Jim knew without me telling him the pine box in the back of my wagon held my brother. Pop knew it too, the minute I walked up to his door. Tall, like me, but stooped with age and disappointment, he was a misfit in that little house near a trading post, a place not even a shadow of the ranch he’d built for all of us. His dark eyes went from relief to despair as he looked from me to his other son. Or rather, the box that held him.
Luke had been long enough above ground. Pop never even had time to weep before we had Luke out at the Red Rock Ranch—or what was left of it—and buried beneath its red dirt. Friends came, as did a girl Pop said was Luke’s intended. Her hair was black, like mine, her eyes dark, and she was tall and slender. I shook her hand, shook everyone’s hand, and took Pop back to the house he didn’t belong in.
Neither did I.
I roused Pop early the next morning, hooked Walter to the wagon, and took Adler Duncan, the man I’d always admired and wanted to see live again, to the bank. With the money Jim had paid me, I restored Red Rock Ranch to my father. Exactly what Mr. Gulliver had wanted me to do for Regina. Except that was a job, my part of it over. Jim would take care of her now. The black of my gut darkened.
Pop sat quiet beside me as I took him to the nearest sawmill and bought what we needed to rebuild a ranch house for him and me. He was too old to be cutting his own boards this time, and time was what I wanted to give him. Along with a house for the two of us, just like we’d started out in years ago.
That day, and from then on, we built. Pop and I rebuilt over the black char that was smeared across the ground. He never asked, and I never explained.
Every day felt the same under the red sun that beat down on the red dirt. It was like shoving Kansas and its brown dirt aside, like Luke’s funeral never ended. Each day I felt that knot of dark inside and that niggling uneasiness, all of it housed in a sweaty body, caked with red dust, as I rebuilt my father’s house with his help. I promised myself that when it was done the empty look would disappear from Pop’s eyes, along with the empty feeling inside my chest. I made each nail and spike a memory, hammered and buried them all so hard and deep I’d never see them again. Neither would Pop. No one would take this house from us. Not this time. No one would destroy my father’s ranch. And hopefully not Regina’s. I slammed the hammer again. Harder and louder.
****
“Who shot Luke?” Jim leaned back in his chair the way he had ages ago, the way he always did. I stood at the front of his desk, just like I had when he told me I’d be marrying the widow Howard.
“I don’t know.” I looked out the window behind him. There was too much red. Red dust on the glass, red dirt beyond. Red hair stuck in my mind.
“Not Morrissey, though.” Jim pressed the tips of his fingers together in a tepee.
“No. Maybe someone scared, trying to stop my brother from shooting wild.”
“Can’t pin Morrissey with murder, then. Got him for other stuff, though, but not sure I can hang him. Yet.”
“If you don’t, I will.”
“Then Adler will have two dead sons. You finish that house. I’ll take care of Morrissey.” Jim shoved papers across his desk at me. “Got the papers written up to send to the woman you married. I’ve explained everything to her, said we’d pronounce Ben Miller dead, and she’s free to marry for real, if she wants.”
Tend to Regina. Doc would. I stared at the papers. Tried not to swallow in the too-quiet.
“That Mr. Gulliver was as guilty as Morrissey, it turns out.”
I looked up, He was? written on my face
“We got him. Part of the whole scheme that was indeed up north. As for the woman you married, I just need the deeds for the land you told me about, and I can make the land officially hers. Then we’ll be done with that part.”
“I have them.”
Jim’s eyebrows peaked. “You have them? You should have told me.”
I should have, but I hadn’t. I’d been holding on to them while I hammered one nail and one board at a time. Rebuilding here while I let go of there. “I didn’t trust that ranch manager of hers, so I grabbed both of them. Stole one out of his bunkroom and took the other from her bank. Didn’t leave them with her, even though I’d intended to.” She’d probably assumed I left the one under Jess’s mattress but likely knew better by now. Another reason not to trust me.
Jim grinned. “You’re turning into me. Good job. Bring them in, and we’ll get them official for her. In the meantime, I’m wiring her to expect these papers. She’ll be a proud ranch owner as Mrs. Whoever-She-Wants-To-Be soon.”
