Shades Of Gray

“There are still hands there, aren’t there?” Edwards’s cheeks flushed and his eyes widened in alarm.

“Don’t you know?” Derek tried to pin the banker with a sharp frown, but the man refused to meet his gaze. “Your letter said you were overseeing the place until I got here.”

“I…” Edwards paused as though reconsidering whatever he’d started to say, then merely nodded. “Yes, of course. I haven’t been there in a while, though. Busy here, you know.” He waved a hand to indicate his desk, which looked remarkably clutter-free.

Derek swallowed a sigh. What the hell was the use? No one seemed inclined to confide in him. “The place isn’t quite deserted.” He made no effort to keep the displeasure from his voice. “There are two old men, a couple of Mexican families, a boy too young to have seen much of any kind of work and a woman. Those are my ranch hands?”

“Six Parker worked for your uncle from the very beginning, and the Mexicans stayed through the whole of the war.” Edwards counted off the workers on his pudgy fingers. “Whitley Andrews may be young and inexperienced, but he’s willing. As for Micah Smith and Amber Laughton, they came together—a pair, you might say. They moved to the ranch when she was run out of town.”

“Run out of town?” The incredulous question slipped out before he could think better of it. Derek snapped his mouth shut, effectively cutting off any other indiscreet remark, but his earlier observations taunted him.

Why would a beautiful young woman confine herself to keeping house at a remote ranch, and for a man old enough to be her father?

And his reply to himself: Unless she defined friend differently than he did.

“I am not one to carry tales, mind you,” Edwards said in a prim voice that told Derek otherwise. “However, since Amber Laughton is living under your roof, I feel obligated to warn you that she was involved in some trouble with a number of men. She consorted with them after her father died—or so they say. Your uncle—well, I don’t know if she bewitched him, or if he thought to do a good deed and take the hussy from our midst. In any case, she moved to the ranch, and she’s been there since.”

Derek said nothing for the space of a heartbeat. “Amber was Richard’s mistress.” It was more a statement than a question. Dozens of other questions raced through Derek’s mind, but a particular reluctance to ask them of Edwards kept him silent. He’d already said too much. He would get his answers, but he’d get them from Amber.

“Only she can tell you that for sure, now that Richard is dead,” said Edwards stiffly, without meeting Derek’s gaze. “But I believe so, yes. I, certainly, will have nothing to do with her.”

Derek tightened his jaw. He couldn’t risk unleashing any emotion over Edwards’s announcement. He had certain secrets from his own sordid past that he wished to leave behind him; he couldn’t afford to start something he wasn’t prepared to finish. He’d already revealed too much in his desire to learn more.

“All right, Mr. Edwards,” he said. “And just what is it you suggest that I do as the new owner of the Double F?” He had no real interest in Edwards’s opinion, but it seemed an easy diversion for the moment.

He was right. Edwards’s mouth flattened in a self-deprecating smile. “It’s your ranch now, Mr. Fontaine. Nothing has to remain as it was. You are under no obligation to maintain the same workers your uncle employed. At the very least, I encourage you to disassociate yourself from Amber Laughton once and for all.”

“I see.”

“Times are changing, people are moving west.” Edwards leaned forward as though warming to his topic. “We’ve had two new families settle in Twigg, a man to take over the newspaper Amber’s father once owned, and a man who plans to build a new hotel. More Mexicans are drifting farther north again, without the Yankee army to get in their way.”

He paused expectantly, his features smoothing themselves back into their thin, rodentlike appearance. “The railroad has come, you know, and here in Twigg, we have plans to be a part of the progress. That can only bode well for you and your ranch. They want cattle up north, and we’ve got them here. Your uncle had great plans for the Double F.”

“As you said, Mr. Edwards, it’s my ranch now.” Derek offered a sparse, distant smile. “However, I am not prepared to rush into ill-advised changes at the moment. You will find that I never make rash decisions.

“In the meantime, I have other concerns about the ranch and its financial situation. And I’d like to arrange for a personal account with your bank. If you don’t mind…”

Edwards nodded, perhaps a bit eagerly, and Derek felt a coil of apprehension relax inside him. He understood this man and his desires; he was a businessman, and Derek had money. Not a fortune, perhaps—a major’s commission hardly made a man rich, but there had been precious little on which to spend it during the war. In these days of reconstruction, it was more than many had. Not that he intended for Edwards to know exactly what he had or how he’d acquired it.

No, he would show the overfed rodent just enough to make them friends—good friends in Edwards’s eyes. And then?

Well, maybe then Derek would have the means to get answers to some of his other questions.

