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“If that don’t beat all,” Lath murmured, still grinning at the thought. “As tight as he was with a nickel, don’t you know he must have been crazy mad when he came to?”
“Every time I think about how dead set he was against drinking, it makes me smile.”
“By God, we owe Buck one,” Lath declared.
“That’s what I told him.”
“Haskell must be getting up there in age now.”
“Must be.” Rollie shrugged and negotiated the curve in the road. “He told me he was born just a few days before Chase Calder.”
“I just realized, you two had something in common,” Lath remarked. “You both wound up in prison thanks to Chase Calder. I gotta tell ya, Rollie, I never thought you got a fair deal. Maybe you did have too much to drink, but it was still an accident. You’re sure as hell no criminal. They shouldn’t have sent you there.”
There was little about those years that Rollie wanted to remember. He moved his big shoulders, trying to throw off the thought of them. “Prison wasn’t so bad.”
Lath gave him a knowing look, then faced the front again and offered a succinct comment, “Shi-it.”
After an instant of silence, Rollie broke into a somewhat sheepish laugh. Lath joined him. In that moment of laughter, a thousand unspoken experiences were shared, everything from the humiliation of a strip search to the ominous and echoing clang of lockup. Rollie felt closer to his older brother than he ever had in his life.
A lodgepole gate marked the entrance to the former S Bar Three Ranch. The long cross-member that had once connected the two posts hung drunkenly against the farthest one. Catching sight of it, Rollie slowed the truck to make the turn onto the rutted track that wound away from it, curling back into a crease in the broken hills.
This time Rollie’s glance at the rearview mirror was an automatic one, born out of driving habit. Shock froze the half smile on his face when he saw the reflected image of a vehicle rounding the curve behind him, the familiar light bar of a patrol car on its roof.
He threw a look over his shoulder, needing to confirm it with his own eyes. “Jeezus, it’s Echohawk. I told you he’d follow us.”
Lath wheeled around in the seat to look, his eyes agleam as if it were some kind of game. “I figured him wrong. That’s one for him.”
He checked to see how close they were to the gate, and looked back to measure the distance to
the approaching patrol car, then squared around in the seat. “We’ll make it.”
Sure enough, the patrol car was still a quarter mile distant when Rollie swung the pickup onto the rut-riddled lane. Grinning widely in secret triumph, Lath turned sideways and waved at the vehicle, silently watching to make sure Echohawk drove past the gate. When he did, Lath laughed softly and settled back in the passenger seat, lifting the can of beer to his mouth. Rollie eyed him warily, unable to remember a time when his older brother hadn’t enjoyed flirting with danger. It was clear he hadn’t changed in that.
The dirt track snaked a three-mile long path into the rugged foothills and culminated at the site of the old ranchstead. After years of standing empty, scoured by the elements, the buildings stood on the verge of collapse, their rotting boards weather-bleached an ancient gray. There was a huge hole in the barn roof, and one side of the house had caved in. The stumps of old posts marked the former location of a corral. Near it, repairs had been made to an old lean-to, and a milk cow grazed inside an electric fence beyond it.
In the midst of all this decay and neglect stood a mobile home, its base skirted with bales of straw to block the tunneling of winter’s cold. The area around it had been shorn of weeds, giving the chickens a place to scratch and peck. One flew out of the pickup’s path, squawking a protest.
“I know it doesn’t look like much,” Rollie said, seeing the place through his brother’s eyes. “But I got the trailer cheap, and Littleton is renting us the land for practically nothing. Ma’s got her milk cow and chickens, and the ground behind the barn was pretty fertile, so I plowed that up so she could plant some vegetables.”
“As long as Ma’s happy, I wouldn’t care if it was a hog lot.” Lath reached over and pushed the horn on the steering wheel. The blare of it scattered more chickens as the pickup rolled to a stop just yards from the front steps. “We need to pick up some guinea hens. As much as I hate their racket, they’re the best damn watchdogs a body could have. If anybody comes sneakin’ around, they’ll let you know about it.”
The door to the house trailer popped open, and out stepped Emma Anderson, an apron tied around the plain housedress she wore. Her long gray hair was wound in its habitual coronet of braids atop her head. A smile of welcome rearranged the lines that seamed her thin face.
“Lath. I mighta known it was you making all that noise,” she declared with mock sternness before descending the steps.
“Hey, Ma. How’s my best girl?” Long, loping strides carried him to her. He promptly picked her up and spun her around, laughing at the protest she made.
“Latham Ray Anderson, you put me down this instant,” she scolded, but for all the sharpness of her voice, the sparkle in her dark eyes was that of a young girl.
Seeing it, he laughed again and gave her a big smack on the cheek, then set her down. A little breathless, she pulled primly at the dress his hands had hitched up, and raised a smoothing hand to her hair.
“You are such a scamp,” she admonished, then succumbed to the upswell of affection and clasped his face between rough and liver-spotted hands. “It is so good to have you home, Lath. Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“Now, Ma, you know I was on parole and couldn’t leave until now,” he chided gently, capturing her hands and pressing a kiss against them. “But that’s all over with and I’m as free as the wind.”
“That wind better not be blowin’ anywhere but right here,” she informed him, then stepped back and waved a hand toward the pickup. “Now, you go get your things and bring ’em in the house while I see to dinner. From the looks of you, you haven’t had a decent meal in months.”
Turning, she grabbed onto the handrail and climbed the wooden steps to the door, without directing a single word to Rollie. He wasn’t surprised by that; he had always known Lath occupied a special corner of her heart. The years he’d been away had only solidified it.
