Calder Pride (28 page)

Culley’s gaze bored into him, green and icy hot. “She’s been hurt a lot in this life. I’d like to think she’ll be safe with you.”

Logan had the distinct impression that if she wasn’t, he’d find himself coming to blows with the old man. “She’ll be safe.”

“She better be.” It was a warning, clear and simple. “She’s all I got left in this world.” Drawing the reins up, he turned to his horse and looped them over its neck.

“We’ll see you at the wedding,” Logan said.

Culley threw a look at The Homestead and gave what passed for a shrug, then slipped a toe into the stirrup and stepped into the saddle, without a single creak of rubbing leather. The horse instantly moved out at a soft-footed walk.

T
he guineas set up a racket when the pickup came rattling up the rutted and weed-choked lane. Pulling into the ranch yard of the old Simpson place, Rollie swung the wheel toward the house trailer, his face grimy and streaked with black coal dust from his day’s work in the strip mine. In his idle sweep of the yard, his glance briefly touched on the wiry, thin figure of his mother, coming from the direction of the old barn, the vegetable basket under her arm mounded with fresh lettuce.

“You’re late.” The sharpness of her voice turned the observation into a criticism when he climbed out of the truck.

“I had to stop for gas.” Rollie gave his ponytail a quick flip, lifting it off his sweaty neck and letting it fall back, a gesture of his discomfort with her reproach.

“Fedderson got his new pumps installed, did he?” She continued toward the trailer.

Rollie nodded. “They finished hooking them up early this afternoon. Nearly every vehicle in town was there waiting to get gassed up.” He looked around. “Where’s Lath?”

“He’s been messing around all day fixing up that old root cellar. I expect he’s still at it,” she said. “Leastways, come canning time, I’ll have a place to store all our vegetables.”

The root cellar was more like a cave that had been dug out of the hillside. The instant Emma had learned of its existence, she had insisted that the house trailer be positioned near it.

“I hope he shored up that one beam.” Rollie glanced toward the cellar’s entrance, its framework slanted to match the slope of the hill. Its warped and weathered wooden door lay open at a crooked angle, a visible reminder that it needed new hinges as well as boards. “I heard a bunch of hammering earlier, so I expect he has. I wouldn’t worry about Lath. He knows what he’s doing.” Something in her voice insinuated that Rollie didn’t.

Rollie smothered the flare of resentment and bowed his head, accepting that he would never be equal to his brother in her eyes.

“Hey, Rollie!” Lath waved to him from the cellar’s tunnellike opening. “Come take a look at this. Not you, Ma,” he added when she started toward him as well. “This isn’t something you should know-about.”

Without questioning his decision, Emma resumed her course to the trailer steps. His curiosity heightened, Rollie headed for the root cellar as Lath ducked back inside it.

An electric work light hung from one of the overhead beams, and it lit all but the corners of the earthen cellar. Sidestepping the extension cord that ran to it, Rollie walked a few feet inside and stopped in surprise. On all three sides there were nothing but shelves, stacked three high, strung with cobwebs and coated with a decade’s accumulation of dirt.

“Lath?” He turned in a complete circle, his
searching glance ransacking every dark corner. But there was no sign of his brother. “Lath, where the hell are you?”

The musty smell of bare earth and stale air pressed in around him. The silence of the place was suddenly eerie. The skin along the back of his neck crawled with it.

“Damn it, Lath,” he swore, angry now. “I don’t know what kind of trick this is—”

“No trick, little brother,” was the muffled reply. “Just a hidden door.”

The short shelving on the back wall moved, one side swinging open. A grinning Lath poked his head out, a flashlight in hand.

“Care to come into my parlor?” he invited. “Watch the corners of those shelves, though. I need to make them narrower.”

Rollie had to squeeze through the opening, made tight by the jutting shelves. On the other side was near-total darkness. The play of Lath’s flashlight beam ran over dirt walls that confined an area of roughly four by five feet.

“I didn’t know this was here,” Rollie murmured.

“It wasn’t. I took out the shelving that was in this area, used some of the old boards from the barn to create a false wall, then covered it with part of the old shelves. Clever, huh?”

“It’s clever all right, but what’s it for?”

“I needed someplace to stash the shipment of automatic rifles I’ve got to pick up.”

“Rifles?”

“That’s right, little brother. Rifles.” Lath clamped a hand on his shoulder and steered him toward the narrow doorway. “You don’t think I’ve just been sitting on my hands while you’ve been working all day?”

