And as if to pile on the agony, she came back outside. She'd put on an apron and filled the pockets with cornmeal, and now she was tossing it to the flock of laying hens he and her boy had tried their damnedest to scare to death a moment ago. The wind unfurled strands of her loosely upswept hair and pressed her skirts to her legs. The love he felt for her burned so hot and fast that his eyes blurred. She was beautiful. Beautiful in that fragile way that made a man wonder if such a thing was meant to last. If such a thing was ever meant to be.
Home. Everything he wanted was right here, and all of it belonged to his brother.
Beside him Gus pushed off the fence rail, gripping it hard with his big hands. Rafferty could feel his brother's eyes on him. He didn't have to look to know they were filled with a pained bewilderment. Gus sensed that things were wrong between them, but he was unable to understand what they were. And Rafferty vowed for the thousandth time to do all in his power to ensure that Gus would never understand.
She went back inside the house, taking the boy with her. Rafferty tried to clear the gritty feeling out of his throat and sought words to bridge the distance between him and his brother. "The snowpack was gone already from the mountains when I passed through," he said.
"And the hay is thin," Gus said, seizing the topic eagerly. "Could be there's a drought in the making."
"It's already been hot enough this summer to put hell out of business," Rafferty said.
"And only to get worse, I reckon."
"Speakin' of worse, I heard a rumor in Rainbow Springs that the old man is back in town."
"Well, hell." Gus frowned so hard his mustache quivered, and Rafferty smiled to himself. Jack McQueen had finally worn out his welcome in the RainDance country about two years ago, and they hadn't seen hide nor hair nor patch of him since. Until now. Their father did have a way of rubbing and pinching at Gus like a too-small boot, and it gave Rafferty a mean satisfaction to know his brother was going to have that aggravation back in his life.
Charlie banged back out the kitchen door just then, carrying a bucket of slops to the pigsty, a new addition to the ranch since Rafferty had left. The boy had to stand on tiptoe to empty the bucket of swill down the chute into the feeding trough. The pigs squealed, and Charlie laughed.
"I bought us a couple weaners while you were gone," Gus said.
Rafferty cocked a smile in his brother's direction. "Yeah, so I can hear."
He waited for her to come back outside and ached when she didn't. The hunger was constant within him, to be with her and look at her and talk to her, whether half a hay meadow separated them or a thousand miles. Yet it was torture to be with her and not touch her, and so when he could bear it no longer, he took himself away.
And when he could no longer bear being alone, he brought himself back.
The fence rail was rough against Rafferty's back, the wind warm on his face. The grass beneath his boots was springy soft, and it was his. At least his name was on the deed.
He cast a sideways look at his brother's profile. Not for the first time he wondered at the capriciousness of a fate that had brought him and his brother back together seven years ago.
"You ever ponder the strangeness of it, Gus," he said aloud, "that you and I would come to cross paths in a country this big and empty?"
Gus's face broke into his sun-bright smile. "Not so strange, little brother. When I decided to go looking for you, a cattle drive was the first place I thought of. You had the cow fever powerfully bad the summer that... the summer Ma and I left. You used to talk all the time about running away and joining up with some outfit."
Did he? Trust Gus to latch onto a bit of idle wishing and build it into the sort of pie-in-the-sky dreams Gus had always befuddled his own mind with. No, the only dream the boy Zach McQueen had ever had he'd kept hidden deep inside himself, safe where it wouldn't get broken. Home. God, he wondered what his brother would say if he knew that all he had ever really wanted, all he'd ever dreamed about, was having a home.
"What happened to that dream, Zach?"
Rafferty started and the blood rushed to his face. Then he realized Gus's thoughts were still back on the cattle drive, and he huffed a shaky laugh. "Nothin'. I lived it. And it didn't take me long to figure out that punchin' cows ain't exactly the easiest way to make a living."
"And what about the ranch?"
He pretended to misunderstand. "You appear to be getting along just fine here without me, so I thought I'd chase up some mustangs and run them on over to the Dakotas between now and the fall roundup. I hear the army over there is buying and paying prime."
