It struck Hubert in an instant that maybe he should have taken another approach when it came to telling Bebe about his plan to investigate Price. And that was putting it mildly. He felt like he’d just stepped in a gigantic cow patty in his bare feet.

“It’s not like that, Bebe,” he said, trying to make his voice as soothing as possible.

Bebe wasn’t having it.

“Not like what? Are you or are you not going to get on a train and leave Haskell?”

“It’ll just be a short trip,” he tried to explain. “To investigate.”

He was suddenly aware of the mass of Bebe’s friends, watching from the table. Not one of them looked the least bit sympathetic to him. In fact, if he wasn’t careful, he’d likely be pecked to death by the hen party.

He cleared his throat and took Bebe’s elbow, walking her to the farthest corner of the room. Bebe shook out of his grip with a grunt, but kept walking with him.

“Are you or are you not planning to leave me again?” she hissed once they were in the corner where the piano stood.

Hubert took a breath, wincing on the inside. “Price stopped me in the street yesterday. He threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t leave you alone.”

Bebe flinched and blinked. “That’s not like Price at all. He isn’t exactly the bodily harm sort. He’s always so fussy with those glasses of his.”

Hubert shook his head. “That wasn’t what he was talking about. He said he had family. Family who could cause a lot of trouble if they had a mind to.”

“The Penworthys are an influential family in Denver,” Bebe said, crossing her arms.

“Yeah, and Price threatened to sick them on me, like a rabid dog.”

A flash of indignation lit Bebe’s eyes. All too quickly, it turned into anger. Anger directed at him. “All that is beside the point. Price is twiddling his thumbs back at the ranch right now. You’re the one who’s just barged into my party to tell me you’re leaving.” Before he could get a word in, Bebe’s face crumpled, and she wailed, “How could you?”

Hubert was completely unprepared for the burst of emotion. “I smell a rat,” he said. “A big, Penworthy-shaped rat.”

“And because of that you’re going to turn tail and run? Again?” Bebe’s eyes were glassy with misery and rage.

“No, no, it’s not like that at all.” Hubert fumbled to defend himself. “I need to get to the bottom of this. You told me to use my investigative journalism skills to figure out—”

“So this is my fault, is it?” she cut him off. “You’re going to abandon me mere days before I’m supposed to marry Price because that’s what I said to do?”

Hubert blew out a hard breath through his nose, planting his hands on his hips. The Bebe standing in front of him definitely sounded like the spoiled girl she’d had a tendency to be from time to time when they were young. Well, no one was perfect. And the problem was, he had to admit, now that he thought about it, she had a right to be upset. And judging from the way some of her friends swayed or watched them with blurry eyes and pink cheeks, she might have had a few drinks.

“Let’s start this conversation over,” he said, letting his shoulders drop. He raised his hands to appeal to her. “Price threatened me. He said some things that were mighty suspicious.”

“Price was right,” Bebe said with devastating confidence. “He told me I was brave to keep loving a man who had abandoned me. He told me that you’d do it again.”

“Bebe, I’m not abandoning you.” Hubert scrambled to keep the conversation from flying off track again.

“Well, can’t remember right now what his exact words were.” She raised a hand to her temple and shook her head. “But he was right about a lot of things.” She lifted her head and glared right at him. “Price has been by my family’s side for years, since before things started to go bad.”

Hubert frowned. “Wait, so things started to go bad when Price got involved with the ranch?”

“Price has never left us. He’s the only one who seems to care or who seems to be doing anything about our difficult situation,” Bebe blew on. “When Father was dying, he handled all the business so that we didn’t have to.”

“Price took over your finances before Rex died?”

“He wants to marry me,” Bebe shouted. “Even though he doesn’t love me and I don’t love him. Love doesn’t seem to count for much when it comes to loyalty and sticking with people.”

She’d grown so loud that Hubert slipped a glance to the side to find all of her friends still watching the two of them as though they were putting on a play. He managed a weak smile and a wave for the other ladies, then turned his focus back to Bebe, gripping her upper arms.

“Don’t you find it just a little bit suspicious that a man shows up out of who knows where, makes himself invaluable to your family, then takes over as soon as your father dies?” he asked her.

“He didn’t come out of nowhere, he came highly recommended by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.”

Hubert’s eyes narrowed to an even deeper scowl. He knew Rex had been an early member of the WSGA. He also knew that the WSGA was behind every crooked deal and range war in Wyoming just then. It was widely known that WSGA members were the ones who pulled the strings of the state government. Price’s association with the group only deepened Hubert’s misgivings about the man and his motives.