“That would be Mrs. Harris.” Doc’s wife.
“What?” Jim looked up.
“Nothing.”
Jim leaned even farther back in his chair. “You okay?”
“I’ll bring those deeds in tomorrow. She needs to get on with her life. And so do I. When can I get back to work?”
Jim stood. “Finish your father’s house. No work for you until I say so.”
Chapter 60
A man can mess up my plan when he’s here. How can he still mess it up when he’s gone? ~Regina
I slammed the drawer to my dresser and glared around my room. Where in the world was that deed Ben…Rex…took from the bank? It was supposed to be upstairs, but it wasn’t. It had to be somewhere here. Maybe he wasn’t even a Ranger. Maybe he simply preyed on me, like Ted first thought.
I went to my trunk and lifted the lid. The little bottle of “medicine” I’d finagled out of Doc for Jess was still there. Ready. He’d need it to travel as soon as I tricked Mr. Gulliver into giving me a copy. I’d come up with some reason for him to. Drat that Ben! Rex!
I marched to the kitchen to see if whichever-one-he-was had created some sort of hiding place of his own in the stones around the hearth. Like Flynn. I beat on every rock, and nothing budged. I was fed up with looking for men’s hiding places. Why didn’t they just do sensible things, like plan ahead and let everyone know what those plans were? I scoured the cabinets, emptied shelves, and even looted the pantry. Nothing. Scallywag!
I climbed the ladder to Jess’s loft to check more carefully one last time. Flynn’s clothes I no longer wore lay scattered where I’d tossed them across Jess’s room to look under the mattress.
I lifted the mattress again and dropped it back into place when I saw nothing under it. Again. I ransacked my own clothes and Flynn’s, as well. Again. Jess’s also. Ben must have stolen my deed, and it would be nearly impossible to wrangle a copy out of Mr. Gulliver. I didn’t have enough money from what Ben had got for my cups and saucers and tea towels both to bribe Flynn’s banker and buy our train tickets to New York.
I kicked one of Flynn’s boots across the room. Why had Ben, the liar, bothered to give me money anyway? Guilt, no doubt, since he’d done God knows what to my dishes and towels. I kicked Flynn’s other boot. It hit the chair and spun, something shooting from its top. Something sparkling and rattling as it skittered across the floor. It was small and shiny, definitely not my deed, but I chased after it anyway, and bent to pick it up. My comb. Its broken teeth. I turned it over. The comb I’d lost the day of Flynn’s funeral.
I looked around Jess’s loft, clamping my comb in my hand. He couldn’t climb up here. And I certainly hadn’t dropped the comb into Flynn’s boot. In fact, I’d worn those boots since the funeral. I sank down onto Jess’s bed. How? Who else but Ben? I threw myself backward. Ben. What a clever thief.
I sat back up. Of course. His loft!
Holding onto the comb, I clambered down Jess’s ladder, hurried outdoors to the barn, and scaled Ben’s, climbing it furiously until I reached the top. There I stopped. My eyes level with his floor, I stared at the place Ben had slept. At his bed. At the hay he’d bunched together, with a shirt lying nearby. I climbed on up and stood where he used to lie. I gathered his shirt and bunched it into a ball, held it over my mouth and nose. Everything smelled like him. His scent was there, even more powerful than that of dust and hay. I dropped dow
n onto a pile of straw, hit something hard with a crunch, and toppled off to the side. I rolled to all fours and stared at the lumpy straw where I’d sat. With Ben’s shirt around my hand, I brushed golden stems and blades aside until blue shone through. And white. Fine strokes of red and green on each piece. I blew at the straw, swiping away the rest, my cups and saucers showing through, even my tea towels. I fell back to my haunches and stared at my treasures.
Ben hadn’t sold them. Or he’d bought them himself—but left them behind. I laid out his shirt, gathered my china and tea towels within its long back, then bundled them like a sack. With Ben’s shirt in one hand and the broken comb in the other, I managed the rickety ladder and made my way to the barn’s floor.
“What’s all that?”
“You’re back?” I looked at Ted.
“Where’d you get that?” Ted reached for my comb.
