It was that combination that had gotten him in trouble with her before. At least that’s what he’d told himself.
“You know something about Sam that I don’t?” he asked, wondering what she’d heard, wondering if she was an innocent about it all like she claimed to be.
She bit her lower lip as if unsure what to say or unsure of how much to confide. “Hollis said that Sam went away one day without any good-byes or explanations.”
“Weber just up and left?”
“Hollis assumed he grew weary working for Ned and quit.”
“Like I did?”
Her face flushed a dirty red, proof he’d gotten through to her this time. “Well, apparently not the same if this poor man was dragged to death.”
He swore and strode back to the fence, easing through it with care. “I was lucky.”
She stared at him, not blinking, barely breathing. Even the wind seemed to lay by as she obviously mulled over the fact that he hadn’t intended to leave the ranch and her.
“You’re sure Ned did that terrible thing to you?”
“Damned sure. Bet he was the one who did this to Sam Weber too.” He grabbed his gelding’s reins but didn’t gain the saddle yet. “Only difference is Barton likely told Ned to get rid of me for good for daring to romance you.”
“Daddy wouldn’t have done that.”
He snorted and swung onto the saddle. “Like hell. I saw Barton horsewhip a hand once for running his mouth about how much he wanted to get cozy with you.”
The man had been drunk and talking way out of turn. Hell, if Barton hadn’t stepped in, Trey would have. It wasn’t as if he’d scarred the man. Scared the hell out of him was more like it. Sent him packing then.
But that was Barton’s way. Swift punishment followed by getting booted off the JDB, for Barton wouldn’t condone any men looking at his daughter with anything but respect.
“Ned would’ve done this one on his own,” he said.
“I’m sure Ned decided to do that to you as well without Daddy even being aware of it.”
He pulled a wry grin. Shook his head. “The problem with putting somebody on a pedestal is that he will shatter when he eventually falls.”
“Daddy wouldn’t have had you dragged to death behind a horse,” she said. “Horsewhipped, maybe. But he wouldn’t have had you killed.”
Trey heard the conviction in her voice. She’d never believe Jared Barton capable of meting out Western justice as he saw fit. Refused to even think that he’d order something as brutal as a hanging or a dragging.
“Barton would be proud of you for having such blind faith in him.”
She jerked her head back as the truth in his words slapped her. “That wasn’t my daddy’s doing. I suggest you think back to who you crossed.” A couple beats of silence drummed the stillness. “I’m sure I wasn’t the only woman you seduced and left.”
There had been damned few women he’d gotten tangled up with for any length of time. Daisy had been the only good girl. While he’d known he was playing with fire the longer he romanced her, he couldn’t stop dancing in the fire of her desire either.
If Barton hadn’t stepped in to put a stop to it, who else would have paid Ned to do him in? The man she was to marry? Or someone else on the JDB?
Someone took matters into his own hands. He was still banking that Ned was the culprit.
“Maybe Ned feared I’d end up married to you and he’d have to take orders from me,” he said, thinking out loud. “What’s funny is if he’d just waited another couple of months I’d have been gone.”
She went still as death then, the color draining from her face. But it was the hurt in her eyes that lashed him, laying his old wounds open.
“You never told me you planned to leave,” she said.
He shrugged. “Told you I wasn’t the putting-down-roots sort of man, that I had nothing to tie me down.”
“I was just a diversion to you then?”
Hell, how to answer that? The memory of holding her, loving her, had robbed him of sleep far too many nights. It still did. But he was in no position to compete for her hand.
Even if he was, what kind of woman cheated on the one she was promised to? She could spout all the righteous chatter she wanted. She’d done her intended wrong by crawling into the hay with him.
“You were engaged to marry Kurt Leonard.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t have gone through with it.”
His eyebrows lifted, and he almost smiled. “You saying you’d have gone against your daddy?”
“I couldn’t marry Kurt after what we’d done.”
Strong words, but he read the hesitation in her eyes. She’d have been hard-pressed to go against Jared Barton’s wishes.
