The smugness had fled from Bodine's expression. Raw anger had replaced it. He backed up, keeping his eye on the weapon poised inches from him. "You got no call to keep that thing pointed at me. I told you I'm unarmed."
The heat outside hit them like a wall, fueling the tension between them. "Funny you should mention this gun," Chase said without a trace of humor in his voice. "It's been a little unreliable lately. In fact, it nearly blew up in my face the other day. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
Bodine paled. "How would I know about yer gun?"
"Because I think you're the one who rigged it, that's how."
"Chase..." Libby gasped. "What are you saying?"
Bodine's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. "You accusin' me, Yankee?"
"Are you denying it?"
"Hell, yes, I'm denyin' it. What would I want to cripple yer gun for?"
"I've been asking myself the same question. You had the opportunity that morning when you were saddling the horses. It would only have taken a few seconds to empty a cartridge of powder and replace it in the breech."
Bodine let out a snort of laughter and looked to Libby. "You ain't gonna listen to this, are ya? He loads a bad cartridge into his gun and he's accusin' me of tryin' to kill him. I think this Yankee's playin' with a few cards shy of a full deck."
Chase pulled a cartridge from his vest pocket and threw it at Bodine who fumbled to catch it. "Those pry marks look familiar, Bodine? That bullet was tampered with. I say you did it."
Bodine's dark eyes narrowed into slits. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "He's crazy. That's what. You hired yerself a goddamn lunatic, Miz Libby."
Libby's shocked gaze went from Bodine to Chase.
"Oh, yeah?" Chase pressed, taking a furious step toward him with the gun. "What about all the other accidents happening around here, Libby? Doesn't it strike you as a coincidence they all started about the time Bodine came to work for you? The fire, losing stock, Will Barlow's accident? All of it aimed at chipping away at the underpinnings of the Double Bar H. All aimed to make you fail. And every time, Bodine was there—with the opportunity."
"And so was every other man on this place!" Bodine growled. "You can't pin any of that on me. You ain't got one lick of proof."
Early stepped around the corner of the house and took in the situation with one look. His mouth was drawn in a thin, hard line and he clenched and unclenched the fists he held at his sides.
"Tell him, Early," Bodine pleaded. "Tell him it ain't so. You was there all them times, just like I was."
"Miguel remembered seein' you with a knife in yer hand comin' away from Will Barlow's horse."
"A knife!" Bodine let out a desperate croak of laughter. "I was... uh, I was pickin' stones out of the horse's shoes! That's all. That cinch weren't cut with no knife. It wore clean through!"
"A man can cut a string girth to make it look worn out."
"You ain't sidin' with him, are ya, Early?" Bodine demanded of the older man who stared dispassionately at him. "I don't believe this. Yer gonna take that damn Yankee's word over mine?"
Early stared at him with silent accusation.
Libby pressed her fingertips against her eyes. "Wait a minute. Chase, these are serious accusations. Have you got any proof of all this?"
"He was up in my loft this morning, going through my things."
The color left Bodine's flushed face and his mouth dropped open. "He ain't got no proof. He was asleep. He didn't even see—" Bodine's mouth snapped shut as he realized what he'd said.
Chase lowered his gun and smiled grimly. He held up the cigarette wrappings, sealing his case. "You dropped these." He threw them at Bodine's feet.
A hot breeze whipped at Bodine's stony face, buffeting his hair. A muscle clenched in his jaw.
"Why, Trammel?" Libby asked, shaking her head with disbelief. "Why would you do those things to me? To the ranch?"
"Shee-it. You got nothin' on me. Nothin'," Bodine replied hotly, digging the blood-spattered toe of his boot into the sandy soil. "I didn't do none of them things Whitlaw said. And last I heard, bein' up in a hay loft weren't no crime."
Chase's green eyes had gone dark with fury. He took a menacing step toward Bodine. "You almost killed me, you sonofabitch—"
Early grabbed his arm, stopping him. "Messin' with another feller's personal things is crime enough to get yore sorry ass thrown off'n this place, Bodine," Early told him. "Get your gear together and drift."
