Bleeding Texas (13 page)

Samantha couldn't help but notice that Trace Holland didn't come back to the Rafter F with Nick. She didn't really care where the gunman had gotten off to, but his absence made her curious. If she hadn't seen him sneaking around with Nick, she never would have given it a second thought.

But were they really sneaking around? she asked herself that night. She had seen them ride away together, sure, but they had done so openly.

Maybe she was just trying to distract herself from the fact that Lee was gone and she wouldn't see him for the next couple of weeks. That weighed even more heavily on her mind than Trace Holland's disappearance.

A couple of days later, when she was passing by the open door of the ranch office and saw Nick sitting at the desk with some papers in front of him, she decided to indulge her curiosity and went in.

“Nick, can I ask you a question?”

He didn't glance up from the papers, which were covered with printing and numbers. Samantha didn't know anything about how the ranch was run and didn't really care to know, even though she didn't think it was fair that her father intended to leave the spread to Nick and Danny and cut her out of it.

“What is it?” Nick asked.

“I noticed that Trace Holland hasn't been around the past couple of days. What happened to him?”

That made Nick look up. In fact, his reaction was rather sharp, Samantha noticed.

But his tone was deliberately casual as he said, “What do you care about Trace Holland?”

“I didn't say I did. I'm just curious, that's all.”

She started to add that she had seen Holland riding off with Nick but then decided not to reveal that.

Nick waved a hand and said, “He drew his time and left, that's all. I don't know where he went and don't care.”

Again, Samantha thought her brother was acting a little too disinterested. Plenty of times, she had seen Nick's reaction when he really didn't care about something, and this was different.

“I was just curious,” she said again.

Nick grunted and looked back down at the papers.

“A saddle tramp like Holland's not worth being curious about,” he said. “Forget him.”

“Of course.” Samantha hesitated. “What's that you're looking at?”

A slightly annoyed expression appeared on his face. He wasn't accustomed to her asking questions about ranch business.

“I was just figuring what it would take to expand our herd. How much money . . . and how much range.”

“I didn't know you were planning to expand the herd. I haven't heard Pa say anything about it.”

“I'm just considering the possibility. Haven't bothered him with it yet.”

“Oh. Well, that makes sense, I guess.”

He couldn't conceal his impatience as he asked, “Was there anything else, Samantha?”

“No, I guess not. I'm sorry I bothered you, Nick.”

“No bother. I've just got things to do, that's all.”

She left the office, but she was more puzzled now than she had been when she went in.

She didn't like the idea that Nick was trying to hide something, and she especially didn't care for a gunman like Trace Holland being mixed up in whatever it was.

Despite what she had told Nick, she was more determined than ever now to find out what was going on.

And while she was doing that, maybe she wouldn't be thinking about how much she missed Lee . . .

 

 

The bunkhouse had always been forbidden for Samantha to enter. Her father didn't want her becoming involved with any of the cowboys who worked for him. She could do much better for herself than that, he had declared, and he would see to it that she did.

Once his feud with the Creels had heated up and he began hiring men of unsavory character for their gun-handling skills, Ned Fontaine was even more determined that his daughter wouldn't associate with any of them. She was allowed to be around the barn and the corrals during the day, but that was all.

So she couldn't try to find out from any of the hands if they knew where Trace Holland had gone. They would profess ignorance or just refuse to answer her, and then there was a good chance they would go to Nick or her father and tell them that she was asking questions about things that were none of her business.

That left her with only one option.

Spying.

She spent a lot of time in the barn, ostensibly taking care of the horses she used for riding, but her real purpose was eavesdropping on the hands when they came in to get something from the tack room or tend to their own mounts.

The Rafter F had its own blacksmith shop, since several of the men were qualified to work as farriers, and Samantha made a point of being around there whenever some of the cowboys had gathered for one reason or another.

The members of the crew took their meals at a long table in a wing built onto the bunkhouse. The weather was still nice enough that the windows in that dining hall were usually open, so Samantha managed to linger just below one of them one evening while the hands had supper.

She hadn't heard anything worthwhile, though, just some bawdy jokes that made her ears burn with embarrassment, before Danny stepped out onto the porch of the main house and called, “Hey, sis, where are you? It's time for supper!”

Samantha scurried through the twilight shadows and circled around to make it look like she was coming from the barn.

She was glad she hadn't overheard the cowboys making any ribald comments about
her
. She was sure they did from time to time, but hearing them might have been too much to bear.

“Where you been?” Danny asked in a surly voice as she came up to the porch. “Pa says you're always off somewhere these days, instead of underfoot like you usually are.”

