“Charlie doesn’t have to put up with him.”
They were waiting by the corral while Bret saddled his horse. Emily was certain that part of Lonnie’s irritation was because Bret had picked out her best horse even though he’d never ridden any of them, a big mouse-gray gelding with a reputation for being hard to handle. Lonnie had warned him, but Bret said he’d like to try him anyway.
“He’s a guest,” Emily told Lonnie. “You will treat him with courtesy.”
After his work with the piebald, the cowhands were willing to accept Bret as an equal. That seemed to irk Lonnie even more.
“I hope he doesn’t stay long,” Lonnie said. “I’ve got too much to do to be mollycoddling some tenderfoot.”
“You don’t have to go with us,” Emily said.
“You think I’d let you go traipsing all over the ranch alone with him?” Lonnie asked in amazement.
“What could happen?”
“No telling with a man like him.”
In fact, Emily was wishing Bret wasn’t quite so well-behaved. She didn’t like being so strongly attracted to him, but she was even less happy that he didn’t seem attracted to her. She was certain there were lots of more beautiful women in Boston, certainly more sophisticated and more knowledgeable, but she wasn’t used to being ignored.
Bret emerged from the barn leading the gray.
“Wait until he gets in the saddle,” Lonnie said.
“He handled the piebald,” Emily reminded him. “I expect he’ll do fine with the gray as well.”
“I really appreciate your taking the time to show me around,” Bret said to both of them when he came up beside them. “I know you have work you’d rather be doing.”
“I plan on enjoying the ride,” Emily said. “I haven’t gotten away much since Dad got sick.”
Lonnie moved quickly to help her into the saddle before Bret had a chance to offer. She was annoyed, because she’d enjoyed the experience of Bret lifting her into the saddle as though it were easy to do. She gathered the reins, settled into the saddle, and waited for Bret to mount the gray. Lonnie was waiting, too. Emily thought she could detect a smile in Bret’s expression.
When Bret started to put his foot in the stirrup, the gray sidled away from him. When it happened a second time, Bret led the horse to the corral and positioned him next to the fence. The gray tried to bolt when Bret mounted up, but Bret quickly tightened the reins.
“Don’t be so anxious,” Bret said to the horse. “You’ll have plenty of chances to show your stuff.”
“He likes to make mounting him as difficult as possible,” Emily said. “Most of the hands don’t like riding him.”
Bret patted the gray on the neck. The horse responded by throwing his head about, fighting for control. “You’ve been getting off easy,” Bret said to the horse. “I’ll see what I can do about that.” And with a few more words, he got the gray to settle down and trot peacefully alongside Emily’s mare.
Emily knew she shouldn’t have been amused to see Lonnie forced to swallow his anger, but his dislike of Bret was unfair. Maybe Lonnie wasn’t able to separate the messenger from the message. She disliked the thought of having to move to Boston, but it was impossible to dislike Bret.
“Dad controls well over a hundred thousand acres,” Emily said as they rode away from the ranch buildings.
“It’s closer to two hundred thousand,” Lonnie said.
“That’s a lot of land,” Bret observed.
“Mr. Abercrombie is a very wealthy man,” Lonnie said.
Once Lonnie got started talking about the ranch, he gradually forgot his dislike of Bret. Emily realized he was trying to impress Bret with her father’s wealth; even she didn’t know some of the things Lonnie was saying. She’d been so busy taking care of her father and training her horses, she hadn’t fully understood the vastness of her inheritance or all the problems of safeguarding it.
“Are you having much trouble with rustlers?” Bret asked.
“When you have as many cows as Mr. Abercrombie, there’ll always be somebody trying to steal a few,” Lonnie said, making it seem as though it weren’t a problem.
“Jake never liked it when he lost a single cow,” Bret said. “He said if anybody wanted a cow, they had the right to work hard enough to own one.”
“It’s not worth the trouble trying to chase down every two-bit rustler,” Lonnie said. “We don’t have the men or the time.”
