Dorothy Garlock (28 page)

In that brief moment, a sickening suspicion wormed its way into Eli’s gut. The thought that it was Seth who fired upon him at the cemetery, who meant to kill him at the very spot that his brother and father lay, had drifted around in his mind, trying to find solid ground upon which to stand. He resisted that thought, refusing to believe that Seth could truly be capable of such an act, but he was unable to completely shoo it away. But that brief glance, the look that could have been that of a gunman checking upon the wound that he himself had inflicted, sent Eli’s mind into a raging turmoil.
Was it Seth who tried to kill me? Is he here to complete the task? For how long has he carried his murderous intent?
Is it possible that Seth McCarty had something to do with Caleb’s murder?

“Might I check to see how Mrs. Morgan is faring today?” Fawn asked.

“That’d be fine,” Hank answered.

“I hope she’s better.”

When his uncle led Fawn and Seth up the stairs and into the ranch house, Eli did not follow, staying behind as indecision raged in his breast.
How I want to act!
It took all the restraint he could muster not to rush after them, grab Seth by the throat, and wring the truth, no matter what it might be, from him, consequences be damned!

But he couldn’t act until he was certain, until he had successfully determined that his suspicions were valid. He thought of Hallie, of how she would want him to act honorably, and that is what he would do. He would bide his time, get Seth alone, and then he would finally learn what happened to him at the cemetery and maybe even find out what happened in one of Bison City’s dark alleyways, four years past.

“Patience,” he whispered to himself. “The time will come.”

As dusk began to fall upon the ranch, and deep reds and purples spread across the far sky, Hallie could still hear Fawn’s voice from behind the closed door of Adele Morgan’s room. She’d been in there for hours, since shortly before lunchtime, and the two women’s cackling had long since become a source of annoyance. Fawn had only exited the room twice, both times for only very brief moments, and she had fixed Hallie with a severe frown on each occasion.

“I’m beginnin’ to wonder if she’s ever gonna leave,” Pearl mused.

“If it were up to her, I doubt she
would
leave.”

“And what about that fella that come with her? What’s his story?”

Hallie had been wondering about that very thing from the moment she had first laid eyes upon the man. He was clearly cut from the same cloth as his betrothed, arrogant and self-assured. But where Fawn was bubbly and talkative, her mouth and hands always moving, her fiancé was cold and reserved. The only words she’d heard him speak had been a greeting to Mrs. Morgan. Since that time, he’d stayed near the front windows, his eyes roaming.

“I don’t think he’d tell us even if we asked,” Hallie replied.

“To hell with him.” Pearl shrugged. “I’m more worried about Mary.”

They stood in the doorway of their friend’s room, much as they had been doing for a week, watching Mary sleep, Abe having resumed his quiet vigil beside her bed. If she had not known better, Hallie would have assumed that, indeed, nothing had changed, but the pall of Mary’s brief reawakening hung heavy over the air as if it were a funeral shroud, blackening their thoughts and mood. If Mary
did
awaken again, Hallie feared that there would be nothing more than the same chaos as before.

“Do you suppose she’ll just keep sleeping?” Hallie asked.

“After spendin’ all that time hopin’ she’d wake herself up, I can’t help but thinkin’ it’d be better if’n she did sleep a spell longer.” Pearl shrugged again. Nodding toward Abe, she added, “I still can’t bring myself to believe how she acted toward him when she came to, what with the slappin’ and all. My heart really broke for that there fella.”

“Mine too,” Hallie admitted. “It nearly brought tears to my eyes.”

“Same for this here hard old broad.”

If she were to close her eyes and listen, Hallie was certain that she could still hear the sound of Mary’s slap echoing around the small room. It was as if she herself had been the one who had received the frail woman’s blow. She marveled at how Abe could just ignore what had happened and resume his duty, caring for Mary.

“You reckon the day’ll ever come where she ain’t afraid of Chester?”

Hallie thought over Pearl’s question for a moment. “I don’t know if that day will ever come for any of us,” she explained. “To know that that monster is out there somewhere, looking around every rock and behind every corner means we won’t ever be safe . . . not really.”

“He ain’t gonna find us, Hallie,” Pearl said. “He ain’t.”

