The Devil You Know Read online

Page 6


  “You have the sensibility of an Eastern debutante, don’t you, girl?” Willa gave her a light pat on the neck as Felicity climbed out of the run. “And the heart of Joan of Arc. Let’s go.”

  Willa followed alongside the trail of crushed grass and scattered rock. Twice she saw narrow strips of material torn from Israel’s jacket and trousers, and both times she left them where they lay. The trail divided in the midst of a stretch of old boxelders, and Willa reasoned the riders did not follow the same trail through the trees on their return trip. She found evidence of Israel’s passing in the heavily furrowed bark of several boxelders, threads of fabric snagged by the gray-brown trunks, and she kept Felicity moving slowly in that direction.

  When she reached the clearing on the other side, she saw what Cutter had observed in the multiple hoofprints, the movement of restless horses, and the damp outline of shoes that did not belong to any four-legged animal. She did not pause there long but kept going, taking the route the riders had used when they fled in hopes of finding where they had come from and where they had gone.

  She was crossing the meandering run a second time when she saw two riders approaching from the northeast. Willa urged Felicity forward until they were on the other side of the run and then held her up. She recognized the men as much from their mounts as she did from the manner they rode them. As a precaution, she opened her coat to put her Colt in easy reach and unstrapped the holster. She also had a rifle in the tooled leather scabbard if there was need for it, although she reckoned that if she were serious about using it, she would be taking aim right now.

  The lead rider was a large man, not heavy, but heavily built, broad and big-boned. He held himself erect, although not stiffly. It was the natural posture of a man always at attention, but the effect was that he drew attention. He had a presence beyond what could be accounted for by his physical size. When she was a child, Willa had imagined that he could suck the air out of a room. As an adult, she knew it to be a fact.

  Willa steadied Felicity as the riders drew closer. They had slowed once they recognized her. The follower in the pair was wearing a thick leather coat with a lamb’s wool collar turned up to his ears. The coat added bulk to his lean, compact frame, but he still did not approach the size of his companion. Willa wondered if that had been the intent when he purchased it. Eli Barber had never really tried to step out of his father’s shadow, and whatever space he had created for himself, the shadow he cast was in Malcolm Barber’s image.

  They wore identical hats, silver-banded black Stetsons that bore none of the sweat stains and grit of the hats worn by the men who worked for them. They shared the same coloring, fair skinned, sandy hair, and green eyes, but for all of that, they were not peas in a pod. Eli’s features were better defined, not like his father’s, whose were broad and flat. He had a narrow face with a clean jawline, full lips, and faint hollows under high cheekbones. Eli’s hair brushed his forehead while his father wore his swept back under his hat, and although Malcolm’s face was carved by a less deft hand, he was as handsome as his son in a roughhewn way.

  Willa tugged on her scarf, lowering to just under her chin so she could greet them. It was her practice to never give either of the Barbers the first opportunity to speak, and if she could have the last word as well, so much the better.

  “Morning, Mal. Eli. What are you doing on my land?”

  “Now, Willa,” Malcolm said patiently. “Is that really how you want to begin? A debate over whose land this is?”

  “I said ‘Morning’ first.”

  “So you did.”

  “And there’s no debating it,” she said. “The only person questioning the survey, the government land office, and the judge’s ruling is you.” When Willa saw Eli casually raise his hand, she added, “And your son. So I’m asking again, what are you doing on my land?”

  “Looking for rustlers, or at least trespassers. Haven’t determined if there are missing cattle, but my fence has been cut, so it seems likely. My men are counting head now. Trail led us here.”

  “Huh. Rustlers. As it happens, I’m looking for a couple of cows that wandered off from the north pasture. I didn’t consider rustlers. It’s been a while since we had that kind of trouble.”

  “Well, it’s never not a possibility.”

  “True.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder to indicate the ground she had already covered. “There’s no point in the two of your troubling yourself any further, especially seeing as how you are three miles deep onto my land and how I’ve been where you’re heading and saw no evidence of rustlers or your cattle. I don’t suppose you’ve seen my cows?”

  Malcolm Barber’s expression turned regretful. “Sorry, Willa, but no. No sign of them.”

  “But you’d send them this way if you did see them.”

  “Of course. I’ll deliver them to your front door if you like.”

  She shook her head. “You get within forty yards of the front porch and Happy will shoot you. You know that.”

  “Your father could give lessons on how to hold a grudge.”

  Willa said nothing. She looked pointedly to the ridge where they had first appeared and waited for them to leave. It was only when they brought their horses around that she spoke. “Always nice chatting with you, Eli.”

  Yes, she reflected, as they rode away. She’d had the first word and the last. All in all, a satisfactory encounter.

  * * *

  Israel had alternated once between lukewarm white willow tea and cold oatmeal and was set to take his second sip of tea when he remembered that Annalea was still waiting outside. She had been quiet so he considered there was at least some chance that she had wandered off to find her dog. The hope that this was true decided him in favor of calling for her, although he hedged his bet by not calling very loudly.

