Only 06 - Winter Fire

bluntly.
    â€œTenderness?”
    â€œLike kissing and such.”
    â€œFar as I know, my sister got her first kiss the night she came back riding double with you.”
    â€œJudas priest,” Case whispered. “Why did she marry the old—never mind. None of my business.”
    Conner’s face seemed to flatten and tighten. It was a flash of the man he would become in time, honesty and strength and force in equal parts.
    â€œWhy do you think my sister married him?” he asked coldly.
    â€œNecessity.”
    â€œDamned straight. She was barely fourteen and I was nine. No relatives survived the flood. We were starving. She answered an advertisement in the newspaper.”
    â€œAnd married Hal?”
    Conner nodded. “The old son of a bitch couldn’t even get a squaw to put up with him.”
    â€œHow did you kill Hal?”
    The easy question caught Conner off-guard. He looked around quickly.
    No one else was in sight.
    â€œHow did you know?” he asked.
    â€œI didn’t, until now.”
    â€œDon’t tell my sister,” he said urgently. “I want your word on that.”
    I’m supposed to keep my half of the ranch secret from Conner , Case thought wryly, and now here’s a second secret I’m supposed to keep from Sarah .
    â€œAre you sure she doesn’t already know?” he asked.
    â€œYes!”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    Conner made a hard, chopping motion with his hand.
    â€œWhat does it matter? He’s dead.”
    â€œShotgun from ambush?” Case asked casually.
    â€œNo. Hell’s fire, I didn’t even mean to kill the old bastard.”
    Case lifted an eyebrow and waited.
    Sighing, Conner ran a hand through his hair, settled his hat with a jerk, and started to talk.
    â€œHe’d been after her the night before. It was one of the few times he caught her.”
    Case’s eyelids flinched once, then again. He didn’t like thinking about Sarah and an old man so cruel he couldn’t even get an outcast Indian woman to live with him.
    Far as I know, my sister got her first kiss the night she came back riding double with you .
    â€œHe was on a real toot,” Conner said. “He was still drinking when he rode out prospecting the next morning. I followed him.”
    â€œOn foot?”
    â€œHal’s horse was as old as he was. But he was a real walking fool. It was afternoon by the time I caught up.”
    Case watched the boy through narrowed eyes.
    â€œI told Hal to quit mistreating my sister,” Conner said. “He started to pistol-whip me. It wasn’t the first time, but it sure was the last.”
    â€œYou shot him?”
    â€œWe fought over the gun, it went off, and Hal just sort of folded up.”
    Despite Conner’s matter-of-fact words, Case could see the shadows of old anger and horror in the boy’s green eyes and thinned mouth.
    â€œI tried to feel bad about it afterward,” Conner said softly. “But I felt worse when I had to shoot a mustang that had a broken leg.”
    â€œHow old were you when Hal died?”
    â€œTwelve.”
    â€œHard way to grow up.”
    â€œI grew up when I was nine,” Conner said. “After that, all that mattered was Sarah.”
    â€œAnd you’re all that matters to her.”
    â€œMe and the land. And now you.”
    Case ducked the veiled question.
    â€œWhat about Ute and Lola?” he asked.
    â€œIt’s not the same. Oh, we all get along real well, and Ute would fight to the death for Sarah, but…” Conner shrugged. “My sister doesn’t fret about them the way she does about me or you.”
    â€œI think she values your hide one hell of a lot more than she values mine.”
    Conner hesitated, then shrugged. “Maybe.”
    Yet the boy’s steady green eyes said that he thought the older man was wrong.
    I should have run when the running was good , Case told himself.
    Then he thought of the land calling to him and knew he couldn’t run. At that instant he understood what it felt like to be a wolf in a trap.
    Nowhere to run.
    Nothing to fight but himself.
    A lot of wolves died that way, bleeding to death when they gnawed off their own legs in a desperate try for freedom.

14
    D isgusted, Case leaned on the shovel and stared down at the cold hole he had dug at the base of a finger of red rock. It looked a lot like the other holes he had dug in the past two