As for him, he wouldn’t have stood a chance of gaining her hand. Not that he ever thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell of marrying her. Barton wouldn’t have let a two-bit drifter like himself claim Daisy’s hand, even if that cowpoke had a bit of jingle and prime horses. He’d known that going in.
That’s what had convinced him to claim his shares of the Crown Seven by Christmas Eve.
If he’d just divested Barton of his savings and moved on sooner. If he’d ridden out months beforehand instead.
He’d have owned land. He could’ve returned sooner and asked for her hand.
If he just hadn’t gotten so tangled up in Daisy’s arms that he hadn’t wanted to leave ...
That he couldn’t bring himself to walk away from her. To stop dreaming of her. To forget that she made him feel things he hadn’t believed possible.
“Did you actually believe that I would go through with that marriage to Kurt after we’d made love?” she asked, her voice strained yet ringing with a note of anger.
“Sure I did,” he said, and every time he’d thought of her in the arms of the other man he’d wanted to fight Leonard for her hand.
But he was a cowpoke without a home or a family or a name. Leonard had roots deep in Texas and a ranch to rival Barton’s.
He’d have treated Daisy in the manner in which she’d been raised. She never would’ve had to want for anything.
“Didn’t what we shared mean anything to you?” she asked, and this time he saw the glint of tears in her eyes.
Shit, she was fixing to start bawling. Though he’d do damned near anything to avoid being around a weeping woman, he wouldn’t lie to her either.
She wanted flowery words, and he couldn’t tell her something he didn’t believe existed. “You know damned well I enjoyed making love with you, but I never promised anything more, Daisy.”
She drew in a shaky breath, holding back her tears. “At least you’re honest.”
He was for the most part. How he truly felt about her was something he couldn’t explain. Something he couldn’t even figure out himself.
“Why didn’t you marry Leonard?” he asked.
She looked at him then, and he cringed at the hurt banked in those glittering eyes. “For a cowboy who professes to know the cattle business, you sure are pitifully ignorant about the ways of the heart.”
Before he could find a rejoinder for that verbal slap, she reined her mare around and took off back toward the ranch house.
Trey watched her, sorely tempted to follow. In the end he climbed back off his horse and untied his bedroll.
He had to let her go. Had to put her from his mind.
He had to gather up Weber’s remains and bury them properly back at the ranch.
He’d cut a deal with her to see him by. A bit of dallying on the side would only complicate things.
Nope, he had to keep their roles separate now. She was the boss lady. He was her foreman.
This time he was going to do this right. This time he wasn’t going to be swayed by a pair of soulful eyes, lips that begged to be kissed, and a ripe body made for loving him.
Chapter 8
It took Trey the better part of thirty minutes to make a travois to haul Sam Weber’s
remains back to the ranch. Cost him the blanket in his bedroll and a throbbing ache in muscles that weren’t quite healed.
No matter his discomfort, he’d ended up better off than Sam. But it’d been a mighty close thing.
The steady drum of hooves had him looking up from lashing the blanket to the two saplings that served as poles. Daisy must’ve made it back and spread the news of their discovery.
Galen Patrick reined up beside his gelding and dismounted, crossing to Trey with an economy of movement. Was he the man the Texas Ranger had left behind to keep an eye on things? If so, Patrick was lax in his job.
“Damn,” Patrick said, crouching beside the dead man, much like Trey had done when Daisy found the body. “I knew he wouldn’t just walk off, not with the boss counting on him and me to keep them thoroughbreds hidden.”
“Yet you didn’t go looking for him.”
Patrick glared up at him. “There you’re wrong. I looked for the better part of a week, but we was hit with a freak snow and the ground was covered.” He turned back to the dead foreman. “One of the men claimed to have searched up here. One of Ned’s men. Dammit, I trusted him. Didn’t ride up here at all.”
