Wayward Wind (15 page)

Sylvia stood with her arms crossed and deliberately ignored his greeting. “Cooper isn’t here, and if he was, he wouldn’t want
anything to do with you. If you keep on runnin’ after him, he’ll kill you.”

Adam laughed. “That’s how it’s goin’ to be, is it? I always like crossing swords with a flippity woman. Kill his own father?
He’s my son and he’s too smart to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. I’ve had a long ride, Sylvia. Fetch me something
cool to drink.”

“There’s a horse trough out back and a creek on your way back to town.”

“Oh, my. You’re still holding a grudge after all these years. Look at it this way: I gave you a fine son—you’ve got nothing
to bitch about.” He sat down on the edge of the porch and fanned his face with his hat.

“Nothing to… bitch about?” Sylvia sputtered, forgetting she had promised herself she wouldn’t lose her temper. “All those
years I did laundry at the fort to support my son—hearing him called a bastard! Cooper had to grow up in a place where his
mother was known as a fallen woman! I could kill you myself for what you did to that boy!” Sylvia’s voice trembled with anger.
“You… make me sick to the stomach! I don’t want you here! Leave, or I’ll scream and the men will come from the bunkhouse.”

“Stop playacting and sit down. There’s only one man around here. We passed the other one fixing the fence down at the far
end of the valley. And don’t play the ravished virgin with me, Sylvia.” He pulled at his handlebar mustache and eyed her with
eyes as blue as her son’s. “You got what you wanted. You were wild for me. You were a little bitch in heat and I serviced
you. That’s all there was to it.”

Sylvia’s mouth dropped and color drained from her face. She spun on her heels to go into the house.

“Sylvia!” His commanding voice was like a lash on her back. “You’d better stay and hear what I’ve got to say if you want that
farmer who’s courting you to stay in one piece. What’s his name? Arnie Henderson? And doesn’t he come out here on Saturdays
and Sundays? It’d be a shame if he fell off his horse and broke his legs in so many places he’d never ride again—a horse that
is.” He looked at her over his shoulder to be sure she caught the meaning of his words. Her crimson face told him that she
did and he laughed nastily. “Is he as good as I was? You were lousy in bed, Sylvia. You’d never have made it as a whore, but
you were all that was available at the time.”

“I don’t know how anyone as rotten as you can live.” Sylvia was beyond anger, beyond tears. His insults had shaken her to
the very roots, but she refused to allow him to see the effect of his cruel words.

“I live very well in a house that makes this one look like a pigsty. I’ve got servants who jump when I holler, and money in
the bank. I was the first white man to come to this northwest territory. I drove off the stinking redskins and the riff-raff
who follow the trailblazers to a new land. The vultures weren’t going to feed off me! I’m a lusty man and take my fucking
where I can get it. If that’s being rotten, I’m rotten, but I’m rich rotten!”

Sylvia took a long, slow breath to steady herself. “If Cooper knew you were saying these things to me he’d horsewhip you.”

“He isn’t going to know because you’ll not tell him. I want to talk to you about Cooper and I want to look at you when I talk,
so sit down.”

“I’ll not be ordered to sit down in my own home,” she said with quiet dignity.

“Very well,” he said tiredly. “I’ll stand up.” Adam got to his feet, turned to face her and leaned against the porch post.
He looked at her for a long moment through half-closed eyes. “You’re a tiresome woman, Sylvia, but not bad looking for your
age. However… I don’t care for the loose skin and sagging tits of older women.” His eyes roamed her figure insolently.

She regarded him unflinchingly, refusing to allow him to intimidate her.

“At one time during the last couple of years I entertained the idea of marrying you and bringing you and my son to live at
Clayhill Ranch. Then I realized what a drawback you’d be to a man who expects to be governor of this territory.”

“I’d sooner be wed to a rattlesnake.” She spoke quietly with no emotion. “You did me a favor, Adam, when you slunk away in
the middle of the night like a yellow belly. It opened my eyes to what you are—a taker, a spoiler. I shudder to think about
the influence you’d have had on my son when he was growing up.”

For an endless moment Adam stared at the cold-eyed woman, aware that behind the calm mask was lethal hatred. Then he shrugged
his broad shoulders.

