Three Brothers Page 7

  Chance and I rode silently into the valley, keeping our horses at an easy walk so as not to unsettle the herd. As we got closer, a few mares on the outer edge cocked their heads back to investigate us, but most got right back to their grazing. One of the sorrels arched her head back and let out a shrill whinny. Dark Horse answered with a soft neigh.

  “They’re really amazing, Chance, you know that?”

  “Yeah, I know.” His eyes were bright as he looked at the herd as if each of them were a child.

  “I know most ranchers let wild horses on their land for the BLM money, but since I know the Armstrongs aren’t lacking in that department, why do you have so many on Red Mountain?” I nudged Dark Horse as close to the herd as I dared. I would have loved to weave through it, touching the colorful manes and velvety coats, but even though I’d accepted the remote possibility of getting trampled, I wasn’t going to open my arms to it.

  “The money we net on these guys isn’t too bad, but we pour that right back into the community, so really, it’s a wash.” Chance reined Honor a little farther out from the herd. Both Honor and Dark Horse were gelded, but Honor seemed to be having trouble accepting that while surrounded by a few thousand mares.

  “You take all your net profits and give them to the community?” My nose wrinkled as I considered that. The Armstrongs were well known for being charitable with various international and domestic organizations, but if they were making nothing off the horses, it seemed strange they’d keep so many. “Then why keep so many mustangs?”

  “If that’s the way you think of it, then why do we keep the cattle, or farm wheat and corn, or have a cherry, grape, and apple orchard?” Chance tipped his hat back a bit so his eyes weren’t so shaded by it. “If you can’t understand why we keep the horses despite not profiting from them, you probably won’t understand why we do the rest.”

  “You don’t profit off the cattle?” I’d just passed a mare with the most perfect diamond on her nose. I wished I’d brought my camera to snap a photo of it.

  “Nope. Again, what profit we make, we give back to the community.”

  I knew enough about ranch life to know the cattle business was the bread and butter of a rancher’s income. “So you don’t make money off the horses. Or the cows. Or the crops. Why exactly do you do all of it then?”

  He chuckled. “Because I’m an idiot. That’s the answer my dad used to give me when he could still put together sentences.”

  I couldn’t join Chance’s laugh, as much as I could tell he hoped I would. John had been hard on all of his boys, Conn most of all and Chance least. He’d been such a different father figure to me than he had been to his sons, and a part of me wondered if the boys resented me for that. I knew if I’d been in their shoes, I might have.

  “And what’s your answer for why you do all of this?” I pulled back on the reins to stop Dark Horse and fished out the Thermos of coffee. The sun was rising high enough it warmed our backs, and the coffee could do the rest of the warming.

  Chance and Honor stopped beside us. Chance’s brows came together as he examined the land and animals around us. “I do this because this place has a history of taking. A devastating history of taking. I thought it was about time someone created a different history, a history where this land gave back to the community instead of bleeding it dry.”

  A sharp gust of wind whipped through the valley, tousling manes and gusting the tall, green grass to the ground. I didn’t need Chance to explain what he meant. I knew the history of their land, the natives who’d belonged to it and the outsiders who’d come to claim it. I knew the first and last name of the man who’d led the army responsible for massacring hundreds of Shoshone people on this land. It was the same first and last name of the man who’d raised me as a teen. Same name but a different man.

  “You might be the best person in the whole world, Chance Armstrong.” I dropped my gloved hand on his.

  He rotated his hand and wove his fingers through mine. “Yeah, well, the blood of the worst kind of person flows inside me, so I have to be more purposeful than the next man when it comes to performing those random acts of goodness.” He winked, but there was no shadow of jest in his words. Chance lived as though those hundreds of dead bodies were his responsibility. He lived as though he was trying to atone for lives he’d not taken, blood he’d never spilt, curses he’d never been responsible for creating.

