Thayer asked Montoya, “Have you challenged the right of Thomas McCabe to claim the land in question before bringing this lawsuit?”

  “You know I have,” snapped Montoya.

  “In 1852?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the result of that challenge was that an official of the United States government ruled that you had no legal claim to the land?”

  “He was wrong!” Montoya shouted. The old man lifted a clenched fist and shook it. “What do you expect? He was a damned gringo—”

  “Your Honor!” Berglund practically yelped. “My client is understandably upset after having been badgered by Mr. Thayer. I humbly ask that you excuse his emotional outburst.”

  The courtroom was buzzing now. Judge Davis rapped several times with his gavel to quiet the place down, then said, “Please keep yourself under control, Señor Montoya. If you don’t, I’ll have to find you in contempt of court, and that won’t help your case.”

  Montoya still looked like he wanted to take a swing at Thayer, but he managed to nod and say, “Si, Your Honor. I will remember.”

  Davis said to Thayer, “Go ahead, counselor.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.” Thayer turned back to Montoya. “Did the United States land commissioner rule against your claim?”

  “He did,” Montoya said tightly.

  “And has the situation changed since then? Have you found the original land grant, for instance, or is it still missing?”

  With an effort, Montoya grated, “The situation has not changed.”

  “So you still have absolutely no evidence to support your claim?”

  Montoya sat there silently, his face like stone.

  “I won’t ask the court to force you to answer that question, Señor Montoya,” Thayer said. “Would you say that you brought suit against the late Thomas McCabe, the original defendant in this case, and then against his widow, Mrs. Emily McCabe, in an effort to annoy, embarrass, or otherwise harass them?”

  “No!” Montoya’s rein slipped and he surged to his feet. “I want what is mine! McCabe was a thief!”

  For the first time, Emily spoke up. “That’s not true!” she exclaimed as she leapt to her feet.

  Davis was already pounding again with his gavel. “Mrs. McCabe, sit down!” he shouted over the tumult in the courtroom. “Señor Montoya, sit down now! Order, blast it!”

  Longarm wasn’t leaning casually against the wall now. He stood up straight, his hand ready to reach for his gun if need be. On the other side of the room, Sheriff Walcott was just as tense.

  The judge kept rapping his gavel on the bench, and slowly the noise in the courtroom died down. Thayer went to Emily’s side and eased her back into her chair, speaking quietly in her ear as he did so. Berglund hurried up to the witness chair and put a hand on Montoya’s shoulder. Montoya shook off the attorney’s hand, and for a second Longarm thought he was going to clout Berglund one. Then, reluctantly, Montoya sat down, and Berglund retreated to the plaintiff’s table.

  “Do you have any more questions for this witness, Mr. Thayer?” Judge Davis asked.

  “Just a couple, Your Honor,” Thayer said as he left Emily sitting at the table. “Señor Montoya, when Land Commissioner Cunningham ruled that without the original document your land grant was no longer valid, you actually had no legal claim to any of your ranch, did you?”

  Montoya blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Under the circumstances, Tom McCabe could have gone to the territorial capital in Santa Fe and not only filed legal claim to the land that is now known as the Box MCC ranch, he could have also claimed all of your land. Isn’t that true?”

  “That ... that is true, I suppose.” For the first time, Montoya’s proud veneer was beginning to show some cracks.

  “But the land in dispute was only the area between the creek and Arroyo Rojo.”

  “Yes, but if Tom McCabe was the greedy, land-hungry thief you make him out to be, he could have taken your entire ranch and forced you out of the valley completely. And you wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it without the land grant document.”

  Montoya glowered up at him, but he didn’t deny what Thayer had said.

  “So, actually, Tom McCabe was being a good neighbor. He just took what he thought was rightfully his, and he left you alone to file legal claims on what is now known as the Lariat ranch. Which you have done, correct?”

  “I try to abide by the American laws,” Montoya said. “My claims are registered in Santa Fe.”

  “Yes, they are. I have copies of them.” Thayer nodded and said to the judge, “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  Berglund was sitting at the plaintiff’s table looking stunned. “Mr. Berglund?” Davis prodded him. “Call your next witness.”

