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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.
Chapter Four
Man, that is one mean woman.” Pete, one of the new men, spoke almost admiringly as they watched the boss’s daughter march back across the clearing that was ringed by the main house, the big barn and the cook-shack, the other outbuildings scattered closer to the back lane.
Lilah had gone to the cookshack to deliver a message from her father. Hesitating in the doorway, she had scanned the noisy, comfortable room with its mingled aromas of pork barbecue, fried onions and tobacco. Locating her target, she took aim and fired. “My father wants to see you.” She pointed at Eli.
He laid down his fork, “May I finish my supper?”
“Now.”
Eli had learned self-control in a far tougher school than the Bar J, having grown up with a domineering grandfather and a drunkard for a father. Lacking, for the most part, a woman’s softening influence, it had been a matter of survival. He took his time rising. Placing his utensils across his plate, he watched Lilah’s retreating figure while the other men waited to see his reaction.
What the hell was Jackson thinking of, using his daughter as a messenger? He could have sent the old woman. He could have come himself, for that matter. Appearances to the contrary, Jackson had not yet lost the use of his short, bowed legs.
“Save my dessert for me, will you?” he said quietly, reaching for his hat.
“Better you than me,” Mickey said feelingly.
“They say she’s got a worser temper then her old man,” said one of the more recent hires.
“Something don’t set right with her, she’ll sure enough let you know about it. I like the ladies, but damned if I’d want to tangle with that one, even if she was giving it away.” Arnold, the carpenter-blacksmith shook his head.
Mickey Lane leaned forward, his animated face alight. “You ever hear her cuss? Man, she can evermore set fire to the bushes.”
Eli was on the point of reprimanding the young brush roper when Streak took matters in hand. Looking at first one man and then another until he had surveyed the entire gathering, he said quietly, “Y’all don’t got no call to talk about a lady thataway. Don’t do it n’more, y’hear?”
On his way out the door, Eli glanced back at the man he had quickly come to respect. An exceedingly homely man, Streak, christened Thomas O’Neal some twenty-nine years ago and called Streak o’ Lean for as long as anyone could remember, had been here longer than any other member of the crew except for Shem.
The day was Wednesday, unless Eli had missed a few days on his calendar. He always reported on Fridays. Searching his mind, he tried to think of anything he’d done lately that might have warranted the peremptory summons.
The corn was finally in the ground. Late, but that was hardly his fault. The haying was well underway and the tally-branding was scheduled to start early next week, probably on Monday if they got the chute repaired by then.
Eli took his time crossing the yard. The housekeeper, Pearly May, yanked open the door and glared at him. Without thinking, he wiped his feet off on the filthy scrap of rug on the front porch. Not that it would have made much difference if he’d tracked in half the mud in Orange County. He didn’t know what the woman did to earn her keep, but it sure as hell wasn’t floor scrubbing. As for her cooking, the less said, the better. He’d had the dubious privilege of taking supper at the Jackson’s table. They’d been served underboiled chicken, over-boiled cabbage and biscuits that might’ve won the war for the South if they’d been used as ammunition.
“In there,” the housekeeper snapped, jerking her head in the general direction of the big walnut-paneled front room.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She snorted. Eli grinned and entered the lion’s den. “You don’t want nothing to drink, do you?” she growled.
He was tempted to say yes, just to see how she would react. “Thank you kindly, Miss Pearly May, I just finished supper.”
Without another word she stalked off down the wide hall, smelling of sweat, onions and vanilla extract. God knows why Jackson kept her around. She was probably the only woman who could put up with his cantankerousness. He might be a smart man, but when it came to charm, Burke Jackson couldn’t charm his way out of a gopher hole.
Of Lilah Jackson, there was no sign. Evidently, her duty was finished once she’d delivered the message. Eli entered the room and nodded to his employer, aware once again of the overpowering smell composed of liniment and something that smelled a lot like tobacco. Jackson had been told to throw away his cigars. Whether or not he had remained to be seen.
If the quick grimace could be interpreted as a smile, Jackson was in an unusually genial mood. “Heard you put a new man onto the books.” The smile disappeared as he leveled the charge at point-blank range. “What you got to say about that?”
Since he hadn’t been invited to sit, Eli leaned against a dusty credenza. “You heard right.”
“That’s what I hired you for. You ain’t up to the job, say so.”
“Ace is better with numbers than I am. I’m starting him on the monthly accounts, under my supervision. If things work well enough I’ll extend his responsibilities. We’re shorthanded, Jackson. I can’t be in the office and out checking up on the new hands at the same time. Maybe if we increased the pay a few dollars, we’d get some competent men and I wouldn’t have to spend so much time keeping behind them.”
“I pay ’em what they’re worth.”
“And get what you pay for.”
“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.
