CHAPTER 10
When Jake’s eyes opened early the next morning, he had to take a couple of seconds to remember where he was. Then he looked at Sara as she slept peacefully beside him and wanted to kiss her awake but didn’t want to risk spending another hour in bed.
He slowly slid out of the bed, picked up his discarded skivvies and his boots then tiptoed out of the bedroom. Once he reached his bedroom, he hurriedly pulled on his underpants, then opened a drawer and began yanking out his clothes. He dressed quickly and after pulling on his boots, he hurried to the kitchen and after going out he back door, trotted along the brick path to the privy.
As he stepped along the hard surface, he smiled when he recalled why it was there. He was ten years old, and his mother had just returned from using the small house after a passing thunderstorm. His father was at the breakfast table when she entered and without saying anything, she turned to the cookstove, exposing the back of her mud-covered dress.
His father hadn’t said a word as he drank his coffee. So, when his mother set her cup of coffee on the table, instead of sitting down, she turned and sat on his father’s lap, transferring some of her mud onto the front of his shirt.
She then stood, picked up her coffee and walked down the hallway to change. His father still didn’t say anything, but two days later, the safe walkway to the privy was completed. The privy had moved a few times since then, but it was always one step away from the brick path.
When he returned to the kitchen, he started a fire in the cookstove, then washed and shaved at the sink. After drying his smooth face, Jake stepped down the hallway expecting Sara to be stirring, but when he reached the big bedroom, he smiled when he realized she was still sleeping. He had to admit that he’d kept her awake a little longer than she’d probably expected, so he let her sleep and headed for the office.
He soon opened the door and saw his father’s dirty Stetson on the desk. When he reached the desk and picked it up, he could tell that Sara had tried to clean it as best she could, but it was beyond salvage. He had planned to bury it with his father anyway, but as he looked at the hat, he decided to keep part of it.
He set the hat back onto the desk and turned to look at the rifle rack. His Winchester ’76 now occupied the spot that had been used by the Martini-Henry and Jake wondered why Dave had taken it. Sara had captured his complete attention when he found her in the big bed, so he hadn’t spent any more time trying to figure out that question.
He half-sat on the desk as he stared at the gun rack.
“Where are you now, Dave?” he asked quietly.
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If he knew the answer to his private question, Jake would have been more than just surprised. Dave Forrest was having breakfast in the same town where Jake had been six days earlier. He even had a room at the Flanagan Arms Hotel where Jake had spent his one night in Helena. With more than fifteen hundred dollars of Elliott money, he had no intention of returning to the Elk, either.
Dave was relieved yet frustrated. He had come so very close to his prize; not once, but twice.
What he’d written in the letter he left behind was partially true. He had worked on a small ranch with his brother near Judith Creek in Meagher County. His brother’s young, pretty wife had certainly attracted him, but he soon discovered that she wasn’t receptive to the idea of an affair. She told her husband and he’d given Dave half of the ranch’s money and ordered him to leave.
He’d drifted north from ranch to ranch, but never stayed very long. At each of the spreads, he’d improved his behavior and by the time he was hired by Chet Elliott, he’d learned to disguise his ambition. He’d engineered a very different personality that was merely a well-constructed façade.
When he started working at the Elk, it didn’t take long for him to notice the divide between Jake and his father. He worked hard to impress Chet but worked even harder to befriend Jake. It was all part of his ultimate goal of owning the Elk.
After he’d been made foreman, things got even better. He was making good money and had his own house. He spent more and more time with Jake and had become his friend and confidant. He had to walk a fine line between earning Jake’s friendship and trust while avoiding angering his father to the point of firing him.
But then he made his first mistake. He accepted a teenager’s opinion of his father. It wasn’t much different from his own anyway. Chet Elliott was a cold, hard man who never displayed any emotion, so Dave believed that Chet treated his wife the same way, if not worse.
He’d been infatuated with Rose Elliott almost from his first day, but he’d learned his lesson at his and his brother’s ranch. His was a long-range plan anyway, so whenever he was close to losing control, he visited one of the two brothels in town. But it was always Rose Elliott who inspired him. She was not only a handsome woman; she was elegant and good-hearted.
For eight long years, Dave waited for the right moment. Then an opportunity dropped into his lap just a few months too early. Jake wasn’t going to muster out of the army for a few months, but when Dave suddenly found himself alone on the ranch with just Chet and Rose, he knew he’d have to act.
He’d
