Read Online This Calder Range by Janet Dailey - Free Book Online Page A

…” She hesitated, then reluctantly said, “I believe my husband did make a comment about the amount of ammunition your father wanted. He jokingly asked if he intended to start a war. Your father smiled and said only a small one.”
    Turning his face from her, Benteen swore savagely under his breath. He’d known the day was coming when his father’s situation would come to a head, but this wasn’t the way he had expected it to end.
    â€œPlease sit down and drink your coffee, Benteen,” Mrs. Pearce urged. “It’s getting cold. You’re probably hungry, too. Let me fix you something to eat.”
    â€œNo.” Impatience thinned the hard line of his mouth. He was irritated with her female belief that food could solve things and provide solace to something that was inconsolable.
    An inner rage made him leave the kitchen and the feminine attempts to comfort him. He didn’t want a soothing hand to ease the hot grief burning away hisnumbness. A seed of anger was growing inside him, and he wanted to feel it. Again he walked past Lorna as if she wasn’t there, and kept going until he reached the parlor.
    Lorna had expected Benteen to be upset, but not like this. She would have been shocked if he had cried, yet she thought he would show more emotion than that cold anger. Instead he’d built a wall around himself that shut her out. It hurt to think he didn’t want her, and that’s the impression he was giving. They were to be married. She was to be his wife. It was her duty to be at his side during times like these, to try to ease his pain.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Mother?” Her bewildered voice was quietly pitched. “He looks right through me and he was rude to you.”
    â€œDo you remember the puppy you had when you were little?” The understanding that came from experience and maturity was in her mother’s gentle expression. “It was kicked by a horse, and when you tried to help it, the puppy was in so much pain that it bit you. The puppy didn’t mean to hurt you but it didn’t know what it was doing.”
    â€œAre you trying to say that Benteen is like a wounded animal?” Lorna was taken aback by the suggestion.
    â€œI’m trying to say that his pain runs very deep,” her mother explained. “Men seem to think they have to hide such feelings—that we’ll think less of them if we see they can be vulnerable, too. Benteen doesn’t want to admit it, but he needs you, Lorna.” She silently encouraged her daughter to go to him.
    Lorna hesitated and finally accepted the risk of being rebuffed again. She didn’t have her mother’s insight into a man’s thinking, but it was something her mother had probably obtained after years of living with her father.
    When she entered the parlor, she saw Benteen standing next to the boxes of personal belongings that she and her mother had taken from his ranch. JuddBoston had given them permission to remove the personal articles from the house. They had kept them here for Benteen’s return.
    Lorna was struck by how old Benteen appeared. His sun-browned features looked haggard and drawn, showing an age that came from brutal experience rather than the accumulation of years. Even when the dirt and dust from the trail were washed away, it would still be there.
    Lorna felt dreadfully innocent and naive. How foolish she had been to think she knew the words that would comfort him, when Benteen had seen so much more than she had. What did she know about death and hardship? It had all happened on the periphery of her life.
    His dusty, lowcrowned hat was held at his side. The tight hold of his gloved fingers was curling the stained brim. He reached down to pick up the framed daguerreotype lying on top of the folded clothes and various other articles that had belonged to his father. Lorna crossed the room to stand slightly behind him. Her tenderly compassionate gaze