Sidewinders (4 page)

It seemed that there was no end to the surprises he was going to encounter today, Bo thought as a bitter taste welled up in his throat. He looked at his father and asked, “Is that what you said, Pa?”

He knew better than to expect John Creel to be embarrassed about anything, so he wasn't disappointed when John returned his look squarely and answered in typically blunt fashion, “Damned right I did. And when I said it, I meant every word of it, too.”

“Then what's he doing here?” Riley asked.

“It's his home just like it is yours, no matter what he's done. I realized that when I saw him.”

Anger flashed in Riley's eyes as he said, “The hell it is. He ran off ages ago, while me and the rest of the boys stayed here and worked our hind ends off and helped you make the Star C one of the best spreads in Texas!”

“I'm right here, you know,” Bo said coolly. “If you've got a problem with me, Riley, you can tell me about it to my face.”

Riley's jaw jutted out defiantly.

“All right,” he said. “That's just what I'll do. As far as I'm concerned, Bo, you're nothing but a low-down—”

“That's enough!” John's voice cut across his son's words. “Bo, you and Scratch go on in the house. I'll join you directly. Riley, you take care of their horses.”

“The hell I will,” Riley said. “Get somebody else to do it.”

He turned on his heel and stalked off toward the bridge over the creek. John's face flushed a dark red with fury. Bo knew his father wasn't accustomed to being spoken to that way, least of all by one of his own sons.

One of the hands came up and said, “I'll tend to the horses, Mr. Creel.”

“I'm obliged to you, Steve,” John said as he jerked his head in a nod. He dismounted, along with Bo and Scratch, and turned to follow Riley.

“Maybe I ought to go after him, too,” Bo mused as he handed his reins to the young cowboy called Steve.

Scratch shook his head and said, “Right now I reckon there's a good chance you'd just make things worse. Let the two of them sort it out, if they will.”

Bo knew that was good advice, but it still wasn't easy for him to take it. He sighed and forced himself to walk toward the big ranch house.

The front of the house had a low porch on it. As Bo and Scratch stepped up onto that porch, the front door opened and a woman said, “Bo Creel and Scratch Morton. Land's sake, I'd just about given up on ever seeing you two boys again.”

The tiny owner of that voice stepped out onto the porch to meet them. Idabelle Fisher barely topped four feet. She had been John Creel's cook and housekeeper for fifteen years. Her gray hair was pulled into a tight bun on top of her head. Spectacles perched on the end of her nose. She lifted her arms to hug Bo and Scratch in turn as they bent down to embrace her.

“Howdy, Miz Fisher,” Scratch said, grinning. “You don't happen to have any peach cobbler cookin', do you?”

“No, but if I'd known you were coming, Scratch, I would have had one in the oven. I'll whip one up tomorrow. You
are
staying awhile, aren't you?”

“I reckon that depends on Pa . . . and Riley,” Bo said. “He wasn't too happy to see me.”

“Don't worry about that stiff-necked brother of yours,” Idabelle said. “He'll do whatever John says.”

“Then maybe I should worry about Pa. According to Riley, Pa said I wasn't welcome here anymore.”

“Your father says a lot of things. It means about as much as an old bull bellowing in the pasture.” A troubled look came over the old woman's face. “Blood's stronger than, well, just about anything.”

“You're probably wondering—”

She stopped him by shaking her head.

“I'm not asking any questions.”

“Well, I'm telling you,” Bo said. “I didn't do those things folks are saying I did.”

“And I can vouch for that,” Scratch added. “Bo and I just rode in today from up north. Neither of us has been anywhere around here since the last time we saw you, ten years ago.”

Idabelle looked relieved.

“Thank the Lord for that,” she said. “I never believed those terrible things people claimed you did. When Barney Dunn told everybody about the man who killed poor Rose, somebody said that description sounded just like Bo Creel, but I knew that was pure foolishness. I knew you'd never hurt anybody unless it was a bad man who had it coming. Nobody was willing to listen to reason, though. You know how people are. Once somebody said your name, so many of them latched on to it and decided you had to be the killer. You hadn't been around here for so long, it was easy to blame you.”

