“There she is.”
She stopped in her tracks and stared at Eller Hawkins. “What brings you here?”
“Just being friendly.” He grinned and nodded at Seth. “I brought Uncle Seth some of the tobacco he favors.”
Seth held a packet of tobacco, which he set on the table next to his chair. “Much obliged. Y’all plan to start branding tomorrow, I hear.”
“If everything falls into place,” Eller agreed, moving aside as Banner went past him toward the coat tree by the front door.
She shoved her arms into her coat and tried not to cringe when Eller stepped toward her with a, “Let me help you with that.” She murmured a thanks as she buttoned the blue coat and then pulled on a blue wool hat and scarf she’d knitted for herself.
“It’s nippy out there, so bundle up good,” Eller said, resting his hands on her shoulders and giving a squeeze before letting her go. “If you’re heading to your place, I’ll ride part of the way with you.”
She didn’t know how to politely refuse him. He was going home and that meant they would ride in the same general direction until he would veer east and she would head west. “You probably want to visit with your uncle,” she ventured, knowing it was a weak ploy but all she had.
“I need to get on home to Lilah.” He winked. “She’s done without me as long as she can stand it, I reckon. She gets all, um, anxious when I’m not there beside her, so that last couple of nights without me have been hard on her.” His gaze moved languidly from her face to her chest and back up. “You’ll understand one day when you land a husband.”
Banner averted her eyes from him and saw the concern on Seth Latimer’s face. She didn’t want him to worry, so she forced a pleasant smile to her lips. “I suppose we can be on our way then.”
Eller waved at Seth. “Be seeing you. Enjoy that tobacco.”
Since there seemed to be no way out of the situation, Banner trudged out of the warm house, ducked her head against the bite of the wind and the occasional kiss of a snowflake, and stalked to the barn with Eller right beside her. Once inside and out of the elements, she scrambled up to the seat, cringing when Eller’s hands bracketed her waist to assist her.
Gripping the reins, she flapped them against Pansy’s back and rump and the dozy mare perked up and trotted out of the barn. Banner glanced over her shoulder. Eller’s horse was right behind her. Damn him. She told herself not to make so much of it. He was riding partway home with her. That’s all. She wouldn’t have minded a bit if any of the other cowhands had done the same. But this was Eller. Lying, grinning, sly-eyed Eller Hawkins. Always had something to say to her – something that rankled or made her skin crawl. That he was spreading rumors about what they’d meant to each other years ago infuriated her, but she knew better than to discuss it any further with him. Letting him realize that something bothered her was like pouring kerosene on a fire – only made the situation worse, if not dangerous.
Eller rode beside her, but back far enough that she couldn’t see his face, although he could see hers. She knew he did that on purpose, and although she wanted to glance backward to determine just what he was looking at, she refrained from it. Instead, she focused on the snow pocked trail and the flutter of sparse snowflakes that drifted from the gray sky. Clouds covered the sun, so it felt more like dusk than late afternoon.
“Hollis ever smack you?”
His question rocked her back and she turned sideways a little to give him a look that called him crazy. “No! How dare you even suggest such a thing! And if I ever hear from anyone that you’ve said that about Hollis, I’ll slice off your tongue and use it as fish bait.”
“Whoa!” His brows lifted to let his eyes widen to their fullest. “Damn, woman. I just asked because I’m concerned for your wellbeing, seeing as how it’s common knowledge that your brother is a bit touched in the head.”
“I feel safer around him than I do around you.” She faced front again and clucked at Pansy to step lively.
Eller’s flashy pinto pranced up beside her and he leaned forward in the saddle, trying to capture Banner’s gaze. “That right? How about Callum? You feel safe with him?”
“Of course, I do. We’re business partners.”
“He’s sniffing around you like he’s caught your come-and-get-it scent.”
“I’m not having this conversation with you, Eller Hawkins. You know why?” She angled sideways to give him the evil eye. “What I do and what anyone does to me never has nor never will have anything to do with you.”
