Sweet Autumn Surrender Page 5

  The water was hot, the dishes few, and before she finished she had had ample time to reflect on her lack of knowledge about gunfighters. She had judged this man by a pattern created in the mind of a child, a pattern she had done nothing to modify since she’d matured. Perhaps Kale Jarrett was the cold-blooded killer she had judged him to be from Benjamin’s story about the carpetbagger and the rosebush.

  But he was also a human being. Tonight he had lost a brother—more than that, a father. Tonight he was not a killer, and tonight he did not need her rejection. She watched him out the window, sitting where she had left him, staring still at the grave of his brother. Tonight he needed a friend.

  In her earlier disappointment that he had come instead of Carson, she had lashed out at him. She had deliberately rejected him, and in doing so had undoubtedly caused him to think her rejection mirrored Benjamin’s.

  Such an idea was neither right nor fair, and she must correct it. Taking up her shawl once more, this time carrying a lantern, she walked to the edge of the porch and looked toward the gravesite. Light from the moon played off his face, but his dark head faded into the blackness of the landscape.

  The slamming of the front door alerted Kale, and he looked across the clearing to see Ellie standing on the porch, outlined in the soft moonlight. She looked fragile, almost helpless, although he knew she could not be. Not having survived the loss of her parents, not having grown to womanhood in this wild country. Again he remembered the photograph on the mantel and wondered at the fashionable gown and fancy house. She hadn’t always lived in a humble shack beside a disputed creek. But you wouldn’t know it by the fierceness with which she defended her home.

  Rising, he brushed dirt and gravel off his pants with half a mind. He would take care of her…he owed Benjamin that much. He would see she kept her home, even if she did have a mighty low opinion of gunfighters.

  Seeing him start down the hill, she hung the lantern on a peg and waited until he reached the porch to speak. “Cooking always heats up the house. Why don’t we sit out here, while I tell you what little else I know about the situation?”

  Kale squatted on his heels with his back propped against the rock wall of the house. He fished makings from his pocket and began to fumble with a sack of Bull Durham. “Mind if I smoke?”

  She shook her head, taking a seat across from him at the edge of the porch, leaning against a post, dangling her feet over the edge. Again she studied Kale’s features in the moonlight.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t welcome you properly,” she began.

  His gaze held hers. He saw pain etched in the fine lines at the corners of her eyes. The first words she had ever spoken to him leapt to his mind, along with the heat generated by those words and by her lovely figure poised opposite him at the water trough. As far as welcomes went, that one ranked high on his wish list. Leastways, in a different situation it would have. In a different situation her initial welcome would have held a generous amount of promise.

  He would like to have teased her about it, but jesting was out of the question—for her and for himself. His brother lay dead in a grave not a hundred yards from this very porch. His brother, her husband…

  “No need to apologize,” he replied. “Let’s just figure out how to keep you from losing this place. Why don’t you start at the beginning? Maybe between the two of us we can piece this puzzle together.”

  She turned back to the yard. “Over two months ago Benjamin rode out to the north bedding grounds; he never returned. For a solid week I rode the pastures but found no sign, neither of him nor of his horse. Horses always come back to the place where they’ve been fed.” She looked to Kale for confirmation.

  “His horse should have returned,” he agreed. “Unless the critter stepped in a varmint hole and broke his leg.”

  “In which case I’d have found the carcass. Anyway, a week later one of Benjamin’s boots turned up on the back step.”

  Kale frowned.

  “The next morning I rode into Summer Valley. That’s when I wired Carson. The day after that, Benjamin’s body was left on the back doorstep, the same place I found his boot.”

  Only by concentrating intensely was Kale able to force emotion out of the way, to compel his brain to work on the problem at hand. “You say trouble with the Raineys didn’t start until after he disappeared?”

  She nodded.

  “Did he have disputes with anyone else?”

  “You knew Benjamin.”

  “Yeah. He could get along with the devil himself. I guess that’s the result of raising up five rowdy brothers.”

