I ran inside the barn and felt my way in the darkness to Ted’s door. I fumbled with the handle, twisted and lifted, but it didn’t open. I’d never noticed if he had some trick to getting in and out of his room. I settled my fists on my hips and wondered if it was locked from the inside. My heart lurched. If it was… “Ted?”
I listened at his door. I didn’t breathe, as I stood silently praying Ted hadn’t beat me back. My neighbor’s horse nickered outside the barn’s wall. I crept close to Ted’s door and planted my ear against the wood. Nothing. Ted couldn’t have been that quick. My neighbor’s horse stomped a foot. Well, Ted could have. I ran my hands along the seam where the door and wall met. There had to be a way…
My finger bumped over something cold. A tiny latch. I eased it up, and the door swung open. I paused, listened to nothing but the wind, then entered, and closed the door behind me.
Ted’s room felt cold. Colder than the outdoors. A chill ran up my arms as I groped through the dark until my fingers brushed the base of a lamp. Running my hand along where it sat, I found matches nearby and struck one, creating an eerie orb of light in the small room. I trimmed the wick, lifted the lamp, and set about inspecting Ted’s sparse but neat quarters.
I searched the obvious places first—under his cot, beneath his tight blanket, on a small shelf, in his spare boots. Nothing. The second obvious place was the large box. I brought the lamp close, set it on a nearby crate, and opened the lid.
Carlisle. Of Carlisle and Morgan. It was back in New York I’d heard that name. He’d talked with Flynn about ranching. He’d claimed it was an open door, and what Easterners like Flynn didn’t understand about homesteading, other men did. Men out here. Like Morgan. But which Morgan? I intended to find that out.
I tipped the lid back as far as it would go and dug deep, Ted’s tidy piles falling into disarray as I scavenged to the bottom—ending at nothing. I stacked everything back the way it had been and straightened. I needed something with Carlisle’s name on it. Or the other deed. Or Flynn’s money. Something, so I could carry out my plan.
I stepped back to the door, cracked it open, and listened. The wind howled, as always, a coyote along with it. I closed the door, returned to the box, and closed its lid. I held the light high and looked behind it. Black shadows and nothing more. Latching onto the back corner, I tugged and twisted until Ted’s enormous box scooted out from the wall. I brought the light to its back, and saw it, then. A rim of white sticking up from a false back. My arm was slender. Thin enough I snaked it behind the box, pinched the white edge with my fingernails, and lifted.
My hands trembled, but I held tight. If this was what I needed, I’d load Jess—and the bottle of medicine I’d tricked Doc into giving me so Jess could travel without pain—and we’d go. Back to New York with the deed and this evidence. I’d undo whoever else was tied to Carlisle and Morgan, and come back to claim what was mine.
The wind changed, and I listened. It wasn’t the wind I heard. It was a voice. A voice and hooves. I tugged hard at the papers. Only one came. I shoved the box back, leaving the rest behind, and blew the lamp out.
Chapter 55
Blood is thicker than I thought. So thick, a heart might stop. ~Rex
“Rex!” Little Brother’s shout echoed in my head along with the shot. The music was gone, the crowd was still. Everything was quiet except for Luke’s voice, the shot, and the fire raging through my veins. I had Morrissey up off the ground with a fist, and I dragged him to the street as I barreled out to look for my brother. My half-brother.
I spotted him. Spotted Luke in the middle of the street, lying there like he was all gone. Morrissey hung from my fist like a rag doll. I looked down at Matt and landed a fist on him again. For Pop, for Luke, for the ranch I had to burn down.
I dragged and kicked Morrissey through the street, dropped the rumpled bag of wind in the dirt beside Luke. Beside my knees where I knelt at Luke’s chest. Luke was bent like Jess had been in the prairie that day, half mooned on his side. Lying all wrong.
“Little Brother.” I laid a hand on Luke’s ribs and an ear against his chest, blood turning his shirt thick and warm. If I’d heard a man drown, this was what I imagined it would sound like. Froth blocking the cries for help until they were wordless gurgles. Then nothing. “After all I taught you.”
I looked up at the crowd. “Where’s the sheriff?”
