There was a lot of activity going on inside the walls. Three men at a corral breaking in a horse. A servant leaving the storehouse with an apron full of dried apples. Mexican children pretending to ward off an Indian massacre, stirring up dust near a small cemetery plot with three crosses in it. The sound of wood being chopped. A woman singing off-key, then laughing and trying again.

As Angel moved into the yard in front of the house, heads turned his way, movement stopped, the noise at the cemetery died down, the off-key singing sounded louder.

A young man stepped out on the veranda with a coffee mug in his hand. He had blond hair hanging to his shoulders, brown eyes, was of medium height and no more than a year or two over twenty. His chaps were rough hide; his six-shooter rested overly low on his hips to account for a long reach. And he stood with an overstated arrogance, telling Angel he was about to meet his first Catlin.

“Can I help you, mister?” the young man asked in a neutral tone.

Angel didn’t dismount, but he rested his hands nonthreateningly on his saddle horn. “I’m here to see the owner.”

“That’d be my ma. I’m Buck Catlin, and I do the hiring here.”

“I’m not looking for work. I’ve got a message for your ma, so if you wouldn’t mind fetching her, I’d appreciate it.”

Buck Catlin didn’t move, other than to take a sip of his coffee. “Ma’s busy. You can give me any message you got to deliver. I’ll see she gets it.”

“You’re welcome to hear it the same time she does, not before.”

Buck’s eyes narrowed with a frown at that answer. He wasn’t used to being told no. He’d been giving orders to men older than he since he was thirteen. The ranch would be his one day. He was already running it. No one told him no — except his ma.

“Who the hell are you, mister?”

“The name’s Angel.”

“And who’s your message from?”

“Me,” Angel replied, then elaborated. “Actually, it’s more in the way of a warning. So will you fetch your ma, or do I have to find her myself?”

“I don’t think you’ll be doing anything but leaving.”

Buck had started to draw his gun before he finished that statement. Angel’s weapon was palmed, cocked, and pointing at his belly before his hand had even got near it.

“You don’t want to do that,” Angel said in his slow drawl. “And Miss Cassie doesn’t want me to shoot anyone, so back off. This way, you get to live and I don’t upset the lady. We both win.”

Buck’s fingers twitched, then closed on empty air, and the hand slowly lowered. “Who did you say you were?” he asked in a choked voice.

“Angel.”

“Angel what?”

“Just Angel.”

“Should I know you?”

“No reason why you should.”

“But you know the Stuart girl. You said so. She hire you to come here?”

“No,” Angel replied. “Fact is, she asked me not to. She had this notion that I might shoot someone. That isn’t going to be necessary, is it?”

Buck Catlin turned a little bit pale with that gun still pointed at him and the new expression Angel wore of ominous intent. All he could manage at that point was to shake his head.

“Good,” Angel said. “Now, I’ve allowed you more questions than I usually do, so why don’t you return the favor and fetch your ma?”

“His ma is already here, mister,” Dorothy Catlin suddenly said behind Angel. “And I’ve got a rifle aimed at your head, so drop that gun if you want to live to leave here.”

Angel’s muscles tensed only a little. But his expression didn’t change, and it remained on Buck.

“I’m afraid I can’t oblige you, ma’am,” he said politely, though without looking around. “I’ll keep the gun until I do leave.”

“You think I won’t shoot you?” Dorothy demanded incredulously.

“I don’t particularly care whether you do or don’t, ma’am. ‘Course, your boy here will die, too. If that’s what you want, go ahead and shoot.”

A long silence followed that had Buck breaking out in a sweat. He was the one to break it when his mother still made no move to lower her rifle. “Ma, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not die today.”

“Son of a bitch,” she cursed then and came around to face Angel. Her rifle was now pointed at the ground. “What are you, a crazy man?”

“Just a man who’s lived with death too long to pay it much mind.” He tipped his hat at her as he gave her half his attention. His gun, however, remained pointed at Buck.

She was tall for a woman at only an inch or two shorter than her son. And she had the same blond hair and brown eyes. Angel guessed she hadn’t reached forty yet. Frankly, Dorothy Catlin was still a beautiful woman, so she must have been stunning when she was younger. And she was soft-looking in her full skirt and lace-edged blouse.

