Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (53 page)

      
“My baby-faced little brother here had a whole bag full of tricks. The theft of those shiploads of supplies always did strike me as a bit too clumsy to be your style,” he said to his father. “Then when you showed up at Leather Shirt's camp, I knew you had to be after Larry. The whole thing reeked of a trap.”

      
“A trap into which you fell neatly,” Lawrence replied with a death's-head grin, pressing his revolver against Roxanna's breast. “But you had to go and spoil my plans. I could’ve devastated old Jubal by wiping out his granddaughter and heir apparent—and done it in a way that would never have made him come looking for the murderer. I had to move fast before that stupid Darby slut told him you weren't Alexa Hunt.”

      
“You're a fool if you think the old Scot didn't already know the truth,” Andrew said with a flicker of amusement overlaying the chill in his expression. “I approached him with the information months ago. Men like us are beyond your ability to comprehend, you with your puling boyish jealousies and hurt feelings.” There was terrible anger in his voice but perhaps more...pain, loss, resignation? “Jubal told me he already knew and didn't give a damn—the same way I'd have bluffed him if our positions were reversed.”

      
“ ‘Boyish jealousies? Hurt feelings,’ is it?” Lawrence parroted with cunning malice. “It was pure bloody genius. I had you fooled the same as her. You saw me as weak and ineffectual because that's how I wanted you to see me.”

      
“You did have us all fooled, Larry,” Roxanna replied, as her eyes met Cain's.
What can we do?
He looked utterly calm, but she could sense the fear for her deeply buried inside of him. She could also feel the hate radiating from Lawrence and tried to step back but he rammed the gun barrel harder into the tender flesh of her breast. Cain moved a step closer while Lawrence's attention was diverted, then stopped when his brother looked at him again.

      
“I think I'd still have kept her to warm my bed after you were dead if not for your brat in her belly,” he said with sneering contempt, looking from Cain to their father. “At least I have principle enough not to claim a breed bastard.”

      
“I never acknowledged Cain,” Andrew replied quietly. “Perhaps that was a mistake. He has my brains and nerve, something you'll never possess. You take after your dear unlamented mother and her sly, grasping little clan. Greedy but gutless.”

      
The scathing words dropped like shattered icicles. Cain tensed, prepared to make a desperate lunge if his brother turned his rage on Roxanna, but Lawrence's attention now riveted on their father.

      
“Greedy? Gutless?” he echoed tonelessly. The gun jabbing Roxanna’s side moved slightly as Lawrence's eyes narrowed on the man who had dominated him all of his life. “You've belittled me, ridiculed me, preached, goaded, threatened...” His voice began to rise, growing thinner as his grip on the earlier calm slipped. “You played with me as if I were an insect in a glass jar!”

      
“I tried to make a man of you,” Andrew replied calmly.

      
Like Cain, he had moved closer. Now each of them stood within six feet of Lawrence on opposite sides of him. “But all you'll ever be is a spoiled little sneak thief. Collis Huntington will eat you alive.”

      
“You fucking son of a bitch!” Lawrence shrieked, turning the gun on his father.

      
As soon as the sharp pressure of the barrel moved, Roxanna lunged free of his grip, flinging herself toward Cain. Two shots rang out almost simultaneously. Lawrence took his father's bullet directly in the heart, falling back like a rag doll onto the hard dusty earth, his face expressionless in death. Andrew looked down at Lawrence's blue eyes, the only physical resemblance between them. “I may be a son of a bitch...but I know you were one, boy,” he whispered as his knees slowly buckled.

      
Dropping his gun, he crumpled while a red stain began to widen across his chest. Quickly sliding his own unfired .44 back into his holster, Cain caught him and lowered him gently to the ground, then began to unbutton his shirt to examine the wound.

      
Andrew shook his head with a thin smile. Faint flecks of blood foamed on his lips as he said, “No use. Funny...I guess he did have nerve after all...just not enough...brains... You always had...the...brains. You beat me...Cain...satisfied now?”