Chapter Three

Andrews Mercantile looked like a thousand other general stores that had sprung up in the fledgling towns that had begun to dot the West. Derek stopped just inside the doorway and glanced around, inventorying the crowded interior with narrowed eyes. Groceries, dry goods and hardware filled the shelves. Kegs and barrels of sugar, flour and molasses littered the floor, squatting next to half-filled sacks of potatoes, onions and other produce.

Several women stood in a semicircle near the dry goods, murmuring among themselves, while two old men sat crouched on a pair of stubby, three-legged stools next to a cold woodstove. A middle-aged man, the proprietor, no doubt, shifted canned goods on a shelf to make room for more.

“Them wimmen cackle like a bunch a’ chickens.”

“Flock.”

Derek followed the voices and found himself looking at the old men. They stared back. “I beg your pardon?”

The thinner of the two, balding on top and scowling, jerked his head in the direction of his companion. “A flock. A group a’ birds is a flock. Clem called them a bunch.”

“Dang it, Twigg.” The other man, really no heavier, with fewer hairs and an almost identical sour expression, spoke up. “It don’t matter about the damn birds. I was talkin’ about the wimmen.”

The corner of Derek’s mouth kicked up in amusement, then faded in bafflement. “Twigg?” He stepped closer. “Like the town?”

“Yep.” The old man straightened with peremptory pride. “They named the town after me. We was the first ones here—the founders. Clem wanted to name the place after him, but that ain’t no name fer a town. Clem!” He snorted.

“Yer him, ain’t you? The new feller at the Double F.”

Derek hesitated, then nodded. “I’m Derek Fontaine.”

“Ha! I knew it!” Clem slapped his knee with a liver-spotted hand. “Yer Richard Fontaine’s nephew, all right. I’d recognize you anywhere. You look just like him. Pay up, Twigg.” He held out the same wrinkled hand, palm-up.

“Dang it, Clem, when he come in you said you never seen the man before. Now yer sayin’ you knew him all the time. That’s cheatin’ an’ I ain’t payin’ no cheater.”

The old men’s quarrel took on a snappish tone, and Derek blocked them out with an ease that surprised him for a moment. But—no. It made perfect sense that the habits of the past remained deeply ingrained within him. Hadn’t he spent years listening to Jordan’s tirades and lectures, standing at attention before the old man’s desk with bright eyes and a thoughtful face, while his mind had darted off to a far different world?

And later, when the noise and stench of thousands of men and animals, all crowded together in the hell that masqueraded as life in the army camps, had become too much, hadn’t he stolen away inside himself for his own private solitude? He’d escaped that and more rather than dwell on things far more oppressive. Things like the emotions conjured up by Clem’s observation.

When he’d first learned that Richard was his father, Derek had embraced the news with equal parts relief and fury. Relief because it explained so much—and fury for the very same reason. He had never seen a portrait, tintype or photograph of his father, if any had ever existed; even the mention of Richard’s name was banned in Jordan’s household after the death of Derek’s grandmother. As a child Derek had never understood why there were so few opportunities to learn about his “uncle” Richard. Now, none of it seemed to matter.

And how odd to realize that, in order to see his father’s face, he’d only needed to look in the mirror. But, damn, he was tired of hearing how he looked just like the man.

“Did they, young Mr. Fontaine?”

The sharp voice recaptured Derek’s attention. “Pardon me?”

“You deaf, boy? I asked if the law ever found out who kilt yer uncle.”

A thousand denials shrieked in his head, each one fierce with disbelief. Derek blinked, gathering his concentration, before attempting to eye the men with cool calculation. “Killed…as in murder?”

“Yeah, murder. Ain’t nobody told you nothin’?” demanded Clem peevishly.

“Apparently not. Or maybe I’ve been talking to the wrong people.”

“You have if you been talkin’ to Frank Edwards. He sits over there in that bank, thinkin’ he knows so much ’cause he studied that law and he owns the bank. Hell, he’s even been pretendin’ to run the Double F since Richard died. Well, let me tell you, he ain’t done nuthin’—an’ he knows even less. He oughta get out here with the rest a’ us, and he might figger a few things out.”

“What’d he tell you, anyway?” Twigg asked.

Derek hesitated. These men seemed to know more than he did, and his purpose here today was to get answers to his questions. He shrugged. “That Richard was found dead several miles from the ranch. That he’d been out alone and it looked like an accident.”

“Accident, my foot!” Clem stamped the floor for emphasis. “He was shot—murdered—by rustlers. You mark my words!”