Incredulous, Bodine looked to Libby in a last-ditch effort to save his job. "You're buyin' all this? You're gonna take the word of that no-account Yankee over mine? You need me, lady." He jabbed an angry finger in her direction. "You know it and I know it. Without me, who's gonna break them horses for you? Huh? How you gonna get that contract in on time?"
Libby turned her head away, unable to bear looking at him. "We'll get by. You heard Early. You're fired. Get your gear together. Early will draw up your pay."
Bodine blew out a harsh laugh and sent a snarling smile Libby's way. "You're just bent out of shape because I looked at you like you're a woman today, instead of the man you're always tryin' to be—"
Chase's fist smashed into Bodine's face before he could get the whole insult out. Bodine was nearly airborne with the force of the punch and he landed hard in the dirt several feet away. Chase reached down and grabbed the dazed man by the front of his shirt. "That was for Libby," he snarled into his face. "Personally, I'd like to break your worthless neck." Instead, he shoved Bodine back down into the dirt and started to walk away.
Bodine sat up, grabbed his aching jaw, and dabbed at the blood trickling down the side of his mouth. "You got more guts than brains, Whitlaw."
Slowly he got to his feet and picked up his dusty hat. His smile was slow and he looked as dangerous as a coiling snake when he turned back to Libby. "I'll go," he said, backing up a step or two, "but while yer pointin' fingers, why don't you ask this lily-white drifter what he's doin' with that little trinket of yours in his saddlebags? The one with yer picture inside."
Chapter 13
The color left Chase's face in a rush as he wheeled on the wrangler. "Goddamn you, Bodine!" Chase launched himself at him again, driving him back against the rounded adobe horno. Bodine's head cracked against the rock-hard outdoor oven, but he brought a fist up and snapped Chase's head back. Chase staggered back a step but then, in a mindless rage, dove at Bodine, sending them both crashing to the ground. Over and over they rolled, pummeling each other with their fists. Dust billowed up in a cloud around them. Vaguely, Chase heard Early shouting at Libby to stay back.
He wanted to kill Bodine, string him up by his heels and make him suffer long and hard for telling her this way. His hands closed around Bodine's throat and his fingers tightened, cutting off the other man's airway.
Only Libby's plaintive cry kept him from snapping Bodine's windpipe in two.
"Stop it! Please, Chase! Let him go!" she cried, dragging at his arm. "Don't kill him."
For the first time Chase could see Bodine's face, see his eyes bulging from lack of oxygen and he realized how close he'd come to killing the man. He slackened his grip on Bodine's throat and rolled off him.
Trammel groaned and flung his head back, gasping for air. "Sonofa—" he rasped, unable to complete the word for the ache in his throat.
Chase got up slowly. His chest heaved with the effort to control the sickness welling up inside him. He swiped at his bloody mouth with the back of his hand and the fight left him as soon as he looked into Libby's stricken eyes.
"Get up, Bodine," Early ordered. "Get yer gear and get out." Bodine slowly rolled to his feet, massaging his reddened neck.
"No." Libby put a hand on Early's arm. "Not until he tells me what this is all about. What were you saying, Bodine? What did you mean about the trinket?"
"Go on," Bodine taunted in a hoarse voice. "Why don't ya ask him? Ask him how he come by that little silver locket of yours. Maybe he's been ste
alin' right out from under your trusting little nose."
Libby's gaze went from the taunting mockery in Bodine's eyes to the misery in Chase's. Confusion muted her senses and she stared at him blankly. "Silver locket? What's he talking about? I don't have a—" The words died in her throat and a cold knot formed in her stomach as she met the grim, confirming look Chase was giving her. She'd had a locket like that... once.
Stunned, she watched Chase turn and walk to his horse as if he were a condemned man headed to the gallows. He reached inside his saddlebags and pulled something out. Libby's heartbeat pounded in her ears. Silently, she prayed it was all a mistake. A horrible mistake.
Chase reached for her clenched fist and opened it with his fingers. Gently, he pressed the warm metal into her hand and closed her fingers around it.