  Ellie suppressed a shudder. She knew what Benjamin had meant to his family. Lavender had played much the same role in her own life. Lavender wasn’t even blood-kin, yet her rejection would devastate Ellie. “Benjamin was proud of you, Kale.”

  “Humph!”

  “He was.”

  Fiercely he broke their gazes, turning to look into the tidy, swept yard. “We’ll whip that horse later. For now let’s work on finding his killers.”

  After a while the tension eased, and Ellie continued her story. “He’d gone into town a few days before,” she mused. “Said he wanted to send some wires.”

  “Wires? What about? Who to?”

  “I don’t know. I told you we never discussed business. Benjamin was so much—” She stopped abruptly, searching for the right word, then continued, “He was much more experienced than I, so he handled our affairs.”

  Kale puzzled over her words. The one she hadn’t spoken traveled between them on the soft night air—older, she had started to say. Why hadn’t she gone on and said it? Benjamin had been more than twenty years older than Ellie.

  “He was also a practical man,” Kale told her. “He would have known the odds of you outliving him were in your favor—”

  “In my favor? What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing,” he answered quickly. “I’m sorry. But it’s true. And that truth doesn’t make sense. Benjamin was always open; he believed in talking a matter through.” Kale shrugged. “I can hear him yet, ‘Talking about a problem makes it easier to get a handle on, Kale, so open up and let’s hear what’s eatin’ at you.’”

  She grinned at him, then looked quickly back toward the town road, while Kale considered the inconsistencies in what he saw and heard here. Something was cockeyed. He recalled the two guns hanging above the door, leaving no empty pegs, no place for the saddle gun Benjamin would have carried with him.

  The moment he asked her about it, however, he knew he had stepped into a den of rattlers.

  “Benjamin did not carry a gun,” she insisted.

  Kale held the steady gaze of those penetrating eyes. Instead of smiling, they now accused. “Not even with the Raineys out to take this place?” he quizzed.

  “I told you the harassment didn’t start until after Benjamin disappeared.”

  “You’re saying the Raineys waylaid Benjamin without first trying to get hold of the ranch some other way?” This lady was living in a world of her own making. “I’m sorry to upset your nice little world, Ellie, but if you’ll open your eyes and look around, you’ll find that things aren’t as simple as all that. Folks don’t generally resort to kidnapping and murder without trying other means first.”

  Even as he spoke, Kale knew he could be wrong. Anything was possible; believing that had kept him alive the past twelve years.

  “I can see you’re going to be a lot of help,” she said at last, turning her attention to a large oak tree growing in front of the house.

  “I may not be much help at that,” he answered. “But for now I’m all you have.”

  “Armando Costello is helping,” she retorted, then bit her tongue.

  The sound of the man’s name, stranger though he was, flashed through Kale like a gunshot. So the grieving widow was not so grief-stricken after all. He should have known; the pretty ones were always the most fickle. “Who the hell is Armando Costello?”

  “A friend.
” Recognizing the anger in his voice, she quickly added, “Benjamin’s friend.”

  The silence between them deepened. After a while, she sighed and told him the rest. “Armando is a gambler up at the Lady Bug Emporium. Lavender, she’s the owner of the Emporium, introduced them when she learned about Armando’s interest in the old mission. That plat—the one on the mantel—it’s supposed to lead a person to some sort of treasure connected with the mission.”

  Kale flicked his cigarette to the ground, then quickly ground it out with the toe of his boot and scattered the remaining tobacco into the evening breeze. Lordy, his habits needed sprucing up.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea about Armando because he’s a gambler,” Ellie said. “He and Benjamin became fast friends. They spent hours together combing these hills. We even made a trip up to the painted caves on the Concho River.”

  With her explanation, Kale’s anger had subsided, only to be replaced by a sense of confusion. “I’ll admit it takes some doing, picturing Benjamin a close friend to a gambler.” He drew a lungful of fresh night air. “Fact is, though, he earned any pleasure he could squeeze out of life after the way he stayed home and took care of Ma and us younguns. Even searching for buried treasure, if it pleased his fancy.”