“Never huh? I do recall a time when we were everything to each other.”
“Hollis isn’t the only man around here who’s touched in the head because you weren’t anything to me except a boy who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Ours was a one-sided courtship and you know it.”
“Is that what you tell Callum?”
“That’s the truth.”
He leaned out to her, gripped her upper arm, and jerked her around to him. The fading light threw shadows across his features, but she could see the dark glimmer of his eyes and the flash of his teeth as he snarled at her. “You writhed against me and moaned my name when I kissed you. Every damned time. You know you did.”
She barked a laugh at him and wrenched out of his grasp. “I squirmed to get away from you and yelled ‘No, Eller, no’ every time you assaulted me. You were at my house to worry my folks and rile my brothers. And you thought you could lie with me without too much effort, but you found out different, didn’t you? You found out right quick that I’d rather lie with a rattlesnake than with you.”
His free and came up and Banner reacted spontaneously, ducking as she closed her fingers around the handle of the buggy whip at her feet. She cocked her arm, ready to slash Eller with it.
“You stay away from me or I’ll lay your skin open with this,” she warned him, her voice low and almost toneless.
He regarded her for long seconds, his expression slowly changing from anger to malice. “I do believe that you and my dear cousin are perfect for each other. You’re both good at pining for things that you don’t have the guts to just reach out and grab.”
“You know nothing about me.” She brandished the whip. “Go on! Get away from me.”
He laughed at her. “Yeah, Cal pines for his family and he’s too stupid to start one up himself. You want folks to respect you and your dimwit brother instead of telling them all to go straight to hell, thereby earning their respect.” He batted a hand at her and laughed again when she raised the whip. “I ain’t scared of you and I ain’t that interested in what’s between your legs neither. Not when I got Lilah Belle home in bed waiting for me with hers spread.” He tipped back his head and laughed up at the scudding clouds. “Poor, old Cal. He’s had the best and he’s left with the dregs.” He offered up one more slicing glance before he turned his mount to the east and slapped the gelding into a gallop.
Banner stared after him, shivering outside and stinging inside because what he’d said, unfortunately, rang true in some ways. She and Callum were grasping for things that could very well be right in front of them.
Chapter 13
After another week of never knowing who would show up for breakfast or dinner, Banner was glad to see all of the “regulars” at breakfast once again. The cattle were branded, counted, and herded to the winter wheat pastures. Banner gave each man a smile and nod as she went around the table, filling coffee cups and milk glasses.
They’d finished the work just in time because it was snowing this morning and didn’t look like it would stop any time soon.
“How much snow you think we’ll get?” she asked no one in particular.
“Ankle high, I’d say,” Flint answered.
“More than that,” Franklin said. “Wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t get several inches of the stuff.”
“Wind is blowing Missouri way, so they’ll get some of this bad weather, too,” Shane mumbled around the food in his mouth.
Banner k
new that Shane was thinking of his young wife in Joplin, who was living with her mother and sisters in the last months of her pregnancy. “Will you go back home before or after Christmas, Shane?”
He swallowed the mouthful of eggs and sausage this time before he answered her. “I aim to head out a few days before Christmas. She ought to have the baby before the New Year. I’ll be back by the middle of January, though. I hope to work here at least until the cattle go to market.”
“If you want, I’ll see if the trail boss I hire will take you on for the trip to market,” Callum said. “They usually need another good cowpoke on the drive to Kansas. Then you can skip on over to Missouri with more coins in your pocket.”
Shane’s brown eyes shone with excitement. “That would be right nice of you, Mister Cal. With a new baby, I could use it.”
The men fell silent as they concentrated on filling their stomachs. Banner pulled another skillet of hot biscuits from the oven, dropped them into a basket, and took them into the dining room. Seeing the new batch of fluffy biscuits won her grateful smiles all around, especially since the twenty she’d put on the table ten minutes ago were all gone.
