Stomach nothing more than a pit, he marched back to where Cora stood. “I’ll tell you the truth.” He jutted out his chin. “I bought a small bottle of laudanum right before I saw you at the café with that weasel. I planned on saving it until after I left Weatherford and headed back East.” His tongue scraped his mouth like sandpaper.
Her gaze scoured his face. “And where is the bottle now?”
His eyes narrowed. “I have to give you proof? You can’t take my word for it?”
She hung her head. “I don’t know.”
Might as well have rammed a spear through his chest. “The bottle and every drop of the poison is in the pile of waste beneath the latrine.”
Her head jerked up.
“Nine days’ worth of waste, to be exact.” Acid rose in the back of his throat. “I poured it out, without touching a single drop, after that beautiful speech you made up in the loft about how you would stick by me, and how we were in this together. But Iguess I misunderstood the context. It just applied to cattle, not life. And only as long as you could have evidence.”
She flinched as if he’d struck her.
He squeezed his eyes closed. Maybe if he’d shut his mouth and cool his temper, she’d find a way to trust him. The pottery shard crunched beneath his boot. He picked up what was left of it, hauled his arm back, and hurled it away from them as far as he could. If only he could do the same with her doubts.
“Cora.” He struggled to contain the torrent raging through him and keep his voice quiet and steady. “I thought about taking the medicine. For an hour, the cravings almost got the better of me. I was feeling lower than mud after what happened with the cattle. I bought the poison, but the lid stayed on until I poured it down the outhouse hole. I never touched a drop. I swear to you. After the love and trust you showed me in the loft, I knew I didn’t want anything to do with the medicine. I threw it away, but I have no evidence. Only my word.”
Her gaze shifted to the horizon. Bees buzzed around them. She took off her hat and crunched it in her grip. “I want to believe you.” Her voice quivered.
“But you don’t know if you can. After all this time, you don’t know if you can trust me.” With a heavy sigh, he met her gaze. His heart clenched. In her eyes lurked what he’d thought he’d see there the day he told her about the loss of the cattle, but he’d been spared, until now. The loss of respect… Shoulders sagging, he lifted his chin and walked off, his chest hollow.
CHAPTER 35
That evening, Ben ate his dinner off a tin plate in the loft, sitting with his legs draped over the side of the bunk.
Charlie sat beside him on a stool. “You’re not feeling well? Just like Cora?” The boy frowned, his gray eyes only slightly lighter than the brewing clouds outside. His father’s eyes, a father who had hardly acknowledged him, according to Cora.
“No, I’m not feeling good.” Maybe he’d never feel well again. He picked over his food. The argument with Cora, the disappointment in her face when she looked at him, had shriveled his appetite to the size of a prune. “But don’t worry. Tomorrow morning, we’ll still head into Weatherford and get our cattle. On the way there, I’ll tell you what you need to do in order to help handle them. As long as you promise you’ll be careful with your arm. That cast doesn’t mean you’re ready to go lassoing and wrangling yet.”
“I know.” Charlie rolled his palm-sized ball around in his hand. “But I can hold the reins in my teeth. I tried it once.”
“That’s something I don’t want to see anytime soon.”
“But maybe I should practice lassoing one-handed.”
“Not tonight. I need to rest.” Ben ate a bite of chicken. Cora had killed a chicken for him again, but no amount of hospitality could erase the words said in the garden. “Why don’t you grab my saddlebags off the table there? I have something for you.”
Charlie hopped up and pulled his worn suspender over his shoulder. The boy needed a new set of clothes.
Ben couldn’t spare the money now, but he’d send some with a portion specifically marked for Charlie to have a new outfit. He set his plate down as Charlie lugged the heavy leather pouch over.
“I found it on the trail in Palo Pinto.” Ben dug the foot-long object, wrapped in a dirty shirt, out from amongst his extra set of trousers and drawers.
Charlie cast the cloth aside and gasped. “A buffalo horn.” He held the bone-hard object and grinned, running his fingers over the dark-brown curve, all the way to the pointy tip. “Did you kill the buffalo?”
“The animal was long dead. I bought the horn from a trader. But I figured this could tide you over until you get to hunt one someday.”
“Maybe you and me can go hunting next spring.” He picked up the dirty shirt and began polishing the dull, nail-like material.
Ben’s chest tightened. He had to tell Charlie the news. “We need to talk.”
“We are talking.” Charlie spit on the cloth and rubbed the horn. “What’s the knob here? Is that where it connected to the bone?”
“We’ll talk about the horn later.” Ben exhaled. “I have something serious to tell you.”
Charlie blinked.