  He was not inclined to favor children, although he had nothing specific against them. True, they tended to be sticky and inquisitive and unruly and more often than not they got underfoot, but any of those traits, whether alone or in combination, was not enough to put him off them entirely. His awareness of his unsuitability as a parent did that. It made him a careful partner in bed, even with women who assured him that they were past their childbearing years.

  He wondered again what he might have done in Jupiter, if indeed he had been there. Bedded the mayor’s wife? The preacher’s daughter? The sheriff’s niece? Had he been so foolish or desperate or both that he had abandoned precaution for a tumble?

  He was following this line of reasoning when Annalea burst in the door, throwing it open so wide that it slammed against the wall. That thud brought his head up and effectively put a period to his thoughts.

  She was wearing an apple green gingham dress with a full apron stamped with tiny blue flowers. Those flowers fairly danced until she ground to a halt in front of him. Without preamble, she said, “What did you do with it?”

  It took him a moment to realize she was asking about the piss pot. “No,” he said firmly. “Leave it.”

  She took her hands out of her deep apron pockets and set them akimbo. Her chin came up in a manner he was beginning to think was a family trait.

  The pot was under the foot of his bunk, and Israel realized he must have slanted his eyes in that direction because she was on it like a beggar on a penny. She had it halfway to the door before he thought of anything to say, and by that time it hardly seemed worth saying. In short order, she returned it empty, pushed it under the bunk, and joined him at the table. She rested her elbows on top and her chin in her palms and regarded him openly.

  “Don’t you have chores to do?” he asked, resuming his meal.

  “Done. Or mostly done. I have things to do when you finish your breakfast. I already made my bed, washed the morning dishes, blackened the stove, swept the kitchen and front room, collected eggs and fed the chickens, and took out your pot. Now I’m keeping you company.”


  “That’s a chore?”

  “Today it is.”

  “Hmm.” He swallowed a spoonful of congealed oatmeal made slightly more palatable by the dollop of strawberry preserves that had been stirred into it. “I already guessed you blackened something this morning. I thought it might have been your shoes, but they could still use a good polishing.”

  Annalea pressed her lips together, thinking. “Do I have a smut on my nose?”

  “Those are freckles. You have a smut on your cheek.” He shook his head when she knuckled her right cheek. “Other one. You got it.”

  “You have the kind of smuts that don’t come off when you rub them.”

  “I’m sure. Do you suppose you can find a mirror for me? I’d like to look.”

  “Not while you’re eating.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse.”

  He nodded. “It feels worse.”

  “I am supposed to ask about your knee.”

  Israel flexed it under the table. It hurt, but he had been able to put weight on it when he answered nature’s call and when he dressed. The clothes that had been left for him were well-worn but clean, and they fit reasonably well. The faded chambray shirt was loose and the trousers rested low on his hips, but he had no cause for complaint.

  “The knee’s better than it was yesterday,” he told her.

  “What about your head?”

  “Let’s say that I know it’s there and leave it at that.”

  “All right. I’m supposed to get you to walk outside. Not far, Willa says, just enough for you to stretch. She says you’ll seize up otherwise.”

  “Willa says a lot, doesn’t she?”

  “Not really.” Her mien turned thoughtful. “Not as much as me.”

  “I think that’s probably true.” He finished off the tea and set the cup back on the tray. “I didn’t thank you yesterday. So thank you.”

  She snorted. “You told me to go away yesterday.”

  “I did, and you didn’t listen.”

  “That’s right, and here you are.” She waggled her pursed lips back and forth as if she were swishing water in her mouth. When she stopped, she asked, “What should I call you? Mr. McKenna? Israel? Augustus Horatio Roundbottom?”

  “Don’t you dare, brat. Call me Israel.”

  She grinned at him and dropped her hands away from her face. She folded her forearms on the table. “You can call me Annalea. I should probably address you as Mr. McKenna when Willa is around. She is one for manners, mostly because our mama’s gone and she thinks it’s her duty to raise me not to be a heathen. Plus, she went to an academy in Saint Louis for young women when she wasn’t much older than I am, so she learned some things that she feels compelled to pass on. I have to take it all in or she says she’ll send me there.”

  “You believe her?”

  “I do.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Then you better call me Mr. McKenna, though I can’t promise that I’ll always answer to it. Now about that mirror? I bet Cutter or Zach have one in their shaving kits.”

  Annalea went to Cutter’s bunk because it was the closest. She rummaged around the small trunk at the foot of his bed and found a framed mirror about the size of man’s palm. She held it behind her back while she gave him the benefit of her thinking. “You should sit back on the bunk in case you faint. I won’t be able to get you up off the floor on my own.”

  “Noted.” He scooted back a few inches and held out his hand. She presented the mirror to him with the kind of gravity usually reserved for conferring a diploma or a knighthood. He took it and held it up to his face, and then he blanched. Or at least he thought he did. It was difficult to see any change in his pallor given the artist’s palette of color that was now his complexion. “You did warn me.”

  “I did.”

  His features were so distorted by swelling that he was unrecognizable to himself. It was not only that the left eye was closed, but also that it resembled a pig’s bladder—if the pig had drunk from a trough of port wine and absinthe. He gave his head a quarter turn and surveyed the line of his nose. It appeared to be unbroken with the familiar bump on the bridge exactly where he remembered it and not slanted to one side the way the rest of his face seemed to be.

