Calder Pride (23 page)

“It don’t look to me like you need any gas.” He flicked an accusing finger toward the gauge.

“You can’t pay any attention to that. Rollie tells me it was broke when he bought the truck.” The pickup rolled to a stop beside the pump island. Lath shifted the gear stick into Park and switched off the engine, glancing sideways at Emmett as he did so. “I honestly can’t tell you whether I’ll be charging ten or twenty dollars’ worth of gas.”

“You won’t be charging anything. I told you before, you haven’t got an account with me, not till you pay what you owe.” Emmett spoke with force to combat the scared, crawly feeling in his stomach.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Emmett. I’m truly sorry. You don’t leave a fella much choice.”

“What do you mean by that?” Emmett frowned, half turned in his seat, the passenger door pushed partway open.

“Mean?” Lath feigned a look of innocence. “I meant just what I said. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. You understand that, don’t you?”

Emmett searched through that answer word by lazily drawled word, seeking something that would justify this growing uneasiness. But he could find no concrete threat in any of them, not separately or together. He climbed out of the pickup and shut the door. “It’s cash or no gas,” he said through the window.

“You called it, Emmett. No gas.” Lath started up the truck and drove off, the sound of his cackling laughter floating above the engine noise and sending a shiver down Emmett’s back.

He tried to shake it off, but it clung to him, echoing in his mind all while he went about shutting down the gasoline pumps and locking up for the night.

There was no smile on Lath Anderson’s face when he walked back into the restaurant. His glance swept coolly over Logan without lingering. It might have been accidental that he looked in his direction at all, but Logan didn’t think so. Lath Anderson was the kind that always liked to know where the law was.

“More coffee?” Sally paused beside his table, coffeepot in hand.

“Please.” Logan nodded and dragged his attention back to the steak on his plate, slicing off his second bite. “Does Lath Anderson come in here much?”

“He’s been in a few times.” Tilting the pot, Sally poured coffee into his cup. “Why?”

“Just curious.”

Sally smiled at that. “No law officer is ever ‘just curious,’ but that’s okay. I won’t ask you to explain.”

“I’m not sure I could.”

“I know what you mean.” Her smile faded. “Even as a boy, Lath never caused any trouble, but you always had the feeling he could.”

“Everyone has the capacity to cause trouble.”

“You’re probably right.” She breathed in deeply and let it out in a sigh. “If there’s anything else you need, just holler.”

“I will.”

After the first few bites, the edge was off his hunger, and the meal became no different than a thousand others that he’d eaten alone, without conversation to liven it. He listened to the laughter from the bar area, and the constant run of talk, holding himself away from it as he had always done—except that night when Cat had walked over to him and pulled him into it.

Annoyed that he had allowed the thought of her to cross his mind, Logan washed the last bite of food down with a swallow of coffee, rose from his chair, dropped some tip money on the table, then gathered up his hat and the check and walked over to the cash register.

With the pool game over, Lath sat at the bar and stared at Logan’s reflection in the back mirror, tracking him as he paid for his check and crossed to the door. After it swung shut behind him, Lath took a long pull on his beer, then set it back on the bar counter, idly turning it in semicircles.

“I don’t get it,” he murmured. “That guy’s got too much smarts to be in this out-of-the-way place.”

“What guy?” Rollie glanced over his shoulder.

“Echohawk.”

He squared back around to the bar and shrugged. “Maybe he just likes it here.”

“Maybe. Then again, maybe he’s lost his nerve.”

“He doesn’t act like he’s lost it.”

“No,” Lath conceded. “But I’d sure like to know.”

“Personally, I hope I never have to find out.” Rollie tipped the bottle to his mouth.

Lath chortled and slapped him on the back, gripping his shoulder and giving it a shake. “By God, little brother, you’re smarter than I thought you were.”

Both pleased and a little embarrassed, Rollie said, “Hell, I am your brother.”

They both laughed.

It was late when Logan finally finished up all the paperwork and made the long drive to his ranch. He bypassed the house and drove straight to the barn. Tired as he was, he still had the horses to feed. Leaving the lights on, he climbed out of the patrol car and headed toward the barn’s wide door.

“I already throwed ’em some hay.” The voice came out of the deep shadows near the barn.

Whirling in a crouch, Logan had the holster flap loose and his hand on the gun butt before the voice registered as a familiar one. Even then the high alertness didn’t leave him, his gaze raking the shadows, seeking the source of it.

“Step out where I can see you.” That same tension gave his voice the hardness of command.

Culley O’Rourke separated himself from the shadows without the slightest sound. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you, Logan.”

