The Best Man

by Maggie Osborne

  That’s what she was thinking as she gradually became aware of an unusual warmth flowing down her left leg, followed by the realization of wetness. When she looked down, sunlight glistened on bright red blood soaking her trouser leg. She stared and blinked, astonished that she didn’t recall getting slashed, had felt nothing.

  Now she did. Pain, hot and searing, arched through her body, and she gasped and gripped her thigh above the gash in her trousers. Her eyelids fluttered and she swayed and sagged then slipped off her horse, falling to the trampled ground.

  Rage shook Dal’s body, communicating to his horse, making the animal restless and prancy. The buckskin also reacted with nervous edginess to the sight and smell of the dead cattle strewn along the banks of the river.

  “How many?” he snapped, staring at the wagon that had set off this disaster. The near side was smashed. Goods littered the ground. Beyond the wagon the few animals who had managed to get around it grazed on lush spring grasses.

  Caleb Webster shifted on his saddle and wiped a sleeve across his forehead. “I count forty-two carcasses. We’ll probably find more when we check farther down.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Dal bit down on his back teeth hard enough to make his lower face ache. “Get Drinkwater and your brother and move that wagon out of there.”

  Jerking savagely on the reins, he turned the buckskin away from the carcasses, rode upstream to a point where the water was clear and crossed there, emerging on the far side with boots and pant legs dripping.

  Grady waited beside his horse, studying the dead steers and shaking his head. “Christ a’mighty,” he murmured, then spit a stream of tobacco juice between his front teeth. “We can butcher up a couple, but no way can we make use of ’em all.”

  “What the hell happened?” Dal demanded, jerking his head toward the wagon. “How did that wagon get there just as we ran the leads into the water?”

  “Me and Peach got the wheels back on the chuck wagon and moved it and the remuda off that way.” Grady nodded toward the camp in the distance. “Our observers”—he paused to spit, contempt in the gesture—”crossed closer to town. Luther and Hamm rode in together.” He pushed back his hat and gave Dal a long expressionless look. “Caldwell drove the stuck wagon.”

  Dal’s thigh muscles tightened like cords of iron and the buckskin danced to one side.

  “First I noticed something wrong,” Grady continued, glancing at the mired wagon, “was when I seen Caldwell unhitching the horses. With no way to move the wagon, the minute those horses moved out the fat was in the fire.” He let a long beat pass and then added, “Course, if he hadn’t gotten the horses out, maybe we’d a still wrecked on the crossing plus had us two dead horses.”

  Without a word, Dal turned and rode toward the campsite. Every cell in his body urged him to close the distance fast and beat the living hell out of Caldwell. He forced himself to proceed at a trot, tried to gain control of his fury.

  Accidents happened on every drive. And plain bad luck, that happened, too. But a chain of coincidences? He wasn’t a man who believed in coincidence. Yet Caldwell just happened to be driving the wagon Luther Moreland usually drove. And Caldwell just happened to drive it along the riverbank instead of going directly to the campsite. And the wagon just happened to dip near enough to the bank that the wheels sank in mud. And this just happened to occur at the precise spot where the herd would cross and at the exact moment the lead steers entered the river.

  He tied the buckskin to the wheel of the chuck wagon, then strode toward the observers’ camp. Luther, Ward, and Caldwell stood when he approached and, to their credit, both Luther and Ward were white-faced, and obviously shaken.

  Caldwell wore a small half smile. “I guess you’re looking for me. Sorry for the trouble,” he said smoothly, pushing back the edges of his jacket to hook his thumbs in his vest pockets. “I wanted to watch the crossing. Guess I picked the wrong spot to do it. By the time I realized my mistake,” he shrugged, “the wagon was stuck.”

  It was a lie that couldn’t be disproved, so Dal didn’t even try. He hit Caldwell in the stomach, then as he doubled over, Dal caught him in the jaw hard enough to lay him out. His fury was so great that he would have kicked Caldwell’s ribs toward his spine if Luther hadn’t gripped him from behind.

  “What happened was an accident,” Luther said sharply.

  Dal spun and thrust his face forward. “Why the hell was Caldwell driving your wagon?”

