Chapter 40
CHAPTER 40
“You get the ranchers,” Max shouted to the others, steering Ares down the ridge on a heading that would intercept the Evil Prince. “Convince them to go home before they realize they’re chasing the wrong guy. I’ll deal with Hugo.”
Leaving the ridge, he lost sight of Hugo as the man rode down the far side of a grassy rise, Ares racing all out. In the distance, the dark storm clouds that had been gathering above the Wind Dance Mountains rose as one from the tallest peaks and started swiftly toward him across the blue sky, a rumble of thunder coming on a hot, gusting breeze, the foreboding screaming in his head.
No, he yelled to the time travel gods, Ares galloping, cresting the grassy rise. Not yet. Not now. Not until the Evil Prince had left Wyoming.
Not until Max knew for sure Cally was safe.
The land flattened out, Hugo not a quarter mile away, seemingly unaware of Max’s presence as Max and Ares gained on him. Thunder rumbled louder, the dark clouds coming nearer, Hugo galloping straight toward Elkhorn Valley like an arrow of fate.
Max reached the hillside just above the dam a moment after Hugo did, coming up from behind his ancestor on another rumble of thunder, Max hidden from Hugo by the trees that would one day border the wildlife sanctuary’s parking lot.
Hugo, in the last instant, started to turn his head toward Max, but Max had already begun his leap from Ares.
He knocked Hugo off his horse. The two men tumbled down the grassy hillside, punching at each other as momentum carried them down the long, long slope, rolling past the hillside’s midpoint, rolling past the flatbed wagon on the low rise above the river, fetching up against a pile of large stones not twelve feet from the water’s edge, the stones destined for the dam.
Landing on top, Max pummeled Hugo. He couldn’t kill the Evil Prince. But by God, he could make him wish he’d never been born. “That’s for endangering the girl,” Max told him in a harsh undertone, striking him again in the jaw.
Dried mud still coated the hillside along the flood line. There were no signs of Hugo’s workers, who’d been paid off by Stubby, the dam itself not looking much different from seven days ago after the flood, the river flowing freely except along the very edges, where the dam’s stone foundations still jutted out from the riverbanks.
With a roar, Hugo thrust Max off toward the water’s edge. Leaping to his feet, he brushed dirt and grass from his gold-trimmed, black shirt, his borrowed black trousers tucked into his tall European riding boots.
“You’re not wanted here,” Max told him, jumping to his own feet as Hugo lined up in a boxing stance six feet away beside the large stones. “And you haven’t fooled anyone with your change of clothes. The minute I saw that gray stallion racing for your mini castle, I knew it wasn’t you. I told Creede’s deputy that.”
He’d also told the others he needed to confront Hugo alone. The threat of someone else shooting Hugo in the midst of a confrontation was too great.
Besides, more than anyone else, he had the best chance to convince Hugo to leave Wyoming, especially now that Hugo had had a taste of the vigilantes. If Hugo felt outnumbered, he’d dig his heels in. If Hugo believed he’d been commanded by the king to return home, Hugo would—reluctantly and ill-humoredly—go.
“Once the deputy shares that information with Creede and your vigilante neighbors,” Max said, “they won’t be fooled again. You’re better off to leave this place. Now.” He unbuttoned his shirt pocket and pulled from it the wax-sealed letter he’d forged from Hugo’s father the king. “I can’t kill you,” he said, “more’s the pity.” Not without wiping out his own immediate family. His sisters.
His nieces and nephews. “But I can send you the hell back to Zalgravia.” He tossed the letter to Hugo. “You are commanded by King Maximilian to return to Castle Balmont, to await judgment on your actions. You are to leave today.”
Hugo flicked a dismissive glance at the letter as it landed in the long, mud-dried grass at his feet, then froze as he recognized the seal.
Bending, he snatched up the letter. Read it. Crumpled it and tossed it back to the ground between them. “Who are you?” he yelled at Max in Zalgravian.
“The king’s emissary,” Max said in English, a faint scent of rain coming on the hot, gusting breeze. The dark storm clouds that had been traveling his direction had paused abruptly a mile or so beyond the far end of the valley among a series of high ridges—the Walford Peaks, according to Cally—pausing abruptly as if stuck there, sending rain down in heavy sheets, though the sky above Max was still clear and blue.
“But not the Duke of Balmont,” Hugo said.
“I—”
“The duke leads with his left in a fight.”
