Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,137

easier to be out here under big skies, or to drink himself into a stupor in town, than to face the reality of his son's death and the loss of his wife's companionship. How had he managed to be such a success in matters outside the home, and such a failure at his personal life?

He and the eight men with him, plus Ty, reached the bottom of the plateau and broke into a hard gallop, the cook, simply called Oatmeal, lagging behind with the chuck wagon, and three more men herding the remuda even farther back. He could see that the riders they were trying to reach before they got too far past had finally noticed them and were pulling up. Luke glanced over at Ty, who was riding hard right alongside him, his dark hair flying away from his face, his wide-brimmed hat caught by its cord around his neck and bouncing at his shoulders. He grinned as he realized Ty was turning this into a race, and he let up a little on his own gray-and-white speckled Appaloosa, letting the boy nose ahead of him. "All right, you win!" he shouted as they neared the waiting riders.

Ty let out a war whoop and laughed. "You let me win, didn't you?"

"No. I swear," Luke answered with a grin. Yes. Out here he could feel good. Out here he could laugh. He wanted to share laughter again with Lettie and the other children.

"Luke! We was hopin' to run into you!"

Luke recognized his good friend Will's voice. It reminded him of poor Henny, partly crippled now. He knew how hard it was for Will to see her that way, but at least the woman wasn't crippled emotionally, as Lettie seemed to be. "What's going on?" he shouted in reply, slowing his horse to a trot as he rode closer. He recognized several of the others now, Carl Rose, Calvin Briggs, Joe Parker, Hank Kline, and several other men, some of them small ranchers, some businessmen from Billings who had joined them, men sworn to help uphold the law in Montana the only way it could be done in these parts—through vigilante committees. "You boys look like you're hot on somebody's trail." Luke's men formed a line beside him.

"We're headed for Pine Creek, Luke," Calvin Briggs answered. "We would have waited for you, but we couldn't wait on this one. Annie Gates had a customer the other night who got so drunk he bragged about how he was going to meet up with some buddies of his at Pine Creek Canyon and help herd some cattle north, said he'd be making a lot of money for helping because they'd get a good price for the cattle up in Canada. Told Annie he'd bring her a diamond necklace when he came back. There's no ranchers we know of around Pine Creek, and nobody we know takes their cattle to Canada except rustlers. Annie told Sheriff Tracy about it, and he sent messengers out to the rest of the ranchers. Figured it was a job for us instead of him. We had us a little talk with the one who bragged about helpin' herd the cattle. By the time we finished with him, he told us the truth. It's rustlers, all right, and part of their gang is the Walkers, them two boys and their pa that you chased off the Double L last year."

"I thought they were far away from here by now. Don't they realize we all know they're the ones who raided Matt Duncan's place and killed Duncan? They raped the poor man's wife besides, then made off with all his livestock. How can they be stupid enough to come back here?"

"Well, it's a good thing that hired hand of Duncan's managed to get to town to tell us he seen it was the Walker boys. Now we've got no doubt what to do with them if we find them."

"Bastards," Luke fumed. "I've lost at least three hundred head myself over the past couple of years. It was probably the Walkers who took them."

"It's just too bad it took so long for Duncan's man to get to town to tell us about what happened," Will put in. "Otherwise we could have followed their tracks if they were fresh. I'd have chased the bastards all the way into Canada if necessary, but by the time we got out there, it was too late. Rain had washed away the tracks. Now we've got