This Calder Sky (23 page)

“You hanged yourself, Angus. Everyone is going to think so, except your partners in this. The word will spread and it will be a long while before anybody will help themselves to Triple C cattle again.”

Webb Calder did not sadistically draw out the moment and wait until O'Rourke dissolved into a blubbering mass of fear, begging for mercy. He gave the signal while the man was standing straight, with a trace of weak defiance. And the signal was no obvious nod, just a mere blink of an eye.

When the box was kicked out from under O'Rourke, Chase was stunned. He heard the odd whining thump of the rope, strained by the sudden weight pulling it taut, and O'Rourke's startled gasp. The short legs kicked, churning the air in an effort to find something solid beneath them, an action that lasted only seconds but became indelibly imprinted in his mind. O'Rourke's face was turning gray, his eyes and tongue bulging. The kidneys and bowels had released to add to the stench of death.

Chase felt his stomach roll violently. He'd never seen a man die before. He'd never seen a man hanged. It sickened him. Chase hunched his shoulders and started to lower his head, but the claybank stallion sidled against his horse, jostling him.

His father's voice came to him, low and heavy with disgust. “If you heave your guts in front of these men, I swear I'll—” He ground his teeth shut on the rest of the threat, but the contempt in the words stiffened Chase, straightening his shoulders and lifting his chin. He stared at the limp body swaying on the end of the rope,
no longer seeing a human being, but just a thing. The rope made a grating sound as it rubbed against the crossbeam under the pendulous weight of its burden.

“He's dead.” The voice came from one of the three men inside the barn; Chase wasn't sure which one.

“Untie his hands,” his father ordered, and the man on the horse rode over to remove the pigging string.

Culley's hand was still clamped over Maggie's mouth, placed there when the box was kicked away from their father to smother her scream. His arm was crushed around her, holding her hard against him. He had tried to turn her head so she wouldn't see the hanging, but she had refused to look away from the horror of it.

When all the riders were mounted, they left the ranch yard at an unhurried trot, going back the way they'd come, with Calder and his son in the lead. Once they were out of sight, Culley loosened his hold on her and Maggie tore away to race for the barn, not stopping until she reached the rope tied to the upright roof support. Her fingers clawed at the knot, pulled so tight, little animal sounds of frustration coming from her throat. Her wild efforts broke and tore her fingernails all the way to the quick, trickles of blood from the cuts smearing the white rope. She was indifferent to the pain, not pausing until she worked the knot loose. As she tried to slowly lower her father to the barn floor, his dead weight pulled the rope through her hands, burning the palms. She clamped a lip between her teeth and held on, steadily lowering him.

Before his boots touched the floor, Culley had a hold on the body and Maggie let go of the rope. It slithered over the crossbeam like a treacherous white snake, following the body that Culley gently lowered to the floor. When Maggie reached them, her brother had thrown a saddle blanket over the head and shoulders of
the body. She sank to her knees beside it and her fingers reached out to grasp hold of the blanket.

Culley pulled her away. “Don't look at him, Maggie.” His voice was a harsh, anguished sound.

“I want to look at him!” She turned on him, her face deathly pale, but there was a fiercely burning light in her eyes. “I want to remember how the Calders murdered my father!”

His hands framed her face and held it tightly. There were tears streaming down his cheeks and his mouth was drawn back in a grimacing smile to control them. “Don't look, Maggie. You'll remember how they killed him just like I will. You don't need to see him to remember.” Then she was enveloped in the crush of his arms. Maggie clung to him, sharing the intense pain that racked his body with shudders, but there were no tears to bring her relief. She envied her brother because he could cry. Her throat was raw and aching and her eyes burned, but no tears fell.

Finally they found the strength to stand apart from each other, brother and sister, sharing the same grief-torn expression. Culley had always been closer to her father than Maggie, had more understanding of his weaknesses, while she had condemned them. She was sorry now that she hadn't been more forgiving of her father's faults. He had been a weak man, not a bad one.

