“What are we going to do, Father? Shoot him down in the street?”
“No, we’re not going to gun him down in plain sight. He’s well-liked. Every time he comes to town, folks mob him. He throws his money around and talks about cattle and Texas rising again. You’d think he was running for mayor.”
His father shook his head with irritation and continued to pace back and forth.
“So what do we do?” Sully asked.
“We strike from cover. We can’t let folks know it was us.”
His father stopped pacing, lifted a painting from the wall, and opened the safe hidden there, then came back out with a stack of bills.
“Want me to pay off the bluebellies?” Sully asked, doing his best to conceal his fear.
“No, I do not. He hasn’t troubled us since you paid him, but that didn’t help your cousin, did it?”
“No, sir.”
“I am beginning to suspect that Culp isn’t for sale. Which complicates things. If I send enough money to a man I know in the North, I could probably have Culp replaced, but that would take time we don’t have and money I’d rather not spend.”
Sully’s father squeezed his hand into a fist, crinkling the crisp greenbacks. “No, there is a more direct, affordable way to handle this without bringing suspicion on ourselves. Will Bentley had stirred these idiots up. They’re ready for a fight. If he dies, and we’re involved in any way, they’ll lynch us in the town square.”
Sully tugged at his collar. He could almost feel the noose squeezing his throat.
“Take this,” his father said, handing him the bills. “Here’s what I want you to do.”
As Sully listened, a smile crept onto his face.
It was such a simple, brutally effective plan, it was bound to work. Why hadn’t he thought of it himself?
“I’ll take care of it right away,” he promised and started for the door.
“One more thing, Sully,” his father said, and Sully turned back around to see hard eyes staring directly at him, almost through him. “Make sure every penny goes to the man I want you to hire. Do you understand?”
Something in Sully crumbled. How much did his father know?
“Yes, Father,” he said and went out the door, feeling uneasy.
The way the man had looked at him, he almost seemed ready to kill Sully, too.
But even these troubling notions couldn’t hold down Sully’s spirits, which again lifted with optimism and satisfaction. This simple, beautiful, merciless plan was certain to work.
Will Bentley was a dead man!
CHAPTER 38
“Count me in, Will,” Jake Stall said. “I’ll ride with you.”
“Me, too,” Ted LaVoy said. “I never did much roping, but I’m sure I can learn.”
“We’ll all be learning on the job,” Will said. “And every time we do a gather or drive them to market, we’ll get better at it.”
The men at the bar nodded. They’d really come to life since Will had started coming into the Red River Saloon every day.
He now had plenty of men to do a big gather in the Thicket, and plenty who were ready to brave the Chisholm Trail.
But Will had more business in here than just drumming up a crew. Every day, he reminded them of Sully’s cowardice, his dereliction of duty in the war, the things he’d tried to do to Will, and the way he and Gibbs had run roughshod over these men themselves.
He also reminded them of how the Weatherspoons had embraced the Reconstructionists and how pretending to support the Union while still keeping so-called servants in a state that could only be called slavery.
