Читать книгу More Than A Cowboy - Peggy Nicholson - Страница 11

THE NEXT TIME Adam saw her was the last night of the drive.

Following a century-old tradition, the combined herd of all the Trueheart ranches arrived on the summer range at sundown. The cowboys held the cows overnight at Big Rock Meadow. Come morning, the best riders would show off their mounts’ cutting skills. The cattle would be sorted by brand, then driven east or west across the foothills, to their own ranch’s grazing allotments.

Low, laughing voices rumbled around the campfire, punctuated by the occasional satisfied belch. Tonight was the cowboys’ final chance to savor Whitie and Willie’s chuckwagon cooking. Grilled steaks and barbecued beans and cornbread tonight, then tomorrow—and for the rest of the summer—it would be bachelor fare cooked in their own solitary camps.

This was their last night to pull a prank, swap a yarn or tell a joke to an appreciative audience, before they rode their separate trails. Starting tomorrow, company would be scant and seldom, not that it bothered this crew.

Line-camp men were chosen for their solitary ways. Solid, self-sufficient men, they were amiable in company and even better apart. After five days of rubbing elbows with sixteen men, most of whom were strangers, Adam had to admit he was ready for a spell of solitude himself.

“Dubois, this danged hound’s ’bout to break my heart! Claims you ain’t fed him since Christmas.” Across the fire, Jon Kristopherson scowled in mock indignation. Watson stood behind him, with his chin resting on the rancher’s shoulder. “He’s droolin’ down my collar again. Call him off.”

“Don’t you believe that beggar!” warned Willie. At seventy-five, he was the oldest hand on the drive. Too stiff to sit a saddle these days, he shared the driving of Suntop Ranch’s pride and joy, a genuine mule-drawn chuck wagon that was older than he was. And he reigned over the cookfires alongside Whitie Whitelaw. “Worthless bum stole half a skilletful of biscuits this morning, and Whitie’s been sneakin’ him bacon all the livelong day.”

Since Watson had turned out to be terrified of cows, he’d been consigned to ride on the wagon, where the old guys were spoiling him rotten. At this rate he’d be too fat to track a lynx hatband, much less a lynx.

“Watson, get your ass over here!” Adam patted the ground and the hound shuffled meekly around the circle to sit by his side, then heaved a long-suffering sigh. Adam was the only one who refused to be charmed by his “gimme” eyes. “Stay,” Adam told him sternly, then glanced up….

And there she was, stepping into the glow of the fire on the far side of the gathering. Slender as a young aspen in her boots and jeans, dark hair gleaming loose on her shoulders.

“Tess! What are you doin’ up here?” called one of the Jarretts, over a shouted chorus of similar questions and greetings. Faces brightened, bodies shifted to make room for the newcomer. Adam sat up straighter. At the edge of his vision, men were rebuckling loosened belts, tucking in shirttails and wiping greasy mouths. Seventeen men with a sexy woman suddenly dropped in their midst.

“Now, how could I stay away, knowing this was Last Night and Willie would be serving his apple pie with vanilla ice cream?” She laughed and folded gracefully down, to sit cross-legged between Rafe Montana, manager of Suntop and boss of the trail drive, and his stepson, Sean Kershaw. Firelight danced across her vivid face as she cocked her ear to something Sean said.

She was all he’d remembered and more, Adam told himself, as she glanced up and over her shoulder, then reached for the plate Kent Harris had brought her. The line of her throat lengthened with the movement—glowed golden in the flames. Adam moistened dry lips as he pictured himself laying a kiss there where her pulse beat below her ear. Another in that shadowy hollow between her delicate collarbones…

She murmured her thanks, dipped a fork into Willie’s famous pie à la mode, then closed her eyes in ecstasy as the fork touched her tongue. “Ohh!”

He must be imagining that little moan off her lips. No way it could carry over the surrounding hubbub; still Adam could hear it, clear as if she’d moaned against his mouth.