      
“No...not satisfied at all,” Cain replied quietly as his father's narrow aristocratic features grew slack in death. Sightless blue eyes stared up at the sky until Cain closed them.

      
Roxanna placed her hand gently on his shoulder, knowing that in spite of everything her husband grieved for the father he never had.

      
“I wonder if he intended to kill Larry all along,” he said to himself.

      
“Regardless, he saved our lives. I'm certain Larry would have killed us once he finished venting his spleen.”

      
“I never imagined how much he hated Andrew. I guess I was too wrapped up in my own hurt and anger to really see him.”

      
“He never let anyone see who he was, Cain. I honestly believed he was my friend.” Her voice choked. The harrowing experience of standing with death all around made her suddenly light-headed.

      
Cain stood up and took her in his arms. “When I heard those first shots I was terrified that I was too late. I came scrambling through the brush just after Andrew showed himself. Larry was holding you so close I couldn't risk a shot. I—”

      
A volley of shots echoed from over the rise. Roxanna flinched, but Cain rubbed her back to calm her. ‘That's probably Riccard Dillon taking care of Johnny Lame Pony's men. I wrung a promise out of him to hold back while I came in after you.”

      
She looked up into his eyes. “You always come after me, don't you?”
Say you love me, Cain.

      
He brushed a stray curl from her cheek as he smiled at her. “Yeah, I'll always come after you, Roxanna. The minute I found out from Dillon that his men had turned you over to Larry, I rode hell-bent to reach you.”

      
She waited expectantly, but just then the sound of approaching hoofbeats made him turn from her. “That's probably Dillon's men, but let's not take chances,” he said, taking her arm and hurrying into the cover of the rocks a few yards away.

      
When the blue uniforms of several cavalrymen became visible, Cain stepped out into the open, followed by Roxanna. Dillon and several of his men reined in their horses. Riccard looked around the campfire at Johnny Lame Pony and the Powells. “Christ, looks as if you had your own small war here.”

      
“You get all of those ‘Indian raiders’?” Cain asked.

      
The colonel threw up one hand in admission of his mistake. “You were right. They were working for Powell,” he replied, looking down at Andrew.

      
“Not the old man—Larry,” Cain corrected.

      
Dillon's world-weary countenance gave way to an expression of frank incredulity. “That greenhorn kid?”

Even in death Lawrence Powell would receive no respect.
      
“Yeah, that greenhorn kid.”

* * * *

      
A detail of Dillon's troops saw to the burial of the renegades. The Powells were wrapped carefully in blankets and strapped to their horses for the long journey back to civilization.

      
“Will you take them to San Francisco?” Roxanna asked as they rode with the column later in the day. In a few hours they would reach the railhead at Rock River.

      
Cain shrugged. “I guess there's no one else.” He smiled at the sad irony of it all. “He was always so damn careful to keep anyone from finding out that I was his son, Larry's half-brother. Now I'm the only blood kin left to see to their burial.”

      
“I'll go with you.”

      
He looked at the dark smudges beneath her eyes. She had been through so much in the past weeks and most of it was his fault. What would he do if something happened to her and their child? He refused to think about it. “You need to rest, not spend the next five days on overland coaches and trains.”

      
“I'm perfectly fine,” she remonstrated.

      
Cain shook his head firmly. “You're carrying our baby and you're exhausted. I want you to spend at least a week sleeping in a real bed while I'm away. That big place Jubal had built in Cheyenne ought to be finished by now.”

      
An expression of dismay crossed her face, followed by uncertainty. “I don't know...” she said softly, still feeling the sting of hurt the old man's scheming with Cain had caused.

      
“You have to make your peace with him, Roxanna. He was a lot less guilty than me. I came to him and offered to marry you.”

      
“And he made a deal to get rid of the embarrassment of the sullied woman he believed was his granddaughter.”

      
“If that was the way he felt about you, he could have disavowed you when he found out you weren't Alexa,” he countered. “I think he cares for you more than he ever did any of his family.”