“But we hadn't been here, like you just said,” Scratch pointed out. “Why would folks think that Bo had snuck back to Bear Creek and turned into a mad dog?”

“Well . . . that was easier for folks to believe than to think that one of their neighbors . . . maybe even somebody in their own house . . . was to blame, I suppose,” Idabelle said.

She was probably right about that, Bo thought. Nobody wanted to believe that someone capable of such brutal violence lurked among them.

“I've heard this Barney Dunn mentioned a couple of times,” Bo said. “Who is he? I don't remember him.”

Idabelle waved a hand and said, “Oh, I suspect your father will want to explain everything to you. There's coffee on the stove. Come on in, and I'll pour a cup for both of you.”

Scratch said, “That's an invitation I won't turn down.”

They followed the diminutive woman into the house, which was almost exactly as Bo remembered it. The flintlock rifle his father had used during the revolution hung over the mantle above the massive stone fireplace. A couple of sets of longhorns were mounted on the wall flanking the rifle. Thick woven rugs were scattered around on the puncheon floor. The furniture was heavy and comfortable. There was a certain air of gloom in the place because it was rather dark, and that was because the windows were small. Big enough to fire a rifle out of, but too small for a Comanche warrior to climb through. More than once in the old days, the family had been forced to fort up in here and fight off a marauding war party.

Bo and Scratch hung their hats on pegs near the door while Idabelle went into the kitchen. She came back with steaming cups of Arbuckle coffee. Scratch took a sip of his and said, “Strong enough to get up and walk off on its own hind legs, just the way I like it.”

“That's the only way any of you cowboys drink it,” the old woman said. “Although I guess you and Bo aren't really cowboys, are you?”

“We've done our share of working cattle,” Bo said. “Just not here.”

“Well, from what your pa told me about what happened, I don't suppose I blame you for leaving, Bo. Might've been nice if you'd been here to lend John a hand over the years—”

“He's done all right for himself, and he's had plenty of help from Riley and the other boys.”

“Yes, but I know he's missed you,” Idabelle said.

From the gentleness of her tone whenever she spoke about his father, Bo had a pretty good idea that Idabelle was in love with John Creel, even though he would have bet not only his hat but his boots and saddle, too, that nothing improper had ever taken place between the two of them, and almost certainly never would at their age.

Bo's mother had been dead for several years when Idabelle came to work at the Star C. John had gone through a succession of cooks and housekeepers before finding one who could put up with his sometimes irascible ways. Idabelle had filled that bill. She wore a wedding ring but never said anything about a husband, so Bo had always assumed she was a widow.

All he knew for sure was that she took good care of his father, and that was all that mattered.

John came in, stomping his boots on the porch before he did so to get some of the dust off them. That had been a habit of his for as far back as Bo could remember, stomping off dust in the summer and mud in the winter. John hung up his hat and walked over to join them near the fireplace.

“I tried to talk some sense into your brother,” he said to Bo. “Don't think I did much good, though.”

“Riley was always pretty stubborn,” Bo said. “He comes by it honest. We all do.”

John snorted. He gestured toward a couple of chairs and said, “Sit down. Idabelle . . .”

“Already going to get your coffee,” she said over her shoulder as she swept out of the room.

The men sat down. Bo said, “If you think it'll help, I'll talk to Riley.”

“You leave your brother to me,” John said. “I'll make him understand.”

“Making somebody understand something and making him believe it are sometimes two different things,” Bo pointed out.

John scowled.

“I reckon I'm partly to blame for this. When folks in Bear Creek started talkin' about how it must've been you who killed those girls, I didn't put a stop to it right away like I should have. I knew better than to think that my own son would do such a thing. But I hadn't seen you for so long . . . and folks change some over the years—”

“Not that much,” Bo said.

“No, not that much,” John agreed. “You're right. But you know how I am.”

“You get a burr under your saddle and say things you don't mean.”

