The Lone Rancher - By Carol Finch Page 0,77

wires as if he’d done it countless times—and chances were, he had. The two rustlers trotted off to sort out a dozen head of Cahill steers, then sent them through the opening in the fence. Then they herded a dozen longhorns that Adrianna planned to send up the trail to Dodge City in a few weeks.

She nudged Buckshot, determined to catch the thieves red-handed but Cahill grabbed her reins, bringing the gray gelding to an abrupt halt.

“Not yet. Let’s see if anyone else is involved and where they’re taking the cattle for safekeeping.”

Adrianna chastised herself for jumping the gun. Quin was right. They needed to know if a third cowboy was waiting at another site to herd the cattle away from the two ranches or if they would pen them in a makeshift corral.

A half-hour later, the two rustlers veered toward an isolated, dead-end ravine on McKnight property. Adrianna glanced around but she didn’t see another rider waiting to join Chester and Ezra.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Cahill muttered sourly.

Adrianna glanced in the direction he pointed to see the men ride up to a rock ledge halfway up the hill. They picked up a note, then divided up the money waiting for them.

“What the devil is going on?” Adrianna murmured as the men pocketed the money, then rode downhill.

“Stay here, Boston,” he whispered. “If gunfire breaks out and you start shooting, try not to hit me.”

She waited in a grove of trees east of the ravine, despite the urge to join Cahill while he confronted those low-down, double-crossing rustlers who pretended loyalty to the 4C and McKnight Ranch. But she supposed Cahill was right. She was the element of surprise—if he needed reinforcements. But he had better not get himself shot, either, or she’d never forgive him!

With both pistols drawn, Cahill made his presence known to the thieves. When they tried to grab their pistols, Cahill growled threateningly. “Toss ’em in the dirt. Now.”

Ezra defied him and went for his weapon but Cahill shot his gun hand, then hit the cartwheeling pistol in midair, making it dance sideways before it hit the ground.

“Try it again, Ez, and I’ll take you in, jackknifed over your saddle. Your choice.”

Adrianna decided right there and then that Cahill had gone easy on her during their previous confrontations. The man possessed amazing shooting skills and he could sound unnervingly vicious and deadly when he felt the need. In the scant moonlight and flickering torchlight, she could see Ez’s and Chester’s Adam’s apples bobbing apprehensively.

Good, she thought, they deserved to be scared half to death after all the rotten things they had done.

When Chester tossed aside his weapon, Cahill pointed at the torches. “Drop those in the dirt.” When they did as ordered, he called out to her—without taking his eyes off his captives. “There’s a rope in my saddlebags, Boston. Let’s tie them up and retrieve their discarded weapons.”

Both men jerked up their heads when Adrianna appeared from the shadows of the trees. She didn’t display her pistol or the dagger she kept tucked in her boot for desperate occasions. Those weapons were her aces in the hole.

Without a word, she reached into the leather pouches to retrieve ropes, noting the extensive length of each. She wondered if Cahill had planned it that way.

“It’s a long walk in the dark but the fresh air will do you both good,” Cahill remarked.

She approached the men on horseback, then demanded, “Get down, and do it carefully. Just so you know, I voted to shoot you both and be done with it, but Cahill decided to let you live…if you behaved.” She tossed Cahill a quick glance. “I still vote to shoot ’em dead and bury ’em with their boots on. Either that or use the ropes to hang ’em high. I haven’t attended a lynching yet. This will be my first.”

“We’ll see how it goes, Boston. For now, tie their wrists, then wrap the rope around their waists…in case I feel the need to drag them behind the horses until they tell us what we want to know.”

Their Adam’s apples bobbed again and she could see the whites of their eyes in the moonlight. Clearly, they didn’t put the threat past Cahill. “I’ve heard of the tactic, but I’ve never seen it,” she commented offhandedly as she wrapped Ezra’s wrists—thrice—then encircled his hips with rope. “Is it true that you can drag a man’s skin off his bones when his horse is racing at full gallop?”

“It is,” Cahill