Читать книгу Beckett's Birthright - Bronwyn Williams - Страница 11

It had been months since Lilah had been able to visit the Randalls. The cabin was in worse condition than ever, both the tiny front porch and the roof sagging badly. The yard had been raked clean except for a few toys, although the honeysuckle vines had been allowed to ramble freely, adding a softening touch. In spite of what had happened to her husband, Martha Randall had obviously not given up.

The family had lost so much that Lilah was determined to see they didn’t lose their home, regardless of her father’s orders. Burke Jackson had taken it for granted that the Randalls had been turned out immediately after Ed Randall had gone to jail. Without discussing the matter, Shem had simply never gotten around to asking them to leave.

Dismounting, Lilah looped the reins around a catalpa tree and began unpacking her bulging saddlebags. Then the door burst open and a child shouted, “It’s Miss Lilah! Mama, Miss Lilah’s here!”

The yard was suddenly alive with children.

By the time the last bundle had been carried reverently inside Lilah’s eyes had taken on a soft, damp glow. Her hair was tumbling; there were dusty smudges on her dark skirt and small, grimy handprints on her shirt from all the eager hugs she’d received, but she felt enormously full of…love?

Well, yes. Love. And it felt damned good, too.

Laughing and listening to the childish confidences, she followed the five young Randalls inside to where a thin, faded woman was putting away beans, sugar, tea and dried apples. Lilah herself carried the slab of bacon through the shotgun-style house to the coolhouse on the back stoop.

“Aren’t you home early?” Martha Randall queried.

“Yes, and this time I’m home to stay.” Lilah broke into a smile, her eyes twinkling. “Papa’s still grumbling, but I told him it would take blasting powder to pry me loose again.”

Martha cocked an eyebrow. She was a handsome woman, tall, calm and patient. Lilah had always liked her, although the older woman had not encouraged a closer relationship.

The children, though, were another matter. Soon, the sleeves of her shirtwaist turned back, Lilah was seated at the table surrounded by Randall children, from four-year-old Betty to nine-year-old Brantley, who took seriously his role as acting man of the house. Barbara, the eldest, was helping her mother put away food. “You just missed Willy,” Martha said, filling the kettle for tea. “He brought me a mess of fresh-caught fish.”

Willy was not a Randall. In fact, no one knew his last name. As for his age, it could be anywhere from twelve to twenty, although Lilah thought he must be about fifteen. Even Willy didn’t know how old he was, not that it seemed to matter. He had simply turned up at the cookshack one day a few years ago, looking for food. Streak and Shem had taken him in. With his freckled face, his overlarge ears and his guileless smile, he’d come in for more than his share of teasing from the hired hands until Shem had let it be known that teasing Willy was a firing offence. He slept in the wide-open loft or in an empty stall, depending on the season. He ate at the cookshack, ran errands and fed the buttermilks—the motherless calves. Between tasks, he played with the Randall children.

While eleven-year-old Barbara carefully measured out tea, four cotton-white heads leaned over the large picture book. Three pairs of blue eyes and one set of brown peered eagerly at the pictures as Lilah carefully spelled out the words beneath each one.

After almost an hour passed, the time filled with questions and earnest confidences about teeth lost, minnows caught in the creek, and how high Brantley could jump, Lilah handed around sheets of paper and pencils. “First, I want you to copy the picture of the boy on the raft. Then I want you to copy the words underneath. I have prizes for whoever remembers what the words spell, and for whoever draws the best picture, and—and for—”

Lilah tried to think of another category so that each child would receive a prize and, more important, so that each child would have bragging rights. She would think of something. She always did. She’d been coming to see the Randall family whenever she was home ever since Edward Randall, once her father’s blacksmith, had been convicted of stealing a box of shotgun shells from the hardware store in Hillsborough. He’d admitted the theft and gone to prison for eight years, leaving his family totally without support.

Lilah knew Martha did sewing and took in washing for Streak and Shem, but that would hardly provide much in the way of security.