She swallowed blissfully, opened her eyes, and across the fire, their gazes met—zoomed together like two on-coming trains, blue light to widening green. Her plate fell from her fingers—she let out a yelp and grabbed for it as pie and ice cream slid into her lap. “Oh, darn! Clumsy! Oh, Willie, what a stupid waste!” She brushed at herself, looked helplessly around for a napkin.

Two men rushed off to find one. Napkins weren’t a usual part of cowboy dinnerware.

Quicker-witted than his human counterparts, Watson rose, trundled purposefully around the circle, then insinuated himself under her elbow. Slurped greedily at her slender thigh.

Seventeen men watched in thunderstruck envy as the hound licked her clean—while Tess tipped back her head and laughed. “Why, thank you, sir. And who is this?” She scratched him between the shoulder blades and laughed again as his tail whacked her in the ribs, then bludgeoned Sean.

“Watson, leave her alone! Come.”

“Oh, no, he’s wonderful!” she insisted, glancing up at Adam, then quickly back to the dog. “Can’t he stay here? Clumsy as I am, I’ll probably need him.” She slid her hands under each of Watson’s ears, then lifted them out to the sides. Held their tips. “My! Would you look at these—a three-foot wingspan! Can he fly?”

No, but they would. Together, and soon. As quickly as he could make it happen. Adam hadn’t wanted a woman this much in… He couldn’t think when he’d wanted a woman the way he wanted this one. Or why. She wasn’t pretty like butterflies or flowers. Something much better than pretty, with four times the impact, that hit him like a bolt of summer lightning.

She glanced his way again, and her smile faded. She swung her head toward Joe Abbott, who’d brought her a fresh serving of pie, and it returned.

Whatever this is, you feel it, too, Adam told her silently. He turned to his neighbor, Anse Kirby, not quite the foreman at Suntop, but Montana’s right-hand man. “Who is that?” No need to point. Kirby’s eyes were fixed on her.

“Tess.” Kirby was a man of few words and he saved them for those he knew well. Adam would have to stick around a few more years before he’d qualify.

Tess. It suited her. Started strong, ended soft. A good name for whispering in the dark. Adam swung the other way, toward Bob Wilcox, one of the JBJ crew. He didn’t know the man well, but at least he was a talker.

“Heard tell she’s stayin’ up here for the summer,” Wilcox muttered to the man on his far side. “Over at the Two Bear camp.”

“Well, that oughta liven things up,” observed the other hand. “She ain’t grown up half-bad.”

“They all did. Her daddy had an eye for the lookers, all right. Three outa three.”

Two Bear. That was the peak to the west of Mount Sumner; it towered above the Suntop Range. So. Adam drew a satisfied breath. They were going to be neighbors? For the next three months? All right, then.

Something told him he could have cut her out of this herd of friends and admirers if tonight had been his one shot at winning her. But he preferred to take his time. Cool and easy was the best way when courting a woman. Trying to rush the process only made a man look anxious.

“Dubois.” Someone touched his shoulder and Adam turned to find Rafe Montana standing behind him. “You’re riding herd the ten-till-two shift. Best saddle up.” The trail boss moved on around the circle, tapping other men.

Tomorrow, then, Adam promised himself as he rose. Or if not tomorrow, then very, very soon. He shot her a farewell look as he left the campfire.

If she noticed, Tess didn’t return it.

“WHO’S THAT?” Tess asked old Whitie as the new guy strode off into the dark.

She’d known most of these men all her life. Half a dozen rode for her father’s brand. The rest were friends and neighbors. She’d ridden roundups with them since she turned fourteen, when she’d first flouted her father’s orders, running off to tag along on the spring drive. After that there’d been no holding her back. She’d kept right on defying Ben, riding with the hands fall and spring, till she went away to college.

But she’d never seen him before. Even at fourteen, she’d have noticed.

“The Cajun? That’s Dubois. Riding line for McGraw.”

Dubois, she spoke his name silently. If Dubois worked for Tripp McGraw, that would explain why he’d slept at Sumner cabin last week. He must have been moving in. The hairs stirred along her forearms and a warm ripple of awareness lapped up her spine. So… We’ll be neighbors.