  Unweaving my fingers from his, I was just about to open the Thermos when one plus one came together. “Oh, shit. I get it now. I didn’t see it last night, but I see it now.” The wind had vanished, but an unsettling stillness clung to the air around us. “Chase thinks Jenny was killed because of the curse, doesn’t he?”

  Chance took a moment to answer. “No, Chase doesn’t think that. Chase thinks he knows that.”

  “But it was an accident.” The worst kind of accident imaginable but an accident nonetheless.

  “Like our mother’s death, like our grandmother’s before her, and a few more back down the line.” Chance tipped his hat so low I could barely make out his eyes. “Whether there’s a curse on our family or not from what a monster of a man named John Armstrong the First did to this land and these people doesn’t really matter.”

  “Why doesn’t that matter? Of course it matters.”

  “It doesn’t matter because curse or no curse, Chase believes there’s one. That’s where the power rests—in the belief in existence, not the actual existence.” My forehead had just begun to crease when Chance saw the signs of my confusion. “Take the whole God thing. Whether there is some higher power up there or not is beside the point because people believe there is. There’s power in what a person believes, and it has nothing to do with if whatever that belief is founded on is real or not.”

  I shook my head, not sure if he was making so much sense it should have been illegal or if he was blowing so much smoke it should have been just as illegal. “So you’re telling me that whether there actually is a curse on the men of your family is beside the point because Chase believes there’s one and that this curse was responsible for killing his wife?”

  Chance shifted in his saddle. “Chase isn’t the only one who believes in the curse.”

  “Yeah, I know John does too, but just because two people believe in a curse doesn’t mean I’m going to believe in it.” I snapped the cup off the Thermos and twisted off the cap. I poured a cup and handed it to Chance. Steam billowed from it in warm clouds.

  He raised the cup in thanks then took a long drink. “John and Chase aren’t the only ones.”

  My eyebrows pushed into my stocking cap. “Are you trying to get me to believe that Conn believes in this curse? Conn? The guy who is so not superstitious he doesn’t even jokingly knock on wood? Yeah, not buying it.”

  Chance took another drink from the cup before handing it back to me. “Fine, don’t take my word for it. Ask Conn for yourself. Or don’t. Doesn’t matter to me because I know he does.”

  I gave him a look before lifting the cup to my lips. I usually took cream and sugar in my coffee, but whenever I rode with Chance, I always made it black. For some reason, being out on a horse, surrounded by unending valleys and towering mountains, required one to drink black coffee. It was an official rule of the Wild West, I was sure.

  “Okay, so John, Chase, and Conn believe in this curse,” I said. “But you’re the most level-headed of the bunch. Your take on the curse thing is equal to all three of theirs.” I’d finished pouring my second cup before I realized Chance was being too silent, sitting too still in his saddle. My eyes cut up to his. From the look on his face, I already knew the answer. “You don’t believe in it, right? Please, for the love of God or no God, don’t tell me you believe in some ancient curse that people want to blame for the tragic deaths in your family’s past.”

  One of Chance’s eyes closed. “I could tell you that, but that doesn’t mean it would be true.”

  “Unbelievable.” I threw my head back and stared at the
lightening sky. “You really believe that some curse John Armstrong the First claimed some powerful Shoshone medicine man tied to your family after dear John the First massacred his tribe is what’s responsible for killing your mom and Jenny?” I blinked at him a few times. “Because I’m all for a good story told around the fire in your family’s living room, but I thought that was as far as that story spread. I didn’t realize any of you, other than your dad, actually believed in it.”

  Our horses were getting impatient, so we coaxed them ahead at a slow enough pace that I could still drink my coffee without spilling it. Too much. When a drop or two fell on Dark Horse’s shoulder he snorted his indignant remark.

