Free Trilby by Diana Palmer

for bed, loud gunshots echoed through the desert, accompanied by the sound of bellowing, stampeding cattle.
    Jack and Teddy rushed into their clothing and out onto the front porch. Old Mosby Torrance was already there, tall and stiff-necked, his watery blue eyes blazing out of a face like honed leather.
    “Ten of them,” he panted, having run from the bunkhouse. “Vasquez and Moreno saw them. Mexicans, they think, after the cattle.”
    “We’ll give chase,” Jack said coldly. “I’ll have Mary fetch some rations. Roust the men and I’ll break out some extra ammunition for the rifles.”
    “No sooner said than done, boss. I’ll get my Winchester—”
    “Oh, not you, Torrance,” Jack said abruptly, staring at him as if he thought the old Texas Ranger was off his bean. “No, you have to look after the women. You, too, Teddy,” he told his son, who looked shocked. “This isn’t a job for either of you. I’ll get my guns.”
    Torrance looked violent. Teddy moved forward. “It’s okay, Mr. Torrance,” he said miserably. “I guess we’re both out of it.”
    The old man swallowed. “Damnedest thing about getting old, boy,” he said huskily, “is that everybody thinks you’re no account anymore.”
    “I think you’re magnificent, sir!”
    Torrance felt the sting go out of Jack’s words as he looked down into the hero-worshiping face of the youngster. He had a son of his own somewhere. But his wife had died of pneumonia one winter while he was out chasing outlaws; he didn’t know where the boy had been sent. By the time he got home, it was all over and his only child had vanished without a trace. He’d searched, but to no avail. He looked at Teddy and hoped that his child was as sturdy and brave as this one.
    “Can you shoot?” he asked Teddy.
    “I sure can,” Teddy replied. He grimaced as he glanced after his father. “He doesn’t think so, though. Gosh, Mr. Torrance, nobody thinks we’re any good for a fight, do they?”
    “I reckon not. Well, I’ll go get my gun anyway, in case they make a play for the house. You can help me keep watch outside.” He glared toward the hall. “I don’t guess he’ll mind that.”
    “Not if we don’t tell him,” Teddy said, and grinned conspiratorially.
    Torrance chuckled. Teddy really was one hell of a boy.
    He went back to the bunkhouse and took out his nickle-plated, mother-of-pearl-handled .44 Colt revolver. The gun had been in a lot of battles with him over the years. It was still a respectable weapon, despite the .45 that most everyone carried these days. Like himself, the gun was out of place in a century that boasted machines that went as fast as a horse on the land and in the air. He was like a prehistoric man, he sometimes thought. Someone who’d lost the world he belonged in, and who couldn’t quite fit into the new one.
    It was a different story just after the Civil War when he became a Texas Ranger and wrote his own history as he went. Along with men like Bigfoot Wallace, he was a legend among Texas peacemakers. He’d backed down outlaws and gunfighters; he’d once backed down a whole damned lynch mob after a prisoner. But none of that was known out here, and nobody cared what he’d been fifty years ago.
    Maybe he should be grateful that he even had a job, he supposed. Not that Jack Lang had had much choice about hiring him. He was foreman until Lang had inherited the place. Now he was the cattle foreman. Lang was his own boss.
    He stuck the gun in its gunbelt and picked up his Remington, checking the action before he strode backout the door. He was tall and lithe. Except for his white hair, he looked much the same as he had when he was in his thirties, his step sure and firm on the wooden floor of the porch, his carriage erect and proud. What a hell of a shame, he thought, with faint amusement, that a man had to go and get old. There had been a time when he was sure he was going to be young forever.
    Jack Lang came out the door buckling