The barkeep ran off. “I’ll get him.”
I’d stayed away from the sheriff until now, kept as far from him as I could, as Regina’s husband. Things were different now. I grabbed a loop of rope from a nearby horse. The men in the circle moved back.
“I’m a Ranger. This man’s under arrest.” I nodded toward Matt Morrissey, his limp figure in the street. No one argued I’d taken their rope. I bound Matt tighter than necessary, then thrust him up against a hitching post and tied him there. No one questioned whether I was really a Ranger. The cowhand lie didn’t even make them doubt where I’d really learned to manage a rope.
I scanned the crowd and spotted Mr. Greene. “Make sure the sheriff takes him to jail.”
“Yes, sir, we will.” Mr. Greene pushed through the crowd. He stood close to Matt, hanging over him like a vulture.
I hied it to Luke, swept my brother off the ground, and ran, breaking through the men who were fixed in a circle, racing through the dark to Doc’s.
Doc responded the way he had with Jess. He was more than a man doing a job. He was a man who cared, who had Luke on a cot and his shirt cut away before I said a word. Doc bent in front of me, hovering over Little Brother and the bullet hole through his chest. I stood back and shivered. Tried not to scream. At Luke, for Luke. For the smile that couldn’t die, the one that looked like my stepmother’s. My shirt stuck to my skin, turning cold, as I shook above Doc. I glanced down at the dark, cooling stain. Little Brother’s blood.
“I’ll be back.” I didn’t know if Doc heard. My voice sounded like it did at the ranch when I burned it down. Like a boy’s voice, one so full of hurt he couldn’t talk.
The door slammed behind me. I looked to the left, down the boarded walk where the saloon was. Only a knot of men remained where Luke had fallen. Mr. Greene and Morrissey were missing. No one seemed alarmed by that, so it meant the sheriff had Matt. I turned to the right. Time to visit the jail. Officially.
****
“I’m sorry.” Doc’s hand was gentle as he touched my arm when I came to his door. He stepped aside and ushered me in, pointing me to where Little Brother lay.
The sheet over Luke was mostly white, darkened only with a large oval of red below where it covered his head. Red. For the first time in my life, I hated red. I dropped to the chair beside Little Brother, adding spots of my own to the white. Wet spots. Wetness that couldn’t put out the fire or cut the smoke. Doc left me alone as I finally cried.
Chapter 56
It takes one to know one. I never believed that until now. ~Regina
The horse stopped. Whoever had ridden up to the ranch pounded on my kitchen door. Warm fumes of burnt oil filled the air. I grabbed the lamp and took it with me as I slipped from Ted’s room; I set it in the back of the barn to cool.
“Regina!” Ted hit the door to my house again.
“What is it, Ted?” I walked as far as the pump and stopped in the dark barnyard behind him.
“Why are you out here? Is it Jess?” He came toward me, his boots marking his advance where I couldn’t see.
“No, Jess is still at the neighbor’s, where I left him while I went to get that medicine.”
“I’ll go get him for you.”
“No, don’t. They were going to play a game. Something quiet, that he doesn’t have to run in. I thought I’d give Jess some time there; he needed the change.”
Ted was at the trough, his steps on the ground coming around to my side. Too close to the barn, the wafting scent of the extinguished lamp I’d left out, and the paper I’d slid under loose hay for me to retrieve later. “I�
�ve got news. Bad news.”
I thought of Ben. I thought of Doc. I slapped a hand on my chest, my heart pounding the way Ted’s fist had hit my kitchen door. “What? Who?”
“There was a shooting. No one you know, but it does affect you.” Ted looked toward the house. “Would you like to sit?”
“No, Ted, just tell me. Who was it?”
“Don’t know his name, but I know his brother’s name. Rex Duncan’s the brother. You might know him as Ben Miller.”
I sat. I tried to stay on my feet, but I backed to the trough and dropped onto its edge.
“Sorry you had to find out this way. I knew something was wrong about that man. I just knew it.”
“Ben?” My voice was barely a whisper, barely audible over the night breeze.
“He’s not Ben, he’s Rex. His marriage to you was a hoax. He’s a Ranger from down south. I found it all out.”