  “They weren’t really searching for treasure,” she assured him. “Benjamin said it never existed. He said that was the way the Spanish priests had of getting missions built so they could convert the Indians. They knew the king would never spend money to build missions, so they traveled out here and made maps of gold and silver deposits—some real, most fake. What king could pass up gold and silver?”

  “Sounds like a bunch of hogwash to me.” Kale immediately regretted his attitude. He was beginning to dislike this situation to a great degree. Not that he had envisioned it being pleasant, but on the other hand, he certainly hadn’t expected to find Benjamin dead and buried. Why, he’d been busy finding fault with everything Ellie told him, and now he even questioned her knowledge of history, about which he actually cared very little. She seemed not to notice.

  “How else were they going to keep all those poor heathen souls from going to hell?” She asked the question with such seriousness that he laughed.

  “Why, ma’am, I must have been misinformed. I judged lying to be a sin, same as carrying a gun.” The words escaped his mouth before he could stop them. He felt the accompanying smile die on his lips as the implication dawned in her eyes.

  “I’m serious about that, Kale Jarrett, but I don’t expect you to understand.” She turned her back to him, and Kale reflected how he’d never seen such a lovely back.

  After heaving a sigh, she continued. “I won’t stand for violence. I want to see Benjamin’s killers punished more than anything in the world, but it must be done without lawlessness and violence.”

  “Regardless of what you think of me, Ellie, I do understand. I understand about your folks, and now Benjamin, all killed needlessly. I understand your fear of me. I’m a fighting man. I live in a fighting world. But from the very beginning I’ve fought against lawlessness. And I edge to the far side of violence every time it gives me a chance.”

  “That’s what we have sheriffs and peace officers for,” she responded.

  “That’s why you sent for Carson?”

  “Yes.”

  He exhaled. “Someday we’ll have enough peace officers to go around. Right now the few good men we have wearing a badge need the help of ordinary folks who don’t mind putting their necks on the line to see justice done.”

  “Vigilantes are lawless men.”

  “So are men who waylay a man in his own pasture.”

  He watched her catch a sharp breath. After a while she answered in a soft whisper. “I know that, but I don’t want any unnecessary shooting or killing.”

  “Neither do I. I know my reputation. I know Benjamin likely told you that I use my gun first and ask questions later. I don’t, but in this day and time a man can’t always avoid using a gun.”

  “I understand that, Kale, but I worry.”

  “Then you’ll just have to worry, because I aim to find my brother’s killers and to see you keep your home, even if I have to shoot up half the country.”

  Her shoulders tensed, and he instantly regretted having shocked her, but he knew she was likely in for a good deal more unpleasantness before this shindig was over.

  The thunder of hooves announced the approach of three riders along the town road. Reaching for his handguns, Kale found himself unarmed. Without hesitation, he rose and headed for the doorway. “Do you recognize them?”

  Jumping to her feet, she watched Kale step to the mantel, where he shook some cartridges from the fruit jar into his palm. She tensed. Trust a gunfighter to know right where to find bullets.

  He lifted the shotgun from its peg over the doorway, broke it, and slipped in a couple of shells.

  Distraught, she turned back to the road. “The one in the middle looks like Holt Rainey. I’d recognize him in pitch darkness. The others I don’t know.”

  When Kale moved back onto the porch, she placed a restraining hand on his arm. Their eyes met, and she saw the determined glare in his. She felt her hand tremble on his arm.

  “Trust me, Ellie,” he whispered. Then he stepped to the edge of the porch, shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm.

  The riders drew up. Dust swirled around their horses’ legs and settled into the evening air. Ellie stifled a cough. Kale stood impassively beside her, his breathing even, his voice clear and calm.

  “State your business and be gone. Mrs. Jarrett isn’t receiving callers.” Kale addressed the group, but his eyes rested on Holt Rainey.

  That the man fancied himself a gunfighter was evident in his getup and fancy guns: hat brim concealing his eyes, coattails tucked behind ivory-handled guns. Kale grimaced when the gun butts caught the lantern light. He hoped Ellie wouldn’t make the comparison; he knew she would.

