Shotgun Bride (27 page)

C
ree Lathrop had vanished, and that troubled Kade far more than the man’s unwelcome presence ever had.

The day of the much anticipated “shooting exhibition,” heralded by bills posted all over town, came and went, and a sense of uneasiness settled over Indian Rock, causing Kade to pin on his badge again. He sent wires to other places, inquiring about Jim Dandy’s Wild West Show, and the various town marshals and prominent citizens he contacted replied, to a man, that they’d never heard of the outfit.

Though Mandy had seemed forthcoming about her past, though they both caught fire in bed every time they lay down together, which was often, a certain distance still stretched between them, because there were still secrets. Kade didn’t know how to breach the gap, either with his mind or his body, and when he tried to talk to Mandy, she withdrew.

A week of this had gone by when two things happened that changed everything. The first was a telegram from the U.S. army, sent by Captain Dixon Harvey:

GIG CURRY ESCAPED STOCKADE LAST NIGHT. TWO GUARDS KILLED BY ACCOMPLICE OR ACCOMPLICES. ADVISE CAUTION.

Kade was still absorbing the implications of that when Concepcion burst into his office at the jailhouse, pale and dusty from a hard ride.

“Something’s happened to Angus!” she blurted.

Kade crumpled the telegram into a wad and tossed it onto his desk. “What?”

Fresh tears followed the tracks of others, already shed, leaving streaks on Concepcion’s face. “He saddled up yesterday and rode out,” she managed, as Kade eased her into a chair. “He said he was tired of being holed up in the house and wanted to feel like a man again. I begged him not to go, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Dread curdled in the pit of Kade’s stomach. “I take it he didn’t come back.”

She shook her head. “I sent some of the men from the bunkhouse out to search for him right after sunrise.”

Kade took three or four slow, deep breaths. “No word from them?”

Again, Concepcion shook her head. “I waited as long as I could bear to. I could think of nothing to do but to come and find you. I don’t know where Rafe and Jeb are—like I said, I came straight to you—but now you must all go and look for him.”

Kade was already strapping on his gun belt. “Rafe is with Emmeline at the hotel,” he said, cataloging facts for his own sake as well as his stepmother’s, “and Jeb is probably at the Bloody Basin, fleecing some cowboy out of his wages over a game of poker.”

“I am going with you.”

“No,” Kade replied flatly. “You’ll only slow us down. I’ll get somebody to take you back to the ranch. Pa’s probably already there, wondering where you’ve gone.” If only he truly believed that. Unfortunately, his gut was telling him something different.

“You know that is not so,” Concepcion accused, dark eyes snapping with frustration and fear.

“Right now, I don’t know much of anything,” Kade said, putting on his hat. “Go home, Concepcion. If Pa is in trouble, he’ll need you to be there waiting when we bring him back.”

With that, Kade went out.

Harry was idling at the horse trough out front, with his feet swinging in the scummy water. Kade sent him to the livery stable, to tell Old Billy to get a buckboard ready, then made for the Bloody Basin.

He pushed open the swinging doors, scanned the dark and smoky interior, and saw Jeb at a table in the back, with cards in his hands and a big pile of chips in front of him. Kade beckoned, and Jeb laid down his hand, excused himself to the other players, and came toward him. Two cowboys, both riding for the Triple M brand, pushed away from the bar and joined them.

“Jake, Tom,” Kade said tersely, to get the greeting out of the way, while Jeb stood close by, “Concepcion’s at the jailhouse. I want you to pick up a wagon over at the livery and take her back to the ranch right away.”

The cowhands nodded and vanished, their drinks unfinished on the bar.

“What the hell is going on?” Jeb demanded. “I had a royal flush—”

“Pa’s gone,” Kade interrupted.

“What?”

“Concepcion says he saddled up yesterday and left. She hasn’t seen him since.”

Jeb swore. Behind him, the game had resumed with some grumbling, but he didn’t so much as look back. “Where’s Rafe?” he demanded, resettling his hat and unconsciously laying a hand to the handle of his .45.

“Hotel,” Kade answered, turning. “Let’s get him and ride.”

