VERA SPOKE CALMLY: “Calm down, Boyd. Behave yourself.”
Boyd came down the steps two at a time, shaking his fists at Chris. “Get out of here, you mangy no-good—”
“Boyd!” Vera cried sharply.
Boyd halted two paces away and glared at them. “Two minutes, and you’ve already got my wife talking to you. You’re worse than you ever were. Get on your horse and—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Chris said evenly. “Settle down, brother Boyd.” The reckless, cocky grin lay across his face.
He had to tip his head back to look into his brother’s face. Boyd had inherited the Appalachian big-boned heaviness of his mother’s stock; for though their mother had been a small woman, her brothers and her father had been immense. Boyd shared Chris’ clean, straight jaw line, his sandy hair, and the direct level intensity of eyes, although Boyd’s eyes were a darker gray, nothing like the metallic silver of Chris’. And, as was immediately evident, both of them had inherited a wide streak of stubbornness from their lion-tough father.
Boyd now considered him with high contempt and said: “You’ve got five minutes to be off this place, Chris. I mean that.”
“Maybe you forget I don’t scare easy.”
“Hell, I can tear you apart, brother.”
“Maybe. I notice you’ve put on some rolls around the middle there.”
Boyd’s leather-dark face turned an even deeper color.
Feeling he had struck a tender spot, Chris grinned. “Too much easy living, high on the hog. That it, brother Boyd?”
“Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking I can’t do it,” Boyd breathed.
“Your two paid buzzards didn’t scare me off last night. How do you expect to do any better all by yourself?”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Two gents shot down my horse,” Chris said. “They left something interesting.” He took the patch of the branded cowhide out of his pocket and tossed it in the dust at Boyd’s feet.
Boyd did not reach down. He looked at the cowhide, nudged it with his boot and turned it over, and raised his eyes to Chris. “Just what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe I ought to show it to Santee and find out,” Chris suggested with dry malice.
Boyd’s eyes rose defiantly. “Go right ahead.”
“I might just call your bluff,” Chris warned.
“Damn it, go ahead! I’m no cattle thief. Santee knows that, and if you had a brain in your head, you’d know it, too.”
“Sure,” Chris murmured. His hooded glance shifted to Vera. She was glaring at Boyd as though he were a disobedient child.
“Those two hairpins did a poor job of trying to scare me off,” Chris said, “but I’ll tell you this much, Boyd. If you’re so anxious to get me out of here, it only means one thing.”
“Which is?”
“You must have something to hide.”
Boyd’s reaction was unexpected. He burst into loud guffaws of laughter.
Vera said, “Chris, really!”
Still laughing, Boyd bent over, then turned to the porch steps. “Good Lord,” he said. “Come on inside, or we’ll all be the laughing stock of the county.”
Vera turned to go in after him. Chris retrieved the cowhide, dusted it off, and went inside.
The room hadn’t changed very much, but there were a few womanly touches, new since Chris’ time, when the house had held three McLean men but no women. Curtains, one or two new upholstery cloths on the furniture; that was about all. There was still the buffalo head over the great, stone fireplace, still the black bear rug with its jaws wide, snarling; still the rack of rifles and shotguns, handy by the door.
Boyd, who had been laughing, looked utterly humorless now. His angry gray eyes stared bleakly at Chris. “In case you’re wondering, that laugh was for the benefit of Clete Sims and whoever else might have been watching. I don’t want to involve the crew in this.”
“If you’re stealing cows,” Chris said, “they’re already involved. Or have you got a separate crew for that? Like Carson Denver and a few more like him, maybe?”
“Little brother,” Boyd said mildly, “you are clean out of your head. I don’t know what you’ve been drinking in those saloons where I hear tell you hang out, but it must have been pure brain-eating rotgut.”
Vera went over to the sideboard and opened it.
Chris said, “When the old man died, I noticed neither one of you saw fit to write to me about it—even when you found out he’d left half this place to me.”
Boyd frowned. “I told Ford Cooke to find you and let you know. Didn’t he?”
It left Chris a bit taken aback. “I thought you and Ford weren’t on speaking terms anymore.”
“We’re not bosom friends, no. But he’s the only lawyer in town, and he had to probate the old man’s will, anyway. He said he’d take care of informing you. I didn’t see any reason why I should duplicate the effort.”
“That’s a pretty flimsy story,” Chris said. “The fact is, you were hoping I’d never come back. That way you’d have had the whole kit and caboodle to yourself.”
Boyd shook his head. “Lord knows you didn’t earn any of it. I’ve sweated to help build this place ever since I was ten years old, and what were you doing? Gallivanting around from trouble to trouble. What makes you think you deserve half this place?”
“Maybe I don’t,” Chris said. “But that doesn’t give you the right to push me away from the trough. The old man’s will said fifty-fifty, and that’s the way it’s going to be, brother Boyd, like it or not. I figure to stick around and see that the Concho doesn’t get involved in what I think you’re getting it involved in.”
