Cowboy Come Home (10 page)
Authors: Janette Kenny
Chapter 8
It took Trey the better part of thirty minutes to make a travois to haul Sam Weber’s remains back to the ranch. Cost him the blanket in his bedroll and a throbbing ache in muscles that weren’t quite healed.
No matter his discomfort, he’d ended up better off than Sam. But it’d been a mighty close thing.
The steady drum of hooves had him looking up from lashing the blanket to the two saplings that served as poles. Daisy must’ve made it back and spread the news of their discovery.
Galen Patrick reined up beside his gelding and dismounted, crossing to Trey with an economy of movement. Was he the man the Texas Ranger had left behind to keep an eye on things? If so, Patrick was lax in his job.
“Damn,” Patrick said, crouching beside the dead man, much like Trey had done when Daisy found the body. “I knew he wouldn’t just walk off, not with the boss counting on him and me to keep them thoroughbreds hidden.”
“Yet you didn’t go looking for him.”
Patrick glared up at him. “There you’re wrong. I looked for the better part of a week, but we was hit with a freak snow and the ground was covered.” He turned back to the dead foreman. “One of the men claimed to have searched up here. One of Ned’s men. Dammit, I trusted him. Didn’t ride up here at all.”
The wrangler’s voice held that angry tone that was typical of someone who was kicking his own ass for something he blamed himself for. With snow on the ground, it would’ve been easy to miss one dead man on the fringe of a twenty thousand–acre spread.
“Help me move him onto the travois,” Trey said. “Man deserves a proper burial.”
“Miss Barton was beside herself, but it sounded like she said that Sam had been murdered,” Patrick said, after they’d maneuvered what was mainly rags, skin, and bones onto the blanket.
“Roped and dragged.” Trey glanced at the other man, noted his confusion. Shock. Dare he trust him with more?
Patrick’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, and Trey knew then the man hadn’t had a hand in this. “How would you know that?”
“Because the same damned thing happened to me.” Trey settled his hat low on his brow, as much to shade his eyes from the punishing sun as to prevent the other man from reading him. “I was roped from behind. Before I could turn I was yanked off my feet and dragged for miles.”
The bandana Patrick had around his neck bobbed, and he swore. “You see who did it?”
“Ned Durant.” The bastard did it with a smile that had needled Trey’s memory the past six months. “He told everyone at the JDB that I pulled up stakes and moved on.”
“He ought to get a taste of his own medicine,” Patrick said.
Trey had felt the same as his body slowly mended. “Waste of rope and man hours. Better to string him from the highest tree and be done with it.”
The other man nodded, his mouth pulled in a tight line. In that instant Trey believed he’d finally found an ally on the ranch.
“What do we do now?” Patrick said.
“We get Sam buried, then we have a powwow and lay down a plan that’ll protect the thoroughbreds, the cattle, and ourselves.”
“You think Ned will try something?”
Trey squinted at the vast plains chiseled from rock and sprinkled with dirt, held tight by short grass, mesquite, and the sweat and blood of countless men. “I’d bet on it, which is why I want those thoroughbreds brought in from the canyon. We need them close so we can watch them.”
“We’ll drive them in this afternoon,” Patrick said. “What about the mustangs?”
“Cull a dozen good mares from the remuda and run them with the thoroughbreds in that pasture closest to the barn. Turn the rest out to run with the cattle.”
He was banking on those few mustangs to help conceal the blooded stock. Plus it’d be interesting to see what type of foal those wild mares would throw if one of those stallions caught them in season.
Unlike Reid, Trey wasn’t opposed to throwing a mixed breed. He’d seen some damned fine stock with such combinations.
With Sam secured on the travois, both men gained their saddles and started back to the ranch at an easy walk. This was the first time that Trey had ever been in charge. That he’d given orders and had them obeyed. That another man had looked up to him for counsel.
The responsibility hit him hard, for he had to think beyond himself. He had to think in broader terms for the good of all.
And just doing that seemed to calm the anger that typically boiled deep in him. That feeling of never being wanted, never being trusted, never having anything much of his own vanished, replaced by a strong sense of purpose.
Though the Crown Seven had been the closest thing to a home that he’d ever had, it was clear from the start that Reid viewed that ranch as his own, that he was the boss and favored son.
That’s the way it had ended up, with Dade and Trey accused of rustling when they’d done no such thing. Having family turn on him, toss him out, was the turning point.
A man just didn’t forget something like that.
Oh, he reckoned he could’ve trailed along with Dade as he searched for the sister he hadn’t seen in twenty years. A waste of time, if you asked him.
So he’d struck out on his own, swearing that he wouldn’t miss the men he’d called brothers. That he wouldn’t regret closing the door on his past.
Yet last year when he heard that he had until Christmas Eve to claim his shares of the Crown Seven or lose them forever, he decided to do just that. Head back home and have it out with Reid. Home ...
Hell, he reckoned he’d always think of the Crown Seven that way. That part of him would always miss Reid and Dade. But going home wouldn’t be a reunion, and he sure as hell wouldn’t stay.
He wasn’t about to try working side by side with Reid again, even if he was asked to stay on—even if he could have a parcel now for his own stock.
Trey just couldn’t take orders from his oldest foster brother anymore. He wouldn’t continue being the little brother sucking hind teat.
Nope, he aimed to stay in Texas. The land was as raw and as wild as he felt inside. As big as the dreams that he’d kept to himself all these years.
He had a chance to see them through now. From the first time he’d driven Barton’s thoroughbreds to the old homestead, he knew it was time he settled down in Texas.
But he’d never forget the past in a Pennsylvania orphanage that shaped him. Never forget the brotherhood forged in blood. Never forget those good years growing to manhood under Kirby Morris’s tutelage.
