Wicked Wyoming Nights (50 page)

“I don’t want you to have any reason to set foot in this place ever again,” Ella stated emphatically.

“I got the dratted man at last,” Iris said, disgust rampant in her tone. “I could have brought the whole Army with less effort and in half the time.” Susan Haughton followed in their wake.

“You’ve got to take as many men as you can and go straight to the Matador” Eliza stated, pouncing on Joe before the man was barely across the threshold. “Croley’s gang is going to try to steal Cord’s herd tonight.”

“Like I told this lady,” Sheriff Hooker said, pointing to a very exasperated Iris, “I can’t go busting out to Stedman’s place and arrest everybody who sets foot on his land. A man is free to ride anywhere he wants as long as he doesn’t cause trouble.” The sheriff shifted his weight from foot to foot, tugged at his collar with two fingers, and looked uncomfortable. His job had never been easy, but during the last month it had become nearly impossible.

“My uncle
told
me they were going to take Cord’s cows while he’s gone,” Eliza repeated, with emphasis. “That means they have to do it in the next few nights.”

“And that’s another thing,” Joe added. “I can’t ask a bunch of men to sit in the dark for several nights. They have their own cows to look after.”

“And well they should, for it’s very little looking after you’ve been doing, Joe Hooker” intoned Ella, entering the fray. “If you don’t do something, you’ll never be elected sheriff again.”

“All it will take is a few men,” Eliza pointed out.

“It’s not all that easy to get men to volunteer,” Joe replied, looking more and more harassed.

“Then deputize them and make them go,” urged Ella.

“I know Cord’s men won’t let their herds be taken without a fight,” Eliza said, thinking of Franklin, and Royce and Sturgis. “They’re likely to follow them all the way to Montana.”

“Family men aren’t anxious to get into the middle of a gunfight,” Joe said.

“You’re all cowards,” Ella said emphatically. “Ever since that no-good bunch of cutthroats rolled into Johnson County, stealing and burning for the fun of it, you and every other so-called decent man in town have taken to hiding behind closed doors. You’re going to have a hard time explaining what you’ve been doing when that scum turns on the law-abiding citizens.”

“I’ll go for the Army,” volunteered Iris.

“You’d better get your men together and go with Eliza, Joe,” Susan advised him. “A second gunfight is all Washington needs to be convinced the state’s in rebellion. If the Army comes in, you’ll lose any authority you have.”

“And the Association will be just as mad at Cord as everyone else because he agreed to lead that roundup,” Eliza said earnestly. “If they succeed in ruining him, you know there’s nothing to stop them from smashing the rest of the ranchers and homesteaders and farmers around here.”

Joe Hooker felt helpless and surrounded. He wasn’t
afraid
to round up a posse; he doubted that he
could
.

“If you can’t, or
won’t
,” Eliza stated, at last roused to fury by the sheriff’s reluctance to take action, “then I’ll go into every saloon in this town myself. I’ll find out whether there are any men of courage left, or if they prefer talking and drinking to living up to their word. You can go back to your office and board up your door, Mr. Hooker. I will take them to the Matador myself.”

“Now just a moment, Miss—”

“You’re not setting one foot out of this town, Eliza Smallwood,” Ella told her sternly. “You’re going straight to bed.”

“Not until I’ve warned Cord. Uncle Ira is the cause of all this trouble. If I hadn’t sided with him against Cord, he’d probably be in jail right now, so in a way I’m responsible. I’d better get started now if I want to find enough men.”

“I’m coming with you,” declared Susan. “I know most of them already, and if you can’t convince them, maybe I can shame them.”

“And I’ll see the colonel has the Army ready in case it’s needed,” Iris chimed in.

“How does it feel to see your job done by a pack of females, Joe?” Ella sneered, her contempt cutting through to the man’s soul. “You’re not going to be able to hold your head up when this gets out, and I’ll make sure it does. Don’t fool yourself by thinking they’ll fail. Eliza’s so popular right now she could raise an army to fight Sitting Bull all over again.”