“What the hell are you doing here, O’Rourke?” He straightened slowly, gripped by an anger that came from being caught completely off guard.

“Just waiting around for you to come.”

“It’s usually my enemies who wait in the shadows, O’Rourke.”

“I reckon that’s so.” He nodded, then lifted his hand, motioning toward the corral. “Like I said, I noticed your horses hadn’t been fed, so I went ahead and threw ’em some hay.”

“Thanks.” Logan made an effort to rein in his anger. “I had to work late finishing up some paperwork.”

“I know.” Culley studied him with a bright-eyed watchfulness. “I saw you with the kid today.”

“The kid.” For a puzzled instant, Logan didn’t know who he meant. Then he remembered Calder’s young grandson. “How did you see me? Where were you?”

“Up on the bluff.”

“What were you doing up there? That’s not Shamrock land.”

There was a small lift of his thin shoulders that seemed to shrug aside the question. “You can see for miles from atop that bluff.”

“What do you know about those dead cattle?”

“About as much as you do.”

“And what’s that?”

“From what I could tell, they looked like somebody used them for target practice.”

“How were you able to determine that? Did you go down there?”

“Didn’t have to. I got me a pair of field glasses. I watched you dig a bullet out of one of the carcasses.”

“I understand you do a bit of wandering at night. You haven’t heard anything that might have been gunfire the last few nights, have you?”

“Who’s to say they were shot at night?”

“Good point.” Logan smiled, some of the tension finally easing. “At the same time, I can’t imagine anyone doing it in broad daylight.”

“I don’t remember hearing gunshots,” Culley said, at last answering the question. “But if the wind was blowing just right, it probably would have carried to the north range.”

“Is that where you were?”

“There, or somewhere on the Shamrock or else around The Homestead.”

“Where’s The Homestead?”

“That’s the name they gave Calder’s house.” O’Rourke paused and cocked his head to the side, eyeing Logan with open curiosity. “What made you become a cop?”

“A psychiatrist could give you a long answer to that.” A smile half tilted his mouth. “But some people are just born warriors.”

That was a new concept to Culley, one he had to think about. A warrior: he liked the sound of it. It conjured up images of a man willing to fight to protect those in his care. “You got any family?”

Logan shook his head, the smile fading. “Not anymore.”

“My dad wasn’t much, but he was there. That’s sayin’ something nowadays, when a man sows his seed and never gives a damn about the baby that grows from it. There was a time when folks held a man accountable. Now they figure a man’s happiness comes ahead of his responsibility, and look to the government to take care of the kid. But the government can’t raise a boy to be a man.”

“I suppose not.” Logan had never cared much for politics. “Do you have any ideas about who might have killed those cattle?”

“I haven’t given it any thought.”

“How about someone who might be carrying a grudge against the Calders?”

Culley exhaled a laugh. “The list would be as long as your arm. Practically everyone around here has come up against the Calders at one time or another—and come out the worse for it.”

Detecting a bite of bitterness, Logan probed, “Even you?”

There was a long pause while O’Rourke studied
him with close scrutiny. “Let’s just say, I didn’t shed no tears when I saw those buzzards feasting on Calder beef. It seemed a kind a’ poetic justice.”

“For what?”

“The dozen head he shot.”

“Your cattle?”

“Some were mine, some were MacGruder’s, and a couple carried the Circle Six brand.”

“When was this?”

“Close to forty years ago. Long before your time.” The clipped answer indicated his reluctance to discuss it further.

Logan didn’t let that stop him. “What happened?”

“There was a drought. Our wells had dried up and the grass grazed to the ground. And Calder had that north range without a cow on it and water in the river. We drove our herds onto it. We couldn’t afford hay, so it was either that or watch them starve to death. Calder met us, told us to turn back. When we didn’t, he told his men to start shootin’ our cattle. They did.” The bitterness of the memory was in his voice and his expression. “I know we were in the wrong, but I still remember how those cows fell.” He dragged in a cleansing breath. “It’s hard land, and it breeds hard men to hard ways. The Calders are about as hard as they come.”

“And your sister married a Calder,” Logan remarked, idly wondering at that.

“Yup.” O’Rourke dropped his gaze to the ground, the brim of his hat casting his face in shadows. “He loved her. I’ll say that much for him.”

“Sometimes that’s all that needs to be said.”

“I guess.” He looked up, again observing him in that closely watchful way. “What did you think of the boy?”

Logan frowned, puzzled that O’Rourke would
be asking about Calder’s grandson again. “He seemed like a good kid. I didn’t really pay that much attention. Why do you ask?”

