Western Romance Collection: Rugged Cowboys Part 29

Glen saw the Deputy coming a ways off, but he didn't want to deal with the ha.s.sle. His head still hurt on account of not being able to sleep. As he pushed himself up and brushed away the straw from his coat, he could still feel the buzz of pain in his mind. He shook it away. He didn't have time for it. Instead he forced a grin onto his face and went out to meet the man.

"What's the word, Deputy?"

Deputy Barrett didn't return the smile. The rudeness wasn't the only thing that bothered Glen about it. It didn't tell a good story.

"I thought I would see if the change in situation would affect the Sheriff's opinion. He doubled down on you and your lady friend having manufactured the whole situation."

Glen heard the insinuation and decided not to comment on it. There would be time to make sure that the man understood their position perfectly well later.

"So what, then?"

"So we can't count on his help."

"Is that it?"

"Not exactly. Can I get a head count on your cattle? Do you perhaps have a bill of sale to confirm how many you should have had?"

Glen did the head count. What had been fifty-three, then fifty dead even, now there were forty-six. At this rate, he wouldn't have a herd left by the end of the summer, wherever they were taking them to.

The deputy seemed to be sympathetic, but there wasn't a whole lot the man could do to change the past, and Glen wasn't about to ask him to try it.

"Now that's done-let's go talk to Mr. Dawson, shall we?"

Glen liked the sound of that.

Catherine watched them go and tried not to let the bad feeling in her stomach get to her. The way they rode off together, Glen looked as comfortable as she had ever seen him.

He looked a hundred times more comfortable riding off to make sure the Deputy Marshal didn't get shot than he ever had riding off with the cattle. As if doing it was what he naturally wanted to do.

They were going off to the Dawson brewery, she thought. They would be back tonight, no problem. Even if there was a problem, Glen wasn't going to be in the middle of it. He was just hired on to help do the job.

There wasn't any reason to kill him. So there was no reason to be worried about him.

The reasoning didn't help to calm her nerves. As she watched him ride off, Catherine couldn't help feeling that something was fundamentally changing. Something she wasn't going to like.

She wanted a horse, to follow them from a ways behind to make sure they would be alright, and she wished he had taken the Spencer from over the mantelpiece. Anything that would supplement that pistol of his. Regardless of how natural it looked on him.

She let out the breath she had been holding. There was no use in watching him go. He would be back tonight. She repeated it again to herself. Only in a few hours. Back by tonight. She liked the sound of it.

Now if only she believed it.

Twenty Four Glen had a bad feeling. They didn't have enough men. That was the worst part. Knowing that they should have had at least two more.

One should wait outside with a rifle, make sure that n.o.body came up behind and cover their exit. The other... well, Glen didn't see Rod Dawson going quietly in any case. Not with this many men hanging around. Three inside was the minimum. More would have meant that they might all be going home.

Two men felt like a joke. They would be lucky to make it out of the place with their lives, never mind with Dawson in tow. He said so to Deputy Barrett.

"The way I figure it, if we take the time to get backup, they might just remove any evidence. Your Sheriff probably already warned him that you're onto his trail-can we afford the time?"

Glen thought they could, but he wasn't in charge, and both of them knew it. He was there for muscle and to provide support. An extra gun. He didn't have a rifle in the first place, either, so the more comfortable position wouldn't be possible.

He turned the cylinder to check that the Colt was loaded, then thought better of it and thumbed a cartridge into the last s.p.a.ce. Six shots would do him better than the a.s.surance of the empty cylinder right now.

The Deputy turned to him. "You ready?"

Glen nodded. He didn't like this, but that didn't mean he was a coward, and it d.a.m.n sure didn't mean that it was going to change anything if he waited.

They got back onto their horses and started in, nice and slow. No hurry. If they were lucky, they would walk out with the man. Lucky being the operative word-Glen would nearly take it as proof that the man was innocent if they made it out alright.

The Deputy knocked. Glen stayed a few steps behind, keeping an eye on the men who were sitting by the side, smoking thick cigars. They shut up as soon as the two men came into earshot, but pretended not to notice them.

Well, either way. He wasn't going to get riled up over just that. Still, his fingers flexed on the b.u.t.t of his gun. This wasn't going to end well, he knew. Not at all well.

