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“When Kent came here for the first time, looking for cattle, he shocked me. He was aloof but respectful. Armstrong was the same. Both of them knew they wouldn’t get very far with my pa if they weren’t and they wanted to know what happened to their cattle.”
She resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder and look at Kent, though she wanted to know his reaction. “Later, Kent was so kind to me. We talked about everything but the feud. He loved learning and medicine. I wanted him to make all his goals happen that he wanted in life. Then he protected me from your nephew, who wanted to see my family dead. Giving him that scar.”
Louis glanced away, the accusation that his own family wasn’t so pure chinked his brutish armor. Now was her chance to let him, and Kent, know exactly how she felt about what he’d done for her.
“I would never risk losing Kent. He left me once before, and I would never willingly do anything to make that happen again. I don’t know where that weed came from and I’m so sorry that it killed one of your cows. But I never put it there. I can swear that other than Kent’s book with the drawing inside, I’ve never seen that in my life.”
Louis looked up, a fiendish glint in his eyes. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then let the deputy and I take a look at your hay. If your animals are sick too, maybe they’ve found where you have it secreted away. The only thing I haven’t figured out yet is why you’d give it to the Olesons. Maybe you didn’t want the deputy here to be suspicious.” His voice took on a mocking, sing-song quality. “It couldn’t possibly be the Johlmans if the problem is happening to anyone other than the Douglases. They are so kind and so good.” He rolled his eyes. “Bah!”
Pa stepped forward, shuffling her back into Kent. “That’s quite enough, Louis. I have nothing to hide because I don’t think for one second that Alice did anything and Kent already looked at what’s left of our hay just two days ago. With the grass coming in, the sheep haven’t needed it, so it’s been just sitting there.”
“And have your sheep improved?” Blake asked.
She’d almost forgotten he was there. He so quickly blended into the group.
Pa tilted his head to the side and furrowed his brow. “The sheep I released with the others, yes. They healed quicker than I expected. The young ones are still struggling, and I’ve had to keep them close to the barn.”
Blake nodded quickly and tilted his head toward the barn. “Let’s get this business over with.”
* * *
Kent walked alongside Alice,still stunned at her words. He’d known deep in his heart that she’d entered that pasture to see him. Why else would she be there? But to hear her say the words and to defend her motives stirred his heart.
She wouldn’t jeopardize their friendship, but did she feel what he did? Did she hope for more? He’d kissed her and thought he’d communicated his feelings to her in that way, as his words often came across harsh or clinical, two things he didn’t feel for Alice.
The walk was too short for him to completely analyze what she had said. Before long, they stood in the barn where he’d spent hours the week before slowly parsing through the hay, trying to find a stray stalk that looked different from the others. The activity had been mentally exhausting, and he’d failed. He’d found nothing.
His father would find nothing because Kent had looked and had found nothing, and he’d known exactly what he was looking for. He cut her a glance, and she’d hung her head next to him. Without his support, she might think she had none. He reached out and wove his fingers through hers and held tightly.
She caught his glanced and mouthed the words. “I didn’t do this. You have to believe me.”
He gave her what he hoped was a resolute nod of encouragement. He knew Alice better than anyone. And he’d been a fool to think she would judge him when she could still act in fairness and even grace with his father, who’d come here threatening and demanding.
But did she love him? If he said anything, what did it gain him? His father wasn’t well and could forget what he’d said to Kent at any time. But the more he pushed Kent away, the less likely it was that he would ever accept Kent back as the son he was. But Alice, she was his future. He had but to claim it. To claim her by speaking the truth.
“I’ve hunted through this pile. Granted, it was much larger then, but I found nothing. The weeds weren’t there. Bodey, Blake, some of the hands and I were all looking through the barns and all of the Johlman pastures for that weed. We found none. If that weed came from anywhere, it was from our barn, not this one. Though, if I’d been allowed, I would’ve hunted Douglas land too, just to be certain it wasn’t anywhere on either side of the fence.”
Pa stood up straighter and glared fiercely. “Are you calling me a liar? I hope you’re not, because it’ll be the last thing you do.”
“What’s this?” Blake picked up a mangled stray piece of hay that had fallen on the floor and been trampled underfoot so many times it was almost indistinguishable but certainly different from the rest of the hay.
Kent felt the life drain from him and he gripped the wall of the stall next to him. “I searched . . .” He’d failed Alice. He’d worked so long and hard and they’d found in minutes what he hadn’t found in days. How had he missed something right in front of him?
If Blake hadn’t found the stalk, he would’ve thought Pa had brought it with him and pulled it from his own pocket to make Alice appear guilty. He glanced at her and her face had lost its color.
“That hay is not from our land. The only thing we’ve grown to feed any other animals is the alfalfa in the field behind us. That hay, the only hay that’s been stored there since the flooding started, was that which we bought from the feed and seed. The very same hay every farmer and rancher has purchased. That’s how it has spread. Not through me, and not through the fertilizer plant, but through need.”
Kent wrapped his arm around her and straightened. “She’s right. When I spoke to Marshall last week, he’d said that the men who he’d purchased the hay from had started to buy from sellers further south and they were having to cut fields they’d never cut before. Instead of pointing the finger at Alice, we need to be spreading the word about the hay.”
Blake nodded his agreement with Kent’s assessment. Alice held tight to him for a moment. “Kent, if it was here all along, why weren’t your horses affected? Our horses don’t eat this, just the sheep. But you mentioned your horses . . .”
He’d read the part of his book that had described locoweed many times over the last few weeks, trying to remember everything about it. The fact that it did not bother the horses was one of the factors that made him believe it was locoweed, and not something else. “Oddly, many horses won’t eat it unless they are forced to. Some show no response to it, others can go sterile.” He swallowed hard, forgetting himself and the company for a moment. “And we wouldn’t know if our horses suffered until breeding time.”
He picked up a handful of the hay in the area where they’d kept the bales and still saw no other bits of locoweed. That explained why the young were affected more than the old. They needed more of the hay to survive and the older ones were eating so much other roughage that it was affecting them less. “I think, contrary to what I’d thought before about bringing the sick animals in and having them eat only hay as the safest option, we need to turn them loose and have them eat what’s naturally available. They may have gotten better right away if I’d recommended that.”
Blake glanced slowly at each person in the barn, letting them think for a moment. “Louis, you’re the one who reported this as a crime. Do you feel this answer satisfies you?”
“No, it doesn’t. She was on my property, and I don’t want her there.”
