Chapter 7
Lyric sank into a chair and stared down at her limp hands in her lap. She let out a shaky breath. Melody laid a hand on her arm. “You can rest for the night. He’s safe now.”
Lyric’s head shot up. “I just don’t get it. How long has he been sleeping in the barn? From what Riskin said, he could have been there for weeks.”
Riskin spoke up from across the dinner table. “That explains why he never spent any money. He was too passed out and malnourished to move.”
Lyric glared at him. “That’s my father you’re talking about.”
Riskin stabbed his fork into another ear of corn and shrugged . “I’m just saying.”
“At least we don’t have to worry about him drowning in a ditch or something horrible like that,” Melody added.
Lyric shut her eyes and moaned. “Melody, please. Can’t we stop talking about it?”
“What else is there to talk about instead? We’ve been in that room all day. He’s gonna need constant care until he regains his strength. He might not regain his strength at all. He might fade away.”
Lyric wrung her hands and looked around the table at the circle of faces. “How can you talk like that? He can’t die. He can’t!”
Azer tossed a bare lamb chop bone onto his plate. “I hope he dies. I hope he dies real soon.”
Melody gasped. “Azer!”
“Well, I do,” Azer retorted, “but you know what? He won’t die. He can’t die. He’s made a pact with the devil to annoy me for the rest of my life. He can drink all he likes. He can starve himself until he looks like a scarecrow. He’ll never die. That would be doing me too much of a favor.”
Both girls gasped, and Lyric’s hand flew to her mouth, but Riskin let out a loud bray of laughter. “You said it, man.”
Lyric rounded on him with her teeth bared. “How dare you! How dare you talk about my father like that?”
Riskin shrugged. “He’s right, you know. Rex is a drag on all our lives. He’s a dead weight on the ranch. He’s nothing but negative energy around this place. We always wind up talking about him and planning our lives around him. We would all be better off if we didn’t have to think about him and worry about him anymore.”
“He’ll never die,” Azer repeated. “He’s gone out drinking and carousing for months before. He’s come back a lot worse off than he is now, and he always recovers. He’ll recover now, and he’ll live to spoil another several years of my life.”
“How can you talk about your own father like that?” Lyric asked. “How can you be so cruel?”
“He’s the one being cruel. He’s the one who’s done everything possible to destroy our lives. You know that as well as I do. I just can’t figure out why you’re worshiping him now.”
“I’m not worshiping him. He’s a dying old man. He needs our help, and you want to throw him out in the cold. You haven’t even gone in that room to see him since he got back.”
“I haven’t seen him, and I won’t go see him—not now, not ever.”
“He’s your father.”
“All the more reason I won’t go see him. He ought to be shot in the head as a service to all Bruin kind.”
Melody interrupted, “Don’t say that, Azer.”
“I’ll say it,” Azer’s voice rose to a yell. “I’ll shout it from the rooftops. I only wish someone had the balls to come in here and blow his brains out. I would hire someone to do it if I thought I could get away with it.”
Lyric surged out of her chair. “You rotten, ungrateful piece of monkeyshine! You don’t care about your own father.” Her hand shot out, and she aimed an accusing finger across the table. “Look over there, you worthless sack of dog vomit. Take a good long look right over there at Mattox Farrell. You think Mattox is a weakling and a simpleton, but even he has the balls to help a helpless old man when he needs it. He could have turned his back and left Papa passed out in the barn, but he didn’t. He brought him in here and took care of him and cleaned him up. Are you gonna sit there and tell me you care less about your own father than a total stranger does?”
Azer squared his shoulders. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Do you think I’m grateful to Mattox Farrell for saving my poor benighted father? I hate him as much as I hate Papa. They’re in the same sinking boat, as far as I’m concerned. What has Papa ever done for me, that I should care if he lives or dies? He’s done nothing but destroy my life ever since Mama died. I only wish he had the nerve to kill himself back then. He would have saved all of us a heap of trouble and money.”
“That’s all you care about, your precious money and your precious ranch.”
Azer jabbed his steak knife at her. “This ranch is all we’ve got between the three of us. It’s the only thing putting food on this table. You better remember that when you go defending him.”
“You’ll be sorry if Papa dies and you haven’t even visited him. How will you feel then?”
“I won’t visit him. If he dies and I never have to see his ugly mug again, I’ll be relieved.”
Lyric turned on Riskin. “How can you sit there stuffing your face with corn on the cob while I’m fighting for our family here? Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you do something to convince him to at least visit Papa on his deathbed?”
Riskin set down one cob and picked up another. “What do you want me to say? I agree with Azer. Your father is our enemy and he always has been. We’ve fought tooth and nail for years to save this ranch from him. You’ve fought with us, too. You’ve complained about him and wished him dead more times than I can count. I don’t understand why you’re sticking up for him now.”
