Love on the Range (Brothers in Arms #3)(33)
Wyatt felt a pang of worry over the RHR. He hoped Cheyenne had moved home. They always worked with a skeleton crew over the winter. So the hands that didn’t wander off were hard-pressed to get things done. Cheyenne could handle things. And maybe she’d encourage Falcon to find some cowboy skills. Rubin had trained Andy, and he had several cowpokes to help him. But Kevin was a raw beginner. Jesse, one of the newer hands, had seemed eager to work with Kevin. Wyatt sure hoped someone could teach Kevin to like ranching because he was probably going to be stuck doing it the rest of his life.
It made Wyatt grind his teeth in frustration to wonder how things were going at the RHR. He hadn’t heard a word from anyone at home since he’d come over here.
With satisfaction, Wyatt plunged his pitchfork back into the straw, enjoying the crunch of digging out the old to make way for the new. No reason this couldn’t be Kevin’s land. Wyatt intended to see Kevin and Win settled in here.
He worked out the day, keeping at it long after the rest of the hands turned in. He ate with them in the bunkhouse, returned to his work, then finally went to his cabin for the night and waited for the lights to go out in the big house.
“We have to wait until Molly and Wyatt get back.” Rachel was adamant.
And yes, Cheyenne had gotten to calling her Rachel. Truth was, Cheyenne liked the woman. Rachel was ruthless. She wanted to crush an evil man beneath her bootheels. She wanted to earn a living.
Cheyenne could not find anything in that to object to.
“It’ll take a day. That’s all,” Cheyenne insisted. “You can ride out after dark. You can’t send the telegram from Bear Claw Pass nor Casper. Too many people know what’s gone on around here. The will, the rustling, the name of my ranch, and they may remember your involvement in all of it, Rachel. Word could get out. It could reach Hawkins, and that would put Molly and Wyatt in danger. You’ll have to use White Rock Station, that’s the next place east that you can send a telegram. You can reach it by riding overnight. If you send the wire in the morning, include a notice to expect a letter explaining everything in detail. Mail travels fast now, so it should reach your agency in a matter of days. The wire will give them enough information to be ready to move when details arrive. Your agent can get ready to travel, unless they have agents in Tennessee—”
Rachel shook her head. “I’ve never heard we had agents that far south, but I’m not sure. There may be other private investigating agencies we can work with. But even if no agents are there, they will have some closer to Tennessee than Chicago.”
With a nod of satisfaction, Cheyenne said, “Good. An agent will have time to pack and prepare to travel as soon as the letter arrives.”
“If Wyatt comes running on that day, saying they have what they need to arrest Hawkins, and I’m not here—”
“This can wait, Cheyenne.” Kevin would not cooperate. “There’s no rush to settle the estate.”
“There’d be no rush to set the investigation in motion before winter crashes down, if I could just go to Bear Claw Pass,” Rachel said. “But until we have evidence to take to the sheriff about Clovis, I don’t dare trust the telegraph operator not to talk. And in Casper, with Randall Kingston, that lawyer Clovis hired to make sure his will was airtight, living there, I don’t trust him not to hear about it. Any news about the RHR would draw his interest. Word could get back to Hawkins.”
Cheyenne couldn’t believe she’d considered marrying that man. She felt embarrassment creeping every time the memory swept over her. She was fairly dark skinned, so she hoped a blush didn’t show. But she was tired of the back of her neck getting hot.
“So we’ll do it in the spring.” Kevin acted like it was all settled.
Rachel shook her head. “By spring we’ll have let almost a year go by. Especially when you add the time it might take to run our investigation. When these legal matters have dragged on that long, a judge might consider them settled and not overrule it. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and the ownership will have stood for a decent amount of time. I don’t think we should let this go on that long. Falcon, do you think we can track down the date of your mother’s death?”
He nodded. “The circuit rider wrote down things like births and deaths. He’d have the exact dates, in the church in Chickahoochi Cove. And I know the parson came out. It’s hard to say how he’d heard about Ma passin’, but word seemed to spread up and down the holler like it was carried on the wind. He didn’t make it for the buryin’, but he came along soon after and prayed over Ma’s grave and talked to me about coming out with him. He offered to let me live with him.”
“And you didn’t go?” Cheyenne asked. “You were so young, and you chose to live alone?”
Falcon shrugged. “The parson was a fine man, but he was married and had six kids, in a one-bedroom cabin not much bigger’n mine. I should’ve probably offered to take some of his young’uns in with me. He sure enough didn’t need another.”
Cheyenne patted him on the shoulder but didn’t comment.
“I probably knew enough to say, ‘Ma died last week,’ or, ‘Ma’s been gone three days.’ Something that’d give him a decent guess at the date. He’d’ve written it down. Send someone to Chickahoochi Cove to look at the church papers.”