Devil's Range by Skeeter Dodds

Author:Skeeter Dodds [Skeeter Dodds]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780709098560
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 2012-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Sarah Rawl was angry with herself because, try as she might, Caleb Ross kept coming to mind and refused to be shunned. She stubbornly refused to admit to herself that the stranger to the valley had made an impression above and beyond what a brief meeting should have made. Yes, tough he was, but at their meeting at the creek where he had been bathing, she had seen a gentler side to him; a side that had sent her heart skittering the way an impressionable young girl’s might, instead of the heart of the older and wiser woman she was.

Her reverie was interrupted by the sound of her brother’s hee-hawing as he came along the hall to the den where she was doing the ranch accounts. She did not have long to wait to find out the reason for Scott Rawl’s hilarity and mirth. He had no sooner swaggered into the den than he told his sister the reason for his good humour.

‘Darnest funny thing, sis,’ he guffawed. Jack Sweeney, a man Sarah disliked intensely was with Scott and was even more amused than her brother was. ‘The drunks acting as pall bearers at the Watson funeral, because no one else would do the job, dropped the casket.’

Sarah Rawl was rocked by the news.

‘It burst open,’ Scott leaned on Sweeney, guffawing even more, ‘and good old Tom fell right out and landed face down in horse manure!’

‘Tom Watson’s dead?’ Sarah asked, shocked.

‘Yeah,’ Scott Rawl drawled, as if Watson’s death was a matter of fleeting interest. ‘Thought he was good enough to draw on Jack.’ Rawl sniggered. ‘Found out he wasn’t near good enough, eh, Jack.’

Fury replacing shock, Sarah Rawl sprang out of her chair. ‘A man’s death is not a laughing matter, Scott!’ she rebuked her brother. Her eyes were hot coals on Sweeney. ‘You must have known that Tom Watson was no match for you?’

Sweeney gave a shrug of indifference.

‘Wish I’d been there to see it,’ Scott Rawl snorted. ‘Tom Watson eating horseshit.’

‘Get out of the house, Sweeney,’ Sarah ordered. ‘And don’t enter it again.’

‘Now hold on a minute,’ Scott Rawl railed against his sister. ‘Jack’s a friend of mine. A good friend, too.’

‘He’s nothing but a toerag dragging you down to his level,’ Sarah Rawl fumed. ‘And you can’t go any lower than that, Scott.’

She turned her glaring attention on Sweeney.

‘You didn’t have to kill Tom Watson.’

‘He made the play, Miss Rawl,’ Jack Sweeney flung back. ‘I simply indulged his stupidity.’

‘Tom Watson was no gun-slick, and you knew that, Sweeney. In my book that makes his killing murder.’ Sarah Rawl’s anger intensified. ‘Go one better, Sweeney. Get off Rawl range when you leave the house.’

‘I’ve got pay coming,’ he growled.

Sarah Rawl did a quick check on the payroll ledger. She took a roll of dollar bills from the desk drawer, peeled off fifty dollars and threw them across the desk at Sweeney.

‘That’s more than you’ve got coming. And,’ Sarah’s look was one of utter contempt, ‘a way more than you’re worth.

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