Lady of the Gun (23 page)

Two days later Cass woke up to discover she wasn't pregnant. A great sigh of relief escaped her as she dressed. Now she had to tell Brett. But if she told him, would he leave? Biting the inside of her lower lip, she wondered why the thought of him leaving gave her such an empty feeling.

"Missy Cass," Soony called dow
n the hall.

"Yes, Soony, what is it?
”

"Your uncle wants you to come quick
,” he said.

Cass opened her door.
“Where is he?”

"Outside, M
issy."

C
ass ran through the house and raced outside, fearing that Darby was ill or injured. “What is it, Uncle Darby?” she asked when she reached him. He was standing by the barn.

“
Darby looked sadly up at her. “I have to show you,” he murmured.

Cass followed her uncle behind the barn. The stoop to his
shoulders and his slow gait told her something was terribly wrong. It wasn't until they climbed the hill and looked down to the little valley below that she knew what was troubling him so. Someone had desecrated her family’s graves. “No!” she shouted in anger as she ran toward the tiny cemetery.

The gravestones had been ripped from the ground and
dragged by horses some distance from the graves. Then the same horses had trampled the mounds, destroying the grass and flowers that had grown there. “The bastards!” she swore, running to where the gravestones were strewn haphazardly across the ground. When she reached them, her anger grew even hotter. Across her mother's stone someone had scrawled the word
‘slut’
with a piece of old charcoal apparently taken from the burned-out house.

Falling to her knees in front of the stone, she began to
rub out the offensive word. “I’ll get them, Mama. I’ll get them for doing this. Those bastards are going to pay for this," she promised.

She then found her father's headstone. It was
lying face down, the inscription hidden beneath it. Struggling with all her might, she turned it over. There was a message scribbled there, too: ‘
You started this.’
Letting her head fall back, she screamed to the sky, “And I’ll finish it, too!”

Two hours later she replaced the last of the gravestones,
that of her little sister, and smoothed over the mounds as best she could. Kneeling on the ground, looking over the grave sites, she burned with a renewed hatred. "Tylo has to be stopped," she said.

Standing up, she brushed the dirt from her trousers and
turned back toward the house. It took her only seconds to strap on her guns, then mere minutes to saddle her horse. As she rode out, she could hear her uncle calling after her, but she didn't stop. She was headed to the Lazy T.

As she rode, Brett's words of warning rang in her ears,
but she pushed them back, refusing to listen to his logic. She knew Tylo was responsible for last night's destruction, just as she knew he was responsible for murdering her family.

When she rode into L
azy T property she was met by several riders.

"You got business here, gal?" one man asked her.

"I want to talk to Hunt Tylo," she stated flatly.

"Say, ain't you that little gal Ramsey's taken up with?"

He turned to his cronies and laughed, continuing before she could confirm or deny his statement. 'Yeah, this is Cassidy Wayne, our neighbor, boys. Ooooh, don't we feel honored you've come to call," he said snidely.

His tone informed her she probably wasn't welcome on
the Lazy T after telling them their cattle could no longer use her land, but it didn't matter. She wouldn't be welcome after she talked to Tylo, anyway. "So where's Tylo?" she asked.

"He's up at the house. But I don't know if he wants to
Bee you. You better wait here while one of us goes back and asks him. The rest of us will keep you company." He turned to an underling. "Go on up to the house, Squirt. Tell the boss Cassidy Wayne wants to talk to him."

"Aw, Jake, do I have to?" Squirt belly
-ached.

"Don't give me no lip, boy. Do as you're told."

"Yes, by all means, do as you're told, Squirt," Cass taunted.

Squirt glared at her, but he tu
rned and rode toward the house.

"Now what should we do with you whi
le we wait?” the leader asked innocently.

Cass stared at the dirty man. He was thin, with a scraggly
beard and bad teeth. "I think we'll just sit here and wait,” she told him in a monotone.

"
I don't know. Maybe we could think of something else to do?"

Cass pulled one gun with
lightning speed and shot a hole through the middle of the letter
A
in the Lazy T sign hanging over the gate. "I think we'll sit here and wait,” she repeated.

The men's eyes were wider after her demonstration.
They'd all heard about her. They’d heard she was fast. But their male egos had refused to let them believe she hadn’t been lucky. Now they shut up their blustering and waited quietly until Squirt returned.

"The boss says let her come," called Squirt, riding hard
to rejoin them at the gate.

Cass aimed her gun at them.
“After you, gentlemen," she ordered.

Following them to the house, she fought the urge to shoot
them out of their saddles. They might have been the ones who had desecrated her mother's gravestone and trampled the graves. They might have written the message letting her know the war had started. But she couldn't shoot them in the back even if they were the ones. And she wasn't sure yet that they'd had anything to do with it. “Damn,” she muttered.

"Why do I have the honor of your presence, Cassidy?
” asked Hunt Tylo as he sat behind his big desk smoking a cigar. His tone was sarcastic, his expression rude, his eyes filled with evil intent.

"There was so
me trouble out at my place last night,” she told him.

"Really? What kind of trouble?
”

Cass glowered at him. She could tell he was well aware
of what had happened at her place. “You don’t know?” she challenged.

"How would I know, Cassidy? Are you insi
nuating I had a part in whatever it was?" he drawled.

"I'm more than insinuating, Tylo. I'm saying it to your
face. You did it yourself, or you had some of your boys do it. Either way, my family's graves were desecrated during the night."