Since then, in unspoken conspiracy, Willy brought fish while Streak hunted rabbits, which he skinned out and took to the Randalls. Lilah, when she was home from school, watched for an opportunity to help herself from Pearly May’s pantry. Burke Jackson would have turned them all out without a second thought, Lilah knew to her sorrow. If the man had ever harbored a single generous impulse, his daughter was not aware of it.

“Have you heard anything from Edward?” Lilah could remember watching the farrier as a child, fascinated by the glowing coals and the way the brawny man could shape metal by turning it fiery red.

“Not a word. He’s shamed, I know he is.”

What could she say? Of course he was ashamed. Edgar Randall was a decent man, but even decent men sometimes made mistakes.

“It’s not the stealing that shames him—well, I reckon it is, but what shames him worse is being shut up in that place and not being able to take care of his family. I should never have had so many babies,” she said, her voice low so as not to be overheard. “But they just kept on coming and every one was such a blessing.”

Lilah thought, damn you, Papa, for being a mean, miserly old man. Right or wrong, her father could have easily prevented the man from being sent to jail. He was certainly not without influence, being one of the wealthiest men in the entire area.

Both women glanced toward the table, where four pale heads were bent studiously over their tasks. The older woman smiled, a spark of animation momentarily brightening her lined face. “I never could say no to the man. Lord, he was a dandy.”

Which was not exactly the way Lilah had seen the burly blacksmith, but then, she didn’t know all that much about men. She’d never been offered the opportunity to learn.

“You know what I miss most with Edward gone?”

“I can probably guess,” she said, not wanting to get into the kind of things that went on between a married man and his wife.

“I miss the way he used to play with the young’uns. He used to hold Betty’s hands and let her walk up his legs and turn a somersault.” She shook her head. “Laugh? I swear, you never heard a child laugh so hard. Used to wet her pants near about every time. He knew it, too, my Eddie did, but he never let on. She used to run up to him when he came in from work and say, ‘Flip me, Daddy,’ and he’d hold out his hands to her. Never did it with any of the others, that was Betty’s special treat. With the boys, it was fishing. Lord, I don’t know what we’d do if there weren’t fish in that creek.”

Half an hour later, Lilah rode away with the sound of children’s laughter ringing in her ears. Candy prizes had been handed out for the neatest lettering, the best drawing of a foot, of a smile, of a fish, and for remembering to sign the drawing. Lord knows, she thought ruefully, if Edward had lured Martha into his bed many more times, Lilah would have been hard pressed to come up with enough categories to reward.

She was halfway back to the horse barn when she heard someone riding up behind her. Turning, she shaded her eyes against a blinding sun. Most of the men were over near the creek cutting the first crop of hay.

Chandler. Her hand rose instinctively to the hair that was tumbling from its pins, thanks to so many enthusiastic hugs. “You’re riding Demon,” she accused. It was the first thing that popped into her mind when she saw him ride up on the big bay stallion.

Actually, it was the second thing, but she wasn’t about to acknowledge the way her stomach quivered at the sight of those yoke-wide shoulders and his lean, unsmiling face.

He nodded to the docile mare. “Jenny’s a bit tame for you, isn’t she?”

It was a perfectly innocent observation, Lilah told herself. So why did it instantly set her teeth on edge? “She needs the exercise.”

“She gets enough exercise, Shem rides her every day.”

“Yes, well…”

She could hardly tell him that Demon couldn’t be trusted to behave around children, much less to stand patiently while she read to them for more than an hour. She had learned that lesson soon after Edward had been sent to prison, when she’d first started riding out to see to the family’s welfare.

Head held high, she did her best to look down on a big man who sat a tall horse. “Don’t you have anything else to do today? Shem can’t do it all, you know.”

Shem could do little more than offer advice. Which he did freely, and which Eli gratefully accepted. “I thought I’d ride out and see how soon we can start planting corn. We’re more than a month late, as it is.”

“Shem always had the corn in by the middle of April.” It was an open accusation.

“Shem never had to wait out a solid month of rain.”

