Mail Order Bride: Springtime (Bride For All Seasons 1)

“Few miles, as the crow flies.”

“Well,” sniped Austin, “since we ain’t crows, I reckon we’ll be takin’ the long way. Let’s go. I’d like to get these two coyotes under lock and key.”

Another hour’s ride took them through a moonlit night, along a trail through pasture and grasses, thence to a track made by some four-wheeled vehicle. As they drew nearer the designated spot, light from kerosene lanterns up ahead advertised someone’s presence. As did noise: hammers clinking on rock, the clatter of gravel being shifted and dumped, a muffled cuss word now and then.

“Huh. Shoulda come out here sooner,” Ben glowered, and pulled his horse to a walk.

Off in the distance a buckboard wagon had been parked in the weeds, waiting for some sort of load to be piled into the box. What exactly had these two semi-outlaws gotten themselves into, and what did they hope to gain?

Copper mining, were they fortunate enough to have actually stumbled upon a vein, would require vast sums of money for the initial start-up—digging out and crushing ore, treating the mineral with chemicals, shipping the concentrate to smelters, wherever one might be—and both intelligence and experience to run the operation.

Or had they, perhaps, located some investor willing to take the plunge...if only the mining rights could be secured and the metal might actually exist in quantity?

The sheriff swung down from his horse, dropped the reins, and started toward the confusing scene. “Putnam!” he called out, as a caution. “Paul Winslow here. Me and my deputy have come to have a little talk with you and your brother.”

“Talk? What about?” It must have been Earl, the chatty one, who put down a shovel and, in the semi-darkness, strode belligerently forward.

Winslow continued forward, swishing softly through the tall pasture. “About a crime you’re bein’ accused of commitin’ a couple days ago.”

“Oh, yeah? What crime is that?”

The two men were practically within spitting distance of each other. Winslow kept a wary eye on his adversary; he knew that his well-trained deputy, following a few steps behind, would be keeping an equally wary eye on the other brother—less talkative, just as furtive. If anybody could but see the hulking brute, somewhere off in the shadows.

“Seems you assaulted Ben Ferguson’s wife, right on her own front porch. He ain’t real happy about it.”

“Didn’t figure he would be. Reckon he got the message I left, then?”

“I got the message,” affirmed Ben, speaking up coldly from his own patch of shadows. “It still won’t fly, Putnam. You’re on open land right now, with a whole slew of charges bein’ brought against you. B’cause whatever you’re doin’ here is illegal.”

Earl Putnam laughed loud and long. “Whatever I’m doin’ here is gonna make me a boatload of money, Ferguson. And ain’t a one of you gonna stop me. We got a tunnel started, and we found a nice deep pit to nowhere.”

There was no more warning than that.

A blaze of red burst forth from the muzzle of Putnam’s Colt Army Revolver, across the intervening space, and then another immediately after, and a barrage of bullets. Interspersed with that came the lever action repeating shots from a heavy-duty Winchester.

The invading force was ready and instantly returned fire.

It wasn’t until every weapon was empty, and the smell of gunpowder was mixing with blue smoke in the air, that the sheriff could take stock. Breathing hard, shaking a little from the rush of adrenalin, he managed to call out, “Austin!”

“Yo!”

“You okay, son?”

“Yeah, I reckon. Took a hit above my ear, but I’m still alive and kickin’.”

“Ben!”

Silence. Utter silence, more pervasive now that the battle was ended. There was only the soft sound of a breeze careening through the trees, and the faraway squawk of some water fowl as its heavy body hit the waters of Juniper Creek.

“Ben, answer me!”

The sheriff, quickly reloading his Colt, just in case, stumbled to where he’d last caught glimpse of his trusty back-up. Only to find Ben dropped right where he had stood, leaking blood like a faucet from the bullet which had plowed into his chest.

Both Putnams, murderous swine, lay dead on the ground they had been working to tear up.

With Austin’s unsteady help, the bodies were rolled into canvas and burlap, to be collected on the morrow for a more decent burial than they deserved.

Wounds bandaged roughly and hastily, as a stopgap until medical care could be attained, they had loaded Ben into the wagon box, hitched up the horses, and started the return trip to Turnabout.