This Calder Range (54 page)

Webb was riding on his hip. Benteen swung him to the floor as they entered the house. His gaze went to
Lorna, sweeping over her in that intimate way that always sent her pulse chasing after itself.

“Supper ready?” he asked.

“I haven't even started it,” Lorna admitted, then laughed and grabbed his hand, tugging it like a child. “There's something I want to show you.”

With barely contained excitement, she led him to the study doors, opened them, and stepped into the room. She made a whirling pivot to watch his reaction as his gaze traveled around the room.

“Part of the furniture arrived after you left this morning. I've had the workmen busy ever since, uncrating it and getting it arranged,” she explained.

“The map.” He noticed it and smiled at her. “I like that.” He wandered over to the cavernous stone fireplace. “The mantel needs something.”

“I was thinking that myself.” She bit at the inside of her lip, then walked calmly over to a desk drawer and took out the daguerreotype of his mother when she was young. “Would you want to put this on it?”

She handed it to him, and watched him study it. There was a rush of conflicting emotions across his ruggedly planed features. His chest lifted on a deep breath as he looked at her.

“No.” He slowly shook his head. “Put it away somewhere if you want.”

There was nothing left of the old dream, or the old bitterness. Lady Crawford and the image in the picture were two different things, separated in his mind. Lorna crossed the room and put her arms around his middle.

“You knew that, didn't you?” Benteen murmured against her hair.

“I hoped that all the ghosts were gone,” she admitted. “She couldn't be what you wanted.”

A chuckle came from his throat. “Can you imagine Webb calling her grandmother? She'd be horrified.” He lifted his head to look at her, linking his hands at the small of her back to mold her against the lower half of his body. “Speaking of Webb, you don't think you
could persuade your son to go out and play for another hour?”

“An hour?” she murmured provocatively. “You're not bragging much.”

“You sassy little—” He wasn't allowed to finish the rest, as she pulled his head down to kiss him.

From free grass to fences,

A lotta things have passed,

But one thing that's for certain

This Calder range will last.

1902

In the early morning light, Benteen led the two saddled horses to the camp. When Lorna saw him coming, she shook the coffee dregs from the tin mug and left them in the wreck pan by the chuck wagon. It wasn't as good as Rusty's coffee had been. She smiled briefly at the thin man named Bogie who had taken his place. She missed the irascible, white-whiskered cook. There wasn't anyone to tell her where she should look for the “wildflowers” growing. He had died peacefully in his sleep one night—just slipped away. She regretted that she hadn't told him how much she liked him, but it always seemed there was time.

Conscious of Benteen's gaze on her, Lorna shook off the faint sadness and smiled. His eyes darkened as they ran over her. A pair of pants fit snugly over her hips, softly curved hips created for a man's pleasure by the wise Maker. The denim material was new and stiff, making a rustling noise as she walked to meet him. She was just as slender and beautiful as the day he'd married her, although considerably more experienced, Benteen thought with a hint of a smile.

He handed her the reins to a blaze-faced roan, observing, “I think you come on these roundups just so you have an excuse to wear pants.” He liked her in them, but it wasn't something he intended to admit to her.

“I think you asked me to come just so you can see me wearing them,” Lorna returned saucily, and hopped to step her foot in the stirrup, swinging easily into the saddle.

It was a movement Benteen watched over the seat of his saddle, enjoying the way the material stretched to outline her firm buttocks. She continued to stir him, as nature had intended from their first mating.

Benteen mounted his horse. “I should have made you take those things off the first time you put them on instead of thinking it was going to be a temporary thing. Give a woman an inch, and she takes a mile.” But he smiled when he said it. “You do know everyone in the Stockmen's Association talks about the way you ride around like a man?”

“I don't know why they should talk,” Lorna declared. “I'm not the only woman who rides astride.”

“But you're the only one who does it wearing pants,” he pointed out, and turned his horse toward the gathering pens. “All the rest have split riding skirts.”