“What’s done is done. This is now. I want my son, Sylvia. Cooper is my son. You have only to look at him to know he’s a Clayhill.
I want him to come and make his home at Clayhill Ranch and take his proper place in running things.”

“He’ll never do it.”

“You’re going to see that he does.”

“You’re out of your mind. Cooper despises you!”

“You’re goin’ to change that, too. You’re goin’ to persuade him that it’s to his advantage… and yours, that he forget the
past and think of his future.”

“He’ll never do it,” she said again with a shake of her head.

“I want that boy—”

“My God! Can’t you get it through your stupid head that he’s not a
boy
? He’s a twenty-six-year-old man with a mind of his own.”

“When I was twenty-six I had a good foothold on this land. What’s Cooper got but a piddly horse ranch that isn’t worth diddley
squat? Where are your brains, woman?” he asked harshly. “Don’t you want anything better for him than… this?” Clayhill’s eyes
roamed the house, the corrals and outbuildings with disdain, and his lips, beneath the white mustache, twisted in a sneer.

“He built up this
piddly
ranch with his own two hands without walking on anybody or hiring killers to run people off their land, which is more than
you did with yours.”

He ignored her outburst. His cold, steel blue eyes bored into hers. “I want him as a foreman-manager of Clayhill. He’s a Clayhill
through and through. I’ll take him to Denver, introduce him to men of influence, make him a big man in the territory.”

Sylvia shook her head with disbelief. “Why Cooper? Why don’t you try to
buy
your other son, Adam? Did you know that you have a grandson?”

“Gawddamn you!” His fury burst forth in a strangled shout and his face turned beet-red with anger. “Don’t mention that sonofabitchin’
redskin to me. He’s not a Clayhill! He’s a gawddamned fucking red ass Indian.”

“Logan’s not a Clayhill? How did you manage that, Adam? He’s got the Clayhill crooked finger, and Cooper says your grandson
has it, too. By the way, did you know that they named him Henry Grant Horn, after Rosalee’s father and your brother, Henry,
who raised Logan like his own son after you deserted him and his mother? Cooper’s very fond of little Henry. He says he’s
got black hair like Logan’s and blue eyes like Rosalee’s. Cooper says—”

“Gawdammit!” Adam roared and anger poured out of him. “I don’t give a gawddamn what Cooper says!”

“I thought you did,” Sylvia said sweetly. “I thought you’d want to know that Logan despises you every bit as much as Cooper
does, and being an Indian, he’d think no more of putting a knife in your back than he would killing a mad dog if you were
a threat to his family. That family includes me and Cooper, now. The two men have become close friends since they discovered
they are half brothers.”

Anger unfailingly turned Adam’s face a mottled crimson, and when he was angry, as he was now, he invariably struck out at
something. His fist hit the porch post with such force the tin on the roof rumbled.

“That bastard hasn’t got the guts,” he roared. “If he makes a crooked move the army’ll be on him like flies on a pile of fresh
cow shit and he knows it.”

Sylvia’s smile had a hint of secrecy to it. “If you say so, Adam.”

He slammed his hat down on his head and pointed his finger at her. “You start working on seeing that Cooper comes to see things
my way, or else—”

“Or else what?” Sylvia lifted her apron and folded her arms in it.

“Or else that farmer you’re fucking gets a hole right between his eyes!” Adam jutted his chin out as he spoke and his eyes
were like cold steel.

Pride and dignity caused Sylvia to lift her chin a little higher. “When all else fails, you dip down into your dirty mind
for a weapon. You’re a poor excuse for a man.”

“What you think means no more to me than a pile of horse shit. I mean to get my way in this… one way or the other. I’ll give
you until the end of the month.”

With a murderous look on his face, he mounted his horse and stabbed his luckless mount with his spurs. The gelding’s powerful
haunches propelled it forward into a hard run as it sought relief from the punishing jabs. Adam’s men saw him coming and hurried
to open the gate. He plunged through it going at full gallop and was soon out of sight.

Sylvia leaned against the wall of the house and watched the men close the gate and ride hard to catch up with Adam. Then she
began to tremble, as she always did after each confrontation with him. She’d didn’t understand his obsession with her son.
It had to have something to do with his male pride, in the fact he’d sired an offspring as handsome and as well thought of
in the territory as Cooper. He’d lost considerable face that day in Junction City when it was made known he had a half-breed
son who had bought the government lane Adam had been using, cutting his holding almost in half.

