Love on the Range (Brothers in Arms #3)(64)

Maybe talking would help. At least she might find out what was going on.

“So you’re my uncle. Is that right?” Win asked. All she could think of was that the blood of outlaws flowed in her veins. Her father a killer. Her uncle a thief. “And was Cl-Clovis Hunt my uncle, too?”

Sick, she realized that made her and Kevin first cousins. Was a marriage between first cousins even legal? Was it wise?

“Clovis is my brother, but Oliver isn’t blood kin to us.”

“Th-that’s why my father doesn’t have the same hazel eyes.”

“Yep, them brown eyes with the stripes of gold run strong in our family. Clovis had ’em, and me. Your pa, the youngest of us, is the son of one of my pa’s friends. When his friend died and our ma had died, Pa married his friend’s widow and took her boy, Oliver, in. I should’ve told him to run, risk starving and dying in the cold, but I wasn’t smart enough to spare him a new family.

“Oliver was the same as a brother to us. Clovis did his best to protect Oliver and me from Pa when he was sideways from the drink. Both of us looked up to Clovis.”

“Your accent is getting stronger as we ride. How did you and my father lose that Southern accent when Clovis had it so strong?”

“We were making a new life. We headed for Chicago, but Clovis met a woman and stayed behind. Oliver and me, we didn’t want anyone to know we’d spent time in that boys’ prison. And Oliver had plans to marry a fancy, rich woman. Not sure where he got that notion, but it was a good one. He said he’d never fetch one around if’n she knew he was a mountain boy. So we made ourselves into city toffs, invented an education and a background. While we were at it, we didn’t mention being brothers.”

“Is your name really Kingston or Hunt or Hawkins?”

“Clovis and I were named Hunt. We were half grown when our pa took Oliver in. Your pa’s real name is Jethro Pervis. We both chose new names, wanting to sound more like city folks.”

“And because there were records of you being in prison under your real names.”

Kingston grunted. “If I was going to name myself, by golly, I’d pick a royal name. I kept Randall and settled on Kingston. But Oliver’s name was Jethro.” With a shake of his head, Randall said, “Jethro Pervis. He was never gonna get a fine woman to marry him with that name. So he went about calling himself Oliver Hawkins.”

“So I’m really Winona Pervis?” The name made her want to cringe, but she brightened a bit as she thought, no, she was really Winona Hunt. And that name went with Kevin, not Clovis. And Kevin, with his strong, decent brothers, had made it a name to hold with pride.

“You grabbed Rachel and me because you needed hostages to hold off the townspeople. Now you’ve gotten free, so let us go. Just set us down on the ground. Your horses will go faster and for longer without the extra load.”

“Not how your pa wants it done. He’s all het up about Rachel. How she’s the one who brought him to this. Drove him from a fine home.”

Win thought of the account books Wyatt had talked about. “He was going to have to give up that fine home soon enough. The money is all gone. My father has squandered all my mother’s wealth. He married her for it. Killed her for it. And now that it’s gone, he’d’ve lost the place anyway.”

Good old kidnapping Uncle Randall blinked at her, then his head flew up to glare at his brother. His voice a great deal louder, he said, “Is that right, Oliver? Is the money gone?”

Pa turned his head so fast Win almost heard it snap. “Of course not. She’s lying to you.”

“You were going to fund our getaway.” Randall didn’t seem to even consider believing his brother. “I left my home behind. I should have headed back to Casper when I broke jail. We still could. I’ve got some cash money. It’d keep us until I find something to steal, or you find a new woman to marry.” Randall laughed, but there was no humor in it, only cruelty.

“I’ve got plenty with me. We head west. I’ll find a new wife. I’ll have to be easy with a woman until she marries me.”

Win had already known her father was a killer. Known it from the evidence that’d been gathered. But now she heard him confess it. Or close enough for her. It made her sick. It made her want to cry and scream and claw his eyes out.

She knew of all the people in the Hunt family, she was considered the softest, with her finishing school education and all the years back east.

But she was a strong woman inside where it counted. And with the deepest, most heartfelt prayers of her life, she asked God to give her a chance. To let her bring her father to justice. To give her the courage, wits, and opportunity to make him pay for killing her mother.

And she prayed it knowing that in the end, her father very likely planned to kill her, and certainly Rachel. Oh, he might think to let Win live somehow, but if she died in the middle of the madness he’d wrought, he wouldn’t care.

He might even write her a poem that said, “And now I must go on alone.”

She shuddered to think of it.

Win opened herself to every glance, every move on Randall’s part. She thought of where his gun was, and then she remembered that recently, she’d taken to arming herself. Randall hadn’t searched her for a hideout knife. She had one slipped into a clever little sheath inside her boot that Kevin had helped her make. Apparently, all his family carried knives as a family tradition. And from what she knew of his family back in Kansas, Win could hardly blame them.