“’Cause next time maybe you should.”

“Why’s that?” His pager beeped. Logan checked it and smothered a sigh of irritation. “Excuse me.” He walked to the patrol car, slid behind the wheel, switched on the radio and called in. “This is Echohawk. What’s the problem?”

There was an initial squawk and a crackle, followed by the excited voice of Deputy Rouch. “There’s a fire at Fedderson’s. Hubble just called from the scene and said the gas pumps are engulfed in flames.”

“Has the foam truck been called in?”

“I don’t know,” the deputy replied uncertainly. “I never asked.”

“Find out,” Logan replied. “I’m on my way.”

“Ten-four.” Rouch at last responded with the radio codes he was so fond of spouting.

“Did he say Fedderson’s was on fire?” O’Rourke stepped up to the driver’s side when Logan started the engine.

“Yep.” Reversing away from the barn, he peeled out of the yard, driving with one hand and buckling his seat belt with the other.

When he hit the highway, he turned on the siren and raced toward Blue Moon. His thoughts traveled along a dozen different tangents, and he found himself wondering again why O’Rourke had asked him about Calder’s grandson. But the answer to that would have to come at another time.

D
aylight brought a steady stream of locals to view the damage of the previous night’s fire. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in Blue Moon in years. They stared at the blackened metal shells of the gasoline pumps, the charred tires propped beside them, the fire-scorched concrete around them, and the globs of melted plastic, and listened intently to accounts of those who had been on the scene. All speculated on the disaster that might have occurred if the underground tanks had blown, while others wondered where they were going to buy gas for their vehicles.

The constant flow of people brought business, more business than Sally Brogan had ever had at her restaurant. By four o’clock Saturday afternoon, she was down to one package of buns, a dozen eggs, and two pounds of hamburger, and was completely out of lettuce—and the evening crowd had yet to arrive. Left with no choice, she made a quick trip to Fedderson’s store and came out with an armload of groceries.

She was halfway back to the restaurant when a pickup pulled off the highway and parked in front of it. Sally didn’t have to see the Triple C brand embla
zoned on its doors to recognize Chase behind the wheel. Jessy and Cat were with him, along with young Quint.

“Honestly, Chase, don’t tell me you came to gawk at Emmett’s burned pumps, too?” Sally walked up to him when he climbed out of the truck.

“Actually, I thought it was time I took these two young ladies out to dinner.” But his glance was already sliding past her to the station area. “I did hear there was a fire. It doesn’t look like there’s much damage.”

“It was confined to the island. The gasoline pumps are a total loss. Unfortunately, it may be as much as a week before he can get new ones installed.” Sally glanced that way as well, the paper sacks rattling in her arms.

Jessy came around the truck, followed by Cat and her son. “Let me give you hand with those sacks, Sally,” Jessy offered, reaching out.

“No, thanks. Right now I have them wedged together. If you took one, I’d probably drop the rest.” She turned her smile on the tall blonde. “You’re looking well. How are you feeling?”

“Wonderful,” Jessy replied, beaming with happiness.

“Where was the fire, Grandpa?” Quint caught hold of Chase’s hand, claiming his attention. “Can we go see?”

“We will in a minute,” he promised.

“Don’t worry, Quint,” Sally told him. “Your grandpa wants to see it as much as you do. It seems we never quite outgrow our fascination with fire and its aftermath, no matter how old we get.” Sally’s astute observation drew a smile from Cat and a quick, admitting chuckle from her father. With a smile of her own, Sally started toward her restaurant. “I’ll see you inside.”

“Let me get the door for you.” Jessy went after her.

Cat fell in step with her father and Quint when they headed across the graveled parking lot toward Fedderson’s. Wooden barricades blocked off the fire-damaged pump island and kept the handful of onlookers well away from the site.

A couple of Dy-Corp workers stood at the far end of the restaurant parking lot, watching a man inside the barricades as he inspected the burned area inch by inch. Hearing footsteps behind them, they glanced around and nodded a silent greeting.

The taller of the two said, without preamble, “Guess you heard about the fire last night. The fire marshal just got here a little while ago. That’s him going over it now.”

But it was the lean and rangy man behind the barricades, standing beside Emmett Fedderson, who claimed Cat’s attention. He was out of uniform, dressed in boot-cut jeans, a white western shirt, and a lacquered straw Stetson, looking much as he had the very first time she’d seen him. Her pulse skittered, the memory of last night’s hard kiss surfacing abruptly, and the air temperature seemed to rise a good ten degrees.

“Is arson suspected?” her father asked, stopping to talk to the two men.