Crowded by Lath, Rollie pushed his way through
the opening, then turned on him. “You aren’t selling guns again, are you?” It was an accusation rather than a question.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking, little brother.” Lath held up his hands in a placating gesture. “But I made the mistake of selling to somebody I didn’t know once. I’m not about to repeat that. I’m buying from a guy I’ve known for years and I’m selling to one I’ve known even longer. Neither one of ’em can afford to turn informant.”

“Just make sure you leave me the hell out of it,” Rollie warned.

“Whatever you say. But I will need you to drive me into Blue Moon tonight. I finally talked that Kershner fella into sellin’ me his van with only three hundred dollars down.”

“Only three hundred dollars? Damn it, Lath, I haven’t got three hundred to spare, not if I’m gonna make the trailer payment on time.”

Lath drew back his head in feigned surprise. “Did I ask you for the money, little brother?”

“You didn’t have to,” Rollie answered in disgust. “You’ve been bumming money off me ever since you came back.”

“And you’re such an easy touch, you keep forkin’ it over.” He grinned and sauntered over to a rusty metal canister sitting by a shelving post on the cellar’s dirt floor. Squatting beside it, he wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his T-shirt, pried off the metal lid, then reached inside and pulled out a thick wad of bills. Rollie’s mouth dropped open when he saw the amount of money still left in the can.

“How much is in there?” he breathed the words.

“Close to ten thousand. I got a can with another twenty thousand buried at the southeast corner of the barn.” Lath paused in his counting of the money and grinned up at him. “You don’t think I spent all
that time in prison without some seed money waitin’ for me when I got out.”

“You mean…you have nearly thirty thousand dollars?” Rollie had trouble absorbing that.

“And this gun deal comin’ up is gonna net me another five.” He raised an eyebrow in open mockery. “Do you still want me to leave you out of the deal?”

Almost woodenly, Rollie walked over to the can, needing to touch the bills and make sure they were genuine. “You made all this from selling guns,” he murmured, awestruck.

“Nope. This is only what I managed to save. I did me some livin’ with the rest.”

Rollie frowned. “If you had all this, why didn’t you send Ma some when she was needin’ it?”

“I couldn’t get to it, not without taking the risk of those Treasury boys following me and seizing it like they did just about everything else I had. ’Sides, even if I had, we both know she would have plowed the money back into the damned farm. This way’s better.”

“Jeezus, we’re rich,” Rollie murmured, lovingly fingering the bills. “I can quit my job—”

“Not so fast, little brother.” Lath pulled the canister away from him and stuffed the excess bills back inside, pocketing the rest. “You gotta keep that job. One of us has to be makin’ an income people can see. That was another mistake I made the last time, flashing more money than I could account for. This time, I’m gonna look poor, live poor, and drive poor, and let people think I’m spongin’ off my hardworkin’ little brother. In a year, maybe two, I’ll have enough that we can blow this place, buy us some new identities, and show Ma the good life.”

Seeing all the money turned Rollie into a believer. He watched Lath shove the canister into the black
shadows under a shelf. “You aren’t going to leave that there, are you?”

“It’s okay for now. Later I’ll be buryin’ it right inside the cellar door.” He laid an arm across Rollie’s shoulders in a confiding gesture. “I’m tellin’ ya that so you’ll have it for Ma in case I run into any trouble. Okay?”

“Okay.” He was suddenly and deeply moved by the trust Lath was showing in him. He had been the little brother and called the little brother for so long that he’d always felt inadequate. Now, Lath trusted him, and he felt somehow bigger, stronger, more competent.

“I knew I could count on you.” Lath slapped his back. “Come on. Let’s go get cleaned up. We’re both about as rank as an old man’s dirty laundry.”

It wasn’t until he was out of the shower that Rollie remembered the news he’d heard in town. He padded into the kitchen, a towel wrapped around his hips and water still dripping from his long hair. His mother was at the sink, peeling potatoes to add to the roast in the oven. Lath sat on the kitchen counter, a beer in his hand, watching her.

“I forgot to tell you—I saw Reverend Pattersby in at Fedderson’s getting gas. You’ll never guess where he was going.”

“To hell?” Lath grinned.

Emma pressed a hand to her mouth, smothering a girlish titter. “Lath, you’re awful.”

“No, it was better than that. He was heading out to the Triple C. Echohawk’s marrying Cat Calder, and Pattersby’s performing the ceremony.”

Lath pushed off the counter, surprise digging a deep furrow across his forehead. “Echohawk is marrying the Calder girl?”

“That’s what Pattersby said.”

“I never heard any talk about him seeing her,” he mused aloud.