“I don’t think you can trust him,” Hubert said, as plain and simple as he could be.

Bebe scoffed. “What do you know about trust? You promised to love me, to marry me, then you disappeared for seven years.”

“Three years,” he corrected, not sure if he was helping or hurting his argument. “We wrote for four years, remember?”

She shook her head and crossed her arms. “I don’t care if it was three days, Hubert. You left me when I needed you most, and here you are, telling me that you’re going to do the same thing again.”

“I’m not abandoning you, Bebe,” he said, frustration leaking into his voice. “I just need to—”

“Leave town days before I’m supposed to marry a man I don’t love to save a ranch that is full of bad memories for me, and sisters and a nephew who I love but don’t particularly like?” She arched an eyebrow.

Hubert let out a breath. “I’m doing this for you.”

“Just like you were doing it for me last time.” She shook her head. Then she did something worse than shouting or stomping her feet and making a fuss. She walked away.

“Bebe, wait.”

He strode after her, but she raised hand to hold him off, not looking at him. She headed straight toward the large punch bowl on the table next to the one where the other women sat.

“Erin, pour me a glass,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Erin mumbled and jumped to do as she was told.

“Bebe.” Hubert appealed to her, but she ignored him completely.

“You should probably just leave,” Julia told him in a low, sad voice, wedging herself between him and Bebe. With an earnest look in her eyes, she said, “I’ll make sure she gets home safe. You go and do what you need to do.”

Hubert took a few steps back, watching as Bebe raised her punch glass, clinked it with Erin’s, then swallowed the whole thing in a few wild gulps. He felt like a complete heel, but there didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do about it. At least Julia was there. That was the only thing that made Hubert feel like he could leave Bebe in her current state.

But once he left the saloon, instead of heading down to the train station to buy a ticket to Denver or to Vernon’s house to pack his things, he marched straight up Main Street and around the corner, heading to his father’s house.

Just like it had been a decade ago when Hubert lived there, the Strong house was filled with noise and activity when he stepped through the front door. Only, instead of children shouting and running, the noise came from a piano in one room competing with a trumpet in another room, two of his sisters squealing and giggling about something in a room upstairs, and his father talking loudly to Elspeth in the kitchen over all of it.

As he had every time something had weighed on his mind when he was younger, Hubert headed straight past the family room, with its brightly-festooned Christmas tree and presents waiting to be unwrapped in a few days, into the kitchen.

“Hubert. What a pleasant surprise,” Elspeth greeted him from the sink where she was washing dishes after what looked like a large and satisfying meal.

“Fancy seeing you here, son,” Athos said from Elspeth’s side, where he was drying a pile of dishes.

“Hey Pops, Elspeth.” Hubert nodded to them both, trying to greet them as warmly as they’d greeted him. He failed, and both his father and step-mother appeared to go instantly on the alert.

“Is something wrong?” Elspeth asked, her refined British accent as strong as ever, though she’d lived in Haskell for almost a decade.

“You look like you’ve had a tussle with a skunk and the skunk won,” Athos said. He finished the plate he was drying, then gestured for Hubert to take a seat at the kitchen table.

“It’s Bebe,” Hubert sighed, slumping into his old chair. Athos sat next to him.

“Hmm. Women trouble.” Athos nodded sagely.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” Elspeth said, switching from the sink to the stove.

“Thanks.” Hubert nodded to her, then sighed and rubbed his face. “Although it’s not just Bebe.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Athos reached for the remaining third of an apple pie in the center of the table, cutting a piece with the knife that rested in the empty half of the pie plate. He served half of it to Hubert and took the rest for himself.

The offer of food was as good as a demand to spill the entire story. Hubert took a fork from the basket in the middle of the table, cut into his pie, and began. “Bebe’s madder than a hornet at me because I told her just now that I have to go to Denver.”

Both Athos and Elspeth hummed and groaned as though he’d made a serious error.

“I’m not abandoning her again,” Hubert said, a little too forcefully.

“She’s not going to see it that way,” Elspeth said as she put the kettle on the stove and checked the fire.

“She didn’t see it that way,” Hubert sighed. “She got upset and said she didn’t trust me.”

Athos didn’t seem surprised. He shifted in his seat, studying Hubert, then asked, “So why do you have to go do Denver, and does it have to be right now?”

At last, someone asked a question in a way that he could answer.