Trouble, that’s what would come of this, she knew instinctively. Trouble and excitement.

“Not from around here,” she noted casually. “Is he really a Cajun?” Or had the men simply dubbed him that, because of his French surname? Still, that would account for the trace of accent she remembered. And his teasing use of the endearment cher.

“He’s a Lou’siana boy.” Whitie’s shrug said, what more do you need? He’d brought her a cup of hot chocolate, then stayed to gossip. “I bunked at Sumner cabin with him a few years back fer a while. He was workin’ half-time for Kaley and half-time for Tripp, that summer ’fore they came together.”

“But a Cajun cowboy?” she mused on a note of mild derision. “What did he learn to ride on? Alligators?”

“Beats me. He was a close-mouthed, smilin’ son of a gun back then and he ain’t improved much on that count. Seem to recall he said somethin’ ’bout having kin over Durango way. Had his share of cow sense.”

That was high praise, coming from Whitie. Tess changed the subject before the old man could mark her interest. “I see. So…where’s Chang?” Whitie’s constant companion was a doddering Pekinese with an evil eye and a worse disposition.

“In the wagon sulkin’, if he ain’t flopped on his back, chasin’ dream rabbits. He’s been mad enough to bite his-self ever since we let that there Watson hitch a ride.”

The hound was lying with his warm spine propped against her knees. Tess scratched between his ears. “And Watson belongs to…to Dubois?” Funny how momentous that felt, speaking his name for the first time.

Something told her it wouldn’t be the last.

NATWIG LAY half dozing on the couch. Any minute now he’d find the energy to get up and stir the fire, he was assuring himself for the third time, when the phone rang. “I’ll get it!” He sat and scrubbed a hand across his face.

But Karen was already wheeling herself toward the kitchen. “Don’t be silly. It’ll be for me.” Her big orange tomcat leapt down from her lap and stalked off, tail lashing at this disturbance. The little calico that was draped across her footrest stayed put, staring fascinated at the carpet rolling past its whiskers.

Eight months ago, his lively wife would have grabbed the phone by its second ring. Natwig gritted his teeth as it rang a fifth time, a sixth, while she maneuvered her wheelchair around the center cooking island he’d built her only last year. Ought to take that out of there, so she can move easier, he told himself as she snatched up the phone.

Karen had pulled a fit the time he’d suggested it. She was going to walk again—would be riding again by next year—she kept on telling him. Your lips to God’s ear, sweetheart. But Natwig was starting to doubt it.

“Hello?” she cried happily. She’d left a message on her sister’s answering machine just before supper. “Hello? Hel-lo-o-o!” She stared at the receiver with a puzzled frown. “Hung up, whoever it was.”

“One of those damned recorded salescalls, most likely.”

“But there was somebody there. I heard a rustle.”

“Wrong number, then. How about a bowl of ice cream?”

While she tried her sister again and again reached her machine, Natwig dished out two helpings of vanilla. That finished the carton. He scraped up a final spoonful. “This one’s got your name on it.” He teased the spoon across her smile, then eased it onto her tongue.

As she savored it, her wide blue eyes looked into his. She swallowed, then made a little sound as she licked her lips—his stomach muscles jerked tight. He straightened hastily, turned to drop the spoon in the sink. It jangled against a pot he’d yet to wash.

“Honey…” She broke the charged silence. “Dr. Murray says it’s—”

“Yeah, I know he did, but…” But Natwig had hurt her already, allowing her to ride that green-broke colt. Didn’t matter that she’d begged him to let her. What kind of fool took a chance with the thing—the person—that mattered most in all his life?

And if he hurt her again, he’d never, ever forgive himself. She seemed so tiny and fragile, trapped in that hateful chair. To satisfy himself at a risk to her? No way. It was better to wait.

But wait for how long? Forever? howled a voice like a lost coyote in the back of his mind. He swallowed around a lump of rock in his throat, then said gruffly, without turning, “want some peaches on top of yours?”

