Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold by Ellen O'Connell Read Free Book Online

bound for the Bennett Ranch, and he was still not sure why. Edward Wells had come to him yesterday morning, demanding that his daughter Anne be “rescued” from Cord Bennett’s, but almost nothing about his story made sense. Noah had to testify in court in the afternoon and refused Wells’ demands for immediate action, but promised to look into the matter first thing today. He had, however, been forced to waste hours this morning calming an irate citizen who was losing a chicken a week and sure that her neighbors were helping themselves to a weekly roast chicken dinner.
    Wells claimed his daughter had “stumbled” onto the Bennett Ranch, been beaten and raped by Cord, and that Wells and a rescue party had beaten Cord in retaliation and “accidentally” killed him. If they hanged the half-breed under those circumstances, trying to prosecute would be a waste of time. It made no sense that that was what Edward was lying about, and there was no doubt in Noah’s mind that Edward was lying.
    Wells refused to listen to Noah’s patient explanation that rescuing crime victims was not part of a sheriff’s job, became evasive and abusive when pressed about how Anne had gotten to the Bennett Ranch in the first place, and refused to answer at all when asked why he hadn’t brought his daughter home immediately.
    Everything about the story smelled bad, and Noah felt uneasy. Anne Wells had not been seen around town for more than a month now, and her family answered inquiries with a story of slow recovery from a fever. Noah now remembered a few gossips happily nodding their heads and implying that actually she was being held prisoner by her family in the continuing effort to get her to marry George Detrick, but Noah disregarded such stories as nonsense. Such Medieval happenings could not be occurring in his town in this year of 1885.
    Noah was further troubled because of the Bennett family’s involvement. The Bennetts had been long-time residents of Colorado when Noah arrived, but the sheriff had learned their history in bits and pieces over the years.
    James Bennett had come west with his three young children, Ephraim, Frank, and Hannah, in the ‘40s. At first he made a living any way he could - hunting, trapping, and trading. By the time Colorado became a territory in 1861, he had the boundaries of what would become the Bennett Ranch staked out, and he set about acquiring title to the land in earnest.
    Noah knew some in Mason rationalized Jamie’s second marriage as clever politics. The land was still ruled by the Plains Tribes, and the Bennetts had indeed prospered without fear of Indian raids. Yet both Ephraim and Frank Bennett maintained that their father’s second marriage was a love match, and unlike most white men, Jamie married the woman he called Song before a Christian preacher.
    Noah also knew it was Song Bennett’s death that had changed Jamie from a vital adventurer to an absent-minded man who left both running his ranch and raising Song’s son and daughter, Cord and Marie, to his older children.
    Noah shook his head. Cord…. How on earth could Edward Wells and a few townsmen have beaten Cord Bennett? It would be Noah’s expectation that the half-breed could tear Edward and several like him to pieces. It was even harder to believe that Cord would commit such a crime.
    Cord had spent ten days in Mason’s jail when he was only fifteen. At that time, Noah tried to help the boy come to terms with what his mixed blood would mean in a white man’s world, something Noah faulted the Bennetts for protecting him from too well for too long. Noah had ended up feeling uneasy about the quiet boy, a disquiet that turned to fear over the years. He often wondered if his meddling back then did more harm than good. Considering why Cord was jailed in the first place, it was even harder to believe he would hurt a woman, but there was no doubt that in the years since Cord returned to Mason from his never explained wanderings, he