The door opened on a broad-shouldered man wearing a heavy ap.r.o.n.

"I'm with the United States Marshal Service, and I'm here to serve an arrest warrant for one Rodney Dawson. I believe he owns this brewery, is that right?"

The man raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, Rod runs this place, sure. He ain't here."

"That's very disappointing to hear, sir. Do you know where I might be able to find him?"

"No."

The man was lying, and he wasn't doing much to hide it. Even the straight face he was keeping was less because he thought that he needed it, and more because he didn't seem to particularly care what they thought, so long as they left.

"You don't mind if we come in? I've got a warrant, you see."

"Let me see it."

The Deputy pulled a bill out of his pocket and handed it over. The man took it and glanced down. Then he handed it back and shrugged. "Knock yourself out."

Barrett tipped his head to signal Glen to follow. There were more inside. Maybe twenty of them in total. Too many for a brewery, but more than that, too many for them to take in a fight. They should have had four. Shouldn't have come in with just the two of them.

The damage was already done.

Glen stayed a few steps behind, tried to keep his back pressed up against the wall, and tried to keep his eyes on the men around him.

There was a door with the word "OWNER" written across the front, and inside, a behemoth of a man with curly red hair leaned back in his chair, feet propped up on his desk.

Glen tapped on the Deputy's shoulder and pointed him out. "That's our guy."

"Rod Dawson?" Barrett called it out before they crossed into the room, making Glen glance around nervously. The brewers continued to decidedly ignore them.

Something about the entire set-up seemed contrived to make them think that it wasn't going to be as much trouble as it was. It might have been that Glen was letting himself get nervous, but he would rather be nervous than dead.

"Yeah, who's askin'?"

"My name is Deputy Micah Barrett, and I've got an arrest warrant, signed by a judge, to bring you in."

"What's the charge? If you don't mind my asking."

The man stood up. His head seemed to be just inches away from brushing the ceiling. Glen was struck by the feeling that he didn't want to get into a fistfight with the man. He also thought that if things went the way he was afraid they would, there was a good chance that he wouldn't have a choice in the matter.

The giant held his hands out and let himself be cuffed. Nice and easy. Maybe, Glen thought, he was just being jumpy. Maybe things would go fine. Maybe they had the wrong guy after all. He looked around the room anyways. He couldn't afford to give the man the benefit of the doubt until he was already home, safe.

Barrett didn't act surprised. Perhaps he wasn't, and this was how it went. Not in Glen's experience, but then, his experience was Army experience. The folks they had sent him out to get, he rarely gave the chance to come in quietly. They weren't that kind.

Glen let the Deputy pa.s.s him. The big man went first, then the Deputy, and Glen came last. His hand sat on his pistol, but he kept it light. Any moment he might have to grab it and have it out.

They went through the door. Nice and easy. He was just jumpy. Still, he stayed jumpy. It was going to keep him alive, he hoped. The brewers were watching, now, wearing an expression somewhere between surprise and antic.i.p.ation.

Glen made the trip through the door halfway backwards, keeping his eyes out for someone to rush him. Then he turned to follow Barrett.

A shot rang out and the Deputy fell. Glen's hand was quick, and he'd been afraid of this. He turned the direction he'd heard the shot from and a second shot rang out. The man holding a gun grabbed at his gut and fell back against the brick wall behind him. Glen's other hand smacked the hammer back a second time and he let off another shot, winging a man but sending him wheeling to the ground as well.

The blow that came down on his head took a second to register. n.o.body could hit that hard, he thought, and his horse was still tied to the post. Couldn't have kicked him from this distance.

His body knew what to do on its own, though. Glen fell to the ground. The gun slipped out of his fingers, and then with the last fading bits of consciousness he clutched for it, turned himself over, and pointed it at the big redhead behind him.

"Let me go, or I'll end you. I may not get out of here alive, but I guarantee you, you son of a b.i.t.c.h, neither will you."

The man was already going through Barrett's pockets, and the Deputy wasn't moving to stop him. "You're the guy from Billy Howell's old ranch, eh?"

"What if I am?"

"How's his wife doin'? You tried her yet? Best c.u.n.t in town, I tell you. And that mouth-"

Glen thumbed back the hammer. "Let me go," he repeated.