The wrangler’s voice held that angry tone that was typical of someone who was kicking his own ass for something he blamed himself for. With snow on the ground, it would’ve been easy to miss one dead man on the fringe of a twenty thousand–acre spread.
“Help me move him onto the travois,” Trey said. “Man deserves a proper burial.”
“Miss Barton was beside herself, but it sounded like she said that Sam had been murdered,” Patrick said, after they’d maneuvered what was mainly rags, skin, and bones onto the blanket.
“Roped and dragged.” Trey glanced at the other man, noted his confusion. Shock. Dare he trust him with more?
Patrick’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, and Trey knew then the man hadn’t had a hand in this. “How would you know that?”
“Because the same damned thing happened to me.” Trey settled his hat low on his brow, as much to shade his eyes from the punishing sun as to prevent the other man from reading him. “I was roped from behind. Before I could turn I was yanked off my feet and dragged for miles.”
The bandana Patrick had around his neck bobbed, and he swore. “You see who did it?”
“Ned Durant.” The bastard did it with a smile that had needled Trey’s memory the past six months. “He told everyone at the JDB that I pulled up stakes and moved on.”
“He ought to get a taste of his own medicine,” Patrick said.
Trey had felt the same as his body slowly mended. “Waste of rope and man hours. Better to string him from the highest tree and be done with it.”
The other man nodded, his mouth pulled in a tight line. In that instant Trey believed he’d finally found an ally on the ranch.
“What do we do now?” Patrick said.
“We get Sam buried, then we have a powwow and lay down a plan that’ll protect the thoroughbreds, the cattle, and ourselves.”
“You think Ned will try something?”
Trey squinted at the vast plains chiseled from rock and sprinkled with dirt, held tight by short grass, mesquite, and the sweat and blood of countless men. “I’d bet on it, which is why I want those thoroughbreds brought in from the canyon. We need them close so we can watch them.”
“We’ll drive them in this afternoon,” Patrick said. “What about the mustangs?”
“Cull a dozen good mares from the remuda and run them with the thoroughbreds in that pasture closest to the barn. Turn the rest out to run with the cattle.”
He was banking on those few mustangs to help conceal the blooded stock. Plus it’d be interesting to see what type of foal those wild mares would throw if one of those stallions caught them in season.
Unlike Reid, Trey wasn’t opposed to throwing a mixed breed. He’d seen some damned fine stock with such combinations.
With Sam secured on the travois, both men gained their saddles and started back to the ranch at an easy walk. This was the first time that Trey had ever been in charge. That he’d given orders and had them obeyed. That another man had looked up to him for counsel.
The responsibility hit him hard, for he had to think beyond himself. He had to think in broader terms for the good of all.
And just doing that seemed to calm the anger that typically boiled deep in him. That feeling of never being wanted, never being trusted, never having anything much of his own vanished, replaced by a strong sense of purpose.
Though the Crown Seven had been the closest thing to a home that he’d ever had, it was clear from the start that Reid viewed that ranch as his own, that he was the boss and favored son.
That’s the way it had ended up, with Dade and Trey accused of rustling when they’d done no such thing. Having family turn on him, toss him out, was the turning point.
A man just didn’t forget something like that.
Oh, he reckoned he could’ve trailed along with Dade as he searched for the sister he hadn’t seen in twenty years. A waste of time, if you asked him.
So he’d struck out on his own, swearing that he wouldn’t miss the men he’d called brothers. That he wouldn’t regret closing the door on his past.
Yet last year when he heard that he had until Christmas Eve to claim his shares of the Crown Seven or lose them forever, he decided to do just that. Head back home and have it out with Reid. Home ...
Hell, he reckoned he’d always think of the Crown Seven that way. That part of him would always miss Reid and Dade. But going home wouldn’t be a reunion, and he sure as hell wouldn’t stay.
He wasn’t about to try working side by side with Reid again, even if he was asked to stay on—even if he could have a parcel now for his own stock.
Trey just couldn’t take orders from his oldest foster brother anymore. He wouldn’t continue being the little brother sucking hind teat.
