Chapter 2
Stella Duncan looked with regret at her brother Leland.
Dead.
It’d all happened so fast.
Earlier, Leland had recognized their brother Clive and the lawmen transporting him back to prison and started emptying his gun.
Stella didn’t know if they’d hit anyone, but she’d seen those riders go down hard and fast, and it had horrified her into action.
Leland had been in the lead, and he’d emptied his gun and reloaded and started shooting again even though everyone was out of sight, as if rage drove his trigger finger. Rage and stupidity. Never a good combination.
She’d leapt at Leland and pulled him off his horse. They hit the ground, and she’d landed a punch before Pa had pulled her off him long enough for him to give Leland a kick to the belly.
“Are you crazy? You could’ve shot your brother!”
“You could’ve shot a lawman.” Stella wanted to start hammering on Pa, too. “For all we know, he did shoot a lawman. If he did, he’d be in line right behind Clive for the hangman’s noose.”
Stella knew well how her family was. Her pa, Ralph “Sly” Duncan, wasn’t the kind of man to let his son go to prison, even if he was a killer and a thief.
Or in Clive’s case, hang for murder. Clive had sworn it was self-defense, and Stella believed him just because he seemed like the sort of fool who’d boast about it if he’d really committed cold-blooded murder.
Pa’s brother, Uncle Gordy, didn’t have much mean in him, but he would fight for family.
In fact, they had a motto from their Scottish Highland ancestry: The Duncan Clan Fights for Family.
It wasn’t much of a motto because all clans fought for family.
It was practically the motto of every Highlander.
And family unfortunately included her idiot brother Clive.
The old ways of the Scottish Highlands were fading away, but a few idiots clung to them still, or maybe this ran in the blood of all Scotsmen because her family sure seemed to be displaying a fair amount of it.
The Duncans were an unruly lot, and they tended to strike out on their own and leave Pa behind to his wandering, family motto notwithstanding.
Stella sure hoped her turn to take off was coming soon.
Today, though, she’d ridden along with Pa because he wouldn’t let her stay home alone anymore, no more than he’d let her just take off on her own.
It made a certain sense since she was the lone woman now that Ma and her little sister and Uncle Gordon’s wife were all dead, and they lived in a remote series of canyons with the reputation of a Robbers Roost. No place for a woman alone.
While it was reasonable, at the same time it annoyed her right down to the ground. And it meant she’d been on hand to see Leland rashly open fire not once, but twice—the second time after the lawmen had gotten away, dragging Clive along with them.
Tragically for Leland, the man who’d shot down at them from the rocks above had possessed a deadly aim.
Even though Stella’s next younger brother, Johnny, had moved fast to grab Leland and haul him under the cover of some nearby trees, it had been too late.
Stella shuddered. She suspected that the lawman could have killed them all if he’d wanted to.
She wondered if he was sharp-eyed enough that he’d seen who’d shot at them and deliberately killed the man responsible. Leland.
Johnny hadn’t shot at anyone, and he wasn’t apt to. But when he’d let Pa goad him into coming along to rescue Clive, he’d known what he was buying into.
Now they were hiding, and Pa was shaken and fuming. In fact, he was about one more burst of anger away from foaming at the mouth.
If only Leland hadn’t gone after those lawmen again after they’d somehow managed to get up the narrow trail along that wickedly steep mountainside. What a waste.
Now there was only silence. No more gunfire from above, and no one down here quite reckless enough to open fire when the top of the cliff where the shooting had come from was out of range.
A warm mountain breeze washed over them. The trees, mainly aspen and pine, stood like sentries to block the sight of them from anyone overhead.
Stella noticed Pa had hunkered down over Leland. He was so red in the face she wondered if he might have an apoplexy right here on the spot and fall over dead.
He wasn’t roaring, though, and loud rampages were usually his way. Maybe he had the sense to know they might be within earshot of a man with a dangerously accurate long-distance rifle.
While she waited to see if Pa would survive his wrath, she looked down at Leland. Dead with a certainty. A rifle shot in the heart from probably more than two hundred years away.
A lawman for sure and probably a former soldier. She had no interest in riding into range of that man’s gun ever again.
Leland had been of a kind with Pa, though Pa was no killer for all his dreadful temper. Leland hadn’t been either before today. Now she had to wonder if he had indeed managed to kill someone because whoever had shot back at them from up there had shot to kill.
Stella moved with all the skill she’d learned living mostly on the trail with Pa and her family after Ma died.