They had been riding for over an hour and were well away from the ranch. Post oak, blackjack oak, elm, pecan, cottonwood, and ash bordered the creeks. The slopes of the flat-topped hills featured Spanish oak, live oak, and mountain juniper. The prairie was covered with a variety of grasses—big and little bluestem, Indian grass, Texas wintergrass, blue grama, and buffalo grass—that produced fat cows because her father refused to put more cows on the range than it could support. Emily could remember as a little girl riding through grass up to the belly of her horse.
“We’ve got the best grazing land in the area.” Lonnie waved his arm in a half circle, indicating grass-covered prairie that stretched to the horizon.
“We’ve had several offers to buy the ranch,” Emily said. “I’m not interested in selling, but folks seem to think I won’t be able to hold on to it after Dad dies.”
“I’d be more worried about the rustling,” Bret said.
“We don’t have much rustling, do we?” Emily asked Lonnie.
“More than I let on.” Lonnie’s eyes became hooded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Emily demanded.
“You had your hands full with your dad. Taking care of the rustling was my job.”
“What have you been doing about it?” she asked.
“I’ve got the boys on patrol.” Lonnie sounded defensive. “We haven’t seen any signs of rustling lately.”
Emily wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but she decided to wait until they got back to the ranch to question Lonnie further. She didn’t like the idea of anyone stealing her father’s cows.
Bret and Lonnie traded stories about rustling and what some ranchers had done to stop it. Emily was interested at first, but after a while it sounded like a game men played with each other. Her attention had begun to wander when Bret pulled up, his sentence unfinished.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Why isn’t that calf wearing the same brand as the others?” Bret asked, pointing to a calf no more than three months old among a group of cows and calves. “I thought we were well within the limits of your father’s land.”
Emily was confused, but Lonnie seemed agitated. “Maybe he got lost from his mother,” Lonnie said.
“There’s one way to find out,” Bret said. “Let me use your rope.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Rope that calf. If its mother is anywhere around, she’ll come running.”
“I don’t like anybody using my rope,” Lonnie said.
“Fine. You rope him.”
Lonnie hesitated, and Emily wondered if he was afraid he couldn’t rope the calf. Usually the cowhands did that kind of work, not the foreman.
“Here, use my rope,” Emily said, handing hers over to Bret. “Next time, bring one for yourself.”
Bret built a loop quickly and efficiently. The calf had moved away and broke into a run when Bret rode toward it. Emily found it exciting to watch him ride after the calf, sitting high in the saddle, the rope making a perfect circle in the air above his head.
“He’s just showing off,” Lonnie said. “He’s probably never roped a calf before in his life.”
Before Emily could remind Lonnie that Bret had spent nine years on a ranch, the rope settled over the calf’s head, and Bret brought his horse to an abrupt stop.
“Then I guess he’s doubly lucky today.” Emily was so anxious to reach Bret, she didn’t bother to look back to see if Lonnie was following her. By the time she dismounted, Bret had wrestled the calf to the ground and was examining its brand.
“How can you tell?” Lonnie asked as he joined them.
“Because the only cow that didn’t disappear over the rise is wearing the Abercrombie brand. This calf isn’t. How long ago did you brand your calves?”
“More than a month,” Emily said.
“I’d say this brand is fresh.”
Emily got down next to the calf. The brand was still surrounded by freshly burned hair.
“If you look really close,” Bret said, “you’ll see the brand is uneven. Someone has put this new brand on over the old one.”
Emily had never looked at a brand in that way before, but it didn’t take long before she could see exactly what Bret was talking about.
“Someone may be rustling your cows, but someone is also going through your herd rebranding calves.”
“So they won’t have to worry about where to hide them,” Emily said. “Our hands will automatically separate them out when it comes time to choose the steers to sell. But that doesn’t make sense. How can they claim the steers without being identified as rustlers?”
