WINTER KILL

Rustling is an ugly business.  Just the suspicion of it can get somebody hurt – or killed.  And there’s a whole lot of suspicion over on the Bar 6, the largest spread in the region.  Old Titus Branson is missing a hundred head of Bar 6 cattle, and he’s mighty sure of who did it: Bass Manko, one of the town’s wildest young men.  The stories about him grow every day and most aren’t good.  Especially the ones about his skill with a gun..

     Titus has three sons to help him: John, Dish and Cade.   If Dish was summer thunder, Cade was winter lightning -- and John was a spring mist that couldn’t make up its mind whether to rain or not.  But it was Cade Branson, not Dish, who had won last year’s county bare-knuckle championship.  Of course, Dish hadn’t entered either; he was too busy working cattle.  Or so he said.

      Like his late mother, Cade was inclined to take sides with those who needed it the most.  The odds never mattered.  Both were easy to misread because of it.  Stray dogs were always in the house, to his cruel rancher father's constant dislike.  Around the county, his older brother, Dish was thought to be the toughest, but anyone who had seen Cade in action questioned that claim.  Both had broken noses, a result of the other’s fist.  No one could remember seeing the oldest Branson brother, John, in a brawl of any kind. 

      His wife's death years back, combined with years of whiskey, had shriveled Titus Branson into a bitter man.  Consumption was accelerating his physical leanness as well.  But there was nothing new about his cruelty.  Everything that went wrong had to be dragged out; every detail examined and blamed on someone.  The next time he thought of a past mistake, the same process would occur.  Over and over.  Of course, nothing that went wrong was ever his fault.  Ever.  The oldest son, John, was usually the target and had become a stuttering man incapable of making a decision.  Titus didn't try it with Dish -- and Cade never listened.

     So Titus isn’t about to sit still for something like having some of his cattle stolen.  He and his boys are dead set on seeing Bass Manko swing from a rope.  But Titus will have to face someone besides Manko first: Manko’s best friend – Titus’s own son, Cade.