  Luther’s eyebrows rose and a flush darkened his skin, but he didn’t back away. “Hamm had some legal questions about the sale of his store and asked if I would ride with him.” Luther placed a hand on Dal’s sleeve. “You’re out of line. It was just bad luck.”

  He didn’t believe it. Eyes narrowed down hard, he watched Caldwell sit up and rub his jaw. “If you pull another stunt like this,” he warned, speaking between his teeth, “I’ll break both of your legs and leave you to crawl to the nearest town.”

  Caldwell muttered an obscenity and pushed to his feet. “I won’t forget this, Frisco.”

  “I’ll make sure you don’t.” Dal took a step forward and would have beaten the sneer off of Caldwell’s mouth if he hadn’t heard Alex scream. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw Drinkwater riding toward the chuck wagon, carrying Les in front of him. Even at a quarter of a mile, he saw the blood glistening on her trousers.

  Sprinting back to the chuck wagon, he tossed Alex her crutch, then started opening drawers and bins on the chuck box. “Where are the medical supplies?” he demanded, frustrated.

  “Top drawer on the left,” Alex whispered, her gaze fixed on the approaching horse. “I’ll need a basin of water, the whiskey, a needle and catgut, and bandages.”

  “I’ll get the water,” Hamm said, running toward the barrel.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Dal snarled, looking at the bottle of medicinal whiskey he held in his hand. “Luther? Get him away from here!”

  “That’s Les,” Hamm said hotly, scarlet pulsing in his face. “I have a right to be with her.”

  “Listen, you pompous idiot. The widow Roark came forty-two beeves closer to winning your fiancee’s inheritance today. Do you want to hand over the rest of the herd by being where you’re not supposed to be? Do you think Caldwell is going to look aside at any infraction?” His hand tightened on the whiskey bottle. “Get back where you belong.”

  Hamm backed away, his face red and filled with hate.

  Behind him Alex called, “Put her on this sheet.” She was up on her crutch, awkwardly shaking out a bedsheet. Drinkwater slipped off his horse and caught Les in his arms when she toppled, then he carried her to Alex. She ripped open Les’s pant leg, exposing a long deep gash across her thigh. Dal heard her suck in a sharp breath, then he relinquished the whiskey bottle, took Drinkwater’s arm, and led him away from the women.

  “What happened?” He knew the answer, but asked anyway. When he heard about Drinkwater finding Les laid out on the ground, he nodded and swore under his breath. “Any other injuries?”

  “The usual bumps, bruises, and cuts,” Drinkwater said, clenching his fists and turning a grim face toward the river when Les screamed. “Hate to hear a woman hurting,” he mumbled.

  Dal didn’t look toward the sheet either. “As soon as the wagon is cleared out, we’ll bring the rest of the herd across,” he said, his voice clipped and angry. He listened to Les’s screams until she fainted, and he kept thinking it could have been Freddy. Freddy laid out with her thigh gashed open and pouring blood. He wasn’t squeamish, but his stomach tightened.

  He let another minute pass before he returned to the observers’ camp to speak to Luther, passing Hamm standing between the two campfires. Dal resented his presence, but the woman leaking blood all over the sheet was the woman Hamm planned to marry.

  He stopped. “She’s going to be weak, and she’ll hurt like hell, but she isn’t going to die.”

  Hamm glared and his lip curled. “You’re not God. You don’t
know if she’ll die!”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said tersely. “You put men and longhorns together and a few men are going to get gashed. I’ve seen it before.” He continued forward, stopping when Caldwell stood up beside the fire. It pleased him that Caldwell already had a dark bruise rising on his jaw. Luther looked at both men then hastened forward.

  “How bad is it?” Luther asked anxiously.

  “Bad enough. Laudanum will keep the pain manageable, but she’ll be plenty uncomfortable and unable to ride for at least a week. We need a ruling, Luther. Is she out of it? Or do we put her on the chuck wagon with Alex and give her a week to get back in the saddle?”

  “What would you do if it was one of the Webster boys?” Luther asked, examining his face. “Would you leave him in Austin and hire on a new man?”

  That was exactly what he would have done rather than move the herd with one man short. On the other hand, he’d already planned to rest the herd and graze them for forty-eight hours. That cut a shorthanded week to five days. He glanced back at the bloody bed-sheet.

