Pemberley Ranch - Jack Caldwell [100]
“What about… her?” Pyke asked, pointing a finger upstairs.
“That’s your job,” Whitehead said easily, betraying the tension he felt when talking about the girl. “Keep her out of sight. You can do that, can’t you?”
“Yeah,” sneered Denny, “keep my property well looked after. Just don’t look too close, partner,” he added, patting his holstered gun.
Collins started to open his mouth, but whatever he was going to say, he thought better of it. Whitehead didn’t need to hear it, anyway, for the banker was only going to voice what had been running through his own mind. The girl had become a distraction and a threat. Things were too important; the money and the power that would come with it were too damn close to chance that she would be discovered.
Denny walked to the window. “When do you wanna leave? Been raining hard for two days. Roads will be muddy for sure.”
“As soon as it stops. We’ll go on horseback rather than the carriage. Be faster.”
Yes, Whitehead thought, the faster I get to Fort Worth to get my update from Elton, the faster I can get back here and tie up all loose ends. And that includes the girl. Denny will just have to find another toy. Lily Bennet needs to disappear for good.
It didn’t stop raining until after Darcy returned to Pemberley. The next evening he learned from his spies in town that Whitehead, Denny, and a couple of riders had left that morning for Fort Worth.
Ironic, he thought. Another day and we might have met on the road. I wonder what would have happened. Would Whitehead and his party have just passed by, or would we have settled this thing out there in the wilderness once and for all? Darcy knew he wouldn’t have started anything, but he also knew he was prepared to end it.
He forced himself to stop thinking of Whitehead; he had more pressing issues on his mind. The storms had scattered his cattle all over the range. Every hand was needed for the roundup. He knew he had days in the saddle before him.
It would only delay the confrontation with Cate Burroughs.
The rains may have stopped, but the river kept rising as the storm waters flowed into Rosings Creek and the Long Branch. Higher and higher the river rose, turning Thompson Crossing into a raging torrent. Downriver, the townspeople watched the single bridge across the river with concern, hoping it wouldn’t fail. It survived, but just barely.
The same couldn’t be said for the abandoned homesteads in the new settlement. The long-timers’ predictions rang true when the Long Branch overflowed its banks, inundating the bottomland and the houses that stood like lonely sentinels. They were flooded one by one, and a few, like the Washingtons’ place, could not stand the deluge and were swept away.
One old wag opined that God Himself was cleaning the foul stench of the crime that had been committed there. Publicly, most scoffed at the idea, but it was telling that, for generations, folks in Long Branch County would consider the site haunted.
October 31
THE DAYS WERE GROWING shorter as October ended, but the air still held a hint of summer’s warmth. Therefore, Charlotte was not chilled as she carefully walked home from the jail, the streets still damp and slightly muddy from the rains that had fallen for the past week, and she was able to lose herself in thoughts of Fitz. Her progress was halted by a loud noise, and she turned to observe some of Denny’s men entering Younge’s Saloon, singing and cursing. Charlotte frowned, wondering again why Rosings tolerated such an establishment. She looked up and down the muddy street at the storefronts and shops, at the banks and the church, at the new schoolhouse going up. All signs that the town was leaving its frontier roots. Even Whitehead’s building, next to Younge’s, spoke of the future—
Charlotte froze.
Looking from a second-floor window in Whitehead’s building was a young, blonde woman. Her face was painted and her clothes could only be described as indecent, but Charlotte recognized the girl