“It’s my comb.” I twisted, keeping the comb out of his reach. “The one Flynn gave me, that I lost at his funeral.”
Ted glanced to the barn behind me. “Where’d you find it?”
Don’t trust Ted. I knew myself now that Ted couldn’t be trusted. “It’s no concern of yours.”
“And what’s that?” Ted nodded at Ben’s shirt hanging from my other hand.
“My china.” I lifted Ben’s shirt, thinking of the way the loft still smelled like him.
“He stole it from you?”
“No. He sold it for me; he paid me for it.”
“Probably not as much as he got.”
More than I expected, truthfully. Ben had done well.
Ted pointed to the comb. “Not right. Not right a man would keep something like that around.”
I tucked the comb into my pocket. “You’re right. No man should. But I never said Ben did.”
Chapter 61
When the smoke clears, a man can see forever. ~Rex
“Son, you building this house or destroying it?”
The ping of my hammer rang across the red dirt and plains, looking for a place to echo, but there was none. I straightened from the board I’d been nailing and swiped my shoulder across my brow. More red. Red dirt streaked and stained my shirt.
“Sorry, Pop.” I walked to his side. The two of us stood there looking at what we’d done. Together. Years ago, when Pop built the real ranch house, he’d done the hammering. Loud, like me now. The echo of his agony I hadn’t understood still rang in my memory. He’d wiped red sweat from his brow while I dragged boards and carried nails. I looked at my father. He must have hammered frustration out then, like I was hammering it out now.
“I miss Luke,” I said. Every board that rebuilt this house reminded me of him. How awful he was at hard work, how he complained, how he struggled to keep up yet stayed behind where he was comfortable. “I miss her, too.” I meant my stepmother. Pop and I stood in the quiet, the echo of hammers in our minds. He crossed his arms. I knew the discussion was done.
We’d worked around the one building left standing. The shed. Neither of us mentioned it. Pop never even offered to store our tools inside it. Maybe he knew what his wife used to do for me there. Maybe he was afraid, because it was the last thing he’d built left standing. He stooped to grab another board.
“We’ll build the barn back, too,” I said. I didn’t turn and look at the enormous black char on the ground behind me. Pop grunted as he dropped the next board where I could hammer it into place. That meant yes. I understood Pop’s noises the way Walter understood mine. They said just enough. But not enough.
As I hammered the next and the next boards, I tempered the strength I put behind each swing. Instead of the endless ping, I heard Luke, his constant harangue, his boyish chatter that needled me when it was aimed my way. Jess chattered when he was happy, grumbled when he hurt. I slammed the last nail hard, harder than the rest. The hammer vibrated, bounced out of my hand, and skidded through the red dirt.
“Son, you need to get away. Go ride. Go take a breather.” Pop needed a breather, too. Looking into his eyes, I saw hard hammering that never stopped.
“I can finish…”
“Go on. You need it.”
I let the hammer lie, hopped on Walter, and rode. I didn’t look back as Walter and I headed across red buttes and plains, but I knew what that hilltop would look like if I did—half a house, a man who looked…and felt…just like his son. This son. Not the one he and I had buried next to his ma, and both missed.
Walter and I rode a big loop through land we knew as well as our own. We’d covered this ground many times going to and from assignments, checking in with Jim and Pop, then leaving again.
The building Jim used for an office appeared below a long grade. “Come on, Walter. Let’s go see if Jim is about ready to have us back.”
Jim had a spark in his eye when he met me at his office door, the kind that said something good had come of his ways. “Sit down. Got news for you. Good news I’m going to pay you more for.”
I never sat in Jim’s office. I always stood, ready to go…except when he sent me to Liberal to marry the widow. I stood that time, too, but I wasn’t ready to go. I sat this time. Part of Pop’s breather I needed.
Jim rounded a desk covered in red dust and stacks of papers and dropped into his chair. He twisted my direction, tipped back, and grinned like a cat that had just cornered a mouse.
“You did good up there in Liberal,” he said. “Even better than you thought.” He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his desk. “Found the main guys, I’m pretty sure.”
I raised my brows. “Gulliver?”