Hunt flicked the ash from the end of his cigar into a huge
copper ashtray and leaned forward. "I don't take kindly to people coming on my land and accusing me of doing things I don't know anything about," he said in a menacing tone.

"You told me there'd be trouble if I fenced my place.
You know I ordered the barbed wire. The trouble began last night."

"The whole town knows you ordered the wire, Cassidy.
And I never threatened you. I just gave you a friendly warning. There are a lot of folks around here who don't take kindly to the idea of barbed wire. It could have been any one of them who was at your place last night. But it wasn't me,"

Cass took a step toward the desk, a menacing scowl dark
ening her features.

"Are you going to shoot me here in my own study, Cassidy?"
he asked mockingly.

"I'd like to, Tylo. I'd like to."

"Talk is cheap, Cassidy. So until you can prove I'm guilty of anything, or you're ready to pull the trigger on one of those Colts, get the hell off my land," he ordered.

Cass scowled and stood her ground. She wanted so badly
to rid the world of Hunt Tylo. She knew in her gut he was the man she'd been seeking for so long. "I'll be waiting for your next move, Tylo." She ground the words out between clenched teeth.

Hunt laughed at her. "You do that, Cassidy. And we'll
see who loses more sleep, me or you."

Cass tu
rned on her heel and stormed from the room. As she flung open the front door, she ran headlong into Ramsey.

“
Cass? What is it? What's wrong?” he asked when he saw her expression.

Cass looked up into his thin face, his pale blue eyes. She
shook her head. "Go ask your father,” she said, stomping away from him.

"My father? What's my father got to do with anything?
” he questioned, alarms going off in his head. He followed her down he porch steps and stood by as she swung up into the saddle.

Cass looked down on him
from her vantage point high atop her horse. The sun glinted off Ramsey’s blond hair. His complexion had tanned some since he’d arrived home, giving him a healthier look than he’d had when he arrived, but she still found him wholly unappealing. “Just go talk to your father. I'm sure he'll enjoy filling you in.”

"But, Cass, you're so angry. You're not angry with me,
are you?" He let himself hope.

She couldn't respond. She couldn't give him a
ny encouragement. Right now all she felt was frustration and hatred. She finally spat out a reply, "We'll talk later, Ramsey." Then she glanced up at the house. "Maybe,” she added. Tugging on the reins, she turned her horse around. “Good-bye, Ramsey," she said. Spurring her mount, she took one last look over her shoulder as she headed toward town, and Brett. She had to tell him what had happened. As she rode away, she could hear Ramsey bellowing for his father, demanding to know what he'd done.

Shaking her head, she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Brett had just come out of the hotel where he
’d been told Sharky had never shown up again when he saw Cass riding into town. Tugging his hat farther down over his eyes, he walked out to meet her. She was just tying her horse when he approached her. "Cass?" he said with a smile.

Cass whi
rled to face him, her torment showing clearly on her face.

"
What’s wrong? What's happened? Is it Darby? Soony?” he demanded instantly.

"No. Let's go inside," she said, walking toward the door
of the sheriff's office.

Once inside, she slammed herself down into the chair in
front of the desk, then restlessly stood back up.

"Cass, what's wrong?" Brett asked again.

"It's Tylo," she stated. "He's started the war.”

"What did he do?" Brett's gut clenched tight
ly as he waited to hear the worst.

"He desecrated my family's graves.
He pulled out the headstones and trampled the mounds."

"You saw him do this?"

"Of course not. If I had, he'd be dead."

"
If you didn't see who did it, how do you know it was Tylo?"

"I just know."

"You can't accuse a man without proof."

"That's pretty
much what he said, but I didn't believe him."

"You confronted
him already?" Brett demanded.

"Yes." Cass raised her chin defiantly.

"At the Lazy T?"

“Yes.”

"You are crazy," Brett accused. "Do you know you might have been killed? Jesus, Cass, would you think before you go running off like that?" he scolded.

"Well, I wasn't killed, and I'm not going to be, so you
can stop your worrying."

Brett sighed an exasperated breath. "What did Tylo say
when you accused him?" he finally asked.

"He denied it, of course" He said a lot of people are
angry over the barbed wire, and any one of them could have done it."

"He's right," stated Brett.

"Like hell he's right. He did it, Brett. I know he did. I could tell by the way he looked at me when I accused him of it."

"You think he did it. You don't know it for sure. And
until you get some solid evidence against him, there's nothing I can do about it."

"Damn you, Brett. Whose side are you on, anyway,
” she demanded.

"I'
m on yours, only you're too pigheaded to see it.”

Cass turned her back on him and stomped to the window.
Staring out into the street, she saw nothing. She was remembering. Remembering just enough to keep her tormented, but not enough to solve the mystery. Rubbing her temples, she felt Brett walk up behind her.

"Ca
ss, I know how hard this is for you. But you have to trust me. So far, the men you've killed have deserved it, and you've committed no crimes. But if you go out to the Lazy T without proof of Hunt Tylo's involvement in any of this, and you end up shooting him, I'll have to arrest you. Do you understand?"

She nodded, her back still turned on
him.

"I'd fight to the death to protect you, but
I don't think the good people of Twisted Creek would wait for the circuit judge to convict you. Have you ever seen a lynch mob, Cass? Have you ever seen a man hanged?" he asked.