“My,” Boyd breathed, “don’t he sound high and mighty?”
“You’re both acting like brats,” said Vera. She came from the sideboard with two glasses of whisky, handed one to Boyd, and brought the other over to Chris. “Drink this, both of you. Maybe it will calm you down.”
Boyd threw his head back, tossed the drink down in a single gulp, and set the empty glass on the mantel. He said, “Look, Chris. You and I never could fit in the same place together. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll buy out your half.”
“For how much?”
“You name the figure.”
“Sure—sure. And where do you figure to get the money? Steal some more cows?”
“I’ll borrow it,” Boyd said calmly. “The Concho’s the best security there is. What the hell are you trying to start? I’ll warn you of something, Chris, and I mean this—you start tossing around accusations of rustling against me outside this house, and you’ll come to a lot of grief.”
“What you mean is, you can’t afford to let anybody else get suspicious. They might just start checking up on you.”
Boyd snorted. “Hell, look around. I’m hiding nothing.”
“We’ll see about that,” Chris said hotly.
“You two,” Vera said, “are unbelievable. Simply unbelievable. I’d never have believed that two grown men—”
“Hush up, honey,” Boyd said irritably, and swung back to Chris. But before he could speak, Chris said:
“That’s another thing, brother. Just when did the idea come to you to steal my girl?”
Vera’s eyes flashed. “You are the most—”
Boyd interrupted: “I don’t even intend to discuss that with you, Chris. Now let’s get back to the offer I just made.”
“All right,” Chris said, with mock sweetness. “That’s easy enough to settle, brother, right now. The answer is no.” He was looking at Vera as he spoke. He saw the color creeping up her cheeks, and it gave him the renewed confidence to grin in his brother’s face.
Boyd’s eyes narrowed. “Look, Chris. I’d like to be reasonable, but I’ll be darned if I’ll have a wild kid brother underfoot, mooning over my wife, and challenging every decision I make. Now, either you sell your share of the Concho to me or I’ll make arrangements to send half the annual profits to you, if you’ll just keep me informed of where I can reach you. I’m willing to do that, just so long as you stay away from this house, away from the Jicarilla Valley.”
Chris chuckled. “That’d be an easy out for you, wouldn’t it?”
Boyd clenched his teeth. “Will or no will, Chris, you won’t ever see a penny out of this place unless you get out of here and give me your word you won’t be back. I don’t want you meddling in my business or in my marriage. Now that’s all I’ve got to say to you.”
Chris looked shrewdly at Vera, and back at his brother. “You’re really worried about me meddling in your marriage, aren’t you? You’re afraid I still might be able to take her away from you.”
Controlling himself with an obvious effort, Boyd wheeled on Vera and demanded: “Do you want to go away with him?”
“No.”
“You’re free to go with him if that’s what you want. I won’t stop you.
She said again, “No.” And turned to Chris. “You’re just jeering at your brother. Frankly, Chris, I expected better of you. You’re acting like a hurt, spoiled child. I’m Boyd’s wife now, and I should think you’d be able to accept that like a man.”
Boyd said softly, “Leave us alone for a bit, honey. I want to talk this out with Chris.”
She gave them each a troubled look, and turned out of the room. Chris’ glance followed her until she closed the hall door.
As soon as they were alone, Boyd said, “All right. Let’s leave Vera out of this for the time being. You’ve heard my offer. Ride out, agree not to show yourself around here again, and I’ll send you half the proceeds regularly. You’re welcome to hire Ford Cooke, or any bunch of accountants you like, to go over the books and see that you get your fair share, since obviously you don’t trust your own flesh and blood.”
“I never had reason to trust you,” Chris said hotly, “and I don’t see why I should start now. You turned the old man against me and now you steal my girl. What do you expect?”
Boyd murmured, “Little brother, I’m only going to take so much of that from you. If you were anybody else, I’d have killed you by now.”
A bright challenge gleamed in Chris’ silver eyes. “Try,” he breathed.
Boyd waved a big hand and made a grunting sound, as if to dismiss it. “It’s all water under the bridge. But the way things stand, you know as well as I do that we’ll both be happier out of each other’s sight.”
“Sure. That’s just what you’d like. It would leave you free to gobble up the whole valley and give the Concho a reputation it would never live down. The old man never had that in mind, Boyd. He wasn’t a greedy man, and it never occurred to him that you were. But it’s a good thing at least one of us can remember what the old man stood for. This ranch is half mine, and I mean to see it stays honest.”
Boyd stiffened. He began to nod his head slowly and regretfully, as if he had just made an unpleasant decision.
“All right,” he said. “All right, Chris. I see reasoning with you won’t do us any good. I’ll just have to spell it out for you, I guess.”
And then, with amazing speed, Boyd’s heavy fist came whipping up from thigh level to crash against the side of Chris’ jaw.