Cowboy Accomplice Part 15

Like her. Except he hadn't hired her exactly and certainly didn't want her up here. She was beginning to understand why he was so upset, so worried. This was no place for a woman.

"If it really is about revenge, why has it taken them nine years?" she asked, not wanting to think about the spot she'd put J.T. in by being here, complicating things. And no wonder he'd thought she had something to do with what was going on. She shows up and look what happens.

"The time frame bothers me too," he said. "Why wait? Maybe because I wouldn't be expecting it, not after all this time." He shrugged. "I hope I'm wrong about what's going on up here. But in case I'm not, I wanted you to know."

She nodded, not sure how knowing this helped her. She'd been scared before. Now she was terrified. "You think they're hiding out in the woods like last time?" If he was trying to keep her in the cabin, he didn't have to worry.

To her surprise, he shook his head. "I think the person doing this is here in camp."

She stared at him in shock. "There are only three men left."

He nodded and walked over to a cabinet in the corner. Opening it, he fished around in back.

To her amazement, he took out a gun.

"Have you ever fired a 9 mm pistol?" he asked, sounding hopeful.

She shook her head, hating to see the disappointment on his face.

"I'm not planning on you ever having to use it, okay? But I want you to know how-just in case."

She nodded as he pressed the gun into her hand. She listened as he instructed her on how to fire it. She wasn't sure what frightened her most. That he feared she would need it. Or that she might have to shoot someone.

AS J.T. RODE OUT of camp with the three men, he couldn't shake the feeling that he shouldn't be leaving Reggie alone. Maybe especially with a gun. But he couldn't leave her unarmed and he had to get ready to move the cattle down.

He had thought about taking her with him but they had a long ride ahead of them later this afternoon and with her ankle, the ride would be painful enough without making her ride this morning as well.

The only way he could be sure she was all right would have been to stay with her. Since he couldn't do that, he hoped that by keeping an eye on the last three cowhands she would be safe. As long as he was right about the trouble he was having coming from within the ranks-not from the outside, then all he had to do was keep track of the men.

He had his rifle in the scabbard on his saddle. He noticed that the other men had their weapons as well as they rode out of camp.

He'd considered sending Reggie down the mountain with Cotton and Slim, but he knew he couldn't do that. Cotton was hurt and would be suffering the effects of the snakebite. Slim had been acting too scared. J.T. couldn't even be sure that Slim would stay with Cotton and get him to the ranch and medical help. And the truth was he didn't trust anyone.

At this point, he just hoped that with any luck, he would meet up with his brother Sheriff Cash McCall on the way down the mountain this afternoon. That is, if Cotton made it to the ranch with the message.

He tried not to think about the alternative. Just as he tried not to dwell on getting Reggie off this mountain. He couldn't ride double with her. Not twenty miles. She would have to ride her own horse and no matter what she said about wanting to learn to ride, he had seen how afraid she was of horses. As long as she didn't do anything foolish- He groaned. What could have been more foolish than following him up here in the first place? At least with everything going on, she'd given up on the commercial. He supposed that was something.

Ahead, Slim and Will cut into the trees to pick up three stray cows. He looked around for Roy. He didn't want to lose any more men. Nor did he want any of the three to double back to the cabin. With relief, he saw Roy through the trees, rounding up several more cows.

On the mountain below him, the main herd milled in the large meadow where he and the men had left them yesterday. Their coats shone in the sun, a dark rich brown and stark white. He'd been around cattle all his life but right now they were as beautiful as anything he'd ever seen. He loved this way of life. Anger boiled up in him at the thought that someone was trying to take it away from him-and using his men to do it. Just like last time.

He told himself that by this afternoon he would have the cattle and the crew back at the ranch. If he could just hold things together until then. He headed into the trees to cut a couple of strays back toward the herd, anxious to get back to Reggie and head down the mountain to the ranch.