“We’ve had sunny days this spring.” She hadn’t been here, but the weather in Salem couldn’t have been all that different.

“Not enough to dry the ground.”

She couldn’t argue the point. She’d heard Shem complaining too many times about the poor drainage of the fields nearest the creek. He’d wanted to try ditching, but her father had complained that it would take too long and cost a fortune besides.

“There’s ways of draining a soggy field, you know,” he said mildly. Demon was stamping and flicking his tail.

“Of course there are.” She could hardly argue with him. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of several ways to go about it.” She’d been thinking of no such thing, but her thoughts were none of his business.

He looked—the term magnificent came to mind, and she dismissed it. He looked…capable. Big, with large hands, muscular arms and straw-colored hair that showed the marks of his hatband whenever he removed his curl-brimmed black Stetson. Gray eyes…at least she thought they were gray. She’d never been close enough to be sure.

The thought of being close to that muscular body and those tanned, blunt features made the breath catch in her throat. She hadn’t reacted so physically to any man since she’d been fourteen and one of the young hands had had to carry her to the house after she’d tried to jump off the fence onto the back of a half-wild horse.

Elias Chandler bore no resemblance to the scrawny cowpoke who had staggered up the front steps with her long legs dangling over his arm all those years ago. For one thing, there was his arrogance. Some women would probably consider him attractive, but if he thought that just because he’d been hired to manage her father’s farm he was going to manage her, he was sadly mistaken. She didn’t take orders from any man, not even from Burke Jackson.

“I’m planning on getting the field turned by week’s end as long as the weather holds. Conditions here are some different from Oklahoma, where I’m from.” He gazed out over the rolling green pastures as if he had nothing better to do than to sit on top of a restless horse and talk about the weather.

Demon had a notoriously short fuse. Chandler controlled him as easily as if he were the gentlest of mares. One more thing to chalk up against him. “If you don’t like our weather,” she snapped, “why don’t you go back to Oklahoma?”

Here we go again, Eli thought, amused. He could tell by the way her cheeks flared up, the way she set her lips together in a tight line, that she was hankering for a setto. He was just as determined not to give in to her.

“Well, as to that,” he began, struggling to hide a grin, but before he could finish, she waved a dismissive hand.

“Don’t bother,” she said, gigging her placid mount into a trot. “I’m really not at all interested.”

He held the impatient stallion back while she rode off ahead, watching her as she jiggled on the saddle. Wishing he were the saddle.

What the devil ails you, Chandler? What you need is to take a few days off and spend some time enjoying the delights of a willing commercial lady.

He made a mental note to ask Shem more about the family that lived in the dilapidated old cabin, and whether or not Miss Jackson had any business sneaking off there.

Not that she’d exactly been sneaking. She’d headed off down the lane in broad daylight, both saddlebags full to busting. He’d ridden on past to check the condition of a section they been clearing. Jackson had been using it for a woodlot. Once they cleared out the stumps, he planned to turn it into another pasture unless Jackson had other plans.

When he’d ridden past the cabin on his way back, she’d still been inside. Sensing his distraction, Demon had started acting up and it had been all Eli could do to stay aboard.

Dammit, he’d been hired to oversee the operation of Jackson’s cow farm, not to keep his daughter out of trouble. God help the man who signed on for that duty.

For the next three days in a row Eli watched her ride off down the back lane. It was none of his business where she went or who she met up with. He hadn’t bothered to ask Shem, maybe because he didn’t want to know. He’d sooner come between a hawk and a three-legged rabbit than try to run interference between a hardheaded man and his headstrong daughter.

While Mickey was rounding up strays, getting ready for weaning and castrating last fall’s crop of calves, the driest of the cornfields was being seeded by a couple of the newer hands. It was hard, monotonous work, but it was what farmers did. If they’d signed on thinking they were going to be cowboys, they wouldn’t last long. The men who worked with the herd had to do more than wear the right hat. Mickey was experienced. His helper, another of the other new hires, had worked briefly on a Florida cattle ranch.

