Authors: Ellen O'Connell
One or two of them might use today’s difficulty to try to put a new man in his place, though. Preston would take pleasure in waiting to hand Cal his walking papers until after a bloody, even crippling, brawl.
No matter. Cal rode with a Winchester repeating rifle in the scabbard on his saddle these days, but the Sharps in its custom-made elkskin case lay under his bunk at the ranch. Even if the job with Van Cleve was over, no one was going to stop Cal from retrieving his favorite gun.
The bitter winter night closed in by the time he unsaddled and turned his horse into a corral near the barn. He’d traveled back from the Hawkins farm at an easy pace that hadn’t raised a sweat on his horse and knew it put him far behind Preston. Reaching over the corral rails, Cal touched the neck of the closest animal. Sure enough, ice crystals had formed on a sweat-soaked shaggy coat.
Shaking his head, he approached the bunkhouse from the side and let himself into the attached cook shed.
“You’re too late,” Cookie groused. “I fed everybody else, and I ain’t serving special for you.”
Cal grabbed a chunk of bread from one of the plates still on the table and smeared a thick layer of butter over it. The old man muttered and cursed but in the end found a leathery piece of beef and enough beans to fill a plate. Cal washed the meal down with coffee that could pass for tar except for the grease floating on the surface. He refilled the tin cup and carried it through to the bunkhouse proper.
Conversation died around the crowded room as he walked in. Preston, his men, and the regular cowhands all gave Cal the same knowing look.
“You’ve been a while,” Preston said, blowing more cigar smoke into the cloud that hung over the room. “You must have had a lot to talk about with that old friend.”
Cal ignored the insinuation along with the grins and sly laughter spreading through the gunmen and cowhands alike. “Thanks for cutting me some slack there, Asa. I meant what I said about explaining to the boss.”
“I already
explained
. He wants to see you. Now.”
Nodding, Cal moved across the room, dropped his hat and coat on his bed, and took another sip of coffee. “I’ll go as soon as I finish this.”
Beason, a hulk of a man more impressed with his own size than he should be, crowded into the small space between Cal’s bunk and the next. “You killed Yost over the sodbuster’s whore, and now you think you’re going to make the boss wait?”
Cal already had the bottom of the metal coffee cup cradled in his palm. He drove the cup straight into Beason’s face, the rim breaking nose and teeth alike. Blood spurted, and Beason collapsed, making sounds no grown man ever wanted to make.
Pivoting so his back was to the wall, Cal asked no one in particular, “Anyone else have anything to say about my friend Mrs. Hawkins?” No one did. “Then someone needs to clean up this mess by my bed before I get back.”
A
CCORDING TO THE
hands who had been with Van Cleve since he’d first appeared in Hubbell and started buying up everything for sale and a lot that wasn’t, the lumber for the house and barns had come from Van Cleve’s mill up north. He had anything else he needed or wanted shipped by rail from the East.
Cal had seen houses as large as Van Cleve’s before, but never been inside one. The big white house gleamed in the night. A wide veranda extended across the entire front. Balconies jutted from second-story rooms.
Lanterns burning on either side of the tall double doors of the entrance illuminated a heavy brass knocker sculpted into a bull’s head. Ignoring the knocker, Cal gave the door a couple of whacks with his fist and waited.
The woman who answered the door looked the way a rich man’s wife should, as different from the Hawkins woman as humanly possible. Blonde hair piled high gleamed in the light of the hall. Assessing cool green eyes made him aware of worn clothes permeated with the smell of horse, two-day beard stubble, and the fact he couldn’t remember his last bath.
“Cal Sutton, ma’am. Mr. Preston says your husband wants to see me.”
“He’s in his study. This way please.”
She turned away without offering to take his hat or coat or indicating a place for them, so he carried the one and unbuttoned the other and followed. The skirts of her deep green dress rustled and swayed more than they needed to as she walked.
Cal watched for a few steps then ignored her in favor of taking in the details of the house — the polished wood floor underfoot, the patterned paper and framed paintings on the walls, and the furniture he could see in rooms they passed. Houses fascinated him, probably because he had been in so few.