She figured Danny had added that part about her being underfoot. It didn't sound like something her father would have said. But Danny, despite being younger than her, had always acted like he considered her a pest.

“I was just out in the barn brushing Sweetie Pie,” she said, referring to the white horse she rode more than any of the others.

Danny snorted.

“Damn stupid name for a horse,” he muttered. “Reckon you like those horses more'n you like people.”

“More than
some
people,” she said, not bothering to disguise the tart tone that sprang into her voice.

“Then why don't you just marry one of 'em? Seems to me you got a better chance of doin' that than you do of findin' a real husband.”

“Oh!” Samantha suppressed the urge to slap him. That would just cause more trouble than it was worth. “You're terrible, Danny Fontaine.”

“Just honest, that's all,” he said with a smug, self-satisfied grin.

She couldn't tell him about Lee Creel and how she hoped that the two of them would be married someday. Instead she said, “I don't see you out looking for a wife. You're too busy dallying with painted saloon hussies to court a respectable young woman.”

“I'll get around to it in time, don't you worry. Right now I still got wild oats to sow.”

“Maybe that's how I feel.”

He snorted again and said, “Girls don't have wild oats, stupid.”

Ned Fontaine appeared in the doorway. He said, “What are you two wrangling about now? I sent you to find your sister, Danny, not argue with her.”

“There she is,” Danny said, pointing. “I found her.”

“Well, come in and eat supper before it gets cold. Good Lord, I'm surrounded by barbarians.”

That evening, after she had eaten, Samantha realized that her spying on the ranch hands was misdirected. It would just be a fluke if she happened to overhear a conversation between any of the men about Trace Holland's whereabouts. Most of them probably didn't have any idea where the gunman had gone.

But there was one person on the ranch who did know for sure, or at least she was convinced he did.

Her brother Nick.

From now on, she decided as she sat in her room on the second floor of the ranch house, she would keep an eye on him.

Even now, she smelled tobacco smoke and knew it came from the cigar Nick smoked every evening as he sat out on the porch. The aromatic smell drifted up and in through her open window.

Acting on impulse, she blew out the lamp in her room, went to the window, and pushed the curtain back so she could look out into the ranch yard.

She couldn't have said what made her think anything was going to happen, but if it did, she wanted to be where she would know about it.

Nothing happened, of course, except that nearly half an hour dragged by tediously. She was wasting her time, Samantha told herself. She might as well go to bed.

If she was lucky, she might dream about Lee.

Then she heard the faint crunch of footsteps coming across the yard from the direction of the bunkhouse. Samantha slid the window up farther and leaned out a little so she could see better.

At first she couldn't make out anything, but then a figure ambled into the faint glow that spread across the yard from lamps in the house. She heard spurs chinging and recognized the shape as that of Owen McNamara, one of the hands who had been hired more for his skill with a gun than with a rope or a branding iron.

The only reason McNamara would be approaching the house right now was if he wanted to talk to Nick.

Without pausing to think about what she was doing, Samantha rushed out of her room, down the rear stairs, and out a side door into the night. She slid along the wall toward the front of the house, where she could peek around the corner and see onto the front porch.

McNamara had a shoulder propped against one of the posts that supported the roof over the porch. He was rolling a quirley as he said, “—handful of men left over there, boss, just like you thought when you sent me to scout around. We could take the rest of the herd without any problem.”

Nick stood at the top of the steps, looking out at the night in his usual pose with his hands tucked into his hip pockets. He had a fresh cigar in his mouth, clenched between his teeth.

He said around the cheroot, “If you did that, you'd have to kill all the hands the Creels left behind. It was different when it was Palmer's bunch hitting the Star C herd. Even if any of them got spotted, nobody knew they were working for me. I can't have Rafter F men identified as rustlers.”

In the shadows at the corner of the house, Samantha's eyes got so big she felt like they might pop right out of her head. Her heart slugged painfully inside her chest.

She had worried in the past that maybe Nick was cutting some corners he shouldn't have, but she'd never dreamed that he had become an outright criminal.

And yet he was talking about having a gang of rustlers working for him, led by someone named Palmer. There was no mistaking his meaning. He had just admitted that he was behind all the thefts from the Star C herd.

Owen McNamara had finished rolling his smoke. He put it between his lips, took a lucifer from his shirt pocket, snapped it to life with his thumbnail, and held the flame to the end of the quirley. The light from the match cast harsh shadows over his hard-planed face as he set fire to the gasper.