“He’s marrying a tramp, that’s what he’s doing.” At the sink, the paring knife flashed with new fury, sending strips of potato peelings flying into the air. “Her and that little bastard of hers.”

Rollie had saved the juiciest tidbit for last. “There’s some that are speculating Echohawk is the kid’s father.”

“Wouldn’t that be interesting.” Lath arched an eyebrow, then took a thoughtful swig of beer and gazed off into the middle distance.

“It’d be just like Calder to hold a shotgun wedding.”

A short, heavy breath of disgust came from the sink area. “A wedding won’t change the fact that she isn’t fit to be called a mother, Calder or no,” Emma declared, her thin body stiff with outrage. “If there was any justice in this world, she woulda known the pain of somebody takin’ her son from her long before now.”

Rollie scoffed, “Come on, Ma. She’s a Calder. Such a thing will never happen.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that, little brother.” A hint of slyness crept into Lath’s smile. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that at all.”

“What do you mean?” Rollie asked, with an interest he wouldn’t have had a week ago.

Still smiling, Lath kept his own counsel and tipped the bottle to his mouth, downing another long swallow of beer.

Cat stood motionless in front of the tall cheval mirror, her fingers clasped around a pearl necklace. A tap at her bedroom door broke across her thoughts. Looking into the mirror once more, she raised the strand of pearls to her neck and checked to make cer
tain her expression revealed none of the wild jittering of her nerves, then called, “Come in.”

The mirror reflected her brother’s image when the door opened. “Is Reverend Pattersby here? I thought I heard a car drive up.”

“He’s downstairs.” Ty came up behind her, his dark eyes meeting the green of hers in the mirror.

“I’m almost ready.” She fumbled with the clasp, then gave up before her already thin nerves snapped. “Would you fasten this for me? I seem to be all thumbs.”

“Sure.” He took the two ends from her, the work-roughened backs of his fingers brushing against the skin of her neck while Cat held the weight of her long hair up and away from it. “These are Mother’s pearls, aren’t they?”

“Yes.” She touched the front of them. “I always planned to wear them on my wedding day.”

She didn’t bother to add that she had always thought she would be marrying Repp. The memory of it clouded her eyes for a moment before she pushed it away and ran an assessing glance over her reflection. The dress she had chosen to wear was made of crepe de chine. The muted shades of teal and lavender draped and floated around her slender, curved figure. The design was simple and elegantly understated, but the effect was much more romantic than she would have liked. Given a choice, Cat would have grabbed something out of the closet and called it good enough. But the dress, like the ceremony, was for Quint’s benefit.

“Cat.” Ty’s hands shifted to the rounded points of her shoulders. “It isn’t too late to change your mind. If you do, I’ll stand with you.”

She thought about it for all of two seconds, then gave a small, sideways shake of her head. “No. I’ve agreed to this.”

When she would have moved away from him, his hands tightened to stop her. “Cat, there is only one thing worse than making a mistake, and that’s refusing to admit it. Ask me. I know.”

Turning to face him, Cat struggled to show him a calmness she didn’t feel. “I promise you this, Ty. If I discover this is an awful mistake, you’ll be the first one I’ll tell.”

“You’d better.” Despite the serious gleam in his eyes, his mouth quirked in a smile that disappeared under a corner of his mustache. “That’s what big brothers are for, you know.”

“I’m counting on that.” From the hallway came the clatter of feet running up the stairs, a familiar sound that was distinctively Quint’s own. “It sounds like Dad has sent up reinforcements to hurry me along.”

This time Ty didn’t try to hold her when Cat moved away from him. A second later, Quint pushed the door open and said, in a loud stage whisper, “Mom, everybody’s waiting for you.”

Seeing him clad in his dress pants, white shirt, and clip-on tie, his hair slicked in a neat side part, Cat knew her choice of dress had been right. Five years old or not, she didn’t underestimate his powers of observation. If she had chosen less than her best, he would have noticed and wondered.

“Go tell them I’m coming,” she said.

“Okay.” Off he dashed with the message, leaving the bedroom door ajar.

Turning, Cat ran smoothing hands over the bodice of her dress, her nerves all raw and edgy again. She inhaled a quick, steadying breath. “Shall we?” she murmured, her glance ricocheting off Ty as she moved toward the door.

The ceremony was to take place in the den. There would be no flowers, no glow of candlelight, no
horde of guests, no bridal bouquet, no wedding march, no veil for the groom to lift, no cake to cut, no pelting rice on the newlyweds. The lack of all that should have made it easier. It didn’t.