Hallie didn’t have the heart to tell her friend that he already had; the strange man who accosted her in the mercantile made that much plain. But she had yet to tell Pearl about the man for fear of upsetting her. The only other person who knew what happened was Eli.

“I hope not,” she said weakly.

“Even if that dumb bastard managed to find us, we ain’t alone no more. We got Eli and Hank standin’ by us, protectin’ each one of us as best they can. Chester ain’t gonna be able to just have his way.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I know I am.”

Hallie threw her arms around Pearl, holding her dear friend tight and expressing her joy at knowing the older woman would never give up, would never surrender herself to fear, and would fight for their safety. Turning from the window, she failed to notice the man who peered into Mary’s room, his face bewhiskered and worn, a face that would have brought a scream to her lips.

Seth stood on the long porch smoking a thin cigar. He took a deep drag, blowing the smoke out into a billowing cloud that swiftly dispersed in the evening wind. As much as he wished to calm his nerves, he was still filled with anxiety and the strong desire to accomplish what he had come to do.

All day Seth had paced about the house, forced to listen as Fawn rambled on and on with that old buzzard Adele Morgan, wishing to the heavens above that she would just be quiet for once. He’d nodded when spoken to, said a word here and there, and had waited for his moment to arrive. But the time to deliver the final blow had not come. He had to make sure that he and Eli were alone in order to make it all look like he was simply defending himself, but every time he spied his rival, he was always in his uncle’s company. Now, as the sun began to set, his time was running out.

“Goddamn it all,” he muttered under his breath.

Already, he could hear the sound of Fawn’s grief-racked sobs and cries in his ear. She would be distraught at the loss of her beloved Eli, weeping tears that she surely would not shed if it were
he
who had been murdered. But time would heal the wound and, with the passage of weeks and then months, Eli Morgan would be naught but a memory. He’d be forgotten, relegated to childhood dreams.

The smile that had begun to spread across Seth’s face froze, his eyes narrowing in the last gloomy light of the day, his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. He would have sworn that the gun inside of his vest twitched at the sight of Eli, finally alone, entering the large barn beyond the corrals.

My time of vengeance has finally come!

Chapter Twenty-six

E
LI HEARD THE
cocking of a gun, followed curtly by, “Turn around slowly.”

For an instant, Eli was incapable of moving; his breath caught raggedly in his chest and his heart thundered loudly. He had come to the barn alone in the hope that this moment would occur, that he would find out if his many suspicions held any grains of truth. Now, with the fading of Seth’s voice, Eli knew that some of his questions had been answered.

He stood before the barn’s long workbench that was scarred and nicked from untold years of use. He’d been replacing each of the tools that he and Hank had used to repair the fence posts, his oil lamp sending flickering ghosts of light dancing across the dark walls. He had been about to replace the last of the instruments, a long-clawed hammer, when he’d first heard the faint creak of the barn’s side door, a noise that was as clear to him as the deafening crack of the pistol that had wounded him.

“Do it or I’ll shoot you where you stand,” the voice further ordered.

Without turning, even before hearing the man speak, Eli was certain who stood behind him. As his hand tightened around the rough wooden handle of the hammer, he
knew
exactly who commanded him—
Seth McCarty
!

“It was you in the cemetery,” Eli growled, more statement than question.

“Yes,” came the answer, simple yet certain.

Slowly Eli turned around. Seth stood framed in the sinking sun’s light. A faint glint shone off the coal-black pistol clutched tightly in his right hand, the snub barrel pointed directly at Eli’s belly. With his smartly cut clothes, slicked hair, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a faint smile, Seth looked villainous, cut from a far different cloth from that of the man he meant to kill.

“I always knew you were a goddamn coward,” Eli declared.

“A coward is the man who will not do everything that he can to rid himself of his problems,” Seth answered coldly, his eyes little more than slits, his words both clipped and precise. “I will do absolutely anything that I have to in order to be rid of mine.”

“I’m not your problem, Seth,” Eli argued, trying to make him see reason.

