Petra Read online

  *Outlaw Wars, Western Settler Saga V

  That day Adam learned truly what it meant to have friends. Men hearing about the uproar Pike set off in trying to cleanse their land newly bought and claimed arrived from all directions to pay back help he had given. Marshal Hanks, his friend then mentor, rode alongside a bunch of Spanish toting two freighters, brothers grateful for Pike saving one from death in a raging flood. Rancher Patterson, still remaining thankful, showed up with Cat Rowley, an Army major Adam teamed with to hunt down killers of a military payroll train and the other brothers Pike in tow.

  All converged on Checkmark Mountains just as Oxbar ranch hands riding from west of Morale met Fred Hutchinson’s severe band of riflemen dispatched from defending his mine operations north of town. Putting aside differences the youngster had with owners of each outfit, they joined together sharing only the thought of ending outlaw dominance of Morale and surfaced because they knew to a man he’d have come to their aid without hesitation or question.

  Those were friends worthy the name, he thought, ones earned by doing in battle and business who gave respect and received it strictly on merit of their work. Since, making friends proved difficult, his time as Marshal requiring frequent, extended absences from town while an increasingly hardened view of life built barriers never seen or expected. Feared by many, he kept distant because of that, not wishful of causing discomfort nor, he admitted, wishful of explaining himself or acting differently than he felt proper just to win their hearts or their approval.

  Back home in Michigan, like all the kin, Adam was considered easy-going, known for a sharp wit, keen eye and well regarded by adults and other youngsters, a description likely to bring derision among casual acquaintances now. Those close to him, the kin and their mates would think it apt, seeing him differently in more intimate family settings yet even this small group had to admit the young man they grew up knowing was not the person they met when finally joining him in the west. He was a hard man now, not unloving or uncaring, simply firm in attitudes tolerating little forgiveness of lawbreakers or troublemakers and only modest regard for consequences suffered by folks for their own bad decisions.

  Reining in at Katherine’s, he paused before dismounting, noticing an addition to the bunkhouse that escaped his attention prior, wondering when Step had chosen to move on a notion discussed several seasons earlier. Shrugging, the ranch business not being his to run, he dropped from the saddle, shifting the strap holding the sack of ledgers from one shoulder to the other then popped to the porch with a step lighter than his mood suggested. Knocking softly, Adam pushed through the door when Sis called him in, giving her a nod and receiving a peck on the cheek in return as she greeted him.

  Tossing his hat accurately over a hook behind the door, he strolled feigning nonchalance to the wide roll-top desk Katherine’s husband Jeremy had crafted for their use, setting the satchel on the floor beneath a set of shelves holding prior year accountings. As she poured coffee and returned to the table, setting steaming cups down near chairs where each preferred to sit, Katherine surveyed her youngest brother’s manner knowing instinctively his mood wasn’t all from the season. Watching as he replaced the ledgers precisely organized by operation and year in a fashion agreeable to both, she considered what approach was least likely to fail in drawing him out.

  “Not needful, Adam” Katherine chose to start, blue eyes softly glowing, “for you to cart all the books to your place when reviewing. Could do it as easily here.”

  His back to her as he set the last few in place, Pike tossed his head a mite. “You’ve enough going on here, Sis.” he replied quietly, “Caring for all our outfit’s accounts and supplies, tending to Jeremy’s workshop needs and a growing family, often with seven nieces and nephews underfoot. Isn’t needful to add me sitting at your table several days a month.”

  She nodded, short cut hair tickling her thin neck a mite as he turned, giving a half-smile while sitting and taking a long swallow of good, hot coffee, suggesting then, “Could use the ranch office. Little enough anyone is there.”

  Adam raised a brow, answering, “Not so comfortable doing work for the other operations there. Seems it’s for ranch business, not my other work and, besides, once all is packed up, is just as easy to tote them to my house as there.”

  A critical frown crossed Katherine’s face, long acquainted with her youngest brother’s annual autumn tussle, feeling it at times herself and having seen their Ma suffer every year similarly with bouts of poor thinking for her work lasting nearly all winter. Sensing something more here than just mood, she cocked her head, deciding a modest lashing with credit properly bestowed might serve Adam well.

  “Pike” she declared firmly, resorting to a family habit of using their last name when serious, a practice that brought unending confusion to outsiders involved in their discussions, “best you recall that office, this whole ranch, only exists from the work you did. Any work you’re wishful of doing there is for none to object.”

  Adam’s eyes wandered over the tidy home, always reminded of the only house any of them had known before moving west, liking new curtains on tall, long windows facing Step’s place and his own which, he guessed, Katherine’s daughters helped make. Every corner showed care, Jeremy having built almost every piece of furniture and Sis or one of the youngsters making table covers, rugs and decorations hung on each wall giving warmth not quite equaled at his or Step’s, neither of their wives as skilled or, truth be spoken, with as much time for such given duties they had at the Hotel and in town.