“We'll have to call the sheriff.” Maggie made no attempt to turn back to her father's body, respecting her brother's wishes in this.

“Yes,” he agreed and rested a hand lightly on her arm to draw her away from the body. “I'll call.” They began walking, slowly, leaving the death shadow of the barn for the bright sunlight. “Maggie, listen to me. When I talk to the sheriff, I'm going to tell him that we came back and found him—”

“You aren't going to tell them that—” She interrupted
in a blaze of anger, only to have Culley cut across her protest.

“No.” He stopped. His cheeks were still wet from the tears, but his face didn't belong to an eighteen-year-old boy anymore. It was a man's face, embittered and hard. “Who is going to believe us, Maggie?” Culley challenged. “Calder has everyone around here in his pocket. What proof do we have except our word? Nobody is going to take it against that of a Calder.”

She knew he was right, and she stared to the south, hating. “We can't let them get away with it!”

“I won't. The day will come when they'll pay for this,” he vowed. “I swear it.”

When they rode away from the ranch yard, there was no doubt in Webb Calder's mind that he had done the right thing. He had weighed the other alternatives and chosen his solution. He did not pretend that another man might not have handled it differently, but neither did he dwell on it. It had been unpleasant business without satisfaction in finishing the task.

He felt a thousand years old as they returned to their point of rendezvous on the north range. He had done what the country demanded of him, the way he'd been reared, nothing more and nothing less. What sorrow that was in his heart was reserved for O'Rourke's son and daughter.

With the horses loaded in the trailer, Webb climbed behind the wheel of the truck and glanced at his son. Not a word had been spoken between them since he had cursed him in the ranch yard, but it had been for the boy's own good. He noticed the flesh stretched white across cheekbone and jaw. Chase had stood up well, never showing himself to be soft or weak. Webb had given him the time to think things through on his own during the return ride. Now was the time to speak, not to defend his action, because Webb never defended
a decision. No, he wanted to talk to find out what was in his son's heart.

“There are a lot of hard decisions a man has to have the stomach to make, some more unpleasant than others. Angus was warned and given the chance to leave the Triple C alone, but he came back to take more cattle. If you let one man walk over you, then two will, then three, then four … so many that you won't be able to stop them. You have to stop the first man, or they'll all eventually come. Angus made it clear that he wanted to bring the Triple C to its knees”

“It started because I had taken his daughter.” Chase spoke in a flat voice, devoid of emotion.

“No.” Webb didn't accept that. “The farmer, Anderson, has a son about your age. If O'Rourke's girl had started slipping off to meet him, Angus would have turned a blind eye and shrugged it off as part of being young and impetuous. But you are a Calder, and Angus used you as an excuse. You became his justification for stealing Triple C cattle. If it hadn't been you, he would have found something else. And he would have kept on stealing because it made him feel big. Angus hated being small.”

Chase took in a breath and let it out, turning a cynical glance out the window. “I can't say that I feel big right now … or proud.”

“There was nothing good about what happened today.” Webb felt easier in his mind. A man had to face up to things without liking them, which was what his son was doing. “You can't go through this world without being scarred. That's part of life. You aren't living in a paradise. There's always dirty work to be done, but don't ever send someone else to do it for you.”

Webb was satisfied with his son's attitude and lapsed into silence to let Chase think over what he'd said. So far the road to manhood had been relatively smooth for
his son, but it was going to get rougher and lonelier. Webb had traveled it once himself, so he knew what he had to prepare his son for.

Just before the evening meal, the telephone rang in the den. Webb waved Chase back into his chair. “I'll answer it.” He walked to the extension on his desk and picked up the receiver. “Triple C.”

“Webb? This is Sheriff Potter,” said the slow-talking voice on the other end of the line.

“Yes, Sheriff. What can I do for you?” Webb sat his drink down and moved behind the desk to sit in the swivel chair, leaning back to gaze sightlessly at the ceiling of the den.

“I thought you might like to know that Angus O'Rourke was found dead in his barn today. Hanged,” he drawled heavily.