Her answer was a long time in coming. “No, thanks.”

“Well, I do.” He rummaged in the cabinet, found a can, focused himself on opening it. “How about tuning in the news?”

“I could, sure, but Joe—?”

The phone rang and he snatched it up with relief. “Hello?”

“Ah, you are there. Good.”

Larson, calling him at home. Rage washed over him in a boiling wave. Get out of my house! They met once a month to conduct their business. That was the only claim Larson had on him, and that was bad enough.

Alarm swirled in anger’s wake. Something’s wrong, him calling me here where he never has before! But whatever it was, Natwig couldn’t deal with it now, not with Karen sitting there with her feelings hurt and her ears pricked. “Can’t this wait?”

“Something urgent’s come up. If you can’t speak freely from there, then go where you can and call me back. My usual cell phone number.”

“But—”

“I’ll be waiting for your call.” He hung up.

Natwig stood, his hand clenched on the buzzing receiver. Bastard! Think you own me, just because you pay me?

“Who was it?” Karen demanded behind him. “Joe?”

He blew out a breath and his shoulders sagged. Till he paid off their debts to the hospital, laid up some cash against the rehab bills that kept on coming, Larson as good as owned him. There was no other way out but sell the ranch. And if he lost his land, lost his pack animals, then how was he to earn a living?

“That was…” Lying to Karen didn’t come naturally to him, but he was learning. He’d had more practice in the past six months than he’d had in the first twenty years of their marriage. “That was Cody, over at some bar in Cortez. Says he came out to his truck and he’s got a flat and damned if his spare isn’t flat, too. Wants me to come bail him out.”

“He can’t call his wife?”

“Suzie’s not answering her phone,” he mumbled. “Anyway, I was feeling restless. Drive’ll do me good.”

Karen’s third blasted cat, the tabby, thumped up onto the counter beside him. He grabbed the animal with a snarl and deposited it on his wife’s lap. “Damned cat! Tell a dog once not to do something and it’ll learn, but a cat?”

Beast and woman stared back at him in wide-eyed, wounded astonishment. Then Karen turned her head aside and wheeled toward the living room. “Come on, Posy, let’s go watch the news.”

He took a minute to cool down, then followed, to set the bowl of ice cream and a spoon on the coffee table at her elbow. Stood, shifting from foot to foot, yearning to touch her. “I won’t be gone long.”

Her hands smoothed the cat’s fur, her eyes stayed fixed on a beer commercial, where a pack of drunken college kids cavorted on an endless, sunny beach. Not a care in their world. “Take all the time you please.”

HE MET Larson halfway to Durango, at a roadside rest stop. “What’s your problem?” he growled, as he fitted himself into the Porsche’s low seat.

“Our problem.” Larson corrected him with a chilly smile. “It shouldn’t be a problem, if you move fast. We’ve learned that a female lynx has finally bred and she’s about to give birth. One of the DOW tracking planes spotted her. Four kittens, they’re estimating. That works out to roughly three hundred thousand apiece they’ve spent to achieve that. The taxpayers are out of their minds to put up with this nonsense!”

Natwig nodded grim agreement, though he seemed to recall that the lynx restoration program was financed by a voluntary check-off on the state income tax. Still, that kind of money. He felt a tickle of fear, like a cold breeze on his cheek. No way the damned bureaucrats at the DOW could afford to let all their cats vanish. Sooner or later, somebody would figure out that this wasn’t Mother Nature winnowing the weak. Once they did, somebody was bound to come after him.

Let him come. He’d almost welcome a flesh-and-blood enemy for a change. Better somebody he could face—somebody he could pound into the ground—than this formless fear and frustration that came creeping every night to crouch on his pillow.

“—be the Division’s media darlings, if we don’t watch out,” Larson was saying. “Before that happens, before somebody gets photos of the kittens and posts them on the DOW Web site, they need to disappear. Dead. Gone. Eaten by a bear or a coyote or a porcupine or whatever they care to imagine. But out of sight, out of the public’s mind— ASAP.”