  Seeing her wait for an answer, Pike shrugged. “All given by grace, Sis, so not meant to be abused for my own purposes. Bad enough to have little useful doing to occupy myself not wishful of making it worse by shoving aside others who do.”

  Katherine pursed her lips, wetting them slightly as she did in a mannerism exactly mimicking Ma when thoughts struggled to escape. “By grace, Adam” she replied, the kin’s belief in undeserving gifts granted by an Almighty none could understand well known to her, “but requiring your hard work and smart thinking. Grace unaided amounts to little, you’re knowing that.”

  Staring out over the countryside, Pike nodded, not wishful of more discussion so replying simply, “Am. Still is how I feel.”

  “Your choice.” she responded, concluding more direct comments were required if he was going to speak about what was on his mind, adding softly, “I’m sensing more than weather bothering you. Not my business but am asking anyway.”

  Adam laughed lightly. No Pike easily intruded on another’s affairs regardless of kinship but Sis took special exception in that way. Fiercely protective of her brothers and their family name, he knew she’d struggled for years defending him to folks less aware or appreciative of his toil and sacrifices made to bring law and peace while building a town where they prospered. More than Step, whose ways were natural less abrasive, or Mitchell who seldom appeared in Morale unless spending money, Katherine’s greatest efforts were applied to Adam’s benefit, often with no help from him.

  “Man came to town.” he explained, her steady drumming of fingernails on the oval maple table finally getting to him, “Expecting he’s meaning to settle up on some doings from Marshal years.”

  A spasm of concern snapping across the woman’s face, replaced instantly by a blank expression meant to conceal her thoughts, escaped Adam’s notice, his focus still through the window. Carefully, Katherine set her mug down, asking then, “An outlaw?”

  Pike shook his head, looking at her. “Not known as one, at least in any way can be proved. Is said to be a hired gun, killing from ambush when paid enough. Is the son of one I killed years ago. ”

  “You’re knowing all that, how much proving is needful?”

  “Enough to convince a judge.” Adam replied, “He’s canny. As many that know about him, none been able to put evidence together to support arresting.”

  Katherine snorted. “So many knowing should be plenty.”

  Pike waggle
d his head energetically, long brown hair bouncing on his shoulders. “Can’t be that way, Sis, not in our country. Without real proof, it’s no more than a man’s word against another and soon we’d be like Europe, a few on top tossing any they want into cells or onto gallows for no reason but an opinion or thought.”

  Agreeing despite herself, Katherine rose, retreating to the kitchen for fresh coffee and time to consider. Their upbringing had been to respect the law, a fact central to intense pride she felt in Adam’s decision to serve as Marshal and Step as Sheriff, yet she found the system lacking. Allowing men known as lawbreakers more latitude than deserved, she saw with great displeasure how it tied hands of men like her brothers working to keep order.

  Filling their cups, she replaced the pot and sat again, facing him. “This fellow a problem?” she asked, realizing the cause of Adam’s distress and wanting him to say it aloud.

  He shrugged again, a tell-tale sign to her of thoughts unshared, saying after a pause, “Not to me.”

  “Then why are you acting such?”

  Pike eyed his sister closely. More than anyone alive except maybe Kate, Katherine had intuitions and insights into men beyond comprehension. He knew despite no explanation being required of him and his not desiring to make any that he would regardless, an effect she had on him from earliest years.

  “More he is to the others.” Adam volunteered when silence no longer worked, taking a long drink of coffee as she waited, forcing patience. “Folks around most think days of gun play and killing are over, best left in years past. This man, Petra, will start up the old stories and stir up a mess of feelings I’m not wishful of dealing with again.”

  Katherine bobbed her head, his comments as expected, when Adam continued, “Family’s been happy, almost joyous and free of tension these last few years, Sis, and now we’ll be going around again because of him.”

  Other than Step, none knew better than Pike’s sister the profound difference between ideas of Adam’s wife and himself on use of guns or the nature of the violence in a countryside filled with men reaching adulthood fighting for Union or Confederate armies moving west, often carrying resentment and meanness in them as a result. In this matter, Katherine and her youngest brother were in complete accord. Pikes were raised not to cause a fuss but neither Pa nor Ma permitted their off-spring to back down in the face of one, a result of that teaching having twice brought Katherine herself to kill.

  The first came when a pair of Indians appeared at the ranch house only a week after she arrived in their new home, demanding food and horses. When refused, they charged the door unmindful of the shotgun she held at her side or, perhaps, not believing her capable of using it until too late to mind anything. The second time, walking back to her hotel in Denver City wanting only rest to drive off a headache during a buying trip for the ranch, she’d taken a short cut using a side a lane when a drunk accosted her, commanding privileges reserved for her husband. Unwilling to accept Katherine’s scorning denial, he put mean hands on her causing a hat pin to pierce his chest and heart, an event neither planned nor giving remorse. Completing her walk to the hotel, she left his dead body for others to puzzle over, hat pin tidily cleansed and returned to its place.

