Next it was Chase who came over and stood in front of her, blocking their conversation from anyone’s view.

“I don’t know why Dad thinks Billy didn’t do it.”

Again she said, “Let him handle this, sweetheart.”

“But-”

“Trust me, Chase.”

He nodded, looking doubtful but willing to believe she knew best. “Okay, Mom.”

And finally Bobby came over. “I don’t care if he didn’t do it. I can’t stand to even be in the same pasture with the son of a bitch.”

“Is that how your friends talked at K-State?”

He made the same kind of exasperated face at her that she had made several times that day at him, but he walked away without further argument.

Annabelle hoped that whatever was going to happen would happen soon.

Her sons were now bunched together at a distance from the other men, and all three of them looked as if they were just about ready to explode at somebody, and Annabelle knew who that somebody would be with even the slightest provocation. Seeming to sense the tension in the air, Billy Crosby was keeping his own distance from everyone.

Come on, she urged the sheriff in her thoughts.

But still he didn’t come.

The cowboys gathered around the truck with the refreshments, making appreciative sounds. Annabelle forced herself to walk around to each of them, inquiring about their wives and children, or parents and siblings. She was picking up the remains of the cinnamon rolls just as her husband pushed his arms into a black slicker and called out, “One more fence in this pasture, and then we can move on. Hugh-Jay, Chase, you take care of it.”

“Yessir.” Hugh-Jay licked his fingers and dropped his empty cup into a plastic trash bag. “Come on, Chase.”

“Wait a minute.” Chase pulled out a cigarette and then patted his jeans pockets, as if looking for something in them. “I gotta have a smoke first.” It was the first break any of them had taken since starting work.

“Quit those nasty things,” his father said, looking disgusted.

Chase grinned. “Gotta have some vices, Dad.”

The other men laughed, as if they suspected Chase of more vices than he was laying claim to.

“Here.” Hugh-Jay pulled a rectangle of silver out of his own pocket and tossed it to his middle brother.

Chase caught it with the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette. When he saw what it was, his face brightened and he looked over at his brother. “Hey, it’s my lighter! Where’d I drop it?”

“On my kitchen floor.”

Chase’s grin turned devilish. “Darn, you caught us!”

“You went back there this morning?” Hugh-Jay asked him.

“Yeah.”

Their father said, “I thought I sent you to the bank this morning.”

“You did, Dad, and I went,” Chase said, with an air of humoring both of them. He paused to light the cigarette, cupping his hands over it and the flame to keep the weather from defeating him. When he looked up, after taking a long drag, he blew out the smoke and said, “Then I stopped to bum a cup of coffee off Laurie.”

“Hey, Chase,” one of the other men joked, “maybe you ought to get yourself your own wife to fix your coffee, instead of messin’ around with Hugh-Jay’s.”

Chase laughed out loud at that, and the neighbors and the hired men grinned.

Hugh-Jay, who didn’t laugh, walked off to pick up one end of a brand-new roll of barbed wire. With his cigarette in a corner of his mouth, Chase sauntered over to take up the other side of the spindle on which the wire was rolled. Together they moved toward the broken fence line, while the other men watched them.

The brothers set the roll down on the grass next to the broken fence.

With a gloved finger, Hugh-Jay lifted a strand of wire and pressed the clippers.

Instantly, the high-tensile barbed wire sprang free.

Released from its tight coil, it lunged like a vicious snake toward his brother’s legs.

Chase let out a shout and jumped back.

From a safe distance, he gave his brother an astounded look.

“Jesus, Hugh-Jay, watch it! You damn near took my balls off.”

Unapologetically, Hugh-Jay said, “Might do the women of Henderson County a favor.”

“This family,” Chase said, with a shake of his head, “is in one hell of a bad mood today.” He took a last drag off his smoke, dropped it to the ground and ground it out with the heel of a boot. Pointing to the dangerous roll of wire, he said, “Let’s try this again. A little more carefully this time, all right?”

Annabelle, witnessing the burst of ill-temper between her sons, felt her heart sink.

Cut fences and murdered cows weren’t the only problems this family had, she admitted to herself. It was time, she realized, for a visit she didn’t want to make to her daughter-in-law. She hoped it wasn’t past time to fix something before it got more dangerous than Billy Crosby or barbed wire. And she hoped she wasn’t using it just as an excuse to avoid being there when the sheriff came to arrest Billy. Deep in worried thought, she started carrying things back across the muddy grass to her Caddy, with Red Bosch helpfully following her with a full trash bag in one hand and her iced tea container in the other.

She was halfway to town before she recalled that she hadn’t even said goodbye to her husband or her sons.

10

HUGH SENIOR WATCHED his wife drive off, and he wondered what took her away in such a hurry that she didn’t even say goodbye. He licked icing off his lips and then said, “All right, everybody. We sure do appreciate your help today. Now let’s saddle up and get this over with, so you can get back to your own work.”

“You call the sheriff about this, Hugh?” a neighbor inquired.

Hugh Senior nodded. “He’s coming.”

“Dad,” Chase interrupted, looking toward the sky. “So is the rain.”

That got the men, and Red, moving toward their horses again.

“Not you, Billy,” Hugh Senior called out to his back. “You ride in the truck with me. I’ve got a special job for you.”

Billy Crosby turned around to stare at him.

“What job?” To the ears of the other men who heard it, there was an edge to the question. Some would later remember it as disrespectful, others said it sounded nervous, but every man who was there that day agreed that the statement that followed it was downright cocky.

“I’m better on horseback than them other boys.”

“Well, I’ve got a job just cut out for you.”

Hugh Senior’s voice sounded hard.

“I’d rather work cattle.”

“Oh, you will, Billy.”

The neighbors and the other hired cowboys listened to the tense exchange while trying to appear not to. Some of them exchanged covert glances. All of them remembered yesterday and the ugly scene at the cattle pens.

Hugh Senior pointed at his son Bobby and then at Hugh-Jay. “You two get on your horses.” Then he pointed at Chase. “You stay here, so if your mother sends the sheriff out here you can tell him where we’ve gone.”

“Where are you going, Dad?”

“To separate the calves from their mothers again.”

When Hugh Senior drove into the next pasture with Billy, he pulled up beside the dead cow. “This job’s for you, Billy. Use the heavy-duty winch in back and haul her into this truck.”

From the driver’s seat, Hugh Senior could smell his passenger.

Billy’s sweat and breath smelled like beer, a sure sign of being an alcoholic-just like his parents, Hugh thought.

Billy pulled his cap brim over his eyes and obeyed without objection.

That, of itself, was suspicious, the rancher thought.

Billy didn’t ask “Why me?” he didn’t whine for help, and he didn’t complain. He just trudged off to do as he was told, with a strange, nervous grin playing around his lips.

To Hugh Senior all those facts indicted him.

Maybe jail would straighten him out.

The rancher sat in his truck long enough to watch Billy scratch his head over the already rotting carcass. It looked to Hugh Senior as if Billy wanted mightily to kick it in a fury of resentment and frustration but knew he didn’t dare while he was being watched. Hugh got out of his truck and called the boy Red Bosch over to help with the dragging and lifting. Cheerful as always, the teenager took his place behind the wheel of the truck and maneuvered it backward to winch up the dead cow. When he saw they might be able to manage it by themselves, Hugh Senior walked off to supervise the other work.