  She’d worked hard, and she deserved better than losing her chance at Joe’s inheritance simply because she’d been doing the job and run into a bad-luck beeve.

  “I’d let the drover have a say in the decision,” he answered carefully. “Is there anything in the conditions of the will that prohibits Les from staying on if she wants to? Anything that says she’s out if she can’t work for a week?”

  “I’ll check.” Luther looked toward the river. “How many cattle were lost?”

  “Forty-two at first count. There’ll be a few more.”

  “That’s fifty-three down at the three-week point.”

  And a long way to go. Those were the unspoken words. Dal rolled his shoulders, feeling the tension between the blades. “Caldwell deliberately caused this disaster. I want him off the drive and right now.”

  Luther met Dal’s unyielding gaze. “I’ll warn Caldwell to be more careful in the future, but I can’t put him off the drive without hard proof of wrongdoing.”

  Frustration knotted the muscles in his neck. “What the hell do you want? A signed confession?”

  “I need something more than suspicion or ejecting Caldwell will look like bias on my part. If that happened, Lola could contest the outcome and tie up the inheritance for years.” Luther turned a pained glance toward Les and the bloody sheet. “I suppose there’s no way to keep Hamm away from her.”

  Something in his voice made Dal’s gaze sharpen. “That’s another one I’d like to throw off this drive. Say the word and he’s gone.”

  “Les wants him here. Still, he seems to upset her.” He dragged a hand through his hair and anger glinted in his eyes. “There’s something you need to understand. Joe set very specific rules and guidelines. I can’t eject Mrs. Roark’s representative based on suspicion, no matter how strongly I might agree with you. If I did that, Mrs. Roark could rightly insist that I be relieved of my duty and replaced. She’d file a lawsuit faster than you can ride around that herd. Bring me proof that Caldwell is cheating, then we can get rid of him. And you can’t eject Ward Hamm because neither of us likes him. He’s Les’s fiancé, and she’s entitled to have him here as long as he doesn’t interfere with her work. The guidelines specifically allow for Hamm to accompany the drive as long as he abides by the rules set for the observers, which he is doing.”

  “So we’re stuck with the little son of a bitch,” Dal said, walking away. He stopped beside the edge of the sheet. Blood was everywhere. On Alex’s hands and skirt, soaked into Les’s pant leg and the sheet.

  “She fainted again, thank God,” Alex muttered, brushing the back of a hand across her forehead, leaving a red smear. “If I can keep from fainting myself, I’ll finish the stitching. I hate this, I hate this, I hate this!”

  He gazed down at a tourniquet and the neat stitches below it, then he kicked at a rock and strode toward his horse. He had a herd to move.

  It was only later that he realized he’d been expecting Freddy to abandon the stragglers and come charging into camp. Either she had meant it when she claimed she didn’t care about her sisters, or a certain reckless, willful actress was developing a little discipline and responsibility.

  Freddy felt wild inside. First she had heard that Les was dead, then crippled, then being tended by Alex on the other side of the river. She frantically wanted to check it out herself, wanted to see with her own eyes how badly Les was injured. But she couldn’t.

  To ensure that no more trouble arose, Dal had ordered the main herd broken into six smaller herds, each of which would cross the Colorado separately. Freddy and James worked the last of the smaller herds, riding circle to hold three hundred agitated beeves together. James couldn’t have held them by himself, so Freddy was stuck until they crossed the river.

  Trembling with frustration, she rode around the small herd, worrying about Les.

  For most of her life she had worried about Les. As a toddler, Les had been prone to wander down to the barns and sheds, and it had been Freddy’s and Alex’s responsibility to see that she didn’t even though they weren’t much older themselves. Then Les had taken to following after them, wanting to do everything they did, wanting to dress like they did, wear her hair like they did. Why that had annoyed Freddy so much, she couldn’t remember, but it had.

  She remembered helping Les with her lessons, showing her embroidery stitches, doing Les’s mending because Les never did it right. Then had come the adolescent years and the arguments began in earnest. Les had been like a clinging vine that she perpetually fought to be free of. Even after she returned to King’s Walk following her acting debacle, her perspective broadened, she had found nothing to admire in Les. When she looked at her younger sister she saw weakness and dependency, and she saw or imagined she saw Joe’s favoritism for his youngest daughter.