  “Does there have to be a killing, Adam?” she inquired quietly, her mind furiously racing through options to suggest.

  Pike laughed a little. “Not if he’s here to say all’s forgiven.” he replied then, seeing a doubting look on her face, admitted, “Little likely that’s his thinking.”

  Taking a long drink, Katherine scanned her brother’s face, feeling his despair over possibly being forced to take another life. Adam regretted nothing in his past, she knew, yet despised senseless killing so easily avoided if men would only think more clearly on what was important or not. A number of years had passed since he last used a weapon against a man, another drunk to no one’s surprise, attacking a merchant in town with a knife over some trifle none could begin to make clear. When Pike intervened, the man dropped the blade in favor of a six-gun, dying without ever learning who he faced.

  “She’ll accept it, Adam, as having no choice.” Katherine advised after a minute with no more to offer on the matter. For all the love she felt toward wives of her brothers, there were certain lines she knew could not be crossed and this was one. How they managed relations in their own homes could be influenced in some examples but not here.

  Pike stood, sliding his empty cup to Katherine’s hand. “Appreciate good coffee, Sis. Time for me to go talk with a man about his thinking.”

  Rising, Katherine embraced Adam in a sisterly hug, leaning up on her toes to plant a kiss on his forehead. “Sun will come out one of these days, Adam.” she said, releasing his hand as he moved to the door. “We’ll all feel better when it does.”

  Nodding, he snugged his hat over unruly long hair while crossing through the doorway meeting Everett Langston, one of longest serving 5PL hands, on the porch.

  “Morning, Mr. Pike” he greeted, eyes briefly connecting with Adam’s before flickering to boards beneath them. “Miss Katherine to home? We got some supply in not expected so am needing to ask of it.”

  Cocking his head to the door, Adam replied pleasantly, “Morning, Ev. She’s inside.” then passed by, determined to let no irritation show. Pike had long given up trying to convince their hands to call him by first name but never got accustomed to quivering fear showing in their eyes when they came across him unexpectedly. Hundreds of days he spent working cattle as one of them, volunteering for the most arduous, unpleasant tasks as he believed proper for an owner to do but few among them could sit in his presence for any length of time without giving some excuse to leave.

  Even their foreman, Dave Camp, reacted to him that way despite owning a sterling reputation as a fighter. First for the Army in the Mexican War then battling rustlers and Apaches for outfits trying to set up ranching in the southwest, the hard bitten cattleman seldom sat comfortable in Adam’s presence. More than twice Pike’s age, somewhere between being hired and Adam finishing up as Marshal their relationship changed from equals working together into a peculiar, uneasy one that pleased Pike none but he found impossible to improve.

  Turning his horse onto the stone and timber bridge Adam and Step built seven years before over East River which neither expected would survive the first high water to roar down off the mountains, he glanced across the footings as he’d done on every crossing to see signs of distress or weakness never yet spotted then swung north facing Mitchell’s stone house on the bench a hundred feet higher. Built giving an expansive view of prairie and river to the front with acres of meadow and a small pond behind, he always hoped it would provide serenity to ease the troubled man but never knew if it had or not.

  Following the road west, North River to his right carrying life sustaining water to the 5PL and his own Checkmark Mountains on the left, Adam slowed his mount, not wishful of hurrying his arrival while running over all known about Anton Petra. Gifted with near perfect memory of every written word read and most conversations, Pike ran thinking across each note and story of the man hoping for an elusive tie that could bring an arrest but found none. Canny and careful, Petra was believed to have murdered several dozen times while leaving so little trace his very existence was doubted by some.

  How the man learned his trade or chose to pursue it, Adam couldn’t say but knew he came by it natural. Anton’s father Demitri had cut a wide swath across western Wyoming and southern Idaho for most of a year, robbing banks in towns almost too small to have one with few noticing until the day a young teller resisted, leveling a single shot pistol with the last pile of cash being handed over. While his one bullet grazed the robber, two returned opened holes in his chest that gave eternal sleep as reward to his effort leaving behind a widow not yet twenty-three years of age with two young boys.

  Those shots jolted Pike out of a deep sleep following an all night ride hauling in a pair of claim jumping killers to the first judge willing to try, convict
and hang them, the young Marshal’s enthusiasm for justice often overwhelming desires for rest in those days.* Joining a small throng in the bank lobby, he received a description of Demitri, his horse and an offer of bounty meaning less to him than recovering sums representing life savings of a dozen townsfolk. Riding prompt, Adam trailed the outlaw three days and nights, losing him once but finding him again where blood from his wound had carelessly been left when freshening his bandage.