“You don’t have to say any more, Ella,” Joe said, pushed to the limit at last. “I’ll get some men together.”

“You’ve got to have at least twenty.”

Joe hesitated.

“I’ll come along if you think you’ll need help” Eliza added.

“Of course he will” said Ella, rubbing salt into his wounded pride. “The man can’t even get his deputies to do their job.”

“I’ll have two dozen men at the edge of town an hour before sundown, and I’ll do it by myself.”

“I’m coming along,” said Susan. “I have a family here now. I have just a much of a stake as Eliza.”

Joe didn’t want any woman’s help, but it was obvious Susan was not going to be stopped.

“I’m going to the Matador,” Eliza said, looking at Ella and Lucy rather than Joe.

“Then I’m coming too, “cause you’re gonna faint sure enough,” declared Lucy.

“And I’m going to drive,” stated Ella. “You’re too weak, and I wouldn’t trust Lucy with a pony cart.”

“That’s a good thing” agreed Lucy. “Cooking, sewing, and cleaning I can do, but I’m not sitting behind no horse and telling it to start running. I don’t know how to talk to horses, and I’ve never been around one yet that didn’t want to slow down when he ought to hurry up, or turn off to the right when any fool could see he ought to go to the left.”

Joe Hooker gave up and fled. The companionship of Susan, however undesirable, was preferable to being surrounded by four women, not one of whom he could understand.

Chapter 37

The wait sorely tried Eliza’s patience, but Ella forced her to spend the time resting.

“I’m letting you go because I can’t stop you,” Ella said brusquely “but I won’t allow you to kill yourself over a few cows. The men have been trying to do that to themselves for years, so it’d be a shame to deny them their fun after all this time. You, however, are a female and you ought to have more sense.”

“But they will soon be my cows,” Eliza objected.

“When that’s the case, you’ll have a husband to keep you from dashing off after I don’t know what kind of ruffians. Until then you’re stuck with me and Lucy, and I’m putting my foot down.”

Lucy put
her
foot down too, and Eliza stayed in bed. Shortly before six o’clock Susan stopped by to report she and Joe had rounded up more than the two dozen men Eliza wanted.

“Joe wasn’t too anxious to speak up at first, so I had to do most of the talking. But when they learned it was you who had asked for their help and that you were planning to take on the rustlers by yourself if you had to, it wasn’t hard to get them to listen.”

“I’m relieved to hear there are still some
men
in this town,” Ella observed.

“A lot of people are tired of all the unruliness,” Susan said. “Joe was surprised how many volunteered. He thinks the men are behind him at last.”

“The question is how far they’ll go.”

But when Ella’s buckboard pulled up at the edge of town that evening, she was reassured to see the men were just as anxious to be off as the sheriff. There was also an element of face-saving in their participation. As one young man so succinctly put it as he pushed away the whiskey he had just ordered, “If a lady schoolteacher is willing to face those cutthroats, how can I stay here and still call myself a man?” Not everyone was inclined to go as far, but neither were they predisposed to continue drinking and advertise the fact that they were unwilling, or unable, to do what a mere schoolteacher could do. Without meaning to, Eliza had closed down every saloon in Buffalo for the night. Even Lavinia’s girls went to bed early.

They made the long ride in the dark, and the late spring air turned chilly when the sun went down. Eliza never felt the cold, though she wasn’t sure whether it was due to the excitement or the three blankets Lucy wrapped around her. She also had no idea who they would find at the ranch, or how she was going to convince them she was bringing help, not attacking them.

“Maybe one of you should ride ahead and tell them why we’re here,” Eliza suggested as they neared the ranch house.

“That ought to be you, miss,” Joe said. “Not meaning to hide behind your skirts, but a buggy full of women coming to the door in the middle of the night isn’t going to upset anybody. A crowd of armed men might unnerve some guy with an itchy finger.”

