Matt simply stood there, boiling, and then he snapped, “You get yourself home, young lady, or there’ll be hell to pay, you understand?”
“Don’t move, Megan,” Jason said quietly.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” she replied in the same light tone.
Matt glared daggers at her before he turned on his heel and marched, glowering, down the steps and across the yard to the street, where he turned and shook his fist. “I won’t forget this, Fury!”
“I s’pose he wants to rename the town ‘MacDonald, ’ too,” Ward quipped.
Matt disappeared around the corner.
“He can be my guest,” Jason said before he gathered himself and looked up at Ward. “What about his cattle, anyway?”
“Says somebody’s swiped two of ’em. You ask me, it’s a puma, or maybe a Mexican grizzly.”
Ward was probably right. They both stood there, heads shaking, until Jason said, “You want somethin’ to eat? Jenny did it again. Fried chicken and mashed, with gravy. Green beans. And pie?”
“Don’t have to keep yammerin’ at me, jus’ git outta the way!” Grinning, Jason stepped aside and Ward walked past him, hollering, “Hey, Jenny! Set another plate, ’cause a man with a powerful appetite’s comin’ to supper!”
He heard Jenny laugh as Ward disappeared into the kitchen. He turned back to Megan, who was vacantly watching the empty road.
“Megan,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
She held up her hand, quieting him. “It’s all right. I know he’s a jackass. I’ve known it for quite a while, now. But he’s my brother and I have to accept it. You don’t, thank God. Now, let’s go have some’a that apple pie!” She linked her arm through his and led him back to the kitchen, where Ward was already gobbling down fried chicken like somebody was going to toss it to the hogs if he didn’t rush.
Before the sun went down, Ezra Welk made camp. He’d been riding easy most all of the day, which had been largely uneventful, save for the unusually large herd of pronghorn which had crossed his path this morning.
And all day long, even while he sat there, wrists crossed over his saddle horn while he watched those pronghorns slowly graze and amble their way north, he’d been thinking about that lame-brain, Benny Atkinson.
Whatever had possessed Benny to track him to Los Angeles, and why had he been dumb enough to call him out, right in front of God and everybody? It boggled him that anyone—even a so-called bounty hunter like Atkinson—would be dumb enough to try that. Especially when he had to know damn well that he was an inferior gunman to Ezra.
Well, apparently he hadn’t, because he’d called out Ezra loud enough that they could have heard him down by the docks, and sealed his own fate, just like that.
Ezra had left him lying in the street, his pooling blood catching the dust sent up by Ezra’s pony’s heels as he beat it out of town. What law there was in Los Angeles didn’t like him much to begin with, and he didn’t figure to stick around and wait to see how they liked him now.
Now, Ezra had been riding out of Arizona, and it was a pretty dumb thing for Ezra to be headed back toward its border, but he was. At least Arizona was pretty much wide open. If you could steer clear of Indians and skirt the cities—of which there weren’t many, unless you counted all those little-bitty, here-today-gone-tomorrow mining towns that popped up every sixty feet—you were in the clear. Same thing went for New Mexico and most of Texas, but then, he wasn’t wanted in Texas. Yet.
Well, there was time. And he was still youngish, he thought with a snort.
Matt MacDonald made it home before nightfall and had one of the hands walk his horse, for it was sweating like it would never stop and lathered like a visit to a two-dollar barber. That’s all he’d need right now, he thought. A messed-up horse, and all on account of that damned Jason Fury!
He slammed into the ranch house, then changed his mind. He walked outside again. “Send Curly up here!” he called to the human hot-walker, and then went back inside, the door banging behind him so hard that it broke one of the hinges.
The knock came less than five minutes later.
“Get your lazy butt in here, Curly!” Matt shouted, and Curly stepped in, grabbing the door by its latch and forcing it back up into position.
“What the hell happened, boss?” he asked, staring at the broken door.
“Never mind the damn door,” Matt snapped. When Curly turned toward him, he added, “Got your attention, now?”
“Sure, boss. What you want?”
“Tomorrow, I want everybody to stop what they were workin’ on and start buildin’ a new corral next to the barn. A big one. I’m not going to lose any more cattle, you hear me? I want it big enough to hold every single cow, steer, and bull we’ve got on the place, with plenty of room for them to move around.”
Curly screwed up his face. “What we gonna feed ’em, boss? I mean, out on the range they got forage, sorta. . . .”
“We’re gonna feed ’em hay and corn, you dolt,” Matt said. He was still angry, and he didn’t think he was going to calm down anytime soon.
Curly looked like he knew it, and said, “Yeah, boss. First thing.”
“All right then. You can go, now.”
Curly tipped his hat, struggled once again with the door, and said, before he left, “You want I should send somebody up to fix this?”
Matt poured himself a glass of bourbon, took a drink, and barked, “Of course!”
“Yessir,” Curly said as he closed the door. “Right away, sir.”
And he was gone.
Matt sat down at the table, clenching his bourbon so tightly that the glass broke. Cursing, he found a cloth and wrapped it around his bleeding hand, then found another to pick up the broken glass and soak up the whiskey. It was all Fury’s fault! Everything was Fury’s fault, from the stolen cattle, to this mess, to the ingrown hair on his chin!
The glass picked up and the whiskey sopped, he threw the whole mess in the trash basket beside the sink.
And Megan, the ungrateful little wench! She was too old and too big to spank, but he’d think of something—something that would put her in her place for once and all. He’d had enough of her habit of hanging around with Jenny Fury, and worse, Jason. He’d had enough of her running his bank.
Well, on second thought, he’d best leave that one alone. Megan had a keen head for figures, better than his, and there’d been no complaints about her work. But he’d fix her wagon, all right, fix it so that there’d be no more back talk and no more crossing him. He’d show her!
But first, he had to gather in his cattle and he had to figure out what to do about that damned Jason! Why did Jenny have to be his sister? Why did she have to be related to him at all?
A new knock on the door caved it halfway in, and exposed a wide-eyed and blinking ranch hand. Matt noted the sky was dark behind him before he said, “Curly told you what to do?”
The fellow was still staring at the door. “Y-yes, sir.”
“Well, get to it, then.”
And then, his hand still bleeding into the wrapping towel, Matt stalked off to find himself some dinner. He thought Megan had made cookies or a cake or something the last time she was here.
He thought there was a chance it was still edible.
4
The next morning found Matt up bright and early, overseeing the work on the corral. There was still plenty of wood left over from the barn, and he had two men splitting it into usable sizes for posts and rough boards. Right at the moment, he was more concerned with getting the thing built than what it would look like.
His men didn’t much agree with him, but they were smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves. They just went about their work with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.