Lilli felt guilty at having so much, guilty because she hadn’t given a thought to the families she had lived among with Stefan. There had been a vague awareness that the drought and the grasshoppers had hurt a lot of families, but she hadn’t let her mind dwell on it. But the doctor’s remark reminded her of winters when she had been hungry, with little in the house to eat.
“Simon, before you go, stop at the commissary and take a supply of food with you,” she urged. “If Kreuger asks you where you got it, tell him the church is distributing it. Take food for other needy families in the area, too.”
He nodded briefly, a faint smile of understanding showing on his mouth. She knew most of those people and felt she owed them something, a brother’s keeper sort of thing. She began playing with the baby, and Simon let the subject end with her request.
Senator Bulfert was a weekend guest at the ranch, stopping on his way to Helena. On this occasion, he was alone, unaccompanied by his aides. It seemed to change the tenor of the visit. The usually loquacious and loud politician appeared subdued and less talkative.
At the conclusion of dinner, Webb noticed the senator reaching into his vest pocket, bulging with cigars. Aware that Lilli didn’t like the smell of cigar smoke, he suggested they adjourn to the den for coffee. Lilli excused herself from joining them to check on the baby.
Webb poured a glass of whiskey for each of them and passed the florid-faced man one. There was a flash of the man’s professionally jovial smile as he lifted his glass in a silent toast.
“Better enjoy this while you can,” he declared. “Those Temperance ladies are going to get their wish.” The senator breathed out a disgusted sound and stared at the whiskey he swirled in the glass. “All those saloons Carry Nation busted up in Butte. Thought that movement for Prohibition would end when she died. Hell! It turned her into a martyr.”
“The Congress isn’t really going to outlaw liquor.” The proposition was too unrealistic.
“It’s all part of this moral fervor that’s sweeping the country because of the war,” he grunted, then eyed Webb with a twinkling look. “I hope you got some friends in Canada to keep your cabinet stocked for personal use.”
“I know a couple people.” Webb smiled. “We don’t sell as much cattle to the reservations up there as we used to, but we’ve still got connections.”
“Good.” He sipped at the whiskey, then gave Webb a cigar and cut off the tip of one for himself. “Giles is dead.” The statement came with no advance warning.
The match flame was halfway to his cigar. Webb stopped, taking the cigar from his mouth to stare at the politician. “Bull?” Disbelief ringed his voice. “When?”
“Three months ago, before Christmas. Just found out about it myself.” He puffed on the cigar. “Never was the same after he came back. Started drinking heavy and stopped hanging around with the old crowd. That’s why it took so long to hear about it, I guess. He’d a made a good politician—a big, lumbering ox, but smart as a whip,” he concluded and swallowed another gulp of whiskey, as if in a silent toast to the man.
Webb did the same and watched the flames crackling in the fireplace. Since his mother’s death, there had been no word from Bull. Now there wouldn’t be any.
“What do you know about this attorney, Doyle Pettit?” With a narrowed look. Bulfert eyed Webb through the smoke of his cigar.
Webb’s head came up, some instinct telling him this was the purpose behind the senator’s visit. “I’ve known Doyle all my life. He took over the TeePee Ranch when his father, Tom Pettit, died about ten years back, and he owns a couple businesses in town. Why?” He was scant with his information until he learned the reason for the question.
“I had a look at the property rolls a couple of weeks ago. He’s got title to, or claim to, nearly three-quarters of a million acres.”
The size of Pettit’s holdings surprised Webb, but he didn’t show it. He finished lighting his cigar with a new match, shook out the flame, and tossed the dead match into the fireplace. Doyle had amassed a lot of land very quietly—through the bank he owned, obviously, buying up the claims of homesteaders who had given up. He remembered Doyle’s land scheme of buy and sell, buy and sell.
He looked at the map on the wall. Doyle Pettit. That fun-loving, always smiling boyhood friend who laughed and rarely fought. He’d always been something of a show-off, buying the first automobile in the area and wearing spiffy clothes, free with his money, buying drinks for his friends and quick to loan a ten-spot to a hard-up man. Doyle had always managed to become the center of attention. Quietly, so quietly, he had obtained control of nearly three-quarters of a million acres—almost the size of the Triple C.
The man had always been something of a peacemaker, never liking arguments or hard feelings. He rode the fence, never taking sides. The ranchers regarded him as Tom Pettit’s son, one of them, and the drylanders looked on him as their friend.
The longer Webb looked at the map, the more uneasy he felt. It made no sense to think Doyle’s massive land acquisitions were a threat. They’d known each other too many years. They hadn’t always been close, but Doyle just wasn’t the kind to move against another man. That wasn’t his way. Yet Webb was bothered by the discovery of how big Doyle had grown in such a short period of time.
But his comment to the politician revealed he’d known of it. “When this boom started, Pettit began speculating in land,” he admitted.
“If this drought keeps up”—a wryness touched the expression on the senator’s face—“he’s going to find out he owns land in a dozen other states. The wind’s blowing away what he’s got here.”
Webb’s mouth twitched in silent and bitter agreement. Inwardly he was thinking, Thank God for the grass that covered Calder land and held the soil together.
The heavy buffalo robe was bunched around his chin, warming the air Simon breathed, his head bobbing in sleep. His black medical
bag sat on the floorboards of the buggy near his feet, with the buffalo robe draped over it as well. Even though automobiles were a faster form of transportation, Simon Bardolph preferred his horse and buggy. It might be slower, but there were fewer breakdowns; it could travel cross-country over terrain an auto couldn’t traverse; and if Simon fell asleep, as he usually did, he could be sure of the horse staying on the road and not crashing into some ditch.
The ewe-necked gelding stopped in front of the shanty where a small light glowed in the window. It turned its head and whickered quietly at the man sleeping in the buggy. The sound stirred no response. With almost a disgusted snort, the horse laid back its ears and launched a kick at the buggy, jolting its owner awake.
Simon opened his eyes with a frowning reluctance and looked around for a blank minute before recognizing Kreuger’s place. He pushed aside the buffalo robe and shivered at the early-evening coldness. A horse blanket was stowed in the rear of the buggy. He shook it out and draped it over the gelding, tossed some grain into a nose bag, and slipped the bit out of its mouth before putting the grain bag on. After the horse was taken care of, he lifted his black satchel out of the buggy and walked to the shanty.
Franz Kreuger opened the door when Simon knocked. The smell of sickness was in the small and drafty shack. Simon supposed he would never get used to the odor. The cloth curtain that usually partitioned off the sleeping quarters had been removed to let the heat from the cookstove reach to the farthest corner where the bunks were stacked.
Simon had called on the family too many times to waste his energy exchanging pleasantries with Franz Kreuger, because the gesture wouldn’t be returned. As he shrugged out of his coat, he looked over at the two older children lying in their parents’ bed, and his third patient in a lower bunk. A gaunt and hollow-eyed Helga Kreuger was sitting on the edge of the bunk, attempting to spoon broth into the slack mouth of her son.