Page 35 of Heart of Stone

That wiped the smile off Hendry’s face, and he glared at Stone. “You accusin’ me of somethin’?”

“More like wonderin’.” Stone tilted his head toward Luke. “Seems someone saw you in the stables, but you weren’t near the horses or fightin’ the fire. Or at least not helpin’ to put itout.”

Hendry’s eyes widened, and he looked at Luke. “You sayin’ it was me?” He pushed his chair back and leapt to his feet. “You’re a liar!”

“Then why don’t you tell us what you were doin’ in the back of the stables.” Luke’s voice was admirably calm, but Stone saw his hand move to the butt of his gun. “If you’ve got a good explanation, why then, we’ll let you go on your way. If not, then we might have to pay a call on the sheriff.”

Hendry jutted out his chin and clenched his hands into fists. “I weren’t in the back of the stables, and you can’t prove otherwise.” He was obviously determined to bluff it out with them. “It’s your word against mine, Reynolds. If you bring in the sheriff, there ain’t a thing he can do to me. And you got it in for me, don’t you? Because I don’t like workin’ for no dirty, red—” He stopped suddenly, realizing what he’d been about to say, and his gaze flicked to Stone.

“Dirty, red-skinned Indian?” Stone supplied quietly. He already knew how Hendry viewed him, so he wasn’t surprised by the insult, and it didn’t mean much to him anyway, coming from a liar like Hendry. “Yeah, I know what you think of me, and no, Luke didn’t tell me. I heard for myself. I didn’t fire you because I believe that a man can do a good job without havin’ to like the man he works for overly much.”

Stone paused, glaring at Hendry, and when he spoke again, his voice was hard as iron. “But I won’t stand for a liar who endangers the lives of my men, their horses, and their livelihood. Now I got a question for you, and you can answer truthfully or you can lie, but I guarantee you, I already know you ain’t smart enough to do all you done just for spite. I mean more than the fire. You done that to cover up somethin’ about the water tank fallin’ over, and it ain’t much of a stretch for me to think maybe you had somethin’ to do with the windmill breakin’ and the cattle that went missin’, too. If you confess like a man and tell me who you put you up to all this and why, I might let you go. But if you lie, I’m goin’ to shoot you right here and now and prove it was you when nothin’ else happens to the ranch.”

Hendry stared at Stone, his jaw falling open in shock. “You wouldn’t shoot me in cold blood! That would be murder!”

“Would it?” Stone drew his gun, pulled back the hammer, and leveled it at Hendry. “Maybe I’m just enough of a dirty, red-skinned Indian that I don’t much care. Now are you goin’ to talk?”

“Don’t be lookin’ to me for help.” Luke’s voice was hard and cold. “After all you’ve done to tear down what I helped Miss Priscilla build, I’ll just look the other way so I can say I didn’t see nothin’ if he shoots you.”

Hendry looked back and forth between Luke and Stone and licked his lips in a gesture that betrayed his nervousness. Stone saw him glance in desperation at the door, as though he might actually try to run, but then he shook his head.

“I ain’t takin’ a bullet. I don’t care how much money he’s payin’ me.” He looked at Stone with bitter dislike. “You want to know who’s after you? Well I’ll tell you. It’s your dandified cousin, James. He hired me and Colter to come here and get jobs before he arrived, and he told us to mess things up good. He wanted to run you off, and I guess he figured you’d leave if things got bad. When you didn’t, he told us to make things worse, so we did. Colter even put a burr under your saddle blanket so your horse’d throw you, and we thought for sure that’d do it, but you’re more stubborn than he thought.”

“James did it?” Stone shouted, unable to believe that a man who’d claimed kin on him, even one as annoying and full of himself as James, would be such a low down, no good, back-stabbing snake. “What did I ever do to him?” He looked at Luke in total shock. “Why would he do somethin’ like that?”

Luke looked like he’d been hit upside the head, and he stared at Stone with wide eyes. “I didn’t realize that’s who it was talkin’ about.”

