Bleeding Texas (4 page)

Ned Fontaine and his daughter rode to the top of a hill fringed with oaks and gazed across the rolling landscape in front of them. Samantha glanced across at her father and saw the look in his eyes. It was one of pride and ambition and drive. Ned Fontaine wanted to take that land with its scattered herds and transform it into the richest rangeland in all of Texas.

That was an admirable goal, Samantha thought . . . as far as it went.

This was the highest point for miles, with the best view. From up here a green line of trees was visible as it twisted across the countryside.

Those trees marked the course of Bear Creek. On the other side of the stream lay the Star C, belonging to John Creel.

If her father's ambition had stopped at the creek, Samantha would have thought it was a fine thing.

Unfortunately, Ned Fontaine had set his sights on all that other range, and Samantha feared that ultimately his covetousness would lead to disaster.

“I wish your mother could see this, Samantha,” Fontaine said without taking his eyes off the verdant sweep of countryside in front of him. “I think it would have reminded her of her home back in Ireland.”

“I'm sure it would have, Pa.”

“It's the devil's own shame that she didn't live to come to Texas with us.”

“It is,” Samantha agreed, but she knew he wasn't really paying much attention to her. He was lost in his own thoughts and memories, casting his mind back over the years.

He did that more and more these days, and that worried her. It was easy to get lost in the past, especially as a person got older. The present held less and less appeal. Reality could never quite match up to an idealized past.

People had to live in the present, though.

And some even looked to the future.

Fontaine heaved a sigh and said, “I guess we'd better be getting on back now.”

“Why don't you go ahead?” Samantha suggested. “I think I might like to ride a little more.”

That broke Fontaine out of his musing. He frowned at her and said, “You know I don't like you riding by yourself.”

She patted the smooth wooden stock of the carbine that rested in a sheath strapped to her saddle.

“I'll be fine, Pa,” she told him. “I don't expect to run into any trouble, and if I do, I can handle it. You know I'm a good shot.”

“Yes, you've got a cool head and a good eye,” Fontaine admitted. “For a girl.”

Samantha laughed.

“If you're trying to get an argument out of me, it's not going to work,” she said.

“No, no, just telling you that sometimes you're too confident for your own good. But I'm not a stupid man. I know by now that I'd be wasting my time telling you what to do. Only . . . stay clear of the creek, all right?”

“Don't worry, I'll stay on our range,” Samantha promised.

“All right.” Fontaine lifted his reins. “Don't be too long.”

He turned his horse and rode back toward the ranch headquarters. For a few moments, Samantha watched him go, then she eased her mount into a walk that carried her down the hill's slope toward the creek.

She hadn't exactly lied to him. He had asked her to stay away from the stream that marked the boundary between the two ranches, but she had promised only not to cross it.

Still, that rationalization was enough to make her feel a little guilty about what she was doing. She was well aware of her father's flaws but loved him anyway, and she didn't like deceiving him.

She didn't really have any choice in the matter, though.

As she neared the creek, she reined her horse to a halt, dismounted, and went ahead on foot, leading the animal. She kept a watchful eye on the trees along the bank, alert for any sign of movement. Not seeing any, she led her mount into a particularly thick grove of trees and tied the reins to a slender sapling.

Then she waited, listening intently.

Time seemed to drag by more slowly than it really was. About a quarter of an hour had passed before Samantha heard anything other than the usual noises of small animals in the brush and the lowing of cattle in the distance.

Then she heard something large splashing through the waters of the creek.

Quietly, she drew the carbine from its sheath. There was already a round in the chamber, so she didn't have to work the weapon's lever and make any racket.

With as much stealth as she could muster, she moved through the trees and undergrowth until she could crouch behind a bush and look out at the stream. A man on horseback was crossing it about fifty yards upstream from Samantha's position. The trees along the banks cast dappled shade on the water, and that made it difficult to distinguish details about the man's face.

Samantha lifted the carbine to her shoulder and nestled her cheek against the stock. She peered over the barrel as she settled the sights on the rider, ready to blow him out of the saddle if she needed to.

Lee Creel pointed his horse toward a spot where it would be easy to climb out onto the eastern bank of Bear Creek. He appeared to ride easy in the saddle, but actually he was alert.

He was well aware that he was venturing into the realm of the enemy, and there was no way of knowing for sure what was waiting for him over there.

A slender young man in his early twenties, Lee had a shock of sandy hair under his sweat-stained, pushed-back hat. Like most men who rode this range, he carried a handgun, and while he was no shootist, he considered himself fairly good with a Colt. His father Cooper had taught him how to shoot at an early age.

It was a skill a man needed to have if he was going to survive on the frontier.

