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“Kint?” He stretched out a hand to him in question.
“She’s brave, not foolish.” Jessy turned, her attention caught by the sound of the front door opening. “Sounds like Grandpa is headed off to roundup. Let’s go say goodbye to him.”
With Trey straddling her hip, Jessy reached the front hall in time to see Ballard enter the den. Curiosity drew her forward to within earshot of the conversation inside the room.
“Is there a problem, Ballard?” Chase asked.
“The problem is me,” Ballard replied on a grim note. “I would’ve bet my life Jessy was the target, but we both know I was dead wrong. I feel like it’s my fault. If I hadn’t opened my mouth, none of us would have been distracted with worrying about Jessy.”
“That’s something we’ll never know.”
“I recognize that,” Ballard admitted. “I know I wasn’t raised on Triple C, but when you go after Haskell, I want to come along.”
After a slight pause, Chase said, “I’ll remember that.”
“I hope you do. It’s the only way I’m gonna feel right about any of this. Anyway, that’s what I came to say. I know there’s a lot you’ve gotta’ do today, so I won’t keep you from it.”
As his footsteps approached the hall, Jessy quietly backed up a few steps to make it less obvious she had been eavesdropping. Ballard halted when he saw her, his achingly gentle eyes making a quick and thorough study of her face.
“Are you holdin’ up all right, Jess?”
Unconsciously she folded both arms around Trey, drawing a measure of comfort from the child Ty had given her. “I am.”
“Good.” The look of empathy in his eyes managed to convey that he knew the deep pain she felt. “ ’Cause them kids are gonna need you, little though they may be. I guess you know if there’s anything I can ever do . . .” He let the sentence trail off, unfinished.
“Thanks.” The corners of her mouth lifted in a semblance of a smile.
He responded with a nod and a bolstering smile of his own. Then, without another word, he moved past her and out the front door. Jessy lingered in the hall a moment then continued to the den, entering as Chase stood up and reached for his work Stetson, a clear indication he was preparing to leave.
“I guess you’re heading to Broken Butte,” Jessy observed.
Chase nodded and pushed his hat on. “I’ll be there until late.”
“I listened in on your conversation with Ballard,” Jessy admitted. “Will you take him with you?”
Chase ran his gaze over her face. “Would you?”
In that instant, Jessy knew this was to be her first lesson in leadership. She thought it over for several seconds. “I’m not sure why—I certainly don’t question his loyalty, but—I wouldn’t.”
“You have good instincts,” he told her. “Remember that and go with them, regardless of what your head says.”
Late that afternoon, Chase took his own advice. With the roundup well in hand at Broken Butte, he left Stumpy in charge, climbed in his pickup, and headed southeast, but not toward The Homestead. The route he traveled took him straight to Wolf Meadow.
Bypassing the house, he drove directly to the mobile home, set back in the shade of the bluff. He climbed out of the cab and made a slow scan of the area, taking special note of the workers moving about, especially the idle ones. He saw what he expected to see, and climbed the metal steps to the trailer door. Chase rapped twice on it and walked in.
It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the relative dimness of the trailer’s interior. He swept his glance over the narrow living room and brought it to a stop on Virgil Haskell, seated in a corner recliner, an afghan bundled around his legs despite the trailer’s stuffy warmth. Virgil sat forward, his bony fingers gripping the ends of the chair’s armrests, his eyes glaring his hostility.
“I had a feeling you’d show up,” Virgil said, a slight smirk to his mouth. “But I didn’t figure you’d come alone. You took quite a chance, Calder. What if Buck had been here?”
“Then my search would have been over,” Chase replied smoothly. “Where is he, Virgil?”
“I can’t say.” Virgil leaned back against the recliner and folded his hands on his lap. “For all I know, he could be in Canada by now.”
Bowing his head briefly, Chase glanced at the floor then back at the old man. “I imagine that’s what you told Logan so he would switch his focus away from here. But I don’t buy it. He’s still around, isn’t he?”
Avoiding any comment on that, Virgil settled a little deeper in the chair, his expression taking on a look of malicious satisfaction. “You’re mad clean through, ain’t ya? I guess now you know how it feels to have your son taken away from you.”
“I always knew there was a bitterness in you, Virgil. But I never realized how deeply it had eaten into you. You even poisoned your own son with it.” After throwing the old man a look mixed with pity and disgust, Chase struck out for the kitchen area.
