A Promise of Thunder Read Free Page A

undertaken.
    She felt a hand on her shoulder, burning through the material of her dress. Turning her head, she peered at Grady through eyes misty with tears—and the breath slammed out of her chest. It was
him!
The half-breed Indian who was the cause of Buddy’s death. Her warm sherry eyes turned glacial, her face hardened, and she deliberately shrugged off his hand where it gripped her shoulder.
    “You!” The word exploded from her mouth like a vile curse. “Murderer!”
    For a moment Grady looked stunned. Then his face cleared as he realized what had happened. He had heard the other gunman fire his weapon, but had given it little thought since the bullet had gone astray. It appeared nowthat the bullet had struck down an innocent bystander—the woman’s brother? husband?
    “I’m sorry,” Grady muttered. He had difficulty working his tongue around the words. Apologizing was something he rarely did. And when he did, it was never a graceful admission. “I fired only once and my aim was true. It wasn’t my bullet that struck down your …”
    “… Husband. Buddy was my husband. And he would be alive right now if you and your friend hadn’t aired your differences on a public thoroughfare.” Her voice had risen steadily until she was screaming at him.
    “Calm down, lady,” Grady urged. He wished desperately that he had never set foot in Guthrie, Oklahoma, this day.
    “How can I calm down when my husband lies dead? How dare you! What does a savage know about grief?”
    “More than you give him credit for,” Grady bit out as he sought to soothe the distraught young woman.
    “Just go away! Can’t you see you’re making matters worse by just being here?”
    Frowning, Grady stepped aside, allowing a woman to help Storm to her feet. Two men quickly stepped forward to lift Buddy into the wagon and drive him to the undertaker.
    “What are you going to do now, dear?” Grady heard the woman ask as she led Storm away.
    Grady wanted to follow, to ask the blonde’s name, but by then the sheriff was pushing his way through the crowd, and Grady spent thenext hour answering questions. By the time the sheriff had interviewed witnesses and satisfied himself that the attack upon Grady had been unprovoked, the beautiful widow was gone.
    On September 13, 1893, absolute chaos reigned in the town of Guthrie. The line to buy train tickets to the new towns of Enid and Perry, where settlers hoped to claim land, was even longer than the day before. But for reasons he himself did not understand, Grady lingered in town, sleeping in the livery when he found no other suitable lodging. For a man without a conscience, he had lost a lot of sleep thinking about the provocative blonde and her dead husband. He wondered what she planned to do now that her husband was dead. Did she have family back East somewhere?
    Try as he might, Grady could not deny the fact that it was his conscience that brought him to the undertaker that bright September morning. A somber man dressed in black greeted him at the door.
    “How may I help you?”
    Grady cleared his throat and glanced around the room filled with wooden boxes.
    “There was a man brought in here yesterday. Young, gunshot. Do you know his name?”
    “Ah, you must mean Mr. Kennedy. The funeral is this afternoon. Are you a member of the family?”
    “No,” Grady said harshly, unwilling to admit he was the indirect cause of the young man’sdeath. “Has the burying been paid for?”
    “Why, no, it hasn’t,” the undertaker said. His suspicions fully aroused now, the undertaker took a good look at Grady, put two and two together and came up with the right answer. “Why, you’re the man who shot Mr. Kennedy.”
    Grady’s mouth stretched into a grimace. “I don’t shoot unarmed men. Kennedy was killed by a stray bullet. But I’m not here to defend myself, I want to pay for the burying.”
    “Why? The man has a widow.”
    “Just tell me how much,” Grady said tightly. A man of few