Stands a Calder Man (Calder Saga 2)

As Webb moved away, spurs rattling with each stride, the aching numbness returned in Benteen’s left shoulder and arm. He rubbed at the soreness, kneading the muscles with his fingers.

“What’s the matter with your arm?” The voice asking the question belonged to Barnie Moore.

Benteen let his right hand slide down the arm and shrugged aside the nagging ache. “Too many nights sleeping on cold, hard ground, I guess.”

“I know what ’cha mean.” Barnie arched his back, as if flexing stiff muscles. “Neither one of us is as young as we used to be.” His gaze followed Webb. “I remember when that one was just a pup, playin’ around with my boy. Now both of them is full-growed men.”

Benteen sighed irritably. “I wish I knew where I went wrong with him.”

“Webb?” Barnie frowned at him. “There isn’t a better cowboy on the ranch than him.”

“It isn’t a cowboy I want,” Benteen replied, but didn’t confide the doubts he had about Webb’s ability to become the ranch’s leader. “How many more carloads of steers do we have left?”

Barnie took the cue to change the subject. “About eight or nine, I’d say.” When he noticed the haggard lines etched in Benteen’s features, he concealed his concern by casually rolling a smoke. “No need for you to stick around. We can handle the rest.”

Benteen hesitated, but the constant din at the railroad pens grated on nerves that were already raw. “I’ll be at the hotel if you need me.”

Barnie nodded acknowledgment, although he didn’t look up as he tapped tobacco from the pouch onto the trough of cigarette paper.

When Benteen stopped at the hotel desk to pick up the key to the suite, there was a message waiting for him. “Your wife said to tell you she’d gone shopping, Mr. Calder,” the clerk informed him.

Annoyance flickered across his expression as he closed his fingers around the key and clipped out an automatic “Thank you.”

“Be sure to let us know if there’s anything you need,” the clerk offered, not wanting the hotel to be responsible for the displeasure of a guest as important as Benteen Calder.

“Have someone bring up a bottle of your best whiskey,” he ordered.

A quick smile spread across the clerk’s face. “Your wife has already seen to that, sir. It’s waiting in your room.”

As he climbed the stairs to the suite, Benteen made a silent wager with himself that there would be a fresh cigar waiting for him in addition to the bonded whiskey. He won the bet. It was his wife’s thoughtfulness that softened the hard curves of his mouth more than the cigar and the sipping whiskey. Shrugging out of his jacket, he dropped it and his hat on a chair in the suite’s sitting room and sat down in the second chair, stretching out his legs full length in front of him.

Although the whiskey he’d splashed in the glass was barely touched, the cigar was half-smoked when Benteen heard the soft laughter of female voices in the hotel corridor. A key was turned in the lock and the door was pushed inward. His instinct was to stand, but a lethargy seemed to have control of his muscles as Lorna swept into the room with a rustle of skirt and petticoats.

Her arms were laden with packages. The young, blond-haired girl who followed her into the suite was similarly burdened. Benteen couldn’t help noticing that Lorna didn’t look that much older than the teenaged girl. She claimed there were gray strands in her dark hair, but they were so few that they didn’t show. Her figure retained its slim, youthful curves and her complexion was china-smooth, showing only fine hairline cracks of age—thanks to the lotions she used to combat the effects of Montana’s harsh climate. No one looking at her would guess at her inner strength, or the hardships she’d suffered in the early years. Her struggle to come to grips with this land had been as great as his own. With Lorna at his side, Benteen felt there was nothing he couldn’t handle.

“I hope Daddy won’t think I spent too much,” young Ruth Stanton declared with a trace of apprehension.

Neither woman had noticed Benteen yet. He didn’t mind. He liked the opportunity to watch Lorna unobserved. After setting her packages on the table just inside the room, she was unpinning the feathered blue silk hat.

“Your father wanted you to buy nice things for yourself,” Lorna insisted, still addressing the daughter of her late friend. Since pneumonia had claimed Mary Stanton’s life last winter, she had taken Ruth under her wing. Benteen suspected it filled a void in both lives, easing their grief. As a surrogate mother to Ruth, Lorna had acquired the daughter she had always longed for, while Ruth had an older woman to act as adviser and role model.

Ash was building on the end of his cigar. Benteen tapped it off. It was either his movement or the smell of cigar smoke, or both, that suddenly attracted Lorna’s attention to the side of the room where he was sitting.

“Benteen.” Lorna set the blue hat atop the packages as she crossed the room to greet him, her dark eyes radiant with delight. “No one at the desk mentioned you were here. Why didn’t you say something when we came in?” Bending, she brushed her lips against the roughness of his cheek, then straightened, letting her hand rest on his shoulder to maintain contact.

“I knew you’d notice me sitting here sooner or later.” A smile touched the corners of his mouth. “It looks like the two of you bought out the town.”

“We tried.” Lorna winked at Ruth in mock conspiracy.

An attractive girl with curling blond hair and quiet blue eyes, Ruth Stanton was innately shy. Even though Benteen had been the closest thing to an uncle all her life, she wasn’t able to directly meet his gaze. Her glance skipped quickly back to Lorna.

“I’d better take these packages to my room.” She almost pounced on the excuse to leave.

“We’ll meet you in the dining room at six.” Lorna didn’t attempt to detain the girl. “Webb will be there, too. Why don’t you wear your new pink dress?”

“Yes, I will.” The suggestion brought a flush of pleasure to Ruth’s cheeks. With a circumspect nod to Benteen, she slipped out the door to cross the hallway to her room.

When they were alone, Benteen tipped his head back to eye his wife. “Are you sure Webb’s joining us for dinner?” With the roundup over and the cattle on theirway to market, most of the Triple C riders would be doing the town. And Webb counted himself among them.