"Aw, Zach. You've only just got back." Gus paused to chew on the end of his mustache, and Rafferty thought he was probably trying to figure out a way to nudge the conversation in the direction he wanted it to go. "The dollars you bring in are welcome, but I reckon it's more a thirst for excitement and the chance to pass a good time that keeps pulling you away from us." He took off his hat and thrust his fingers through his hair. "Lord, don't you think it's about time you quit gallivanting around and grew up and settled down?"
Rafferty nearly laughed out loud. Gus thought he actually liked riding shotgun up on the box of a bone-jarring stagecoach, putting up with runaway teams and half-drunk drivers, getting his nose and mouth clogged with dust in the summer and freezing his ass off in the winter, catching sleep on a dirt floor, and wolfing down indigestible food.
Gus telling him to grow up and settle down.
Gus all the time thinking that his little brother was so damn tough.
Gus's hand fell on his shoulder, but he removed it when Rafferty stiffened. "Clem and I, we need you. We... need you here, with us, is all."
Rafferty looked at his brother's face, at the sky-blue eyes that were their father's, and the tawny hair that was their mother's, and the smile that was uniquely his. What did you have to go and marry her for, brother? We were getting along fine just the two of us. Except they hadn't been getting along well at all. They were too different. It was as if they looked at life through opposite ends of a telescope. Like most of Gus's dreams, the idea of the ranch and the two of them making up a family was too grandiose and beautiful to be real.
The old disquiet filled him again, gripping his chest like an actual pain. The yearning was keen within him to get on his horse and ride out of here, ride away from this ranch that wasn't really his and never would be. It would hurt to give up the dream, but he was tough enough to stand it. He was supposed to be tough enough to stand anything.
But he wasn't so tough that he could leave her. At least not yet.
Gus pushed out a sigh to fill the silence. "Well, at least stick around until after the Fourth of July. The town's fixing to put on some big doings this year."
Charlie banged out through the kitchen door again, the zinc bucket clasped to his chest. It was his sixth trip to the trough with the bucket. Whatever Clementine was fixing for supper, it was generating a lot of slops.
One of the pigs rammed hard against the logs of its box and squealed loudly. Charlie dropped the bucket and ran shrieking to Gus. "Papa, that pig got angry!"
The pigs were making a lot of noise, too much noise. Gus swung the boy up on his shoulders, and they ambled over for a look at the sty.
The pigs, a sow and a boar, were pink with black spots, bristly backbones, rotund bellies, and big lop ears. The boar stood in the middle of the pen with his feet splayed and his eyeballs rolling in his head like balls in a roulette wheel, and squealing so loud his snout flapped. The sow was trying to stand up. She would get on her two front feet and try to hoist herself up on the back two, whereupon the front two would slide wide apart like a kid learning how to ice skate, and she'd collapse snout-first into the straw.
Gus gripped his son's squirming body to anchor him on his shoulders as he leaned over the fence. "They look..."
"Drunk," Rafferty said, and laughter welled up and out of him in great whoops that felt good. Good and cleansing.
"They'
re hungry!" Charlie bellowed in his father's ear. "Feed 'em again!"
The noise had brought Clementine running out of the house, although she slowed some when she saw that Charlie was safe in her man's arms. She too leaned over the fence for a better look at the distressed pigs.
The sow had finally gotten all four legs underneath her, but she swayed from side to side like a weathercock in a storm. The smell of beer, heady and yeasty, seeped up from the trough.
Clementine's fists landed on her hips, her nose went into the air, and she swung an accusing gaze over to Rafferty.
Laughing still, he flung up his hands as if she were all set to spit bullets. "Hey, don't look at me. You were the one kept putting all them buckets of home brew into Charlie's innocent little hands."
Her mouth pulled and puckered. She covered it with her palm, but sounds escaped, giggles and gentle snuffles. "He kept saying, 'More, more. They want more, more.' I thought you two were out here tying on a big one."
Charlie shrieked and pulled at his father's hair.