But Quint kept walking toward the barricades. Cat hurriedly caught him by the shoulders, drawing him to a halt. “This is close enough, Quint.”

He stopped reluctantly. But any hope that she might escape Logan’s notice vanished as his gray eyes cut to her. She made a point of ignoring him, although she couldn’t ignore the vivid and unsettling effect of his presence.

“How come it’s all black over there?” Quint wanted to know.

“The fire did that.” A lazy breeze carried the smell of smoke and burned rubber. “Remember how black it is inside the fireplace?”

“Uh-huh.” Quint nodded.

“It’s the same thing.”

“You mean, it’s like soot?” He tilted his head back to look up at her, and Cat found herself glancing into another pair of equally gray eyes.

“Very much like it, yes.”

Quint squared around and stared at the fire scene for a long minute. “What’s he doing?” He pointed to the balding man behind the barricades as Jessy rejoined them.

“He’s trying to figure out how the fire got started,” Cat replied.

“How can he do that?”

“Now that’s a hard question.” She glanced at Jessy, uncertain how to answer it in terms Quint could understand.

“I think he went to a school to learn that,” Jessy put in.

“Will I learn that when I go to school?” Quint asked, clearly intrigued by the possibility.

“Probably not right away,” Jessy answered with more than a trace of amusement.

Cat smiled in response to it, but it was an absent movement of her lips as she cast an oblique glance at Logan. She hated this achy need she felt whenever he was around. Last night she had fought it as much as she had fought him; in the end, she had surrendered to both.

It shamed her to realize that she now thought of Logan in that same heated way she had once thought about Repp. The memory of Repp was just that—a memory. The thought of him no longer stirred up any of the old quiver of longings. It shook her faith in her own judgment and somehow cheapened the
love she had felt for Repp. But she would not let go of her loyalty to him. She absolutely would not.

A pickup truck turned off the highway, skirted the wooden barricades, and pulled up alongside the building. There was the metallic slam of doors, one an echo of the first as Norma Fedderson stepped from the store and hollered at her husband that he had a phone call.

“Maybe that’s the insurance adjuster,” he said to Logan and hustled off to take the call.

Logan managed a belated nod and snapped his gaze away from Cat and back to the fire marshal, half-irritated by his absorption with her. From the instant he saw her standing there, the sight of her had been like a potent whiskey racing through his bloodstream. Thirsty again, he looked back to take a second drink.

A silver concho belt cinched the waist of an emerald dress that matched and deepened the green of her eyes and turned her hair a more shining black. A playful wind teased at the hem of the dress’s full skirt, then molded the fabric to her and showed each ripely curved line of her body, a body he remembered in intimate detail.

There was a coolness to her expression now, but he knew the fire that lay just beneath it, the fire of both her anger and her passion. He had aroused both, and he could do it again. She knew it as well, and hated him for it.

The scuff of sauntering footsteps sounded behind him. Logan turned with an impatient swing of his shoulders, expecting to see Emmett Fedderson. His piercing glance collided with the mocking eyes of Lath Anderson.

“Heard there was some excitement here last night,” he remarked with seeming idleness.

“A little.” Recognizing the sudden shortness of
his temper, Logan turned back, his glance running again to Cat.

Lath saw it. “That Cat Calder is quite a looker, isn’t she?”

“Keep your mouth off her, Anderson.”

“Now, there’s a picture,” he said with a marveling shake of his head. “Tell you the truth, about the only thing better than having my mouth on her, would be having hers on me. Just thinking about it is enough to make me hard.”

Lath glanced sideways to gauge the effect of his words, and shock ripped through him. Echohawk’s eyes were on him, cold and wicked like the black muzzles of a shotgun ringed with gray steel.

“One more word, Anderson, and you’ll find yourself spread-eagled on the ground eating concrete.” The tightly murmured words held a warning note of thinly repressed fury.

“Hey.” Backing up a step, Lath held up his hands in mock surrender and laughed to cover the fear churning through him. “How was I to know you had ideas in that direction yourself?”

“You’re wrong about that.” The reply was snapped out, giving lie to the denial.

“If you say so.” Lath shrugged, relieved when those cold eyes were directed elsewhere, and fully aware jealousy didn’t get any greener than what he had just witnessed. He looked to where the man was poking around in a pile of ash next to a charred gas pump. “Anybody know how the fire got started?”

“With a match.”

“You mean it was deliberately set?” He feigned surprise, and saw Echohawk wasn’t convinced. Confident again, he didn’t care.

“Where were you last night between midnight and one o’clock?”

“Me? You surely don’t think I had anything to do with starting this fire, do you?”

