A hill of beans, p.18
A Hill of Beans, page 18
Mac’s Smith & Wesson seemed to have leaped into his hand as if by its own volition. He’d been unable to stop Roman from going for his gun, and he hadn’t been fast enough to prevent Forrest from taking his shot. But now, as he saw the professor clearly getting ready to fire again at the hunched-over form of Roman, this time there was something he could do. Had to do. No other choice.
Since calling out again would have been an even more useless waste of breath than the first time, all that was left was to beat Forrest to triggering another round and killing Roman. The Model 3 bucked in Mac’s fist, and the .44 caliber slug exploding from its barrel slammed hard into Forrest, knocking him to the ground and stopping him from getting off a second shot.
CHAPTER 32
“If he hadn’t moved, I’d’ve only got his arm. That’s what I was aiming for,” Mac said in a tight voice. “But at the last second, he leaned forward—lunged, sort of, as he was getting ready to shoot again. That shifted him right into my line of fire.”
Kneeling beside the body of the fallen man, Norris Bradley reported, “Your bullet went into the side of his chest. Deep, might’ve clipped the heart. At any rate, it killed him. Quick and clean.”
“Damn,” Mac said under his breath.
His gaze lifted from the man he’d shot and went to Belinda, who remained standing where she’d been when the bullets started flying. Colleen had moved up to stand beside her. Belinda’s face was ashen, pinched by shock and anxiety. When she heard the words “killed him,” she closed her eyes and lowered her head, bringing her forehead to rest on Colleen’s shoulder.
“What about Roman? How is he?”
Bradley’s question caused Mac to shift his gaze over to where Roman lay on the ground with his brother Henry and Sparky Whitlock kneeling on either side of him. Without looking around, Henry said, “He’ll be okay. Took a deep bullet burn on his side. Gonna be mighty sore for a few days, but it could’ve been a whole lot worse.”
“It hurts like blazes! You were sure right about that much,” proclaimed Roman.
Bradley straightened up. He glared down at Forrest. “Darn fool went plumb out of his head. I don’t get it. As a father, I can understand being protective of your daughter and all . . . But to pull a gun and start shooting? Over a kiss?”
“That’s all it was, Pa,” Roman insisted. “And like I said before, wasn’t nobody forcin’ nobody.”
Mac took a deep breath, exhaled through his nostrils. Then he said, “The way Forrest acted didn’t come from being a father.”
Bradley scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Belinda lifted her face from Colleen’s shoulder and gave Mac a pleading look. “You promised.”
“I promised nothing,” Mac replied with a shake of his head. “I said I’d keep your secret as long as no harm was done. One man’s dead, another is wounded. I’d say that pretty much breaks the bargain. And if you hadn’t been in such a hurry to fling yourself at Roman—the way I’m guessing you did, same as you tried with me earlier—it wouldn’t have come to this.”
Now everybody was looking at him. Even Roman, pushing himself up onto one elbow.
“What the devil are you talking about, Mac?” Bradley said, growing more impatient. “What secret? What bargain?”
Mac heaved another sigh. “First things first,” he said. “Somebody throw a blanket over Forrest. Henry, Sparky—help Roman to his feet and steer him over to the chuckwagon where there’s stuff to treat that wound. While we’re doing that, I’ll tell you all what I guess I should have spilled to somebody before this.”
“Fair enough,” allowed Bradley. “I’ll take care of covering up the professor. You boys get started on Roman’s wound. I’ll join you in a minute.” He cut his gaze to the two women. “Colleen, I think it might be best if you took Belinda to her wagon and sat with her for a spell. I’ll come by directly and we can talk about . . . well, what else needs to be done.”
* * *
Roman’s wound turned out to be exactly as Henry had described, a bullet track through the meaty area above his belt and just below his ribs. Mac cleaned it first with soapy water and then sloshed it with whiskey, which got a louder yelp out of the patient than when he took the initial hit. Some additional whiskey, poured down his throat this time, helped settle Roman down. After the bleeding was stopped, some healing salve was smeared the length of the gash and then several wraps of clean dressing were wound around Roman’s middle.