“What’s this I hear about Buck Friendly refusing to sell goods to Altus Decker?” Callum asked, glancing around the table.
“What?” Seth asked, wiping milk gravy off his mustache with his napkin. “Can he do that? Turn away customers who have money to spend?”
“Why would he?” Shane looked truly befuddled. “Makes no sense with times being so hard.”
“He’s one of those hard-headed, stubborn mules who sees enemies everywhere. Yankees purchasing Rebel land, former slaves, Indians.” Callum waved his fork in a circle. “They’re all alike in his eyes and he won’t let any of them buy even a twist of tobacco in his place.”
“I guess they’re still stinging from the loss to the Union,” Flint noted.
“Well, ain’t we all?” Seth threw down his napkin in a gesture of disgust. “But it’s over. Done. We dressed our wounds, buried our dead, and now we have to put one foot in front of the other, no matter how bad it hurts.” He glanced around the table with a smirk. “And some mornings it hurts like a sonofabitch.”
Snickers circled the table and Banner turned her back to the men to hide her grin. She didn’t want to encourage such language at the breakfast table, but still . . .
“When the South fell, I didn’t feel much of anything.” Callum’s solemn admission was followed by a silence so complete that Banner could hear the men breathing. She turned sideways to look at him. He sat back in his chair, fork in one hand and knife in the other, and stared moodily at the food left in his plate. Drawing a deep breath that expanded his chest, he released it in a long, almost mournful sigh. “I was gutted by that time and couldn’t feel anything. I was sure I’d die before the war ended, so I think I was in shock that it was truly over and I hadn’t even been wounded.”
Banner moved cautiously toward him and filled his empty coffee cup. He glanced at her, but she didn’t’ think he saw her. He was somewhere else. Somewhere dark and grievous. She backed up until she felt the sideboard behind her.
“I remember when I lost all interest in the South and North and everything in between.” Callum’s voice was just above a whisper and everyone at the table stilled, hanging on his words. “You probably think it was when I heard that my brothers were killed in the Battle of Shiloh.” He shook his head and one corner of his mouth twitched in an embryonic, rueful smile. “But, no. When I heard about that, I bawled like a babe and I’m not ashamed to admit it.” His green gaze locked on the pair of filmy green eyes at the other end of the table for a jarring moment or two before Seth looked away. “But that’s not when I went numb inside. That happened one clear, bright night when we were camped about a quarter mile from the Union soldiers we were going to fight come daybreak. The Yanks started singing hymns. Songs we all knew by heart. All of us in those ditches.” His eyes became red-rimmed, but dry. “We sang with them through most of the night. Chorus after chorus of church songs. Then, an hour after dawn, we commenced to killing each other.” He ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek and swallowed hard. “I saw clearly the folly of prideful men that day and that, no matter what color uniform we wore or the color of our skin, we were all doing the devil’s work.”
Pride and empathy swelled in Banner’s heart and she wanted to wrap her arms around Callum.
“Some say that owning slaves was a sin. My folks never had slaves.” Shane cleared his throat and glanced at Seth. “Did y’all?”
“Nah.” Seth batted away the notion with a big, age-spotted hand. “My wife was a Quaker and didn’t believe in all that. Thought it was unnatural for humans to buy and sell other humans.”
“Quakers?” Franklin sat back in quiet repose for a few moments. “Can’t say I’ve ever known any Quakers.”
“They’re good people,” Seth said. “They want nothing to do with any injustice or war. She rubbed off on me a little, I guess. Even when our boys were all fired up to go fight the Yankees and I was proud of them for it, something deep inside resisted. Their mama railed against it. She said that when a man raises his gun, he lowers his worth.”
Banner had never cared for Mrs. Latimer, but she wondered now if her assessment might have been too hasty.
“My people owned slaves,” Franklin said. “My parents did and all my uncles and aunts. My papa owned more than fifty slaves before the war broke out. I see the freed men and women wandering around looking lost. They don’t look all that happy, unless they’ve drunk up too much red-eye juice. I think we’re all kinda aimless.”