"G'on. Since we's so close, and all." The man gave a wink. "Tell Catherine that Roddy sends all his love. We'll be by later an' talk."

"You're a liar."

Rodney found the key to the manacles and undid them.

"You'll find out soon enough, man. I don't need to lie, little thing like that. Ask her." He turned toward the brewery. "Ace! Come here, get this cowboy on his horse, will ya?"

Twenty Five Catherine was waiting on the porch. She didn't want to look desperate, but they should have been back by now. Hours ago. If she was right to be worried, then she would be fine looking like she worried about the man.

He had been such an important concern for her these past weeks. He'd even found, at least seemingly, a solution to the ma.s.sive rustling problem that they'd been having. If she was just being a worry-wart...

Well, she could accept that, too. It was no big deal. As long as he was home safe, she frankly didn't give a G.o.d d.a.m.n.

The horse coming back off in the distance worried her. There was no rider, so that either meant that it wasn't him, or that something was very wrong.

She turned to Grace. "Stay here with your brother, I'll be back in a minute."

Then she stepped off the porch. As she got closer, she became more and more convinced. This was Glen's horse. The coloring, the size, it all pointed to being his. Which made it that much more worrying that Glen's horse didn't have Glen sitting on it.

Once she was within a hundred yards or so, though, she saw him. He was hanging from the saddle by one foot caught through the stirrup, and he looked like he had been dragged for a while. It was lucky for him, she thought, that he hadn't been stepped on already. Or perhaps he had.

He probably wouldn't think any part of it was lucky, though. She lifted her skirt and broke into a run, caught the horse's reins and slowed her down.

Then, once the horse was slowed and calmed down, she turned to Glen. He was in bad shape. She tried to recall her life back in Baltimore, when she had been training as a nurse. She checked his pulse. He was alive. The pulse was strong, to boot.

But when she pulled his leg free, he didn't react. When she slapped him, just a bit, he didn't wake up. Nothing. So she shifted his weight until she could get her arms wrapped around him, lifted as hard as she could, and took a step back.

He came off the ground just enough so he wasn't being dragged across the dirt. Not enough. Catherine lowered her hips as far as she could, got her weight under him, and pulled again, digging deep for strength she didn't know if she had.

His weight tipped and shifted until he was leaning against her shoulder. She took him, then, his feet still dragging in the dirt even as his head lolled back on her shoulder, but there was nothing she could do about that.

The stairs were the hardest part. He wasn't moving, wasn't helping. She took them one at a time, gathered her breath and heaved to get him up. By the time she dropped him on the couch, her chest burned when she took a breath and her muscles ached already.

Then she went to the well-water, wet a cloth in it and then wrung it out. That was the first thing. Keep him cool. Someone hurt this bad, she would need to make sure they didn't catch a fever.

His hair was caked with soil, his clothes sticking oddly to his frame. She undid the b.u.t.tons on his shirt to check on him, started looking up and down to figure the extent of his injuries.

His cheek looked bad, and dried blood from a broken nose caked around his mouth. No visible cuts, but bad bruising. Bad enough that he might have had a broken rib. With him not moving, though, she couldn't check a whole lot else. So she took another cup of water and dripped it on his face.

His eyes blinked open after a moment.

"Where am I?"

"You're back home. Do you remember what happened?"

Catherine saw his face darken. "No."

She wasn't an expert card player, and she wasn't a master of reading people. She couldn't keep a straight face, not like she knew Glen could, when he had to. Which made it that much more worrying that she knew he wasn't telling her the truth.

"What happened?"

"I don't remember."

"Stop lying to me."

"We went to get Rod Dawson. They-" he stopped a minute, reached down for his ribs, and put a hand on them. As soon as his fingers touched the sensitive flesh, though, he thought better of it as pain shot through, and he pulled away like he'd touched a hot stove. "They shot the Deputy."

"How did you make it out alive?" He looked at her for a minute, and she knew. She had been afraid that it was going to happen, and now it had. "What did he tell you?"

"Enough."

"Glen-"

"You do whatever you have to do, Catherine. I ain't your husband."

She kept her hurt feelings in check while she daubed the blood from around Glen's mouth. She wasn't going to let him get to her. She already knew who she was. He was right to be upset, but he didn't know the whole story, and when he did...

Would it matter?