  Slowly, Berglund climbed to his feet. “I, ah, have no more witnesses, Your Honor. Before Senor Montoya steps down, however, I would like to ask him one more question.”

  Davis looked at Thayer, who waved a hand confidently, indicating that he had no objection.

  Berglund approached the witness. “Señor Montoya, before the land grant document was lost, did you ever see it personally, with your own eyes?”

  “I did,” Montoya said. “I saw it many times as a young man.”

  “And is it your testimony, based on your personal knowledge of the land grant, that the document set forth the boundaries as you indicated earlier?”

  “I told the truth,” Montoya said. “The western boundary was Arroyo Rojo, not the creek.”

  “That’s all, Your Honor,” Berglund said.

  Thayer stood up. “Can I follow up on that, Your Honor?”

  “Go ahead,” said Davis.

  “Señor Montoya, is there anyone else who actually saw the document and can testify that you are correct about what it said? Anyone at all?”

  “The document was old,” Montoya said hesitantly. “It was kept locked in a safe. Only members of the family were ever allowed to see it. It was precious, like an heirloom.”

  Thayer indicated Mercedes with a sweep of his hand. “Should I call your daughter to the stand and ask her if she has ever seen the document?”

  “There is no need to do that,” Montoya said. “The land grant disappeared when Mercedes was only a child. If she ever saw it, she would have no memory of it.”

  “So there is no one alive who can corroborate your testimony based on personal knowledge?”

  Montoya sighed. “No.”

  “Thank you.” Thayer went back to his chair.

  Davis looked at Berglund, who shook his head glumly.

  “The witness may step down,” Davis told Montoya, who stood up and went back to the plaintiff’s table, moving like an old man now. Longarm glanced over at Emily and saw that she was watching Montoya with something like pity in her eyes.

  Berglund got up and said, “The plaintiff rests, Your Honor.”

  Thayer was on his feet before Berglund had sunk disconsolately back into his chair. “Your Honor, due to the fact that the plaintiff has introduced no evidence to substantiate his claims, and in light of the decision rendered previously by a United States land commissioner, I move that this lawsuit be dismissed.”

  Davis grunted. “Now’s the right time, counselor.” He lifted his gavel, poised to strike. “The defense’s motion is granted. This lawsuit is hereby dismissed due to lack of evidence.” The gavel came down with a sharp crack. “Next case!”

  Longarm waited tensely for the explosion that might come.

  Chapter 16

  He didn’t have long to wait. Montoya leapt up from his chair, shouting, “This is an outrage! Again the gringo government steals from me what is mine!”

  Furious, Judge Davis pointed his gavel at Montoya. “One more word and I’ll have you arrested, sir!”

  Longarm caught some movement from the comer of his eye. The courtroom door was open a couple of inches, and through that gap Longarm caught a glimpse of Chuy Valdez’s face. Valdez disappeared. Longarm knew the young vaquero was probably on his way to let Montoya’s men know that their patron had lost in court.

  Sheriff Walcott moved toward Montoya to be ready in case the judge ordered him to take the old man into custody. Meanwhile, Mercedes stepped through the gate in the railing and hurried to her father’s side. She took hold of his arm and began speaking quickly to him in an effort to calm him down. Montoya looked as if he wanted to pull away from her, but he didn’t try to.

  Thayer hugged Emily in congratulations, holding her a little longer than was absolutely necessary, Longarm thought. Most of the spectators were on their feet now, so Longarm pushed his way through them until he reached the railing. Not bothering with the gate, he swung his long legs over the barrier and stepped up to Emily and Thayer.

  “Might be a good idea to head on back out to the ranch,” Longarm said. “Hell could start popping around here in a few minutes.”

  “But we won,” Thayer said, confused by Longarm’s warning.

  “Don Alejandro doesn’t have to accept the loss gracefully,” Emily said. “I know I wouldn’t, if it were the other way around.”

  No, she probably wouldn’t, Longarm decided, and he thought again how much Emily and Montoya were alike, despite the hostility between them.