“That's right, but you needn't sound so disrespectful about it. I'm still your pa, remember?”

“Why don't you start at the beginning?” Bo suggested. “I'd really like to hear about these things I'm suspected of doing.”

“Once you've heard it, you may not feel that way.”

“I'll take my chances,” Bo said.

Before John could begin, Idabelle came back from the kitchen with a cup of coffee for him. He took a couple of sips, then said, “About a month ago, a girl who worked at one of the saloons down in Cottonwood turned up dead. Her name was Sara, Sally, something like that. She had her own shack where she lived, and when she didn't turn up for work the fella who owns the saloon went looking for her. He found her in the shack . . .”

John stopped and glanced at Idabelle, who had taken one of the other chairs. She said, “If you're thinking to spare my delicate sensibilities, John, it isn't necessary. I've heard the story, too. I know what happened to the poor girl.”

“All right,” John said. He went on, “The gal had been choked to death, Doc Perkins said when they brought the body up here for him to look at, and after she was dead whoever killed her took a knife to the body. A big knife with a heavy blade, from the looks of it, accordin' to Doc.”

“A butcher knife,” Bo said.

“More than likely. The sheriff sent a deputy down to ask around about what happened, and a couple of people said they saw the girl talkin' to a tall fella in a dark suit the night before, but nobody seemed to get a real good look at him. The girl worked at the saloon, but she, uh, sometimes . . . uh . . .”

John hesitated and glanced at Idabelle again. She said, “For goodness' sake, John, I know what whores are. I'm not going to roll my eyes and faint just because somebody says something about what men and women do together.”

“All right, all right,” John muttered. “Sometimes this gal would take men back to her shack, too, as well as consortin' with 'em at the saloon. Everybody figured the fella she was with went a little loco—”

“More than a little,” Idabelle put in.

“Yeah, more than a little. It shook up the folks in Cottonwood when she was killed, but the people in Bear Creek weren't that worried about it. Then a couple of weeks ago, Rose Delavan was killed the same way. She worked for Lauralee Parker at the Southern Belle.”

Scratch asked, “Lauralee wasn't hurt, was she?”

“No, she's fine. Just upset and scared, like everybody else.”

“So who's Barney Dunn?” Bo asked.

“He's a bartender who works for Lauralee, too. On the night that Rose was killed, he stepped out in the alley behind the saloon for a minute, after most of the customers had gone home, and he spotted something going on in the shadows. He said it sounded like a couple of people strugglin', so he went to get a better look. Then he heard this sound like . . . well, like somebody cuttin' meat. He struck a match to see what was goin' on, and he saw a man bendin' over what was left of Rose, choppin' her to pieces. The fella stopped cuttin' and looked right up at him.”

“And it was me,” Bo said heavily.

“Well, he said it was a fella who wasn't young, who had brown hair with a little gray in it and wore a dark suit. You've got to admit, that sounds like you, Bo.”

Scratch said, “It sounds like thousands of other hombres, too.”

“Yeah, but Dunn, he's sort of good at sketchin' things, so he made a drawin' of the man he saw killin' Rose, and I got to admit, Bo, it looked just like you. Dunn was showin' it around at the saloon, and Avery Hollins saw it and said, ‘Good Lord, that's Bo Creel,' and other folks who know you took a look at it and agreed. It didn't take long for the story to get around town, and everybody figured you had come back to Bear Creek and started killin' soiled doves.”

Bo drew in a deep breath and blew it back out in an exasperated sigh.

“Did anybody bother to stop and ask themselves why in blazes I'd do a thing like that?” he wanted to know.

“I'm sure some did. I guess most folks just assumed you'd gone mad.”

Scratch said, “That's a heck of a conclusion to jump to.”

“Yeah, but mobs don't stop and think, and that's what the population of Bear Creek is these days, a mob. It don't help matters that the Fontaines keep stirrin' 'em up. Danny's always in one of the saloons harpin' on the killin's and sayin' that something ought to be done about them.”