He shook the match out, flicked it away, and said, “You know it wouldn't be any problem takin' care of those Star C punchers, Nick. The rest of the boys and I knew it would probably come to that sooner or later.”

“Sure,” Nick said, “and it might yet. But we'll wait and see how Palmer's bunch does.”

Samantha had to clench her jaw tightly to keep from moaning in despair. Nick and McNamara were talking about murder now, and their conversation was casually cold-blooded, too.

What had happened to Nick? He had always been distant, more like an uncle than an older brother to her, but she would have sworn that he was a decent, law-abiding man at heart, despite the hardness she sensed in him.

Had ambition and greed hardened him even more, to the point that he was willing to work with outlaws . . . to become an outlaw himself?

The things she was hearing seemed to indicate that was the case.

Even though the world was spinning crazily around her and she felt like she might be sick, she forced herself to listen. Her brother and McNamara were still talking.

“When will you hear from Palmer?” the gunman asked.

“I told Holland to ride straight back here as soon as Palmer's bunch has the herd. He doesn't have to go all the way to Rockport with them. All I need to know is that the Creels won't be selling those cattle and ruining my plans.”

McNamara chuckled.

“You reckon Palmer will leave any of those Creels alive? From what I've heard, he ain't the sort to be merciful.”

“I don't care,” Nick said with a note of savagery in his voice. “As far as I'm concerned, he can kill all of them, and good riddance. If all the old man's sons and grandsons are dead, he won't have anybody to back him up anymore. The Star C will be mine, and as far as anybody knows, it'll all be legal.”

Grandsons
. . . The word hammered inside Samantha's skull.

Lee was one of John Creel's grandsons. Lee was with the cattle drive. The drive that Nick had sent a gang of vicious rustlers and killers to raid.

She turned away, unable to listen to any more. She had already heard enough to shatter her world. Her brother an outlaw. The man she loved marked for death. It was all too much for her to bear.

She had taken only a couple of steps when everything came crashing down on her and the shadows around her grew even darker, black and hungry enough to swallow her whole as she collapsed silently.

A dank coldness had settled over Samantha, chilling her to her very bones.

That was the first thing she was aware of as consciousness seeped back into her brain. She began to shiver.

That motion warmed her up slightly. Her sluggish blood began to course faster through her veins. She realized that the temperature wasn't really all that cold.

It was all the things she had heard her brother say that had turned her insides to ice.

She was lying on the ground, huddled near the wall of the house where she had collapsed when she fainted. That was what had happened to her. She was convinced of that, even though she had never fainted before in her life.

She had never heard Nick talking about murdering someone before, either.

Especially not Lee Creel.

Samantha pushed herself to a sitting position. Her hair was loose and tangled around her shoulders. She pushed her fingers through it as she tried to figure out what she should do.

How long had she been unconscious? She didn't know. The night was quiet, no one moving around as far as she could tell, so it might have been a while.

She could go to her father's room, wake him up, tell him what she had overheard Nick and Owen McNamara saying.

But would he believe her? She knew how stubborn Ned Fontaine was. He had faith in Nick; otherwise he wouldn't have entrusted so many details of running the ranch to his oldest son in recent months. He wouldn't want to accept that Nick had allied himself with a gang of murderous rustlers and intended to destroy the Creels any way he had to.

No, Samantha realized, even if she told her father everything, his most likely reaction would be to tell her that she was imagining things, or that she had fallen asleep and dreamed the incriminating conversation.

At best, he would call Nick in and ask him about it, and Nick would lie. Samantha was sure of that.

And then Nick would know that she was aware of his plans. Such a possibility shouldn't have frightened her . . .

But as she felt a stab of cold fear in her heart, she knew it did.

Maybe she should ride into town and tell Marshal Jonas Haltom about it.

Haltom didn't have any jurisdiction outside the settlement of Bear Creek, though.

The county sheriff was all the way up in Hallettsville.

The idea that hit her next was so far-fetched for a moment she couldn't bring herself to grasp it.

The cattle drive had left for the coast several days earlier. Lee and the other men from the Star C were dozens of miles away by now. But a herd like that could only go so fast.

A lone rider on a good horse could travel a lot faster.

A day, maybe two, and she could catch up to the drive, Samantha thought. She could take Sweetie Pie and another horse, maybe the big paint called Scudder, and by switching back and forth between them she could keep up a fast pace. She knew she was a good rider, even though she had never attempted anything like what she was thinking about now.

Nick and McNamara hadn't said anything about when the Palmer gang was going to hit the herd, only that Holland would return to the ranch when the deed was done.