  His mouth was dominated by an upper lip that rested like an overstuffed bolster pillow on the lower one. He tried to smile. The effect was grotesque. He should be living under a bridge in a child’s fairy tale, collecting tolls from billy goats. He thrust his chin forward and examined it from all sides. It was scraped so raw that he might as well have plowed the lower forty with it, and then again, that was a fair description of what had happened. There were also abrasions on both cheeks and across his brow and quite possibly more silver threads at his temples. The short version of what he saw was that he was a mess.

  He turned the mirror over, set it down on the table, and pushed it toward Annalea. “You can put it back.”

  She took it but did not leave her chair. She tilted her head to one side and studied him, a small crease appearing between her brows.

  “What?” he asked. “Something I missed? Am I growing another lump?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve been wondering what you will look like when all the clutter is gone. I asked Willa if she thought you might be handsome, but she said she didn’t know and that it was not important.”

  “It’s a little bit important.”

  “That’s what I thought. No one wants to be ugly, although if it turns out that you are, I am sorry for saying so. I do like your eye. The color, I mean.”

  “This one?” He pointed to the pig bladder.

  Annalea curled her lip. “No. The one you can see out of.”

  “Huh.” He envied her the shrug she gave him. Thus far this morning, he had managed to avoid that response. Thinking about it made him adjust his sling.

  Annalea’s chair scraped the floor when she pushed back from the table. She hopped up and returned the mirror to Cutter’s kit. “I’m going to take the tray to the house and then I’ll be back for you.”

  “Back for me? For what?”

  “Our walk. So you don’t seize up, remember?”

  “Oh, that walk.” He looked around at the floor. “I don’t see my shoes anywhere.”

  “Willa told Zach to put them outside last night so it’d give you pause in case you wanted to leave.”

  “Leave? I don’t even know where I am.”

  “Guess Willa didn’t think of that.” She retrieved the shoes from just outside the door and gave them to him. “I could help you put them on.”

  “I can manage.”

  “I’ll clean them up tonight.”

  Israel supposed that meant the plan was to put them out of his reach again. It was a wholly unnecessary precaution, but it seemed Willa was going to have to come to that conclusion on her own. He might have brought her around to believing he was Israel McKenna, but here was proof that she did not trust him.

  Well, good for her. He did not trust himself either.

  * * *

  Willa waited until Mal and Eli Barber were over the ridge before she set Felicity on their path. She did not put it past them to circle back so they could watch her. If they were out of her sight when she reached the rise, she would know that’s what they were up to. If they were headed back to Big Bar by a direct route, she would still be able to see them.

  She dismounted just before she reached the crest and left Felicity behind a rocky alcove while she carefully climbed to the top of it. She stretched out flat and pulled herself by the elbows to the edge. When she was reasonably confident that she could see and not be seen, she raised her head and shoulders to look down the other side of the ridge.

  It seemed that Mal and Eli were in no particular hurry to return to Big Bar. Not only were they still visible, but they had trav
eled only a little more than half the distance that she had estimated. She swore softly. Malcolm Barber wanted to make sure she saw them. He was deliberately provoking her, taking his time leaving her land. She would not have been surprised if he had taken a piss somewhere to mark the territory he thought was his.

  The dispute over the land had originated between her grandfather and Malcolm’s father, Ezra Barber. When it was open range and ranchers were driving cattle long distances to market, property boundaries were more of a gentlemen’s agreement than a hard line. The railroad, barbed wire, and an influx of homesteaders changed that. Ezra put up his fence first, claiming the herds were mingling and he was tired of cutting out his branded cattle from Obie’s. Since Obie was of the opinion that Ezra had never done much in the way of separating the two herds, and that he was essentially a rustler posing as a respectable rancher, Obie was initially in favor of the fence. That lasted until he learned Ezra was not going to let him through to take his cattle to market, and as the route was the most direct, Obie could either pay for the right to travel over Ezra’s land or he could go around. It was never a real choice for her grandfather.

  He went around Ezra’s land, and then he went around Ezra.

  The plan for the Union Pacific spur from Denver had been to lay track to Wheaton. That would have been another advantage to Ezra, but Obie got to the surveyors first and made a convincing case for Jupiter. They accepted his proposal—in no small part because it came with a substantial bribe—and set the rails to Jupiter. It was then that Ezra tried to move his fence line, though the attempt was made more out of sheer cussedness than for any substantial benefit.

  The government surveyors sided with Obadiah. The ones that Ezra hired studied the same land grants and had an opposing view. They determined that when Ezra set his fence, he created a boundary that was well inside the property he owned. Whether it had occurred because Ezra did not know how to properly read a map or because of his need for expediency did not matter. It had no bearing on the result. The law did not recognize ignorance as an excuse and looked on expediency as proof of greed. In effect, Ezra had turned over acres of grazing land, and Obie’s subsequent use of it year after year made it Pancake land in the eyes of the law, if not in Ezra’s.