Heart of Stone

by Ari McKay

  “Yeah, I don’t care for it myself,” Stone replied. “So you didn’t notice anyone gone, and since you don’t smoke, you weren’t out there yourself.”

  “Nope.” Hendry smiled smugly. “Is that all? Can I go now?”

  “Just one more thing.” Stone kept his voice light. “Nobody saw you helpin’ get the horses out or helpin’ with the buckets. So exactly where were you?”

  That wiped the smile off Hendry’s face, and he glared at Stone. “You accusin’ me of somethin’?”

  “More like wonderin’.” Stone tilted his head toward Luke. “Seems someone saw you in the stable, but you weren’t near the horses or fightin’ the fire. Or at least not helpin’ to put it out.”

  Hendry’s eyes widened, and he looked at Luke. “You sayin’ it was me?” He pushed his chair back and leaped to his feet. “You’re a liar!”

  “Then why don’t you tell us what you were doin’ in the back of the stable.” Luke’s voice was admirably calm, but Stone saw his hand move to the butt of his gun. “If you’ve got a good explanation, why then, we’ll let you go on your way. If not, then we might have to pay a call on the sheriff.”

  Hendry jutted out his chin and clenched his hands into fists. “I weren’t in the back of the stable, and you can’t prove otherwise.” He was obviously determined to bluff it out. “It’s your word against mine, Reynolds. If you bring in the sheriff, there ain’t a thing he can do to me. And you got it in for me, don’t you? Because I don’t like workin’ for no dirty, red—” He stopped suddenly, realizing what he’d been about to say, and his gaze flicked to Stone.

  “Dirty, red-skinned Indian?” Stone supplied quietly. He already knew how Hendry viewed him, so he wasn’t surprised by the insult, and it didn’t mean much to him anyway, coming from a liar like Hendry. “Yeah, I know what you think of me, and no, Luke didn’t tell me. I heard for myself. I didn’t fire you because I believe a man can do a good job without havin’ to like the man he works for overmuch.”

  Stone paused, glaring at Hendry, and when he spoke again, his voice was as hard as iron. “But I won’t stand for a liar who endangers the lives of my men, their horses, and their livelihood. Now I got a question for you, and you can answer truthfully or you can lie, but I guarantee you, I already know you ain’t smart enough to do all you done just for spite. I mean more than the fire. You done that to cover up somethin’ about the water tank fallin’ over, and it ain’t much of a stretch for me to think maybe you had somethin’ to do with the windmill breakin’ and the cattle that went missin’, too. If you confess like a man and tell me who put you up to this and why, I might let you go. But if you lie, I’m goin’ to shoot you right here and now and prove it was you when nothin’ else happens to the ranch.”

  Hendry stared at Stone, his jaw falling open in shock. “You wouldn’t shoot me in cold blood! That would be murder!”

  “Would it?” Stone drew his gun, pulled back the hammer, and leveled it at Hendry. “Maybe I’m just enough of a dirty, red-skinned Indian I don’t much care. Now are you goin’ to talk?”

  “Don’t be lookin’ to me for help.” Luke’s voice was hard and cold. “After all you’ve done to tear down what I helped Miss Priscilla build, I’ll just look the other way so I can say I didn’t see nothin’ if he shoots you.”

  Hendry looked back and forth between Luke and Stone and licked his lips in a gesture that betrayed his nervousness. He glanced in desperation at the door, as though he might actually try to run, but then he shook his head.

  “I ain’t takin’ a bullet. I don’t care how much money he’s payin’ me.” He looked at Stone with bitter dislike. “You want to know who’s after you? Well I’ll tell you. It’s your dandified cousin, James. He hired me and Colter to come here and get jobs before he arrived, and he told us to mess things up good. He wanted to run you off, and I guess he figured you’d leave if things got bad. When you didn’t, he told us to make things worse, so we did. Colter even put a burr under your saddle blanket so your horse’d throw you, and we thought for sure that’d do it, but you’re more stubborn than he thought.”