      
She sighed. “Perhaps, but whatever he feels for me, I do owe him enough to face him and sort this mess out.” Right at that moment she was too weary to even feel, much less think.

      
They left Dillon and his command at the Union Pacific railhead and boarded a night train eastbound for Cheyenne after sending a wire to Jubal. In the absence of his chief of operations, the Union Pacific director was overseeing the work crews on the Utah line. Cain's message explained what had transpired since Roxanna had left him. Jubal wired back at the following stop saying he was returning on the next train east to see that Roxanna was comfortably ensconced in his new house while Cain took care of family obligations. Jubal included a cryptic postscript indicating that Isobel Darby should no longer trouble them.

      
Late the following day Cain stopped the small rig he'd driven from the railway station in front of the impressive new white frame structure on the outskirts of Cheyenne. The house was three stories high with a large tower on one side and beautifully wrought gingerbread trim on the porch railings. The shutters and latticework were painted charcoal gray, giving a clean pristine accent to the house. A pair of large bay windows with leaded glass panes in rich hues of ruby and deep blue gleamed in the evening light.

      
“Almost as big as a Scottish castle,” Cain said as he helped Roxanna down from the buggy.

      
“All it lacks is a moat,” she replied, eyeing the immense tower with foreboding. It was made of granite blocks hewn in the Medicine Bow Mountains. It loomed over the house.

      
They walked up to the wide wooden porch and climbed the steps. A smiling Li Chen opened the front door and bowed in welcome as they entered. Chattering excitedly in Cantonese, he explained to Cain that Jubal had sent Roxanna’s trunks here as soon as the house was finished, along with a skeleton crew of servants to wait on them when Cain returned with his ‘missy.’

      
After thanking Chen, he turned back to his wife. “He'll have a bath drawn for you and supper waiting as soon as you're ready. They're holding the westbound cars at the depot until I return, so I'd better go. Get some rest while I'm gone. Jubal will be here in a couple of days.” He drew her into his arms for a kiss.

      
She held him tightly as he brushed her lips tenderly. “We've had no time alone to talk since that awful renegade Sioux came riding into Leather Shirt's camp—”

      
“We'll have all the time in the world when I return from San Francisco—to talk...and do other things,” he replied with a smoldering smile.

      
She felt a tremor of urgency but dismissed it. This was not the time to explain her dream or for him to describe his Medicine Lodge vision. That must be a very special moment of sharing between them.

      
Cain could feel her disquiet—or was it something in the house? That was absurd. It was brand new. No spirits haunted it. He looked at her quizzically, a frown creasing his forehead. “Roxy, is something wrong?”

      
She felt a queer malaise stealing over her, almost as if someone had brushed her with a silk scarf, then vanished into the gathering darkness outside. “No, it's nothing, just a flight of fancy common to pregnant women. Hurry home, Cain.”
I love you.

      
He raised both her hands in his and kissed the palms, then drew her back into his arms for another kiss. “Rest well while I'm gone.”

      
She stood silhouetted in the front doorway until he had driven the rig back down the street. The peace and quiet would do her good and Jubal would watch over her, protective as a bulldog. Cain was certain of that. Still the premonition of danger would not leave him as he boarded the westbound train.

Chapter Twenty-Four

      
Jubal climbed out of his rig and motioned for the driver to take it around back to the stables, then stood looking up at his new home. He was making a fresh start here in the West. Railroading was in his blood. Steel manufacturing, textiles, shipping, all the other business ventures he had established back East no longer held his interest. Chuckling, he wondered if Cain would consider taking the helm of his highly diversified holdings.

      
Jubal doubted it. Building railroads to crisscross the West from California to Canada, Missouri to Mexico, that was what his young protégé wanted. They would do it together, for in Cain he had at last found the business associate he had hoped for when his daughter wed that shiftless aristocrat Terrence Hunt. They would sell out his eastern interests for a tidy profit and pour it all into railroad expansion and subsidiary industries out here.