“Are you trying to tell me what to wear, Benteen Calder?” she challenged.

“It wouldn't do any good. You'd do just as you damn please, the way you've always done,” he replied dryly.

“Not always,” Lorna corrected, because there was a time when other people's opinions had mattered. “This land taught me to be independent.”

They rode out to where the cowboys were making the spring gather. The Hereford cattle being rounded up had shiny white-faced calves at their sides. The gate was opened so another small bunch could be driven in to add to the growing number inside the pens. Benteen and Lorna reined to one side to watch.

The Triple C brand was a burned mark on the rust-red flanks of the cows. Lorna felt a sense of pride and achievement whenever she saw it. She cast a brief glance at Benteen, while the bulk of her attention remained on the wild rangeland that they owned.

“Do you feel like a cattle baron?” There was a smile in her voice—she was aware the term irritated him.

“Nobody ever says ‘cattle baron' without saying
‘greedy
cattle baron.'” He rose to her baiting tone. “It's something I'll never understand. It's always the
homesteading farmer with his little wife who gets all the sympathy and support for the hardships and struggles he's gone through. They always make out that the big cattle ranchers are some kind of feudal lords. They don't take into account the struggles and hardships we endured to have what we now possess.”

“You told me a long time ago it's human nature to want what someone else has,” Lorna reminded him.

“Yes. But someday people will have to recognize the cowboy. Nobody had a lonelier, harder job, not even the farmer. The hours are long, the working conditions usually poor, and all he has for company is a horse. We were here before there were towns and people—when there were just prairie dogs and Indians. We built something where there was nothing, and now we're condemned for it.” There was disgust and impatience in his voice.

“That's because they think we are somehow to blame for the high price of beef at the stores,” she said. “When they're trying to feed their family, they aren't interested in the bad years we've had—the droughts, the blizzards.”

“The winter of 1886-1887 was the worst, coming right after a summer drought that left the range in bad shape,” Benteen remembered with a grim look. “A lot of ranches went under after that.”

Lorna recalled the year that had nearly crushed them along with so many others. After deep snows fell in late November, the chinook had come in early January to give them hope. But it had turned bitter cold. The partially melted snow had turned into an armor of ice that hooves couldn't break through to reach the grass. Frozen and starved cattle had died by the thousands.

It had been a severe blow. The previous year, they had branded nearly ten thousand calves at spring roundup, but after that killing winter there were only twelve hundred calves branded. A lot of ranchers had gotten discouraged and quit or lost their financial backing.

Benteen had figured the tremendous loss of cattle would create a shortage of beef at the market and drive the price up. He took what cash reserve they had and partially restocked the herd. Then he'd sent Shorty Niles to Canada to purchase some draft horses and turned fertile bottomlands into hay. Shorty had come back with the horses and the farmer's daughter as his wife.

The gamble had paid off, and there was hay to feed the cattle if there was another such severe winter. Ranching became combined with part-time farming.

“Mr. Calder!” Jessie Trumbo's fifteen-year-old son came riding up, one of a handful of second-generation Triple C riders.

Ely and Mary Stanton's firstborn was a girl named Ruth Ann. Woolie Willis had married a little red-haired schoolmarm, and Bob Vernon had eventually married his dance-hall girl and had a seventeen-year-old son working the roundup. Barnie Moore, Vince Garvey, and Zeke Taylor were all married with growing children. There was a sense of continuity and belonging, an established order that lent a feeling of permanence to things.

Benteen turned his horse toward the approaching rider and waited until Dick Trumbo had pulled his cantering horse down to a plunging walk. “What is it?”

“Pa wants you to come. It's Captain. He's dead.” The boy was already wheeling his horse in a circle to lead the way.

A murmured sound of regret came from Lorna as she reined her horse to follow after Benteen. The old Longhorn had led the trail drives up from Texas until the influx of settlers had finally closed it off. They had retired the brindle steer to pasture some years ago.