Holland wasn't back yet. That didn't mean the rustlers hadn't already struck, but at least it was possible they hadn't. There was a chance Samantha could carry a warning to Lee and the rest of the Creels in time.

In doing that, she asked herself, would she be betraying her own family?

No.
The answer rang hard and flat in her brain. Once Nick crossed the line into lawlessness, he wasn't family anymore. He was just an outlaw to be stopped.

Deep down, Samantha knew she didn't fully believe that was true. But if she kept telling herself that, she could use it to justify her actions.

Besides, there was Lee to consider. Wild idea or not, what she did next might be the best chance of saving his life.

She pushed herself to her feet, went to the side door she had used earlier, and tried it. Thank goodness no one had come along and locked it. The door opened, and she slipped inside.

Once she was back in her room, she practically ripped her dress off and pulled on one of her riding outfits. She would be in the saddle for long hours, so she needed to be comfortable.

She wouldn't take any extra clothes. She didn't want to weigh the horses down with anything that wasn't necessary.

Food was necessary, though. She knew that quite a few biscuits had been left over at supper. Being careful on the stairs so that the treads didn't creak underneath her, she went down to the kitchen and put all the biscuits in a canvas sack. If she ate them sparingly, they would last her until she caught up with the Star C cattle drive.

She wished she could say good-bye to her father and even to Danny. If she woke either of them, though, they would want to know what she was doing. They would stop her from leaving. She couldn't take that chance.

Still moving as stealthily as possible, she went into her father's study where the gun rack was and took down the Winchester '73 carbine she usually carried when she rode out on the range. She took a box of .44-40 cartridges, as well, stuffing it in the sack with the biscuits.

That wasn't much, but it would have to do.

Using the side door again, she left the house and headed for the barn. Everything was quiet and still around the place. Peaceful, as far as anybody could tell by looking and listening.

They wouldn't be able to see the evil underneath. Samantha didn't want to, either, but the knowledge of it had been thrust upon her.

It was better this way, she told herself. Better for her to be heartsick and disillusioned than for Lee to die at the hands of those rustlers.

Sweetie Pie bobbed his head and whickered softly in greeting as Samantha began getting her saddle on him. She put halter and reins on Scudder, too. She tied the sack of food and ammunition on the saddle, slid the carbine into the boot. She got a couple of canteens she could fill at the creek and slung them on the saddle, as well. Then she led both horses out of the barn.

She worried that someone in the bunkhouse would hear her and come out to see what was going on. The cowboys must have all been sleeping soundly, though, because no one raised an alarm. She walked and led the horses for a couple of hundred yards before she swung up into the saddle on Sweetie Pie's back.

Then she took a deep breath, told herself that she was doing the right thing, and rode away from her father's ranch, heading southwest into the night.

When everyone got up in the morning and found that she was gone, would they guess where she had gone? She didn't see how they could. Nick believed that his plan was still a secret.

They could try to track her, but there were so many hoofprints around the barn and the ranch yard that she didn't think anyone would be able to.

No, she decided, her only real enemy was time.

And every minute that ticked past might be a minute closer to death for Lee Creel.

 

 

The next morning, Nick was roused from sleep by an angry bellow from his father.

“Nick! Nick, get up! Your sister's gone, damn it.”

Nick sat up in bed and cursed. He had consumed nearly an entire bottle of whiskey the previous night, after talking to Owen McNamara on the porch. He was drinking more and more these days.

That seemed to be the only way he could get his brain to slow down enough for sleep to overtake him. Otherwise he tended to lie awake in bed at night thinking about all the things he would do once the Rafter F was the largest, richest, most successful ranch in this part of Texas.

There was no reason he couldn't use that success as the basis to expand even more. Why settle for being the biggest in this area? Why not the biggest in the entire state?

That level of power and influence would open doors for him he never would have dreamed of otherwise. Why not Senator Fontaine, maybe? Or even Governor Fontaine?

Right now, though, he was just sleepy and hung over and irritated by his father standing just inside the door of his room, yapping at him like an annoying little dog and causing any pleasant thoughts to evaporate.

Nick raked his fingers through his tangled hair and said, “What the hell are you yammering about, Pa? What's that you're saying about Samantha?”

“She's gone,” Ned Fontaine snapped as he advanced a couple of steps into the room. “I can't find her anywhere.”

Nick glanced at the window. He could tell by the quality of the dim light coming through the gap between the curtains that the hour was fairly early. The old man had always been one to get up at the crack of dawn.

Nick had never minded his father being an early riser and insisting that everybody else should be, too, unlike Danny who preferred to carouse until all hours and then sleep until noon. There were always plenty of chores to do around a ranch.