A study turned out to be a room stinking of cigar smoke just like the bunkhouse, but all similarity ended there. Heavy drapes covered the windows, shelves of books filled one wall, and a big map of the ranch and surrounding properties hung on another.
Van Cleve sat behind a desk as shiny as the floor, except the desk was bare and the floor had a thick carpet over it. Everything was of the first water, but disappointing in some elusive way. A fire burned under a marble mantel. The room was too warm yet not warm at all.
“Have a seat.”
Tossing his hat on the indicated leather-covered chair, Cal pushed back his open coat and propped a hip on a nearby table.
Van Cleve shook his head. “No need for that.” As if to emphasize his words, he turned his back and poured generous measures of amber liquid from a cut-glass decanter into matching glasses.
Cal took the offered glass in his left hand, and Van Cleve laughed out loud. “Careful, are you? I like a careful man.”
An experimental sip of the whiskey went down like smooth fire. Not many places stocked whiskey like this, and those that did hid it under the bar.
Instead of returning behind his desk, Van Cleve propped his own hip on a corner, grinning as if that made them two of a kind.
Cal studied the dandified little man. Van Cleve shone from the oiled dark hair on his head to the spit-polished boots on small feet that barely touched the floor. Good thing he could afford everything made custom because he’d have to take boys’ clothing off shelves in a store.
Imagining Van Cleve on a buffalo hunt or chasing settlers off their land in person was impossible. Shooting a man between the eyes or in the heart? No. A bullet in the back? Sure.
“I guess you know Preston wants to run you off the ranch and not wait till morning. Can you give me any reason I shouldn’t let him do just that?”
“You lost one man today, and you’ve got another in the bunkhouse that won’t be much good for a while. You probably don’t want to lose anyone else tonight.”
Van Cleve lost his smile but didn’t ask about the second man. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Cal had been referring to losing Preston, which was what would happen if the ramrod tried to run Cal anywhere, but he let Van Cleve keep his illusions.
The rancher made a show of offering Cal a cigar out of a fancy box, choosing one for himself after Cal declined. “The problem is if you only hired on to protect kin, I’m better off without you, aren’t I? And if you know the Hawkins woman, you must be from around here, which tells me you’re related to the Suttons up north. Was old Henry Sutton your father?”
“Uncle.”
“So I’m right. You came here to protect the Suttons and today you decided to throw the Hawkins woman in with the family.”
If Van Cleve believed that, he’d have given Preston leave to do what he wanted. The rancher was probing, not accusing.
“I came here because parting Henry Sutton from that land would be such a pleasure I’d pay you for the privilege. Finding out he died before I hired on almost put me off my feed.”
After one startled look, Van Cleve’s grin returned. “What are your feelings for the rest of them?”
“I don’t have any.” That was a lie, but Cal didn’t want to examine his feelings about Jason Sutton or any other kin. He wasn’t admitting his mistake about the Hawkins woman either. A predator who admitted mistakes became prey.
“How long ago did you leave?”
“Fifteen years come spring.”
Van Cleve whistled. “Never been back?”
“No.”
The rancher squirmed off the desk corner, which had to have been biting into his small but well padded behind, went back to the decanter, and refilled his glass. When he looked up again, he changed the subject.
“Preston sang a different tune when you first showed up here, you know. Said he was pleased as punch to have a man of your caliber in his crew. He told me what you did in Colorado.”
“I got lucky.”
“Three men coming at you from three directions, and you were the only one who walked away. You call that luck?”
“I do.” Bad luck was what Cal called it. One of many men hired in a fight over a town not worth fighting over, he’d been the first targeted for killing by the other side. Surviving had only brought a lot of unwanted attention.
If men like Preston knew the story, so did hotheads like Yost and Beason, which explained a lot and gave Cal a strong urge to leave here, head for Montana, and change his name.
“It didn’t sound like luck to me.” The rancher leaned forward, black eyes bright. “Preston’s too stupid to realize he should have kept quiet about what happened today. Admitting he backed down when he had half a dozen men behind him says he’s got a yellow streak, and you don’t.”
“I asked him for a favor, and he gave it. It wasn’t worth dying over. Yost was stupid. Asa’s not.”