Holding a rifle didn’t suit her. Her shooting one seemed absurd. But Angel hadn’t survived this long by dismissing innocent-looking people. He’d learned long ago that anyone with the right provocation was capable of killing.

“I heard you mention the Stuart girl,” Dorothy said in a highly disgruntled tone. “If you’re here to apologize for her, you’re wasting your time.”

“I’m not. I don’t apologize for myself, much less anyone else.”

“That’s good, because what she’s done ain’t excusable.”

Buck spoke up to second that opinion. “You just look at my sister these days and she starts to bawling. That’s all she ever does anymore is cry, and Cassie Stuart and her meddling is the cause.”

Angel wondered about that, when it could be just as likely that the girl was crying because she was back home, rather than living with her new husband. But all he replied was, “So I hear.”

“Then state your business and get off my property,” Dorothy said.

“The Stuart herd was stampeded this morning, the cattle scattered clear to the MacKauley range. The shots that started it came from your direction.”

Dorothy’s face reddened with indignation. “You’re accusing me of starting a stampede?”

“I’m a cattleman, mister,” Buck added angrily. “I wouldn’t stampede cattle for any reason.”

“And the last thing we’d do is plump up the MacKauley herd,” Dorothy added, “even to get rid of that meddling Northerner.”

“But my guess is you’ve got men who work for you who might not take that into account,” Angel said. “And a stampede’s too dangerous to fool around with. Men have died in ‘em. So if I find who started this one, I’ll probably kill him.”

“You’ve made your point,” Dorothy gritted out with a good display of rage to accompany her supposed innocence.

“Not quite,” Angel replied, and a cold, steely edge entered his voice. “Cassie Stuart happened to be on the range and got caught in that stampede. If that wasn’t your intention, I’ll call this one an accident. Anything else happens, I won’t, and I’ll be back to hold him responsible.” He nodded at Buck so she wouldn’t mistake his meaning. “You don’t want me calling him out, ma’am. I don’t shoot to wound, so odds are he wouldn’t survive it.”

Buck swallowed hard. He’d already seen Angel draw. So had Dorothy as she’d come up behind him, but she didn’t address that now.

“Was she hurt?”

Angel reserved judgment on the concern that entered Dorothy’s expression as she’d asked that. “She could have been, should have been, since the idiot woman rode right into that stampede to stop it.”

“Don’t sound like you like her much,” Buck got up the nerve to comment.

“I’m still making up my mind about it,” Angel admitted. “But whether I do or don’t‘s got nothing to do with my protecting her. I’ll be doing that until she leaves here, and she won’t be leaving until her pa gets back. So I would advise you folks to leave her alone from here on — unless you’re willing to take me on.”

“I don’t want her dead, mister, just gone,” Dorothy stated, belligerence back in her tone. “The sooner she is, the sooner my girl can forget what happened.”

“When she’s got a more potent reminder in a husband living only a few miles away?”

“Ex-husband, just as soon as the judge gets back from Santa Fe.”

Angel shook his head at that reasoning. A divorce paper wasn’t going to make Jenny Catlin MacKauley forget she’d been wedded, bedded, and abandoned.

“That’s your business,” he replied. “Cassie Stuart is now mine.”

“You’ve got your nerve, coming in here and threatening me, I’ll give you that,” Dorothy told him. “You’d be easy enough to get rid of, fast gun or not.”

“You’re welcome to try, if you want bloodshed added to this thing. But for the record, I rarely threaten, ma’am. I state facts as they currently stand. What you do with ‘em is up to you.”

Dorothy was red-faced with anger again. “All right, you’ve stated your facts, now here’s one of mine. You show up here again and you’ll be shot on sight.”

Angel grinned at that point. “Fair enough, though I ought to warn you that isn’t likely to stop me. Good day, Mrs. Catlin.”

He tipped his hat to her again, holstered his gun, and turned his back on them. He’d gone several yards before she called out, “If the Stuart girl didn’t hire you, what’s she to you?”

“A favor.”

Dorothy didn’t say anything else, just watched him leave without the least concern that he’d be shot in the back. She hated gunfighters, she really did. You couldn’t deal with a man who lacked fear.

“Find out who he is, Buck,” she said, still bristling. “A man don’t talk like that unless he can back it up. And find out which one of the boys is taking matters further than ordered. I want whoever it is gone by sundown.”

Chapter 11