The Man Who Loved Cole Flores (Dig Two Graves 1) - Page 2
Ned took off his hat and held it to his chest. “Maybe he could have told—”
“Boy, I don’t even need to look into his mouth to know he’s got no tongue either. Go into town and alert my deputies, will you?”
At twenty-three, Ned hardly considered himself a boy but wouldn’t be arguing with the sheriff at the scene of such terror.
“Mr. Byrne as well?” he asked, already heading for his horse.
Sheriff Pattison nodded. “Yeah, the grim reaper’s gonna have a field day with this.”
The local undertaker had a penchant for beautifying corpses. The more mutilated, the bigger the challenge. Perhaps he’d make the old man a new face out of clay.
*
The sun had almost reached its zenith as Ned came back to his uncle’s ranch. With the smell of recent death still stuck up his nose, the broad valley that encompassed the property seemed like a sanctuary from all evils, even though bandits had killed three people only a stone’s throw away.
Perhaps no one had yet found out, and it would be up to him to deliver the grim news?
The main house, large, with two storeys and a sloped roof, sprawled in the middle of the vast open space dotted by purple flowers. Around it, were the bunkhouse where the ranch hands lived, and the paddocks, but all the farm buildings were dwarfed by the magnitude of the snow-capped mountains shooting toward the sky in the background.
Growing out from behind the dark green hills, they never seemed quite real to Ned, though he still remembered the bitter cold at night, and the solitude of that final winter up there. But time weathered his memories, and seen from down in the valley, the place where he’d spent his early childhood seemed like the setting of some grim fairy tale that should have never become reality. The mountaintops remained white all year round, and he sometimes found himself wondering what his life would have been if he’d stayed up in the Rockies, among their sharp edges and ravines deep enough to keep the worst of crimes secret.
Too bad the haven Uncle Liam created for the O’Leary family was no longer peaceful.
Ned waved at a ranch hand tending to an injured cow in a pen adjacent to the barn. The man had impressive muscles, and while already going gray, he was as handsome as fellows ten years younger. It was a surprise he hadn’t got himself a wife, but it was none of Ned’s business, so he continued toward the gentle slope where, on the side of the main house, his cousin Brianna passed between rows of linens that had been hung to dry. The breeze carried the scent of lye soap, making Ned long for a bath that would wash off the odor of blood and rot that surely still clung to him and would spoil the peace of their home.
Briana’s shadow moved behind the squares of fabric flapping in the wind, and Ned was quick to roll up sleeves, which had been left stained while he tended to the dying old man. She would be peeking at him soon enough, and the last thing he needed was questions about the origin of the stains coming from a fifteen-year-old girl.
“Where have you been?”
The harsh voice pulled Ned out of his thoughts, and he looked up at his cousin, Dylan, who approached him on a tall bay gelding from behind the wind pump. Dylan was older than Ned by only three years but acted as if he’d already lived to ripe old age and now had the right to oversee everyone else’s work.
Ned couldn’t help a tiny bit of satisfaction at the sight of sunburnt, peeling skin on Dylan’s face. Ned’s mother hadn’t been nearly as pale as all the O’Leary’s, and just like her, he tanned to a golden shade under the red threads of body hair. While staying in the sun made him sprout hundreds of freckles, at least he didn’t suffer like the rest of his adoptive family.
Ned exhaled. “A stage’s been attacked a fifteen-minute ride down the road. Sheriff Pattison had me fetch his men from town.”
Dylan stilled, his lips pressing into a thin line that for once didn’t mean he intended to scold Ned for not doing enough, which he believed regardless of how many hours Ned toiled each day. “Goddamn it. You sure it wasn’t just a scrap between strangers?”
Ned shook his head with a somber expression, and Dylan glanced toward the entryway to the ranch. “Tell my mother. I’ll alert Father.”
Of course. He wanted to be the one bringing important news to Uncle Liam. Oh well, at least Ned would get to wash down the bitter taste in his mouth with a glass of fresh milk, because Aunt Muriel was always in the kitchen. He might have been at the bottom of the O’Leary ladder, but he had some privileges none of the other ranch hands could dream of, and a soft bed in the main house.
Source: readsnovelonline.net