  “James did it?” Stone shouted, unable to believe that a man who’d claimed kin on him, even one as annoying and full of himself as James, would be such a low down, no good, back-stabbing snake. “What did I ever do to him?” He looked at Luke in total shock. “Why would he do somethin’ like that?”

  Luke looked like he’d been hit upside the head, and he stared at Stone with wide eyes. “I didn’t realize, but James must be who she was talkin’ about!”

  At Stone’s bewildered look, Luke seemed to shake himself out of his shock and offered an explanation. “When she got sick, Miss Priscilla told me about her will because she wanted to be sure I was willin’ to stay and run the ranch until her heir turned up. She didn’t even know if you were still alive, so she set it up so I’d be in charge for a year while the lawyers looked for you. She didn’t mention any names other than yours, though, so I didn’t realize James Rivers was the one who stood to inherit if you were dead or they couldn’t find you.” He paused, glowering at Hendry. “Or if you either gave up the ranch or didn’t prove you could run it right in the first year.”

  “What?” Stone was completely at a loss. He remembered the lawyers saying something about “defaults” and “codicils” and other fancy words he hadn’t understood, but he’d been too stunned by the thought of having someone give him a ranch to really pay much attention to what they meant. He knew he had to make things work; it never crossed his mind he could fail, so he hadn’t worried about someone else getting the place in his stead.

  James stood to get Copper Lake if Stone gave up, and damned if the man hadn’t come out here specifically to make that happen! Stone rose to his feet, not sure if he was glad or not James wasn’t the one he was staring at down his barrel. “I want you and Colter to get the hell off my ranch! You ain’t takin’ nothin’ that you didn’t bring with you, and you should feel damned lucky I ain’t puttin’ a bullet in your skull. But you’re a fool, and you’ll get what’s comin’ to you eventually. Just make sure you go a long, long ways from here, because if I ever see your face or hear your name again, I’m comin’ for you, and I will shoot you dead.”

  Hendry swallowed hard, looking as though he was afraid Stone might shoot him anyway, but he nodded and backed up to the door. Then in a flash, he was gone, and Stone sat down heavily, unable to believe he’d been the target of so much greed and hatred. He’d known James was a dandy and a fool, but he’d never guessed James was so viciously evil. “I should’ve known. I didn’t trust him, but I never thought he was this much of a snake.”

  “Me, neither.” Luke watched Hendry’s retreat with obvious disgust. “I thought he was just a lazy moocher.”

  Stone put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands, tired and depressed. He was angry, too. What man wouldn’t be, given the wreck James had tried to make of his life? But mostly, he was tired of everything being so damned complicated.

  “What do I do now?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. “I don’t know if I should shoot him, beat the pure livin’ daylights outta him, turn him over to the sheriff, or maybe all three.”

  “If it was me, I’d tell him I knew what he’d tried to do and march him right down to the sheriff’s office,” Luke suggested. “Spendin’ time in jail would be a hell of a lot worse punishment for someone like him than just shootin’ him.”

  “I suppose.” Stone looked at Luke, taking in the features of the man who’d come to mean more to him than anyone else. Once again, Luke was standing by him through all the disasters and strife; it made Stone feel like he was almost as bad as James, taking from Luke all the time, when Luke didn’t pressure him for anything in return. And here he was, locked in a prison of his own making, not knowing how to reach out to Luke and try to make it better.

  He stood up and took a step toward Luke. “I can’t take it bein’ like this, Luke.”

  There wa
s a sudden loud banging on the kitchen door, and Shorty stuck his head in, grinning broadly at them. “’Scuse me, boss, but we just got back from town. We had some good luck! We ran into the reverend when we stopped at the sawmill. The lumber came in for the expansion on the church, but when he heard about the stable, he said we could take it instead! If you don’t mind puttin’ the stable up in a different place, we could start rebuildin’ right away.”

  Stone was torn between throttling Shorty for the untimely interruption and hugging him for bringing the one bit of good news they’d had in weeks. He raked his fingers through his hair, gave Luke a look of wry frustration, and nodded to Shorty.

