This Calder Range (41 page)

Benteen started to pick him up, but Arthur wanted his mommy and sent up a fresh wail, stretching his clutching hands to her. She lifted the toddler into her arms and cuddled him close, rocking him slightly in silent comfort.

“Is Arthur hurt?” The older boy strained to see the injury. “Is he bleeding? Can I see?”

“He just scraped his knees,” Lorna replied, then glanced apologetically to Elaine. “Would you excuse me?”

“Certainly,” she agreed with alacrity. “Your husband can show me the rest of the house.” She turned away to conceal the satisfaction that gleamed in her eyes and crossed the room to the massive fireplace. She listened to the sound of footsteps, separating Benteen's from those of Lorna and the children as they left through the front door.

“The stairway to the second floor isn't completed,” Benteen informed her. “There isn't any more of the house to see.”

Elaine tipped her head toward her shoulder to study him with a sidelong look. “You don't remember me at all, do you?” she murmured.

“I beg your pardon.” There was a quizzical lift of one eyebrow, yet his curiosity seemed forced. It was obvious his mind was elsewhere.

“I didn't expect that you would.” Her gaze returned to the fireplace. “Your father used to keep a picture of me on the mantel. I often wondered how long he left it there.”

When she looked at him again, she saw the whiteness under his skin as his facial muscles tautened with cold shock. Elaine wasn't surprised by the bitter hatred that blazed suddenly in his eyes.

“It was there until the day he died.” His voice rumbled the answer, yet his control remained unshaken.

“Seth always was a hopeless romantic,” Elaine declared on a throaty laugh, then let her gaze wander over the half-finished house. “Perhaps if he had built me a home like this, I wouldn't have left him. Is that why you're building it, Benteen? Are you afraid of losing your wife?”

“I don't know why you're here, but you can get the hell out!” His low-pitched voice vibrated with the effort to contain his wrath. “Go back to your fancy lords and ladies. You aren't wanted here.”

“I haven't come to beg your forgiveness,” she replied
with a trace of amusement. “I don't regret running away from your father and leaving you. When I left Texas with Con Dunshill, I never once looked back.”

“Do you think I give a damn?” Benteen challenged thickly. “I am not my father. You walked out of my life and you can stay out.”

Her dark gaze studied him unmoved by his bitter hatred of her. “You aren't like your father,” she agreed. “I knew that when I saw you in Dodge City. You are like me, Benteen. Just like me.”

“You're an adulterous, scheming bitch. You don't even have the scruples of a whore.” Contempt and derision twisted his features as he spat the accusations at her.

“And you are ruthless, ambitious, and intelligent—all the things you claim I am. In a man, they are qualities to be admired,” she reasoned. “But if a woman possesses them, she is a scheming, gold-digging bitch. I plead guilty to all three. What now, Benteen? Aren't you just a little bit curious why I'm here after all this time?”

“Not particularly.”

“You do want to know. You just don't want to admit it.” She smiled with certainty. “So I'll tell you. Since my husband's death—”

“I assume you mean my father,” Benteen broke in coldly. “He was your legal husband.”

“Add bigamy to the charges against me, then.” She shrugged aside the technicality. “Since the death of the Earl of Crawford, whom I had been living with these past years as his wife, I have found English society too confining. I am not quite ready to sit on a shelf, as they would have me do. Ever since I saw you in Dodge City, the idea has been in the back of my mind that we'd make a great team, you and I.”

“I'm not interested in a partner, and I certainly wouldn't pick you.”

“I am an extremely wealthy woman, although I doubt if that's of any interest to you at the moment. But
later, after you've had time to get over the … shock—shall we call it?—of seeing your mother again, there's a business proposition I'd like to discuss with you.”

“I don't have a mother,” Benteen stated flatly.

Her shoulder lifted in an expressive shrug of indifference. “I'd much rather be your partner, but we'll talk about that another time.”

“There won't be another time, and I'm not interested in any proposition of yours—business or otherwise. I suggest you leave before I throw you out.” There was no softening of his hard, embittered features.

