A Rancher's Honor

Ace, Sly’s longtime foreman, was staring at him oddly, and Bean, a grizzled cowhand, wore a frown. Ollie, a rangy twenty-year-old kid Sly had hired for the spring and summer, shot him a curious glance.

Sly realized he was grimacing and smoothed his expression. When he’d met his attorney at the Bitter & Sweet Bar and Grill for dinner last night, he’d planned on staying about an hour, then heading home. Instead, he’d arrived home just shy of dawn. “I’m okay,” he said.

“Well, you look like you’ve been run over by a tractor and left for dead.” Ace blew on his hands to warm them and then shook his head. “It’s that trouble with Tim Carpenter, isn’t it?”

Bean said nothing, but now he appeared intrigued. Ollie, too.

Sly and his lawyer, Dave Swain, had met to discuss whether Sly should sue Carpenter. The whole idea left a bad taste in Sly’s mouth. Dave didn’t enjoy it either, and thought Sly should try to work things out with his neighbor, who owned the Lazy C Ranch, which was adjacent to Pettit Ranch. But Carpenter’s refusal to sit down and talk had left Sly without much choice.

“I’m not happy about it,” Sly said. “But that’s not why I look like hell. I’m hungover.”

The crew members chuckled.

“Been there more than a few times myself,” Ace said. “The way you’re sweatin’ out that alcohol, you’re sure to feel better in no time.”

Sly lifted the gate of the holding pen and Ace slapped the rump of one of the January calves they’d culled from the herd earlier.

As the calf loped from the pen and Sly herded her toward the calf table, he thought about the mess with his neighbor. Tim Carpenter had a chip on his shoulder a mile wide, mainly because Pettit Ranch was profitable. Not enough to replenish Sly’s all-but-empty savings, but enough to pay the bills. It wasn’t his fault the Lazy C continually struggled to stay solvent.

He and Carpenter had never been friends. Now they were enemies. All because a few months back, someone had poisoned Sly’s cattle. Two of his heifers had miscarried and had lost any chance of future pregnancies, and three others had died. As a grown man, Sly rarely felt powerless, but he had then. He hated his inability to help his animals as they sickened, as he’d watched them die and feared that others could, too.

Autopsies and tests had proved that his animals had been poisoned with arsenic. Neither Sly nor his crew had any idea who’d do something so heinous. Then by chance, Ace had spotted a small pile of white powder just inside the northernmost pasture fence off the private service road that ran between Pettit Ranch and the Lazy C. He’d tested the powder and determined it to be arsenic. Both ranches shared the road, and no one else had access. Who else but Carpenter could have set the arsenic there?

Still, Sly had given his neighbor the benefit of the doubt. He’d driven to Carpenter’s and attempted to question him. The first time Carpenter had ordered him off his land. On Sly’s next try, he’d pulled out a rifle and aimed it at Sly’s chest.

Which sure made it seem as if the man had something to hide. That was when Sly had quit trying to straighten things out himself and hired a lawyer. Not with the intention of suing, but to get Carpenter to cough up information that could shed light on what had happened. That plan had also failed, and now he really was on the verge of suing.

“Sly?” Ace was waiting for Sly to say something.

“I need to get to the bottom of this poisoning.”

Ace rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “You’re suing, then?”

Ollie and Bean looked down, as if the subject made them uncomfortable.

Join the crowd, Sly thought. “You all know how much those vet bills, tests and autopsies cost, and the cows we lost...” Sly shook his head. He wanted to be reimbursed for his losses.

The money he’d spent on all those things had been earmarked for a badly needed new drainage system. The existing one, installed some thirty years ago, functioned on a wing and a prayer. The next big rain could result in heavy flooding and wreak havoc on valuable low-lying pastureland. Sly and his men could do some of the grunt work, but they needed to bring in an expert. He’d considered taking out a loan to cover the costs, but as it was, the monthly payment on his mortgage was a strain. Any more debt and he’d be in over his head. He wasn’t about to jeopardize everything he’d worked for by borrowing more.

“The way things stand,” he said, “I don’t see any other options.”

“He’s a tough nut to crack, all right.” Ace pulled off his baseball cap and scratched one of his sideburns. “The Bitter & Sweet always brings in a live band on Friday and Saturday nights. I hope you spent some of the evening dancing off your troubles with a pretty girl.”

Lana was no girl. She was all woman. “I danced a time or two,” Sly admitted.

His foreman, who’d been married umpteen years, nodded approvingly. “Now and then a man’s got to cut loose and have some fun.”

Ollie, who knew his way around branding and, according to him, around women, too, grinned. “Me and my girlfriend, Tiff? We sure put the f-u-n in our Friday night.” He made a lewd gesture with his hands. “But we’re doin’ that almost every night.”

