Chapter Four Night Riders #3
Drew closed his fingers over the stamped leather until its edge bit his palm. “No.”
Hank watched him.
The pause stretched.
Then the trail boss nodded.
They returned to camp near dawn.
No one slept. The men reset the herd, buried two more cattle, and repaired tack damaged in the run. Hank moved among them until every injury had been seen and every horse rubbed down.
When the eastern sky paled, Drew found him alone beside the ridge.
Hank looked older than he had the night before. Dust grayed his hair at the temples. His shirt remained partly open, revealing the top of the scar Drew had kissed.
“You should rest,” Drew said.
“So should you.”
Drew stood beside him. The leather mark felt like fire inside his pocket.
Hank looked over the quieting herd.
“I trust you more than I should,” he said.
Drew could not breathe.
The confession held no accusation. Hank offered it as a fact, perhaps even a gift.
Drew wanted to tell him everything.
He wanted to place the marked leather in Hank’s palm, give him his real name, and accept whatever followed. The desire was so strong that his hand moved toward his pocket.
Then he imagined Warren’s reach, Luther’s violence, the six ranches balanced on this drive. A confession without proof might save no one. It might only make Hank send him away before Drew could learn enough to stop what his father had begun.
He let his hand fall.
Hank turned toward him. “Nothing to say?”
Drew looked into the face of the man he was betraying one silence at a time.
“Not yet,” he answered.
Pain flickered behind Hank’s eyes.
He walked away.
By dawn the scattered cattle had been gathered into three uneasy bunches. Two steers were dead, six missing, and one rider had a broken wrist. The hidden saboteurs left no tracks that survived hundreds of hooves, only the length of new wire Drew had concealed beneath his coat.
He could feel it against his ribs as he rode.
Hank moved among the crew without rest, checking every man before counting cattle. A cut marked his brow. Both hands were raw from rope burn. He refused coffee until the youngest rider had been splinted and made comfortable in the wagon.
When the immediate work ended, Hank dismounted beside a low ridge and swayed once.
Drew reached him before anyone else. "Sit."
"I'm standing."
"Poorly."
"Herd needs—"
"Sam has the herd. Sit before I embarrass you in front of your men."
Hank's eyes narrowed. "How?"
Drew put a hand to his chest and pushed. Exhaustion did what argument could not; Hank sat on a flat stone.
Drew knelt and took one of his hands. The palm was scored red where wet rope had run through it. Tiny fibers remained embedded beneath the skin.
"This will hurt," Drew said.
"Everything does."
"A moving philosophy."
He washed the hand with water from his canteen.
Hank watched him work. Dawn gave the older man's face no mercy, showing every sleepless line, yet desire moved low and immediate through Drew.
He remembered that same face softened in the moonlit hollow, Hank's arms holding him after tenderness had surprised them both.
Hank felt the change. His gaze dropped to the unmistakable tension beneath Drew's trousers, then returned with heat that made breath difficult.
"Bad timing," Hank said.
"Your body has shown little concern for timing."
Hank's own arousal was visible even through dust-stiff denim. "Neither has yours."
"I am tending an injury."
"You're taking your time."
Drew drew one splinter of fiber free. Hank hissed.
"Because you are an uncooperative patient."
"Enjoying it."
"Your pain? No. Your obedience? Immeasurably."
That earned the tired ghost of a smile. Drew wrapped the first hand, then held out his own for the second.
Hank surrendered it. The act carried the intimacy of the previous night into morning: not the physical hunger, though that remained, but the deeper astonishment of being trusted with weakness.
"You saved the drag line," Hank said.
"Will did."
"Will followed your signal."
"Then your crew is admirably trained."
"Take a compliment, White."
"I prefer payment."
Hank's thumb moved over the inside of Drew's wrist. "Thought you won last night."
"That was a wager. This is wages."
"Greedy."
"You noticed at the spring."
Their eyes held. Hank lifted his unbandaged hand to the back of Drew's neck.
