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A silence fell. For a moment Cat was afraid it would last until she left the room. Then Emma Anderson spoke again, in that same humble tone as before.
“My husband is a proud man, Mr. Calder. He’s worked hard his whole life. It’s hard for him to admit he can’t do for himself anymore. But the simplest chore is a task for him now. Rollie’s had to do most all the work for the last two years. If Rollie goes to prison, I don’t know how we’ll keep the farm going. We can’t afford a hired—”
Her husband broke in again, gruffly indignant, “That is none of his concern, Emma.” Abashed by her admission and struggling to conceal it, he threw a hesitant look at Chase. “Like I told you, this was that lawyer Barstow’s idea, or we wouldn’t have come here today.”
“I understand that.” Chase nodded smoothly.
“I guess it all comes down to the question that brought us here, then,” he spoke with a bluntness that revealed his lingering discomfiture. “Will you speak to the judge and ask him to go light on Rollie?”
“Please, Mr. Calder,” Emma pleaded, trying to temper her husband’s request. “There’s been enough suffering already. We need our boy to home.”
“So do the Taylors,” Cat stated, her temper flaring. “But their son is dead. He can never come home.”
“Stay out of this, Cat.” The warning from her father was quick and curt. Cat checked the hot retort and waited, ready to defy him if the need arose.
“My Rollie isn’t a bad boy, Mr. Calder,” the old woman insisted. “He just made an awful mistake. He deserves a second chance.”
Chase gave a slow nod of his head, conceding the point.
“No.” Cat’s half-strangled cry put her on the receiving end of another sharp look from him.
Then his attention swung once again to the Andersons. “I understand your situation and respect what you’re trying to accomplish. In your place, I would probably do the same. But I think you have forgotten that as long as there has been a Calder on this land, a Taylor has stood beside him. On this matter, I stand with them, just as I stood beside them when they buried their son.”
Loyalty. Cat wanted to laugh with relief. At the same time she was ashamed that she had forgotten the strong bond that linked her family with the small cadre of families whose ancestors had been trail hands on that first cattle drive and stayed to help her great-grandfather Benteen Calder build the Triple C.
It was a holdover from the West’s early days when taking a man’s pay meant you “rode for the brand” and fought his fights, standing beside him, right or wrong. It was an old code of living that ran both ways; to attack a man’s rider, provoked or not, was the same as attacking the man. Back then, “All for one, and one for all” had not been merely a trite phrase; it had been a hard-and-fast rule. There were still some who abided by that old western code today, and her father was among them.
“I didn’t figure you’d speak up for the boy,” the old man said with a slow, sage nod of acceptance.
“But you must.” Desperate, Emma couldn’t let that be the last word. “If you don’t help us, no one will. Don’t you see, they’ll all take their lead from you.”
“I’m sorry, Emma.” Pity gentled his voice and his expression.
She seized on it and sought to twist it to her advantage. “No, please, you’ve got to help us. Please—”
“The man has given us his answer, Emma,” her husband broke in, embarrassed to the point of curtness. “There is no more to be said.”
“But what will we do?” She bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing them to water. Tears had always been a woman’s weapon, and Emma doubted that Chase Calder was the kind of man who would be immune to an old woman’s tears. They ran down her cheeks when she finally looked up. “Every time I think about our boy getting locked away with a bunch of hardened criminals, it scares me. You know it’ll change him. You know he won’t be the same as when he went in. I don’t want our Rollie turning into some mean, hard man. He did wrong, but he doesn’t deserve that to happen.”
Calder was wavering. Emma sensed it in the way he was having trouble meeting her eyes. For one brief moment she was certain he was about to relent. Then he dropped his gaze, a long, grim breath coming from him.
“You need to tell the judge that, Emma, not me,” he said. “I can’t help you.”
“You don’t mean that,” she murmured in dismay, but she saw the
hardening of his expression and knew he meant every word of it.
Fury came, black and swift. She shook with the effort to keep it from him, fully aware that to unleash it would kill whatever slim chance remained.
Beside her, Neil overcame the protest of his pain-wracked joints and struggled to his feet. “It’s time for us to go home now.” He prodded at Emma with a gnarled and twisted hand, urging her to rise, then bobbed his head at Calder in a respectful nod. “Thank you for your time and the coffee. We will trouble you no longer.”
“But what is to become of Rollie?” Woodenly Emma rose from the chair, still pressing her case. She had come too close to give up without trying again. “What is to become of us?”
She resisted the pressure of her husband’s guiding hand when he attempted to steer her away from the desk. Slightly built though she was, Emma knew he hadn’t the strength to force her from the room.
With eyes still weeping, only more from frustration now, she turned her beseeching gaze on Calder. “Without Rollie, how will we make it? The cows got to be milked morning and night. There’s hay to put up, fields to cultivate, crops to harvest—and nobody but us to do it. We’re too old to be doing that kind of work. We’ll lose the place.”
He was deaf to her pleas, his expression closed, shutting her out. All hope for her son’s freedom was lost. Calder would not help them. Nothing she could say or do would change his mind.
