Page 9 of Hell and Gone
“I have.”
“Caught the killer?”
Everett nodded again. “I thought this was your ranch. The sign says ‘Delaney Ranch.’ You aren’t Lawrence Delaney.”
“No, I’m not.” Lawrence peeled his sunglasses off. “I’m the manager and the cow boss of the ranch. The Delaneys, they’re a Silicon Valley family. Tyler Delaney made his millions on a start-up, bought this property on a whim, n’then found a woman to marry him. His wife had twins, and after that, they ain’t been back in years. This is his play ranch. I manage the place while he’s gone, and long as the ranch remains above water, I got a job and a place to lay my head.”
“How many hands do you have working for you?” Everett surveyed the ranch, as much as he could from the corral. The ranch home overlooked the road, white paint and a wide porch wrapping all the way around the squat log cabin frame. The corral Lawrence was in led to a horse barn and stables, and behind the stables, there was a bunkhouse for the hands that lived and worked on the ranch, and another smaller log cabin set back in the pines.
“Four, now,” Lawrence snapped. “And I keep bleedin’ more. Murders got a way of spookin’ people. This’ll be a ghost ranch soon.” He pushed back from the railing. “So when do we get started? What’s first? You wanna see the murder scene, or—”
“Why are you certain he was murdered? Sheriff Braddock says it looks like a suicide.”
“Carson wouldn’t kill himself.” Lawrence ducked under the corral railing and strode toward Everett, got up in his face. “I knew him, better’n anyone else. Carson wouldn’t have killed himself. Not ever.”
“Sheriff says there are reasons he might have done it.”
Lawrence glowered at Everett. “AndIsay he don’t have those reasons.”
A long moment passed, sunlight beaming down on them, birds calling from the aspen behind the bunkhouse. They were in a standoff, one Everett could make last as long as he wanted.
But he had a job to do. “Braddock sent me up here to work with you because you were the best cowboy in the whole range. I’m a damn good investigator, Mister Jackson, but I still have things to learn. Braddock said you were the best man up here that could show me to where Carson Riley died.”
A kicked look punched into Lawrence’s face. Lawrence’s lips pulled back, shock warring with something else on his rugged face. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and a rough shadow dusted his square jaw. “Braddock said I was the best cowboy in the Crazies?”
“He did.” Everett nodded. There was animosity between those men, so thick he could breathe it in. But at least there was a measure of respect, too. The sheriff could compliment Lawrence, recognize his skill—
“That son of a bitch,” Lawrence growled. He shook his head and set his jaw. “Bet you think that’s a compliment?”
Everett stilled. He’d stepped on a mine somewhere in this conversation, crossed a tripwire of history and relationship and small-town blood. He said nothing.
“You got a lot to learn, Army. Cowboys are sons of bitches. Good-for-nothin’ saddle tramps. They drift from ranch to ranch, work what they want to work. Most will steal from you. Most will lie to you. Most drink their pay up in one weekend, then stumble drunk through Monday, are hungover on Tuesday ‘n cranky on Wednesday. Sour and sassy on Thursday and lightin’ out of the ranch early Friday to go drinkin’ again. You can get rid of any of those romantic notions you might have had about cowboys, anythin’ you thought you knew from movies or books. The truth is mighty different.”
“So you’re a good-for-nothing, then? That’s what the sheriff was trying to tell me?”
Everett spread his legs and squared his shoulders. Lawrence Jackson had been pushing for a fight from the moment he’d driven up, and if he wanted to go now, Everett was ready. He held his fists loose, muscles twitching.
Lawrence tipped his head back and laughed. The sun caught the angles of his face, his jaw, his strong nose. Beneath his hat, the ends of his hair ran over his ears and shone burnished bronze in the sun. Everett’s eye twitched.
“I’m a born and bred cowboy. My daddy was a no-good cowboy who was run out of Cheyenne before I was five. My momma was a gin drinker and a pool hall hustler, robbin’ men blind when she wasn’ blind drunk herself. I could ride and rope before I could read. Montana dirt is my home. Ranchin’ is everythin’ I know in the whole world. So yes, I’m a good-for-nothin’ cowboy from a long line of good-for-nothin’ cowboys. But I keep this ranch runnin’, and I treat my hands, boys I’ve found through long, hard years of damn brutal trial and error, right. I’ve counted myself up a dozen different times, faced down my life. I knowexactlywhat I am.”
Everett swallowed. His fists relaxed. He worked his jaw side to side, trying to loosen the tension, the pounding behind his temples. He looked at the barn, unable to hold Lawrence’s hard stare. There was something about the man, an intensity. It was like trying to stare at the sun.
He licked his lips. Tasted dust. Smelled horses and hay. “Well, that’s what I need, Mister Jackson—”
“You call me mister one more time, I’m throwin’ you off the ranch.”
“What do you want to be called?”
“My name is Lawrence Jackson. You can call me Lawrence, you can call me Jackson. People who know me call me Law. You don’t know me yet.”
Something flared inside Everett. “Is that because your word is the law or because you bring the law?”
“What if it’s ‘cause I disregard any ole law I think is full of shit? Or ‘cause I don’t much like me any officers of the law?”
That was the way of this part of the country, it seemed. Everett shook his head. “I’ve been learning how to ride up in Helena, but I don’t have much back country experience. I need to visit the scene where Carson Riley’s died. I understand it’s out in the rough parts?”
“You could say that.”
