Judd bared twin rows of broken yellowed teeth. “Harvest time will be here before you know it. I’m gonna need his help.”
Again the urge to drive his fist into the farmer’s face flared. He held back. “We aim to raise the boy as our own.”
Judd cackled. “What the devil would you want to do that for? He’s a dirty little beggar who’s been nothing but trouble since the day he was born.”
“That’s my business.” Cole tried to swallow the anger that demanded a hunk of Judd’s hide. He needed this conversation over and done with before he lost control. “I’ll pay you fifty dollars if you promise to leave this town for good and never return.”
“Fifty dollars! You’re a fool to pay that kind of money for the whelp.”
“Is it a deal or not?” Cole said tersely.
Judd scratched his unshaven chin. “Can’t say I’ve ever had that kind of money before.”
Cole dug in his vest pocket and pulled out fifty one-dollar bills rolled in a tight wad and tied off with a piece of rawhide. He tossed the money on the bar. “All you have to do is say yes.”
Judd licked thin sun-cracked lips. “If you change your mind, I ain’t giving the money back.” Judd reached for the money, but Cole slammed his hand on top of the farmer’s locking it in place.
“Yes.”
Cole released the Judd’s hand and watched the farmer study the wad of bills before he tucked them in his pocket. “I don’t ever want to see you in White Stone again.”
Judd smiled. “Reckon I got no reason to come back now.”
“Dusty’s my child now.” Cole had to say the words—he wanted no misunderstandings later.
Judd grabbed a half-full bottle of whiskey from the bar. “Whatever you say.”
“Don’t ever come back,” Cole warned.
Judd laughed and staggered toward the door. “Fool.”
Cole watched the farmer push through the doors and down the boardwalk. It wasn’t until the man’s stocky frame disappeared in the distance that Cole unclenched his fingers and expelled the breath he was holding.
Seth came up behind Cole. “Do you really think you’ve seen the last of him?”
“Nope.”
* * *
Judd groaned as he plopped down under a tall oak tree on a small rise looking down on the Shady Grove Inn. The reddish-orange sun hung suspended on the horizon, bathing the town of White Stone and the Shady Grove in an amber light.
He raised the whiskey bottle to his mouth and gulped down the remains of the liquid. He savored the way it burned his throat and dulled the pounding in his head. He wiped the excess whiskey from his lips and stared at the white clapboard house below.
Fifty whole dollars. “Judd, you are one lucky man,” he said to himself. Once he’d had five dollars after he’d sold a horse, but never fifty. And it had been the easiest money he’d ever made.
“To think someone as smart as Mr. Cole McGuire would waste good money on a whelp like Dusty.”
The mountain air had turned cold and Judd hugged the tattered edges of his coat together. He raised the bottle to his lips only to remember it was empty. Angry, he tossed the bottle on the ground. It rolled down the hill toward the inn, crashed into a rock then broke into pieces.
He thought about walking back to the Rosebud and buying another bottle. Then he remembered Cole’s warning not to return.
He wasn’t up for the long walk to Leadville and even if he did make the fifteen-mile trek, fifty dollars wouldn’t buy so much whiskey in a boomtown. “Hell, I’d be lucky if I could get three bottles of good booze for fifty bucks.”
Irritated, he thought back to the deal he’d struck with Cole. The delight he’d felt soured. Maybe he’d been too quick to accept McGuire’s offer.
He glared at the lantern light that glowed from the inn’s windows. People who lived in houses like that had more money than they could shake a stick at. Probably, fifty dollars was nothing to the likes of them.
“Damn it all,” Judd muttered. “If you’d been smart you’d have held out for seventy-five, maybe one hundred dollars.”
Just then Rebecca McGuire’s slim figure moved in front of a lighted window. He leaned forward, unable to take his eyes off her.
Dressed in a thick blue robe, she stared up at the starlit sky, her long blond hair draping over her shoulders. She was a beauty. Stuck-up as they came, but Judd couldn’t deny that she made a man yearn for more.
Dusty ran up to Rebecca. She brushed the hair off the boy’s smiling face then hugged him close. Something inside Judd tightened with fury.
