Chapter 1 – The One Left Behind
"Whatta ya mean he's gone?"
He'd heard the words, and technically he knew exactly what they meant. He just didn't know what they meant. When he went to sleep last night at Althea's his brother had been here at the house in his room, asleep, he thought. When he returned to Ben's this afternoon Lily Mae gave him some kind of explanation that involved the words 'Bart', 'left today' and 'gone.'
"Why didn't he wait for me to get home?" Bret asked, and came as close to scowling as Lily Mae had ever seen.
"Why weren't you at home to begin with?" Lily Mae shot back at him, and Bret stared down at the floor. Once he'd started sleeping over at Althea Taylor's, Lily Mae had been out of sorts with him. Since that had been going on for several weeks, she'd been unhappy with him for quite a while. And now his brother had left for parts unknown without saying one word about going without him.
Well, he reasoned, what could he expect? Althea was their friend Fred Taylor's widow, and he and Bart had run a cattle drive for her not long ago. Along the way, and without expecting it to happen, she and Bret fell in love. By the time the drive was over and they were all back in Little Bend, Texas, Althea had asked him to move in with her, and for all intents and purposes he had.
Even stranger than that, Bart and Pappy had been involved in some kind of discussion or conflict or long-time-in-coming reconciliation that he had been excluded from. The exclusion was his own fault, he was told, because he wanted to be with the woman he loved and hadn't paid enough attention when Pappy tried to include him in whatever it was that was going on. For the first time Bret felt what Bart had mistakenly perceived his whole life – like the outsider, the kid with his face pressed up against the glass looking in on a happy family scene while being omitted from it. It was not a good feeling.
What made it worse was the fact that Bret knew what he was missing out on – the story of Pappy and their deceased mother, Belle Maverick; their entire history. When he asked to hear what was left in the tale Pappy had told him "No;" he couldn't hear the end if he'd missed the beginning. Bret had sighed in frustration and gone back to Althea's, where he'd been for the past two days. Until this afternoon. With his return to his Uncle Ben's house, the place of residence for all five of the Maverick men, he'd set off the current firestorm simply by asking where his brother was.
Just as Lily Mae was getting ready to yell at him again, something she'd done only once or twice before in almost twenty-five years, his father came around the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. "Son," he said in greeting, and took up his normal seat at the supper table. This gave Lily Mae an excuse to dispense with Bret and fix Beauregard a plate. Soon Ben and Cousin Beau appeared, and Lily Mae could ignore him completely until everyone was finished eating. She didn't ask him if he wanted anything to eat and she didn't fix him a plate. Lily Mae really was mad at him.
"Can anybody please tell me where my brother went?" he pleaded. All he got was two Maverick heads shaking 'no' and a look of sympathy from his father.
"Bart didn't tell anyone where he was headed," Pappy finally explained. "He didn't want anyone to follow him."
"You mean he didn't want me to follow him." Bret wasn't happy about it, and the displeasure could be heard in his voice.
Pappy looked right at him and patted the seat next to him. "Come sit down, Bret. Join us for supper."
Disgruntled or no, Bret knew an order when he heard one, even when it was phrased as an invitation. He sat. Pappy placed a hand on his shoulder, and there was something akin to pity in his voice. "That's right, son, he didn't want you to follow him. He wanted you an' me to spend some time together without him around."
"Why?" Bret asked. That didn't sound like his brother.
Beauregard looked at his firstborn and it almost pained him to give Bret an answer. But answer him he would. "Bart said you need to put yourself first for once and quit worryin' about him. He can take care of himself."
Bret shook his head. "That's just it, Pappy. Bart thinks he can take care a himself. Then he goes off and gets into somethin' that takes both of us ta get him out of."
Uncle Ben injected a thought. "Less you're part bloodhound you ain't gonna find him, boy. You know how your brother is when he don't wanna be found."
That was all too true. Bart was better at hiding his whereabouts than anyone he'd ever run across. Especially if he'd disappeared back down into Mexico, although that was less likely now that the Federales were still on the lookout for 'Rory Emory,' the persona Bart had assumed when he rescued Doralice Donovan from a certain hanging.