"I reckon they'll live," Gus said around his own laughter. "But they're going to have one hell of a head come morning."
The boar lifted his snout in the air and trumpeted like a moose, then fell on his face in the dirt, and they all laughed some more. "I need to dig up some carrots for tonight's supper," Clementine said a moment later. Her gaze met Rafferty's for an instant, then skittered away. "To go along with the chicken we're having so unexpectedly. You'll share it with us, won't you?"
He flashed a careless smile at her. "I reckon my stomach can just about handle your cooking after six months of practice on stagecoach fare."
"Oh, you!" She laughed like a young girl and punched him lightly on arm. And even that touch, innocent, done only in fun and without thought, brought the hunger bludgeoning through him with such force he shuddered.
Clementine whipped the spoon so vigorously through the cream it thudded against the wooden bowl. The motion stirred her skirts until they swayed around her small hips. The setting sun lanced through the kitchen window, tinting her cheeks. The smell of the fresh-baked apple pie they were having for dessert was sweet in the air, but underneath it he could still detect her own special scent: wild rose and warm woman. The breathy gusts of a late afternoon wind and the thud of the spoon were the only sounds to disturb the silence.
Rafferty didn't want to be here. It was too easy to pretend this was his kitchen, his wife. A hard, hollow ball of longing built and got stuck in his throat. He tipped a whiskey bottle over his empty coffee cup and poured it full. He drained the cup, trying to wash the longing back down with the booze. He ignored his brother's disapproving frown. Sometimes there just wasn't anything else to do but drink against the great loneliness that filled a man.
Rafferty sat sprawled in his chair, one arm hooked over the back. Gus sat across the table from him, hunched forward, his hands pressed together over his coffee cup as if in prayer. Clementine stood between them, beating at the cream to pour over the pie. The kitchen was definitely too quiet now without the boy's constant chatter. Charlie, exhausted from his busy day and the excitement over his uncle's homecoming, had fallen asleep during supper and been put to bed. The collection of arrowheads he'd been playing with lay scattered over the white oilcloth, the chipped obsidian glittering in the fading light.
She paused a moment in the whipping of her cream and smoothed her apron over the soft swell of her belly. The thought of her pregnant again left Rafferty feeling as if he'd been gutted. Barely a year ago she had nearly died from a stillbirth and here she was expecting again. Three babies in four years. What the hell was Gus—a rutting beast? A ruefulness twisted Rafferty's mouth. As if he would be able to leave Clementine alone if she shared his bed.
If she shared his bed... God, just once. If he could have her just once. There was a lot of what was noble and pure in what he felt for her, but it just wasn't in him to love a woman chastely. He wanted to feel her underneath him, he wanted to taste her skin, her mouth...
"Did you stop off and see Hannah on your way?" Gus said into the silence.
The spoon stopped in mid-beat. "I saw her," Rafferty said.
He toyed with the handle of his coffee cup. He knew that if he looked up he would see pain in Clementine's eyes. Hannah was her dearest friend, but he sensed she had a hard time bearing the thought of him touching any other woman, loving any other woman. Good, he thought sourly. I hope it hurts you to think of me in bed with her. Because it sure as hell hurts me to think of you in bed with my brother.
He drank more whiskey to wash away the thought. It made it seem as if he was only using Hannah to punish Clementine, and that wasn't true. Even he wasn't that much of a son of a bitch. He was fond of Hannah—loved her, maybe—and he'd always tried to be as good to her as it was in his nature to be.
A frown was pulling at Gus's mouth, putting a crease between his brows. "You ought to marry her, Zach. It isn't right, your... your visiting her regular like you do and for all these years. She won't ever be thought of as respectable as long as you won't marry her."
"Hannah's not the marryin' sort. And neither am I." And it ain't none of your business, brother, he told Gus with his eyes. Gus's mouth tightened, though he said nothing more.
Rafferty thought of last night. They were both so damned afraid of being alone, he and Hannah, and so they clung to each other. In the beginning the loving had been so good between them, and there'd been plenty of easy laughter. But somewhere along the way the good loving and the easy laughter had stopped being enough.
