Chapter 2
Two
Grand Springs,
Montana Territory.
The grass had come.
Beau Hawkins sat his horse on the rise above Crimson Creek and looked out at the miles of Montana that had been dust in September and was green now, green all the way to where the land folded over on itself and went blue with distance.
Those days of rain early in the month had saved him.
The soft patter had soaked in, rather than the fast pelting of snowmelt.
Grass meant that this year, at least, the cattle might last through until winter.
And the lands had answered the way it always did when you gave it half a chance.
"Well," Duke said. "There’s your answer. I guess the good Lord was listening to your prayers, after all."
Beau’s mouth twitched. After the things he’d done and the things he’d seen, he wasn’t sure that God would give him the time of day anymore. "Guess so."
"You going to say something about it or just sit there like a man at a funeral?"
Beau shifted in the saddle. "I'm looking."
"You've looked."
"I'm looking again."
Duke Darby grunted and turned his own horse a few degrees, easing his weight off one hip the way he did when the cold got into it.
His foreman had a face like a boot that had been rained on and dried out too many times.
On the ground he walked like a man crossing a frozen pond, but on a horse he was the best ranch hand in the territory.
"The creek's running free and easy," Duke said.
"First time since the year before last it's carried this side of June.
There's water standing in the bottom of Sand Coulee, too.
And that seep up under the Cutbank's come back.
" He shook his head. "Didn't expect that.
It's been dry since your daddy was alive. I'd written it off."
"You checked all that?"
"Course I checked it." Duke spat into the dirt. "What d'you think I do all day? Rode it Tuesday, then went back yesterday just to make sure I hadn't dreamed the dang thing."
Beau nodded slowly.
That was the thing about Duke. There was not a draw, coulee, spring, alkali flat or bad crossing inside forty thousand acres that the man did not carry in his head the way another man carried the alphabet.
He knew which slopes cured out first in the fall.
He knew where the drifts piled and where the wind swept a hillside clean so cattle could get at the grass in March when needed.
He'd started on this outfit as a boy, hauling manure out of a stable that wasn't even there anymore, and he had been walking this land ever since.
Beau had been gone eleven years and back for two. Some days, it still felt like Duke was teaching him the place all over again. As if John Hawkins’ ghost was riding alongside his son and pointing out all the ways he’d ruined his life.
"So, we'll have a year," Beau said, trying to sound like he wasn’t guessing.
"We'll have grass." Duke settled his hands on the horn.
"Grass ain't a year. Grass is grass. You want a year, you need the grass, and you need the calves to stick, and you need the weather in November to have some manners about it.
And then you need somebody in Chicago to want beef in September, which lately they don't seem to. "
"They'll want beef."
"They'll want it cheap."
Beau didn't answer that, because there was no use in it. Beef prices had been falling for a couple of years. Too many cattle on too many ranches, and every last one of them headed for the same buyers. The men who'd got rich early could afford to wait it out.
Beau couldn't.
His father had been one of those who’d got in early. John Hawkins had come up the Bozeman Trail in 1866 with a wagon, a few dollars, and his Union discharge in his pocket. He’d taken up a stretch of hard country nobody else thought worth having and made something of it.
He’d made Silver Sage.
By the time Beau was grown, Silver Sage ran from the river clear up into the breaks. Thousands of acres: some owned, some leased. In a good year there were four thousand head on the grass and twenty men sleeping in the bunkhouse.
When he’d died, there hadn't been much question about what John Hawkins had built out of this rugged land.
The question now was whether Beau could keep it.
Beau had been twenty-one when he'd walked away from all of it. He had not come back until they put the old man in the ground.
"Rain won't fix the fence in the East pasture," Duke said, cutting off Beau’s meandering mind.
"I know that."
"Two miles of it, boy. Posts rotted through and past the corner."
"I’ll get to it, Duke."
"Just saying what's there."
"We’ve got to work with what we have now," Beau said. Duke remembered his daddy’s days of glory, when there had been the ranch hands spare to fix fences and the like.
Those days were well and truly behind them all.