And then there was Streak, the herd boss, who was slow, deliberate and methodical. He kept records in his head, which was a problem for anyone trying to maintain an overall view of the operation, but Streak was a good man. And like Shem, he thought the sun rose and set on Miss Lilah’s head.

Eli made the rounds each day, checking on the work in progress. Repairs on the damaged chute and the shed roof they were extending weren’t finished yet, but until the corn was in and he had manpower to spare, they’d hold. He’d sent a man out at first light to check the fences. That was a mandatory daily patrol. Now he lingered to look over the new crop of calves, and then rode out to see how the planting was coming along.

One thing he hadn’t quite figured out yet was the difference between Carolina and Oklahoma when it came to crops and seasons. Back home he’d barely got started on his plan to fence and stock the land he’d inherited from his grandfather. Having left his fortune with Lance Beckett, he’d had to start all over again. He’d got as far as running a few lines of fence and had made plans to buy out a cattleman whose wife insisted on going back to Baltimore when everything had come apart.

Eli was still musing on the unlikely train of events that had brought him east again when Shem rode up, spat a wad of tobacco and said, “Three new men just turned up. Word o’ mouth, I reck’n. I thought we took down the hirin’ sign at the feed and seed.”

“Did it last week. Farmers or cowhands?”

“Bit o’ both, I reckon, ‘pending on what we need. Right now I’d say we need this weather to hold long enough to finish getting them seeds in the ground. Time we wind up there, we’ll have us another crop of hay to get in. I ‘clare, if this ain’t been the wettest spring since Noah went into the boat-building business.”

“Glad to hear it’s unusual,” Eli commented, not that he’d be here come another spring. Might not even make it to harvest time, if he got lucky. “Miss Jackson went out again today on the mare. I understand she has friends in that direction?” He nodded toward the lane that led through forty acres of second-growth timber to the woodlot and the hayfields beyond.

“The Randalls. Her paw don’t know, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t let on.”

“Jackson doesn’t know what? That she has friends?”

“Truth to tell, he don’t know no more about her than he has to. Dang shame, if you ask me, but he ain’t about to change his spots just ’cause he’s a sick man.”

The conversation turned in another direction then. Burke Jackson’s health. It was Shem’s opinion—Eli wasn’t entirely sure he was joking—that the man was being slowly poisoned by that evil old woman’s foul cooking. From what Eli had seen and heard, Jackson’s housekeeper was a slovenly woman who should have been fired years ago.

“That woman can sour a pan o’ milk just by looking at it.”

“What about the daughter? Can’t she step in?”

The old man removed his hat and scratched his bald, freckled head. “Burke won’t listen to her. Never did, not since she was a little thing, sweet as cane and wantin’ to please. No, sir, that man’s miserable and he’s gonna make dang sure ever’body else is just as miserable.”

Eli had trouble picturing Lilah Jackson as a little thing fitting Shem’s description. Whatever she was up to, he didn’t have time to oversee her as well as the rest of Jackson’s operation, even if he’d been so inclined. Spring was a busy time. But then, so was fall. In fact, if there was a slack time on a farm, he had yet to discover it.

Right now there was the first haying and late planting to oversee, not to mention ongoing repairs and improvements. The new crop of calves should have been culled more than a month ago, but due to both the weather and a shortage of manpower, they were running considerably behind. Still to be done was castrating and hair-branding. It was a noisy, dirty business, one he wasn’t looking forward to. Streak, Mickey and a few more men would do the actual work, but Eli was responsible. He’d once worked briefly on a ranch where some numbskull had mistaken his orders, turned the culls out to pasture and made steers of what would have been five valuable bulls.

An hour later Eli interviewed the new men and hired all three. One was the youngest son of a dairy farmer—some experience there. Another was a trapper from up in the mountains, skills that might come in handy if the damned groundhogs didn’t stop digging holes in the pastures. He’d seen more than one horse lost that way.

It was the third man who interested him the most, however. Ace Glover claimed to be a professional gambler in a Midwestern casino before losing the three middle fingers on his card-dealing hand.