“Once the calf is weaned, you won’t be able to tell it’s a false brand without killing the steer and looking at the underside of the hide. Any one of your neighbors could register that brand, claim their cows had strayed on your land over the years, and there’d be nothing you could do about it. Do you recognize that brand?”
“No. Lonnie, do you know it?”
Lonnie looked white, shook his head. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“What can we do about it?” Emily asked Bret.
“Several things, but we ought to talk to your father first. It’s his ranch.”
“Lonnie and I make most of the decisions now,” Emily said. “We try to spare Dad as much as possible.”
“This is something he’ll want to know about. But before we say anything, we ought to see if we can find any more calves bearing this new brand.”
It didn’t take them long to find several others. But what disturbed Emily almost as much was finding the remains of a fire used to brand the calves.
“They’ve got plenty of nerve,” Bret said. “They’re branding your calves on your own land, right out in the open.”
“It’s impossible for us to watch all the grazing land all the time,” Lonnie said.
“I’m sure Mr. Abercrombie would have expected you to have discovered this before now. From the numbers we’ve seen, it’s been going on for at least a month.”
“This isn’t the farthest part of the ranch from the house,” Emily said. “The boys should have been through this area at least a couple of times.” Lonnie should have told her, but she felt guilty she hadn’t made it her business to find out. She wasn’t doing a very good job of running the ranch for her father.
“Knowing rustlers are out there has the boys a mite nervous,” Lonnie said. “They don’t like riding out except in pairs. That cuts down on the amount of ground we can cover.”
“Why haven’t you told me any of this?” Emily demanded.
“I didn’t want to worry you, not with you already upset about your father. And now”—he glanced over at Bret, an angry look in his eyes—“having to put up with him trying to convince you to sell up and move to Boston.”
“You should have told me,” she said, angry that Lonnie had taken such a decision on himself. “This is my ranch—or it will be—and I have a right to know everything that happens on it.”
“I was only trying to help.”
“Next time, help by making sure you inform me of anything out of the ordinary. Do you think we ought to look for more evidence?” she asked Bret. She was aware that turning to Bret made Lonnie look bad, but she was too angry to care.
“I’d like to see if they’re rebranding any older stock,” Bret said.
They spent the rest of the afternoon riding over as much ground as possible but found that only spring calves had been branded.
“Calves are relatively easy to brand,” Bret said. “Two men could do it by themselves.”
“Do you think only two men are involved?” Emily asked.
“I’d say you have a conspirator on your crew, one who tells the rustlers where the men are going to be at any given time.”
“Are you accusing me?” Lonnie’s face turned red, his mouth tight with anger.
“Of course not,” Emily said. “Nobody would accuse you.”
“I’m not accusing anyone,” Bret said, “only making an educated guess.”
Emily would have sworn all the cowhands were honest and trustworthy, but it was impossible to ignore Bret’s reasoning. The rustlers had to know where the cowhands would be in order to have avoided notice for as much as a month. “I don’t understand,” she said, thinking aloud, “why none of the boys noticed those brands.”
“They probably did,” Lonnie said, “but cows get mixed up all the time. We worked at least a dozen different brands during roundup. Your father owns four himself.”
“I know that,” Emily said, “but cows don’t accept the wrong calf.”
Emily felt guilty she hadn’t lived up to her responsibilities. She’d been telling her father not to worry, that she and Lonnie were taking care of everything. And it turns out that neither one of them had had any idea their calves were being rebranded. Worse yet, she had no idea who owned the brand or who was doing the branding.
Lonnie was uncharacteristically quiet, probably from embarrassment. He’d been very vocal in his opinion that Bret didn’t know enough to get out of his own way. Yet it had been Bret who’d noticed that a cow and her calf had different brands—and that the second brand was an easy alteration of her father’s brand.
“I hate to do this,” she said to Lonnie, “but I want all the men in the saddle from dawn to dusk until we find out who’s behind this. After we talk to Dad, I’ll send one of them to Fort Worth to look for more help.”
“I ought to do the hiring,” Lonnie said.
