Sid glanced from me to two ranch hands that lay dead on the ground. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the lights from the barn were enough for both Sid and I to see that Ralph and Devin had been murdered. That was all Sid needed to see. He pulled his shotgun up to his face and walked straight toward the cabin without stopping to look at me again.
Ralph was my second in command and had been a truly good man. I imagined that he had pushed the other men aside when the intruders started asking about me. Ralph had an ex-wife and three daughters he sent money to. He confided in me once that he had never been a good husband, but he wanted to be a good father. He worked hard and didn’t keep any of his salary for himself. Every month he went into town and had a cashier’s check made up and sent to his family. He was proud of the support he gave them and my heard ached to know he had been murdered.
Devin was one of the youngest ranch hands we had, although you wouldn’t be able to tell it by looking at him. He was six feet six inches and nearly four hundred pounds of pure muscle. He wasn’t the brightest of kids, but he was so kind that we all fell in love with him. He had been in prison after some boys were picking on him at his college and he punched one of them who ended up dying. I honestly believed that Devin hadn’t tried to kill that boy, but just didn’t know his own strength.
I turned and watched in total astonishment as Sid walked straight toward the cabin without hesitating at all. I ran after him. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t have a gun and only the pitchfork as a weapon, but I wasn’t about to let Sid get murdered by these men who were really there after me. I would rather them just kill me than see Sid or any of his family hurt. Whomever Frank Gordano had sent to kill me, obviously, they were cold blooded killers who didn’t have any problem with murdering an old man if Sid was standing in front of them.
Sid stood outside of the cabin about twenty feet away and just as I caught up to him the two men walked out the front door. There was no yelling at them. Sid didn’t give them a chance to put their weapons down. There were just two shotgun blasts to their bodies and the men fell straight to the ground. It was quite a sight to see as their bodies collapsed onto each other and everything went silent.
My hands shook, my whole body shook, as I walked with Sid over to them. He flipped the porch light on and we saw that one of the men was the new ranch hand that Sid had just hired. Sid had known that his hiring of ranch hands was the only way to get close to me. He had held off as long as he could before he finally hired the man. We had talked about it and Sid was going to lose other men from exhaustion if he didn’t get more help. We both shook our heads. It was a horrific scene, but we didn’t have time to linger over their bodies.
“Go check on those two,” Sid ordered me.
As I ran over to the other two men, I saw Meredith in Sid’s office. She was on the phone with someone, but appeared remarkably calm. It struck me that she knew exactly what to do and wasn’t crying or screaming in panic. Meredith Miller was a pretty strong woman.
When I got to Ralph and Devin’s bodies, it was clear there was nothing we could do for them. They had both been shot in the head a point blank range. The other men were standing at the window of the bunkhouse and slowly came out as they realized the two assailants were dead. Their eyes looked at me and I felt their stares even before any of them spoke.
The brains of Ralph and Devin were spewed out all over the dirt and I was the one the men were looking at. They knew I hadn’t actually shot the two, but I suspected they also knew that the gunmen had really been looking for me.
That evening I had my fill of gruesome bloodied bodies, that was for sure. I had never been so close to a dead body and it seemed unreal that I had four of them all around me. It was almost too much for me to handle and I desperately tried not to look at them anymore.
Instead, I looked at the ranch hands and searched the hate in their eyes; it wasn’t much easier to look at that. These men had been my co-workers and friends, but in that moment, they appeared fearful of me. I saw it in their eyes. They thought I had something to do with their friends being murdered. Which, technically I did. It was me who those men had wanted and I knew it.
“They were looking for you,” one of the ranch hands said. “They had your picture.”
His voice was filled with contempt and hate toward me. I didn’t know what to say or do. It was true, I knew it. If I hadn’t of been at that ranch Ralph and Devin would still be alive.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
The group of men just looked at me and then at Sid. They were scared and didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t blame them for hating me. I had put their life at risk and their friends had been murdered all because of me. I deserved their hatred. I deserved every stare they were giving me. My heart sank as the scene unfolded and the reality of the situation began to weigh heavily on me.
Never in my life had I felt responsible for a man’s death before I got mixed up with Frank Gordano. My money hungry decision had changed the lives of so many people and ended the lives of good men. I was sick to my stomach. In that moment, I was feeling the true consequences of my actions. Up until that second I had believed my consequences were only that I had been sent away to the Montana ranch and that I had to take time out of my life. But that was not true at all.
My actions in deciding to work with Frank were a ripple effect that had changed so many people’s lives. I wished I could take it all back. I would give every last penny that I made back and I would live the already great life I had. But I couldn’t take it back, nothing I said or did could change what had happened that night.
Two good men were lying there dead, all because of me. It was a senseless act of violence and I felt so guilty I almost collapsed right there in the dirt. Since arriving at the Miller’s ranch I had only worried about my own life. It had never dawned on me that Frank Gordano would actually kill innocent people to get to me. And from what I heard, Devin had even willingly told them where I was, but the killers didn’t care and shot him anyways.
I stood there looking at Ralph and Devin as tears filled my eyes. They were dead and I was alive. It was a horrible injustice yet I couldn’t do a thing about it. I couldn’t bring them back to life and I couldn’t change what had happened.
Everything had happened so quickly that when I looked up and saw Sarah standing in the barn doorway it felt like it had been hours since I had been lying next to her. But in reality, it had probably only been about five or ten minutes. She had stayed in the barn like I ordered her, but with the talking of the men from the bunkhouse, she finally emerged.
“Daddy,” Sarah yelled as she ran over to her father who was walking toward me with his shotgun in hand. “What happened?”
“I need you to gather the men and keep them occupied. Take them to the north barn and feed the animals or something. J
ust keep them away from all this,” Sid said without actually answering her as to what was happening.
Sarah stood looking at Ralph and Devin in total shock and then looking at me. There was no time to explain what had happened; I would just have to talk to her later. For the time being, we weren’t one hundred percent sure that we had everyone who had come there to kill me and it wasn’t a good idea for Sarah, or anyone, to stay there.
But I knew that Sarah had heard Devin’s pleas to save his life just like I had heard them. She knew that the men had been looking for me and she knew that I was the reason that poor Ralph and Devin were lying there with holes in their heads. I couldn’t take the disappointment and sadness in her eyes. I couldn’t stand the way she was looking at me one more second.
She moved toward me and reached out to touch my arm. The look of concern on her face wasn’t something I deserved. She could keep her pity for Ralph and Devin and their families. Sarah had no idea the truth behind it all. She didn’t know that it was my fault those men were dead. Sarah had no idea what I had done to be sent to her ranch and how many lives I had ruined because of my selfishness. I couldn’t take her sympathy another moment. I didn’t deserve sympathy.
“Go!” I said firmly as she looked at me and tears continued to stream down my face.
It caught her off guard how I yelled at her and I was sorry about that. But I couldn’t have her staying there and looking at me the way she was. I couldn’t have her asking me a bunch of questions, because I wasn’t going to answer them. But most of all I wasn’t going to have something happen to her while I had a breath left in my body. She could hate me if she needed to, but I needed her to follow her father’s directions and get out of the area.
“Agent Walker is on his way. He’ll arrive in a couple hours. He said to let local police do what they needed to do with the scene,” Meredith said as she walked up to the three of us.