“Which is?”
“We get them all to market, your share will come to around fourteen hundred dollars. Maybe even more.”
Rufus’s eyes grew huge. “Is that much even possible?”
“Yes, sir, it is. That being said, I figure we should give each of these men a cut. They hired on for their wages, but we couldn’t have done this without them, and I’d like their help again.”
“You want to come back here, do this again?”
“I do.”
“So old Forester was right. You’re a cattleman in the making.”
“So are you.”
“That’s all I ever wanted to be since the first time I roped a steer,” Rufus confessed. “Fourteen hundred dollars. That’s a lot of money, Will.”
“It is. What are you going to do with it?”
“I don’t know. My mind doesn’t really work that way. Guess I never expected to have anything of my own really, except maybe a family.”
“Is that something you want?”
“Oh yeah. I got a young lady I’d like to marry.”
“Does she know that?” Will asked, letting the hint of a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.
“Oh, she knows, all right. Her name’s Candy. She loves me.”
“Is she soft in the head?”
“Soft in the head? No… why would you…?” Then Rufus’s smile came back. “Oh, I get it. You’re having a little fun with me. No, for your information, Candy is not soft in the head. Though she probably thinks that I think she is.”
“Why’s that?”
“I tried to talk her into quitting her job and leaving with me. Told her what good was freedom if she didn’t use it? Free or not, she’s still back at that house, slaving away, just like she always has.”
Suddenly, Will realized what Rufus was implying. “Does she work for…”
Rufus nodded, his face somber. “The Weatherspoons.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, my friend.”
“So am I. But we drive these cattle home, I’m gonna ask her to marry me. Then, we get them to market, maybe I’ll buy me a ranch like yours and hire folks to do all my work for me, walk around in fancy clothes.”
Will grinned. “A real gentleman rancher. Have a hot toddy for breakfast every morning.”
“Yeah,” Rufus laughed. “That’d be the life. Tell you the truth, Will, so long as Candy’ll marry me and we got food on the table, I don’t care where we live. I’ll be happy.”
“Well, with your share of the take, you should have no problem doing that,” Will said. “In fact?—”
“Hold it right there,” a man in the darkness shouted. “We got you surrounded.”
CHAPTER 28
Instinctively, Will rolled backward off the stone he’d been sitting on, away from the dying embers, and scooped up his short-barreled scattergun.
An instant later, Rufus was on the ground beside him.