For as long as he lived, he’d regard the two men he’d grown up with as his only family, even though they’d drifted apart.
He’d made plenty of mistakes along the way, but he had learned from them. He’d surely live longer if he was slow to trust. If he held a tight rein on his temper and thought things through first.
And most important, if he stopped baiting bears. He’d done that with Daisy, knowing she was spoken for but flirting with her anyway. That led to a few stolen kisses, and as if there were a fever in his blood he had wanted more of her. All of her.
He hadn’t been strong enough to walk away from her when he’d known to stay was wrong. He’d never gotten his fill after one stolen kiss.
Hell, if he was honest, he still dreamed of getting lost in her arms. But he wouldn’t go there again, no matter how much she tempted him. No matter how much he still wanted her.
“What’re you going to do with Weber?” Patrick asked when they were nearing the ranch, breaking the silence that had settled over them on the ride back.
“Reckon that ranger would find his death mighty interesting,” Trey said. “But it could be a spell before he comes around.”
The lawman was likely in El Paso seeing if Trey had told him a lie. Trey wasn’t of a mood to ride into San Angelo and look up the U.S. Marshal. Either way they’d end up waiting.
“In the state Weber’s in, even keeping him in the barn will draw predators,” Patrick said.
Trey damn sure couldn’t dispute that fact. The poor bastard had been savaged enough by the elements and the worthless sonofabitch who put him through this torture. Trey’s body throbbed at the memory of what he’d endured, not just from the dragging but for six long months afterward.
“You think we should bury Weber and forget calling the law?”
Patrick shifted uneasily in the saddle, and Trey wondered if the wrangler was fighting emotions or guilt. “Yep, I do. Don’t know that anyone will be able to tell much from what’s left of Weber. Burying him just seems the right thing to do.”
He agreed with all that, but still he didn’t want to bury the man until someone else who he trusted took a good long look at what had happened to Weber. He didn’t want this being passed off as a cowboy who ended up accidentally dead. Weber had been murdered and brutally so.
Trey wanted the man responsible to pay. But who the hell did he trust here? He didn’t know any of these men that well. As for trust ... Well, it was rare when he doled that out.
I’ll leave a man here,
the ranger had told him. But had he? Did one of the hands wear a tin star too?
the ranger had told him. But had he? Did one of the hands wear a tin star too?
Hard to tell. That could’ve been a bluff to keep Trey in line. But he had nothing to lose by following the hunch that the ranger had been straight up with him.
“Gather all the men out by the barn,” Trey said. “They need to see what happened to Weber.”
Patrick cut him a shocked look. “Some of the hands are just boys.”
As if that made any damned difference at all. He knew all too well the hell that boys could get into, of their own accord or by the hand of a no-good.
He’d been there and seen the worst that mankind had to dish out when he was just twelve. Seeing that side of life had toughened him. Opened his eyes to how downright mean one man could be to another.
It’d formed the grit that made him into the man he was today. A survivor. If he hadn’t been tempered early, he never would’ve lived after Ned’s brutal attack.
Yep, he wanted all the men on this spread to see what had befallen Sam Weber. He wanted to watch each face as they took a look and then another. Hopefully he’d be able to tell which man viewed Sam Weber’s remains with a lawman’s shrewd eyes.
Patrick gave a jerky nod and rode off toward the ranch at a lope, leaving Trey to continue on at his slow pace with the travois scraping the ground. He was close enough to the cattle to draw their attention. The horses too lifted their heads and watched the somber procession toward the ranch.
By the time he drew aside the barn, all of the hands were milling around the area between the bunkhouse and the corral. And smack dab in the middle of them was Daisy, her straw hat perched at a jaunty angle and her wide eyes trained on him.
He felt that stare clear to his soul and something inside him shifted, softened against his will. Once again the hardest thing he had to do was tear his gaze away from her troubled one. But putting her from his mind was impossible.
Trey swung off his horse and strode to the travois. “Miss Barton found this man up on the north end of the property on the other side of the fence. I found a watch on him that belonged to Sam Weber.” That dredged up grumblings among the men. “Take a look and see if you recognize anything.”
The young hands from the JDB hung back, most turning an unnatural shade of green at the sight of the remains. The older hands ventured closer, each face showing a fair amount of revulsion.
“Them’s Sam’s boots,” one of the men said. “Recollect the day he got them fancy tips put on them, but they’re sure gone now.”
“That’s his belt buckle,” another man said, and the others nodded and grumbled a bit more.
One of the JDB hands heaved, then clapped a hand over his mouth and took off running behind the barn. Wasn’t long before another young cowpoke followed, either in commiseration or struck with the same affliction.
All of the other men looked shocked, clearly sick at what had happened to one of their own. All except Hollis Feth, who took a gander and didn’t blink.
The older man’s poker face revealed nothing, but then Hollis had likely seen worse cases during the war. “Appears he took a beating. Dragged, maybe.”
“Just what I thought,” Trey said. He suspected he’d found the man Ellsworth left behind. “Any idea who had it in for Weber?”
Hollis worked his mouth, taking his time answering. “Seeing as he was the ramrod and didn’t hold with no tomfoolery, I reckon he acquired a good deal of enemies.”
“Was Ned Durant one of them?”
“They locked horns on several occasions,” he said. “The last was after Galen left the JDB on Daisy’s birthday. Durant made a trip up here a week later to tell us he’d be taking over.”
“Did Durant want the thoroughbreds?” Trey asked.
Hollis dipped his chin. “He accused Weber of stealing them.”
Trey looked to Patrick, whose face was hard as bedrock. “He corner you too?”
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