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Chase knew what he was asking. “He’s dead.”
It was the word Jobe Garvey had been waiting to hear. He reined his horse away from the rest and sank his spurs into him, taking off at a fast gallop for camp.
The discordant jangle of a horse chewing on its bit filled the silence that followed. For a long minute, no one said a word. Then Stumpy cleared his throat.
“Did he say who killed him?” Stumpy’s words were stiff with repressed feeling.
“No.”
“I thought, maybe . . .” Stumpy let that die unfinished. “Did he say anything?”
It required much effort, but Chase looked Stumpy in the eye and lied, “He was already dead when we got here. Stabbed.”
Just as he had once withheld his father’s dying words, Chase did the same with his son’s. It was better that he lived with the pain of them since he had been the one to order Jessy back to camp. Her grief would be enough to bear without adding such bittersweet knowledge to them.
“You’d better ride back to camp, Stumpy,” Chase said with great weariness. “Jessy will need you. The rest of you go, too.”
Stumpy hesitated, compassion welling up. His daughter was alive, but Chase had lost his only son. “What about you?”
“I’ll stay here with Ty.”
One by one the riders turned their horses around and rode out of the coulee, leaving Chase alone on the ground beside the body of his son.
Chapter Twenty
Tension hung over the camp with all the thickness of a heavy fog. Only the twins were immune to it. Trey played his own boisterous version of tag with Quint while Laura sat on Jessy’s lap and made eyes at the cook. The twins’ innocence gave a look of normalcy to the scene that was taken away by Cat’s restless pacing. As usual, she made no attempt to conceal the anxiety that gripped everyone.
Cat made a few attempts to occupy herself with the children, but after a short while the edginess took hold and she wandered off, usually to stare in the direction of the Three Fingers, watching for a rider to return with news of Ty.
After another fruitless vigil, she walked back to the cookshack and refilled her coffee mug. It was not the coffee she wanted as much as it was something to do with her hands. Worry clouded her green eyes when she darted a look at Jessy.
“Just because there was blood on the saddle, that doesn’t necessarily mean he is badly hurt. You can bleed a lot just from a nasty cut.” Cat seemed to gain some reassurance from voicing the thought aloud. “That’s probably all that happened, Jessy.”
“I know.” Jessy had told herself the same thing, but she had trouble believing it.
A ranch pickup came roaring toward camp, traveling at a reckless speed. Its approach brought Jessy to her feet as Cat hurriedly discarded her cup in the wreck pan and moved toward the oncoming vehicle.
“That must be Amy,” Cat murmured.
But it was Ballard who emerged from the cloud of dust that swallowed the truck when it came to a stop. His first few strides toward camp had a frantic quality about them. Then he saw Jessy and relief visibly sagged through him.
“There you are.” He walked straight to Jessy, a faint smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “I’ve been half out of my mind since Sally told me you’d come out here to roundup. How did you manage to sneak away without me seein’ you leave?”
“I didn’t sneak away. I rode with Chase,” Jessy replied, her attention already straying.
“I never gave it a second thought when he left this morning. It never crossed my mind to check and see if you were with him. I’ll know better next time.” His lazy smile was full of self-reproach.
“When we saw your truck, we were sure you were Amy.” Cat glanced toward the road and chewed absently at her lower lip.
“Amy Trumbo?” Ballard asked with a frown. “Why are you expecting her? Is somebody hurt?” His glance made a lightning sweep of the camp area as if searching for an injured rider.
“Ty is missing.” Cat’s jumbled nerves needed the release of words. “They found his horse.”
“Don’t tell me he got thrown?” Ballard reacted with a half-smile of disbelief then shook his head. “Naw, his horse probably stepped in a prairie dog hole and took a spill.”
“There was blood on the saddle.” In Cat’s mind that negated any thought that Ty would be found walking back to the roundup site.
After a slight pause, Ballard darted a look of concern at Jessy then insisted, “That doesn’t mean anything.”