Uh, oh. That hadn’t been in the family history. “He asked me to bring you this letter from the king,” Max said over a new rumble of thunder.
Hugo clenched his fist. “Why not bring it himself?”
“He had a chance to join an expedition climbing the highest peak in Colorado.”
“You are a by-blow of my uncle’s? The duke’s bastard brother?”
“The only bastard here is you,” Max said. A nervous Ares had followed him down the hillside and stood now a few feet away. Max strode to the horse and took the silver racing trophy from his saddlebag. “You wanted this so badly.” He tossed the trophy to Hugo. “Take it and go.”
Hugo backhanded the trophy as it arced toward him, striking it back toward Max, making Ares shy away and sending the silver cup toward the water, the trophy catching on a low, craggy rock that stopped it from rolling into the river. “You have no right?—”
“ I have every right ,” Max shouted. Maybe he could lure Hugo closer to the river’s edge. Maybe he could get Hugo caught up in the oncoming flood, but without the trophy. Maybe that would be enough to convince him to go back to Zalgravia, or at least, enough to enable Creede and Bart to escort a drenched Hugo to Laramie and put him on a train east.
If the flood didn’t kill him.
Damn.
Sun beat down hard on Max’s hatless head, his hat lost in the first long tumble down the hillside. The water rushing around the remnants of Hugo’s hoped-for dam seemed to rise the slightest, sending a shiver of memory through him.
Hugo made to pull his sword.
Max tensed. Grabbed for one of the six-shooters holstered on his gun belt, then his hand relaxed as he held the gun on his ancestor. “Left that with Wulfdag, did you?” he said when he realized Hugo had no sword to pull.
Hugo drew the pistol from the holster at his hip instead, giving a triumphant, arrogant expression to Max.
Max swallowed hard, knowing he didn’t dare fire at his ancestor. “You wouldn’t dare kill a member of the royal family. The king?—”
“You forget my duel with the duke on the cliffs of Mount Zalgravia, ‘cousin.’ Or perhaps the duke has not shared with you how near to death he came.” A malicious smile crossed Hugo’s scarred face. “Perhaps the duke fears me and sent you in his stead.”
Oh, hell.
Hugo’s smile deepened, slow and vicious, Hugo too confident that Max wouldn’t dare shoot the heir to the throne.
And Hugo was right. Only for the wrong reason.
“This time, ‘emissary,’ you shall die, and I shall return to my father’s country when I am ready.”
“I reckon,” Cally called out from higher up the hill, sounding as hard and dangerous as her brother, “you’re ready now.”
Cally stood in the sunlight halfway down the hill, Apollo safely tethered among the trees at the top, near the dam workers’ second wagon full of stones and logs, and away from the Evil Prince’s gun.
Rain fell hard in the distance, great sheets of rain, the storm moving closer, rain driving harder, unrelenting, the scent of it deepening in the air. The dark clouds dropped lower, churning and roiling as they stopped two miles away among the hills just beyond the other end of the valley—just like they had a week ago, right before Max had arrived among the floodwaters.
From what she could tell, the river was rising.
Her racing heart raced faster. She knew Max would leave her as soon as the floodwaters built up high enough beneath those storm clouds upriver. She knew he had no choice in the matter.
She knew she couldn’t kill the Evil Prince, not without harmin’ Max and his family. But she could protect Max so he could get home safe. And she could make his ancestor wish he’d never tangled with her and her family.
Holding her rifle in both hands, she aimed the deadly weapon at Hugo as if she owned the land she was standing on, her heart pounding, thudding hard in her chest like a galloping horse. No, she couldn’t kill him, but Livie could patch him up if she hurt him enough to leave Max alone.
Even now, Ma and Livie were coming fast behind her in the buggy. Cally had raced on ahead as soon as she’d seen the storm clouds stop among the Walford Peaks. She’d known what those storm clouds meant.
Bart would head this way, too, once he saw Livie and Ma.
The storm whipped up around her, a gust of wind ruffling the long grass of the hillside. The air around her turned colder, gusting harder, sending goosebumps skittering over the back of her neck.
Lying in the mud-caked grass not more than six feet behind Max’s cowboy boots, her silver trophy cup glinted in the sun at the river’s edge. The trophy he needed to take him home.
The trophy he needed to leave her.
She took a step toward Prince Hugo and cocked her rifle, just so he’d know she meant business. “Set down your pistol, varmint,” she shouted down the hill to the Evil Prince.