Chapter 18
Eighteen
Duke straightened up as they rode into the yard, the horses sweating.
He pushed his hat back and grinned up at Della. "See you got the hang of it pretty quick, then. Him teaching you to ride." He lowered the horse's hoof, rasp in hand. "Ain't nobody better to teach you than this man here."
He said it proudly, which angered Beau all the more.
Beau dismounted and tossed the reins at Colt, trying to hang onto his temper.
He'd had time to think about it on the ride home.
Maybe the wolves had scattered the bones.
Maybe the snowmelt had moved them. Maybe it was the wrong place.
But there was only one Cutbank on this outfit. He knew it, and so did his foreman.
"We went out to the Cutbank," Beau said.
He watched awareness slide into those rheumy eyes.
"That so?"
"Yeah." Beau sighed. There was no way round it but through. "The ground looks pretty bare, seeing as thirty-one head died there."
Decisions rolled across the old man's face. One hand went to the small of his back, and he squinted at Beau against the low sun.
"What d'you mean?"
"There ain't a bone. Nor a hide scrap, nor a smell, nor a bare ring where the stock won't graze. Nothing, Duke."
Duke shrugged. "We've had snowmelt, boy. You know how that moves things about."
"I've seen a die-off." Beau's voice was rising, and he couldn't stop it. "I’ve seen enough of them here to know what it should look like. There's nothing in that bowl."
Duke moved to pick up his rasp. "I don't know what to say to you?—"
"Duke!" The bark of it sent Colt scurrying behind the barn. Beau rolled his fists and advanced on the man who'd picked him up and dusted him off when John Hawkins had hollered at him for not staying on a bucking horse. "Don't lie to me. Not when I think I know what you've done."
Duke regarded him steadily. And then the light went out of his eyes. What was left was a harder man. The cowboy who'd lived six decades on this barbaric land and seen what he'd seen. "What do you think I've done?"
Beau said nothing. He only looked at him.
Duke's mouth moved. Half a smile, there and gone. "There wouldn't be any bones there."
"Say it."
"Beau—"
"Say it."
The old man took his hat off and turned it round in his hands, looking at the crown of it. "There weren't thirty-one head that died in the Cutbank."
“How many died there, Duke? Did any?”
The slow head shake was like a punch to the gut, his breath leaving his body. Blood thundered in Beau's ears.
Duke looked up. "I got Boyd drunk. He was sleeping it off.
" He said it matter-of-factly, like he was reading a book, not admitting to a crime.
"I drove them cattle south, down through the breaks, and handed them to a fella.
Different iron burnt over the top of them.
I took what I took for it." He shrugged one shoulder.
"Snow came in, like I told you. Boyd figured they must've got buried, and I went along with it. "
Beau's temper simmered under his skin. Della was standing a little way off by the porch. The others had gone very still. "That's not the only time."
"No." Duke shook his head slowly. "It ain't the only time."
"How long?" Beau's voice cracked. "How long have you been stealing from Silver Sage?"
"Two years. That's the truth of it."
"Truth?" Beau bellowed. "You wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and bit you on the backside! Two years, Duke. Two years!"
"Boy—"
"Don't you call me that." He roared it. "Not any more. I'm not your boy. I'm John Hawkins' boy."
"Oh, so you do remember that?" Duke's chin came up. "Only I wasn't so sure. Seein' as you took off and didn't look back."
Beau rocked back on his heels. "That's not your business."
"It was my business. I know you had your quarrel.
" Duke's voice had gone up now, and it carried across the whole yard.
"Show me a son and a father that don't fight when the boy comes to manhood.
It happens. It's happened since Adam. But you walked away, and you left me here to fix his lands and hold him up, and I done it. For fifty years,” he added bitterly and thumped a hand flat against his own chest. "And after he as good as promised this place to me, he left it to you.
To a man that hadn't set foot on it in more'n six years. "
"You had a home," Beau pointed out.
"Not of my own!"
The roar of it startled the horses. Anger came pouring out of the old man like water out of a broken barrel.
"I broke my body for him. I got two fingers that don't straighten and a hip that’s not been right in years after I fell off because John Hawkins got scared of a snake.
Every one of them I got on his ground doing his work.
And that ungrateful old goat never mentioned me once in his will.
" His voice shook. "I sat in Kessler's office with my hat in my hand, and I waited for something.
A scrap of land to call my own. A place to lay my weary bones after fifty years of faithful service.
" He spread his hands. "Nothing. Not even a thank you. "
"You got a bed, wages, and you got fed for all those years," Beau ground out.
"Wages. And not even a fair rate for them.
" Duke's mouth twisted. "But I held fast to him, thinking we was friends.
He got so that he couldn't get up on a horse without a block, and he'd not have you talked about.
Not once. And then he up and left the whole lot to you.
" He shook his head. "And you didn't even want it. "
Beau didn't answer. He couldn't. He'd told Duke exactly that, standing on the platform at Grand Springs with the earth still fresh in the churchyard.
"That first winter," Duke said, quieter now, "I watched you make a mess of it.
Every week was a bit worse. And I thought that it's going under anyway.
When it does, I'll have less to show for it than I got now.
" He put his hat back on. "So, I took what I reckoned I was owed. Easy, at first. Nobody counts on ol’ Duke.
" The sneer sat badly on that weathered face.
"Handy on a horse and no other sense in him. Can’t write worth a spit, or so I let people think.
Your daddy taught me what I needed to know, and that was that. "
Beau turned away. He leaned both hands on the corral rail and put his head down, fighting the urge to hit him. He'd seen too much of it. Battlefields and saloons and too many years of other men's tempers. He had promised himself a long time ago that he'd not bring it home.
"How much did you take?"
"What I was owed."
Beau whirled round. "Do you know?"
"Course I know," Duke snapped. "And it still ain't enough. And you're too stupid to have seen it."
Beau advanced on him, and Della's gasp stopped him. Fists balled, he fought his temper and the urge to strike. Breathing as Duke saw it, and grinned at him, baiting him.
Two years. Every single night at that desk with the lamp burning low and the columns swimming in front of him, and Duke coming in with coffee, and telling him it was hard country.
You want to know where the money went, boy. It went on feed in eighty-three and feed in eighty-four and thirty-one head froze in the Cutbank.
"Get off my land," Beau said.
"Beau—"
"You'll take what's yours out of the bunkhouse, and you'll go." His voice was low, lethally so. "If you're still here in the morning, I'll fetch the sheriff out and show him what you've done."
Duke considered him for a long moment.
"Was it her?" he said. "That found it?"
Beau's jaw moved. "Yes."
"Figures. After I done mentioned gettin’ yourself a wife just to keep you away from those books.
" The old man sighed. Then he turned and ambled off toward the bunkhouse, rolling on those bandy legs. Beau watched him go. The man who’d been more than a father to him, his rock after John Hawkins had died.
Just as it felt as though he was about to fall apart, when the ground seemed to shift under him, he felt her come up at his side.
Della slid her arm through his and said nothing at all.
They stood there together, the pair of them, until Duke Darby rode down the drive and out under the crossbar and did not look back.