Something made Lee's nerves crawl as he rode out of the creek and up onto the bank. The skin on the back of his neck prickled. He recognized the symptoms.

He was being watched.

The important question was who was doing the watching.

He reined in, and as he did he heard something rustling in the brush. A figure carrying a carbine suddenly stepped out from behind the trees about ten yards away from him. Lee's heart jumped.

Then he hurried to meet Samantha Fontaine, and as his arms went around her, she tilted her head back and parted her lips slightly to receive his kiss.

Lord, she tasted sweet! Lee had never experienced anything like it.

Not since the last time he'd kissed her, anyway.

Samantha lowered the carbine's butt to the ground and let go of the barrel. The weapon toppled over. Luckily, it didn't go off. She lifted her arms and twined them around Lee's neck. Their bodies strained to draw even closer together.

Lee's heart was pounding fit to bust by the time he finally lifted his lips from Samantha's. His voice was a little breathless as he said, “When you stepped out from the brush with that carbine, I thought for a second I was done for. Figured you'd changed your mind about bein' in love with a no-count Creel.”

“You thought I was going to shoot you?”

“Well, not really. But the idea crossed my mind for half a second.”

“I could never do that,” she said. “I was just being careful. I didn't show myself until I made sure it was you. I didn't want somebody else to come along and catch me out here waiting for you.”

“So you planned on murderin' 'em if they did?”

She balled a fist and struck it lightly against his chest.

“You just stop your foolishness, Lee Creel. You know good and well there are outlaws and rustlers around these parts.”

Yeah, and some of them were named Fontaine, he thought, but he kept that to himself. It wouldn't do any good to point out to her that he considered some of her relatives no-good.

All of her relatives, as a matter of fact. He believed there was only one good Fontaine around here—and she was in his arms at the moment.

Six months ago, the idea that he'd be hugging and kissing any Fontaine would have struck him as plumb
loco
. If anybody had made such a claim, he would have considered those fightin' words.

But that was before a rattlesnake had spooked Samantha's horse and sent it stampeding across Bear Creek onto the Creel range one day, with her in the saddle hanging on for dear life and trying unsuccessfully to bring the animal back under control.

Lee, who had been riding near the creek himself, had seen the runaway horse and gone after it without even stopping to think about who the rider might be. Samantha had been riding with her hair tucked under her hat that day, as was her habit, so Lee had figured the rider was some hapless cowpoke . . . until he'd gotten close enough to see that the figure on horseback wasn't shaped like any cowpoke he'd ever run across.

He'd grabbed the reins, of course, and brought the runaway to a halt. He could tell how nervous the young woman was by the way she kept casting glances back across the creek, as if she knew she was somewhere she shouldn't be. Lee had recognized her from seeing her with her father and brothers in town, so he'd said, “It's all right, Miss Fontaine. I won't tell anybody you're over here on this side of the creek if you don't.”

“You're not going to shoot me for trespassing?”

“No . . . but I might do this.”

Acting on impulse while they were both still in their saddles, he had leaned over and stolen a kiss. Samantha had gasped, slapped his face, and then laughed.

He had kissed her again before that day was over.

That was how it started, and they had been meeting out here along the creek several times a week ever since. They were careful because they both knew that her father and his grandfather would be furious if they found out. Lee's pa and his uncles wouldn't be too happy about it, either . . . except maybe for Bo. He struck Lee as pretty easygoing, and he hadn't been around when the Fontaines came to this part of the country and started causing trouble with their pushy ways, either.

Now Samantha said, “There was another fight in town today.”

“I heard about it,” Lee said. “That gunnie Trace Holland got shot.”

“He's not—” Samantha stopped short. Lee supposed that out of family loyalty, she'd been about to claim Holland wasn't a gunman. But she knew as well as anybody else that was the truth.

Instead she said, “I wish everybody could just settle things and get along. If this turns into a range war, I . . . I don't know what's going to happen.”

Lee knew. If a range war broke out, people would die. There was no getting around it. Creels and Fontaines both, more than likely.

Crazy ideas had started to percolate in his head lately. He wished that both families could get together at a wedding.

Instead it was a lot more likely that funerals would continue to keep them apart.

He put that grim thought out of his head and cupped a hand under Samantha's chin.

“You got your dress picked out for the social?” he asked her.

That put a smile on her face. She said, “Yes, I do. It's really pretty.”

“Good, because I intend to dance with the prettiest girl there.”

“You mean Lauralee Parker?”

“Not hardly,” he said with a grin. “I'm lookin' at the prettiest girl.”

“I don't know, Lee,” she said as she grew solemn. “It seems like if we were to dance together, it would be just asking for trouble.”

