Ride the Savage Land Read online

  He’d had supper sent up; the tray with the empty dishes sat on a side table. Kirkwood wore silk pajamas and a dressing gown. He had a glass of whiskey in his hand, so he downed what was left of the fiery liquor. “All right. Tell me about it.”

  “She’s been staying at a hotel seven or eight blocks from here, at the other end of town.” Leon had set out to question desk clerks at every hotel in Fort Worth, if he needed to. “Some other women joined her while she was there. They weren’t staying together, exactly, but they all seemed to know each other.”

  Kirkwood frowned. “Other women? I can’t be certain, of course, but I would have sworn Isabel didn’t know anyone here in Fort Worth.”

  “They could have come from other places and met here,” Leon suggested. “Since they were all staying in a hotel, that’s a more likely explanation.”

  Kirkwood’s frown deepened as he considered that. He supposed Leon’s theory was possible, but it still didn’t explain anything. “You said Isabel left town. Did the other women go, too?”

  Leon nodded solemnly. “They did. Wherever they went, they were all together, riding in a covered wagon.”

  “A covered wagon!” Kirkwood laughed. “That doesn’t sound like Isabel at all. I can’t imagine that spoiled little beauty in a covered wagon.”

  Leon tipped his head a little to the side but didn’t say anything. His expression made it clear that he was just telling his employer what he had found out, whether Kirkwood wanted to believe it or not.

  Kirkwood picked up the whiskey bottle and splashed more amber liquid into the empty glass. “Go on. Did you find out anything about the other women?”

  Leon shook his head. “The clerk didn’t want to tell me their names, and I didn’t push it. I know you don’t want too much disturbance or notoriety.”

  “I want Isabel,” Kirkwood snapped. “And if it takes some disturbance and notoriety to get her, then so be it. What, exactly, did you find out, Leon? She was here. Hell, man, we knew that already!”

  “We know she left in a wagon with four other women. They had to get the wagon from somewhere. First thing in the morning, I’ll check with the places where they might have bought or rented it, and I’ll start with the ones closest to the hotel where she was staying.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” Kirkwood admitted grudgingly. “All right. Good work.”

  He seldom praised or thanked anyone who worked for him, but Leon was different. He knew how much he depended on Leon.

  “There’s one other thing,” the big man said. “Miss Sheridan and the other young ladies weren’t alone when they left town.”

  “What do you mean, they weren’t alone?”

  “They had two men with them. I wasn’t able to find out anything about them, but it’s safe to assume that they’re either connected with the other women, or else they were hired to go along.”

  “That doesn’t really matter, does it? If they try to interfere with us, you can just kill them.”

  Leon inclined his head again, this time in agreement.

  “We’ll start after them as soon as you find out which way they went,” Kirkwood went on. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that there’ll be a train where we’re going?”

  “We don’t really know where that is yet, but since the women are traveling in a wagon, it’s a safe bet there’s no train.”

  “Well, then, we’ll go on horseback. I’m an excellent rider, you know.”

  “Yes, sir. Until then, I thought you might need something to pass the time.”

  Kirkwood perked up at that. A distraction would be welcome. Something to get his mind off Isabel’s betrayal for a while. A sly smile tugged at his mouth as he asked, “What have you done, Leon?”

  “Made arrangements, sir.” The big man went to the door, opened it, and beckoned to someone in the hall. He moved back to let a woman walk into the room.

  She was Spanish, Kirkwood saw, catching his breath. A bit more dusky-skinned than Isabel, who had gotten some of her heritage from her Irish father even though she had taken more after her Mexican mother. Shorter than Isabel, too, but this girl had the same brown eyes and midnight dark hair and intriguing smile. She wore a long brown skirt and a short-sleeved, dark blue blouse that dipped dramatically in the front to bare her shoulders and reveal the inviting cleft between her breasts.

  “Hello, señor,” she said in a husky voice.

  The huskiness might have been real, maybe a pretense, but it was exciting either way.

  “Your friend here tells me that you are in need of company for the evening.”