Nope, he aimed to stay in Texas. The land was as raw and as wild as he felt inside. As big as the dreams that he’d kept to himself all these years.
He had a chance to see them through now. From the first time he’d driven Barton’s thoroughbreds to the old homestead, he knew it was time he settled down in Texas.
But he’d never forget the past in a Pennsylvania orphanage that shaped him. Never forget the brotherhood forged in blood. Never forget those good years growing to manhood under Kirby Morris’s tutelage.
For as long as he lived, he’d regard the two men he’d grown up with as his only family, even though they’d drifted apart.
He’d made plenty of mistakes along the way, but he had learned from them. He’d surely live longer if he was slow to trust. If he held a tight rein on his temper and thought things through first.
And most important, if he stopped baiting bears. He’d done that with Daisy, knowing she was spoken for but flirting with her anyway. That led to a few stolen kisses, and as if there were a fever in his blood he had wanted more of her. All of her.
He hadn’t been strong enough to walk away from her when he’d known to stay was wrong. He’d never gotten his fill after one stolen kiss.
Hell, if he was honest, he still dreamed of getting lost in her arms. But he wouldn’t go there again, no matter how much she tempted him. No matter how much he still wanted her.
“What’re you going to do with Weber?” Patrick asked when they were nearing the ranch, breaking the silence that had settled over them on the ride back.
“Reckon that ranger would find his death mighty interesting,” Trey said. “But it could be a spell before he comes around.”
The lawman was likely in El Paso seeing if Trey had told him a lie. Trey wasn’t of a mood to ride into San Angelo and look up the U.S. Marshal. Either way they’d end up waiting.
“In the state Weber’s in, even keeping him in the barn will draw predators,” Patrick said.
Trey damn sure couldn’t dispute that fact. The poor bastard had been savaged enough by the elements
and the worthless sonofabitch who put him through this torture. Trey’s body throbbed at the memory of what he’d endured, not just from the dragging but for six long months afterward.
“You think we should bury Weber and forget calling the law?”
Patrick shifted uneasily in the saddle, and Trey wondered if the wrangler was fighting emotions or guilt. “Yep, I do. Don’t know that anyone will be able to tell much from what’s left of Weber. Burying him just seems the right thing to do.”
He agreed with all that, but still he didn’t want to bury the man until someone else who he trusted took a good long look at what had happened to Weber. He didn’t want this being passed off as a cowboy who ended up accidentally dead. Weber had been murdered and brutally so.
Trey wanted the man responsible to pay. But who the hell did he trust here? He didn’t know any of these men that well. As for trust ... Well, it was rare when he doled that out.
I’ll leave a man here, the ranger had told him. But had he? Did one of the hands wear a tin star too?
Hard to tell. That could’ve been a bluff to keep Trey in line. But he had nothing to lose by following the hunch that the ranger had been straight up with him.
“Gather all the men out by the barn,” Trey said. “They need to see what happened to Weber.”
Patrick cut him a shocked look. “Some of the hands are just boys.”
As if that made any damned difference at all. He knew all too well the hell that boys could get into, of their own accord or by the hand of a no-good.
He’d been there and seen the worst that mankind had to dish out when he was just twelve. Seeing that side of life had toughened him. Opened his eyes to how downright mean one man could be to another.
It’d formed the grit that made him into the man he was today. A survivor. If he hadn’t been tempered early, he never would’ve lived after Ned’s brutal attack.
Yep, he wanted all the men on this spread to see what had befallen Sam Weber. He wanted to watch each face as they took a look and then another. Hopefully he’d be able to tell which man viewed Sam Weber’s remains with a lawman’s shrewd eyes.
Patrick gave a jerky nod and rode off toward the ranch at a lope, leaving Trey to continue on at his slow pace with the travois scraping the ground. He was close enough to the cattle to draw their attention. The horses too lifted their heads and watched the somber procession toward the ranch.
Cowboy Come Home Page 10