Logan gave him a level look, his temper once more under control. “According to Emmett, the two of you had words last night after he refused to reopen your family’s charge account with him. He said it wasn’t the first time you’d argued over it.”

“He said that?!” He whirled around as Emmett came out of the store, saw him and hesitated. “Am I glad to see you, Emmett. The sheriff here just told me something real distressing. He claims that you said we argued over my ma’s account with you. Now, you got to come here and set the record straight.”

Emmett shuffled wearily to them, his expression hard and bitter and careful. “What I said was a fact, Lath, and you know it. You was upset ’cause I wouldn’t reopen that account.”

“Sure, it grieved me, but I never said one cross word to you about it, did I?” he challenged.

“Well…no,” Emmett gave in, grudgingly. “But you was mad. I could see it in your eyes. And I remember the way you said ‘no gas.’ Well, I don’t have any gas now.”

Lath shook his head in a gesture of sad bewilderment. “It hurts me, Emmett, that you think I would have done this. Why, you’ve known me since I was a little shaver.”

“And I didn’t dare turn my back on you then, either, or you would have had a half dozen candy bars stuffed inside your pants.”

“Now, Emmett, I never took nothing that wasn’t paid for.”

“You’re damned right you didn’t, ’cause I always charged ’em to your ma’s account,” Emmett countered, a dark flush of anger purpling his face.

“This fire’s got him all upset, Sheriff,” Lath declared. “All I ever did was to ask him politely to
consider reopening my ma’s account. Emmett’s never been anything but a fair and honest man, so I know after he’s had time to think about it, he’ll admit what I’m saying is true. Isn’t that right, Emmett?” He clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder, giving it a small shake.

“He was polite enough with his words,” Emmett conceded sourly.

Before he could say more, Lath threw a bright grin at Logan. “See? I knew he’d clear things up for me.”

“You still haven’t said where you were last night.”

“Sally closes up at midnight. Me and Rollie left a little before that. So I’d say we were either on our way home or else in bed.” His expression never changed. “Anything else you’d like to ask?”

“Not right now.”

“If you think of anything, you know where to find me,” he said with a wink, then walked off.

Watching him head into the store, Emmett grumbled, “I still think he’s the one who started it.”

“You could be right,” Logan agreed. “But suspicions are no good without proof.”

“And you can bet money Lath knows that, too.”

Across the way, Chase Calder said something to Cat. She nodded and turned, touching the shoulder of the young boy beside her. He caught hold of her hand, then reached out to take the outstretched hand of Jessy Calder. Logan watched as the two women lifted the boy off the ground and swung him between them. His giggle of delight drifted across the intervening space.

“I’m kinda surprised to see Calder in town when the Triple C is in the middle of roundup,” Emmett remarked. “Course, I don’t imagine Chase takes an active role in it anymore. Ty sees to it now, I guess.”

“I got that impression.” Logan nodded absently, his glance tracking Cat all the way to the restaurant entrance.

“That’s right. You were out there yesterday, weren’t you?” Emmett recalled. “Trouble comes in bunches, they say. My place gets set on fire and Calder gets his cattle killed. I guess you haven’t had much time to investigate that.”

“Not much.” The comment prompted a question he had planned to ask. “Do you know anybody around here that has a truck with a winch mounted in it?”

“Well, there’s the one I got, parked around back. We hardly use it anymore since we got the tow truck. And Jim Bradley over at the Lone Tree Ranch has one. Old Gaylord Archibald used to have one, but I think I heard he’d sold it to somebody over at Wolf Point. Farleys had one, but they blew the motor in it. The cost of fixing it was more than the whole thing was worth. I’m pretty sure they ended up junking it.” He paused, then shook his head. “I can’t think of anybody else. Why’d you want to know?”

“Just curious. Do you mind if I go take a look at yours?”

“Course not. Like I said, it’s parked around back in that old shed behind the store.”

“Where are the keys?”

Emmett cast a furtive look around them, then lowered his voice. “You don’t need one. That padlock on the shed door has been broke for years.”

Logan shot him a look, a sudden hunch forming. “And the keys to the truck?”

He blinked once, twice, then ducked his head and mumbled a little sheepishly, “On a hook inside the door.”

“I think you’d better come with me.”

“Why?” A note of anxiety crept into Emmett’s
voice. “You don’t think somebody stole my truck, do you?”

Logan ignored the question and called to the fire marshal, “Frank, we’re going around back for a few minutes.” The man waved an acknowledgment, and Logan started toward the corner of the building. “When’s the last time you were in the shed, Emmett?”