He couldn't wait to see the ranch house where he'd been born and raised. Only a few days ago, he'd been glad to leave. With his father Asa McCall acting strangely, his mother Shelby back from the dead, Dusty mad and pouting, Brandon stuck on the ranch working to pay off some gambling debts, Rourke away on his honeymoon, Cash living in town and keeping busy being sheriff, J.T. had wanted as far away from the ranch as he could get.

But even with the craziness at the ranch, J.T. would give anything to be riding up to it right now. He had half a million dollars worth of beef to get off this mountain. The Sundown Ranch was a working ranch that depended on the sale of the cattle each year to keep going.

He had to get the cattle down. And, he reminded himself, maybe whoever was behind the incidents would quit now that they were moving the cattle down. No one had been seriously hurt. This time. So far.

Right. He thought about Buck. He couldn't be sure that was true. Worse, as he watched the cattle milling below him, he couldn't shake the feeling that the incidents hadn't been random, that they were leading up to something bigger. He hoped to h.e.l.l he was wrong.

The one thing he couldn't ignore was the chance that whoever was doing this had the same plan Billy Joe Duncan, Leroy Johnson and Claude Ryan had had nine years ago.

The only one he'd known was Claude Ryan. Clearly, it had been Claude's plan and he'd found two men to help pull it off. With Claude it had been personal. Claude had been nurturing his grudge against J.T. since they were kids.

He'd died trying to even some score that J.T. had never even understood. It was Claude's face J.T. saw in his nightmares. Claude on fire, his face melting in the flames at the window, his gaze filled with hate as he screamed that he would kill J.T.

That kind of hate scared J.T. more than he wanted to admit. Fueled by that hate and madness, was it any wonder that Claude had been the one who'd escaped the burning cabin and had dragged himself partway down the mountain?

J.T. couldn't imagine the last hours of Claude's life. Had he still been alive when his body had been dragged off into the trees by the bear to be devoured?

Not even Claude deserved that.

REGGIE HAD just finished the dishes and packed the necessities for the ride down the mountain. She glanced at her watch, anxious for J.T. to return. It seemed like weeks since she'd seen J.T. kneeling beside her rental car, changing her tire. Changing her life, she thought.

Her head snapped up as she smelled it. She had gotten one of the windows open a crack earlier when she was doing the dishes. Now she wasn't surprised to see smoke blowing in. She could hear the flames licking at the dry wood. Her heart leaped to her throat. The cabin was on fire!

Fire had killed the three rustlers and now the line shack was on fire. Her mind raced. Was it possible she could put the fire out? With what though?

She could hear the crackling of the flames. Smoke billowed past the window and began to bleed through the cracks along the back wall. Her eyes and throat burned as the cabin began to fill with smoke. The whole place could go up in flames at any moment. She had to get out of here!

She limped to the bed, grabbed her jacket and saw the gun where she'd left it on the mattress. As she reached for it, she knew the fire was no accident. Someone was trying to scare her. Or kill her.

Scooping up the gun, she tried to remember everything J.T. had told her about firing it. Her hand shook and she hurried to the door, her ankle throbbing, but nothing like even the thought of being burned alive in this cabin.

She unlocked the door and tried to push it open. The door wouldn't budge. What was wrong? The door had always opened easily. Fear paralyzed her. She threw herself against the door. It still didn't move. Rational thought intervened. Someone had barricaded the door.

Smoke moved like fog around her waist-deep and quickly climbing. She had to get out. The windows were small and paned and her only way out. She hoped she could squeeze out that way. Otherwise, she was trapped in the burning cabin.

Regina rushed to the window farthest from the burning part of the building and began to break out the gla.s.s and wooden panes with the b.u.t.t of the pistol. The gla.s.s was old and brittle, the wooden panes weathered.

The cabin was full of smoke now, her eyes blurred, she could barely breathe. Covering her mouth, she dropped the pistol out the window and then climbed after it. The s.p.a.ce was tight. She was half out when she heard something inside the cabin fall with a crash as the fire spread.

Her hips stuck in the small window. With all the strength she could muster, she pushed against the side of the cabin, forcing the rest of her body from the window.