Fun didn’t come close to describing Sly’s night with Lana, but he wasn’t about to talk about that. “Let’s get this job done so Ace can take the rest of the weekend off,” he said. When time and weather allowed, Sly and his foreman alternated weekends off. This was Ace’s weekend, and he and his wife had planned a trip to Billings to visit their college-age son at Montana State.

“Ready with that iron?” Sly asked Ollie.

“Ready, boss.”

The four of them spent the next few hours herding the calves one by one to the calf table so that the cows could be marked with the Pettit Ranch brand and then vaccinated. It wasn’t exactly rocket science, allowing Sly’s mind to replay the previous evening.

Over dinner, Dave had reluctantly agreed to prepare and file the lawsuit, but he was tying up loose ends for several other clients and needed ten days to put the suit together and file the papers. Shortly after the lawyer had finished his coffee and dessert, he’d left to get home to his wife and kids.

Sly didn’t have a wife or kids, or anyone to hurry home to. His life was uncomplicated, which was exactly how he liked it. He spent his days working hard to keep his ranch profitable and successful, and enjoyed spending his evenings either going out or relaxing alone in his quiet house. But the whole lawsuit business was unsettling, and last night he’d wanted to take his mind off his troubles. So he’d hung around the Bitter & Sweet, waiting for the band to play.

As soon as the cute blonde and her friend had sat down at a table across the way, Sly had forgotten all about his problems. He’d always enjoyed an attractive woman, and when the blonde had looked at him and smiled, something had sizzled between them. He had to meet her.

From the start, they’d hit it off. Lana was fun and easy to talk to, and her eyes had telegraphed that she was attracted to him. Best of all, she’d only wanted a good time. They’d agreed not to share their last names and had steered away from deep conversation.

A dozen dances and several drinks later, Sly had kissed her. Her warmth and enthusiasm had just about blown his socks off. Neither of them had wanted to stop, and before Sly knew it, he was walking her to the Prosperity Inn and paying for a hotel room.

Under regular circumstances he wouldn’t have acted so rashly. He rarely picked up a woman he’d never met before and taken her to bed. But his decision had turned out to be a damn fine one.

The sex had been phenomenal.

His only regret was that he hadn’t gotten her number. He’d thought about waking her and asking her for it before he left at the crack of dawn. But neither of them had gotten much rest, and she’d been sleeping so peacefully that he hadn’t had the heart to disturb her.

Just then, Sly’s daydream was interrupted when on the way to the calf table, one of the calves turned renegade and tried to run off. “Come back here, you,” Sly called as he and Ace cut her off.

When they caught her and steered her back, Ace took up the conversation where they’d left off. “The gal you danced with—you gonna see her again?”

“Probably not.”

The more important reason Sly hadn’t asked for her number was that getting involved with her would be a bad idea. His last girlfriend had accused him of avoiding intimacy, and then dumped him. Not because she’d taken up with some other guy, but because she was fed up with his so-called emotional distance.

She wasn’t the first woman to accuse him of that, but Sly had always been confused as to what “emotional distance” meant. In bed, he demonstrated plenty of emotion.

Maybe it had something do with the fact that he rarely brought the women he dated to his place. All his former girlfriends had complained about that, but hell, his home was his sanctuary and his bedroom was his private space, off-limits to all but his housekeeper, who cleaned it.

After his last breakup and a few months of self-imposed celibacy, Sly had finally figured out what women meant by emotional distance. He admitted to himself that outside the physical stuff, he’d never had a truly intimate relationship with a woman. Sure, he enjoyed giving and receiving pleasure, but he wasn’t about to put his heart on the line. With good reason.

People he cared deeply about tended not to stick around. First his parents, then his brother, then the girl he’d wanted to marry.

Why take the risk of getting too close? Sly wasn’t about to set himself up for that kind of heartache again.

“Now that you sweated that hangover out of your system, you’re lookin’ a sight better,” Ace commented some hours later, when they’d finished the branding.

“I suppose I’ll live,” Sly replied. “Go on now and have a nice weekend—all three of you.”

He headed for the house. Mrs. Rutland, his part-time housekeeper—with just him to feed and clean up after, he didn’t need her full-time—left at noon on Thursdays and Fridays, but cooked enough meals to last until Monday. After showering and changing, Sly filled his belly and then headed outside again to tackle the late-afternoon chores. He fed and watered the horses, giving Bee, his bay, her usual carrot. He checked on the stock and noted additional chores that needed doing the following day.

Then he flopped on the sofa with the remote. Nothing on the tube interested him, and his mind kept wandering to last night. As worn-out as he was, he felt oddly restless—too restless to hang around at home. He considered grabbing a beer someplace, but after last night he needed a rest from alcohol.