Lyric rounded on him with her hackles raised. “You low-life scum. We’re supposed to be getting married in a few weeks, and you side with Azer against me?”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t get married.”
“You prick. You’ve never been a part of this family. You’re working to tear this family apart just like he is.”
Riskin put out a buttery hand to her. “Come on, darling. Don’t let this come between us.”
Lyric slapped his hand away. In an instant, she was on her feet. “You’re the one coming between us. You’re turning Azer against his own father. I’ll never forgive you for this as long as I live.” She kicked her chair over in her haste to get away from the table. She whirled away and stormed out of the house.
Mattox sat silent through the whole fight. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He kept his eyes fixed on his plate, but he heard so many layers of meaning behind everything everybody said. He heard far more than they said.
The front door slammed behind Lyric. Melody sniffed and went back to her father’s bedside. She didn’t say anything to her brother. She wouldn’t even look at him.
After Melody left, Azer wiped his mouth and crossed his knife and fork on his plate. He scooted his chair back and climbed to his feet with exquisite care. He leaned over and propped his fists on the table. He glared across the table at Mattox and growled under his breath. “This is all your fault. The next time you decide to save the world, do it somewhere else. Don’t go near my father or my sisters again if you know what’s good for you.”
He pushed himself up, and Mattox heard his footsteps thumping up the stairs. Azer’s bedroom door slammed, and silence fell over the house.
Riskin kept munching corn on the cob. With no one else left behind to compete with him, he took possession of the field, with all the food still steaming on the dinner table. He pitched his third empty cob onto the platter and helped himself to another. He snorted and winked at Mattox. “Way to go, Mother Theresa. You really stuck your foot in it this time.”
Mattox said nothing. He got up and left the house. Golden lights from the upstairs bedroom windows illuminated half the yard. Beyond that, stars scattered across the night sky. Mattox strolled through the dark and found his way to the barn by smell. That smell comforted him. Nothing could go wrong in a barn—at least, it seemed that way sometimes.
A lot could go wrong in this barn right now, though. He listened to all the arguments back and forth about Rex, but Mattox couldn’t get the old man’s words out of his head. How could he, Mattox Farrell, a stranger and an outcast from his own tribe, waltz in here and take over somebody else’s tribe? How could he become Alpha, when he bore no connection to this place or its people. It was impossible, plain and simple.
So he beat the Alpha in a Bruin challenge. No one could deny that—if anyone ever found out about it. Mattox would never tell a living soul. He would take it to his grave before he shamed Rex in front of his family. Still, he couldn’t escape the simple fact. He fought Mackenzie Alpha and won. That entitled him to take over as Alpha. It entitled him to the ranch, the family fortune, even…even Lyric.
Mattox shuddered. He couldn’t touch Lyric. He wouldn’t steal another Bruin’s mate. He had his own pride and his tribe’s reputation to protect. He didn’t want Lyric anyway. She saw too…well, she was too…He didn’t know what she was, but he wouldn’t consider Lyric in the same sentence with the rest of this sordid mess.
Even if he kept his victory secret, the unvarnished truth meant everything. It changed his whole outlook. It changed his position on this ranch. It changed his relationship to everyone, including himself—especially himself.
He wasn’t the person anyone thought he was. He wasn’t the person his father and Brody thought he was. He wasn’t the person he himself thought he was. He must be capable of running a tribe after all. Brody took over as Alpha of the Farrell tribe. That left the Mackenzie tribe to Mattox.
He buried himself in the dark, pungent barn, but the dark couldn’t wash away the mark on his soul. Rex laid his mantle on Mattox. He marked him for all time as Alpha. Nothing could change that. Mattox might spend the rest of his life bowing and scraping and molly-coddling Azer and Riskin. He might spend his life obeying them and never looking them in the eye.
He could do all that, but he would still be their Alpha. He would do it to protect them and spare them the painful realization they were weaker than he was. Why should he protect them from that? Why shouldn’t he take his rightful place at the top?
With a heavy heart, he flicked on the overhead lights. He moved down the barn to the tie-ups he cleaned out during the day. He came around the corner and almost collided with Lyric standing there. She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you doing here?”
He moved around her to the first space. A cow lay on the floor in the first tie-up. A month-old calf stood at her side. The animals blinked their soft brown eyes at Mattox, but neither showed any sign of alarm when he started working around them. “I guess I’m doing the same thing you’re doing here.”
“I came out here to be alone. I wouldn’t have come if I thought you were going to be here.”
“I came out here to be alone, too. I wouldn’t have come, either, if I thought you were going to be here. Life is too short to listen to insults all day long. Go back inside and insult Azer and Riskin if you want someone to insult.”
