Softly Falling (29 page)

As he rode onto his property and hallooed for Manuel, Jack found himself wondering, as he always did, whether Manuel preferred company or not. Manuel had been a sheepherder since his childhood in Mexico, a lonely occupation. Jack had come across him in Cheyenne, out of work and hungry, and happy to find a simple-enough job for his old bones, since he admitted to at least seventy years, but looked older.

It was short visit, just long enough for his cowhands to shake out their kinks and throw in a few more barbs about vast ill-usage. With Manuel’s slight help, Jack unloaded a hundred-weight bag of potatoes and more pinto beans from the light wagon holding their own food and bedrolls for the past three days. He stacked them against the other bag of potatoes and beans in the board shack with the elegant wallpaper. Hands on hips, Jack stared at Manuel’s supplies—onions, green coffee beans, sugar—without which Manuel had stated firmly that he would not work.

“You have enough cornmeal for tortillas?” he asked the old man.

“
Si
, and flour too.”

They walked to the corral together in silence, to be met by Bismarck himself, who seemed to enjoy an audience. Jack’s cowhands were already leaning on the sturdy fence, admiring the bovine lover as he stared back at him, his massive jaws working.

To Jack’s surprise, Will Buxton appeared the most interested. “These two cows you bred him with—will their calves look like Bismarck?”

“That’s my hope,” Jack said. “The closer cow there has some Herferd in her already. I’m hoping for heifers, naturally. I’ll breed them to Bismarck too, and we’ll see what we see.”

“It’s better beef?”

“Will, it is far beyond what we bring up from Texas. In a few years, I can guarantee you a great steak.”
The trick is getting through the next few years
, Jack thought.
But you don’t need to know that, Will
.

“No quick profit now, eh?” Will asked, sounding annoyingly like his uncle, who thought he ran the Bar Dot.

“That’s the gamble,” Jack said, hoping he didn’t sound too short. It wouldn’t do to irritate someone named Buxton, even though Jack had no idea how close the connection was. Mr. Buxton had a knack for keeping his employees off kilter and concerned for their own future. Trust him to set a spy among them to keep everyone reeling. “Once people start tasting the difference between Herferd beef and scrub cattle, you’ll see.”

“Providing your uh, herd, survives this fearsome winter you say is coming,” Will said, with a prissy sort of smile that might have resulted in a mere cowhand without the Buxton name being invited to change employment. “Three cattle and a fearsome winter, or so you say.”

Jack swallowed his irritation because he didn’t have a choice. “It’s coming, Will,” he said quietly.

C
HAPTER
27

W
ith a wry look on his generally inscrutable face, Pierre met them by the empty schoolhouse, sitting so casually with a leg crossed over his saddle, a better horseman than any of them, with or without a saddle.

“The Big Boss wants to see you right away,” he told Jack with no preamble.

“I’m pretty rank,” Jack said.

Pierre shrugged. Jack doubted that pleasing bosses was ever in the Indian’s greater plan.

“He might mind if I sit within smelling distance of him,” Jack said as he motioned the others forward and rode with Pierre. “Everything all right here?”

“The Little Man of the Prairie returned to his home in the school, and there was general rejoicing, as Lily would put it,” Pierre said.

“She has a funny way of expressing herself,” Jack said.
I’d rather listen to her than anyone else I know
, he thought.

“I’d rather listen to her than anyone else I know,” Pierre said. “Everything sounds better when she says it.”

“Clarence Carteret has that same accent,” Jack replied, laughing inside at himself and men in general. “You feel that way about
him
?”

They both laughed.
So that’s how it is
, he thought, with a glance at his top hand and friend. He tried to visualize Pierre Fontaine as a lady might. Beyond noting long eyelashes and a certainty dignity of carriage, Jack came up dry.

When he arrived at the Buxton house, he waved off Pierre and looped his reins through the hitching post. Fothering answered the door.

