“Forty-two at first count. There’ll be a few more.”
“That’s fifty-three down at the three-week point.”
And a long way to go. Those were the unspoken words. Dal rolled his shoulders, feeling the tension between the blades. “Caldwell deliberately caused this disaster. I want him off the drive and right now.”
Luther met Dal’s unyielding gaze. “I’ll warn Caldwell to be more careful in the future, but I can’t put him off the drive without hard proof of wrongdoing.”
Frustration knotted the muscles in his neck. “What the hell do you want? A signed confession?”
“I need something more than suspicion or ejecting Caldwell will look like bias on my part. If that happened, Lola could contest the outcome and tie up the inheritance for years.” Luther turned a pained glance toward Les and the bloody sheet. “I suppose there’s no way to keep Hamm away from her.”
Something in his voice made Dal’s gaze sharpen. “That’s another one I’d like to throw off this drive. Say the word and he’s gone.”
“Les wants him here. Still, he seems to upset her.” He dragged a hand through his hair and anger glinted in his eyes. “There’s something you need to understand. Joe set very specific rules and guidelines. I can’t eject Mrs. Roark’s representative based on suspicion, no matter how strongly I might agree with you. If I did that, Mrs. Roark could rightly insist that I be relieved of my duty and replaced. She’d file a lawsuit faster than you can ride around that herd. Bring me proof that Caldwell is cheating, then we can get rid of him. And you can’t eject Ward Hamm because neither of us likes him. He’s Les’s fiancé, and she’s entitled to have him here as long as he doesn’t interfere with her work. The guidelines specifically allow for Hamm to accompany the drive as long as he abides by the rules set for the observers, which he is doing.”
“So we’re stuck with the little son of a bitch,” Dal said, walking away. He stopped beside the edge of the sheet. Blood was everywhere. On Alex’s hands and skirt, soaked into Les’s pant leg and the sheet.
“She fainted again, thank God,” Alex muttered, brushing the back of a hand across her forehead, leaving a red smear. “If I can keep from fainting myself, I’ll finish the stitching. I hate this, I hate this, I hate this!”
He gazed down at a tourniquet and the neat stitches below it, then he kicked at a rock and strode toward his horse. He had a herd to move.
It was only later that he realized he’d been expecting Freddy to abandon the stragglers and come charging into camp. Either she had meant it when she claimed she didn’t care about her sisters, or a certain reckless, willful actress was developing a little discipline and responsibility.
Freddy felt wild inside. First she had heard that Les was dead, then crippled, then being tended by Alex on the other side of the river. She frantically wanted to check it out herself, wanted to see with her own eyes how badly Les was injured. But she couldn’t.
To ensure that no more trouble arose, Dal had ordered the main herd broken into six smaller herds, each of which would cross the Colorado separately. Freddy and James worked the last of the smaller herds, riding circle to hold three hundred agitated beeves together. James couldn’t have held them by himself, so Freddy was stuck until they crossed the river.
Trembling with frustration, she rode around the small herd, worrying about Les.
For most of her life she had worried about Les. As a toddler, Les had been prone to wander down to the barns and sheds, and it had been Freddy’s and Alex’s responsibility to see that she didn’t even though they weren’t much older themselves. Then Les had taken to following after them, wanting to do everything they did, wanting to dress like they did, wear her hair like they did. Why that had annoyed Freddy so much, she couldn’t remember, but it had.
She remembered helping Les with her lessons, showing her embroidery stitches, doing Les’s mending because Les never did it right. Then had come the adolescent years and the arguments began in earnest. Les had been like a clinging vine that she perpetually fought to be free of. Even after she returned to King’s Walk following her acting debacle, her perspective broadened, she had found nothing to admire in Les. When she looked at her younger sister she saw weakness and dependency, and she saw or imagined she saw Joe’s favoritism for his youngest daughter.