“It’s that Price Penworthy,” he said, leaning toward his dad and taking another bite of pie. “He threatened me yesterday, told me to stay away from Bebe. He said that his family in Denver was powerful and influential, and he implied that he could convince them to hurt me if he wanted to.”

“The nerve of the man,” Elspeth scoffed from the stove.

Athos frowned. “Price Penworthy may be capable of many things, but I never would have thought physical violence was one of them.”

“What do you know about his family?” Hubert asked.

“Not much.” Athos shrugged. “None of them have come to visit him since he moved here two years ago. If they’d come by train—and these days, almost everyone does—I’d’ve met them and remembered them.”

That was a good point. One Hubert hadn’t considered. It begged another question as well. What kind of man relied so heavily on family members that never visited?

“Something isn’t right about the man,” Hubert went on. “That’s why I want to go to Denver to investigate.”

“And you explained that to Bebe?” Athos asked.

Hubert sighed. “She didn’t give me a chance to explain. And granted, I shouldn’t have started the conversation with ‘I’m leaving for Denver’, but she was all over me like a tornado before I had a chance to spell out my reasons why.”

“Of course she was,” Elspeth said as she fetched her tin of special tea imported from England from the highest shelf in the pantry. “That poor woman has had nothing but misery and heartache for years, and just when she thinks things might finally get better, you’ve gone and pulled the rug out from under her.”

Hearing it put like that, and from a woman he admired and respected for her level head and intelligence, made Hubert feel like the lowest worm. “I can’t go to Denver, can I,” he said.

Athos grinned. “No, son. You can’t.”

The two of them took bites of their pie as Elspeth brought her tea over to the stove and added a few spoons of leaves to the kettle. Deeper in the house, whoever was playing the piano began a Christmas carol. His sisters joined in, their angelic voices wafting into the kitchen. It almost made Hubert smile.

“The thing is,” he started up again when they’d had a few seconds to think, “I know Price is up to something. The man is as shifty as a fox in a henhouse.”

“That’s a good way to describe it,” Athos said.

Hubert frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’ve suspected, everyone has suspected, that Price has spent the last couple of years wheedling his way into the Bonneville family so that he can take over.”

Hubert nearly bit his tongue. “Then why is everyone just standing by and letting it happen?”

Athos gave him a sympathetic look. “Son, if you will recall, not everyone has the soft spot in their hearts for the Bonnevilles that you do. If Price wants to marry into the family—and their problems—then that’s his business.”

Hubert shook his head. “There has to be more to it than that.”

Athos and Elspeth exchanged a look. “Price Penworthy wouldn’t be the first man to marry a woman for her property,” Elspeth said. “In fact, it’s rather a common practice in England.”

“But why would he want to marry a woman who he doesn’t love and who doesn’t love him for a ranch that’s about to be foreclosed on?”

“It’s my understanding that the money from Price’s family will get the ranch out of foreclosure,” Athos said.

Hubert blew out a breath and threw his fork down, leaning back in his chair. “I’m starting to get really sick of people telling me that.”

“Everyone knows about it,” Elspeth said softly.

“But why would a man like Price want to sink all of his wedding money into buying out a ranch that’s been failing for years?”

His question was met with silence. Athos raised his eyebrows, and Elspeth’s look turned thoughtful. Hubert was certain he was on to something.

“Okay, let’s assume that Price wants the Bonneville ranch,” he said, leaning forward again. “Let’s assume that he’s motivated by greed and power instead of love when it comes to marrying Bebe.”

“All right.” Athos nodded.

“People who are motivated by greed and power don’t sink their capital into a money pit,” Hubert went on. “Which means that, somehow, the Bonneville ranch is worth more than anyone but Price knows.”

“I don’t see how,” Elspeth said. “The land itself is the same as any other land in this area.”

“There’s no oil,” Athos agreed. “No gold or silver or any other kind of ore. The only thing it’s good for is cattle ranching.”

“And the Bonneville herd has been failing for years,” Hubert said.

“Yes,” Athos and Elspeth answered at the same time.

“Even before Price came to work for Rex?”

Athos narrowed his eyes, looking as though he were reviewing years’ worth of memories. “Rex had the second biggest operation in the area, next to Howard Haskell, when I moved to town.”

“When I came here too,” Elspeth said. The tea was ready, so she brought it to the table, along with mugs.

“It was still going strong when I left,” Hubert said. “So as of seven years ago, everything was fine.”