“My, aren’t we a sight for sore eyes,” the butler said. “If you look this fraught, how did the bovine fraternity fare?”

Jack smiled, used to Fothering. He was reminded of something Preacher had read from the New Testament when they hunkered down a night or two ago in slush and mud.

“ ‘A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways,’ ” he quoted to Fothering. “That’s somewhere in James. It pretty well fits cows too. Slap me if the whole bovine fraternity on the northern range isn’t dead set on moving south.”

“What can you do about that?” Fothering asked.

Jack gave him a long look, knowing that the butler had asked a question Buxton would probably never even think of. “If it’s the winter I am expecting, not a single thing. They’ll drift south until they freeze to the ground, fall into air holes, or land in the rivers. If we have even half our herd left come spring, I’ll be amazed.”

They stood in silence for a moment until Fothering knocked on the office door.

“Send him in,” came the voice within. Trouble was, with Oliver Buxton you never knew whether he was angry or calm or downright wrathful. It all sounded the same.

Hope he has the windows wide open
, Jack thought and then brightened.
If not, then it would be a short interview, no matter what the problem
.

“Well?” was all Buxton asked. He didn’t gesture toward a chair, but Jack told himself he didn’t want to sit down anyway, not after days in the saddle.

At his own desk, Clarence Carteret gave Jack a sympathetic smile, one not in Buxton’s line of sight.

“We pushed’um back and wondered how on earth we’re going to manage this winter.”

“I can’t believe that the other ranchers around here actually agree with you about this winter,” Buxton said, brushing off the catastrophe to come with a dismissing chop of his hand.

Believe, you ninny
, Jack thought. “The signs are all there.” He glanced out the window. “Never seen snow this early on the mountains, and it was snowing here when we left.” He slapped his gloves from one hand to the other, which was better than beaning Mr. Buxton with them. “We did what we could with the men we have. Now, if you don’t mind, I really need—”

“Just a moment, Sinclair,” Buxton said. He indicated Clarence. “I should have mentioned this sooner. I had cash here ready to pay the commissioning agents’ fee for the cattle that we
didn’t
sell this fall.”

He gave Jack a look that blamed him for the drought and the overgrazing, but Jack maintained his neutral face, the one reserved for the boss and consortium members.

“Got a telegram from Cheyenne while you were away. Seems four or five of the consortium members want that money in a Cheyenne bank as soon as possible. There’s wind of a big deal in Texas for more cattle.”

“Mr. Buxton, this range can’t even support what we have right n—”

“I don’t pay you to comment on consortium business.” Buxton bit off every word and threw them at him like pellets. “I’m sending Clarence to Cheyenne with the cash. I want you to go with him and make sure it ends up in the consortium office and not on some poker table.”

You could have said that in private
, Jack thought as acute embarrassment for Clarence washed over him like stinging nettles.

“I’d go, but Mrs. Buxton is certain she is dying this week.” He glared at Jack as though daring any commentary.

“You can trust Clarence,” Jack said quietly. “I have too much to do here, and so do my hands. I can get him on the Cheyenne Northern, telegraph ahead, and have someone from the consortium meet him at the depot. Nothing simpler.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

Of course not, you pea brain
, Jack thought.
One more year here, one more year. Bismarck, do your duty
. The idea of his placid Hereford servicing a territory-full of heifers, just so he could quit the Bar Dot one minute sooner made Jack smile.

“What is so amusing, Sinclair?”

Might as well be honest about part of the matter. “Sir, that’s not a smile, it’s a grimace. I’ve been riding in grit and dust and my crotch is killing me. If I don’t get to a tin tub soon . . .”

Buxton laughed and waved a dismissal. He looked at his clerk. “All right, Carteret. We’ll trust you by yourself. Two days from now?”

Clarence sat there with considerable dignity, more than Jack had noticed in a long while. “I won’t disappoint you, sir,” he said.

“You had better not,” Buxton said with more menace than Jack knew was necessary, when addressing a wounded gentleman like Clarence Carteret. But that was business.