They finished eating, sopping up the last of the gravy with biscuits and popping the final bite of bacon or sausage into their mouths. All except for Callum, who seemed to have lost his appetite. He pushed aside his plate, nodding when Banner reached to take it away.
In the kitchen, she began preparing to wash the dishes, as she went over and over the unsettling conversation. So, the vigilante groups were stirring up more trouble along with memories that some people were trying hard to bury. She’d noticed that Hollis seemed to be worse lately. Sullen. Anger simmering just below the surface. Stalking off to be alone with his thoughts. Snapping at her when she questioned him about his moods.
Her brother was a sensitive soul and when there was unrest around him, he felt it, through and through. Living with him when he was jittery was like handling a porcupine. There was no way to touch it without getting pricked.
Someone cleared his throat right behind her and Banner spun around with a gasp, her wet hands flying up and slinging drops of water across Callum’s faded red shirt.
“Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I . . . got your shirt wet.”
He shrugged. Banner hoped to see a softening in his eyes, but she was disappointed.
“I’ll be back tonight, but it will be late. You go on home at the usual time.”
“I was mighty proud of you just now.”
He raised his brows and shook his head, clearly puzzled.
“What you said about the war and how nobody wins a fight.”
He held his hat in one hand and rubbed his chin with the other. “I don’t think I said that exactly. Fights are won, but sometimes the cost isn’t worth it.” He took a step back from her, running his hand down the front of his shirt and Banner watched the journey.
She so loved his hands. Long fingers, wide palm. She knew the tenderness of his touch and how they could trail fire along her skin. “I’ve missed you.”
He stared at her a few moments and something vulnerable shimmered in his eyes before he abruptly turned and walked away from her. “I need to get.”
“Callum!” She grabbed the back of his shirt. “Wait.” When he didn’t face her, she stepped around him. “Is something wrong? I feel like we’re on a seesaw here. Up and down. Up and down.”
Walking his fingers around the brim of his hat, he avoided her probing gaze. “I guess th
at sums it up. I’ve had a lot of time to think lately and maybe you’re right. We need to keep our heads clear and . . . well, a woman like you and a man like me . . .” He shrugged.
What in tarnation did that mean? Was this about her being a lowly Payne? Feeling as if he’d ripped opened an old wound, she glared at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. Finally, he glanced up and his eyes widened fractionally.
“Go on then.” Banner snatched his hat out of his hands and whacked him with it. “Get. I don’t have time anymore for this silly game.” His look of surprise angered her even more and she crushed his hat against his chest, making him grab it. She caught sight of Shane standing in the dining room, not hiding his curiosity at the scene unfolding. “Shane needs to talk to you. I’m finished with you.” Whirling around, she stomped through the kitchen and out the back door where the air was bitterly cold, matching the season in her heart. She would not cry! She wouldn’t! Should have known that he’d finally realize that he was too good and proper to be sporting with that Payne gal. He’d been raised to see her as filth and he couldn’t shake it.
Striding purposefully across the frozen ground, she made a beeline for the hen house. It would be warmer in there. Mary had already collected the eggs, but there were probably a few more that she could—
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the scrawled lettering across a big white banner that had been nailed to the side of the barn and her shoes slipped in the snow. She almost fell, but regained her balance in the nick of time. Staring at the ugly message, she was aware of pounding footfalls behind her.
“Damn it all, Banner! Just hold up. I didn’t mean to—” Callum’s grouchy apology stopped at the same time he did. “What the hell?”
JOIN OR DIE
A Confederate flag was nailed below the fluttering white sheet that bore the menacing order. When had this been done? Banner wondered, her mind spinning back to when she’d been out earlier. She would have noticed it then. And the men had ridden up for breakfast! They would have seen it. Someone – no, more than one person – had done this while they’d all been inside. The audacity!
Solitary Horseman Page 18