Pa had always wandered, and the boys had grown up and wandered with him.
Stella stayed behind with Ma in the home she’d insisted on.
Pa had come and stayed through the coldest weather.
The rest of the year he’d been more of an infrequent visitor than a husband and father.
When Ma died, along with Stella’s little sister, in a house fire a little over a year ago, Pa had come home soon enough after the fire.
Ma lingered long enough, he’d built another cabin and then helped bury his wife and daughter.
Then he’d taken Stella along, and she’d been wandering too ever since.
She slipped along the line of trees like Ma had taught her when the two of them went hunting to feed themselves. Careful not to be seen, she dropped to her knees beside Leland. She needed a moment to cry over her big brother, and Pa wasn’t overly fond of tears.
He was still bent over Leland, holding him by the arms as if he could drag him back to this side of the Pearly Gates. For a second she thought of Leland meeting St. Peter at those gates and worried how Leland would fare. The thought made her want to cry some more.
She let the silence stretch until she thought Pa had relaxed a bit. The worst was over. Now it was time to use sense.
“Leland shot at them, Pa. They’re lawmen—of course they were going to shoot back.”
Pa’s bowed head snapped up. He glared at her, pure rage flashing in his eyes. His teeth clenched.
She rested one hand on top of Pa’s where it clutched Leland. “We can still save Clive, Pa. We don’t have to turn this into a war.”
Pa’s chest heaved, but he was listening. Or at least she hoped he was.
“They’re taking him to Fort Russell. Let’s go there. We’ll explain they’ve killed the man who shot at them, and then we’ll explain the mistake they made with Clive. He didn’t start the fight. We can end this without any more death, Pa.”
Like a striking rattlesnake, Pa lashed out with the back of his hand. She dodged, used to his sudden bursts of temper, but also used to escaping them unscathed. Though he never landed a hit, she was royally tired of having to duck.
As was his way, he didn’t swing again. Instead, he knelt there, almost gasping for breath, as he glared. He frightened her suddenly. She was a fool to never be frightened, but she never had been. Right now she was.
“No man shoots and kills my son and lives on.”
She held his gaze. A lot of her strength came from him, she knew that. But she’d gotten a heart from Ma, which was the best part of her, along with the coloring of a Viking, blond and blue-eyed. And a faith in God that gave her a steel rod where some folks had a simple spine.
The silence stretched. The fear held her away, but she wished he’d let her hug him. Mourn with him. Head to the fort with him.
“I loved him too, Pa. We all did.” She looked up at Johnny and Uncle Gordy. Johnny looked the saddest. He’d been close to Leland. He stood with his hands tucked in his back pockets, frowning down at his brother.
Uncle Gordy seemed close to tears. His sons, Macon and Beau, were sitting on the ground, knees drawn up, forearms resting on their knees, staring at the ground and looking defeated.
The menfolk in her family were of a type. Big men with dark, overlong hair that none of them bothered to comb beyond running their fingers through it. Faces that’d never known a razor until they looked more bear than man.
She knew every one of them wanted to follow her to the fort. She also knew every one of them would follow wherever Pa led.
“A woman’s love is a soft and gentle thing,” he said at last. “Fine enough for a woman, but this calls for a man’s kind of love.
The kind that doesn’t let someone attack family.
My Scots ancestors would be ashamed if I even thought of letting those men get away with killing Leland and taking Clive.
I can’t accept that. It ain’t how a real man loves. ”
Stella knew that was wrongheaded. She thought of how her Heavenly Father loved.
The greatest imaginable strength combined with gentleness.
Like her ma, Sigrid, a woman proud of her Viking past, she prayed Pa would respect that and turn to Him for his salvation.
She wasn’t one to judge, but she feared her pa didn’t believe.
Pa tore his gaze from Leland and looked around at his family. Grimly, Stella knew they wouldn’t allow themselves to be thought of as weak, as less than real men.
“We’ll bury Leland right here and stay down here for the night, then when those men up on the cliff move on, we find them and make them sorry for what they’ve done to my boys.”
No one had such a thing as a shovel. But Uncle Gordy produced his knife and dropped to the ground and started cutting away the sod. Soon all the men were helping.
Pa paused in his digging. “Get a meal on, Stella. We’ll eat right after the burial.” Pa went back to work as Stella walked away to start cooking, still thinking of that deadly accurate bullet that had killed Leland and wondering if any of them would survive this madness.