  Suddenly he saw a dozen or more other men wearing Holt Rainey’s hat, their chests panting with shortened breath, their hands poised above tied-down guns. Most of the others were by this time dead and buried.

  How long before Holt Rainey followed them? he wondered. The man’s insolent voice brought Kale back to the present.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” Rainey started to draw as he spoke, but his hand had barely touched ivory when the silence was punctuated by the cocking of Kale’s shotgun. It was aimed at Rainey’s heart, and the sight froze the man’s hands an inch above the gleaming handles of his Colts.

  “Mrs. Jarrett’s brother-in-law.” Kale’s eyes never wavered from Rainey’s; his voice was measured and even. “Come to clear up the matter of my brother’s killing.”

  He watched them study him then, all three of them, trying to decide, he knew, whether he was Carson. They were likely unprepared to tackle the Texas Rangers at this meeting. The man on Holt’s left spoke.

  “Haven’t I seen you somewheres before?” He looked Kale up and down contemptuously, then spat tobacco juice off to the side between his teeth and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Kale turned his attention to the speaker, who looked as though he hadn’t seen a clean suit of clothing since at least the beginning of the drought.

  “I doubt it, Newt,” Kale replied in a deceptively casual tone. “I don’t hang around with the likes of you and Saint, there.” He indicated the man to the other side of Rainey.

  Ellie took it all in—Kale’s easy manner, his calm way of facing these hard men. It eased her mind somewhat and at the same time chilled her to the bone. She drew the shawl more tightly about her shoulders. How could he have known these killers, unless he had ridden the same trails?

  Kale redirected his attention to Rainey. “State your business.”

  Ellie was sure Holt Rainey would not cringe before the fires of hell. She watched him withdraw a piece of paper from an inside pocket and shake it out, apparently unconcerned by the fact that such a move could
have triggered a blast from the shotgun had Kale been the least bit edgy.

  She stole a glance at Kale. Her breath caught like a lump in her chest. She had never seen a man further from being edgy. She looked at his arms, remembering how earlier tonight they had trembled at the loss of his brother. No tremors now…he radiated calmness and strength.

  “This is an eviction notice for Miz Jarrett.”

  Holt Rainey’s words brought her abruptly back to the confrontation before them.

  “Eviction?” she demanded. “On what grounds?”

  Neither she nor Kale moved to take the document Rainey held toward them.

  Rainey shook the paper. “Your husband nested on another man’s property.”

  “You claim this land?” Kale demanded of Holt.

  The rancher’s mouth tipped ever so slightly at the corners. “Your sister-in-law here has till sunup next Friday to get the hell off. After that the law will move her out.” Holt shook the paper again, but still neither of them made a move to take it.

  “An’ since there ain’t no law hereabouts,” Holt continued, “we’ll come and do the honors ourselves.”

  Outrage and anger vied with terror inside Ellie. She drew her shawl tighter about her shoulders, unable to tear her eyes away from the savagery in Holt Rainey’s glare. Cruelty shot from his pupils, which shone as mere pin dots in the flickering light of the lantern. The image of him drawing on Kale sent shivers up her spine.

  Kale motioned with a jerk of the shotgun. “Be gone with you, now…and give your brother a message.” His eyes narrowed on Holt. “Tell him Kale Jarrett’s come looking for his brother’s killers, and if either of you had anything to do with his death or with the harassment of Mrs. Jarrett, you’ll answer to me.”

  After a final insolent nod, Holt whipped his reins against the neck of his horse and the three rode away, the eviction notice falling beneath their horses’ hooves. Dust kicked up behind them.

  When Ellie slumped against Kale’s shoulder, he shifted the shotgun to his other hand and put his arm around her. Recalling how his chin had rested on top of her head up at the grave, he judged her to be about five-foot-six or so. And she couldn’t weigh much more than a sack of corn. Wordlessly they watched until the riders were out of sight, then he turned her toward the house.