After collecting Rafe, they set out, and they hadn’t traveled more than a few miles when three shots, fired in quick succession, drew them off the trail and onto the range, traveling west. They rode hard, which made it that much more of a marvel when Mandy caught up to them, mounted on the little pinto Kade had given her, fleet as an Indian.

Three more shots came, twenty minutes later, and Denver Jack was fixing to fire another three when they came upon him and another ranch hand, Zeke Winters.

Angus McKettrick lay sprawled facedown in the sweet grass with a bullet hole in his back, and Kade was off his horse and running well before the animal came to a stop. Rafe and Jeb were right behind him.

“He ain’t dead,” Denver Jack said, scanning their faces and slipping his pistol back into its holster.

“God’s own wonder, too,” Zeke put in.

Kade crouched next to his father, with Jeb, while Rafe took the other side.

“Pa?” Kade rasped as he and Rafe turned the old man over onto his back.

Angus’s face was filthy, gray with pain, but he laughed, a raucous sound. “I thought you’d never get here.”

“You’re going to be fine, Pa.” Jeb sounded as if he was trying to convince himself, more than Angus.

“Hell, yes,” the old coot said. “Takes more than a few gunslingers to put me in the ground.”

“Just lie still till we figure out what to do,” Rafe urged, yanking the bandanna from around his neck, presumably to use as a bandage.

“Do I have to tell you boys everything?” Angus demanded, crotchety as ever. “Zeke, Jack—you ride back to the ranch and get a buckboard. A bottle of whiskey might be a good thing, too. In the meantime, I’ll do my best not to bleed to death.”

Plainly relieved to have a course of action laid out for them, the two mounted up and rode out, headed for the ranch house, which was a good ten miles away.

“Who did this?” Kade wanted to know. He and Rafe helped Angus to sit up, and Rafe applied the bandanna to the wound. Jeb went back to his horse for a canteen, un-screwed the stopper, and held it to Angus’s cracked lips.

Angus drank, sputtered, then spat. “Claimed they were from the Circle C,” he said finally, “but I didn’t believe ’em.”

Rafe, Jeb, and Kade looked at each other, and a charge passed among them, elemental as lightning.

“They were outlaws, plain and simple, drunked up and yammering on about some train robbery they meant to pull off up around Flagstaff.” Angus couldn’t be blamed for not wanting to accept that Holt Cavanagh might order his murder, but his remaining sons weren’t so sure. At least, Kade wasn’t.

Angus blinked and tried to shield his eyes from the early-afternoon sun with one gnarled hand. “Mandy?” he asked, squinting and plainly surprised. “Is that you?”

She stood at his feet. “Yes, sir.” Kade took in her trousers and shirt. She was wearing boots, and carrying the shotgun loosely in one hand, and she didn’t spare Kade so much as a glance. “It’s me, all right.”

“Dag-nab it,” Angus complained, “it’s been a long night, and I’m cold to the center of my bones. Hungry, too. Any of you got vittles in your saddlebags?”

Mandy smiled gently and shook her head. “No food,” she lamented, “but I’ve got a bedroll tied on behind my saddle. I’ll get it.”

Jeb fished a couple of lint-covered hard-boiled eggs out of his coat pocket; no doubt, he’d purloined those from the usual saloon spread at the Bloody Basin during the poker game. He offered them to Angus, who ate them in two bites, muttering a grudging thanks, letting it be known that he’d have preferred something more substantial. A steak, maybe. Hell, all they’d have to do was shoot a cow, skin it, and roast chunks of it on a spit.

Kade watched Mandy, bemused, as she turned and walked away to fetch the blanket. A bedroll? She’d have had no reason to carry one of those, unless she’d been planning to make a long ride, and she surely hadn’t mentioned anything like that to him.

Damn it, she’d been going to light out without a word of farewell, just as he’d feared she’d do all along. He’d been the one to say her words were shallow.

She’d been at the livery, collecting Sister, most likely, when she’d heard that Angus was missing and decided to follow Kade and his brothers when they’d gone looking for him.