As Mac administered this treatment, he talked. He told all assembled around him—Bradley, Roman, Henry, Sparky, and Laird Nolan—how he had learned the truth about the Forrests actually being husband and wife rather than father and daughter; how he’d wrestled with what to do with the information; how he’d finally confronted Belinda and then agreed to keep their secret as long as they appeared to pose no threat to the Rafter B.
“Obviously,” he concluded, “right about now I’m wishing I would have done different. Told somebody. Something. If I had, maybe what happened here this afternoon wouldn’t have taken place. If Roman had known Belinda was a married woman . . .”
“Don’t beat yourself up over that one,” Roman responded. “Ain’t nothing I’m necessarily proud of, but I haven’t let the fact any gal was wearing a wedding ring stop me in the past when I thought I had a chance with her. I might have been a little more on guard when Belinda all of a sudden seemed so willing . . . but no, I’m afraid it wouldn’t have made much difference in the long run.” He quickly added, “But that still don’t mean I forced anything on her.”
“I can vouch for that,” Mac said. “She wanted badly to make the break with Forrest. Once I discovered their secret and she’d opened up to me about everything behind it, she was afraid he might think she’d cooperated too easily. She was afraid of him in general and got even more desperate to get away. All me or Roman represented were ways she might accomplish that—provide her a way out and at the same time protection against Forrest’s jealousy and any attempts he might make to force her to stay.”
He gave a sorrowful shake of his head. “I didn’t see that part in time. After her and I talked, she seemed nothing but relieved and grateful that I’d agreed to keep their secret. I was dumb enough to expect she’d wait until they got to Miles City before she tried to figure out another method to get away from the professor.”
“Well, she’s rid of him now. Permanent-like,” said Bradley.
“Yeah, and don’t think that don’t eat at me,” Mac said. “It ain’t that I’ve got any problem with having killed that gun-waving fool. But knowing it played right into Belinda’s scheme after all, that’s what galls me.”
Now it was Bradley who heaved a sigh. “Like Roman said, don’t beat yourself up over it. None of it. Flapping your gums about somebody else’s business, even if it’s not exactly on the up and up, don’t come easy to anybody who’s on the level themselves. Even if you’d told me—or anybody—what you found out about the Forrests, what would it have changed? We likely wouldn’t have cast them off on their own, not under these circumstances. So what happened today still could have happened.”
“Especially where I was concerned,” grumbled Roman. “I hate to admit it, but if you’d tried to tell me that Belinda was married and I ought to steer clear—coming from you, you think I would have listened? More likely, I would have accused you of trying to trick me out of the way so you could continue making your own play, and I’d’ve charged after her all the harder.”
Mac grinned wryly. “Yeah, you probably would have at that.”
Roman’s brows pinched together. He looked ready to say something more, but hesitated. He tossed a quick glance to each of the others pulled in close around, then turned his gaze back to Mac.
“Look here. Mackenzie . . . Mac . . . I ain’t done nothing but give you a rough way to go ever since you first showed up. Everybody here knows it. Just like they know I can be kind of a miserable jackass all the way around. But you never did a thing, really, to rate the way I treated you. All the rest of the outfit took to you like ducks to water, and that just burned me all the more . . . And now, blast you, you’ve gone and saved my life.”
Roman cleared his throat. “Guess what I’m tryin’ to say is—Thank you. Thanks for savin’ my hide. And for what it’s worth, you can look for me not to be such a no-good skunk from here on out. Leastways, not any more so than I naturally am to everybody.”
“In other words,” Henry, Roman’s brother, said dryly, “don’t expect too much of a change, Mac.”
Roman grabbed a wadded-up, bloody piece of cloth that had been used to clean his wound and threw it at Henry, who managed to duck. Everybody had a bit of chuckle over the exchange, and it helped momentarily ease the tension still hanging in the air following the shooting.
Until Bradley turned serious again, saying, “Now that we’re all caught up on everything, the rest of us need to make some decisions same as Mac was wrestling with. We can’t dump the girl and leave her on her own out in the middle of nowhere. So if we take her all the way to Miles City with us, what do we do with her once we get there? Knowing she’s a fugitive with Wanted papers on her, I mean.”