  “We’ve lived through the death of our mother, who was killed by the only strike of lightning recorded in the area that night. We’ve lived through hearing the stories of how our grandmother died, our great-grandmother died, and the wife of the man who started it all died. None of them died of natural causes or old age. Or even because of sickness. They didn’t die of heart disease or cancer. They died in nature, from nature, on the same land that battle was fought one hundred fifty years ago.” Chance exhaled, and his back curled forward some, as if a heavy weight had just been dumped on it. “And now we’ve witnessed what happened when Chase married the woman he loved.”

  “But she was killed on a highway, a road far away from Red Mountain.” I wanted to argue with him until I’d proven to him and myself that the curse wasn’t real. It was just some legend created to elicit a bit of fear in those who knew of it.

  “She was killed on a highway on land that, before the road was laid, belonged to the Armstrongs before they sold it to the state.”

  My eyes closed. Just because Chance said the curse was real didn’t make it so. Just because he believed didn’t mean I had to. “Oh my God. That’s why Chase looks like he was the one who killed his wife? Because he actually believes he did?” When Chance just clucked Honor forward a bit faster, I added, “Right?”

  Chance’s head tipped back, but he didn’t look at me. “Yeah. Chase thinks that by falling for her and marrying her, he’s responsible for Jenny’s death.”

  “But that’s insane!” I hadn’t meant to shout, and even though I hadn’t startled our horses, a few in the herd jumped.

  “It’s not insane if you’ve grown up being told and believing what we do.” Chance’s voice was quieter than usual, probably hoping he would rub off on me.

  Like a pattern of dominos, realization after realization fell into place, toppling one over the next until. . . “That’s why he dated all of those lame-brains, so he’d never be in danger of falling for one of them.” I’d had a conversation with Conn in the barn over a decade ago, and he’d said something similar about Chase and his superficial relationships. “That’s why Conn did the same.”

  “And because he was an ass,” Chance muttered.

  “And that’s why you’ve . . .” I looked at Chance. A man in his twenties, a hard-working, loyal man who was easy on the eyes and knew more about love and compassion than people twice his age, a man in his prime. He was single and always had been. To my knowledge, he’d never had a companion or a lover or even a bed-warmer like his brothers had. “That’s why you’ve never settled down, isn’t it? Because you’re afraid some ancient curse will kill whatever woman you love and marry?”

  Chance didn’t sigh. He didn’t pause before answering. Instead, it looked as if the weight that had just strapped itself to his back lifted. “If it’s taken you this long to figure that out, then I must be doing a pretty good job of disguising it.”

  I took a moment to think about it. “I guess I always just assumed you were too busy between school and work to date.”

  Chance motioned toward the herd. “That has definitely always played a part in it. You saw what my schedule was like when you lived here, and it’s only gotten worse. I work a minimum of twelve hours a day, six, sometimes seven, days a week. I can barely find time to refuel my truck, let alone date, and if I can’t fit in a date, then how could I ever find the time to be in a committed relationship?”

  We’d been riding next to the herd for a while, at least five minutes, with no end in sight. From our vantage point, it seemed like we were in the midst of an endless sea of horses. The sun had risen high enough that its warmth was cutting through the morning air. The heavy canvas coat Chance had dug out of storage somewhere and hung on my doorknob this morning was suddenly too hot.

  I pulled each button loose, exhaling when I felt a rush of cool air blanket me. “I’m just putting this out there—and feel free to throw it back in my face if I’m wrong—but do you think you’ve created so much work for yourself and taken on such an active role at the ranch instead of just hiring a few extra hands because it gives you an excuse to not date, which might lead to a committed relationship, which might very well lead to marriage?”

  “Yes, of course that’s one of the reasons why I keep so busy,” he said. “If I don’t have any idle time, I can’t think about what I want but can never have. If I didn’t keep my day so busy with chores I’m asleep before my head hits the pillows, I’d have time on my hands to think about the woman I care about but will have to watch some other man marry.” Chance’s head shook. “I can’t afford idle time. You’ve seen what it’s done to Chase and Conn. The last guy in the world I expected to settle down fell in love, got married, and lost his wife in the span of a year. The other one keeps people at such a distance he’s forgotten what it’s like to care or be cared for. I don’t want either option, so I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing: pre-sunrise to post-sunset.”