“Mind telling me why you applied for work on a cattle farm?”

“A man’s got to eat,” Ace Glover said with a shrug. “I tried dealing left-handed. Tried wearing a glove with plugged fingers.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t the same. Too distracting. Eventually I worked my way east, trying a number of different lines of work. I worked on a gambling boat out of Tampa for a couple of weeks. Big, fancy side-wheeler. Now there’s a line of work I’d be very good at. Trouble is, even tied up in port I got so sick I couldn’t look at a glass of water without wanting to throw up.”

Eli shook his head in commiseration. “You know anything at all about farming?”

“No, but I’m a quick study. I can learn.”

“Know anything about livestock?”

“Like I said, I can learn.”

Eli tipped back his chair, regarding the applicant with a measuring look. The man’s suit had once been expensive, but it was starting to take on the shine of too much wear. Eli had learned about such things from Lance—hell, he even knew how to take the shine off good serge, come to that. Not that he’d ever bothered.

Not that he even owned a serge suit. Levi’s and leather were good enough for the life he led.

Neither man spoke as each measured the other. Ace Glover might not know a damn thing about cattle, but Eli suspected he was shrewd, probably highly intelligent. Like most gamblers, he’d be a good judge of men, which could be a decided asset on a spread with as big a turnover as the Bar J.

Glover crossed his legs. To all appearances, he was totally relaxed, but Eli had had some experience when it came to reading men, too.

He waited, knowing he had the advantage.

Feeling almost ashamed to use that advantage when a man had had a long run of bad luck, as Glover obviously had.

The gambler broke first. “I’ve got a good brain, but there’s a limit on what I can do with my hands. I’ve heard farming’s not an easy job, but I was hoping…” With a wintry smile, he let it rest.

“You heard right. You sure you want to tackle it?”

“A man has to eat,” Ace repeated. “Of course, if I were a fisherman, that wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, the last thing in the world I felt like doing during my two weeks in the Gulf of Mexico was eating.” Both men chuckled, which gave Eli the opening he’d been looking for.

“I’ve heard it said that professional gambling can be almost as risky as farming. Maybe not as physically demanding, but I’ve heard it can turn a man’s hair white overnight. You ever hear of anything like that?”

Glover pursed his lips under a pencil-thin mustache. He looked down at shoes that were long past their prime, but still reflected a shine. “Matter of fact, there was this fellow I met once…” Eli’s fingers tightened around the pencil he held. “Man swore he’d turned white overnight when some hayseed—nothing personal, Mr. Chandler—pulled a gun on him and shot the cards right out of his hand.”

Eli’s body absorbed the jolt of excitement that streaked through him like a lightning bolt. He’d had leads before. Dozens of them, but no matter how promising they seemed in the beginning, few of them had panned out.

He nodded to Glover’s hand and lifted an eyebrow.

The gambler laughed and shook his head. “They weren’t shot off, if that’s what you mean. I tangled with one of these newfangled automobiles. Dangerous machines, I’m telling you. I’ll stick to horses.”

“Smart man. No point in going gray before your time.” The newcomer’s hair was patent-leather black, and just as shiny.

“The man I mentioned—I don’t recall his name, but he had a remarkable streak of snow-white hair. Just a streak, mind you.” He touched his head just to the left of the center part. “Put a man in mind of a skunk.”

Eli eased out the breath he’d been holding, not showing by so much as a twitch the excitement that was beginning to build. This was the first solid lead he’d had in months. There was always the possibility that the man he’d been trailing was playing games, sending Glover in to taunt him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done something like that. Once in Knoxville, when Eli had casually asked after a gambler with a streak of white hair, he’d been given an envelope.

“Man came through here day before yesterday. Said you might be wantin’ to know his whereabouts. Said to give you this here letter. Feels like they might be some money in it.”

He’d waited until he was outside to open the envelope. Cat and mouse wasn’t a game he’d ever liked, but when he played it, he’d always been the cat. The hunter.