"I didn't steal it, I swear to you. But I never meant for you to find out this way."
Numbly, Libby opened her hand and stared at the silvery object he'd placed in it. The filigree locket winked in the sunlight as she touched it with trembling fingers. It had been years since she'd seen it, since she'd given it to Lee when he'd left for the war. But it had been her mother's before that and was as familiar as her own hand. These past two years, she'd assumed it was buried with her husband in Virginia soil.
Bewildered and cold with shock, she looked up at Chase. "This belonged to my husband. H-how did you get it?"
Chase stared at her, unsure of what to say now that the moment he'd dreaded for so long had arrived. He'd meant to plan his words carefully. Choose his time.
Bodine smiled victoriously. "There's yer thief. He ain't so all-fired noble now, Libby, is he?"
Libby turned angrily to Bodine. "Get out," she gritted through clenched teeth. "Get out now and don't let me see your face on my ranch again."
Bodine's mouth narrowed into a straight line. "You're still takin' that thief's word over mine?"
"I've had enough of you to last me a lifetime, Trammel. I'm happy to have the excuse to be rid of you, if you want to know the truth."
"Fine. I'll go," he replied. "You just make sure you have my pay ready. I got five days comin'."
"I'll have it ready," Early replied, shoving Bodine toward the bunkhouse. "Not that you deserve it. Get movin'." Bodine stalked away, slapping his hat against his thigh to rid it of dust. Early turned back to Libby and gave Chase an up-and-down look. "You need me here, Miz Libby?"
"No." The word was strangled and abrupt. "Leave us alone, will you, Early?" The older man nodded curtly and walked off after Bodine. Libby clutched the locket to her breast and glared at Chase. "Well?"
"I think you should sit down first," Chase said, touching her elbow and guiding her toward the house.
She shrugged off his arm and planted her feet where she stood. Dread seeped into her bones like a draft of cold air. "Don't touch me. Say what you have to say."
Chase sighed. "Libby, I'm sorry you had to find out this way. I meant to tell you before—"
"Tell me what?" she asked in a broken whisper. "How did you come by this locket? Lee would never have parted with it willingly. I know that as well as I know myself."
Chase raked a hand through his hair. "He gave it to me as he was dying."
"You s-saw him die?" She shook her head, still not understanding. "But why would he give it to you? You... you're a Yankee. He was... how could he have...?"
"We fought for the same piece of ground in the Wilderness campaign in Virginia." Chase's jaw tightened. He wished he could lie, but he knew varnishing the truth would only make things worse.
"I shot him."
Libby sucked in a lungful of air and felt the blood rush from her face. She swayed on her feet and braced herself against the sun-warmed adobe wall behind her. She could barely hear for the roaring in her ears. "No..."
He extended a steadying hand toward her, but she shoved it away. "You k-killed my husband? You killed Lee?" After several long heartbeats, he answered her.
"Libby... let me explai—"
Her open hand connected with his face in a ringing slap that sent Chase staggering back a step. As if he'd expected it, there was no surprise written on his face, only four red welts where her fingers had stung him.
She pressed her own stinging hand against her lips. "Damn you."
Chase's jaw tightened and he looked away from her. "It was war, Libby. I didn't know him. I didn't know you. I only knew what I was there to do. What we were both there to do. Your husband and I fell together in an explosion that ripped the ground from under us."
Numbed into silence, Libby could only shake her head.
Chase turned away from her, his voice growing clipped and unsteady. "Both of us were lying there in the middle of that... that piece of hell. He was dying. He wouldn't have given that locket to me if he'd had a choice. But there was no one else. He asked me, begged me to get it to you... to tell you..." Chase faltered, feeling sick right down to his soul.
"What? Tell me what?"
"...that he loved you. He wanted you to know that he loved you."
"Ohhh, God," she moaned, staggering away from him toward the house. "Lee..."
"Lib—"
She whirled on him, her eyes filled with such hatred he rocked back as if she'd struck him again. "Don't call me that. You have no right to call me that. How could you come here and... how could you let me think—?"
