Page 2 of Texas Glory
“So Maggie May is gonna have a little brother or sister,” Austin said, his wide grin shining in the moonbeams that passed through the clouds. “You ain’t planning to name all your young’uns after the month they were born in, are you?”
Houston shrugged. “I’ll name them whatever Amelia wants to name them.”
Dallas leaned back against the post. “I sure as hell am glad you took that woman off my hands. I wouldn’t like living my life around a woman’s wants and needs.”
“If you loved her as much as I love Amelia, you’d like it just fine,” Houston said.
Dallas had to admit that he probably would, but finding a woman to love in a land populated mostly by cowboys and prairie dogs was no easy task.
Hell, he couldn’t even find a woman to marry and bear his son, let alone a woman to love.
The absence of decent women in this portion of West Texas was a sharp thorn in his side, a nagging ache in his heart, and a steadfast barrier to the fulfillment of his final glory: a son to whom he could pass down the legacy he had worked so hard to carve from a land known for its disappointments and broken promises.
He had hoped founding a town would attract women to the area, but Leighton was growing slowly. The banker, Lester Henderson, had a wife who easily occupied the entire width of the boardwalk when she strolled to the general store. Perry Oliver, the owner of the general store, was a widower with a lovely daughter. Dallas had considered asking the merchant for his daughter’s hand. At sixteen, his mother had married his father, but Dallas couldn’t bring himself to marry a woman younger than half his age. Besides, he had a suspicion Austin had set his sights on the young woman. Why else would his brother find an excuse to ride into town every day to purchase some useless contraption from the general store?
Neither the sheriff nor the saloon keeper nor the doctor had brought women with them. The town’s seamstress, Mimi St. Claire, was unmarried, but she was on the far side of forty if she was a day.
With resignation Dallas was coming to the conclusion that, once again, he would need to search beyond his town, beyond the prairie, in order to find a woman who could give birth to his son. At thirty-five, he was beginning to feel the weight of the years pressing in on him. He needed a son.
He wanted a son sitting beside him at this very moment, sharing the anticipation of the night. He wanted to count the stars with his son. He needed to feel the breeze blow over their faces and know that when it no longer touched his face—when Dallas was dead and buried—the breeze would continue to caress his son’s face.
The nearby river flowed to the rhythm of Nature’s lullaby: the mating call of insects mingled with the occasional swoosh of an owl’s wings and the howl of a stalking coyote. Dallas wanted his son to hear that song, to appreciate the magnificence of nature, to tame it, to own it. He imagined his son standing here years from now, looking out over all that they had accomplished, listening to the water lap at the muddy shore, listening to the—
Ping!
The tune of destruction broke into the night. Dallas jumped to his feet as the high-pitched whine came again. “They’re to the south.”
He and his brothers mounted their horses with an agility that came from years of chasing after stampeding cattle. The moon’s silver glow lighted their path along the river’s edge.
With a firm grip, Dallas removed the coiled rope from his saddle. He needed only the sure pressure of his thighs to guide the stallion that had helped him herd cattle north. When the shadows of three men emerged from the darkness, the horse didn’t falter.
The tallest of the men fired his gun while the two other men scrambled for their horses. Dallas heard shouts and yells. Horses snorted, neighed, and reared up, their hooves slicing at the air.
Raising his arm, Dallas snapped his wrist and threw a loop that whistled through the muggy air and circled Boyd McQueen. Dallas yanked hard on the rope. The gun flew from McQueen’s hand as he stumbled to the ground. Without hesitation, Dallas secured his end of the rope around the saddle horn, set his heels to his horse’s sides, and galloped toward the precious river.
Dallas glanced over his shoulder. The moonlight glinted off Boyd McQueen’s angry face. Dallas took satisfaction in the man’s fury and guided his racing horse into the shallow water that more closely resembled a babbling brook than a full-fledged river.
“Damn you, Leigh!” McQueen yelled just before the horse splashed into the center of the stream.
Water sprayed Dallas’s legs. He looked back to make certain McQueen’s head was above the surface. He didn’t want the man to drown, but he intended to give him a rough ride.
Dallas heard the echo of three rapid gunshots. No responding gunfire sounded. The eerie silence that followed signaled a warning.
Dallas jerked his horse to a staggering halt. His brothers weren’t behind him. Three more steady shots bellowed.
Groaning, McQueen struggled to his feet, sputtering obscenities that Dallas didn’t wait to address. Releasing the rope from the saddle horn, he urged his horse back toward the fence.
Alarm skittered along his spine when he saw the silhouettes of two men standing and one man kneeling. He dismounted before his horse halted.
He dropped to his knees beside the man sprawled over the ground. “What happened?” Dallas asked.
“Austin took the bullet Boyd fired, and it doesn’t look good,” Houston said.
“Where in the hell is the damn doctor!” Dallas growled as he stared through the bedroom window. He’d sent his foreman into town to fetch the physician, but that had been over two hours ago.
“He’ll be here,” Amelia said softly. While Dallas had brought Austin home, with no help from the McQueen brothers, Houston had ridden to his house and fetched his wife and daughter. With the innocence of a child, Maggie had viewed coming to her uncle’s house in the dead of night as an adventure.
Dallas stalked to the bed where his brother lay, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. He watched as Amelia wiped a damp cloth over Austin’s face. She’d stanched the flow of blood, but they needed the doctor to remove the bullet from Austin’s shoulder. It hadn’t come out the other side so Dallas could only assume it was embedded in his bone. He was lucky the bullet hadn’t dropped lower and gone through his heart. “He looks too pale.”
