Calder Pride (5 page)

She hesitated only a moment, then swung around and climbed the steps, entering the house ahead of them. Emma breathed easier, relieved that he had excluded his daughter.

The interior of the house was as big and grand as the exterior, the large entryway opening into an even larger living room. Emma looked around with interest while Calder shut the front door. She was sur
prised by nothing she saw. The Homestead was a popular topic of conversation among the locals. Every visitor to the house came away with descriptions of it that were passed around from one wagging tongue to another.

When Calder led them to a set of double doors on their left, Emma knew what she would see before she entered the room. Sure enough, there above the mantelpiece of the massive stone fireplace were the wide, sweeping horns of the legendary longhorn steer that had led the first Calder herds to this land more than a century ago. A framed map hung on the wall directly behind the desk. Roughly drawn and yellowed with age, it outlined the boundaries of the Triple C Ranch, an area of land larger than the state of Rhode Island.

The man who ruled it walked behind the large desk and sat down, waving them toward a pair of leather and brass-studded chairs that faced the desk. “Have a seat.”

Neil lowered himself into the first chair while Emma claimed its twin. Neil mopped at his eyes again, then stuffed the kerchief back in his pocket. “I appreciate you taking the time to speak with us,” he said with a nervous bob of his head.

“What is it you wanted to talk to me about?” He directed the question to Neil.

“It’s about our boy Rollie,” Neil began, then paused and threw an uneasy glance her way. “The missus and me met with his lawyer yesterday, a fellow by the name of Barstow. He’s young, but he seemed to know what he was talking about. Anyways, the way he explained it is this—there’s a hearing coming up. As things stand now, Rollie is facing a manslaughter charge, which means he’ll have to serve some time in prison. Barstow wants to plea-bargain the case and get the charges reduced. He
says that the judge might suspend the sentence and release Rollie on probation. But to do that, he says we’ll need somebody to speak up for him. Not just anybody, but somebody whose name carries some weight.”

Chase leaned back in his chair and regarded him steadily. “And you want me to speak up for him.”

“Your word means something around here. Folks listen when you talk.” He stated it flatly, making no appeal with his voice.

“Rollie is a good boy, Mr. Calder.” Emma leaned forward. “A hard worker, too. He’s sorry about causing that accident, sorrier than I could ever say. He never meant for it to happen. It’s just that with the milking and the plowing and the planting, he’d worked from dawn to dusk all week. He went into town Saturday night like all boys do. He shouldn’t have drank so much, but—boys do that, too. Such foolishness is a part of growing up, I guess.”

“Forgive me, Mrs. Anderson, but this isn’t the first time your son has been arrested for driving under the influence,” Chase pointed out.

“I know.” She released a convincing sigh of regret. “Liquor is a terrible thing that’s messed up many a man. I could name a dozen people right here in this county who have a problem with it. And that night, there must have been at least a half dozen others at Sally’s who drank too much. Any one of them could have caused that crash. But it was Rollie. He was the one at fault.” Shrewdly, Emma didn’t deny his guilt as she lifted her hands in silent appeal for understanding. “But it was an accident, Mr. Calder. My boy never meant for it to happen.”

“But a man died just the same.” His expression was unchanged and unreadable.

“I know.” Emma let her hands fall to her lap, her slim shoulders slumping. “‘An eye for an eye,’ it says
in Exodus. But I ask you, what good is it gonna do to send Rollie to prison? It isn’t going to bring that Taylor boy back.”

An eyebrow came up, a coolness entering his gaze. “Surely you aren’t suggesting your son should go unpunished?”

“No, I’m just saying there’s got to be some way to do that besides sending him to prison,” Emma replied.

For the first time, his steady gaze shifted from her. He seemed to be looking inward, considering her words. At the same time, she caught the sound of footsteps approaching the den.

Guessing it was that Audrey person bringing the coffee he had requested, Emma rushed to press her advantage. “Rollie’s just a plain, hardworking farm boy, a little foolish and wild sometimes, but he’s no criminal. And he’s needed at home. Neil and me, we’re too old to do all the farm work. Crippled with arthritis like he is, Neil can’t be bouncing around on a tractor ten and twelve hours a day. Why, he can’t even put the milkers on the cows.”