“I'll leave.” She smiled coolly. “There's just one more thing before I go.”

“Then say it and be done with it,” he snapped, showing the first rush of impatience.

“I believe you know a man named Judd Boston.”

“What about him?” His dark eyes were guarded.

“It seems he has a friend in the land office who had told him about three claims that have not had the necessary improvements made to fulfill the requirements of the land act. All rights and title will be denied the present claimant, and Mr. Boston will be quietly taking them over.”

“Very interesting, but hardly surprising. That's the way Boston works,” Benteen replied.

She moved slowly toward him, gliding in rustling satin skirts. “Ah, but those three claims are yours, Benteen.” The uncertainty of disbelief flickered across his face. “So you see, I can be very helpful to you—in many ways.” Elaine smiled knowingly and laid her hand lightly against his cheek, stroking her fingers across it in a brief caress. “I'll be in touch in a few days, and we'll talk about that proposition.”

After she walked by him to the door, Benteen remained motionless. The touch of her hand had brought a pain that splintered through him like shattering glass. For a split second he was a little boy again, wanting the warmth of a mother's hand and desperately
wishing the beautiful woman in the picture would come back to him. That was before he realized his dream mother didn't exist.

Slowly he turned and walked to the front door, where she waited to be escorted to her carriage. Benteen didn't look at her. He tried to expel her existence from his mind. Although he knew her to be in her late forties, she didn't look it. She was too elegant and sophisticated to ever be considered matronly.

Many times in his youth he had planned what he would say to her if she ever came back. Some of it he had done—calling her names and denying her, ordering her out of his life. Yet, the sensation of her touch lingered on his cheek. He ached from it. But no one could see it. His hard features had been too well schooled in concealing the privacy of his emotions.

The southern exposure of the house had them walking into the sun. The sky was a huge chunk of blue, crowning the range in all directions. Benteen surveyed it with a slow, sweeping gaze, aware of the land's raw malevolence that could give and take by turns. The warning from his mother of Judd Boston's plans came whirling into his thoughts. He had been too confident, too sure of himself.

When they reached the carriage, Lorna was just coming out of the cabin with Webb at her side. Bull Giles followed her, carrying little Arthur in the hook of one arm. Despite the skinned knees and the traces of tears on his cheek, the toddler seemed quite happy on his lofty perch.

“You're a brave boy,” Bull Giles was saying, neither he nor Lorna noticing the pair standing by the carriage.

“Just clumsy,” Lorna laughed.

“Give him a chance to grow into his feet,” Bull insisted. But when he smiled at Lorna, his glance encountered Benteen.

Beside him, his mother remarked, “Mr. Giles appears to be very much at home here. Is he a close friend of yours?”

“No.” Benteen pulled all expression from his voice as he watched Bull set Arthur on the ground. The natural smile had left Lorna's lips, replaced by a more self-conscious one. “He's my wife's friend, not mine.”

All is not well, Elaine thought to herself as Lorna came forward. She studied her son's wife with a little more interest. Lorna was an attractive, well-developed young woman. The hard work this country demanded from a female had kept her figure intact, despite the birth of two children. In the right clothes, she could be stunning. There was intelligence in her eyes, yet she had retained a certain vulnerability. Elaine saw that Lorna still possessed a child's desire to trust, which made her easy to be deceived.

“I'm glad your child's injury wasn't serious,” Elaine remarked when Lorna reached her, with little Arthur trotting to keep up.

“It was very minor,” Lorna responded.

“It's been an enjoyable afternoon. I shouldn't have liked it to end on an unpleasant note,” Elaine said.

“Are you leaving now?” Lorna inquired with mixed surprise and disappointment.

Elaine slid a brief glance at Benteen. “I must,” she replied. When she moved to the carriage door, Bull Giles was there to help her inside.

Lorna came to the side of the carriage and took the boys by the hand to keep them away from the wheels. “I'm glad you called. And thank you for the gifts.”

“You're most welcome.” Elaine's glance slid past her to Benteen, standing silently. “We'll meet again,” she said, then brought her gaze back to Lorna. “I'm confident of that.”

