally the same as the first?”