  “Oh, my, yes,” Kirkwood said as he stepped toward her. He rested his left hand on her right shoulder, sliding it over the smooth, warm skin. His right hand went behind her head and his fingers tangled in the thick waves of black hair. He pulled her against him and brought his mouth down on hers.

  She twined her arms around his neck and returned the kiss eagerly. Then his grip on her got a little too forceful, and she tried to pull away. He tightened his hands on her, not allowing that. She panted against his mouth and managed to draw her head back slightly. He saw in her eyes . . . not fear, exactly, but perhaps the thought that she shouldn’t have accepted whatever offer Leon had made to her.

  Kirkwood held on to the girl as she started to struggle. He looked over her shoulder at the big man and grinned. “Leon, what in the world would I do without you?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ace could tell that Lorena was still angry with him the next morning. Her eyes flashed when she looked at him, and her tone was cool and reserved whenever she spoke to him. He regretted that a little but was certain he had done the right thing when he told her she ought to honor the promise she had made to the man she was going to marry.

  They got a good early start and followed the trail westward over rolling, often wooded hills. It was good country for both farming and ranching. They saw plenty of cattle, as well as some cultivated fields here and there, along with farmhouses where smoke rose from stone chimneys.

  The weather was so pleasant that the women had rolled up the canvas on the sides of the wagon. Every so often a wagon loaded with produce rattled past, headed the other way toward Weatherford. The farmers tried not to gawk at the lovelies inside the vehicle, but most of them didn’t succeed very well.

  More clouds were in the sky today, but they were the big, white, fluffy kind, not dark storm clouds like a couple days earlier. Ace and Chance rode on either side of the wagon part of the time, but Ace also scouted ahead now and then and Chance dropped back to check the trail behind them.

  Late in the morning, they came in sight of the Brazos River, its course marked by an even thicker line of dark green vegetation. Hills rose north and south of the trail, but the route dropped down into a saddle where a ford was located, at least according to the map.

  As the wagon and the riders approached, Ace studied the river and frowned. The Brazos was higher than he had hoped it would be, filling the broad riverbed from bank to bank. It was flowing fairly fast, too, and had a slightly muddy cast to it.

  “The river’s up because of all the rain the other day, I suppose,” he said to Chance as they rode about twenty feet in front of the wagon.

  “You reckon we can still ford it?” Chance asked.

  “I don’t know.” Ace pointed to a large frame building that sat just south of the trail. Five wagons were tied up in front of it. “That doesn’t look too promising. Those wagons probably belong to pilgrims who weren’t able to get across the river.”

  From the driver’s seat of the wagon, Agnes called, “Are we going to have to stop up here?”

  Ace hipped around in the saddle. “Yes, at least until we find out what the situation is. The river may be too high to cross right now.”

  “That’ll put us even further behind schedule,” she said with a frown.

  “Yes, but there may not be anything we can do about it.”

  Ace didn’t like it, either. He hadn’t forgot
ten that Linus Fairweather and his seven hulking sons were back there somewhere behind them. They seemed the sort who would hold a grudge. The night they had spent in Marshal Newsom’s jail would just make them angrier. Ace wanted to put the river behind them and keep going.

  Instead, Agnes had to bring the wagon to a halt in front of the sprawling building. A crudely painted sign nailed to the awning that overhung the porch proclaimed that it was BLANCHARD’S TRAYDIN POST.

  A scrawny man with a brush of gray beard stepped out onto the porch. He wore a black vest over a dirty white shirt and had a black plug hat on his head. “More pilgrims! Welcome, folks! I’m Dingus Blanchard, the owner o’ this here fine ee-stablishment. Light down and come on in. Got plenty o’ drink and food and anything else you might need.”

  Ace didn’t dismount just yet. He rested both hands on his saddle horn and leaned forward as he asked, “Is the river too high to cross here?”

  “Here and ever’where else this side o’ the Gulf of Mexico, I expect,” Blanchard said. He hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets. “Big cloudburst upstream a couple days ago.”