“I need you here. You’re the only one who knows the whole ranch as well as Charlie used to.”
Emily felt a little guilty wishing Charlie were still their foreman, but she’d grown up depending on him and Ida. Nothing had felt the same since they’d left. She had to depend on herself now, but that wasn’t as frightening as it had once been. And whether or not she wanted to admit it, Bret’s being here was part of the reason. She couldn’t let herself start to depend on him. He wouldn’t be here very long.
But she was beginning to wish he would be.
“Do you want any more stew?” Bertie asked.
“If you don’t stop stuffing me so full every time I sit down to the table, they’ll have to carry me back to Fort Worth in a wagon,” Bret said.
“Then you shouldn’t be going to Fort Worth,” Bertie said. “It’s nasty and smelly. No place for a gentleman like you.”
Bret was eating dinner in the kitchen. They’d arrived back at the ranch to find Sam so sick they postponed mentioning the false brands. Emily hadn’t left her father’s side all evening. Lonnie had called the men together to tell them what they’d found and to lay out a new schedule. Bret had suggested they work in pairs and take enough provisions to stay out for as much as a week. Lonnie hadn’t liked his suggestion, but Emily had endorsed it immediately. According to Bertie, the hands had, too. They were angry that re-branding had been going on under their noses and were anxious to recover their self-respect by putting an end to it.
“I live in Boston, not Fort Worth,” Bret told Bertie.
“A man like you has got no business in a place like that.” Bertie was so busy removing bowls and platters from the table, Bret couldn’t see her expression. “You ought to have a ranch of your own.”
Bret nearly choked on his coffee. “What makes you think I want a ranch, or that I’d be able to manage one?”
“The cowhands haven’t stopped talking about the way you handled that piebald,” Bertie said, still
too busy to look at him. “Now you’re the one who discovered the rustling.” She turned to face him. “Sounds to me like you know more than you’re letting on.” She turned away. “Besides, who wants to live in a place like Boston? It’s full of nasty, pushy people.”
Bret chuckled. “At least they don’t wear guns and steal cows.”
“They have lawyers who steal people’s money.”
Bret’s smile vanished. “How do you know about Boston?”
“My father couldn’t find work after the Yankees destroyed everything they could lay their hands on, so we moved there after the war. I didn’t like it so I came back here. I was lucky Mr. Abercrombie was looking for a cook and housekeeper.” She topped off Bret’s coffee. “It was like breathing fresh air when I crossed into Texas. I knew I’d come home.”
It chilled Bret to realize he’d felt exactly the same way. How could he feel like that when his future was committed to Abbott & Abercrombie? He’d devoted the last six years to making a place for himself in Boston, in the company, in the Abbott family. That future was what he’d always wanted. It was what had forced him out of Texas, caused him to leave a family that loved him, a family that accepted him wholeheartedly even though he’d tried to hold back, even though he’d kept telling himself it was only a substitute until he could go back to his real family.
The only thing was, the longer he was in Texas, the more he felt like he belonged here.
In the beginning, he’d hated everything about Jake’s ranch: horses, cows, the dirt. He hated the guilt he felt because he didn’t deserve the love Isabelle gave so freely, the acceptance Jake offered without question, the support the other boys gave him even when he was surly and mean-spirited. But most of all he hated the fact that he couldn’t do anything as well as the other boys. Bitter anger and a fierce desire to prove he was just as good as anybody from Texas drove him to work doubly hard to learn to be a good cowhand. He hated the work, thought the job was demeaning, but he was determined he was going to be as good as anybody else.
Of course he wasn’t. Sean was bigger, Zeke was stronger, Hawk was a better rider, Luke was better with a gun, Chet was . . . in the end it didn’t matter. He accepted he couldn’t be the best at everything when he realized he was good enough at everything necessary to his job. He’d enjoyed his competency, the faith Jake and the other boys put in him, the respect everyone gave him. Before he left, everyone said he’d earned his place. Even more important, he knew it himself.
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