  “Valdez was skulking around out in the hall and went to spread the word,” Longarm said. “That’s why I think it would be a good idea if you two got out of here. I’ll go with you.”

  “My buggy’s tied up right outside the courthouse,” said Thayer. “We’ll go straight to the ranch, Emily.”

  She nodded. “All right. I suppose that would be best.”

  As they started to turn toward the door, Montoya abruptly pulled away from his daughter and leveled a finger at Emily. “I withdraw my proposal of marriage!” he flared. “I thought to make peace between our families by joining them, but now there can be no peace!”

  Sam Kingston bulled forward, holding his hat in his hand. “She was never gonna marry you anyway, you old rapscallion! Hell, you shoulda been ashamed o’ yourself for askin’. Miss Emily, I’m the one you oughta marry. I can take care o’ you and protect you from the likes o’ this greaser.”

  A spate of Spanish curses burst from Montoya’s mouth. Sheriff Walcott moved to get between Montoya and Kingston. Over his shoulder, he snapped, “Shut up, Kingston. You’re just makin’ things worse.”

  Judge Davis started pounding his gavel on the bench again. “I didn’t adjourn the court! Damn it, is anybody listening to me?”

  Not much, Longarm thought as he tried to steer Emily and Thayer toward the door, away from both Montoya and Sam Kingston. Kingston called after them, “Just say yes, gal, and we’ll have ourselves the biggest spread in the whole danged territory!”

  Longarm, Emily, and Thayer had almost reached the door. It burst open in front of them, and half a dozen of Montoya’s vaqueros shoved into the room, Chuy Valdez among them. All of them wore guns, leading Judge Davis to yell, “Sheriff, disarm those men! No weapons in the courtroom!”

  Disarming those angry vaqueros was going to be even harder than it sounded, Longarm thought. But he and Walcott had to try.

  Before they could do so, someone out in the corridor shouted, “There they are! Get ’em!”

  Longarm recognized the young, impulsive voice of Jackson Flynn, the Box MCC hand who had traded shots with Valdez on the evening Longarm had first come to Palmerton. Longarm waited grimly for the sound of shots to come from the hall, but instead the doorway and the corridor beyond it turned into a wild melee of flailing, kicking, and punching. Fists thudded against flesh as the McCabe riders led by young Flynn waded into the Montoya vaqueros. Men grunted and cursed loudly. The chaos threatened to spread into the courtroom, which was already a mass of confusion because of the crowd of spectators.

  Walcott appeared from somewhere at Longarm’s elbow. “Take ’em out the window!” he said. “Get movin’ before this turns into a real riot!”

  It was just about there already, Longarm thought, but he started pushing a path toward the nearest window anyway, holding Emily’s arm and tugging her along behind him. Thayer had hold of her other arm, and together they made sure she didn’t fall and get trampled as the fracas spread like wildfire. Judge Davis was still working his gavel and shouting, but no one paid any attention to him now.

  Longarm reached the window and threw a leg over the sill. The courtroom was on the first floor, so he was able to step down to the ground without much trouble. He turned back and reached up to help Emily as she climbed out of the building. Thayer scrambled out after her, looking none too pleased at having to make such an undignified escape.

  Longarm looked around and saw no one close by, although the noise of fighting from inside the courtroom was growing louder. He took Emily’s arm again and asked Thayer, “Where’s that buggy?”

  “This way,” Thayer said, hurrying toward one of the side streets.

  They reached the lawyer’s buggy a moment later. Thayer helped Emily into the vehicle and climbed in after her. Longarm stepped back and took off his hat as Thayer picked up the reins. “Make for the ranch! I’ll follow along after,” Longarm said, then he slapped the horse on the rump with his Stetson. The horse took off running, with Thayer struggling to keep the buggy under control.

  Longarm didn’t like to leave Sheriff Walcott alone to cope with the brawl inside the courtroom, but he didn’t want to leave Emily unguarded for any longer than necessary. Now that the lawsuit was over and she had won, she might turn out to be in even greater danger than before. If anything happened to her, the Box MCC would be left in the hands of Warren McCabe. Warren wouldn’t be any match for either Montoya or Kingston, and with them crowding in from both sides, they could carve up the McCabe ranch between them.