  Chance said, “We got caught in it between Weatherford and Fort Worth, when it blew through there.”

  “Then you know how bad it was. All that water’s got to run off ’fore the river goes down. Might be low enough tomorrow. Might not. But lucky for you folks, you got a place to stay until it does. I rent rooms here, too.”

  Ace figured the price would be pretty steep. Probably for the food and drink Blanchard had mentioned, as well. The man struck him as the type who wouldn’t pass up any opportunity to make a nickel.

  Blanchard waved to the women. “Come on in, ladies, and make yourselves to home. My, my, I ain’t seen such a collection of purty gals in these parts in all my borned days.”

  Chance lifted a hand and motioned for the women to remain where they were as he said, “You ladies stay right there in the wagon for now. Ace and I will ride down and have a closer look at the river.”

  “Won’t do you no good,” Blanchard insisted. “I been livin’ alongside the Brazos longer ’n anybody around here ’cept the Comanches, and they’ve all done moved farther west. I know the Brazos, seen all of its moods and tricks. You ain’t gettin’ across it today.”

  “We just want to see it better ourselves.” Ace wasn’t sure about leaving the women alone, but the river was only a few hundred yards away and they wouldn’t be out of sight.

  Blanchard shrugged skinny shoulders. “Suit your own selves.”

  Ace and Chance nudged their horses into motion again. They trotted down to the Brazos and reined in on the grassy bank. Ace looked north along the river, which flowed between tall wooded bluffs in that direction. The terrain wasn’t quite as rugged to the south.

  But the river was just as high in both directions, and now that they were closer, Ace and Chance were convinced the wagon wouldn’t be able to cross it.

  “You might could swim a horse to the other side,” Chance said, “but that wagon would wash away for sure.”

  Ace nodded. “Yeah. We don’t have any choice but to wait here until it goes down.”

  “That’ll give the Fairweathers time to catch up to us.”

  “I know,” Ace said, his face and voice grim. “So we’ll have to be ready for trouble.”

  Chance laughed humorlessly. “Same as we always are.”

  Ace couldn’t disagree with that. He turned the chestnut’s head and rode back toward the trading post and the five women waiting in the wagon. Chance’s cream-colored gelding loped alongside.

  Some of the other travelers who had been stopped at the trading post by the high water had emerged from the building and were gathered around the wagon. Ace saw women and children among them, so he figured they weren’t out to cause any trouble. They were just farm families on their way to new homesteads, visiting with the newcomers.

  As Ace and Chance rode up, the ladies looked curiously at them.

  Ace nodded and told them. “We’ll have to spend the night here, all right, and hope the river goes down by tomorrow.”

  “If there is nothing else we can do, we must make the best of it,” Isabel said.

  “There aren’t any other fords around here?” Lorena asked.

  From the porch, Blanchard answered the question. “Closest one is fifteen miles downstream, and the water’ll be too high to cross there, too. This time o’ year, what with all the storms, you got to expect a few delays on account of high water.”

  “What about our horses?” Agnes said. “Those other teams are still hitched up. They shouldn’t be left that way overnight, and neither should our animals.”

  Blanchard jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I got a corral out back and a shed with some hay in it. It’s liable to get a mite crowded with this many critters in it, but I reckon they’ll be all right.”

  Chance said, “I suppose you charge for the feed and the use of the corral.”

  “This ain’t a charitable institution, sonny. My prices is fair, don’t you worry about that.”

  Fair or not, they would have to pay what he asked, Ace thought. He said, “Why don’t you ladies go on inside? Agnes, you can drive on around to the back and we’ll get the horses in the corral. No need in waiting, since it’s clear we’re going to be here for a while.”

  Lorena, Isabel, Jamie, and Molly climbed down from the wagon and went into the trading post, surrounded by the immigrants who had come out to greet them. Ace, Chance, and Agnes tended to the team. Some of the farmers who had stopped earlier brought their horses and mules around to the roughly built pole corral, as well. They introduced themselves, shook hands with the Jensen brothers, and tipped their hats to Agnes, who seemed pleased by the politeness.