  I nodded but only to show I’d heard him and respected what he’d said, not because I believed for one second that the woman he might be tempted to marry would be snuffed out by some curse. “Wait, you said ‘the woman I care about’ in a present-tense kind of way. Is there someone you care about? Someone you’d be with if you didn’t live in fear of some curse?” When Chance looked at me with expectation on his face, I added, “And if you weren’t so busy running a ranch so you can give every last penny to charitable causes. Underachiever,” I finished with a mumble.

  Chance smiled, seeming mollified as he unbuttoned his heavy jacket. “I didn’t mean that in a present-tense kind of way, but in more of an in-theory kind of way.”

  “So there’s never been someone you’ve thought about in that way? Never anyone you found yourself caring about despite your ironclad will and schedule?”

  Chance looked off, focusing on some distant spot. It took me a moment to realize he was staring at Red Mountain. How could one place hold so much power over four of the strongest men I’d ever known?

  “There’s always someone, Scout. Even if I didn’t want there to be, there’s always someone.”

  “Who?” I asked, steering Dark Horse a bit closer to Honor.

  “If I wanted you, or anyone for that matter, to know specifically who, I wouldn’t have just replied with a vague ‘someone,’” he said.

  I blew out an exasperated breath. “But you’re the forthcoming, honest one.”

  “About all things except this. A person is entitled to one secret at least.”

  I leaned down so I could look up at his face under the bill of his hat. “Back there, you were preaching to me about not letting the threats of death overtake your life, and now you’re telling me you’re letting something as unlikely, unfounded, and unproven as this curse keep you from spending your life with her? Whoever this ‘her’ might be? You’re really going to let something like that keep you from love?”

  Chance’s hazel eyes were purposefully avoiding me, probably because I could almost see through him like Conn could see through me. “Of course I am.”

  “Of course you are?” I repeated, the words falling heavy between us. “Why?”

  Chance distracted himself with adjusting Honor’s reins. “If you believed what I did—what all of us do—and witnessed the actual events or heard the stories of the women who had all b
een killed prematurely and tragically—even if you believed in it just barely—could you ever do that to someone you loved? Could you let yourself love them and let them love you while knowing that that love might be a death sentence?” Chance’s eyes drifted to meet mine. “Would you let yourself love someone if you were convinced it would be your love that would kill them?”

  “I don’t believe in the curse, so that’s a baseless question.”

  “Forget about the curse. That wasn’t a part of my question. What I asked you was if you knew your love would be what killed someone, would you still choose to be with that person?”

  I gave it a moment’s thought for Chance, not because I wanted to spend much time thinking about such a gruesome topic. “Yeah, I think I would. If I loved someone enough and they loved me back. . . We’re all going to die at some point, right?”

  Chance nodded. “We’re all going to die at some point, yeah, but if you choose the option I did, you’ll never get close enough to let that person know you love her, and she’ll be able to go on, fall in love with someone else, and live a much longer life with him.”

  I found myself studying Chance’s hands—specifically, his left hand resting on his thigh. If he stuck with what he was saying, that meant he’d never have a gold band on that hand. Chance Armstrong, the guy who defined marriage material, would never exchange vows with the woman he loved. He’d live and die a bachelor. It might not have been the saddest thing I’d ever realized, but it was close.

  “I can’t decide if that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard or the least,” I said as I pulled off my stocking cap. Now that the sun was up, it was getting warmer by the minute.

  “It’s probably a little of both,” he said.

  I ran my fingers through my hair—he’d been right; it was a rat’s nest—and moved on to another sobering topic. “So we haven’t had much time to talk about your dad. I know it isn’t good—I can see that and could tell by your voice when you left me that message a few days ago—but what’s the prognosis? How much longer does he have?”