  This was a hell of a mess, Longarm thought as he headed for the hotel corral to saddle his rented mount. If he had been able to find out who had bushwhacked Tom McCabe, it might have simplified matters. If he could have laid his hands on that old land grant document and proven one way or the other what it said, that would have helped, too. But at the moment, both of those things seemed pretty far out of reach.

  He threw his saddle on the steeldust in a hurry, swung up onto the horse, and galloped out of Palmerton, taking the main trail north. He didn’t see any other riders, and he was thankful for that. Since he could move faster on horseback than Thayer’s buggy could travel, within a quarter of an hour he spotted the vehicle rolling along the trail in front of him.

  He caught up to the buggy quickly and waved for Thayer to keep going. A glance over his shoulder showed Longarm no dust rising from the trail, so maybe they hadn’t been followed. But anybody who knew this part of the country could probably come after them without necessarily having to stay on the trail. They might even find trouble waiting for them when they got back to the Box MCC.

  Thayer had the buggy moving so fast that the ride was pretty rough on Emily, but it was better for her to get bounced around a little than to be caught out here in the open by folks who wanted her dead. Longarm kept a close eye on both sides of the trail, watching for any sign of an ambush, but nothing happened during the hour it took to reach the McCabe ranch house.

  Ed Jordan came running from the barn as Thayer brought the buggy to a sliding stop in front of the house, raising a cloud of dust in the process. “What’s wrong?” Jordan yelled.

  “You came down the road like you had a pack of Apaches on your tail!”

  “The trial’s over,” Longarm said as he swung down from the steeldust and pressed the horse’s reins into Jordan’s hand. “Mrs. McCabe won, but Montoya’s declared war on her.”

  “Damn it! I was afraid it’d come to this.”

  “It’ll be all right, Ed,” Emily said to her foreman as Thayer helped her from the buggy. “I’m sure Don Alejandro will calm down once he understands there’s nothing he can do to change things.”

  Longarm wasn’t going to count on that. “Take Mrs. McCabe in the house,” he said to Thayer. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  The attorney hustled Emily into the ranch house. Longarm was glad the place had such thick log walls. They would stand up to a lot of rifle fire if it came down to a siege.

  “Some of your hands were in town, fighting with Montoya’s men,” Longarm told Jordan. “I saw that young fella Flynn. Looked like he was one of the ringleaders.”

  “Jackson’s a hothead, all right,” said Jordan, “but he’s a good kid. Mighty loyal to Miz McCabe. Was there any shootin’?”

  Longarm shook his head. “Not by the time we lit a shuck out of there, just a heap of fisticuffs.”

  “Maybe nobody got killed, then,” the foreman said worriedly.

  “How many men do you have here on the ranch?”

  “Half a dozen or so. The rest are either in town or out on the range.”

  Longarm nodded. “Better than nothing. Get ’em armed and set some of them out as guards. We’ll need some warning if Montoya attacks the place.”

  “Right. You fortin’ up in the house with Miz McCabe and that lawyer?”

  “Yeah. We could use you and another man inside with rifles to help us cover as many windows as possible.”

  “Be there in a few minutes, as soon as I get those lookouts posted.”

  Longarm nodded again, satisfied that Jordan could do an adequate job of setting up the ranch’s defenses. He clapped a hand on the middle-aged cowboy’s shoulder in gratitude, then hurried inside.

  He found Emily and Thayer in the parlor. Emily was sitting in an armchair with her hands knotted together in her lap, while Thayer paced back and forth worriedly over a Navajo rug. “I should have foreseen that Montoya wouldn’t abide by the court’s ruling,” Thayer said when Longarm came into the room. “I suppose I placed too much faith in the power of the judicial system. All I knew was that we had an open-and-shut case.”

  There he went with that open-and-shut business again, thought Longarm. He said, “It looked like Montoya’s daughter was trying to cool him off. Maybe she’ll get lucky and keep him from coming after Mrs. McCabe.”

  “What about Sheriff Walcott?” Emily asked. “Can’t he stop Don Alejandro?”

 

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