My marriage. A marriage I hadn’t considered real…wasn’t. “Ben isn’t Ben.” The dark made the information confusing, more unbelievable.
Ted dropped down on the lip of the trough beside me. “Sorry, Regina. He lied about everything.”
My life passed before my eyes. The life I’d had the past several weeks. The life that was made of images of Ben. With me, with Jess. In ways even Flynn hadn’t…but it wasn’t real.
My chest rose and fell. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear my breath as it surged. In. Out. How could Ben lie that way? How could he accuse me of lying about hiding a son from him? He was right. He was no good with women or boys. He didn’t even care. Every breath weighed more than I did. Each one burned as it turned to fire.
“I’m going for Jess now.” I rose. “Come with me, please. Ride alongside with Boss so he can pull the wagon back and my neighbor won’t have to.” So you can settle Jess in the house while I tend to Boss. Tend to your lamp. And the paper, hidden in the barn. My plan.
“Yes’m. That I will. You can count on me.”
Chapter 57
Now I was lost in the smoke. My stepmother was right—what would happen if I fell? ~Rex
I thought three of us would be going back to Oklahoma—two of us, at least the right two of us, alive.
Doc stood in attendance as we loaded into the back of the wagon the pine box I’d bought, the box that held Little Brother. I strapped it down, but not as tight as I strapped Morrissey. He was bound and gagged, because I was fed up with listening to him, propped with his back behind the seat, and tied into place.
A gunshot exploded in my mind every time I looked at that skunk, the loud boom, and the voice that cried my name for the last time. Rex!
I slapped my hand on top of Luke’s box. It sounded like another gunshot. The one that heralded in Luke’s other words, the ones he shouted through the thunder of our ranch’s blaze—Come out where I can see you. Come out and face me like a man.
“Thank you, Doc.” I shook his hand.
“So you’re not Ben Miller after all.”
I shook my head and let go of his hand.
“That’s how you knew so much about medicine, how to do what most men don’t.”
I looked at my half-brother’s box again and at the man beside it I held responsible for Luke’s death even though I knew Morrissey didn’t shoot him. He couldn’t have. He was unconscious. But if Morrissey hadn’t swindled our family, Luke wouldn’t be dead. As far as I was concerned, everything was Morrissey’s fault.
“Apparently, I don’t know enough.” I slapped Luke’s box again.
Doc followed me around the wagon to the side of the seat. I climbed up and took the reins to Walter in my hands. My gut felt empty, carved out as if someone had shot a bucket-sized hole through me, leaving it black…only a flittering unease left inside. I looked down at Doc.
“Do me a favor?”
Doc nodded. “Anything.”
“Tend to Regina. I’m going to stop by there on my way to Oklahoma. I’m hoping she hasn’t heard by now I’m not who she thought I was. But she ain’t going to like it, no matter who tells her.”
I couldn’t say more. I didn’t need to. Doc nodded again. Those were eyes I could trust to take care of her. I flicked the reins.
Chapter 58
It was our parting. We’d planned it, just not this way. He had to go. I wouldn’t look back. ~Regina
“Go in the house.” I shooed Jess toward the kitchen door. I cupped a hand over my brows and stared at the wagon heading our way. At the tall, unmistakable figure and the black horse bringing him near. “Go on.”
“Is that Ben?” Jess stuck at my side.
“I said go in. Please. He’s not going to be happy.”
“Why?”
I looked at my son, the color in his face, the brace and crutch that let him stand the way he did. “His brother was killed.”
“Oh.” The color left him the moment I said it. Killed. How stupid could I be?
“Please, just go inside.”
Jess pivoted and dragged himself away. Death was still too near. Walter’s hooves set an equally slow cadence on the hard ground. My heart pounded with every step. Heartache was too near, also. I was done with heartache.
Ben…Rex…didn’t hurry or slow when he spotted me. He kept Walter steady until the wagon was in front of me. Ben made a noise, and Walter stopped. A man in the back twisted to the side. He leered above a bandana that stretched his mouth to a fish-like gape. I shuddered, clasped a hand over my own mouth. He was bruised and swollen, filthy, his face distorted.
