Page 107 of Unwilling Wolf

“Staring.”

“Oh. Okay.” With a sleepy frown, he stretched and looked over at Lenny, who was still asleep.

“Where did you get that scar on your neck?” she asked.

His bleary blue gaze focused on her, and he jerked his head back an inch. He cleared his throat and sat up. “Where’s Burke? Why didn’t he wake me?”

More than a little proud, she explained, “Lenny spelled him, and then I took a turn. I even had a pistol. Where did you get the scar?” she repeated, undeterred.

Garret rubbed his face, ran his hands through his hair and shook it out. “My old man hit the bottle too hard one night. Tried to slit my throat. Unfortunately, that’s one of the memories I retained.” He looked at her with his eyebrows raised, as if daring her to ask more questions she likely wouldn’t appreciate the answers to. “Thankfully, my pa was too drunk to get it done right.”

He’d said it off the cuff, so detached from such a horrid story that had no business coming from a man’s mouth and ringing true.

Wait. His pa, the one who was supposed to protect him, had not only beat on him, but had tried to kill him? Bile rose in the back of her throat at the horror, and she swallowed down the queasiness. “I hate him.”

“Well, he’s sitting in a pit of flames somewhere down in hell, so you don’t have to worry over him too much anymore.”

“When did he do it?”

Garret scanned the dim clearing as if he wished he were anywhere but there. “The summer after you and your ma left Rockdale.”

“Oh Garret. I’m sorry.”

“No use apologizing. It ain’t your fault. It’s on my throat, so I never even think about it unless I catch a glimpse of it in the mirror. That was another life, feels like.”

“I’m sorry no one was there for you,” she uttered softly, just imagining Garret holding his throat together, thinking he was dying, no one to help him.

She truly hated his old cuss of a father. What a horrid man.

“Burke?” Garret called out.

“Here, Boss,” his ranch hand said as he meandered out of the woods with a predator’s grace.

“Let’s pack up and get going. I don’t like being around the Jennings’s territory any longer than we have to.”

Garret rolled his and Eliza’s blankets, and when finished, he saddled their horses while Eliza and Lenny made coffee over a small fire. After a quick breakfast of biscuits and dried venison, the four of them headed out to finish the last few miles to Whitfield’s ranch.

“Need to talk to you,” Garret said as they pulled the horses up at the boundary of old Whitfield’s land.

His serious tone brokered dread, but with a straightened spine, she reined Buck closer to Rooney and waited.

“This money I’m using to buy these cattle? It’s the money we got from driving Roy’s herd, and therefore I was thinking it was rightfully yours. Figured I should ask what you wanted to do with it before I spend it.”

“Buy the cattle, of course. Anything I can do to help us keep the ranch, I’ll do, but can I say something?”

He nodded.

“Why don’t we drive the cattle straight to town, take them to the pens by the train station, sell them at a profit, and be done with Whitfield’s brand?”

“But what about the breeding stock for next year?”

“We can put the money aside to help pay the loan to the Jenningses, but I fear the longer we have these cattle, the more time Wyatt will have to steal them back. I have a bad feeling about keeping this herd.”

Grunting, he nodded. “We could easily triple our money if we drive them into town right now, as cheap as Whitfield is selling them to us. And it wouldn’t hurt to have them gone before the Jenningses find some loophole to get ’em back. I’ll talk to Burke and we’ll see about driving them that-a-way tomorrow.”

They rode through the brush that lined a small clearing, and Whitfield’s modest cabin peeked through a pair of cottonwood trees. The wind caressed a splintered rocking chair on the small porch, and milling cattle dotted the yard. It was clear Whitfield had made a one-man effort to bring the herd together in preparation for selling them. Cows were spread far and wide, but at least they wouldn’t have to go riding all over creation in search of them.

Garret instructed Burke and Lenny to start rounding up the stragglers and motioned for Eliza to join him. Whitfield was a hunched, gray-haired man who came out onto the front porch with his arms full when Garret and Eliza neared. He was packing, and in a hurry.

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