“Go on, both of you,” Buxton said. “As I said, Mrs. Buxton is dying.”

Unsure what to say to that remark, Jack touched a hand to his forehead and beat Clarence to the door. “I don’t mind confessing that Buxton unnerves me, at times,” he remarked to Lily’s father when they were both across the porch and down the steps. He untied his horse but walked alongside Clarence.

“You’re probably in a great hurry,” Clarence said with a half smile of his own. “I won’t think you rude if you ride ahead.”

“Nah. Maybe walking is better. Can’t be worse, anyway,” Jack said. He gazed into the distance for a moment. “I’m not certain if there is a more tactless man in the entire territory than our boss. You have to put up with that every day?”

“On a bad day.” Again there was that ghost of a smile. “Perhaps Mrs. Buxton has the right idea.”

“I had no idea you were a wit,” Jack said when he finished laughing.

The sigh that came from Clarence Carteret could have put out a lighthouse lamp. “There is a great deal no one knows about me. I even used to be a caring father and a good husband.” It was his turn to look away. “The highway of life exacts a toll.”

“I’ve noticed,” Jack said dryly. He brightened, thinking of Lily. “You have a fine daughter, and that’s something.”

“I do,” Clarence said with quiet pride. “It
is
something. This will surprise you, Jack: Although I look like a man with many regrets . . .”

“Oh, I’m—”

“No, it’s true. I know what I am,” Clarence said, his voice scarcely audible. “I have only one regret. There! I can see I surprised you.”

“Well, yes,” Jack admitted.

“It is this: After my dear wife died of yellow fever, and after Lily survived, she and I should have stayed right there in Barbados. I had a job working as a clerk for a plantation owner. Nothing grand, but I was good at it and Lily was happy.”

“You went back to England? On purpose?”

Clarence nodded. “And everything went wrong. I know I am a weak man, but in Barbados I had work and a little home and a five-year-old child who was the joy of our lives.”

“Why’d you go?”

They were getting close to the stable now, so Jack stopped.

“You don’t have time for this,” Clarence said, the meek man again.

“I do. Why’d you go?”

Clarence waited to gather his serenity, or so it seemed to Jack. He looked the foreman in the eyes. “My brother promised me a brighter future if I would go to India to manage some family business. He snatched Lily away and put her in a boarding school and sent me to India.”

“You should have taken her along,” Jack said, wondering how difficult it would be to part from a child, the only particle remaining after the death of Clarence’s wife.

“She was still weak from yellow fever, and I thought it best.” Clarence gave a harsh laugh that he adroitly turned into a cough. “My brother thought it best, rather. Like a fool, I bowed to his will since he controlled the family purse.”

“Wha . . . what happened in India?” Jack asked, wondering if he really wanted to know.

“I missed Lily with ever fiber of my heart, and I started to drink. I wallowed in alcohol and fair ruined the family business until others took it over and sent me home.” He spoke calmly, but Jack heard the underlining shame and disappointment in his voice.

“I’m sorry for you,” he said, and it sounded so lame to his ears. “Did he send you somewhere else?”

“I was given a few weeks to visit with Lily—she was ten then—and sent to Canada to a smaller family business.” He wrinkled his nose. “A fish processing plant somewhere in the interior, where I drank more. After that I was sent to Scotland on more business, which I made a muddle of. Are you seeing a pattern?”

In a hurry as always, Madeleine walked by with her daughters, all of them struggling with bags of coffee and flour. Jack handed his reins to Clarence and lent a hand. When he returned, Clarence was still standing there.

He handed Jack the reins. “My brother gave up then, and I became a remittance man. I was banished to Wyoming Territory, told to buy a ranch, and stock it with cattle. I would get a quarterly check deposited in the nearest bank.” He raised his eyes to Jack’s. “You know the rest, I think.”

“I know you bought the property, but I don’t remember seeing cattle on it.”