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“Lady Dunhill or Duncan, I’ve forgotten her name.”
Tara shook her head. “According to the back of this photograph,” she said, indicating the one of the younger woman, “she is Madelaine Calder, Benteen Calder’s mother.”
“I was told she ran away when he was a small boy.” He frowned, doubting Tara’s discovery.
“She ran away and obviously married into some titled English family, then came back. Imagine that, Ty,” she declared with a suppressed eagerness. “You are descended from English royalty. Well, not exactly.” She shrugged her shoulders to dismiss the lack of real blue blood. “But a little family scandal is always more exciting, especially when it’s connected to lords and ladies. I can hardly wait until the Franklins arrive this weekend so I can tell them. They’ll spread the story around like wildfire. You’ll be the talk of everyone who is anyone.”
“The Franklins?”
His blank look brought a trace of exasperation to her mouth. “Ty, I told you at dinner last week that I had invited them for the weekend.”
Maybe she had, he conceded. Most evenings he had been either too tired or too preoccupied to listen. “Sorry. It slipped my mind. You know, of course, I’ll be going to the hospital on Sunday.”
“Surely you can postpone your visit one day,” she urged.
“Can’t. Spring roundup starts,” he announced. The knowledge of the full schedule ahead of him seemed to prod him back to the monthly reports spread across the desktop.
“I suppose that means we won’t see a thing of you all weekend.” The impatient edge was in her voice, honing out the drawl that usually softened it. “Lyle Franklin could be very helpful to you. Put someone else in charge of overseeing the roundup. Considering the number of people you have on the payroll, one of them should be qualified to do it. If none of them are, it’s time you hired someone who is.”
“It’s my job and I’m going to do it,” Ty informed her patiently and glanced down at the damning figures on the papers. “It seems I have enough problems without arguing with you.”
“Problems? What do you mean?” She was quick to catch the troubled note in his voice. Her expression was instantly serious and intent.
“It appears the ranch operation has been steadily losing money over the last few months.” He gathered the reports together. “And I think it’s time I found out just how long this has been going on, and whether it’s as serious as it looks.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised, considering the way your father has run this ranch,” she said, careful to keep her criticism from becoming too sharp. “He’s still paying people who are too old to work. It’s a very noble gesture if you can afford it, but it would be much cheaper to set up a pension fund for them. Most of these old fogies around here should have retired years ago.”
“They do what work they can.” Ty rose from the chair.
“Where are you going?”
“To see Bob Crane. He prepared these reports, so it will be a lot faster to get to the bottom of them by talking to him, and find out whether it’s payroll or something else.”
After two hours in the accountant’s office, Ty discovered there were many factors that had contributed to the present situation.
“As you can see,” Crane pointed out to him, “if it weren’t for the income from the wells that are pumping out at Broken Butte, we wouldn’t have broken even the last five years. It would have been a struggle under normal operations, but to throw in two large capital expenditures with the feedlot and the horse-breeding facilities and stock . . . the expansion simply came at the wrong time.”
“I can see that,” Ty agreed grimly, aware both had been his programs.
“Of course, there have been abnormally high legal costs this last year as well, because of that land dispute with the government. And it hasn’t been resolved yet,” the accountant reminded him. “And this doesn’t show the medical costs that are being incurred every day your father is in the hospital. I’ve heard”—he glanced hesitantly at Ty—“that with the operations and therapy he’s going to require, it might be as long as a year. That’s going to cost a small fortune.”
“My father must have seen what was happening,” he insisted, his forehead creasing in a frown.
“Yes. But he was gambling on an upturn in the cattle market that didn’t materialize.”
“There don’t seem to be many options,” Ty noted, “except to pare down expenses or create an income stream by selling off expendable assets.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Crane agreed. “Sorry, Ty. I would have said something to you, but I thought you regularly saw the reports.”
“I saw them, but always separately. I never recognized the trend they were showing.” The corners of his mustache were pulled down by the grim curve of his mouth. He rolled the reports in his hand and tapped them absently on the desk as he rose. “Thanks, Bob.”
His steps were heavy when he entered The Homestead, weighted by problems he hadn’t expected. Some hard decisions had to be made, and they needed to be the right ones. He walked straight to the study and tossed the reports on the desk. Crossing to the wet bar, Ty poured himself a shot of whiskey, then wandered over to the large stone fireplace with its mounted set of longhorns. Tara called to him, but he didn’t answer.
“Ty, didn’t you hear me? Dinner will be ready as soon as you’ve showered and changed.” She appeared in the doorway and paused to skim his brooding look. “Bad news?” she guessed and crossed the room to his side.
“It wasn’t good,” he admitted and poked at the fireplace ash in search of a hot coal to rekindle the fire.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” She watched him, a certain complacency entering her expression.