“Town's supposed to be neutral ground, especially at something like a social.”

“I know, but I'm just not sure how my brothers would react.”

“Well, we'll wait and see how things go,” he told her in an attempt to ease her mind.

But make no mistake about it, he thought, he
was
going to dance with Samantha Fontaine.

And anybody who didn't like it could go to hell—especially if his name was Fontaine, too!

Riders on horseback, couples in buggies, families in wagons, all began to converge on the town of Bear Creek one evening several days later. Twice a year the town held a social that featured food, music, and dancing, and people from miles around, from Hallettsville all the way down to Victoria, attended.

The festivities were held at the Bear Creek School. The students' desks and benches were carried out to clear the floor for dancing. A group of fiddlers and guitar players set up shop where the teacher normally stood. To one side of the room was a table with a big punch bowl on it. Marshal Jonas Haltom and his deputies would take turns guarding the punch all evening to make sure no cowboy with a flask of Who-hit-John tried to spike it.

Another table held an assortment of pies and cakes baked by the ladies of the town. They would be auctioned off to raise money for the school. The mayor would probably make a speech, too.

But the dancing was what drew most people—other than the Baptists, of course. And even some of them figured the good Lord would forgive them if they backslid a little, as long as it was only twice a year.

Bo wore his usual dark trousers and long dark coat over a white shirt and string tie. Scratch had traded his buckskins for a tan suit, and he sported a string tie, as well.

“Don't we look like a couple of Kansas City dudes?” Scratch asked as they stood along one of the walls, sipping too-sweet red punch from tin cups.

“Speak for yourself,” Bo said. “This is what I wear most of the time.”

“Yeah, but you got your hair slicked down more than usual. I don't reckon you really needed to do that to impress Lauralee.”

“I don't care whether I impress Lauralee.”

“Well, I think she's tryin' to impress you. And everybody else in the place, to boot.”

It was true that Lauralee Parker was attracting a lot of attention. That blue dress had been so skillfully repaired that it was impossible to tell it had ever been torn. Her blond curls were piled up in an elaborate arrangement, and her face, with a minimum of paint, glowed with a natural beauty.

The dancing hadn't started yet, so at the moment Lauralee stood talking to some of the women from the town. Not for the first time, Bo admired her ability to win folks over. In a lot of frontier settlements, a woman who ran a saloon would be a pariah. People would think she was a prostitute or worse.

That wasn't the case with Lauralee. She was accepted as a member of the community. Part of that was because she had grown up here and people had known her ever since she was a little girl. She had become such a fine adult, too, that it was impossible not to like her. If anybody in Bear Creek had trouble, Lauralee was the first one there to offer her help. She nursed people through illnesses, she fed people who might have otherwise gone hungry, she helped make sure that widows and orphans were taken care of, and she was a friend to anybody who needed one.

She wasn't perfect—Bo knew she had a temper and was stubborn as a mule—but she was about as close as anybody he had ever known.

Bo noticed Gilbert Ambrose across the room. He had promised Hank that he would talk to the banker, but he hadn't gotten around to doing that yet. This evening might not be the best time to have a business conversation, but on the other hand, Bo believed in seizing opportunities whenever and wherever they arose.

He drank the last of the punch from his cup, handed it to Scratch, and said, “Hang on to this for me, will you?”

“Where are you going?” the silver-haired Texan asked.

“I'll be back,” Bo said, which wasn't really an answer.

Ambrose was talking to Judge Clarence Buchanan and Dr. Kenneth Perkins. They were all roughly of the same age, a little older than Bo, and had been here in Bear Creek ever since the town was founded during the early days of the Republic of Texas.

“Hello, Bo,” the thick-set, florid-faced judge said when Bo walked up to the little group. Doc Perkins and Ambrose muttered greetings, as well.

“Evening, fellas,” Bo said. “Looking forward to the dancing?”

Buchanan made a face and said, “These bad feet of mine won't let me traipse around the floor anymore. But I'll enjoy watching the young people.”

“I'm not much of a dancer, either,” the spare, dour physician said.

“My wife will expect me to haul her around the floor a few times,” Ambrose said with a chuckle. “You're the lucky one, Creel. You'll get to dance with Miss Parker.”

Bo smiled and said, “That's more good fortune than I deserve, all right. Say, I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute, Mr. Ambrose.”

“We are talking,” the banker replied. His eyes narrowed. “Or did you mean something more serious?”

“I won't take up much of your time,” Bo promised.

“I didn't come here tonight to talk business,” Ambrose said, frowning. “But I suppose we could have a word. If, as you say, it won't take much time.”

“No, sir.”