  “That really was good luck.” He supposed the whole town had heard about the fire by now, which meant James had, too, and Stone wondered when he’d show his face. But they could deal with James when he returned. Right now, the hands needed all the good news they could get. “I suppose we’d better hitch up every wagon we got to bring all that wood in.”

  “I’ll start roundin’ up some men to get the wagons ready.” Luke pushed back his chair and stood up. “We’ll get the lumber while you figure out where you want to build.”

  “All right,” Stone agreed. Maybe it would be best for him to do some hard physical labor before confronting James. Maybe that way, he’d be too tired to beat the hell out of the man the minute he saw him.

  22

  LUKE didn’t hesitate to pitch in and help the men unload the lumber and other building supplies once they returned from town, throwing himself into the physical labor to help keep his mind off everything that had happened lately. He had been feeling beat down after the back-to-back disasters, but now that they knew the cause of it, he was hopeful the run of “bad luck” was about to end and life could return to normal at Copper Lake.

  Well, mostly normal, he thought, glancing covertly over at Stone. Priss had entrusted him with the task of determining whether Stone was fit to run the ranch, and it hadn’t taken long for Luke to decide to help Stone learn to be a landowner, because he’d seen that Stone would take his responsibilities seriously. Stone seemed to crave responsibility, in fact, and the more Luke learned about Stone’s past, the more he understood why Stone seemed to need stability and a place where he could prove himself. Unfortunately, it was that need standing between him and Stone more than anything else, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

  He was brought out of his thoughts by a group of hands approaching him, all of them looking worried, and his stomach clenched at the thought of getting more bad news.

  Brent was in the lead, and he looked at Luke anxiously. “Hey, Luke, me and the guys was talkin’.” He paused, glancing over to where Stone was sifting through the rubble of the burned stables with some of the other hands, looking grim-faced. “Do you think the boss is goin’ to give up on the ranch? So much has happened, and I know this ain’t goin’ to be a good year. Is the ranch goin’ to go under?”

  Luke handed off the lumber he was unloading to the young man who’d come to get it and waited until he was out of earshot before replying. “It ain’t goin’ to be the best year we ever had, no, but the ranch ain’t goin’ under. Miss Priscilla managed her money well enough that Copper Lake can stand a bad year or two, so don’t you worry about that.” He paused and glanced briefly at Stone, knowing he was making an assumption, but he felt like he understood Stone well enough to make it. “I don’t think Mr. Harrison is goin’ to leave. He’s pretty damned stubborn.”

  Brent nodded, looking hopeful. “You really think so? Things have just been hard, and you know, folks was talkin’….”

  Charlie, who was standing just behind Brent, spoke up. “He means that guy Hendry. Him and his buddy Colter been sayin’ Mr. Harrison’ll probably give up. He said Mr. Harrison’s pa was a quitter, which is why Miss Priscilla inherited the ranch instead of him.”

  “Mr. Harrison ain’t nothin’ like his pa,” Luke replied firmly. “Hendry and Colter have been bad-mouthin’ him ’cause of his Indian blood, that’s all. Mr. Harrison’s a hard worker, and he wants to do what’s right for Copper Lake and the men who work here. You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about.”

  The hands looked at each other, and Charlie nodded. “He sure is a hard worker. Ain’t asked none of us to do nothin’ he ain’t willin’ to do himself.”

  “And he ain’t blamed none of us for what’s gone wrong,” Brent added, and then he rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “I guess you’re right, Luke. It’s just unsettlin’, the thought of mebbe losin’ our jobs and not bein’ at Copper Lake. I like it here, and I don’t want to go nowhere else.”

  After all that had happened lately, it was a relief to know there were men who were still loyal to the ranch and to Stone. That was good news, especially since he’d been wondering how much poison Hendry and Colter had managed to spread to the rest of the hands.

  “If you can stick it out this year, I think it’ll get better.” Luke gave them a reassuring smile. Personally, he thought things were going to get a hell of a lot better now that James wouldn’t be hiring anyone else to sabotage them, but he couldn’t say that. “We’re goin’ to replace everything we lost, and we’re goin’ to keep patrollin’ the fence in case those rustlers come back. We’ll be okay.”