“Turn back around,” Ben barked. The man leered through puffy eyes, then jerked toward the back again, focused behind the wagon.
Ben stepped down, looped the reins over the seat post, and came around Walter to my side. “I want to talk.” He jerked his head toward the man who was looking away. “Private.”
Ben’s brother’s pine box lay in the back of the wagon, long, yellow, identical to Flynn’s. The strange man was pressed between it and the wagon’s side. Ben’s pain was there. It felt like mine. I had seen it on his face. I turned from the box, and looked at Ben. But I saw Rex, instead. The fake. The liar. The one who intended to callously break my heart.
I turned and walked to the edge of the prairie. Far enough from the house Jess couldn’t hear and far enough from the stranger he couldn’t, either.
“Where’s Ted?” Ben…no, Rex…looked down at me when I stopped.
“I sent him to Liberal.” To get him away while I readied to go. Go, like Ben was doing, him to his Ranger life and me to New York. With a letter from W.C. to Ted. It had to be Carlisle, a commission to take on another ranch. Just two weeks ago. Carlisle and Morgan. Ben and Rex. Deceivers, all of them.
“You’ve heard.”
“Yes. You’re not Ben at all. You’re some Ranger who didn’t come here for my sake but your own. You used me!” My voice ranged out of control. High enough maybe even the wind couldn’t wipe it out for once. Loud enough that far wasn’t far enough from the stranger’s or my son’s ears. I didn’t care. Flynn brought me here for his dream, and then died. And now Ted and W.C.—possibly W. Carlisle—were wrapped up in dreams of their own, my ranch likely being part of them. But Ben was worse than all of them. He’d never cared. He’d never dreamed. He came. He lied. He got what he wanted, and now he was going.
Ben stepped closer. “Yes. I did come here as a Ranger. But…”
“And now you’re leaving as one. I don’t need your ‘buts.’ I needed a name. I was honest about that. I also said I was perfectly capable on my own. That was true, too. But you weren’t honest with me, and the name you’re leaving me with is a fake. You’re leaving me with nothing but a lie.”
“There’s more to it than that. It was all worked out ahead of time by my boss. He answered your ad. Yes, he made me come here, but it was for your good, too. He’s going to do away with Ben Miller. You can keep the name, he’ll make sure you get the ranch, but I’ll be gone.” Ben’s lips tightened into a straight line. “If that’s what you wan
t.”
What I want. What I had wanted. No one had cared what I wanted but me. “I want you out of here.” I pointed to his wagon. “Now.”
He turned. Looked at the ranch house, then back at me. “Don’t trust Ted.”
“‘Don’t trust Ted’? How can you lie to me the way you did and tell me not to trust someone else?”
“Something’s not right. I’ll make sure this ranch is yours. Just don’t trust Ted.”
“Well, he said the same thing about you, and I can see he was right. This arrangement is over. We intended to part anyway. I just never knew it would be like this.” I dropped my arm to my side and turned toward the house.
I didn’t look back. It’s what we had intended. It’s what we had arranged.
Chapter 59
We planted Little Brother in red dirt. Nothing’s growing there. ~Rex
Red dirt. Red bluffs. I’d dreamed of this for ages. Now, looking over all that I’d loved, I dreamed of red hair.
Jim never disappointed when it came to the right he believed in, and he treated Morrissey no better than I did when I took him in. Morrissey was locked in a tiny paddock near the back of Jim’s office, with all the finery he would have had if he’d gone ahead and lived in the ashes of Red Rock Ranch I’d left behind. I told Jim everything I knew from my job in Kansas, gave him Mr. Gulliver’s name at the bank, shared what little the young bank clerk had told me, and described the railroad land and what Fred explained about those who bought and sold it. “And then there’s Ted…” I mentioned Regina’s ranch manager, with his name and memories of him stuck in my craw. “I don’t have anything concrete to tie him to any scheme, except he had Flynn’s deed somehow. But he worked for the man, and my guess is he was holding out for Flynn’s wife.” My wife. Jim thanked me. The same way he always did when I finished a job and finished it well. He gave me a nod and paid me more, far more, than I expected.
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