When the poker chip with a white streak painted across the middle had fallen out into his palm, he’d gone cold with rage.

And then hot with determination.

Now he was neither.

But he was still the hunter.

Realistically, Eli no longer held out much hope for Rosemary. God alone knew what she’d been forced to endure. But he was on the right track, he was sure of it. When he’d first set out nearly two years ago he’d known nothing more about the man who had burned his home and kidnapped the woman he’d promised to marry other than that he had a streak of white hair. Now he knew that the man was sometimes called Chips. He knew how he dressed, what he liked to eat and drink, and how he made his living. Most of the information had been picked up in saloons, some in jailhouses and one gem—the bit that had sent him to this particular region, he’d overheard in a whorehouse in Tennessee where the ladies of the evening had been discussing a cheapskate with a polecat stripe, who had professed to being on his way to claim his stepfather’s estate in the city of Durham in North Carolina. The creep had escaped through a window without paying for services rendered.

The man called Chips might enjoy tweaking the lion’s tail, but he was a liar and a scoundrel. Sooner or later his luck would run out, and when it did, Eli would be there.

There was only one thing that bothered him. The crime of kidnapping didn’t seem to fit the image of a professional gambler. Not even a lying, cheating gambler. That was the part that had always puzzled him as he’d studied over all the old cases during his stints as a lawman.

But then, one thing he had learned from experience was that people rarely fit into a neat pattern. Who would have thought that a man who owned the biggest, most prosperous cattle operation in the state of North Carolina would hide out in his house like a hermit and put up with a slovenly female who couldn’t cook any better than she could clean house?

And who would have expected that the same man’s daughter, who was as tall and as tough as any man, would have a mole at one corner of her mouth that tempted a man to lick it off?

The down-on-his-luck gambler stirred, drawing Eli’s attention back to the task at hand. “You don’t know farming. You don’t know cattle. Tell me, why did you apply for work here? What does a man like you have to offer?”

“As I said, my brain. I’m good with numbers, I have a retentive memory, and I don’t mind sitting for long hours.” He grinned again, revealing a self-deprecating sense of humor. “I applied for work at a bank just yesterday. My resume didn’t appear to impress them.”

Tilting his chair, Eli studied the man before him. A seven-fingered gambler wouldn’t be worth a dip of snuff working cattle, but Eli could use a hand with the books.

Glover said, “You seem interested in this fellow I mentioned.”

“Call it a study of human nature. I guess you’ve heard there’s a pretty large turnover here. Jackson pays the lowest wages he can get by with, which means I have to check out any man applying for work to see why he wants to work at the Bar J instead of a place that pays better.”

“Makes sense. Although there’s not a whole lot of hiring going on these days unless a man wants to move to a mill town and work in a factory.” His expression made clear his opinion of that option.

Eli let it simmer. No point in pushing too hard. Glover struck him as a man who played them close to his vest.

The mental sparring continued. Eli had already made up his mind to hire the man, but it suited him to prolong the interview.

Glover said, “If you’re considering hiring me to work on the books, don’t you need to know if I’m honest?”

“Are you?”

“Would I tell you if I weren’t?” An odd moment of understanding seemed to pass between the two men. “But yeah, I am. When I can afford to be,” the newcomer replied.

“That’s honest enough for me,” Eli said dryly. He brought the front legs of his chair down with a quiet thump. “The job’s yours if you want it. We’ll start in the office and see what develops. Like I said, the pay’s not great, but the bunkhouse is clean and the food’s exceptional. Lead your horse around to the feedlot and come back by the office once you’re settled in.”

For several minutes after Glover left, Eli allowed his mind to range freely. Impressions, instinct and random thoughts all merged together. And then a rare smile lightened his eyes without ever touching his lips.

He’d picked up the scent again. Sooner or later something would connect, and when it did, he would need to be ready to move. He might not have a man in place to take over the management, but if Ace worked out, then with the help of Streak and Shem, Jackson wouldn’t be left in the lurch.