“Everyone had a hard year in ’79,” Athos went on, rubbing his chin. “I remember that Rance Bonneville wasn’t much help.”

“Wasn’t that also around the time Rex’s health began to fail?” Elspeth asked.

“That was more like ’81,” Athos said.

“And the year after that, Rex’s foreman quit.” Elspeth poured tea for everyone.

“In some of the last letters I got from Bebe, she mentioned Rex talking about taking out a mortgage so that he could increase the numbers of his herd and bring the ranch back up to the level it’d been at,” Hubert said. “Which would mean that as of three years ago, the ranch was still in the black. When did they take out the loan from Solomon’s bank?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Athos said, stirring sugar into his tea with a frown. “Maybe two years ago?”

“Two years.” Hubert slapped his hand on the table, startling his dad and Elspeth. “Right about the time Price started working for the family.”

“Are you saying Price is responsible for the mortgage?” Elspeth asked.

“The timing would be right,” Athos agreed.

“So why would the ranch begin to fail after a loan was taken out against the property?” Hubert asked, raising his voice. “People take out a loan to make improvements on their property, to increase its worth. So why has the ranch done nothing but gone downhill for the last two years?”

“They’ve had trouble with their herd,” Elspeth said, her voice distant and her eyes unfocused. “They haven’t brought in as much money at market in Cheyenne as in previous years.”

“Have beef prices gone down?” Hubert asked.

“No, I don’t think so.” Athos scratched his head, looking more alarmed by the second. “I’m not a rancher, but listening to conversations here and there, I think the market’s been all right.”

Hubert’s heart raced as though he’d discovered buried treasure…or discovered something valuable that had gone missing. “That’s it,” he said. “That has to be it.”

“That’s what?” Elspeth asked, sitting at last.

Everything came so clear in Hubert’s mind all at once. “The Bonneville ranch couldn’t have been in any more trouble after ’79 than anyone else’s ranches, but word must have gotten around through the WSGA that Rex’s foreman left and Rex’s health was ailing.” His pulse felt like electricity zipping through his veins as he unfolded his theory. “Everyone knows Rex doesn’t have a son, only girls. Everyone must have known the ranch would be in a vulnerable position when it became clear Rex wouldn’t recover.”

“And you think Price swooped in and took advantage of that?” Athos asked.

“I’d bet a mint,” Hubert said. “What’s more, I bet that from the moment Price stepped foot on the ranch, he started cooking the books.”

“How awful.” Elspeth pressed a hand to her chest.

“I bet he took out that mortgage loan for himself somehow instead of spending it on the ranch. I bet he sold the Bonneville cattle for the market price, then told the ladies he had to sell at a loss.”

“The bastard,” Athos growled.

“I bet he’s been squirreling away the Bonneville’s money for years.” It all seemed so obvious to Hubert now.

“What about Bebe?” Elspeth asked. “Why would he marry her?”

The energy in Hubert’s blood turned to fury. “She’s young, she’s pretty, and he inherits a bunch of money from his family when he marries. I bet he was hoping to have his way with her until he got bored or until he couldn’t wring a profit out of the ranch anymore, then pack up and take every cent of his ill-gotten gains and skip town.”

Elspeth gasped in disgust. Athos’s brow furrowed into a scowl. “You can’t let him do that, son.”

“You’d better believe I won’t,” Hubert said. He wanted to jump up right then, run to the Bonneville ranch, and pummel Price into a pulp. “Only, right now, it’s just a theory. I’ve got to have proof if I’m going to act on it.”

“Where are you going to find that proof?” Athos asked.

Hubert sighed, slumping back in his chair. “I don’t know. And tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I doubt most of the businesses Price interacted with will be open. I can talk to Solomon Templesmith, but—”

“Yes, start with Solomon,” Elspeth urged him. “He’s a good man, and he’ll know what’s going on.”

“I just wish I could do something right now,” Hubert said, frustration making him itchy.

“What you can do,” Athos said with a pointed look, “is get your ducks in a row to make a safe place for Bebe to land when this whole thing—if you’re right—comes out.”

“You’re right, Pops.” Hubert knocked the table and moved to stand.

“But finish your tea first.” Elspeth stopped him. “Everything is better with tea.”

Hubert grinned and sat back in his chair. “I sure did miss you, Elspeth.”

Elspeth blushed. “Well, if everything is as you say it is, and if you’re able to prove it and win Bebe over to your side, you’ll set up house here, and you won’t ever have to miss me again.”