As the carriage pulled away from the cabin, Lorna watched it for a few minutes, then turned to Benteen. “Why didn't you tell her good-bye?”

He seemed to drag his gaze from the sight of the carriage rolling onto the limitless plains. “I already had,” he stated, and swung away from her and the boys.

“Where are you going?” She frowned at his abruptness.

But Benteen didn't answer as his long-legged strides carried him from her. She lost sight of him when he walked behind the shed-barn to the corral where the horses were kept. A few minutes later, she saw him riding out.

Over by the area they called the Broken Buttes, Benteen found Zeke Taylor dousing a cow with a bad case of screwworms. Kerosene fumes made the air pungent. Benteen reined his horse to a halt and stayed on the sidelines as Zeke untied the cow's feet and made a run for his horse. It was a zigzagging race, with Zeke dodging to avoid the hooking horns of the ungrateful cow when it charged him. After its initial rush missed him, the cow took off into the broken country, its tail sticking straight up in the air.

Zeke walked his horse over to Benteen. “Hot day,” he said, and removed his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm.

“Find Woolie and Bob Vernon,” Benteen ordered. “Pass the word that I want the three of you to meet me first thing in the morning. You might want to shave. We're riding into town.”

“It can't be payday already.” Zeke frowned in an attempt to recall the number of days since the last one.

“It isn't.” Benteen wheeled his horse to the side and spurred it into a lope.

Zeke sat there for a minute, wondering what was in Benteen's craw. He wasn't concerned by the failure to explain what he wanted with him and the others, but he usually offered a man some cigarette makin's.

Lorna had supper ready a little before dark. When Benteen didn't return, she went ahead and fed the boys and tucked them into bed. She kept the food warm another hour, then fixed herself a plate. She lost count of the number of times she went to the door and looked
out into the night. Finally she took the food off the stove and changed into her nightdress.

With Benteen gone, she couldn't sleep. She sat in bed with her knees hunched up and her arms clasped around them, rocking a little in an attempt at self-comfort. Filtering through the chinked walls of the cabin were the muted cries of nightbirds. The loneliness of the place seemed to shiver over her.

The slowly building echo of horse's hooves began to separate from the thudding beat of her heart. It had to be Benteen. Lorna sprang from the bed and pushed aside the curtained wall to run barefoot to the door. She had a glimpse of a rider's silhouette against an indigo-dark sky before it was gobbled up by the shadow of the barn-shed.

Shutting the door, Lorna hurried to the stove and stoked its fire, then set the food back on it to warm. She heard the faint jingle of spurs as Benteen approached the cabin. The anxiety she had felt, not knowing where he was, changed to a kind of irritated relief when he walked in the door.

“I waited supper as long as I could,” she said. “It'll take me a few minutes to warm it up for you.”

He stopped inside the door to remove his gunbelt and hang his hat on the wooden peg. Without looking at her, Benteen raked a hand through his hair and crossed the room to the crude shelves that served as cupboards.

“I'm not hungry,” he said, and reached to the back of the top shelf, taking down the bottle of whiskey and a glass.

It was the flatness of his voice coupled with the whiskey bottle that made Lorna stare. He walked to the table and dragged out a chair. With his feet propped on the table, Benteen uncorked the bottle and filled the glass half-full of whiskey. While Lorna watched, he downed most of it and stared at the map hanging on the cabin wall. She had never seen him like this before.

“Benteen, what's wrong?” she murmured.

His flicking glance barely met her eyes. “Nothing. It's late. You'd better go to bed.” As he spoke, he refilled the glass with whiskey.

“But—”

“Just leave me alone,” he demanded tiredly.

After a long moment's hesitation, Lorna didn't attempt to probe for an explanation of his behavior. She took the food off the stove and put the dishes away. Benteen didn't answer when she told him good night. She had the feeling he hadn't heard her.

It was a long time before she fell asleep. The lamp continued to burn, shedding light on the canvas partition. When she woke up the next morning, the pillow next to hers was smooth. She found Benteen slumped over the table, the whiskey bottle more than halfempty.