Roman’s eyebrows went up. “Aw, come on now, Pa. You ain’t sayin’ you think we should turn her over to the law, are you?”
“I ain’t saying nothing. I’m asking what the rest of you think. If she’s telling the truth about everything she told Mac, there’s supposedly a sizable bounty on her.”
“If she’s telling the truth,” said Henry. “Even if she is, that was a long time ago and clear down on the border.”
“Besides, it was the professor who did the shootin’ down there,” pointed out Sparky. “Miss Belinda was just an . . . ah . . . just a complish, or whatever you call it.”
“An accomplice,” Nolan said.
“Yeah. One of those,” Sparky agreed. “Heck, on account of that, they probably don’t even want her all that bad. And the reward on her alone might be too puny to bother with.”
“Especially since we got plenty of, er, our own fish to fry,” said Roman somewhat obscurely.
Bradley looked at Mac. “What do you think?”
“I already made my decision,” Mac told him. “Bounty money don’t have no appeal to me and something that happened down on the border two or three years ago don’t rate as any big concern of mine.”
Bradley gave a measured nod. “All right. Sounds like we’re in agreement then. We take the girl—Belinda or whatever her name is—as far as Miles City and there we part company. Leave her to her own pursuits.” His eyes settled on his oldest son. “No matter how doggone pretty she is, she’s proven herself to be a brand of poison that nobody with a lick of sense would tamper with—especially not a second time. Is that clear, Roman?”
“You don’t have to tell me, Pa.” Roman did his best to look both sincere and innocent. Placing a hand gingerly over the dressing wrapped around his middle, he added, “Even if I was inclined to slip a little, in a moment of weakness you understand, I got me a pretty strong reminder against it right here.”
Further discussion was interrupted at that point by the sound of horses approaching at a gallop. All heads turned to look and what they saw was Shad and George—the two members of the outfit who’d been absent for much of the afternoon—riding up.
Reaching the center of the camp, they reined up sharply. It didn’t take but a second for Shad’s gaze to fall on the blanket-covered form of Forrest sprawled where he had fallen.
“What’ve we got here?”
As Bradley and the others peeled away from the chuckwagon and approached the new arrivals, the ranch owner answered, “You’re looking at the late Professor Herbert Forrest.”
Shad’s eyes cut to Roman, shirtless and bandaged around the middle. “What happened to you?”
“Before he turned late, the professor shot me,” Roman answered.
“So you kilt him?”
“Not me.” Roman jerked a thumb. “Mac took care of that chore, savin’ me from a second helping of lead the professor was ready to dish out instead of healing elixir.”
Shad slowly scanned all of the men standing before him. Then, turning to George mounted at his side, he said, “Ain’t it a fright how we can’t leave this rowdy crew for even a couple hours without ’em findin’ a whole new raft of mischief to get into?”
George, looking a little unnerved, made no comment.
Turning back to the others, Shad leaned forward, resting one thick forearm down on his pommel. “Here’s the thing, though, lads,” he announced. “Comes to stirrin’ up mischief, me and Georgie here might have outdone the lot of you without half tryin’.”
Knowing Shad well enough to sense there was something serious underneath the ramrod’s touch of levity, Bradley cocked an eyebrow and said, “What do you mean? Stirred up mischief how?”
“Well, it ain’t so much that we stirred it up. Not yet anyway.” Shad straightened in his saddle again and cocked his head to one side. “But we sure found a whole passel of it waitin’ for us. Little more than a mile off, you see, we spotted the camp of some hombres who look to be just kicked back, kinda relaxed, sort of like they’re waitin’ for something. I figure they must’ve been doggin’ our trail for awhile. I make ’em for a pack of no-good, lowdown rustlers . . . and that means what they’re waitin’ for is the right time and place to hit our herd.”