He kept his voice low and his head bent, but he couldn’t stop a sharp edge creeping into his words. Even as they passed his lips, he felt them strike home. Lyric hugged her arms over her stomach. She paced up and down and scanned the barn for nothing in particular. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come out here to insult you. I guess I’m just…” She stopped short and stared at him. “What are you doing?”
“Huh? What? I’m blanketing this cow and calf.”
She studied his movements. He moved around the cow with slow, careful motions of his harms and hands. He touched the cow all over and brushed her coat until it shone. He buckled the blanket around her chest and legs. Then he did the same thing to the calf.
“What are you doing that for?”
“It gets cold at night these days. I just want to make sure they’re taken care of. I’m checking their feed and water for the night. That’s all.”
Lyric frowned. “What are they doing penned up in here? They should be out with the herd.”
“This pair don’t belong to the herd. They belong to me.”
Lyric started. “To you? But they’ve got the Mackenzie brand—at least the mother does.”
Mattox nodded. He took a lump of salt out of his pocket and held it out to the mother cow. She licked it off his bare palm with her languorous, slobbery tongue. She chewed it with half-closed eyes.
“Azer gave me this cow,” Mattox said. “She was born in your family herd, and Azer mated her with your prize bull. She was due to have her calf, but she had trouble with the other cows. She kept getting into fights and got injured. Azer couldn’t keep her with the herd, and he and Riskin didn’t have time to take care of her separately. He was going to put her down, but I said I wanted her, so he gave her to me. I’ve been keeping her here, and she gave birth to this calf a month ago. No one was using these tie-ups, so I’ve been taking care of them here in my free time.”
“What do you want them for?”
He stole a peek at her. “I just didn’t want to see the cow shot for no good reason. Lots of heifers get into trouble before they have their first calf. They settle down once they start lactating. It’s normal. I’ve seen it a thousand times if I’ve seen it once. That’s no reason to get rid of them.”
Lyric smacked her lips. “If you’ve seen it a thousand times, you know any decent cattleman can’t spend all his time raising calves by hand. I’m sure you could find half a dozen other heifers in that herd with yearling trouble. I don’t see you raising them by hand. What’s so special about this cow and calf, that you want to make pets out of them and brush them and feed them and care for them like your own children?”
He muttered something under his breath and kicked an invisible speck of dirt on the floor. “I dunno.”
“Come on, Mattox. You’ve been playing dumb around here for six months. If I thought you were strange before, you showed me this morning you don’t do anything without some good reason.”
His head shot up, and his eyes shone bright over the cow’s back. “All right. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you. I asked Azer to give her to me because this cow belongs to an old line of pedigree your father developed when he first took over this ranch. He developed a line of cattle better suited to the Peak’s climate and heavier in the flank. That’s how he built up the ranch’s fortune in the first place, but Azer and Riskin don’t use that line anymore. They introduced faster growing cattle that come up lighter at the scales. This calf combines the old pedigree with the Mackenzies’ prize bull. I thought…well, I don’t know what I thought.”
“You thought you could start a new line.”
A light came on in Mattox’s face, and he started talking faster. He’d never spoken about this to anyone before. He never thought he would. “Don’t you see? By combining these two lines, we can create a stronger breed of cattle than either the new one or the old one—at least, I can.”
Lyric pursed her lips. “And this cow and calf, and the new line, will be all yours, won’t it? Azer gave you this cow. We won’t be creating a new, stronger line. You will. You’ll build your own fortune and ride off into the sunset. Isn’t that what you really mean?”
Mattox looked sideways. “Well, not exactly.”
Lyric stared down at the cow. Little by little, her eyes crept up to his face. “How did you learn all this? How did you find out about the old pedigree, and how did you find out about this cow and calf?”
He inclined his head and waved his hand. He led her to a door in the sidewall. That door opened into the old tack room. The Mackenzies kept their saddles, bridles, brushes, halters in there—all the trappings of bygone days when they did all their work on horseback. Mattox stepped inside and switched on the light. He bent over a stack of hay bales in the corner.
Lyric came to his side and found him flipping the yellowed pages of a leather-bound book. “Azer has made me clean out every square inch of this barn since I got here. I guess he and Riskin never took much time to do it themselves. When I showed up, they saw the chance to finally get it done.”
Lyric rolled her eyes. “No, they never cleaned this place out. I’ve never seen it so clean as it’s been since you came.”
“I found this book in the hay loft a couple of days after I first came to live here.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a ledger your father kept of all his breeding activity. It lists every cow, every steer, every mating he ever performed with every single animal.”
“But that’s thousands of animals. There must be a couple hundred thousand entries in this book.”
“That’s right. I’ve been reading this book and studying your operation since I moved into your house. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when no one will talk to you.”
“So what did you find out?”
“Take a look. Here are the tag numbers for all your cows. This number lists the tag number for that cow’s mother. That’s how I found out she belonged to your father’s old pedigree.”