Matt was still too het up to notice, though. He just kept pacing from man to man to man, hardly speaking, just staring at the ground and, every once in a while, glancing up at the work.
Blast that Jason Fury, anyway! He’d thought he could rustle up some men in town, at least; some volunteers, to help him find who was thieving him blind. Those cows weren’t just cows, blast it! They were purebreds—well, mostly pure half-bloods—that his father had brought all the way out here. Well, until he fell down the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, while they were on their way out.
And that was Jason’s fault, too! In fact, to Matt’s mind, there wasn’t a single thing wrong with the world that wasn’t Jason’s fault! If the Lord kept a report card on Jason, he’d bet it was chockablock with F’s.
And those F’s didn’t stand for “Fury,” either.
His stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten any breakfast, and it was almost lunchtime. He hadn’t had much luck nosing around the kitchen last night, either. Meg had made a batch of ginger cookies, but they were so dried out that they were nearly impossible to eat. And the thing was, he knew that when she’d made them fresh, they’d been puffy and chewy and altogether wonderful. But he’d forgotten about them, just like he’d forgotten to pick up any groceries while he was in town.
Well, who could blame him? Again, he laid the fault at Jason’s feet.
“Curly!” he snarled.
Curly trotted up to him, hammer in hand. “Yeah, boss?”
“Tell the bunkhouse cook to fix an extra lunch plate, and have somebody bring it up to the house to me.”
Curly looked at him curiously, but all he said was, “Yessir.”
“And have the boys light a fire under it. I want this thing finished and the cattle all brought in before I lose any more of ’em.”
“Yessir,” came the reply.
Matt turned his back and marched up toward the house, his stomach gurgling and thirst parching his throat. He hoped Cookie would get the lead out and slap him together some lunch, pronto. But first, he needed some whiskey.
A lot of whiskey.
Damn that Jason Fury, anyway!
Riley had started the train out early. At least, what was left of it. He just hoped that Fury had a couple of usable canvas covers that his two topless families could buy cheap, which wasn’t always the case with these little upstart towns.
He had one of his “shank’s mare” members driving the late Darren and Martha Banyon’s rig, battered and tattered though it was. The other wagon tipped by the wind hadn’t been mangled as badly, thank God, but the Banyons’ looked like it had been to hell and back, then run through a wringer.
Several of the fellows had shored up the rear axle, broken in the terrible clash of wind and desert, and done their best to patch up the broken wheel, but they were just temporary fixes. As it was, the wagon just lurched along. He hoped that Fury had somebody who knew his way around a Conestoga, too. He may have lost the Banyons, but he’d by God get their belongings back to their folks!
He was staking a lot on Fury, he realized. He prayed that the fellow he’d run across in that bar back on the coast had been right, and that Fury was “a nice, friendly, little town.”
He heard somebody riding up behind him, and turned to look.
It was Sampson Davis, the big, burly fellow who’d joined the train at the last minute and gone missing during the storm. At first, he’d been happy to have the extra man—and muscle—and glad for the money he paid. But then, something about Davis began to bother him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something just didn’t smell right. He’d told himself he was full of hooey, and that there wasn’t anything wrong—nobody could really be as evil as he felt Sampson Davis was—but with each passing day, the feeling grew stronger.
Sampson reined his bay in next to Riley, and began to pace him. “How long till we hit Fury?” he asked. No salutation, no greeting of any kind, just that question. It was delivered with the usual scowl, of course.
Riley let out a disgusted huff, then said, “Before nightfall, I reckon.” He was going to add, What’s your hurry?, and more to the point, Where were you last night?, but Davis had reined his horse around and was galloping back to the train before Riley had a chance to open his mouth again.
“Prick,” he muttered before he spat down into the brush, and then turned his attention back to the rugged landscape that lay ahead of him.
Despite any evidence to the contrary, Wash Keogh was still searching for the vein of gold that had spat out the turkey egg–sized nugget that was wearing a hole in his pocket. He wouldn’t leave it back in camp, no sir! Who knew who might just come along and accidentally “find” it? Nope, he was keeping it on his person, even though it felt as if it was adding ten pounds to every stride he took.
Hell, he thought. It probably is.
He sat down for a minute, to catch his breath and grab a drink from his canteen. He’d gone through his whiskey supply already: finished it off the day he found the gold rock. But he figured he was entitled to it. When a man found something like that, he had best get himself good and drunk!
He took a slug of water, swished it around in his mouth, then swallowed. He was almost out. He supposed he’d have to go back up into town to replenish his supply, and mentally flogged himself for not catching some of the rainwater. He could have done it. There was some canvas to trap it in.
But the canvas had gone unused, and now he was running low. He figured that maybe he could stay put for the rest of the day and part of tomorrow. There were plenty of barrel cactus between him and town, and he could always raid a couple of those if he got desperate. Of course, he’d have to be pretty damned desperate to do that. Water from a barrel cactus tasted like, well, like water from a barrel cactus. Unconsciously, he made a face.
He stared at his canteen for a long minute before he lifted it to his lips once more and took another drink. And then he stoppered it and slung it back over his shoulder, standing up slowly.
“All right, gold. You’d best quit hidin’ from me. This here’s Wash Keogh, and I means it!” he half-shouted at the desert, before he took a deep breath and started off again, his diligent eyes to the ground.
In his office, Jason was struggling with a letter to the U.S. Marshal’s office up in Prescott.
He still didn’t know what to do with Rafe Lynch, who was still in town, and whose presence he thought the Territorial Marshal should be aware of. At least, he’d want to know if he were the Territorial Marshal.
He wrote that down, then reread it, balled the paper in his hands, and pitched it into the wastebasket. It joined roughly twenty other crumpled pieces of paper, his whole afternoon’s work. Every letter he had started to write had turned into what sounded to him like begging. Or worse, whining. He didn’t think that was a very professional way to contact the marshal’s office, but he couldn’t keep the fear out of his writing.
He had just taken a new piece of paper and written the salutation, when the office door banged open and Ward burst in. Startled, Jason looked up.
“They’re comin’ in!” Ward said, and his excitement was plain.
“Who’s comin’ in?”
“It’s a whole new wagon train, with goods to sell and folks wantin’ to buy stuff!”
Ward was right to be excited. A wagon train always brought good news to Fury, in the form of new settlers and fresh trade. Jason smiled for the first time that afternoon. The day wasn’t a total loss, after all.
Ward leaned across the desk and jerked Jason’s sleeve. “C’mon! They’re pullin’ up now, and you gotta make a whatchacallit. An official presence or somethin’.”
Jason put his pen down and stood up. Whatever would take him away from this blasted letter was something to celebrate, he supposed.