About a half-mile from the pens, they saw Jessie. He had dismounted and was standing at the rim of a coulee. His hat was in his hand, a gesture of respect for the loss of a comrade. Little remained of the steer.
Scavengers had picked the carcass clean, leaving a partial skeleton, a few pieces of loose hide, and a set of long twisted horns.

It was a sober-faced Jessie who looked up at Benteen. “It's Captain. I'd know those mossy horns anywhere.”

The announcement was followed by a long silence that Benteen finally broke. “We'll take the horns back to the ranch.” His glance went to Lorna. “They belong above the mantel.”

She nodded a mute agreement. The steer had played a vital role in the building of the ranch. It was fitting that his memory be honored—and that of his breed.

“Dick, climb down there and get those horns,” Jessie gave the order to his son. “Take them to the chuck wagon.”

The young rider swung off his horse, dropping the reins. He went down the embankment at a sliding walk to reach the carcass and its horned skull.

“These horns must be five feet across or more,” he declared as he hefted a tip and realized they were nearly as long as he was tall.

Jessie walked to the side of his horse and mounted. “There aren't many of his kind left on the range,” the cowboy observed. “I sure do miss seein' them. They sure weren't slick and pretty like those Herefords.”

His comment didn't need any explaining to Benteen. The Longhorn was essentially a wild breed of cattle that had been domesticated—or as tamed as they'd ever get. But it was the wildness that made them special, a kind of freedom that was part of their nature, like the horns. They could fend for themselves; they didn't need anybody looking after them.

“I don't think any cowman is happy to see their herds disappearing,” Benteen agreed. “It's a case of circumstances. With land costs and taxes being what they are, you can't hold a Longhorn on the range until he matures. You need a breed that ages fast, so you can
get him to market. A rancher can't afford to have a Longhorn grazing a range for six years when a Hereford is ready in less.”

“Yeah, I know all the arguments.” Jessie nodded. “The range is too valuable, so the breed's gettin' phased out. I guess there comes a time when we all get phased out. I reckon he had his time of glory, though.”

He touched his hat to Lorna, then reined his horse away to resume his roundup activities. It was a moment before they turned their horses from the coulee and started back to the gathering pens, walking their horses. Lorna watched Benteen scan the range, its vastness pulling his gaze and stretching it out until it hurt.

“It still bothers you to see fences, doesn't it?” she murmured.

“It isn't something any range man would choose, but it was forced on us,” he said. “Just like getting paper title and lease rights to all this land to keep all the little ranchers from taking it away. It isn't just fencing others out. Cattle have become too valuable to be allowed to stray. A cowman can't afford to buy a prime bull and have him servicing somebody else's cows instead of his own. It's a combination of economics and circumstances that killed the open range.”

“And the cowboy,” Lorna murmured. It had been hard for so many of them to make the transition. They'd made their living off the back of a horse with a rope in their hand. Then it had changed, and they were expected to cut hay, dig holes for fenceposts, and string wire.

As they neared the pens, a pair of riders was leaving. Lorna recognized her son with a mother's ease. Webb Calder had grown into a tall, rawboned young man with brown, nearly black hair and dark eyes. Since birth the cowboys on the ranch had treated him like one of their own, never doing his work for him, but always showing him how to do it right. He was young yet, but he already showed signs of independent thinking.

“Webb has been hinting that he wants to move into
the bunkhouse,” Lorna remarked. “I think he's trying to break it to me gently that he's grown up.”

“You can tell him to stop hinting,” Benteen replied. “The governor and his family are coming for a visit the first of the month. I want Webb there.”

“I had forgotten.” She grimaced slightly. “Elaine would be busy organizing everything if she were here.”

It was still difficult to accept that she had died three years before, taken swiftly by a heart attack. Lady Crawford had been such a woman for making entrances and exits that it always seemed to Lorna that she had left too abruptly. It hadn't been her style at all. They had received a telegram from Bull Giles in Washington, where Lady Crawford had journeyed on one of her many political missions.