“That’s enough, Emma.” Neil glowered, the redness of embarrassment creeping up his neck as Cat walked in carrying a coffee tray.

Glancing at neither of the Andersons, she set the tray on a side table near the computer workstation. Cat had overheard much of the old woman’s previous speech, both the pleading defense of their son and the wheedling declaration of hardship. Privately she was outraged at the very idea of Repp’s drunken killer going unpunished.

“You know it’s true, Neil.” The old woman’s voice was soft in its disagreement, a subtle air of meekness about her manner.

Cat placed the two coffee cups with their respective saucers on the desk directly in front of their
chairs. When she turned to retrace her steps to the coffee tray, she encountered the old woman’s hostile glance. The visual contact lasted little longer than a wink. The effect of it stayed, giving Cat the distinct impression the woman wanted her gone from the room. It turned her stubborn and fueled the anger she already felt. Deliberately she dallied at the coffee tray, making long work out of the task of pouring her father’s coffee.

A silence fell. For a moment Cat was afraid it would last until she left the room. Then Emma Anderson spoke again, in that same humble tone as before.

“My husband is a proud man, Mr. Calder. He’s worked hard his whole life. It’s hard for him to admit he can’t do for himself anymore. But the simplest chore is a task for him now. Rollie’s had to do most all the work for the last two years. If Rollie goes to prison, I don’t know how we’ll keep the farm going. We can’t afford a hired—”

Her husband broke in again, gruffly indignant, “That is none of his concern, Emma.” Abashed by her admission and struggling to conceal it, he threw a hesitant look at Chase. “Like I told you, this was that lawyer Barstow’s idea, or we wouldn’t have come here today.”

“I understand that.” Chase nodded smoothly.

“I guess it all comes down to the question that brought us here, then,” he spoke with a bluntness that revealed his lingering discomfiture. “Will you speak to the judge and ask him to go light on Rollie?”

“Please, Mr. Calder,” Emma pleaded, trying to temper her husband’s request. “There’s been enough suffering already. We need our boy to home.”

“So do the Taylors,” Cat stated, her temper flar
ing. “But their son is dead. He can never come home.”

“Stay out of this, Cat.” The warning from her father was quick and curt. Cat checked the hot retort and waited, ready to defy him if the need arose.

“My Rollie isn’t a bad boy, Mr. Calder,” the old woman insisted. “He just made an awful mistake. He deserves a second chance.”

Chase gave a slow nod of his head, conceding the point.

“No.” Cat’s half-strangled cry put her on the receiving end of another sharp look from him.

Then his attention swung once again to the Andersons. “I understand your situation and respect what you’re trying to accomplish. In your place, I would probably do the same. But I think you have forgotten that as long as there has been a Calder on this land, a Taylor has stood beside him. On this matter, I stand with them, just as I stood beside them when they buried their son.”

Loyalty. Cat wanted to laugh with relief. At the same time she was ashamed that she had forgotten the strong bond that linked her family with the small cadre of families whose ancestors had been trail hands on that first cattle drive and stayed to help her great-grandfather Benteen Calder build the Triple C.

It was a holdover from the West’s early days when taking a man’s pay meant you “rode for the brand” and fought his fights, standing beside him, right or wrong. It was an old code of living that ran both ways; to attack a man’s rider, provoked or not, was the same as attacking the man. Back then, “All for one, and one for all” had not been merely a trite phrase; it had been a hard-and-fast rule. There were still some who abided by that old western code today, and her father was among them.

“I didn’t figure you’d speak up for the boy,” the
old man said with a slow, sage nod of acceptance.

“But you must.” Desperate, Emma couldn’t let that be the last word. “If you don’t help us, no one will. Don’t you see, they’ll all take their lead from you.”

“I’m sorry, Emma.” Pity gentled his voice and his expression.

She seized on it and sought to twist it to her advantage. “No, please, you’ve got to help us. Please—”

“The man has given us his answer, Emma,” her husband broke in, embarrassed to the point of curtness. “There is no more to be said.”