Sylvia wondered if she would have acted as she did that day, if she had known what the outcome would be. Yes, she thought,
she would have. What else could she have done with armed Clayhill men lined up against Logan’s armed crew who had just come
out from Illinois to help him build Morning Sun Ranch? Adam had been determined to get rid of Logan one way or the other.
The whole town heard her tell him Logan was his son. He’d called off his men because his ambition to be governor outweighed
his desire to kill the Indian. Of course, in the process, he’d recognized Sylvia as the girl he’d ruined twenty-four years
earlier. And Cooper—to her dying day she’d not forget the look on his face when he realized Adam Clayhill was his father.
She’d been proud of the way he handled himself that day and during the two years since that time. She’d burdened him with
the knowledge that Adam was his father, but she’d also given him a brother he could admire and respect.

Sylvia glanced toward the forested mountain slope and fervently wished that Cooper were home. He should have been back several
days ago, she thought with a frown. It wasn’t that she worried about him. He was capable of taking care of himself. She was
worried about Adam carrying out his threat to shoot Arnie, and she was worried about Cooper’s old friend who lay out in the
bunkhouse with a crushed hand and foot.

There was a lot the old mountain man wasn’t telling about the “accident.” Old Volney Burbank was too trail-wise to let an
accident like that happen to him—if it was an accident. A week ago he’d come riding in on that little dun horse of his, barely
hanging in the saddle, asking for Cooper. The two ranch hands had lifted him off the horse and carried him to the bunkhouse.
She’d done the best she could for his broken hand, but Arnie’d had to work on his injured foot, even taking off three of his
toes that were hopelessly mangled.

At noon, Sylvia ladled a thick soup into a bowl and set it on the tray she’d made from a flat baking sheet. The old man had
eaten very little, and to tempt his appetite she added biscuits, fresh churned butter, and plum jam.

He appeared to be asleep when she entered the square room with the bunks nailed to the outside walls and the potbellied stove
in its center. She tiptoed to the bed and set the tray on the box she had placed there. The part of Volney’s face not covered
with straggly gray beard was dark and leathery. His eyes were sunken and now they peered up at her from beneath bushy brows.

“You were playing possum,” she accused.

“I heard three horses ’n jist one come on in. What’d he want?”

Sylvia smiled down at him. “There’s certainly nothing wrong with your ears.”

“I am’t dead ’n I ain’t no half-wit!” he replied tartly. “What’d he want?”

“It was someone to see Cooper.”

“What was he ayellin’ for then?”

“My my, my.” She shook her head dolefully. “You’re sharper than all get out today.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue.
“If you’d pay as much attention to getting some food in your stomach as you do to what goes on around here, you’d be up and
out of here in no time at all.”

He turned his face away from her. “I’m awaitin’ for Cooper. When’s he comin’?”

“You’ve asked me that every day. Now stop being so cantankerous and eat. You’re so skinny now the wind could blow you away.
Pretty soon you won’t even make a decent shadow.”

He glared at her. “It ain’t seemly for a woman to speak so of a man’s limbs.”

“I’m not a seemly woman, Volney Burbank. I’d have to be blind not to see that that union suit of Cooper’s would go around
you a couple of times.”

“That ain’t seemly neither. Ya ain’t ort a speak of a man’s drawers!” Volney looked pained, but there was the merest twinkle
in his eyes.

“I opened a fresh jar of plum jam just for you. I hope it sweetens you up some.”

“When’s that Henderson feller acomin’ back? He’s sweet on ya, ain’t he?”

His remark brought the results he intended and Sylvia’s cheeks turned a bright pink

“You’re a meddlesome, nosy old man. Now, you get to eatin’ or I’ll feed you myself.”

“I asked you a civil question, woman. When’s he acomin’?”

“Probably on Saturday or Sunday. It’s a long ride from Morning Sun.”

“Are ya agoin’ to wed up with ’im?”

“That’s none of your business,” she said with a sassy tilt to her chin. “As long as we’re asking questions, I have a few of
my own to ask. How did a trail-wise old coot like you manage to get a hand and a foot smashed at the same time? Why are you
so eager to see Cooper? Who is the Lorna you spoke about while you were out of your head? Is she the poor little cripple you
were talking about?”