  In retrospect, it occurred to Freddy that Joe’s partiality to Les was understandable, though she hadn’t recognized this until recently. Alex had run off to the East and was gone. Freddy had shamed Joe by leaving with the acting troupe. Until Lola arrived, Joe would have seen Les as his housekeeper and the companion of his declining years. Until Les brought Ward Hamm to the house, she had given Joe no reason for disappointment.

  Ashamed of the jealousy she had felt, Freddy rubbed her forehead. There was more to Les than she had ever suspected. Until this drive she hadn’t imagined that Les could be persistent or determined, or courageous. She had never considered Les good at anything except looking to others to solve her problems.

  But now she was developing a secret but growing admiration for her sister. Les moaned and groaned, complained and let every new challenge terrify her, then she quietly buckled down and mastered whatever she had to learn.

  Finally, she and James crossed the Colorado, ran their small herd onto the bedding grounds, and Freddy was free to find out what had happened. She cantered directly to Dal, who sat on his buckskin, scowling at the herd.

  She rode close enough to grip his sleeve, feeling his muscles tighten and swell beneath her touch. “How is she?”

  “Drifting in an ocean of laudanum,” he said as she dropped her hand. “Alex put twenty-six stitches in her thigh. She lost a lot of blood, and she’s weak, but she’ll recover.”

  The light was fading fast but still strong enough that she could see the strain etching his face. She gave her hand an unconscious shake, hoping to cast off the hot tingle that touching him had caused. “How many did we lose?”

  “Forty-six at last count,” he said before he turned the buckskin toward camp.

  For Freddy, it had always been a man’s eyes that caught her attention, and that’s what she’d first noticed about Dal. Blue, blue eyes that could be cool or hot, penetrating or soft. She’d seen strength and character in his eyes, and emotion. He could control his expression and usually did, but his eyes gave him away. Studying him now, she saw simmering rage and beneath it the heat that flickered in the depths of his gaze when
he looked at her, heat that licked out at her and dried her mouth and made her stomach suddenly roll and tighten.

  Swallowing hard, she brought her horse up beside him. As always, when she saw the campfire glowing ahead of her at the beginning of evening, she started to feel the aches and pains of a long workday. Her forehead, nose, and cheeks felt tight and hot from the day’s dose of burning sunshine. Her thighs ached from endless hours in the saddle. Her arms felt like stone weights hanging from her shoulders. This was the lonely time of day.

  Keeping her gaze on the campfire, she asked quietly. “Is it true that Jack Caldwell mired the wagon that caused all the trouble?”

  “Yes.”

  Pressing her lips in a line, she nodded shortly and added Les to her list of grievances. If Jack hadn’t been careless, Les wouldn’t have gotten hurt.

  “What happens now?” In the shadowy darkness his profile looked as if it were cast in stone. “Is Les off the drive? That wouldn’t be fair, Dal. Les has worked hard, she’s learned what she had to learn, done everything you’ve asked from her. I can handle the drag until she’s well enough to work again. I swear I can.”

  “Luther’s checking to see if Joe provided for a situation like this.”

  “But you’ll have a say in it,” she guessed. Reaching, she touched him again, letting her fingers linger. Not to persuade, but to comfort herself. That surprised her. “Please don’t punish Les for something that wasn’t her fault.”

  It sounded like habit, like she was trying to solve another problem for Les. But that wasn’t how it felt. There was no long-simmering resentment beneath her plea, no sense of trying to help Les because Les wouldn’t or couldn’t help herself.

  “Is this another practice scene, Freddy?” The darkness was now deep enough that she couldn’t see his expression. “Please, Mr. Villain, don’t tie my sister to the railroad tracks?”

  She jerked her hand away as if the iron muscles beneath her fingertips had scorched her. “I lied to you that night,” she said in a low voice, her cheeks suddenly hot. “I wasn’t acting, I just…” Her chin lifted and she bit off the words. She didn’t want him to know how often she relived his kisses and the touch of his callused hands moving on her skin, driving her wild with desire. “I’m asking you to give Les a chance because she deserves it.”