The kiss began gently and deepened when Drew leaned into it.
Smoke, coffee, salt, and exhaustion—Hank tasted of the ruined night.
Drew's fingers tightened around his wrist, careful of the burn.
Around the ridge, the crew moved close enough that discovery was possible.
Hank broke away first. "Men will see."
"You dragged me into a dry creek in daylight."
"Was angry."
"You appear calmer now."
"Ain't."
Footsteps crunched behind them. Sam stopped at the rise with two cups of coffee. If he had seen the kiss, his expression did not reveal it.
"Six missing," he said. "Ortiz found their trail north. We can send men or keep schedule."
Hank stood. Drew steadied him with one hand at his waist, then removed it before the gesture became public.
"Keep schedule," Hank said. "Six head don't cost six ranches."
Sam gave him the coffee, then looked at the bandages. "Pretty work."
"Drew did it."
The use of his first name before another man startled them both.
Sam's brows rose. "Drew, is it?"
"Only when the patient is delirious," Drew said.
"Must be fever. He usually calls kindness an operational weakness."
Hank drank and walked toward camp. Sam remained beside Drew.
"He's had one man use his trust against him," Sam said quietly. "Don't be the second."
The concealed wire seemed to grow heavier beneath Drew's coat.
"I do not intend to hurt him."
"Intent's cheap. Cattle don't care whether a fool meant to leave the gate open."
"Are you warning me away?"
"Would it work?"
"No."
"Then I'm warning you close."
Sam followed Hank down the ridge.
Drew waited until he was alone, then drew out the wire.
One end bore a stamped mark almost hidden beneath mud: L.B.
He knew the initials. Luther Briggs had supervised removals from disputed railroad land in Kansas.
Men who resisted him suffered accidents, and paperwork arrived afterward to make violence appear lawful.
Drew should take the wire to Hank. The evidence would prove sabotage and also invite the question Drew could not answer: how did a hired cowhand recognize the mark of Warren Whitaker's private enforcer?
He wrapped it again and placed it deep in his saddlebag.
The outfit moved north through gray morning.
Dust rose behind the herd and blotted out the damaged ground.
Drew rode drag, far from Hank, by choice.
Physical distance did nothing to quiet awareness.
Whenever the line bent, he saw Hank's silhouette at point and remembered the weight of him in the hollow.
At noon they stopped only long enough to change horses. Hank came down the line examining cattle and riders. When he reached Drew, his attention went first to the saddlebag where the wire lay hidden.
"Anything I should know?" he asked.
The question might have concerned the herd. It did not.
"The drag is favoring east," Drew said. "Two steers are limping."
Hank waited.
"And your right hand needs a new bandage before dark."
"Anything else?"
Drew's mouth went dry. "No."
Hank looked at him long enough for the lie to become a third presence. Then he held out the injured hand.
"Fix it."
Drew dismounted. In the narrow shade of the wagon, he unwound the bloody cloth and replaced it. Hank's fingers rested on Drew's thigh while he worked, whether for balance or because he wanted the contact. The touch burned through fabric.
"I trust you more than I should," Hank said.
The confession was so quiet Drew almost pretended not to hear.
"Why?" he asked.
"You stay when leaving would be easier. You step toward trouble. And when you look at me, I know what you want."
Drew tied the bandage. "Do you?"
Hank's gaze moved over him. "Most of it."
"And the rest?"
"Waiting for you to tell me."
Drew leaned forward until their foreheads met, hidden by the wagon's shadow. "I want the chance."
"You have it."
Hank mounted and rode on.
That night, Drew volunteered for the farthest watch.
He sat on the ridge above camp with the railroad wire in his lap.
Below, Hank slept near the lead riders, one bandaged hand resting beside his gun.
Drew could wake him. He could carry the evidence down, speak Warren's name, and accept whatever remained after truth.
Instead he watched the dark horizon and told himself he was waiting for safer circumstances.
Drew remained on the ridge until the sun rose, the stamped leather cutting deeper into his closed hand.