The man’s hand shake was firm; that was a good sign. “Come in and have a seat.”
Elijah moved back around his desk and studied the man across from him. He had noted the man was nearly equal to him in height but where he was thick and solid, the man before him was slender, though by all appearances well-toned. With a thick head of wavy black hair and startling blue eyes he was likely popular with the ladies; what Elijah wanted to know was what kind of hand he would make. That wasn’t as easily discerned.
“Do you have any experience as a hand?” Elijah queried. The man didn’t bear the look of perpetual drifter as so many of the hands who shifted through.
“Yes, sir, I worked my uncle’s ranch every summer for three years.”
Elijah nodded in satisfaction; he was willing to give the man a try and expressed as much.
Several minutes later the two of them rode from the house to find the men and the herd.
“You say you worked your uncle’s ranch summers, what did you do the rest of the time?” Elijah asked to make conversation.
“It’s been several years since I worked my uncle’s ranch. I own a farm in South Dakota.”
“What brings you out here then?” Elijah eyed the man curiously. He watched pain cross the man’s face and wished he hadn’t asked.
“I buried my wife and stillborn daughter six weeks ago.”
The man’s voice was devoid of any emotion.
“I buried mine about a year ago,” Elijah shared. He watched confusion fill the younger man’s face. “That was my second wife you met at the house this morning,” he was not quite able to stop the grimace that accompanied the words. “I had my daughter to consider after Martha died and she needed a mother.”
“I see,” the man nodded and Elijah had a feeling he saw too much. He felt a kinship to this stranger that he had seldom found in lifelong friends. Perhaps it was the all too familiar haunted look that filled the man’s eyes when he was unguarded as he was now.
“Her pa and I have been friends for more’n a decade.”
They rode in silence a moment. In the distance the Bitterroot Range, today cold hard silver against an azure sky, jutted into the horizon. More immediately the land around them rose and fell in sloping well watered valleys ideal for the herds of cattle that grazed there.
“Congratulations on your marriage,” the younger man finally ventured.
“I hurt her,” Elijah blurted. “I hurt her and likely one of my closest friends in the process.”
Elijah could hear the weariness in his own voice. It felt good to lay troubling thoughts out in the open and to finally confront them aloud.
“Sorry,” Elijah realized that this man had his own problems without Elijah adding his own to them.
“Don’t be, our problems somehow seem more bearable when we give them voice,” the man seemed to speak aloud Elijah’s own thoughts.
“Yeah,” Elijah grunted.
They topped a rise and the herd appeared below them, several hundred head of cattle being watched over by a half a dozen cowboys. The sight always lifted Elijah’s heart, even on his worst day and today was no exception; the change of topic was welcome too. He urged his horse forward to join the men below; the younger man fell in beside him.
***
The rider sat atop his mount, his spy glass firmly trained on Elijah and the unfamiliar cowboy beside him. He sneered as he watched the man who seemed to thwart his plans at every turn. First Elijah kept snapping up parcels of land he had wanted for himself and then to add insult to injury he had married Alexandria before he, himself had ever made a formal attempt at courting her. Elijah had become the bane of his existence. Every night he couldn’t lay down to rest without torturing himself with thoughts of Elijah and Alexandria together; it ate at his peace of mind until he felt certain he would go mad. Perhaps he already had, he mused as he considered scenarios that would gain him the lovely Alexandria and with her would come the land; the land he had always wanted and then some. He smiled, the spy glass lowering as an idea began to take shape. He had made some connections over the past few years and they would serve him well now. He intended to make Alexandria and the Bison Creek Ranch his own and God help any man who got