Ambrose nodded to Buchanan and Perkins and said, “If you'll excuse us, gentlemen . . .”

The judge waved a pudgy hand to signify that it was fine.

Bo and Ambrose drew off to one side, near the coat closet, and Ambrose said, “Now, what's all this about?”

“Hank mentioned that my pa had to take out a mortgage on the ranch a while back.”

“I can't really discuss your father's business dealings,” Ambrose said stiffly. “If you want to know anything about that, you should ask him.”

Bo reined in the impatience he felt at the banker's attitude and said, “Hank handles the ranch's business these days, Mr. Ambrose, you know that, and he's the one who told me.”

“That makes no difference. The ranch is in your father's name, so any discussion of the particulars of his arrangements must go through him.”

“All right,” Bo said, stifling a sigh of exasperation. “It doesn't matter. What I really wanted to do was let you know that you don't have to worry about the Star C. The spread is going to be just fine.”

Ambrose's frown deepened as he said, “There are rumors that your family has lost a great deal of stock to rustlers.”

“Every ranch has trouble with rustlers from time to time.”

“But the Star C has lost more than its share, I'm told.”

“I don't know that that's true,” Bo said. “And even if it is, we'll get to the bottom of it.”

Ambrose just grunted skeptically. He asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Bo?”

“I reckon not,” Bo said. He had made an effort to keep his promise to Hank. He had talked to Ambrose like he'd said he would.

But as far as he could tell, he hadn't accomplished a blasted thing, and he knew it.

The Star C was still at the mercy of this soft-handed banker.

“One thing you have to remember,” Ambrose said. “John Creel and I have known each other for a long, long time. We've done business for almost that long. I'm not anxious to do anything to hurt someone like that.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that, Mr. Ambrose.”

“Of course, there comes a time . . . No, never mind. Just remember that friendship only goes so far, too.” Ambrose looked across the room as the musicians began tuning up their fiddles. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm sure my wife will have her heart set on dancing the first dance.”

Bo nodded and said, “Sure. Thanks, Mr. Ambrose.”

He watched glumly as the banker started toward a gaggle of middle-aged ladies on the other side of the room, among them Mrs. Ambrose.

Hank sidled up to him and said quietly, “I saw you talking to Mr. Ambrose, Bo. Did you do any good?”

“I don't know. I don't much think so. He makes noises like he's not eager to call in the note, but you're right, he's worried about all the stock the ranch is losing.”

“We've got to put a stop to that somehow.”

“You've tried, haven't you?”

“Of course we have,” Hank said. “Riley and Cooper have spent days trying to track those wideloopers. But they never steal very many head at one time. It'd be easier to trail them if they made off with a big bunch. But it's not that hard to cover up the tracks of a little jag of cattle. There's no telling where they get off to.”

“Bleeding the ranch to death a little bit at a time,” Bo muttered.

“That's exactly what they're doing. And that's why I think there's a good chance Fontaine is behind it. The objective isn't to make a lot of money off stolen stock. It's to hurt the Star C until the damage is finally too much to recover from.”

What Hank said made a lot of sense, Bo thought. But knowing there was a good chance a theory was true and proving it were two different things.

He looked around the crowded room and commented, “I figured the Fontaines would be here tonight.”

“So did I,” Hank said. “Maybe they don't like the rule that nobody can bring any guns in here.”

That was a firm rule, too, and had been for as far back as Bo could remember. No guns at the town socials. Currently, Marshal Haltom enforced it, and he did a stringent job of it.

Usually it wasn't too difficult. Nobody in his right mind wanted any gunplay in a place where so many innocent folks were around, including a lot of women and children.

Scratch drifted up and extended a freshly filled cup of punch to Bo.

“You fellas look mighty solemn,” he said. “You're supposed to forget about your troubles tonight.”

“I'll give it a try,” Bo said.

They walked over to a corner of the room that had been taken over by the Creel family. John sat there on one of the benches that had been pushed up against the wall, with Idabelle Fisher beside him. All the Creel sons, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren made for a formidable brood. Everybody seemed to be having a good time drinking punch and visiting with friends who came by.

Everybody except for his nephew Lee, Bo noted. Cooper's oldest boy stood rather tensely as he watched the door with an expectant look on his face. He was waiting for somebody, Bo thought. A girl, more than likely. Lee was in his early twenties, the prime age for a young
hombre
to start looking for a wife.

Two things happened then, at just about the same time. The fiddlers and guitars broke into a sprightly tune, resulting in a flood of dancers into the center of the room.

And several newcomers came through the schoolhouse's open doors, causing an angry stirring among the Creels.

The Fontaines had arrived.