Today, though, Nick didn't feel like it, so there was a snarl on his face as he threw the covers back and swung his legs out of bed.

“Samantha's bound to be around somewhere,” he said as he stood up and reached for his trousers. “Did you check the barn? She's always fussing over those horses of hers.”

“I looked out there,” Fontaine said. “Sweetie Pie and Scudder are gone.”

“Sweetie—What?” For a second, Nick had trouble wrapping his foggy brain around what his father had just said. “Wait a minute. Those are her horses. Aren't they?”

“Sweetie Pie is the white, Scudder is the paint,” Fontaine confirmed. “They're both gone. And Jed Clemons said they were gone when he first went out there this morning.”

Jed Clemons was the old cowboy who served as the Rafter F's main horse wrangler. Nick knew he was always in the barn well before the sun came up each morning.

“She's gone riding,” he said with a bleary-eyed frown.

“In the middle of the night? Taking an extra horse with her?”

Son of a bitch
, Nick thought. Something definitely was odd here. Maybe the old man was right to be worried about Samantha after all.

This mystery couldn't have anything to do with his own plans, though, Nick assured himself. His sister didn't know anything about those.

Hurriedly, he pulled his clothes on. As he stomped into his boots, he asked his father, “Have you talked to Danny?”

Ned Fontaine made a disgusted noise and said, “Danny never knows anything about what's going on unless it has to do with whiskey and shameless women.”

“Yeah, most of the time. Samantha probably talks to him more than she does to either of us, though.”

Fontaine didn't argue with that. They weren't a close, demonstrative family by any stretch of the imagination.

Nick led the way down the hall to his brother's room. He pounded a fist on the door and called, “Danny! Wake up in there!”

There was no response.

Nick shouted through the panel again, then disgustedly gripped the doorknob and twisted it. The door wasn't locked. He threw it open and stalked into the spacious, well-appointed room that somehow still managed to look and smell like a pigsty because of Danny's filthy habits.

It wasn't unheard of for Danny to pass out in some whore's crib or spend the night playing poker in Bear Creek, then come dragging back to the ranch in the middle of the day. Nick halfway expected to find him gone, too.

But there was an ungainly lump of tangled sheets in the middle of the bed, and raucous snores came from it. Muttering a curse, Nick stepped over to the bed, grabbed one end of the sheet, and heaved.

As the bedclothes unfurled, Danny came flying out of them. He landed on the floor with a heavy
thump
and let out a howl of surprise and anger.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded as he glared up at Nick. If anything, his eyes were even more bleary and red-rimmed than those of his brother.

“Getting your lazy behind out of bed,” Nick replied. “Do you know where Samantha is?”

That question made Danny look more confused than angry. He said, “What are you talking about? She's in her room, I reckon, or maybe out at the barn.”

Nick shook his head. His father had followed him into the room and was sucking at his teeth, making worried sounds that grated on Nick's nerves.

“She's not either place,” he told Danny. “And two of her horses are gone. The white and that big paint. She rides them more than any of the others.”

“Well, there you go,” Danny said with a wave of his hand. “She's out ridin'.” Then he frowned and went on, “Wait a minute. You said
two
of her horses are gone?”

“Yeah. That doesn't sound like she's just gone for a short ride, does it?”

Danny grabbed hold of the bed to steady himself as he climbed to his feet. He wore only the bottom half of a pair of long underwear, and Nick's nose wrinkled at the smell coming off him. It was a mixture of whiskey, vomit, and the sort of cheap toilet water soiled doves drenched themselves in to cover up the fact they hadn't had a bath in a while.

If sin and degradation had a smell, Danny Fontaine's current aroma was it.

But that didn't matter now, and it wouldn't matter in the future, either, Nick thought. Once he was governor, he would make sure to keep Danny out of the public eye. The kid could do whatever he wanted, as long as he was discreet about it.

“Did you talk to your sister after supper last night?” Ned Fontaine asked.

“Naw,” Danny said. “I went into town—”

“I reckon we know that,” Nick said dryly.

“And I didn't see her before I left,” Danny snapped. “Or after I got back, for that matter.”

Something occurred to Nick. He turned to his father and asked, “Had her bed been slept in?”

“I . . . I don't remember,” Fontaine said. “I didn't really look that close . . .”

“Let's go look now,” Nick suggested.

The three of them went down the hall to Samantha's room. Nick opened the door, and it took him only a second to see that the covers hadn't been pulled back on the bed. They looked like maybe Samantha had sat on the bed for a while, but it didn't appear that she had slept in it.