brought others running. Adam was thefirst to reach the porch. The first thing he saw was Lily weeping in Ben’s arms. The quick hitch in his gut had almost as much to do with that as what he saw spread on the porch.
Instinctively he stepped up, laid a hand on her arm, soothing when she jerked. “It’s all right, Lily.”
“Adam, I saw . . .” Nausea churned a storm in her stomach.
“I know. You go on inside now. Look at me,” he murmured, carefully easing her away from Ben and leading her around and toward the door. “Willa’s going to take you inside.”
“Look, I’ve got—”
“Take care of your sister, Will,” Adam interrupted, and taking her hand, placed it firmly over Lily’s.
Willa lost the battle when Lily’s hand trembled under hers. With a mumbled oath she tugged. “Come on. You need to sit down.”
“I saw—”
“Yeah, I know what you saw. Forget it.” Willa closed the door with a decisive click, leaving the men to ponder the headless corpse on the porch.
“Christ, Adam, is that a cat?” Jim Brewster swiped a hand over his mouth. “Somebody sure did a number on it.”
Adam glanced back, studying each man in turn: Jim, face pale, Adam’s apple bobbing; Ham tight-lipped; Pickles with a rifle over his shoulder. There was Billy Vincent, barely eighteen and all eager eyes, and Wood Book, stroking his silky black beard.
It was Wood who spoke, his voice calm. “Where’s the head? Don’t see it there.” He stepped closer. It was Wood who oversaw the planting, tending, and harvesting of grain, and his wife, Nell, who cooked for the ranch hands. He smelled of Old Spice and peppermint candy. Adam knew him to be a steady man, as implacable as the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Whoever did this might like trophies.” Adam’s words stopped the murmurs. Only Billy continued to babble.
“Jee-sus Christ, you ever seen anything like that? Spreadthe guts all over hell and back, didn’t he? Now who’d do that to some stupid cat? What do you think—”
“Shut the hell up, Billy, you asshole.” The weary order came from Ham. He sighed once, took out his pack of smokes. “Get on back to supper, all of you. Nothing for you to do here now but gawk like a bunch of old ladies at a fashion show.”
“Don’t have much appetite,” Jim murmured, but he and the others drifted back.
“Sure is a sorry mess,” Ham commented. “Guess a kid might do this. Wood’s boys are a little wild, but they’re not mean. You ask me, it takes mean to do this. But I’ll talk to them.”
“Ham, mind if I ask if you know what the men have been up to for the past hour?”
Ham studied Ben through a haze of smoke. “Been here and there, washing up for supper and the like. I haven’t had my eye on them, if that’s what you’re asking. The men that work here don’t go cutting up a cat for frolic.”
Ben merely nodded. It wasn’t his place to ask more, and they both knew it. “It had to have happened in the last hour. I’ve been here awhile, and this wasn’t here before.”
Ham sucked in more smoke, nodded. “I’ll talk to Wood’s boys.” He gave one last look at what lay on the porch. “Sure is a sorry mess,” he repeated, then walked away.
“You’ve had two animals torn up in a week, Adam.”
Adam crouched down, laid his fingertip on the bloody fur. “His name was Mike. He was old, mostly blind in one eye, and should have died in his sleep.”
“I’m sorry about that.” Ben understood the affection, even the intimacy, with animals well and dropped a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “I think you’ve got a real problem here.”
“Yeah. Wood’s boys didn’t do this. They’ve got no harm in them. And they weren’t up in the hills slaughtering a steer either.”
“No, I wouldn’t say they were. How well do you know your men?”
Adam lifted his gaze. Whatever the grief, it was hard,direct. “The men aren’t my territory. The horses are.” Still warm, he thought as he stroked the