Beckett's Birthright

“Shem did all that and still kept the books.”

“Shem’s eyesight has been bothering him.” Eli wouldn’t say more than that. Jackson had to know that the old man had allowed things to slide for so long that it had taken Eli weeks to sort things out. In some cases, all he could do was cut his losses and start fresh. “Most operations this size hire a bookkeeper, a herd manager and a general manager.”

“How many spreads you worked on?”

“I believe we went over this before I was hired.”

“Wild West cattle. Spanish stock, all bones, horns and gristle. What d’you think of my herd?”

Eli banked the coals of anger. Jackson was working toward a point. He would get there in his own time. Eli could afford to be patient. He had a new lead; he could move on anytime, but it suited him better to wait until he’d picked up a bit more information. It would be best if he could do it without arousing too much interest, but if weeks passed and he learned nothing more, he might just have to lean on Glover a bit to improve his memory.

First, though, he needed to know whether or not he could trust him. Giving him a set of books to work on was a test. Eli fully intended to go over every single entry and keep his own tally.

The older man, swallowed up by a king-size chair and ottoman, studied him from beneath bushy white brows. Burke Jackson couldn’t be much more than fifty, yet he looked to be at least twenty years older.

“Well? I asked you a question, boy. Speak up.”

“It’s good stock. It’ll bring top prices, especially as you can freight it to market directly instead of having to drive it a hundred or so miles to the nearest railhead.”

“What d’you think o’ my daughter?”

Eli cleared his throat. Talk about coming out of left field. “Your daughter? Well, uh—” Definitely more than bones, horns and gristle, although he didn’t think the old man would appreciate the comparison. “She rides well.”

“Ha! Rides like a damned man. I spent a fortune sending her to that fancy girls’ school and what do I get back? A bossy female that dresses like a man and sneaks around behind my back, stealing food out of the kitchen to feed a pack of poachers!”

That one, he wasn’t about to touch. Poachers? Shem evidently knew where she went several times a week. If there was a problem he’d have reported it, either to Eli or to Jackson himself.

“As to that, I couldn’t say.” He was wondering how to end the conversation and escape. Wondering why he’d been summoned in the first place. He’d actually taken a step toward the door when the man seated in the leather-covered chair, a lap robe spread over his short legs even though the weather felt more like June than early May—spoke again.

“I’m dying, you know.”

Eli dropped his hat. As Pearly May hadn’t offered to take it and hang it up for him, he’d been holding it ever since he’d arrived. He cleared his throat again. What the hell did a man say to something like that?

“I guess we all are.” A philosopher he wasn’t, but some truths, he’d heard tell, were self-evident.

Jackson uttered a short nasty laugh, which turned into a fit of coughing. Before Eli could decide whether to whack the man on the back or summon help, Lilah burst into the room and demanded to know what in hell’s name he had said to her father to set him off.

“Ma’am, I didn’t—”

“Don’t you ma’am me, you scoundrel, or I’ll tell my father—”

The look on her face was priceless. Eli had no trouble finishing the rest of her accusation. She would tell his father that Eli had followed her when she’d gone out riding?

But then she would have to admit what she’d been up to. Whoever lived in that cabin, poachers or not, he had a feeling Jackson wasn’t supposed to know about it.

So he smiled at her. Jackson already knew. Eli had a feeling there was little that went on around here the man didn’t know.

Tapping her foot, Lilah glared at him.

Jackson looked back and forth from one to the other, a curious expression coming over his flushed face. Outside the window a mockingbird cut loose with a rambling threnody. The familiar scent of cow manure and wildflowers drifted in on the warm, humid air, competing with the acrid smell of the room.

Eli, hat in hand, began edging away. Whatever Jackson was thinking, he didn’t want to hear about it. If he was about to be fired, he’d prefer to postpone it until after he’d had another shot at getting Glover to remember something more specific. At the very least he needed a last name.

It was Jackson who broke the silence. “One thing I’d like to see before I die,” the man said sanctimoniously.

Eli and Lilah turned as one to stare at the older man. “Papa, don’t talk like that,” Lilah said. “You’re not about to die.”

“Shut up, girl. You got no notion of what I’m about to do.”

Eli stepped out into the hall and looked around for Pearly May. The old woman was used to handling him. Must be, else she’d have been fired long before now.

“It’d please me mightily to see my little girl settled down with a husband,” Burke Jackson said wistfully. He coughed again, as if to underline his words.

Lilah was first to react. Eyes widening, breast heaving, she cried, “Your little girl! Why, you wicked, scheming old son of a bitch, don’t you dare try to push me off on another man! You’re damn well stuck with me, whether you like it or not! And whether you know it or not, I’m a damn sight smarter than that son you never had that you keep whining about!”

Eli had never heard any mention of a son, whining or otherwise. He did know when it was time to leave. Less than a minute later he found himself outside the front door staring at a row of grinning cowpokes, elbows and booted feet propped on the rail fence. They had obviously heard every word.

Streak and Shem weren’t among them, but that didn’t keep him from thinking it might not be a bad idea to get out before things got any crazier.

A husband for Delilah? The man would have to be seven feet tall, with brass balls and the hide of a rhino.

Through the open door he could hear raised voices. Hers and his. God knows, that was one argument he didn’t want to get in the middle of. What the devil did the man have against his own daughter? All she’d done was show proper concern. Was that any reason to shout curses at her?

For that matter, why should she be surprised that her father wanted to find her a husband? Any decent man would want to be sure his daughter was secure before he passed away.

Something crashed noisily. Glass, from the sound of it. If he had to guess which one had thrown it, his money would be on Delilah. She had a temper to go with all that red hair, and from the looks of him, Jackson didn’t have the strength to spit more than two feet, much less grab something breakable and throw it.

Early the following morning Lilah hitched up the buggy, neither waiting nor asking for help. Three men paused in what they were doing to watch. Eli was one of the three.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, knowing he was risking a set-down in front of his men, something a smart manager avoided whenever he could.

“What does it look like?”

“Then you won’t mind if I take Demon today? I’ll be out all morning, so if you were planning on riding later…?”

She opened her mouth to retort, then clamped it shut again and swung herself up into the buggy.

Watching her ride away, snapping the whip so that it curled just above the little mare’s shiny rump, he had to admire her style. Underneath all that flash and fire, he had a sneaking suspicion there lurked a woman no one knew. What kind of lady would go out of her way to alienate everyone around her, including her own father?

A daughter whose father didn’t approve of her? Didn’t even appear to like, much less to love her?

At least Burke seemed to have her best interests at heart, Eli told himself as he saddled the stallion and set out toward the south pasture to look over the crop of fall calves one last time before the final cut was made.

As much as he hated to admit it, his own childhood had not been all that different as far as family relationships went. According to Shem, during one of their late evening, front porch discussions, Lilah’s mother had given birth to a stillborn son, and a year later she had died giving birth to a daughter, leaving behind the helpless infant and a brokenhearted husband. Both had evidently survived, after a fashion.

His own mother had waited until her son was eleven years old to run off, claiming in equal parts her father-in-law’s nasty disposition, having to work her fingers to the bone, and the freakish Oklahoma weather.

The irony of it was that the Chandler family had had plenty of money. They could have hired help if there’d been any help to be found in the desolate area Matthew Chandler had chosen to settle in. The trouble was that like Burke Jackson, the old man had been a skinflint of the first order. He figured that as long as he had women in the family, why go to the trouble of hiring outsiders? He didn’t like strangers in his house.