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“And as long as they do, the estate can’t be settled,” Rafe whined, hating himself for it. “It’s not that I’m greedy, but I’d like to be able to start building the ranch up again the way Uncle Mack would have wanted me to. I can start doing that come spring, but not with all of this shit hanging over it.”
“Let Luther do what he does best—he can be formidable when he wants to be. He knows how to handle money-grubbers.” The venom in Russell’s voice shocked Rafe a little. He figured there was a story there and waited a few ticks of the old clock on the wall before returning to his breakfast. Finally he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Russell shrugged. “Do I want to? No. But I probably should.” He drank some more of his coffee. “Jase actually threatened to sue me for part of my company because he said that he’d come up with the original idea. Of course he hadn’t. Jase knew nothing about ranching or farming. He was a city boy, born and raised. But he tried to weasel his way back into my good graces a few months after he left. I was messed up and couldn’t deal with him. So Dad called in Luther, who did his magic, and Jase disappeared. I don’t know what Luther did, and frankly I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But it did the trick. I never heard from Jase again.”
“Do you think he and your dad paid him off?” Rafe asked.
“If they did, I never found any paper trail. And I’ve since taken over the books for the ranch, so I’d know about it if they did. No. I think Luther has legal ways of making sure that if your parents want to contest the will, it will cost them dearly. For now, though, I’d try not to worry about it. I know that’s probably impossible, but it’s what I think you should try to do anyway. Have your folks actually filed suit?”
“No. They’re still soliciting support. They consider this to be something of a religious crusade. You know, they gather all the like-minded people together, all spouting the same opinion, and then imagine that opinion alone will change a legal outcome.” He shook his head. “I hate to admit that I’m related to them.”
When Rafe finished his breakfast, he cleared the table, then simply watched the snow fall outside the kitchen window.
There were very few times in his life when he’d had nothing to do. The snow kept him cabin-bound. He’d made sure the small herd of cattle had food and shelter. The horses were snug in the barn, and he and the dogs had a warm house. There was really nothing hecoulddo until the storm let up and he could start digging out. But he was starting to feel a little stir-crazy.
“Is there anything else you need to go through?” Russell asked.
“I don’t know. There are things in the attic, but it’s going to be cold as hell up there. We’ve pretty much cleared out the bedroom. And I had to go through Uncle Mack’s office when I first got here so I could get up to date on the herd and the ranch records.” He sighed and poured himself another cup of coffee. “I wish I had a line on who this Dale might have been. Those letters stick in my mind for some reason.” Thank God his uncle seemed to hate email and computers in general.
“There was a return address.”
“Yeah, but from sixteen years ago. There have to be a lot of Dales in Denver. Who knows if Luther will be able to track him down?” Rafe felt a little low. “It would be cool if he could find someone who knew Uncle Mack back then… who might have known Uncle Mack and Dale as a couple.” But that was just wishful thinking. Rafe had known his uncle up until he was twelve, but after that, he had become largely a stranger.
Maybe this quest Rafe had set himself on, to get to know who his uncle truly was, was destined to fail anyway. He was probably just wasting everyone’s time.
“Did you ever get through all those boxes in the closet?” Russell asked.
“Not yet.” Maybe it would be a good idea—as well as something for them to do—to pull some of those boxes out and see what was inside. So he got up and went to the closet, pulled out a number of boxes, and set them on the table. “Some of them seem to be old family pictures.”
“You go through those and see if there are any you might want to keep or even frame. This still feels like Mack’s place. But it’s your home and it should feel like it. Maybe we can replace some of Mack’s horse pictures with ones that you like.”
“Maybe. But I doubt that there are any in here that I’d want to put up.” Still, he opened the box and flipped through the first group of pictures. He set them aside when he knew no one in them. Uncle Mack had placed them in envelopes, and they seemed to be grouped. There were some of him as a kid, him on a horse, playing with the dogs, even a few with Uncle Mack. Those he set aside to look at later.
The next few envelopes contained old pictures of the family, often featuring his parents. Those he growled at and set in a pile to be put back in the box.
“What are these?” Russell asked, pulling out a few flat boxes.
“I’m not sure,” Rafe said. He opened the first one and pulled out a buckle. “I’ll be danged.” He turned it over and handed it to Russell. “Uncle Mack’s buckles. This one is for a win before I was born.” He brought the box over and pulled out six more buckles, all of them silver and shining as brightly as the day they were presented. Uncle Mack had kept them in a special kind of cloth that kept them from becoming tarnished.
“Wow,” Russell said.
“Yeah. I never knew he rode rodeo.” Rafe smiled as he looked over the buckles and then placed them back into the protective sleeves before returning them to the boxes. “This is pretty cool. I guess I get my ability from him.”
Russell reached for the next box and then slid it over to Rafe after looking inside. “There are more.” He poked into additional boxes and set another one on top. “It looks like three boxes total. It seems Mack was quite the rider.”
“Yeah, it looks that way. Though he rode broncs instead of bulls, he must have been really something.” It had never occurred to Rafe to wonder if his uncle had ever ridden rodeo. “Maybe we can find out something about Uncle Mack from the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. A lot of these buckles are for professional events. Maybe they’ll know something.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Russell agreed.
“Could you check for inscriptions on the buckles? Year, event, etc. Let’s make a list and see if there are any records we can search.” He was excited as he went back to the pictures and started pulling out more envelopes.
Most of the pictures contained images of people Rafe didn’t know, but one envelope held pictures of Uncle Mack. “Check this out.”
Russell came around the table as Rafe laid out pictures on the surface. “These are all of Uncle Mack, but look at these three—they’re him with the same man.”
Russell picked one up, turned the picture over, and then handed it back. “Look….” He turned it over again, showing Rafe the inscription on the back. “That’s Mack and Dale. At least now we know what he looked like, even though we still don’t have a last name.”
“And given what they’re both wearing, I’d guess that Dale might have ridden in the rodeo too.” Rafe was getting excited. Finally he had something to go on. “I think the first thing we need to do is find out about Mack. If we’re lucky, he’ll lead us to Dale.”
