The Storm Family 6 by Matt Chisholm

Author:Matt Chisholm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: wild west, cowboys, old west, outlaws, gunslingers, peter watts, frontier fiction, piccadilly publishing, matt chisholm, ranch wars, mart storm, storm family cattlemen, west fiction, western cowboy fiction
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing

Chapter Eight

At about that time, two things happened.

In the kitchen, Serafina, the housekeeper, who had considerable weight to spare, had lost a number of pounds through the sweat of fear. Which was understandable enough. To have a gun-battle break out in what she had always considered to be a haven of security was enough to arouse acute anxiety in anyone. Seated at the kitchen table, sipping brandy which the lissome Juanita Gomez had poured her, she saw in her mind’s eye herself being both raped and murdered by the barbarian and unbelieving Anglo savages. She would have fled to the safety of the brush in the valley had not her immense legs been bereft of strength and had she not been too afraid to even venture from the room.

The brandy, however, did some good work on her vast in sides and helped to clarify her mind. How, she asked herself, could she prevent atrocities taking place? If she was unable to prevent them herself, if she was unable herself to run fleetly to summon help, then somebody else must do so in her stead. And that someone must be the lissome Juanita.

She knew that the fearsome gringos would have by this time overpowered or murdered the armed vaqueros. The shooting had now died down and Juanita, who had ventured out under the fierce commands of her superior to spy out the land, had reported that the barbarians had seized the supposed undefeatable Gregorio, had captured the new young guest who had arrived so short a time before and had even gone so far as to take the señorita herself. This last was so unthinkable that poor Serafina felt herself giving way to hysterics every time she thought of it.

So, she thought, taking more brandy to clear her head still further, the only help that could be obtained was from her mistress’s friend, the gringo, John McCord. He was a man of standing and power, held in great respect by both Mexican and Navaho alike. McCord would know what to do. Her poor brain could not fathom how one man could outwit and defeat so many armed and dangerous men, but she clung to the belief that McCord could save all.

She therefore told the young Mexican girl that at all costs she must obtain a horse from the corral and ride to McCord’s house.

“But they will kill me,” Juanita objected, not without reason on her side.

“Do you then think that you are of such value?” Serafina demanded.

“But if I am killed what good will I do by trying to get a horse and ride to the gringo?”

“I have noticed that you have grown impertinent lately,” Serafina cried angrily, finding that anger somehow dampened down her fear. “It is because the men are starting to take notice of your growing breasts and that wobbling backside of yours. But one day, my girl, you will be fat like me. Now, do as I tell you. Catch a horse and ride as you have never ridden before.

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