The sting of the betrayal rushed through Kade’s veins like snake venom. He slowly got to his feet.

Paying him no mind, she brought the blanket back, unfurled it, and tucked it around Angus as tenderly as if he were a lost child found after much searching. It galled Kade beyond all reason that she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“These men you tangled with,” she asked mildly, but with an edge of worry in her voice, “did they mean to rob you?”

Angus shook his head, washed down the pickled eggs with another swig from Jeb’s canteen. “Nope. My horse turned up lame, and they closed in, four of them, out of nowhere it seemed like, when I got off to see if old Zeus had picked up a rock. I figured they were just having some fun, but then one of them said us McKettricks needed a lesson. I went to draw then, and one of them shot me from behind. Damn cowards.”

“You didn’t recognize them?” Mandy pressed, but cautiously.

“One of them was an Indian,” Angus recalled. “Never seen him before.”

Kade couldn’t stand it any longer; he took Mandy by one elbow and dragged her away from Angus and the others.

She wrenched free of his grasp.

“Your brother did this,” he growled. He kept his hands off her, but if she made a move to walk away, she wouldn’t get far.

“That’s not fair,” Mandy hissed, turning pink. “Cree isn’t the only Indian around here!”

“You were leaving, weren’t you?” Kade insisted, just as furiously. “Where were you going, Mandy? To join up with your brother and his gang? Or maybe it was Curry you were going to meet. Did you know about his escape from the fort? Maybe you even helped plan it.”

She drew back her hand and slapped him, and the report of it rang out like a rifle shot. He didn’t move, but simply glared down at her, letting his accusations reverberate between them.

Jeb sauntered over, pushed his hat to the back of his head, spoke affably. “Take it easy, both of you. T his is neither the time nor the place for a spat.”

Kade kept his wrath focused squarely on Mandy, and it rolled out of him in waves of heat. “Damn you, you little Judas,” he spat.

She flinched, just as if he’d struck her, but she glared right back. “I wanted some time to think, that’s all.”

“This is Mandy you’re talking to, Kade,” Jeb said quietly, moving between them. “This is
your wife.”

Kade reached out with one stiff arm and thrust his younger brother aside. His eyes were narrowed, his lips taut, as he stared Mandy down. “You were leaving for good.”

Now, Rafe had joined the party. If Kade had taken the trouble to look, he figured he’d probably see Angus trying to crab-walk over there, too. The trouble with this family was, nobody minded their own business. “Kade,” Rafe warned, in a gruff undertone. “Get hold of yourself. We’ve got to think about Pa right now. He’s putting on a show, but
he’s been shot,
and he’s been out here all night, and this kind of carrying on will only get him riled up.”

Kade ignored his brother’s counsel and advanced on Mandy, his fists clenched at his sides. “Where were you going to meet your brother?”

The pain was incomprehensible. Mandy staggered under the weight and shock of it, and Jeb put an arm around her waist from behind, holding her up. “I wasn’t leaving because of Cree!” she cried. “I wanted to get away from you, Kade McKettrick, you and your suspicions and your silences and your long stares: But I would have come back!”

“You aren’t going anywhere until I get to the bottom of this!” Kade yelled.

At that, the hurt got to be too much, and Mandy made to launch herself at Kade, claws bared. Jeb restrained her, hoisting her clean off her feet and swinging her away from his brother.

“Get her out of my sight!” Kade spat, and turned his back on her.

“Jesus, Kade,” Rafe growled, “what’s the matter with you?”

Kade was immovable. “Take her to Indian Rock,” he ordered. “Take her anywhere! But don’t let her sneak off—maybe Curry and Lathrop got away, but she won’t!” He turned and stormed back to his father, who was still sitting on the ground, huddled in Mandy’s blanket. Rafe stalked after him, fists clenched, and all three of them came to a steady boil, like pots with their lids rattling.

Mandy might have collapsed if Jeb hadn’t been supporting her. A few moments before, she’d been blind with rage; now, in the face of Kade’s cold fury, she felt drained, ripped apart, discarded.
That’s what you get,
the voice in her head taunted,
for ever thinking you could be one of them.