Larson’s chubby fingers drummed on the steering wheel as he glared through the windshield. “We’re just starting to see the first complaints in the papers and on talk shows that this program is a waste of time and taxpayers’ money. Momentum is building. But let the bleeding hearts and the tree huggers have a litter of fuzzy, adorable kittens to rally around and…” He shook the awful image out of his head and briskly turned. “So, get on this immediately.”

“I will, but—” Natwig paused. He had a client scheduled, the day after tomorrow. A long-time client, who’d booked a week of fly-fishing and wildflower photography with him every summer for ten years now. No way would he let the man down. An outfitter’s reputation was built on dependability, as well as on delivering whatever the client wanted, from a trophy buck to a rare bird sighting.

But try to tell that to Larson, who saw him only as a tool for his own purposes.

“But what? This is crucial. Time is of the essence here.”

“Well, it may take a while, running the queen down. If she has a litter, she won’t be straying far from her den. And she won’t let the kittens out to play for weeks, not till their eyes open and she thinks they’re old enough.”

“She’s not a—a soccer mom, she’s a dumb animal!”

Dumb? I’d like to see you up there, with nothing but your claws and teeth and wits to feed your family. You and yours would starve in a week! Natwig dwelt on that comforting image for a minute, then said, “Once she’s down in her hole, my equipment won’t pick her up. It’s line of sight, remember? So if she isn’t moving around much, it’ll take longer. I may have to circle in till I cross her prints, then track her to her den.”

“Whatever it takes. Just do it. My…friends have authorized a bonus. An extra five thousand per kitten, on top of your usual ten.”

Natwig gulped, did the math. Five times ten, plus four times five—seventy thousand dollars, all in one den? That would put him past the halfway mark on his debt. No way could he take this assignment and shove it, much as he’d love to.

“But there’s one stipulation to that bonus.” Larson gave him an odd look—a twitch of guilty pleasure, instantly buried. “Since the kittens won’t be wearing a DOW collar, my clients will need some other sort of proof that you took them.”

No way. Natwig let his face relax, the way he did at poker. Not a chance. That would go against everything he was doing. “Like a scalp, you mean?”

Larson pursed his lips. “Or a tail, if that’s easier.”

What would be easy would be to grab this creep by the back of his greasy neck, then slam his head against his fancy steering wheel—half a dozen times. But how to say “no,” without giving his game away? “That would spoil the pelt,” Natwig said at last. It wouldn’t, but he could trust this city slicker not to know that.

Larson gave a little crow of delight. “With all we’re paying you, you’re selling their furs on the side?” Greed, now that was something he could understand.

“Why waste a good pelt? I’m tanning ’em and keeping ’em, for now. I’ll sell them next year, once the fuss dies down,” Natwig added, to head off any objections.

“So suppose I take a picture of the kittens when I catch them. As proof.”

“You could get a photo at the nearest zoo,” Larson noted dryly.

“A photo taken in the wild, not in a cage. Brought to you at the same time as their mother’s collar, with its Division of Wildlife number? It’d be more trouble to fake that, than to bring you the real thing. But if you don’t trust me…” Natwig reached for his door handle.

“No, no, I’m sure that will do,” Larson said hastily. He drew a folded paper from the pocket of his suit. “Here’s her latest coordinates. It’s Collar AK00F6.”

“That Alaskan hussy? Wasn’t she hunting over near Silverton?” Natwig had spent a week on snowshoes, looking for her in February. He’d crossed her tracks a dozen times, without once sighting the sly boots. Finally he’d concluded that she was holed up in one of the mines. The mountains up there were riddled with old shafts, and it would have taken half a lifetime to find her. So he’d gone on to easier prey.

“Yes, but she’s moved. You told me they do that.”

“Yeah.” But why would she abandon a perfect territory for nesting? He shrugged. Maybe she’d hunted it thin this winter and so had to move on. Whatever. “Where is this location?”

“Practically your own backyard. She’s in the peaks north of Trueheart.”