Chapter Two #3
Jonah's smile never reached his tired eyes. "I'll never ask another thing of you."
Every sensible instinct told Caleb to climb onto his horse and ride away, yet he walked to the throwing line instead, testing the familiar weight of the horseshoe in his hand. "You always did know how to corner a man."
Jonah shrugged. "You taught me well enough."
Jonah drew back his arm and let the horseshoe fly. It landed short, bounced across the dirt, and settled well wide of the stake.
Caleb looked at his own and shook his head. "That's the throw you're staking your ranch on?"
"I'm easing into it."
"You'd better ease faster."
Caleb's horseshoe clipped the stake and dropped close enough to earn an approving whistle from someone.
The bartender nodded toward Jonah. "Looks like you've got work to do."
Jonah bent down for his second throw, waiting until another coughing fit released him before sending the horseshoe sailing across the yard. The horseshoe bounced once before settling neatly against the stake.
The conversation around them faded.
Caleb barely glanced at the stake before he threw. The motion came as naturally as breathing after years of practice. The horseshoe clipped the iron and kicked away, rolling beyond Jonah's.
Silence settled over the yard.
Jonah looked down at the two horseshoes before lifting his gaze to Caleb. "I'd call that settled."
Caleb kept his gaze on the stake. "You hustled me."
"I learned from the best. And I’m counting on you to keep your word."
Caleb gave a slow nod. "You still can."
Jonah let the silence stand between them.
Caleb's gaze drifted from the horseshoe leaning against the stake, and the meaning of the wager settled over him with quiet certainty. The game didn’t even matter in the end.
Every story he'd shared, every mention of Sarah, every word about Noah and Maggie had been leading here.
Even the deed bearing both their names had been part of the same plea.
Caleb had left Copper Bend before Noah was old enough to remember him, and Maggie had entered the world after he'd ridden away.
Over the years, bits of news had reached him wherever work carried him.
Beyond that, Caleb knew little about the children, except that they had lost their mother and were about to lose their father.
The thought settled heavily on him. Caleb drew a slow breath before meeting Jonah's eyes. "I'll keep the ranch running," he said. "And I'll take care of Noah and Maggie."
The strain eased from Jonah's face, and the crooked smile Caleb remembered from years ago found its way back. "They're good children. They’ll take to you. Eventually."
The bartender folded his towel across his shoulder. "Those youngsters won't leave you enough peace to miss your old life."
"I wasn't counting on peace," Caleb said. "I gave my word."
Jonah stepped forward and held out his hand.
Caleb looked at it, then clasped it with a firm grip.
The handshake lasted only a heartbeat, yet it carried the same weight it had when they were boys, when their promises had been worth more.
***
Jonah Bell died three mornings later.
Copper Bend buried him beneath a clear blue sky, friends, neighbors, and hired hands standing with bowed heads around the fresh grave.
Noah never cried. The six-year-old stood beside the preacher with both hands buried in pockets too large for him, his sandy blond hair refusing to lie flat despite someone's careful attempt to tame it that morning.
His blue eyes, so much like Jonah's, remained solemnly fixed on the coffin with an expression no child should have learned to wear.
Maggie clung to Russ the foreman until the first shovel of dirt struck the lid. Soft golden curls spilled from a black ribbon as she buried her face against his shoulder, her small body shaking with sobs until exhaustion stole the sound from her.
Caleb remained near the back, his hat in his hands as the preacher spoke. He'd attended more funerals than any man his age ought to have, but none had asked as much of him as this one.
The Bell-Whitaker Ranch greeted him with broken fences and two children who looked at him as though he'd arrived carrying every unhappy change their lives had suffered.
In the days that followed, Noah answered every question with one word, if he answered at all. Maggie followed Caleb from room to room in silence until, one afternoon, she tugged lightly at his sleeve. "Mister Caleb?"
"What is it?"
"If heaven's so far away..." She looked up at him with wide, hopeful eyes. "Will Papa still know where home is?"
Caleb opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He'd tracked cattle through blizzards and crossed half the territory alone, but he'd never learned how to answer a question like that from a little girl whose whole world had just been buried.
That single question stayed with him long after she asked it, though the ranch had little patience for a man who wanted time to think.
Nothing on the ranch seemed to stay done. A calf slipped through a broken fence before breakfast, and by the time Caleb dealt with it, the kitchen was full of smoke and another day's work had already fallen behind. Then came the evening when it was time to get the children to sleep.
Maggie refused to climb into bed until Caleb knelt to check under the bed. "Look properly," she whispered, clutching her rag doll. "Wolves hide under there."
Caleb blinked. "In the house?"
She nodded so earnestly that he couldn't bring himself to smile. He crouched, peered beneath the bed, then straightened again.
"Not a single wolf," he promised.
Maggie searched his face as though deciding whether to believe him before finally climbing beneath the blankets.
Caleb tucked them around her, wondering whether Jonah had checked for wolves every night, or whether grief had filled the space beneath the bed with things only a frightened little girl could see.
Noah proved harder to appease. Caleb found him behind the barn before supper the next evening, struggling to hammer a loose board back into place.
"You disappeared again," Caleb said, taking the hammer before the boy caught his thumb instead of the nail.
Noah frowned and reached for it. "It needed fixing."