  The inside of the trading post was even more crowded with goods than the emporium back in Weatherford had been. The aisles between shelves were narrow and stacked with crates, piles of burlap sacks, barrels, and kegs.

  One section of the place had half a dozen roughhewn tables crammed into it. The other four ladies sat at one of them with cups of coffee in front of them. Jamie motioned Ace, Chance, and Agnes over to join them.

  They had to scoot their chairs together closely for there to be enough room. Agnes made sure she was next to Chance, Ace noted. Chance smiled at her, but there was nothing special about the expression.

  Ace had to give his brother a little credit. He wasn’t trying to take advantage of Agnes’s infatuation with him. He certainly hadn’t led her on or tried to make her believe he was more interested than he really was.

  Blanchard brought over a coffeepot and three more cups. “Got a big pot o’ stew simmerin’ on the stove in the back. I’ll have my Injun woman bring some to y’all when it’s ready.”

  “Do we need to go ahead and pay you for everything?” Lorena asked.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. You can settle up in the mornin’ or whenever you go to leave. I’m a trustin’ sort.” Blanchard paused. “And I got some Injun boys around the place to make sure nobody tries to cheat me.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Chance snapped. “We’re not going to cheat anybody.”

  “Didn’t say you would, sonny, didn’t say you would. I just like to be careful, is all. That’s the way I’ve stayed in business as long as I have. And kept my hair, too, which weren’t easy back in the days when the Comanch’ were roamin’ all over these hills and it was worth your life to cross the Brazos. Some of us old-timers took to callin’ it the Black River, because that was what you had waitin’ for you if you dared to go beyond it—the eternal darkness o’ death.”

  After Blanchard had retreated through a door in the back of the room, Jamie shuddered. “I’m starting to wish I’d never agreed to any of this. I don’t think it’s really safe out here.”

  “No matter where you are,” Lorena said, “a place is only as safe as you make it. That’s why I carry a gun and why Ace and Chance are packing irons as well. You never know when trouble will walk in.”
/>   Ace glanced at the door and stiffened on his chair. “Actually, it just did.”

  The tall, erect figure of Linus Fairweather stood in the doorway, his hawkish eyes under bushy white brows searching around the room.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Molly let out an audible gasp, and Ace knew she had spotted Fairweather, too. So had Chance, who leaned forward and moved his hand toward the Smith & Wesson under his coat.

  “Take it easy,” Ace said quietly to his brother. “There are too many innocent folks in here. We don’t want to start throwing lead around.”

  “Tell it to that loco old man,” Chance snapped. “He wasn’t worried about innocent bystanders when he fired off that double load of buckshot back in Weatherford.”

  All the women were aware of Fairweather’s arrival. Jamie cast an apprehensive glance over her shoulder toward the door and asked in a nervous half-whisper, “Do you think he’s looking for us?”

  “He and the rest of his family were heading west, remember? Could be he’s just looking around, since the river’s too high to cross.” Even though Ace knew logically that was true, he didn’t really believe it. He was even more convinced of that when Fairweather’s gaze landed on the table where the Jensen brothers and the five women sat. A look of savage triumph flashed through the eyes of the white-bearded patriarch.

  Dingus Blanchard had spotted the newcomer and strode toward Fairweather. “Welcome, friend, welcome. Come on in and sit yourself right down. We got stew and coffee and somethin’ stronger to drink if you’re of a mind to—”

  Fairweather brushed past Blanchard and stalked toward Ace, Chance, and the ladies. The immigrants in his way saw him coming and nervously stepped aside.

  Ace and Chance stood up and moved around the table to block Fairweather’s path. Both of them looked determined that he wasn’t going to get anywhere near the five women.

  Fairweather’s mouth twisted in a wolfish grin under the white whiskers. “I figured I’d see you two boys again. We’re all headin’ the same direction, after all. You could almost say we’re travelin’ together.”