"Please, listen to me—"
"Why?" she demanded, tears glimmering in her silvery eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"God, I—I wanted to. So help me, I was going to. I should have." From her expression, he knew she was remembering all the times he could have told her and didn't and he cursed himself again.
Dragging his hands over his face, he shook his head. "But I thought you needed my help then, more than you needed the locket. That's what I told myself anyway. I planned to give it to you when I was... done."
"Oh, did you?" Libby let out a laugh that bordered on a sob. "Well, you can go to hell, Chase Whitlaw. What gives you the right to go around playing God, meddling in other people's lives? How dare you make a decision like that for me? You were holding onto my locket, my memories as if they were some kind of ransom."
The words poured out of her like venom. She saw him wince and was glad of it, as the sharp edges of her words penetrated. "Did you think you could ease your conscience by helping out the poor woman you made a widow? Did you think it would make it easier to look me in the eye and tell me this if you made me... care for you?" Her throat momentarily closed as she held back tears. "Or was it your plan to c-completely humiliate me before you were done?"
"No." His back was ramrod straight and his fists were held tightly at his sides. But his eyes were squeezed shut with misery. "I'm sorry about your husband. Sorry that I made a mess of things here. I never meant for things to... I never meant to hurt you, Libby."
Libby clutched the silver locket against her as if it would protect her from the feelings she'd harbored for him only minutes ago. Her emotions were too raw for her to feel anything but hatred for him now. "Why did you come here? Why didn't you just send me a letter like the army did two years ago?"
Ah, that was the question. Why had he come? His reasons seemed unjustifiable now. Indefensible. "I gave him my word," Chase replied slowly. "I felt... I owed you more than a cold letter in the post."
"You were wrong. You don't owe me anything. I think you had better go." The words hung in the sweltering air between them for several long heartbeats.
Chase bowed his head, ringing the brim of his hat in both hands, his emotions draining into that yawning black pit that had grown in him since the war. "Is that what you want?"
Libby's voice, when she spoke, was harsh and unforgiving. "Do you think I could ever look at you after today without seeing the man who took my son's father from him? Do you think I could ever forgive you for this?"
She saw that his eyes had gone flat and lifeless as blades of sun-faded grass.
He stared out past the broad sweep of land dotted with chamisa and sagebrush, at the still-white peaks of the Sangre de Cristos and she felt the smallest pang of remorse. But not enough to take her words back.
"No," he answered at last. "I figured it this way." He sounded defeated, beaten. He ran a hand through his dark hair and slowly settled his hat back on his head. "I'll get the last of my gear together and get out of here. Should I... say good-bye to Tad?"
"I'd rather you didn't. He liked you. It will only make it harder for him."
He nodded and swallowed hard. "All right. Good luck to you. I hope..." Words failed him and he looked up at her one last time to see tears cutting a path down the dust on her cheeks. "Good-bye, Libby."
"Just go. Please. Just go."
Libby held back her sobs until she'd crossed the darkened threshold of the adobe and she didn't look back until she heard Chase riding off the Honeycutt ranch and out of her life. Forever.
* * *
"It's all your fault," Tad accused, his young eyes filling with tears.
A string of fish Libby wouldn't have the heart or stomach to cook that night, dangled from his small fist, water dripping onto the jerga-covered common-room floor.
"He was gonna teach me to whistle, an' we was gonna catch fireflies tonight for Charlie. Why did you send him away?"
"I'm sorry, Tad." Libby battled her own tears and ran a hand comfortingly over Tad's arm. She saw no point in telling him the truth. It would only shatter whatever memories he had of Chase. "He had to go."
Tad pulled away angrily. "No, he didn't. He liked it here. He liked me, even. You had a fight and you made him go, didn't you? Just like Pa."
"What?"
"Just like Pa, you made him go away."
His words cut her like a knife. "I didn't make your pa go away. He wanted to go."
"You was cryin' then, just like now. I heard you arguing about it with Pa when you thought I was asleep. And then he went away. And he never came back." Tad flung the fish into the dry sink and stood with his back to her. The setting sun was framed in the open back door.
"Tad, that was a long time ago."
Chase the Fire Page 17