“But what will we do?” She bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing them to water. Tears had always been a woman’s weapon, and Emma doubted that Chase Calder was the kind of man who would be immune to an old woman’s tears. They ran down her cheeks when she finally looked up. “Every time I think about our boy getting locked away with a bunch of hardened criminals, it scares me. You know it’ll change him. You know he won’t be the same as when he went in. I don’t want our Rollie turning into some mean, hard man. He did wrong, but he doesn’t deserve that to happen.”

Calder was wavering. Emma sensed it in the way he was having trouble meeting her eyes. For one brief moment she was certain he was about to relent. Then he dropped his gaze, a long, grim breath coming from him.

“You need to tell the judge that, Emma, not me,” he said. “I can’t help you.”

“You don’t mean that,” she murmured in dismay, but she saw the hardening of his expression and knew he meant every word of it.

Fury came, black and swift. She shook with the effort to keep it from him, fully aware that to unleash
it would kill whatever slim chance remained.

Beside her, Neil overcame the protest of his pain-wracked joints and struggled to his feet. “It’s time for us to go home now.” He prodded at Emma with a gnarled and twisted hand, urging her to rise, then bobbed his head at Calder in a respectful nod. “Thank you for your time and the coffee. We will trouble you no longer.”

“But what is to become of Rollie?” Woodenly Emma rose from the chair, still pressing her case. She had come too close to give up without trying again. “What is to become of us?”

She resisted the pressure of her husband’s guiding hand when he attempted to steer her away from the desk. Slightly built though she was, Emma knew he hadn’t the strength to force her from the room.

With eyes still weeping, only more from frustration now, she turned her beseeching gaze on Calder. “Without Rollie, how will we make it? The cows got to be milked morning and night. There’s hay to put up, fields to cultivate, crops to harvest—and nobody but us to do it. We’re too old to be doing that kind of work. We’ll lose the place.”

He was deaf to her pleas, his expression closed, shutting her out. All hope for her son’s freedom was lost. Calder would not help them. Nothing she could say or do would change his mind.

“You have said enough, Emma,” Neil muttered near her ear. “Don’t shame me further with your talk.”

This time Emma didn’t resist when he ushered her from the den, her glance falling on Calder’s daughter as they passed her. Suddenly everything coalesced. There was one single reason for her failure.

“It was that Calder girl,” she declared in a venomous whisper.

“If she hadn’t been there, he would have helped us.”

“You are fooling yourself, woman.” Fumbling he opened the front door with his crippled hands. “If you’re wise, you’ll forget what happened here today.”

“How can I forget when Rollie may go to prison because of her?” She stalked out of the house.

A silence hung in the study, the air still charged with the woman’s emotional outpouring. It held Cat motionless until she heard the click of the front door closing. Uneasy and chilled by the encounter, she crossed to the study window and looked out, watching as the couple made their way to the battered pickup truck.

“I should feel sorry for them.” But every time she tried to summon some compassion, Cat remembered the look of malevolence the old woman had given her. Even now it made her want to shudder.

“In a tragedy like this, innocent people on both sides suffer from it,” her father stated. “We often forget that.”

“He killed Repp.” She felt again the rage of that loss. “Am I wrong to believe he should be punished for that?”

“According to state law, he committed a crime. And by law, he has to answer for it.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” She turned from the window, impatient with his evasive answer. “Am I wrong?”

“That depends, Cat”—his watchful eyes studied her face, his own expression remained impassive—“on whether you want justice—or vengeance.”

It wasn’t the kind of reply Cat had expected. Without a ready answer, she had to stop and think, look inward and examine.

“I don’t know. Justice, I think,” she said at last.

“If you had to think about it, it probably is.” His expression gentled, approval gleaming in his eyes. “Blind hate would have had you demanding it.”

Hate had definitely been in Emma Anderson’s eyes, Cat recalled. “I have a feeling that we just made an enemy.”

“It’s possible.”

“What will happen to them? Will they lose their farm?”

“I would say it’s very likely they will,” Chase replied.

In the middle of August, the bank issued its first foreclosure notice on the Anderson farm. Cat learned about it from her uncle Culley.

The news wasn’t entirely unexpected. The old woman had virtually predicted it when she had pleaded for help.