She tumbled headfirst into the dirt and lay there for a moment, the breath knocked out of her, coughing and crying. Her hips were sc.r.a.ped and cut from the broken gla.s.s. Her hands were sc.r.a.ped and bleeding.

But she was alive. She sucked in the fresh air as she picked up the pistol and scrambled to her feet. The cabin was ablaze, the heat and smoke forcing her back. She stared at the flames for a moment, then turned and looked around the camp, sensing that she wasn't alone.

She couldn't see him but she could feel him watching her. He hadn't expected her to escape. Or had he?

The air felt colder than it had earlier. She moved through the trees, keeping the pistol in front of her, wanting him to see it, wanting him to know she would kill him, praying she would have the courage to pull the trigger.

She stumbled and almost fell. Ignoring the pain that shot up from her ankle, the ache in her chest that made her cough and the tears that blurred her eyes, she ran for her life.

Chapter Eleven.

J.T. spotted the fourth dead cow not far from the line shack. As he approached he caught the smell of charred fur. His heart dropped at the sight of the burned cow lying in the open meadow.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he breathed and dismounted. He'd seen this same work before so he wasn't surprised that the cow had been bludgeoned to death, then set on fire. He could still smell the accelerant used to start it. What a waste. And for what? Just to frighten him? Or to warn him? Either way, the person behind this had already succeeded at both.

He remembered a run-in he'd had with Claude Ryan years ago. Claude had been drunk and looking for a fight. He'd always had a chip on his shoulder when it came to J.T. They were the same age, had been in the same cla.s.s all the way through grade school and high school.

But while J.T. had gone away to college, Claude had stayed and become a bouncer at the Cowboy Bar. In the years before that, Claude and his father had lived in an old house on the edge of town that always smelled of skunks. His mother had run off with a trucker when he was nine and his father had been killed in an accident at the sawmill where he'd worked when Claude was nineteen. Claude had blown what little money he'd gotten from the insurance company.

Claude had never made it a secret that he resented J.T. and felt everything had been handed to him while Claude had had to sc.r.a.pe and sc.r.a.p for everything he got.

"Life isn't fair," he'd told J.T. that night their paths had crossed. "Why is it that you were born into a ranch and I was born into c.r.a.p?" Claude asked him.

J.T. hadn't wanted to get into a fight so he'd tried to walk past Claude, but Claude had grabbed his arm.

"You don't deserve it," Claude blubbered. "Someday I'm going to take it all away from you." He'd let go of him then and stumbled back. "My kind of existence breeds killers. Did you know that? I have nothing to lose and you have everything. That scare you, J.T.? It ought to."

It hadn't then because he'd thought it was just the booze talking. Claude had been in his face numerous times over the years for little slights. If J.T. got better grades or made the football team and Claude didn't, Claude blamed his life circ.u.mstance-and he blamed J.T. as if he measured himself by J.T. and always found himself wanting.

As he looked down at the dead cow, J.T. wondered if stalkers didn't have this same type of obsession. They fixated on one person, blaming them for everything wrong in their lives.

But Claude was dead, he reminded himself. He'd seen the spot where the body had been dragged through the dirt and dead pine needles. He'd seen the grizzly tracks.

He'd looked for Claude's remains, planning to at least bury the man at the cemetery outside of town. But he'd never found them. Not unusual in a country this vast. The bear could have carried the carca.s.s miles away.

He turned his horse away from the desecration and rode back toward the herd. This would be the last of the cattle rounded up. It was time to leave.

But he wasn't foolish enough to think that it was over. He feared what would be waiting for them on the trip down. The county dirt road was about fifteen miles away. That's where Claude and his cohorts in crime had had the rented cattle trucks waiting to be loaded with the stolen beef nine years ago.

What would be waiting for him this time?

THE WIND TORE at her as Regina struggled up the hillside. She thought this was the direction she'd gone the day she'd found the cattle herd, the day she'd found J.T. She prayed she wasn't going in the wrong direction.