“I beg to differ.” The banker scowled, the pistol rising in his hand until it was pointed directly at Eli’s skull. “You were always the one standing in the way of what I want. Even when we were boys, you had to stick your nose where it did not belong. It’s no different now. If it weren’t for you, if you hadn’t come back to Bison City, Fawn and I could have been happy together. She would still have eyes for me alone.”

“Fawn’s feelings for me aren’t returned. They never have been.”

“It makes no difference.”

“It should.”

The laughter that sang from Seth’s lips was cold enough to send a shiver racing down Eli’s spine. “All that matters is that the love she feels for you threatens the plans that I have painstakingly put in place. Until you are gone, Fawn will go on chasing after you, rushing out to this godforsaken ranch to care for your mother, all in the slim hope that she will catch your eye.”

As he listened to Seth speak, Eli recognized that there was no reaching the man. Seth had tried to kill him once and had accompanied Fawn to the ranch in order to finish the job. He was simply waiting for the right moment.

“You’ll never get away with this,” Eli warned. “The men working here will hear the shot and come running.” His mind raced for some plan of action, trying to keep Seth talking long enough to figure out what he needed to do to stay alive. “You can’t expect to just shoot me in cold blood and walk on out of here safe and sound.”

“If I were to step from this barn much as you see me now, you would be right in your thinking,” Seth explained, his self-assuredness taunting Eli. “That is why, after you lie on the ground cold and dead, I will take this pistol and shoot myself in the arm. To any who might inquire, the law included, I would simply have been defending myself.”

“No one will believe you.”

“Won’t they?” Seth scoffed. “I have spent the last several years ingratiating myself with the good people of Bison City; I am the face of their bank and a most respected member of society, whereas you are no one. With our past hatred for each other, will a single person believe that it was
I
who meant to murder
you
?”

“Just like you murdered Caleb?” Eli asked, the desire to know the truth of what had happened to his brother even greater than his fear at facing his own impending death.
If I am to perish here, I will join my brother and father knowing the truth!

A look of confusion crossed the banker’s face as quickly as a summer breeze. Eli couldn’t find meaning in it before it was gone as quickly as it had come. “Can you imagine what it was like for him that night, knowing that he was about to die? What do you suppose
his
last thought was?” Seth sneered, the thought of Caleb bleeding out his last, alone and afraid in the black of night, obviously entertaining him.

“You bastard . . .”

“Quite right.”

Over Seth’s shoulder, the sun had finally given up the ghost, darkness falling over all; the only light now came from the oil lamp. The flickering flame sent dark shadows rolling across the gunman’s face, his intentions looking as dark as they truly were.

Even though Eli was taut with rage, he kept a tight hold on his wits. His hand squeezed down on the hammer’s handle with such ferocity that his fingers grew as white as bone. Still, he forced himself to draw a deep breath. If he were to survive, he would need to be calm and act only when the right moment presented itself, not a second before.

“I won’t give up without a fight,” he said defiantly.

“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

Before Seth could utter another word, Eli rolled hard to his side, reared back and threw the hammer with all his might. The suddenness of his movement startled Seth and the gun bucked in his hand, firing its lead bullet, which slammed into the workbench in a shower of splinters. The sound of the shot echoed around the barn, sharp and deafening.

The hammer crashed into Seth’s gun hand, the metal head smashing into fragile bone. The smoking weapon fell in a clatter to the earthen floor, followed by a shout of intense pain bursting from the banker’s lips in surprise and shock.

“Son of a bitch!” Eli roared as he leaped to the man, his fist cocked to punch.

I meant what I said—I won’t give up without a fight!

“Ohh,” the moan escaped Mary’s lips as little more than a plaintive whisper.

Inside the small room, the sound of the woman’s whimpering melded with that of the soft wind drifting in through the open window. Outside, the inky darkness had once again descended upon the ranch, matching the mood of all those within.

Pearl stood with her arms crossed severely across her ample bosom, her brow knitted in worry. There seemed little else she could do, few others with whom she could speak. Hallie had just left to find Eli and even the sounds of Mrs. Morgan and Fawn’s conversation had faded. She was not alone; Abe sat beside Mary’s bed, his vigil uninterrupted, even after the slap he had received the day before. Just like her, he seemed to be in it for the long haul.