“Mr. Allison,” the cowboy called, starting toward him.
“Who’s the ranny?” Shardeen asked.
“That’s Billy Proxmire,” the barkeep replied. “He’s one of Allison’s cowboys.”
“What do you want, Billy?” Allison asked, not bothering to look up from his game of solitaire.
“Mr. Allison, I expect you better come back out to the ranch,” Billy said. “There’s likely to be some trouble.”
Allison stared hard at the young cowboy, trying to focus, though the fact that he had been drunk for the last twenty-four hours made any kind of concentration difficult. His eyes appeared to swim in their sockets.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Your brother-in-law is here.”
“Jason Wilson? What’s that no-account son of a bitch want?”
Billy cleared his throat. It was obvious that he was about to tell his boss something that Allison wasn’t going to want to hear.
“Uh, Mr. Wilson says you are embarrassin’ the entire family by all your drinkin’ and car ryin’ on, and he plans to put a stop to it.”
“Oh, he did, did he? And did he tell you just how he plans to do that?”
Billy cleared his throat again. “Uh, yes, sir. He said he was going to beat some sense into you.”
“Well, now, we’ll just see who is going to beat some sense into who,” Clay said, standing so quickly that he tipped his chair over. Angrily, he started toward the front door, but he was so drunk that he reeled as he went, falling into one table, lurching into another. “Get out of my way!” he shouted.
“Mr. Allison, you want to take my horse?” Billy called after him.
“Don’t need it,” Clay answered. “I drove the buckboard in.”
“Yes, sir, I know you did. But I’d feel better if you’d take my horse back to the ranch. Or better yet, why don’t you let me drive you back?”
Clay stopped at the front door and looked back toward Billy. A mocking snarl caused Clay’s lips to curl. “What are you trying to say, boy? That I can’t drive a buckboard?”
“No, sir, I’m not saying that. I mean, I know you can,” Billy replied. “But you have had a few drinks and it might be easier on you if you would let me drive.”
Clay belched. “The day I let a little pissant like you drive me around is the day I’ll hang up my spurs for good.”
Shardeen had followed the entire exchange between Clay and Billy with interest. As the rancher and his anxious employee left the saloon, Shardeen moved to the front door to be able to follow them from there.
Shardeen had parked the buckboard in the wagon yard across the street and about halfway down the block. He was so drunk that he could barely walk, lurching down the street as he made his way toward the wagon yard, staggering from side to side.
For a brief moment, Shardeen considered stepping out into the street and calling him out. He could kill Allison easily, and no one could accuse him of not facing the other man fair and square in the street. But as much as he wanted the reputation such an act would give him, he wanted the money more.
When Clay Allison reached his buckboard, he stopped for a minute and began retching. After a few dry heaves, he threw up by the back wheel of the buckboard. Then, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he untied the team and climbed in.
To Shardeen’s surprise, Clay didn’t sit down. Instead he stood just in front of the seat and steered the team out of the yard. Once they were clear of the yard, he picked up a whip and snapped it over their heads, urging them into a gallop.
“No, Mr. Allison, sit down!” Billy called.
Clay shot a glance toward Billy. “I don’t intend to let that no-account brother-in-law get away from me,” Clay shouted as the team galloped by, the buckboard swaying and bouncing behind the team.
At the intersection of Main and Front, a boardwalk had been laid across the street to enable men and women to cross without soiling their trouser cuffs or skirt hems. The team leaped over the boards, but the front wheels of the buckboard hit it at an angle. Suddenly the wagon lurched violently, and Clay Allison was tossed off.
“Mr. Allison!” Billy shouted in warning, running toward him.
Clay flew through the air, flailing wildly with his hands. He hit the ground head-first.
Shardeen watched as Billy ran toward his boss, but Clay Allison’s motionless form lay in a grotesquely twisted position in the muck and the mire of Front Street. It was obvious to everyone that he had broken his neck. Clay Allison, a man who had faced many a gunman in desperate fights, lay crumpled in the street, dead from a simple accident.
Shardeen just smiled.
Chapter 18
The boys were in pretty high spirits. They were two weeks on the trail, heading back home. The horses, though only recently broken, were well under control. Jim was riding point, Gene had the left flank, Barry the right, while Frank brought up the rear.
The women were helping as well, Jim having positioned them so that their mere presence would help keep the herd moving in the right direction. To do this, he put Brenda on the left and Marilou on the right. Katie was riding with him, and it was she who made the observation that her two daughters had changed places with each other, Marilou switching to the left while Brenda shifted to the right.
“Why did they do that?” Jim asked. “They didn’t like where I put them?”
“It’s not that they didn’t like where you put them—it’s that they had their own preference as to who you put them with,” Katie replied. “Mar ilou prefers Gene, while Brenda is partial to Barry.”
Jim chuckled. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, you’ve been so busy getting the horses ready to drive back home that you haven’t been paying any attention to the budding romances.”
“Oh, wait a minute. This isn’t good. If your daughters start pairing off with Gene and Barry, where does that leave Frank?”
“Sorry I don’t have a third daughter,” Katie said. “But I guess Frank will just have to be on his own.”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Jim answered. “But he’s a mite older than the other two. If he and I sort of get left out of this, I reckon we’ll do all right.”
“What makes you think you are being left out?” Katie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jim. Are you completely blind to what’s going on around you? Do you think your seeing me bathing that day was an accident?”
Jim paused for a moment before he answered. “I wasn’t sure it actually happened,” he finally said.
“What?”
“I thought maybe I dreamed it,” Jim explained.
Katie laughed out loud. “Well, tell me this, Mr. Jim Robison. Did you think it was a pleasant dream? Or was it a nightmare?”
“Oh, it was the best dream I ever had,” Jim replied. “Better than the best dream, since now I know it wasn’t a dream at all, that I really did see you nak—that is, I mean uh . . .” He paused, blushing in embarrassment.
Katie laughed again and put her hand on Jim’s arm. “Maybe you’ll have that dream again sometime soon,” she suggested.
Katie’s suggestive remarks, though welcomed by Jim, did make him uneasy, and he looked around quickly to make certain there was no one to overhear them.
“What are you looking around for? Are you afraid someone might have ridden up here just to listen to what we were talking about?”
“No, I, uh, was just wondering when Ortega would be getting back with our fresh supplies,” Jim lied.
Ortega wasn’t coming back with supplies. He was in Chihuahua at that very moment, meeting with Capitán Eduardo Bustamante.