In The Beginning by Gail Daley (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

it’s hot," Bethany warned, referring to St. Antoni's large poisonous reptiles.

"So, shoot it with that damn gun you insisted we bring," Iris retorted, dropping beside her father and picking up his wrist to feel for a pulse.

Jeanne had finished moving the brush aside and she too dropped beside Michael. "He’s bleeding. It looks like someone shot him in the back. We need to get him out of here and back to the ranch."

"The doctor’s house in town is closer," Bethany objected.

"Should we move him?" asked Iris doubtfully. "What if it hurts his back?"

"His back’s already hurt," Jeanne snapped.

"That might not be relevant anyway," Bethany observed. "I don’t think the three of us can get him back up the bank on our own. Here," she pulled bandages, rags and a bottle of alcohol out of her saddlebag. "One of you see if you can clean the wound and bandage it. I—"

Her head lifted sharply as she heard the unmistakable clop, clop of a buckboard driven by a team of tricorns coming down the road from town.

"It’s Margo," she cried, waving frantically at the driver. Margo snapped the reins, and the team broke into a gallop, coming to a sliding stop when they reached the girls.

"What happened, Nina?" Margo asked.

"It’s Papa. He’s wounded, and he’s down in the ditch. We will need help to get him out of there."

"Dios mio!" the middle-aged housekeeper exclaimed, tumbling off the wagon seat and coming to look down into the ditch.

"I think we'll soon have help to get him out of the ditch," Jeanne said, pointing to a plume of dust rising on the road from the direction of the ranch. Shortly, about fifteen of the ranch hands thundered up on lathered tricorns, demanding to know what had happened.

With their help, it proved easy to move the wounded man into Margo’s buckboard. Margo made a wide, slow turn to jostle Michael as little as possible, and headed back into town. Iris and three of the hands, who were just aching for someone to attempt to stop them, rode with the wagon.

Bethany turned to Jeanne. "You’d better go back to the ranch and let Gran know what happened. She’ll want to come into town. Take a couple of the men with you."

Jeanne nodded and remounted.

Bethany got aboard her own tricorn and looked over at the hands who had stayed with her. "Durango, who is the best tracker?" she asked a tall slim man with a wide brimmed hat.

"Red and I," he replied. "You want us to find out who did this?"

"Yes," she said grimly. "I’m putting you in charge. And Durango, when you find him, we need him alive to be able to talk to the Sheriff. I don't care if he dies afterward, just if he lives long enough to talk. I want to know who did this."

She turned her tricorn and kicked her into a gallop, following the wagon into town, unaware of the startled look the men exchanged before setting off to find the sniper.

Unlike his father Michael St. Vyr lived, but he would never walk again. He was lying in bed, unable to do anything but fume when he overheard Emory Johnson's attempt to coerce Bethany into marrying him.

"You can marry me or end up in a whorehouse," Emory told her arrogantly.

Giselle had taught Mike's girls to take care of themselves. Bethany shoved him away and stomped over the front door which she threw open.

"Get out!" She snapped.

Emory hesitated, but Stevens, Michael's attendant had come to the door of Michael's room, and Margo's son Paco was standing in the kitchen doorway watching, so he stalked out.

"This isn't over," he told Bethany.

"It had better be," she retorted. "If you come back here, I'll make sure someone shoots you."

Michael knew he needed to start his plan for taking care of his daughters as soon as possible. Accordingly, he demanded pen, paper and a lap desk be brought to him. He wrote a letter and addressed it to McCaffey & Miller Range & Mine Detection in the City of Bitterstone. Margo's son Paco took it into town and paid a runner to take it to Bitterstone.

An Interesting Proposition

THE YOUNG RUNNER LOOKED doubtfully at the letter he was being paid fifty copper chips to deliver. It was addressed to A. McCaffey, esq. The sign over the door simply read "McCaffey & Miller Range & Mine Detecting". The messenger shrugged and opened the door. Inside the room were two wooden desks, a gun rack, and a cast iron stove with a battered coffee pot and two tables, one of which housed a stack of wanted flyers. A couple of straight-backed chairs pressed against the far wall of the room. The faded window shade rising halfway up the window fronting the street was drawn, but intense summer light glared in over the top of the glass panes.

The two desks had been positioned so that anyone entering by the door was automatically caught between them, but it wasn’t just the feeling of being trapped that made the messenger uncomfortable; it was the men. On the surface, this should not have happened. Outwardly, the two looked like prosperous townsmen, but the messenger could sense a faint edge of readiness for battle when he entered the office. It made him nervous. On St. Antoni, you paid attention to things that made you uneasy, or you died. The young messenger had been living on his own for more than ten years and he was still alive.

The older man was tall and skinny with a grey beard and bushy eyebrows. He wore a faded plaid shirt tucked into homespun jeans. He should have looked neat and tidy, but somehow didn’t. The younger man was a little below medium height with a tough, wiry build and mild brown eyes in a wedge-shaped face. Like the older man, he wore a plaid shirt and jeans but on him the clothes looked comfortable rather than messy. The two men regarded the messenger with almost identical expressions