CHAPTER 33
“Don’t make sense no other way,” Shad insisted. “Why else would they be stopped and camped so early in the day, hangin’ back and not comin’ on ahead to announce themselves, let us know there was somebody else in the area? We’re stopped on account of the river, they’re stopped because we are, and they ain’t ready for us to know they’re on our tail. To me, that adds up to them meanin’ us no good.”
“What were you and George doing back that way so’s you happened to spot ’em?” Roman asked.
“Hunting,” came the answer from George. “We figured as long as we were going to be stopped for another day or two, it’d be a good chance to try and bag some fresh meat for Mac to cook up or maybe even have time to make some antelope jerky out of.”
“Antelope are thick through here,” Shad added. “Leastways they seemed to be back when I was scoutin’ before that storm hit. I spotted all kinds of ’em then. Don’t know where they got to, but we sure didn’t have no luck findin’ any today.”
“Well, if that pack of hombres back there are what you think they are, then I’d say your luck was pretty good regardless,” said Mac. “Giving us warning they’re there gives us a chance to plan for them and not get caught by surprise.”
“Agreed,” said Roman. “In fact, I’d say it puts us in position to be the ones springin’ a surprise.”
“I kinda like the sound of that. What do you think, Boss?” Shad directed the question to Bradley.
The ranch owner looked thoughtful. “Mighty tempting notion. How many are in that bunch?”
“We didn’t have good enough cover to get in very close.” Shad scrunched up his face. “Seven or eight, I’d say. For sure less than ten.”
“That’s about what I made out, too,” George said.
Roman’s head bobbed. “Nothing we can’t handle. Especially with surprise on our side.”
“Just before daybreak would be a good time for that kind of visit,” Shad suggested. “Give us enough light to see by and catch them rascals snorin’ nice and deep, not expectin’ a thing. We could have the drop on ’em before they got the sleep blinked out of their eyes.”
Bradley didn’t say anything right away. His gaze drifted to the south, the direction the men under discussion were camped. When he brought his eyes back to those gathered around him, he said, “That’s the way we’ll do it then. If it turns out they have some legitimate reason for being where they are, we’ll owe ’em an explanation and an apology for rousting ’em a little roughly. If they’re up to what we think they are, we’ll owe ’em something else.”
* * *
Ahead of executing the planned raid on the suspected rustlers’ camp, there was plenty for the Rafter B men to do before what little remained of the afternoon faded into dusk. For starters, while Mac returned to the chuckwagon and commenced trying to make up for the interruptions and delays to his supper preparations, Bradley and Roman told Shad and George about the Forrests and how their secret had culminated in the shooting. As they were doing that, Nolan and Sparky picked out a spot on a grassy slope overlooking the river and dug a grave.
Before the meal was served, while there was still some light left, everyone convened at the graveside. Forrest’s body, wrapped in clean white linen, was lowered down. Colleen stood close to a quietly sobbing Belinda, one arm slipped around her waist. Bradley spoke briefly and impersonally, a few words about ashes and dust and a soul consigned to the mercy of the Lord. When he asked Belinda if she wanted to say anything, she shook her head mutely.
When everyone else filed back to camp, Nolan and Sparky stayed behind to finish burying the body. Colleen accompanied Belinda once more to her wagon. The men made their way to the stew pot being kept warm on the edge coals of Mac’s cooking fire. Not surprisingly, when the fare was dished out, everyone ate more sparingly than usual.
Afterward, while Mac was cleaning up, the others drifted off to their individual pursuits. Darkness had settled in. Everyone was quieter than usual, partly due to the memory of recent violence and death riding fresh on their minds, partly due to the looming possibility of more soon to come when they paid their visit to the camp of suspected rustlers.
“Going in, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt,” Bradley had instructed. “But I want you all to try and get some rest between now and then so you’re sharp when the time comes. If they’re looking for trouble, we won’t hesitate to feed ’em lead for breakfast.”
* * *
Mac was finishing things up for the night when Colleen emerged from the medicine wagon and walked toward him. She looked weary but still strikingly pretty as she passed through the pool of illumination thrown by the central campfire. Mac was glad now that he’d set aside a couple bowls of stew in case the women developed some late signs of hunger.