At the top of the hill, she let herself look back at the cabin. The flames had almost entirely consumed it. Smoke billowed up, the wind tugging at the rancid dark cloud, stretching it, distorting it.

She fought to catch her breath, taking the weight off her ankle for a moment, easing the pain, as she searched for any movement, any sign that whoever had started the fire was chasing after her.

The wind whipped her hair around her face. She brushed it back, holding it, her eyes watering from the wind and the smoke. She didn't see him. But that didn't mean he wasn't there, hiding in the pines.

Turning, she began to run again. Her lungs ached and she knew she wouldn't be able to go much farther on her ankle. She didn't dare look back, stopping only when she couldn't run any farther and only then to lean against the large trunk of a tree, hidden. She hoped.

Her chest ached from the smoke, the fear, the running. She fought to catch her breath, trying hard not to think about who was behind her or what he would do if he caught her.

Right now all she wanted was to see J.T.'s face. To hear him come riding up. To be safe in his arms.

She tried to quiet her breathing, the pounding of her pulse, so she could hear if someone was coming after her. A hawk cried overhead, making her jump.

She knew she couldn't stop for long. He was probably tracking her. She had to keep moving. She peered around the tree, saw no one, and turned, stumbling as she caught movement in a stand of the white-barked trees nearby. Her heart leaped to her throat in that instant before she saw that it was just the wind picking up the leaves, sending them sailing in a golden whirl.

She stared at the stand of trees. They looked familiar. If she was right, the ravine was just on the other side and beyond that the large meadow where the cattle were gathered.

Catching her breath, she stumbled toward the golden leafed trees, praying she was right. The wind whipped at her hair, the cold air biting her cheeks. She could see the dark clouds through the tops of the trees, feel the temperature dropping.

The first snowflakes seemed flung from the sky overhead as the black clouds snuffed out the sun. She slowed, the day suddenly darker and colder and more ominous. She stopped, that feeling that someone was watching her so strong- Through the stark-white branches of the trees, something blue fluttered beyond the golden leaves. The wind whirled snowflakes and leaves around her, but she could see that what she'd seen was a piece of blue cloth. J.T.?

He'd been wearing a blue shirt today.

She couldn't run anymore. Her ankle felt as if it wouldn't hold her weight.

"McCall!" she called, the wind sucking the name away. "McCall?" Only the wind answered with a groan as it thrashed the limbs of the pines and sent the last of the aspen leaves hurling into the air.

What if it wasn't McCall?

The snow began to fall harder. Holding the gun in front of her, Regina inched forward, catching fleeting glimpses of the blue fabric through the trees as the wind whirled leaves and snowflakes around her.

Her fingers ached from the cold and holding the pistol so tightly, but she didn't dare lower it, didn't dare take her finger off the trigger.

What if it was a trap? She caught the sound of cows mooing on the wind. Her heart began to race. It had to be J.T.

But why wasn't he moving? She stumbled closer, suddenly afraid of what she would find.

J.T. REINED IN his horse as he neared the herd. The wind had picked up. He felt the cold on his face and knew even before he turned that Will Jarvis had been right. A storm had blown in.

The sky was almost black as the snow squall scudded across the treetops toward him. It came on so fast, that one moment the sun was out, the day mild, and the next snowflakes began to fall. He'd seen storms like this come in before, without warning, often the snow falling while the sun was still shining.

But today the dark clouds swept over the sun, extinguishing it and the light. The snow began to fall harder as the day darkened, the landscape quickly changing.

J.T. looked around for his men. He'd seen Roy earlier cutting some cows into the herd. Through the snow, he saw Will Jarvis dismount and bend down as if to check one of the horse's shoes. Nevada Black was nowhere in sight. But he'd been near just moments before J.T. had spotted the dead cow and ridden over to it.

As he lifted his face to the wind, he smelled the smoke. At first he thought it was coming from the dead cow but the wind was blowing the wrong direction. He caught a strong whiff of it, his gut tightening at the horrible memory of the scent of burned flesh.