League that you had nothing to do with any of it.”
That only made her feel worse. She’d appreciated her neighbors’ efforts in banding together to help each other in times of need. But Lucas had shrugged off the idea.
“Any fool knows it’s every man for himself out here,” he’d scoffed. Still, he’d agreed to let Hank represent their interests in the league. She’d thought Lucas was merely trying to do his civic duty. Now she was fairly sure he’d used the information the cowboy brought him to help plan his thieving.
“She convinced us,” Edmund was saying, with a glance to Lula May that was all pride. “There isn’t a man—”
“Or a woman,” Lula May put in.
“Who holds you accountable,” Edmund finished.
Nancy drew in a breath. How easy it was to latch on to their forgiveness. A shame she could not forgive herself.
“Thank you,” she said. “But I should have realized what was happening. I should have warned the league, told the sheriff. Because I was blind, you all suffered. I’m so sorry.”
The clink of spurs told her Hank had returned.
“No call to be sorry,” he said, stepping onto the porch behind Edmund. “If there’s anyone to blame for this mess, it’s me.”
* * *
Edmund McKay shook his head, and Lula May, as she’d asked the league members to call her, had that lightning sparking in her eyes again, but Hank knew he spoke the truth. McKay knew it too. He’d been there the day they’d caught Lucas Bennett with a whole herd of cattle not his own.
The members of the Lone Star Cowboy League had been trying to discover who had been stealing cattle from the area. The rustler had hit nearly every spread for miles around, caused a fire that had leveled the Carson barn. But it had taken Lula May to put the pieces together. And the picture she painted had made Hank sick.
His boss was the rustler, and Hank had unknowingly fed him the information to plot the thefts.
When Sheriff Fuller offered to deputize Hank, McKay and another local rancher named Abe Sawyer to go with the lawman after Lucas Bennett, Hank hadn’t hesitated. He’d ridden with the other men to confront his boss. Hank had been pretty sure where the man was hiding, in a box canyon on the spread. But when they found him with more than three dozen head of cattle, Bennett and McKay had squared off, with Bennett drawing fast. The sheriff and Hank had both fired at the same time. Hank knew which shot had hit home.
Nancy Bennett was a widow, and it was all his fault. He was about ready to admit it, take his licks as his due.
But she turned on him, hands going to the curve of her hips. “Nonsense, Mr. Snowden,” she said, hazel eyes wide. “You’re the best hand my husband ever had. He told me so himself.”
He felt as if she’d twisted a knife in his gut. He’d always prided himself on doing a good job, but the fact that Lucas Bennett had bragged on him only made Hank’s betrayal worse.
He tugged the hat off his hair. “Just doing my duty, ma’am. I’m glad to see other folks come out to help, as well.” He nodded to Lula May and the rancher.
“Anything you need,” Lula May assured her friend.
He waited for Mrs. Bennett to brighten. That was one of the many things he appreciated about her. She was mostly quiet—shy, he was coming to realize—but when she smiled, it was like the sun rising, warming the whole earth with its glow. She hadn’t been smiling much since even before her husband had been killed. When she’d beamed at him earlier on the porch, he’d about slid from his chair in thanksgiving.
But now she merely lowered her hands and her gaze as she turned to her visitors. “Where are my manners? Please come in. I don’t have anything baked, but there’s cool water from the spring.”
“And I brought a lemon cake,” Lula May announced. She put her hand on the rancher’s arm. “Would you fetch it from the wagon for me?”
She didn’t fool Hank. Lula May was one tough lady, who’d managed her husband’s horse ranch after he’d fallen ill. Now a widow, she was the only woman in the Lone Star Cowboy League, and the member most respected by the others. If she was asking McKay to do her fetching and carrying, she was up to something.
He was just as glad for it, for it gave him a moment to talk to his friend alone. As the two women passed him to enter the house, he hurried to pace the rancher.
McKay cast him a quick look, green eyes thoughtful. “Mrs. Bennett says you’re doing right by the ranch. I wouldn’t have expected less.”
Hank put a hand on the man’s shoulder to stop him before he reached the wagon. “I promised her I’d stay as long as need be. But there’s something you should know. Lucas Bennett took out a loan from a bank in Burnet before he died.”
The rancher frowned, turning to face him. “From Burnet? Why didn’t he come into Little Horn or approach one of us? We’d have loaned him money or found a way to fix whatever he needed.”
“I don’t think he wanted the money to fix anything,” Hank told him. “He may have convinced the bank he wanted to improve the ranch, but he sure didn’t use the money on anything worthwhile.”
McKay nodded. “Lula May tells me he may have been gambling with her uncle while he was in town.”
Hank felt as if he’d eaten something that had sat in the sun too long. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Not after what else he did.”
McKay shook his head. “I can only feel for his widow.”
Hank too. “It gets worse,” he said. “The bank is threatening to call in the loan. Seems they don’t think Mrs. Bennett is skilled enough to turn a profit ranching. I thought maybe the league could help her out.”
“I’ll ask Lula May to call an emergency meeting for tomorrow night,” McKay promised, starting for the wagon once more. “You can make the case then.”
Hank joined him at the wagon. “I might not be the best advocate. I’ve already done enough damage, carrying everything we discussed about keeping the ranches safe to the very thief we were trying to protect ourselves from.”
“You didn’t know you were telling tales to the wrong person,” the rancher insisted. “No one holds you accountable either. Lucas Bennett fooled us all.”
Hank dusted his hands on his Levi’s, wishing he could wipe away the last two weeks as easily. “At least we know it’s over. We stopped the rustler. Everyone can go about their lives.”
Everyone but him and Nancy.
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” McKay reached into the wagon and carefully drew out a basket covered with a gingham cloth.
Hank frowned. “What are you talking about? Lucas Bennett is dead. I buried him myself.”
The rancher eyed him. “He may be dead, but even alive he wouldn’t have been able to take all those cattle to market by himself.”
“Upkins and Jenks had nothing to do with it,” Hank said, widening his stance. He recognized the gesture and forced his body to relax. What, was he going to draw on Edmund McKay now?
“I believe you,” his friend assured him. “I thought maybe Bennett was stealing those cattle to build his herd. But if he was so desperate for money he’d mortgage his spread, he had to have been planning to sell them.”
“Nobody in these parts would buy stolen cattle,” Hank protested.
“Nobody we know,” McKay agreed. “But someone must have made him an offer. He would have known he couldn’t hide the cattle long before one of you spotted them. And he’d need help to drive that many to a buyer, one who wasn’t concerned about the brands.”
His friend was right. Hank’s