Calder Pride by Janet Dailey Read Free Book Online

lent a hand to the killing or butchering, which made it all right, she supposed, her lips pursing in sour sarcasm.
    “I don’t expect you to beg for his help, Neil.” If there was any begging to be done, she would do it without hesitation. Rollie, her youngest, was her baby. Where he was concerned, pride be damned. “You just explain the situation to him, tell him what the lawyer told us, and ask if he’ll help.”
    “He won’t,” he grumbled.
    “We’ll see.” Determination pushed the point of her chin a fraction higher.
    He slowed the pickup as they entered the main ranch yard. The swirling road dust dissipated, leaving only the roll of dark smoke trailing from the pickup’s exhaust pipe. Emma sat a little straighter and took great interest in her surroundings. In all her years in Montana, this marked her first visit to the headquarters of the Triple C Ranch. She had heard it described often enough, but this was the first she had seen it with her own eyes.
    She scanned the sprawling cluster of buildings—a mix of barns, machine sheds, small warehouses, welding shop, gas station, commissary store, and modern houses for the married help. All of it was neat and tidy. She thought of their own big old drafty farmhouse with its leaky roof and sides that badly needed a coat of paint. The farm was not a place she could point to with pride and say, This is our home. It was a place of hardship and physical labor with little monetary reward and a future that promised more of the same. She didn’t blame Lath for leaving it as soon as he could, rarely returning to visit.
    Emma looked, at last, at the two-story house atop the commanding knoll. With its pillared front porch, it stood big and white and grand against the blue Montana sky. Two people approached the porch, an older man and a young, dark-haired woman.
    “There’s no more need to wonder whether Calder’ll be home or not. That’s him and his daughter walking up to the house now.” Emma nodded at the pair.
    “I see ’em,” Neil said, a trace of dread in his muttered reply.
    Ignoring him, she studied the two, who now waited at the bottom of the porch steps, watching the ancient pickup coming toward them. Both were dressed in typical ranch gear—boots, jeans, and work shirts.
    She touched the cotton fabric of the plain house dress she wore, a floral-patterned thing faded from too many washings. She had been right to wear it. She no longer had any doubt about that, although she knew Neil thought they should have worn their Sunday clothes. In Emma’s mind, her good navy dress and pillbox hat had been the right thing to wear to meet with Rollie’s court-appointed attorney, but not Chase Calder. It wasn’t something she could explain, but she was certain of it just the same.
    When the pickup clattered to a stop a few yards from the house, Emma raised a quick hand to her hair, checking for any wayward wisps. Her waist-length hair remained her one vanity. Every night she brushed it the standard one hundred strokes, and every morning she plaited it into braids and wound them in a coronet atop her head. Years ago it had lost its glossy chestnut color and turned a polished pewter gray, but that hadn’t lessened the care she took of it or the pride she took in it.
    She gave the stubborn pickup door a hard push with her shoulder, then climbed out and walked around to the driver’s side to help her husband. His arthritis always stiffened him when he sat too long, and with his twisted hands, opening the truck door was difficult for him. Long used to his grunts andgrimaces of pain, she paid no attention to them as she assisted him from the cab and kept a bracing arm around him once he stood upright on the ground. She stayed at his side when he hobbled away from the truck toward the porch steps and the waiting Chase Calder and his daughter. She saw, with satisfaction, the way both Calder and his daughter watched her husband, noting the effort it took him to walk and the