Van Cleve snorted disbelief and drained his glass.
“You want his job?”
“No. I’m not sure I want the job I’ve got. When I hired on, I told you I wouldn’t do anything that could get me thrown in prison or hung.”
“Nobody would end up in prison over having a little fun with a woman like that.” Van Cleve held up one pink, manicured hand. “Don’t take it wrong. Since she’s a friend of yours, we’ll go around her for a while, but you know as well as I do after Preston dumped her in town she’d never admit what happened.”
“She wouldn’t have to. Men get drunk and boast, or they get religion and repent.”
Van Cleve waved off any such concern. “The county sheriff works for me. He’s not arresting any of my men over a drunken boast — or anything some sodbuster’s woman says either. But we need to be clear — I never told Preston to hurt a woman. He’s supposed to convince those people to sell me their land. If he gets carried away and does something criminal, it’s on him, not me. You’ve heard straight from me how it is, and you can tell anyone who asks.”
Van Cleve filled his glass a third time, took a swallow, and lifted his brows, questioning. He wasn’t asking if Cal wanted more whiskey.
Cal met the rancher’s eyes, considering. So Preston would take the fall if things got bloody enough to attract attention from outside law. And staying on the payroll meant agreeing to be a witness to Van Cleve’s righteous intentions. After enough time to indicate he’d thought it over, Cal lifted his glass in acknowledgment, nodded, and tossed down the last of his drink.
Making a devil’s bargain didn’t bother him particularly. Neither would breaking it. He put his glass down and eased to his feet.
“Thanks for the drink, Mr. Van Cleve, and I appreciate the — understanding.”
“I’ll show you out.” But Van Cleve drifted to the map on the wall instead of the door, running his hand over it the way some men would a woman.
“It’s hard to think of you as a boy, sweet on Gifford’s daughter. At least your uncle knew how to farm, but those clerks and shopkeepers should have stayed where they came from.”
Cal moved closer and looked at the map over the shorter man’s shoulder. He saw the parcel with Gifford crossed out and Hawkins written underneath. The parcels Van Cleve already had acquired sported large x’s through them.
“These aren’t homesteads, you know,” Van Cleve said, almost dreamily. “Gifford and his friends bought that land along the creek from a land company. No measly hundred and sixty acres for them, and they still went deeper in debt every year. The ones with half a brain knew I was doing them a favor buying them out.”
Van Cleve’s voice droned on, but Cal had stopped listening. Two of the parcels near the Hawkins land bore names he remembered with icy clarity. Flood. Shanks. The big x’s over the names made no difference. A roaring started inside his head. His mouth went dry.
“So Mrs. Hawkins and her husband inherited her father’s land,” he said.
The interruption not only stopped Van Cleve’s fantasies of empire, but put a suspicious frown on his face. A friend of the woman should know things like that.
Cursing his own mistake, Cal covered as best he could. “I knew her before her father took land. They were living out of wagons near town.”
“Oh,” Van Cleve’s expression smoothed out. “No, as far as I know the father’s still alive. Slippery devil, Gifford. When he realized I wanted the place, he sold it to Hawkins, picked up the rest of the family, and headed west.”
Van Cleve left his map and headed for the front door at last. “Sounds to me like you don’t know her that well, but if you want to do her a favor, talk to her. If she doesn’t sell, Preston is going to do something you and I wouldn’t approve of. You can’t protect her forever.”
The door barely had shut behind him when Cal heard a half-expected voice from the lee of the porch.
“He didn’t sack you, did he?” said Asa Preston.
“No. He offered me your job.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Your choice.”
“I’ve seen a man killed with that cup trick, you know.”
Not unless whoever did it used a broken bottle instead of a tin cup. “Is he dying?”
“Maybe not, but he needs more doctoring than Cookie can do, and since you’re the one almost pushed his nose into his brain, you can haul him to Hubbell tomorrow. After you bury Yost.”
Preston was pushing to reestablish his authority. Cal suppressed the urge to push back harder. Giving the rest of the men a couple of days to cool off wouldn’t be a bad idea.
“Let me use a team and wagon, and I’ll haul them both to Hubbell. The undertaker there can do Yost proper.”