"Well then, son, I don't know what to tell ya. I have no idea where he went. That's the way he wanted it. Last thing he was gonna do before he left was go up and see your ma. Maybe he left somethin' up there."
Bret got up from the table. "Thanks Pappy. That's where I'm goin'. Been too long since I was up there anyway." Without so much as a backward glance at Lily Mae Bret left the room, and soon after they heard the front door close. Pappy looked over at the housekeeper and sighed.
"Don't do no good to be mad at him, Lily Mae. Ya know ya can't out-stubborn him."
Lily Mae snorted and shook her head. "Doesn't mean I have to be nice to him, either, Mr. Beau. He knows how I feel about him stayin' over with Althea Taylor at night."
Pappy had to chuckle at that one. "He's not ten years old anymore, Lily. He's a grown man, and she's a widow woman. They're gonna do what they're gonna do."
Bentley spoke up at last. "You're spinnin' your wheels, Lily Mae. They're only slightly further up the evolutionary scale than dogs in heat. Only one part a him doin' any thinkin' right now, and it ain't his brain."
"Pa!" Beau admonished his father for speaking what everybody was thinking.
Beauregard reached across the table and patted his nephew's arm. "That's alright, Beau, your Pa's right. Bret's in love, whatever that means, and he's not usin' the sense God gave him. He'll work it out or get killed tryin'."
"Mr. Beau!" Lily Mae said and blushed
"You know what I mean, Lily. He'll come to his senses eventually. They always do." Beauregard thought about Bart and his marriage to Caroline Crawford, then amended his remark. "Almost always."
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Bret got the funniest felling as he rode up to the little family graveyard on the hill. Almost like Momma was up there waiting for him, and had been for a while. He left his horse outside the burial ground and walked towards the graves, momma's and Aunt Abby's. There were two things on momma's grave; one was a bouquet of dead flowers. The other shook him all the way down to his toes. It was momma's Bible, the one that Bart had carried in his saddlebags as long as he could remember. "What are you doin' here?" Bret asked no one in particular, and the wind rustled through the desert willow leaves in answer. He picked up the Bible and found the note from his brother inside.
'I thought maybe you ought to have this for a while, Brother Bret,' the note read. "I know you'll take good care of it. I've marked some things you might want to read, or not as the case may be. I'll be fine, and I promise to stay out of trouble so you can take care of just you for a while. Pappy told me about the night he tried to – well, you know what he tried to do. Thank God you stopped him. What I've never told you is I tried to do the same thing, one night down in Mexico. I understand a lot about Pappy now, and much more about you and me and why we are the way we are. He's always done the best he could for us, Bret, and that's what I'm tryin' to do for you now. Give that little lady all you've got; she deserves it, and you do too. I'll see you soon. Always your little brother, Love, Bart.'
He folded the note up and put it between the pages of the Bible. He was stunned into silence. No wonder Bart never wanted to talk about Mexico. Bret finally understood, and couldn't imagine how desperate and alone his brother must have felt. And now Bart knew about Pappy. So much had changed in the last two or three years, and yet nothing had changed at all. He tucked the Bible under his arm and looked at Momma's marker. "You take care of him, Momma," he told her. "He rode off without me, and I can't stand the thought of him bein' alone out there. But he wants me to stay here with you for a while, and that's what I'm gonna do. So watch out for him, okay? Until I'm with him again?"
He put the Bible in his saddlebag and tipped his hat to his mother. "I'll be back soon. Remember what I asked?"
He rode down the hill from the graveyard but instead of turning towards the 'mansion', as Pappy called Ben's house, he headed for Althea's. Things had been in flux for weeks, with him torn first one way and then the other. It was time the two of them sat down and had a talk about what it was they wanted. If this was going to get any more serious than it already was, he needed to know. And it was time for them to make a decision about who was living where. He was tired of Lily Mae being mad at him.
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