William Johnstone - Bounty Hunter

“While you rake in all the profits?” Peabody asked.

“Not all of it. You’d still get by, as you put it.” Wolford’s voice finally hardened as he went on. “You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Peabody, that things have changed around here. It’s not the same as it was before the war, and it never will be again. Different people are running things now. I happen to be well acquainted with Colonel Morrison and Judge Blevins, and although I may be speaking out of turn here, I know they’re going through all the records and uncovering a number of cases where insufficient taxes were paid on properties in this area.”

“You mean you’re gonna grab folks’ land by claimin’ they owe taxes they really don’t,” Peabody said.

The big eastern tough in the derby glared and edged his horse forward. “Don’t you talk to Mr. Wolford like that, you old Rebel,” he warned.

Wolford lifted a hand. “Take it easy, Joe. I’m sure Mr. Peabody didn’t mean to cast any aspersions.”

“What I’ll cast is you offa my land,” Peabody said. “I paid my taxes, and can’t nobody say otherwise!”

“Yes, but you paid them to the Confederates who were in charge here at the time.” Wolford shook his head as if he were genuinely regretful. “There’s no way of knowing where all that money went, but it isn’t in the county’s coffers like it’s supposed to be. Unfortunately, in order to fund the new government, a new taxation schedule will have to be put in place—”

“Why don’t you call it what it is?” Peabody broke in. “Stealin’, plain and simple!”

“I’m just trying to help.” Wolford leaned over slightly on the buggy seat to look past Luke and Peabody. “Isn’t that your granddaughter I see just inside the door?” He raised a hand to his hat. “Good day to you, Miss Peabody. You’re looking as lovely as ever.”

“You leave Emily outta this—” Peabody began, but she stepped onto the porch and confronted Wolford and his gunmen, too.

“We don’t want your so-called help, mister.” Her eyes blazed with fury.

She counseled restraint, Luke thought, but her emotions got the better of her and she couldn’t practice what she preached.

“You’d better turn that buggy around and get off our land, right now!”

“Or what? An old man and a cripple will run us off?” The gunman leaned over in his saddle and spat. “I don’t think so.”

“Please, Howell, there’s no need for unpleasantness.” Wolford smiled at Emily again. “I think if you’d just give me a chance, Miss Peabody, you and I could be good friends. If you were to help persuade your grandfather to be reasonable, why, I can see all sorts of benefits in it for you. A girl as beautiful as you should have some of the finer things in life, the sort of things a man like me could give you—”

“So I could be some sort of backwoods harlot for you?” Emily turned toward her grandfather and reached for the rifle. “Gimme that gun.”

Luke saw the three hired killers grow tense in their saddles and knew the situation was teetering perilously close to violence. Under the circumstances, the outcome of that wouldn’t be good for him and his friends.

He moved between the Peabodys and the unwelcome visitors and said in a loud, hard voice, “That’s enough.”

“Do you speak for these people, Mr. Smith?” Wolford asked with a sneer.

“I speak for myself, and this is what I’ve got to say, Wolford.” Luke looked right into the man’s eyes. He didn’t like taking his attention off the others, but knew they wouldn’t act unless Wolford ordered them to. “If there’s trouble here today, you’ll be sorry. I’ll see to that personally.”

“That’s mighty big talk for a man on crutches.” The eastern tough called Joe sneered.

Luke let go of the right-hand crutch, letting it fall behind him, and moved his hand so it wasn’t far from the butt of the revolver sticking out of his pocket. “I only need one to balance on,” he told Wolford, making it clear as he could. If any gunplay broke out, Luke was going to draw that revolver and kill Wolford, no matter what else happened. He might die, and Emily and her grandfather probably would, too, but Wolford would die first.

Luke was going to see to that.

Reading the deadly message in Luke’s steady gaze, fear flared in the carpetbagger’s eyes. An instant later, it was replaced by smoldering anger.

But the fear was still there, underneath, and Luke knew it.

“All right,” Wolford snapped. “I was just trying to be generous. I thought perhaps we could consider ourselves friends and neighbors, Mr. Peabody. But if you’d rather this . . . this unreconstructed Rebel speak for you—”

“Smith’s right,” Peabody said. “We’ve heard enough. You and your boys need to git.”

Wolford lifted the reins. “We’ll be going, then. Perhaps I was wrong, Mr. Peabody. Perhaps you won’t lose your farm”—he paused—“but don’t count on it.”

With that, he turned the team and sent the buggy rolling away from the cabin. The three gunmen lingered a moment, giving Luke hard, murderous stares before they wheeled their horses and followed Wolford.

“I ain’t countin’ on nothin’,” Peabody said, “except that this trouble ain’t over.”

Luke knew the old-timer was right about that.

CHAPTER 21

Wolford had been so angry when he drove away Luke wouldn’t have been surprised if problems started cropping up right away. But several days passed with no sign of the carpetbagger or his hired guns.

Linus Peabody reported the Harkness family on the neighboring farm had packed up and moved away, abandoning the place because they couldn’t pay the exorbitant taxes being demanded by the Reconstruction government. Another worried neighbor had come by the farm and told Peabody about it, adding that the sheriff was going to auction off the Harkness farm in Dobieville on Saturday.

Luke knew Vincent Wolford would win that auction at a rock-bottom price. And he would probably get some of the money back from the sheriff and the judge in the form of a kickback.

The idea of Emily going out to work in the fields with her grandfather worried Luke. If Wolford’s gunnies showed up, intent on causing trouble, Peabody wouldn’t be able to protect her. In his current condition, Luke couldn’t watch over them, so he made up his mind the best thing for him to do was improve as much and as quickly as he could.

With that determination goading him on, he worked with his legs for long hours each day while Emily and her grandfather were gone. He put more and more weight on his own muscles, forcing them to move and carry him, not just support him.

Back and forth across the cabin’s main room he shuffled endlessly, using the crutches. Eventually he was able to take a step, then several steps, without touching the floor with the crutches, although he held them ready to catch himself if he fell.

Those efforts made his legs ache almost intolerably, but he welcomed the pain, even embraced it. To have his legs hurt was so much better than to have them feel nothing at all.

By the time a week had passed since Wolford and his gunmen had shown up at the farm, Luke was able to take actual steps as he walked across the room, no longer sliding his feet in a shuffling manner. He left the crutches behind and walked on his own, something that had seemed utterly impossible a few months ago. His gait was slow and halting, to be sure, and he told himself with a wry smile that he was a long way from being able to dance a jig, but he was getting there.

He was getting there, all right, and it was the best pain he had ever felt, although he sometimes had to bite his lip to keep from crying out when Emily massaged his legs.