He thought of that boy, that rock-buster, and he wondered if the boy would be the one to take Hannah away from him.
And thoughts of the boy led him to thoughts of the mine, and he said, "There was an accident at the FourJacks last night. Cable on the hoisting car broke and a young nipper was killed."
Clementine gasped, the spoon clattering against the bowl.
Gus frowned, shrugging. "We got no say in how the consortium runs the mine, Zach. You know that."
"Oh, Gus," Clementine said. "I told you we should sell those shares."
His hand slammed down hard on the table, rattling the dishes. "And I told you, girl, not to concern yourself with it!"
A dark band of color stained her cheeks and her fingers gripped the spoon so tight her knuckles whitened.
Rafferty had to squeeze his coffee cup with both hands to keep them from curling into fists. A primal rage coursed through him that someone would speak so to his woman. It didn't matter that he had no claim to her, that the man who'd spoken was her husband. On a level that went deeper than what was right or real, she was his.
Gus and his wife shared a long, hard, angry look. "I want us to sell those shares," she said. She turned to Rafferty. "Tell him to sell."
"Sell," Rafferty said.
Gus swung his riled eyes onto his brother. "You got no say in it."
Rafferty drew in a deep breath and let it out in a silent sigh. He knew his brother's anger was born of his frustration at having seen so little money from the mine. Pogey and Nash— and Gus with his twenty percent share—were supposed to get half the profits on all the ore that yielded at least twenty-five percent silver, but the consortium was always careful to mix enough worthless rock in with the ore so that the books rarely showed a yield of over twenty-five percent.
Gus still dreamed of getting rich, though, and living the high life off silver ore. It probably didn't set well with these dreams to learn that a fifteen-year-old boy had died in the shafts he technically owned.
"With the money we are making off that mine," Gus said, "we can buy us some more thoroughbred bulls come fall."
"You got big plans, do you, brother?" Rafferty said. "There was talk in town about you looking to get elected to the Territorial Assembly."
The color came up hard in Gus's face, but he shook his head. "Naw, that's just talk, is all. I don't know about you, Zach, but I want to make my fortune whilst I'm young so's I can calf around
in my old age. What are you going to do when you're too gimpy to bust broncs and rope cattle?"
"Shoot myself, I reckon."
He looked over at Clementine. She had set down the spoon, and now her hand lay on the table. He wanted to press his own hand hard on hers until they became one flesh.
He scraped back his chair, plucking up the half-empty whiskey bottle. "I think I'll turn in early. We all've got a busy week ahead of us if we're ever going to get that hay put up."
"Don't you want any pie?" Gus said.
Rafferty tilted the bottle at his brother's face and smiled, doing it just to irritate the man. "Whiskey makes a better dessert."
"Zach..." Gus stretched to his feet. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked at the toes of his boots. "It's true, what I told you earlier. I didn't just stumble across you, I went looking. Serious looking... It took me over four years to find you."
Rafferty turned startled eyes on his brother. Clementine wiped her hands on her apron, not looking at either of them.
Gus raised his head and Rafferty saw real feeling there. Love, maybe. Probably. "It's good to have you home again," Gus said thickly. "Maybe now you'll think about staying this time."
"It's good to be home," he said, promising nothing, but even so, the words tasted like alkali dust in his mouth.
Rafferty left his brother's house and crossed the hay meadow to the old buffalo hunter's cabin. When he got within the shadows of the cottonwoods he looked back. They had come out onto the porch to watch him on his way. Gus stood behind Clementine, his chin on her head, his arms wrapped around her just below her breasts. This far away it was hard to tell whether she welcomed her husband's embrace. But of course she welcomed it. She loved Gus. She'd told him that the one and only time she'd ever spoken of loving him.
Rafferty went into the cabin, shut the door, and leaned against it. It was dark inside, with only the one window and the sun having fallen behind the hills. The place smelled musty, unlived-in.
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