“Committed suicide, did he?”

There was a long pause before the sheriff answered. “That's the way it looks to me.”

“That's unfortunate.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is,” the sheriff confirmed in a sigh. “Well, I just thought you'd want to know.”

“I appreciate the call.”

“Any more problems with those rustlers?”

“No. I guess they're going to leave us alone.”

“Good. Take care now, Webb.”

“You do the same.” He replaced the receiver with a thoughtful look, glanced at Chase, but made no comment.

The scissors lay beside her on a table, but Maggie bit the dark thread with her teeth and set the spool aside. Moistening the frayed end of the thread to a point, she ran it unerringly through the eye of a needle; then her fingers rolled the end of a thread into a knot. The button didn't exactly match the others on the suit jacket, but it was the closest she had been able to find in her mother's sewing basket. Her mind was empty, blessedly blank, as she held the button in place with a thumb and forefinger and ran the needle through the cloth, its silver point pushing up from the thread hole of the button. It was a simple task to sew on a missing button, requiring little concentration, something that could be done automatically, but it was infinitely better to be occupied. She could drift, feeling no pain, no grief, no bitterness or hatred, just numbness while the silvery needle flashed in and out of the button.

A pickup drove into the yard, breaking the stillness. Her gaze lifted from the suit jacket to the front window. It was probably Culley coming home from
town, she thought absently. But it was a tall, loose-striding man who was approaching the porch steps. Her fingers lost their rhythm with the needle, and its sharp point jabbed into a sensitive fingertip. All the tangle of hot emotions returned to burn her into consciousness as she sucked at the red spot of blood on her finger. When Chase Calder knocked on the screen door, it thumped against its frame.

Maggie neither moved from her chair nor looked up. “Come in.” There was no trace in her voice of all that seethed inside.

The door was opened, that sound followed by footsteps entering. They hesitated, then came the rest of the way into the room and stopped by her chair. She could see the brown toes of his boots as she knotted the thread and picked up the scissors to snip it in two.

“Hello, Maggie.” His voice was quiet.

“There was a button missing on the suit.” She poked the needle and thread into the strawberry pincushion and draped the jacket over the arm of the chair. “I had to sew it on because my father is going to be buried in it. It's the only suit he owned.” Maggie stood up, her fingers still tightly gripping the handles of the scissors.

Chase had removed his hat and was holding it in front of him. His broad chest lifted as he took a deep breath and brought his gaze up to meet the dark green of hers. “I'm sorry about your father, Maggie,” he said grimly. “If there is anything I can do—”

His hypocrisy sent the blood rushing hotly through her veins. “There is nothing you can do now! If you wanted to do something to help, why didn't you stop them from hanging him?!!” she raged. Shock flickered across his carved features. It made her taunt him with what she knew. “I saw you with your father and the others. You didn't think anybody else was here to watch you hang him, did you? But we saw it all!!”

He turned his head aside, showing her a hawk-like
profile. A muscle worked along his jawline as he appeared to struggle to control some emotion. Then he swung back to look at her, nothing showing in his expression, neither regret nor sorrow.

“I wish you hadn't.” There was no break in his voice, all feeling repressed. She faced him, staring at a stranger, not at a man in whose arms she had lain so many times. Inside, she was coiling like a rattlesnake preparing to strike. His eyes grew narrower, probing in their intensity. “You heard your father admit that he was the one who had been stealing our cattle.”

“He didn't do it alone!” Maggie flared. “What about the others? Are you going to hang them, too? I'm part of it. I knew about their raids. I even covered for them. Are you going to hang me, too?”

The admission caught Chase unaware. Until that moment he had believed she knew nothing of her father's involvement in rustling Calder beef. A cold sense of betrayal ran through him.

“Why didn't you tell me before?” he demanded.

“What would you have done? Turned me over to your father?” She was trembling with the rage that boiled inside. It hammered against her control, seeking an outlet, an escape. “What do you suppose he would have done to me? Strung me up beside my pa?”