"There’ll be nothing left to work with when it falls over,” Duke said, moving fluidly as his horse shifted.
There was no point in arguing with his foreman when he was right.
He couldn’t afford to lose any more cows, not after the hardest two years the ranch had limped through.
Beau turned, and Duke followed. They rode down off the rise and came along the creek bottom where the willows were breaking. Beau counted the cows he could see.
Thirteen pair. Fourteen. A dry cow with a bad eye that he made a note to look at. Two-year-old heifers strung out along the water; at least they had water there to be strung out along.
It should have been enough to lift him. It nearly was.
The trouble was that he'd sat down at his daddy’s desk in January and worked it out.
The number he'd got at the bottom hadn't cared about grass.
Feed bought on credit through two dry summers.
The bank payment. The other loan payment.
Wages for four men where there'd once been eighteen men housed permanently in the bunkhouse.
Thirty-one head lost in the Cutbank last winter when the weather came in ahead of them, and nobody could get across to shift them out of the wind.
Drought. Losses. Prices. Luck.
He'd got very familiar with those four words.
He said them to himself the way other men said prayers, and they were all true, every one of them, and they still didn't come to the number at the bottom of the page.
There was a gap. He knew there was a gap.
He'd gone looking for it in the ledgers, sat up past midnight with a lamp and his father's books and his own, until his eyes crossed and the columns were swimming.
Each time, the numbers came up short.
The heck of it was he knew that John Hawkins would have had those numbers locked in his mind. Any discrepancies would have been found within the hour.
His father could add a column of forty figures in his head and tell you where the mistake was before he got to the bottom of it. Beau could gentle a horse that had thrown three men. He could tell you what a steer weighed by looking at it, and he could put a horseshoe on in the dark.
What he could never do was keep a set of books that made sense. It had been clear as day when John Hawkins had shown him. It seemed his father had taken more than reputation with him when he’d died.
Just over two years and every quarter it was a little worse.
Beau had done everything a man could do about it.
Let the hands go, one and two at a time, until there was Duke and Colt and Jed and Boyd and nobody else.
Stopped the repairs. Sold forty head of Hawkins’ good breeding stock and watched the money go straight through his hands into the bank and out the other side without touching anything.
The ranch house came into view. Even from here, it looked worn down.
As if the house was in mourning for its great creator and leader.
How had his father done it? He’d had less and had still grown it.
Was it just the steady price of beef? Was there more to it, another layer that his father kept hidden and Beau was too stupid to see?
He worked harder, for longer, and it made no difference at all.
"You're doing it again," Duke said mildly.
"Doing what?"
"That face."
"It's my face."
"It's a hell of a face for a man on his wedding day."
The freight wagon was in the yard when they got back, and Denny Walsh was sitting on the seat of it with his hat back, eating something out of a paper.
"Wire and salt," he said, around the food in his mouth. "And your flour, and I'll tell you now the flour's short two sacks, because Vance says you'll take four this trip and settle before he sends out anymore."
Beau sat looking at the load for a moment.
"All right," he said.
That was all. He'd found out not long after he’d arrived back in Grand Springs that if you argued, it got repeated in town. If you didn't, not being able to settle accounts still got talked about.
He swung down and got his hands under the first roll of wire, and Denny came up with the book and a pencil stub. "Need a name on it."
Denny’s knowing smirk lit a fire under Beau’s temper. No doubt the worm would be in the saloon tonight, telling anyone who’d listen about how Beau Hawkins was struggling.
Beau hefted the wire. "Duke."
Duke came over on his bandy legs, scowling at young Denny. John Hawkins had taught his son his letters. Duke had never been given that chance.
He took the book and pencil, muttering under his breath as he set it flat on the wagon board. Beau was already lifting a second sack of salt onto his shoulder by the time Duke had scratched out his mark — two cramped, stubborn Ds.
"There," Duke said, and handed it back.
Deeny tore the slip. "Did you see the surveyors whilst you were out?”
Beau straightened with the sack on his shoulder. "Surveyors?"