  Most of the hands nodded in agreement at that. “Well, I guess we should get back to work,” Charlie replied, and with that, they returned to work. Before Luke could get back to unloading lumber, however, Stone spoke from behind him.

  “I hope they weren’t quittin’. I’d hate to lose Priss’s men.”

  Luke whirled, startled to realize Stone had sneaked up on him so quietly, and he took a moment to recover his dignity before replying. “Naw, they were worried the ranch was goin’ under or you were goin’ to quit. They said they like it here, and they don’t want to leave.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” Stone pushed his hat back and braced his hands on his hips. “Especially since I’m hopin’ things’ll get better now. That bein’ said, I suppose I’d best get back to the house and clean up in case James comes by.” Stone suddenly looked grim. “I’m sure he’ll want to gloat over the fire, and that’s when I’m goin’ to give him the bad news I ain’t as easy to scare off as he thought.”

  Luke nodded, glad to receive confirmation Stone wasn’t going to walk away now. “He ain’t goin’ to be happy, that’s for damned sure, but maybe he’ll finally hightail it back to Boston.”

  “If I don’t shoot him first,” Stone replied, and then he shook his head. “Never mind me. I’m just in a bad mood. There ain’t much more we can do today. We can’t start on the new stable until the mornin’. Might as well have the men knock off and rest up.”

  “Good idea.” Luke removed his hat long enough to swipe at his brow. “You want me there when Dandy Jim comes sniffin’ around to see the damage, or you want to handle him yourself?”

  Stone looked at him for a long moment, his dark eyes seeming to soften. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you with me. He might try to bluff if he thinks he’s dealin’ with the stupid Indian. I don’t reckon there’ll be anything said you don’t already know, and I trust your judgment if you think I’m about to do somethin’ stupid.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out for that fancy rig of his, then.” Luke wouldn’t say so aloud, but one of the reasons why he wanted to be there was so Stone would have a third party witness in case things got ugly with James. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but better safe than sorry.

  “Right.” Stone grimaced. “I’d best go up to the house and put on clean clothes that don’t smell like ashes and burnt leather. You comin’? I told Mary to leave supper covered for us, since I didn’t know if we’d be done before she went home for the day.”

  Luke looked around, waging an inner debate. There was still plenty of work to do, but he was bone-tired in more ways than one, and he didn’t reckon it all had to get done in one day.

  “Yeah, I’ll be along in a minute,” he repli
ed. “I’ll let the men know they can quit for the day, and then I’ll be on to the house.”

  “Thanks.” Stone gave him a small, weary smile before heading toward the house.

  Luke watched him go, feeling the familiar ache of longing and loss that had grown far more bitter than sweet lately. As much as he wanted to be a strong, good man and help Stone no matter how difficult it was to stand back and love him in silence, Luke wasn’t sure how much longer he could do it. Then again, maybe it would be different once James was gone and they weren’t dealing with one disaster after another. Maybe it would get easier.

  But there wasn’t any need to decide today, and he headed off to let the men know they could call it a day so he could get to his own clean clothes and warm meal that much quicker. With any luck, James Rivers would come sniffing around sooner rather than later, and they could send him packing once and for all. As far as Luke was concerned, that would be the biggest and best improvement to the ranch of them all.

  23

  STONE stared down at his plate and listlessly pushed the food around with his fork. Mary had made one of his favorites, chicken and dumplings with peas and soft, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits, but his appetite had deserted him. He had too much on his mind between James, the ranch, and Luke, and it had his stomach tied up in knots.

  He glanced up at Luke. The light of the setting sun was shining through the window behind him, casting reddish glints in his brown hair. Stone remembered how Luke’s hair felt, soft and silken as it slid between his fingers. He wanted to touch it now; he wanted to give them both what they wanted.

  Well, assuming Luke did still want it. That was the question.

  Sighing, Stone pushed back his chair, rose to his feet, and carried his plate to the sink.

  Luke’s appetite didn’t seem to be suffering the way Stone’s was, and he looked up from his meal, watching Stone questioningly. “Thought you’d have worked up a bigger appetite than that after workin’ all day.”