It wasn’t right that the brat had a fine house to sleep in while all he had was fifty stinking dollars. His hostility grew when he considered all the years he’d clothed and fed that boy.
“Dusty don’t deserve to live high on the hog when his old man don’t have squat.”
He reached in his pocket and pulled out the roll of dollars. He deserved better. “Years of backbreaking labor has only gotten me pennies for my trouble while the McGuires of the world get rich and have little wives to warm their beds.”
Rebecca McGuire pulled the curtains closed.
Judd flinched and swallowed a lump in his throat. “Here you is again, shut out of the good life.”
McGuire hadn’t been the fool. He had been, for selling out so quick.
The farmer pulled himself to his feet. “Seeing as Mr. McGuire ain’t home, it seems only proper I pay his wife a call.”
* * *
Rebecca laughed as she kissed Mac for the tenth time in five minutes. The light of her lantern glowed from a bedside table onto the twin beds where the boys lay, tucked in and ready for bed. “No, it’s time you go to bed.”
“Mama, stay.”
Dusty stuck out his lip. “Oh, please read us one more story.”
“You two sidewinders have already wheedled enough of a reprieve. It’s bedtime.”
“Mama,” Mac yelled.
“Come on, Ma, just one more story.”
Rebecca’s heart hitched a notch. Dusty had never called her Ma before. She walked over to his bed and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you.” She winked at him. “But good night.”
The boys moaned and groaned as she walked out of the room, lantern in hand, and closed the door. She hesitated, listening until their giggles grew quiet.
The house was silent expect for the chimes of the grandfather clock that marked seven o’clock. Save for the buttery glow of her lantern, it was dark.
Normally she welcomed the quiet in the evenings, but since her marriage her loneliness was most keen at this time. This was the time reserved for husbands and wives.
She tightened her shawl around her and went downstairs. A cup of tea would ease her worries.
As she came down the hallway, she noticed the flicker of candlelight from the kitchen. She frowned. Cole rarely made it home before midnight and Bess wasn’t due back from her evening with the sheriff for at least an hour.
Holding her lantern high, she called out, “Cole.”
She froze on the threshold to the kitchen. Judd Saunders sat at her kitchen table, a six-shooter and an uncorked bottle of sherry in front of him.
He grinned, baring yellowed broken teeth. “Evening, Mrs. McGuire.”
Rebecca bit back a wave of panic. Her first thought was for the children tucked in their beds upstairs. Her second was for the gun hidden in the pantry. She had to get it.
Judd raised the bottle to his lips and took a swig. “Join me for a drink, Mrs. McGuire.”
“No, thank you, Judd,” she said, careful to keep all traces of fear from her voice.
He snarled and glared at her with the eyes of a rattler. “I ain’t asking, I’m telling.”
Rebecca’s breathing slowed. She heard the pounding of her heart in her ears as she took a seat across the table from him. Her nose wrinkled as she got a whiff of pigs. “What can I do for you this evening?”
He pushed the bottle toward her. “Have a drink.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Drink!” he shouted.
She started and reached for the bottle with trembling hands. She wiped the mouth of the bottle with her hand and took a sip and quickly set it back down. “Why are you here, Judd?”
“I come to collect my boy.”
Her throat tightened. “He’s not here.”
Judd grinned. “Now, don’t you start lying to ol’ Judd. I don’t much take to that.”
Fear chilled her heart. “I’m not lying.”
“I saw him through this here window,” he said pointing over his shoulder, “not a half hour ago.”
She wished she’d paid closer attention to Cole’s instructions regarding the shotgun now. “He left.”
Judd slammed the sherry bottle against the table. Amber liquid sloshed on his dirty hands. He rose. His powerfully built shoulders loomed as he advanced toward her.
The muscles in her back bunched into tight knots. “Judd, don’t take him. He’s happy and doing so well.”
“You think I care if that brat is happy?” He jabbed his meaty thumb into his chest. “Ain’t nobody worried if Judd’s happy or not.”
She stood and took a step back. The shotgun was less than fifteen feet from her, tucked up on the top shelf, but it might as well have been a mile away. She’d never retrieve the gun before Judd acted.