At Stone’s bewildered look, Luke seemed to shake himself out of his shock and offered an explanation. “When she got sick, Miss Priscilla told me about her will because she wanted to be sure I was willin’ to stay and run the ranch until her heir turned up. She didn’t even know if you were still alive, so she set it up so that I’d be in charge for a year while the lawyers looked for you. She didn’t mention any names other than yours, though, so I didn’t realize James Rivers was the one who stood to inherit if you were dead or you didn’t turn up.” He paused, glowering at Hendry. “Or if you either gave up the ranch or didn’t prove you could run it right in the first year.”

“What?” Stone was completely at a loss. He remembered the lawyers saying something about “defaults” and “codicils” and other fancy words he hadn’t understood, but he’d been too stunned by the thought of actually having someone giving him a ranch to really pay much attention to what they meant. He knew he had to make the ranch work; it never crossed his mind that he could fail, so he hadn’t worried about someone else getting the ranch.

But James stood to get the ranch if Stone gave up, and damned if the man hadn’t come out here specifically to make that happen! Stone rose to his feet, not sure if he was glad or not that James wasn’t the one he was staring down his barrel at. “I want you and Colter to get the hell off my ranch! You ain’t takin’ nothin’ that you didn’t bring with you, and you should feel damned lucky that I’m not puttin’ a bullet in your skull. But you’re a fool, and you’ll get what’s comin’ to you eventually. Just make sure you go a long, long ways from here, because if I ever see your face or hear your name again, I’m comin’ for you, and I will shoot you dead.”

Hendry swallowed hard, looking as though he was afraid Stone might shoot him anyway, but he nodded and backed up toward the door. Then in a flash he was gone, and Stone sat back down heavily, unable to believe that he’d been the target of so much greed and hatred. He’d known James was a dandy and a fool, but he’d never guessed James was so viciously evil. “I should’ve known. I didn’t trust him, but I never thought he was this much of a snake.”

“Me neither.” Luke watched Hendry’s retreat with obvious disgust. “I thought he was just a lazy moocher.”

Stone put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands, tired and depressed. He was angry, too. What man wouldn’t be, given the wreck James had tried to make of his life? But mostly he was tired of everything being so damned complicated.

“What do I do now?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. “I don’t know if I should shoot him, beat the pure livin’ daylights outta him, turn him over to the sheriff, or maybe all three.”

“If it was me, I’d tell him I knew what he’d tried to do and march him right down to the sheriff’s office,” Luke suggested. “Spendin’ time in jail would be a hell of a lot worse punishment for someone like him than just shootin’ him.”

“I suppose.” Stone looked over at Luke, taking in the features of the man who’d come to mean more to him than anyone else. Once again Luke was standing by him through all the disasters and strife; it made Stone feel like he was almost as bad as James, taking from Luke all the time, when Luke didn’t pressure him for anything in return. And here he was, locked in a prison of his own making, not knowing how to reach out to Luke and try to make it better.

He stood up and took a step toward Luke. “I can’t take it bein’ like this, Luke.”

There was a sudden loud banging on the kitchen door, and Shorty stuck his head in, grinning broadly at them. “‘Scuse me, boss, but we just got back from town. We had some good luck! We ran into the reverend when we stopped at the sawmill. The lumber came in for the expansion on the church, but when he heard about the stables, he said we could take it instead! If you don’t mind puttin’ the stables up in a different place, we could start rebuildin’ right away.”

Stone was torn between throttling Shorty for the untimely interruption and hugging him for bringing the one bit of good news they’d had in weeks. He raked his fingers through his hair, gave Luke a look of wry frustration, and nodded to Shorty.

“That really was good luck.” He supposed the whole town had heard about the fire by now, which meant James had, too, and Stone wondered when he’d show his face. But they could deal with James when he returned. Right now, the hands needed all the good news they could get. “I suppose we’d better hitch up every wagon we got to bring all that wood in.”

“I’ll start roundin’ up some men to get the wagons ready.” Luke pushed back his chair and stood up. “We’ll get the lumber while you figure out where you want the new stables built.”

“All right,” Stone agreed. Maybe it would be best for him to do some hard physical labor before confronting James. Maybe that way, he’d been too tired to beat the hell of the man the minute he saw him.

CHAPTER22

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