"Camped out on the flat past the Crimson Creek crossing. Four of 'em and a wagon. Been there since Thursday." Denny shrugged. "Fella in the Grand said Northern Pacific's looking at a spur down off the main line. Grand Springs to the coal, maybe.”
Duke scoffed. “Nobody knows nothing. They been talking about a spur since '81. Before that, it was down Barren Bank."
“I’m only tellin’ you what I heard,” Denny shrugged.
“And you’ll be tellin’ a different story next time,” Duke said over his shoulder and wandered off.
“He always this way?”
Beau shot the young man a dirty look. “You tell your boss I’ll settle the account before the week’s out.”
Denny lifted a shoulder. He didn’t much care either way.
Beau watched the wagon go out the gate and turn south, and the dust of it hang and settle in the damp air.
‘That boy talks more than his mama,” Duke reappeared.
“Yeah, well, sometimes what he says is true. Crimson Creek is the only place where you can get a wagon across without a bridge. That’s the only reason my father bought it. We ought to ride out and check what he says.”
“We’ve just come from by there,” Duke said. “There were no surveyors.”
Beau looked out towards the road. An uneasy feeling churned in his gut. “Hmm.”
Duke was looking at the salt. "If there are any men out that way, they'll be measuring for the coal," he said. "That's the north country, that is. Nothing to do with us." He picked up the block with a groan and settled it under his arm. "This wants to go in the shed 'fore it rains again."
Beau followed him, settling the sack with the others. Supplies he could ill afford, yet couldn't run without. It had been pride that had made him tell Denny he’d settle the account, though he wasn’t sure yet where that money would come from.
“You plan on marrying that sack?”
Beau lifted his gaze. “What?”
Duke studied him, rheumy eyes twinkling. “Boy, you’d better get your head on straight. And get washed. You can’t turn up to your future bride looking the way you do.”
Beau’s brows fell. “She’ll have to get used to me lookin’ this way. May as well show her what she's getting herself into from the start.”
“You said she was sensible enough,” Duke pointed out.
“Seemed sensible,” Beau clarified. “Though what sensible woman would marry a stranger and travel all this way?”
Duke studied him for a moment. “Bit late to be changing your mind now you sent her all that money.”
“This was your idea,” Beau said, scrubbing a hand down his face, which reminded him he’d not shaved yet today. Did he have to smarten himself up?
She hadn’t sent a likeness. In all honesty, he’d not thought to ask for one from her, even though others had done so. And they were all pretty enough. What was it about this particular woman that had convinced him this was a good idea?
Whilst others had flirted and been lyrical about describing themselves, Della Warner had asked questions. Sensible questions. How far to a doctor? Whether the house had a well or a pump? How many months of the year was the road to town passable? Whether he owned the land or leased it…
Sensible questions from a sensible woman. Perhaps he should have thought more about what that sensible woman would look like now that she was due to arrive today.
He’d sent her money he could ill afford, enough to make sure she traveled safely. Beau had spent enough years on the road to know what could happen to a woman traveling alone. Whatever else came of this arrangement, he wasn’t having her hurt on his account.
"It was a good idea," Duke said. "Don't go making out it was ever anything else."
“I guess we’ll see,” Beau said. “I’d better shave. Kessler won’t marry me looking like I belong on a Wanted poster.”
"You'll want that license signed before he'll say a word over you. And Kessler shuts that office at four, whether a man is standing in front of him or not."
"I know."
"And change that shirt. Between Bessie’s repairs and your bad stitches, it’s barely holding together."
Beau started up the front steps. "Anything else?"
"Yeah."
He looked back.
Duke pushed his hat back and looked at him, a strange look crossing those weathered features.
"This'll turn it round. You mark me. Man's got no business running an outfit like this with nobody in the house. He needs a woman to keep things in order. Meals at a proper hour. A fire lit and somebody to talk to when the day’s done.” His expression softened.
“John had that on his ranch. It showed in everything he laid a hand to." He nodded at the pastures. "Grass is back. Now you’re gettin’ a wife.”
Beau turned and went into the house and stopped in the hallway.
Grass. And now a wife.
He hoped Duke was right.
Because Silver Sage was running out of time.