Chapter Five The Mark He Chooses #2
When pleasure finally left them shaking, Hank held Drew upright against his chest. Neither spoke until breathing became possible again.
Drew rested his cheek against Hank’s shoulder.
“Are you still angry?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“At me?”
“At Carter.”
Drew smiled. “He washed my back.”
“I know exactly what he did.”
“You may challenge him to a duel at sunrise.”
“I may assign him drag until Colorado.”
“That seems more practical.”
Hank’s hand traveled slowly down Drew’s spine, no longer possessive, simply reluctant to lose contact.
“I will not pretend in private that I do not want you,” he said. “In front of the men, I have responsibilities.”
“I understand.”
“That does not mean temporary.”
Drew lifted his head.
Hank appeared to realize he had answered a question Drew never voiced.
“The drive is temporary,” he said. “Not—”
“Not what?”
Footsteps entered the barn.
They separated instantly.
Abel Dunn called Hank’s name from the aisle.
Hank fastened his shirt. Drew reached for the undershirt he had dropped near the door, then remembered it was still outside by the trough.
Hank looked at his bare torso and then at the window.
“You cannot go out like that.”
“I came in like this.”
“You came in before every man on the ranch had time to imagine why.”
Drew glanced at the workbench and raised an eyebrow. “Their imaginations may not require assistance.”
Hank removed his own outer shirt and handed it to him. He remained in a thin undershirt.
Drew put on Hank’s shirt.
It was too large through the shoulders and smelled of him. The gesture felt more intimate than nakedness.
Abel called again.
Hank opened the door. “Stay five minutes.”
Drew caught his wrist.
When Hank turned, Drew kissed him once, softly.
“No one owns me,” he said. “But I am here because I choose to be.”
Hank’s gaze held his. “So am I.”
Then he left.
Drew remained in the tack room until his body calmed and the yard noises returned to ordinary proportions.
He found Hank’s ledger by accident.
The leather book lay beneath a folded saddle blanket on the workbench, pushed aside during their urgency. Drew recognized Hank’s handwriting from the trail tallies.
He should not have opened it.
He did.
The first pages listed cattle, supplies, and wages.
Farther in, the entries changed. Six ranch names appeared beside loan amounts, due dates, and bank officers.
Drew knew three of the banks. Whitaker Railroad controlled them through holding companies his father used whenever direct ownership invited scrutiny.
Beside each ranch, Hank had written a family name.
Bell: four adults, two children.
Carter: widowed mother.
Mason: six families employed.
Webb: medical debt.
At the bottom of the page, beneath the total owed, Hank had written one line.
If sale falls short, Rourke land covers first loss.
Drew read it twice.
Hank had pledged his own ranch so the others could keep theirs.
Warren’s plan had never been merely to eliminate a competing trail. He meant to force the entire group into default, seize the connected land, and build a private rail corridor across it.
Drew saw the map inside his father’s study. Black lines crossing property as if no one lived there. He remembered Warren moving a ruler and saying, Obstacles are only ownership waiting to change hands.
These were the obstacles.
Families. Children. Men who had shared food with Drew and trusted him beside their sleeping bodies.
He closed the ledger.
Hank’s shirt hung from his shoulders. The bandanna circled his wrist. Drew felt marked by kindness he had not earned.
He returned the book exactly where he found it.
Outside, the branding was nearly finished.
Hank looked at him across the yard. His gaze dropped briefly to his own shirt on Drew’s body. The private satisfaction in his face warmed Drew and made the concealed survey stake feel heavier inside the saddlebag.
That evening, Abel served supper at long tables behind the ranch house. Fresh bread and beef replaced trail beans. Men ate until speech became difficult.
Drew sat across from Hank.
They could not touch. Their knees met beneath the table once, whether by accident or design neither acknowledged. Hank did not move away.
Will Carter noticed the borrowed shirt.
His smile widened.
Drew kicked him beneath the table.
After supper, the crew slept near the corrals. Hank took the room Abel offered inside the house but did not use it. Drew knew because he waited near the barn until midnight and never saw him enter.
The camp settled.
Drew woke to bells.
Not alarm bells. Harness bells moving fast through darkness.
Then someone shouted, “Remuda!”
He came out of his bedroll without a shirt or boots. His trousers were unfastened at the waist, and cold air struck his bare skin. Around him men scrambled toward the corrals.
The horse pen stood open.
More than forty saddle horses ran across the south pasture, driven by two riders carrying lanterns. Without the remuda, the cattle drive ended at Mason Creek.