But Eliza didn’t find a stranger in charge.

“What are you doing here?” Cord demanded roughly, stepping out of the dark shadows.

“My God, you nearly scared me half to death,” Ella gasped after stifling a scream that had already half slipped out of her throat. “What do you mean popping out at people from behind dark corners win a rifle in your hands.” But at the first sight of Cord, Eliza had slipped out of the buggy and run into his arms. Safely folded to his chest, she felt all her apprehension melt away.

“I draught you had gone to Montana,” she said as soon as she escaped from his crushing embrace.

“I’m still too useless to make a trip like that,” he confessed, chagrinned at the limitations imposed by his still-healing wound.

“If you’d gone to bed like a sensible person, you’d be fit as a fiddle by now,” Ella scolded him.

“We all had better get inside before we get sick,” said Lucy, tying the horse to the hitching post. “There’s nothing like night air for making a body feel poorly.”

“I’ve spent half my life sleeping in the open,” Cord objected.

“And you ain’t feeling too good now, are you?” demanded Lucy.

“No,” Cord admitted with a chuckle. “But as soon as you tell me what brought you here in the middle of the night, I’ll let you tuck me in bed.”

“It’s little sleep you’ll be getting if Miss Eliza’s right,” Lucy warned ominously. Cord turn toward Eliza, a question in his eyes.

“We came ahead to warn you that the sheriff and a large group of volunteers will be here in a few minutes.”

Cord looked at her without understanding, a dangerous tenseness about him.

“Everybody thinks you’re in Montana, and Uncle Ira said Croley and his men are planning to steal the rest of your herd while you’re gone.”

“I’ve got men riding the range around the clock.”

“Uncle said Croley has got more than twice as many men as you have, and some of them will be happy to shoot anybody who tries to stop them.”

“So Croley has hired himself a gang of outlaws, has he?” mused Cord. “Chances are he won’t be able to control them in the end.”

“But you won’t have any cows by then,” Ella pointed out remorselessly.

“But what is Joe Hooker doing here?”

“I talked the sheriff into bringing some volunteers to help. I thought I could explain everything to Ginny and she would explain it to your men, and when the rustlers knew the sheriff and his men were here, they would go away again.”

“And then the sheriff started acting like he was stuffed with cotton instead of a backbone, so Miss Eliza told him she would raise the men herself” Lucy related proudly. “She shamed him right good and proper.”

“If I don’t marry you soon, I’m going to be too much in debt to ask you to be my wife.” Cord wrapped her in his arms and kissed her again.

“Ain’t you asked her already, and you with your hands all over her?” demanded an outraged Lucy.

“Yes, and she’s agreed, so you can put your hackles down. Let’s go inside. Ginny will be delighted to have someone to entertain.”

“But I want to help,” Eliza insisted.

“This is not a game for girls, especially one who’s still weak from a bump on the head.”

“She ought to be lying down in her bed this minute,” Ella scolded, “but I knew she’d never get a minute’s rest if she didn’t come herself.”

“I’ve got plenty of beds, so you can all stay. It’s out of the question to try and return to town at this time of night.” He ushered the ladies inside and turned them over to an excited Ginny.

“No point in telling him we’ve been planning to stay all along,” Ella whispered to Lucy.

“You’ll come back before you leave?” Eliza asked.

“Of course. I couldn’t go off without seeing you again,” Cord reassured her.

Ginny was properly horrified when she learned the cause of the ladies’ errand, but she was too excited at having female company to think of that for more than a few minutes. She took them into the parlor, beamed with pleasure when Ella praised everything in the room, and nearly burst with pride as she showed them over the whole house, telling them what had been in the rooms in the days when the Orr family had lived there and how Mr. Stedman’s purchases were a great improvement.

“There was no reason to think he would know how to pick out furnishings, him being a man and more used to the outdoors than the inside of a house, so I was right amazed when all this stuff showed up, right down to the rugs and the curtains for the windows.”