Calder Pride Read online

  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 flaring. “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.

  “It must have been a bitter blow to the Andersons.” Cat looked to the south where the land stretched in an undulating sweep of untamed plains.

  “Bitter ain’t the word for it.” Culley snorted a laugh. “I heard the old lady went after Jim Farber with a shotgun when she found out what he was there for. Old Neil Anderson managed to talk some sense into her.”

  “I wonder what they’ll do?”

  “It’s hard to say. But I wouldn’t be worrying about the Andersons.” He sat loose and easy in the saddle, his body swaying with the rhythm of his horse’s striding walk. “That Emma is a canny woman, sharp as a New York banker where money’s concerned. Most folks don’t give her enough credit for them keeping the farm as long as they have.” He glanced sideways. “I’d wager that Emma knew that foreclosure notice was coming. They sold their herd of dairy cattle two weeks ago, and nobody’s been able to figure out what became of the money. The Andersons claim they had to use it to help their son, which strikes me as unlikely, considering Rollie’s got himself a public defender for a lawyer. Me, I figure Emma socked that money away knowing they would be needing it. They’ll get by just fine. You wait and see.”

  She said nothing, her attention drifting to some far-off point.

  Watching her, Culley could tell she had something else on her mind.

  “What are you thinking so hard about?” he asked at last.

  A soft laugh feathered from her. “Am I that easy to read?”

  “To me, maybe. What’s the problem?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a problem, really. It’s just that I’ve decided I’m not going back to college this fall.” The announcement was made with a large measure of calmness and certainty.

  Worried that he might say the wrong thing, Culley stopped to think this thing through, searching his mind for the right response. In his heart, he was glad that Cat would not be leaving. But Maggie had set great store on a college education. It was something she would have wanted for her daughter. On the other hand, if Cat didn’t want to go, would Maggie have made her?

  “What did your father have to say about it?” he asked finally.

  “I haven’t told him yet.”

  “You don’t figure he’s going to like the idea, do you?” Culley guessed.

  “That may turn out to be an understatement,” Cat replied with a casual wryness.

  That settled the issue in Culley’s mind; if Chase Calder would oppose her decision, he was for it. The fact that it was what Cat wanted to do only added weight to his reasoning, tipping the scales.

  “It’s your life. You got to live it as you see fit,” Culley stated, hearing his words and liking the sense they made. “You’re a grown woman. It ain’t his place to be telling you what to do anymore. You can tell him I said so. And if he gives you any trouble, you have him talk to me.”

  The underlying thread of fierceness in his voice moved Cat. She turned to him with a look of affection. “I love you, Uncle Culley.”

  He reddened and ducked his head, embarrassed by her simple declaration. “Guess you’ll be sticking around here, then,” he remarked needlessly, self-conscious and struggling to cover it.

  “This is my home.” The quiet conviction in her voice had a steely quality.

  Her gaze lifted to travel over the wide, rolling plains, cloaked in their summer-tan colors beneath a big, brassy sky. It was a strong land, in some ways a hard land, its vastness stretching the eye farther and farther. Every bit of it, close to six hundred square miles, was Calder range. Born and raised on it, she knew this land in all its tempers—the harsh savagery of its winter blizzards and the warmth of its chinook winds, the awesome violence of its spring thunderstorms and the lush green of its new grass. It was a land and a heritage that she had thought she would share with Repp. But that wasn’t to be now. The thought of him was
like a pain squeezing her heart again, making it ache.

  “If I have to live the rest of my life alone, then I’ll do it here.” Her head came up when she said that, pride asserting itself, making it less a statement of loneliness and more one of resolve.

  Culley knew she was remembering Repp again. He wanted to say something to assure her that things would get better, but he didn’t know the words. In the end he decided it was best to get her thinking about something else.

  “Do you want me to be there when you tell Calder you aren’t going back to college?” he asked.

  “Thanks, but I’ll handle it.” Cat glanced at the sun, gauging the hour by its position in the sky. “It’s time I was heading back.”

  “I’ll ride with you part of the way.” He reined the bay horse to the left, pointing it toward the headquarters of the Triple C, Cat’s home.

  Cat made her announcement at dinner that evening after coffee was served. As expected, her decision was lot greeted with approval. To her father’s credit, he reacted to the news with commendable restraint. It was Ty who erupted. “Good God, Cat, you only have a year left. It’s idiotic to quit now.”

  “Some may think that, but I don’t.” Cat toyed with her coffee cup, conscious of her father’s cool gaze.

  “I know these last couple months have been difficult for you,” her father began smoothly. “But before you make any hasty decisions, I think we should discuss this.”

  “There is nothing to discuss,” Cat replied. “I have already sent a letter to the dean of admissions, informing her that I won’t be returning for classes his fall.”

  “Without talking to me first?” It was that, more than her decision, that raised his eyebrow. “I think you could have told me about this before you mailed he letter.”

  “Maybe I should have,” she conceded. “But it is my life and my decision to make.”

  “Cat, you know how much your mother wanted you to have a college education,” he reminded her.