“Naw, he was important, but not the most important. But he talked. Kind of a worm, wanting out. Willing to cooperate.”
“So, who was it?”
“It was a they. Carlisle and Morgan. They’re the heart of this scheme.”
I straightened.
“Little ranches were merely means of cash. So were investors from the East. And ranchers who didn’t know any better. That money went not just into their pockets but also toward the railroad land. Bought up or stole more and more, turned it over for a pretty profit.”
“You mean my pop’s ranch really was just for cash?” The house I’d burned? The barn and the rest of it? For nothing? For a place Morrissey never admired or intended to lay his head at all?
Jim nodded. “Yep. Bitter. Raises a man’s hackles to know some thief saw what had been a homestead and hard work as nothing but disposable.”
I saw red. Red fire, red flames, red words my little brother shouted at me as I ran from our burning ranch.
“Got dibs on Carlisle. He’s back east.”
Morgan. I was on my feet, spilling Jim’s chair over backwards. The dark finger that hadn’t stopped niggling through my black and empty gut coming to light. “Ted. Ted Morgan. I’m heading back to Liberal.” I saw red again, red hair, red danger. The man who had most likely killed Flynn. And Little Brother.
“Sit back down. You’re not going to Liberal. Already got men on the way.”
I stayed on my feet. Red hair waving through my mind. Ted and I had both ended up at the Howards’ place, with opposite goals in mind. Except neither of us wanted to marry the widow after all. That was then. I knew better now. I fixed my feet in the stance that said I was ready to go.
“You build that house for your father. I have other jobs for you coming up. For now, you’re to do as I say and stay put.”
“How close are your men? Would they be there by now?”
“Close enough.”
I wasn’t made to just stand there when my guts burned inside. I strode back outside to Walter. Walter, because he liked water. I looked to the north as the door to Jim’s office opened behind me. I turned to look at him as I latched onto Walter’s reins and my saddle horn.
Jim was leaning against the door jamb. “You need to collect yourself,” he said. “We’re getting your man, and I promise to take care of that one in the back.” Morrissey. The ruts and gouges on that weathered face deepened a
s one side of his mouth kicked up. I knew Jim would.
I mounted Walter without a word to Jim or a noise to my horse, and rode straight to my father’s ranch. Hard.
The ranch was quiet when Walter stopped in a cloud of red dust. Pop was gone, likely for a breather of his own. I dragged the saddle and bridle off Walter and slapped his rump to let him roam free, cool off, get a drink from one of the buckets that had survived the fire.
I stared north as he amiabled away. One of Regina’s words. I knew she meant amble, but I’d never told her I did. I stared through the house that was more than half built but looked half unbuilt. Unfinished business. Like Regina and her ranch, and other things I never told her. And the shed right here that stood not far away. “I can’t, Ma.” I shook my head. Too many memories that hammered nails hadn’t solved. Of her, of Luke, of the night I should have gone in there and dug up whatever it was she left. The tin box was probably disintegrated by now.
I walked to the pile of lumber, long boards waiting to be hammered into place.
The shed. I turned. It was as if Ma was tapping my shoulder when Liberal was on my mind. The shed.
“Dang it, Ma.”
I left the boards where they were and walked to the shed. I stood in the doorway, glanced around the square open space, light in long slits striping the floor and walls. The corner, the one my stepmother always used, lay flat and bare, two slivers of light making a cross on the spot.
Pop had brought a shovel from his house, along with other tools he didn’t store in this shed. I went to his pile and snatched the shovel off the ground. I bounced its tip on the hard dirt with every step—leaning into it like a crutch. Until I entered the shed. Stepping where the cross marked Ma’s spot, I dug a wide circle around where the tin used to be. The ground was softer in this old space, but still it resisted. I felt her smile, that motherly insistence as I kept at it until the dirt came loose. Setting the shovel aside, I nearly smiled myself, seeing Regina’s barn floor, all the holes she’d dug for some reason. Maybe for a treasure. I knelt near the rim of the hole I’d dug and pawed away the rest of the ground until I felt it. Tin. The box. The last token of my childhood.
The Lady's Arrangement (Help Wanted) Page 26