Drew seized the first bridled horse he found and mounted bareback.
“White!” Sam yelled.
Drew was already riding.
The horse beneath him belonged to Cookie and resented speed, but fear lent it enthusiasm. Drew chased the running remuda toward the lower fence. If the horses reached open range, they would scatter for miles.
One of the saboteurs cut across the front, waving a lantern.
Drew recognized the broad shoulders.
Luther Briggs.
Even in darkness he knew the man’s seat, the rigid way he held his left arm after an old gunshot. Rage surged through Drew.
“Briggs!”
The rider turned.
Recognition paused him for half a second.
It was enough.
Drew drew alongside the outer horses, shouting and swinging the loose end of a halter. The remuda turned from the fence but continued running east.
Hooves pounded behind him.
Hank appeared on his black mare, coat open over a bare chest, hair disordered from sleep. “Take the lead mare!”
Drew saw the gray mare at the front. He drove Cookie’s horse toward her, caught the trailing halter rope, and nearly lost his seat. The rope burned across his already injured palm.
He wrapped it around his wrist and pulled.
The gray mare slowed. Horses behind her crowded, wheeled, and began following her back toward the corrals.
A gunshot split the dark.
Hank’s mare stumbled but recovered.
The saboteurs fled south.
Drew wanted to follow Luther. Every instinct demanded it. If he caught the man, he could force the truth into daylight.
Then Hank shouted his name.
Drew chose the horses.
Together they brought the remuda around in a wide circle. Ranch hands closed the pasture gates. Sam and Will guided the last frightened animals into the corral.
Only when the latch dropped did Drew realize his palm was bleeding.
Hank dismounted and came to him.
“You rode out barefoot.”
Drew looked down. His feet and legs were streaked with mud. “I did not have time to dress.”
Hank’s gaze moved over his bare chest and the low, unfastened waist of his trousers. Even amid alarm, desire answered in his face and body—an involuntary reminder that nothing between them had cooled.
Drew noticed Hank was dressed no better.
“You wore a coat,” he said.
“I am the trail boss.”
“Apparently authority begins with outerwear.”
Hank caught his injured hand. The humor vanished.
“This opened again.”
“The rope slipped.”
“You could have lost fingers.”
“But not the horses.”
Hank looked toward the secured remuda, then back at Drew.
Forgetting the watching men, he pressed his forehead to Drew’s.
The contact lasted one breath.
It contained fear, gratitude, and everything daylight denied them.
“Thank you,” Hank said.
Drew’s eyes closed. “You do not have to thank me for protecting what is yours.”
Hank drew back just enough to look at him. “That is not why.”
Behind them, Sam began ordering men to search the fence line. Will politely faced the opposite direction.
Hank took the bandanna from Drew’s wrist and wrapped it around his bleeding palm.
The black cloth darkened with blood.
Near the cut fence, a ranch hand found a dropped lantern stamped with a railroad supplier’s mark.
Hank held it beneath the moon and went very still.
Drew stood beside him wearing Hank’s shirt over his arm, Luther Briggs’s name locked behind his teeth.
The betrayal had grown beyond silence.
Drew closed the mortgage ledger and held both palms against its cracked leather cover.
Names filled the pages, not merely figures: Alvarez, Bellamy, Ortiz, Mason, Reed.
Beside each stood acreage, cattle pledged, interest due, and the date a bank could take everything.
Small notations in Hank's hand recorded children, illness, damaged wells, and which families could survive one more bad season.
The drive was not a private gamble. It was a rope stretched across six households, and Hank had wrapped the other end around himself.
Bootsteps sounded in the tack room. Drew slid the ledger back beneath a folded blanket just as Hank entered carrying two lanterns.
"Thought you were sleeping," Hank said.
"I came for a clean shirt."
Hank looked at Drew's bare chest, then at the soot-streaked undershirt hanging from a nail. "That one surrendered."
"It showed poor character."
The jealousy that had driven them into the barn earlier had not vanished. Its aftermath lingered in Drew's loosened body, in the faint marks Hank's mouth had left below his collar, and in the new boundary between them: desire was not ownership, and Hank had agreed to remember it.
Hank set one lantern down. "Will says you ride well in your drawers."
Drew stared, then understood. "During the remuda attack."
"What'd you think?"
"That your jealousy had recovered with impressive speed."
"It has."
The admission pleased him more than it should. Drew unfolded a clean shirt from the shelf. Before he could put it on, Hank took it from his hands.
"Turn around."
"Is this another order?"
"You're bleeding."