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“How was the drive?” Seth Calder took the cigar out of his mouth long enough to ask the question.
“Fine.” Benteen swirled the black coffee in the tin mug. “How many head did you end up losing this past winter?”
“By tally, it came out to thirty missing. I found the carcasses of half that number,” his father admitted.
“Did you check any of the Ten Bar herds to see if some of your cattle might have strayed in with theirs?” Benteen didn’t want to come right out and voice his suspicions, not yet.
“I did.” It was a simple answer, yet its tone encouraged Benteen to continue along the same track.
“It sure would be easy to work over a Cee Bar brand into a Ten Bar. It would be hard to spot.” He eyed his father over the rim of the mug as he took a swig of the strong coffee.
A dry smile twitched one corner of his father’s mouth. “Not if somebody botched the job.”
“Then it’s true?” Benteen lifted his head, regarding his father with narrowed surprise. “I only guessed it yesterday. How long have you suspected what was going on?”
“I happened across a steer with a fresh Ten Bar brand over an old Cee Bar this fall,” he said through the cigar between his teeth.
Benteen’s expression darkened with a narrowed look that was hard and uncompromising. “Why didn’t you do something when you found out? Go to the sheriff.”
“How could I?” His father removed the cigar from his mouth and studied the gray ash building on its tip. “When my own son was working for the man rustling my cattle.”
“I’m not drawin’ Ten Bar wages now.” Benteen set his cup down on the table. “You should have said something to me. Told me what you found.”
“You’d left for Wyoming on the drive. And I didn’t have any proof that it wasn’t the work of some overzealous cowboy, done without Boston’s knowledge.”
“Nothing goes on at that ranch that he don’t know about. No order’s given without his knowledge,” Benteen stated.
“That’s the way I figured it.” But he seemed unmoved by it. “He ain’t laid his hands on any more. I’ve kept what’s left of the herd close in where I can keep an eye on ’em and run a daily count. The next time one comes up among the missing, I’ll know who to see.”
“Sell out, Pa,” Benteen urged, and leaned forward to make his point. “What’s this place ever brought you but grief? I staked out a piece of range in the Montana Territory that makes Texas look like a picked-over cotton field. Barnie’s sittin’ on it now till I can come back with a herd. We can trail the Cee Bar stock up there and turn ’em loose on all that free grass.”
Seth Calder shook his head. “Nope. I ain’t quittin’ just ’cause things got tough.”
Impatient and irritated with his father’s blind stubbornness, Benteen held in his temper. “You don’t understand, Pa,” he replied with contained force. “Up there, we can carve out a spread that will make the Ten Bar look like a squatter’s camp. It’s all there for the taking, and it can be ours!”
“It may look green to you, but it looks like runnin’ to me.” There was no give in him, and his eyes were dark with disapproval. “No one’s gonna drive me off this place, least of all a carpetbagger like Boston.”
The chair legs scraped the floor as Benteen shoved away from the table and walked with restive energy to the cast-iron stove, refilling his cup with coffee from the metal pot.
“How much longer can you last?” he demanded. “Another bad winter, a dry summer, and you’ll be finished. Boston won’t even have to lift a finger. Time’s gonna do it for him.” It was so obvious, even a blind man should be able to see it.
“The fight ain’t over till the shootin’ stops.”
“What then?” he challenged with thinned lips. “What happens when it’s over and you’ve lost?”
“I’m not leavin’ here.” Seth Calder held firm to his convictions. “I built this ranch for Madelaine and me. I’ll be here when she comes back.”
Bitterness splintered through Benteen. “She’ll never come back,” he snapped. “Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next year. You’re lying to yourself if you think she will. If she’s not dead, then she’s probably somebody’s whore.”
Seth came to his feet, anger burning in his face, the cigar gripped between his fingers. “I won’t have you talking like that about your mother!”
Benteen closed his mouth on all the things he would have liked to say. They were wasted on his father, who wouldn’t allow a bad word spoken against her. There was a silent battle of wills that ended when Benteen backed off and looked away.
“I’ll be spendin’ the winter in the brush making myself a herd from the wild stock. A couple of boys from the Ten Bar are going to help,” Benteen announced flatly. “Come spring, I’m going to marry Lorna and move north with the cattle.”
It was a statement of his decision, not a request for his father’s approval or his blessing. He’d already asked him to come along once, and Benteen wasn’t about to repeat himself. His father had to do what he thought was right—just as he did.
In the dining room of the Ten Bar ranch house, Judd Boston held a private court with his foreman, a narrow, spare-fleshed man named Loman Janes. Loman had the huge hands of a man good with a rope and the weathered toughness to his pocked complexion that spoke of his hours in the sun. His light gray eyes were flat with resentment at the rebuking tone of the man who possessed his unswerving loyalty.
