Читать книгу True Heart - Peggy Nicholson - Страница 11

“EEEASY, SUNNY. ’Atta boy,” Kaley murmured, backing the little chestnut down the trailer ramp. When his hooves reached solid ground, she rubbed his warm red shoulder while he snorted and shook his shaggy head. “Good fella.” The chunky quarter horse was the most docile ride of Jim’s string. On this, her third day home, Kaley was still taking it slow, working up to her brother’s hard cases. She tightened the gelding’s saddle cinch, then tied him to a tree at the side of the unpaved turnaround that marked the end of the logging road and trailhead to Sumner’s Peak.

Five miles up-mountain, on the far side of the forested ridge, lay Sumner line camp, headquarters for the Cotter cattle’s summer range. She’d chosen to drive an extra seventy miles round this spur of the mountains, bringing the trailer as close to the camp as she could, rather than ride the direct route from the southeast, which would have meant a trek of some thirty miles as the crow flies. Her thighs weren’t up to that yet. Neither did she care to stop overnight in the line cabin, as that longer ride would have required.

Just find Whitey and bring him home; that would be sufficient unto this day. She collected her hat and Levi’s jacket from the ranch truck’s cab, then turned to her mount. What the old man must be feeling, to have retreated as far as the line camp! He was seventy-two this year. Too old to wake up and find himself without a home.

“Not a good feeling,” she informed the chestnut as she swung her leg over the saddle and urged him toward a gap in the trees. Her heart ached for the old man. She knew precisely how he felt.

Yesterday she’d gone looking for Whitey in Trueheart. A day late, but after her disastrous encounter with Tripp, she’d slept the clock ’round, and woken at noon.

By the time she’d eaten lunch, then yawned her way into town, it had been nearly three. Then she’d lost another hour at Emma Connelly’s, eating homemade cherry pie and listening to the old woman’s complaints.

Whitey’s elder sister had been widowed for twenty-three years. Time enough to decide that she knew precisely what shelf of the refrigerator the butter belonged on, and exactly in what order she cared to read the sections of the Durango Herald. At seventy-six, Emma figured she was old enough to know that a grown man ought to make his own bed, ought to close a box of crackers once he was done with it. And as for her brother’s nasty spit jar for his tobacco chaws? Or that mangy old dog of his?

Whitey had been eating Sunday dinner with his sister as long as Kaley could remember. But apparently sibling affection and forbearance stretched only so far. Emma had never imagined herself saddled with her brother full-time, any more than Whitey had pictured ending his days without a job, cooped up in town.

By the fourth day of his self-imposed exile he’d retreated from Emma’s guest bedroom to an army cot in her drafty garage. Three days later there’d been the final blowup—something about Whitey’s attempt to do a load of his own laundry, Emma’s unimpeachable, but roundly ignored, advice about never mixing blue jeans with white shirts and red bandannas—and Whitey had packed his duffel, growled something about the line camp and stalked out. Emma doubted she’d see him before the snow flew, if then, stubborn old coot.

Considering that she’d had tears in her eyes when she’d said this, Kaley couldn’t find it in her heart to blame the woman. Because even in good times, Whitey was best taken with a large dose of wide-open spaces. Given the claustrophobic confines of a spinster-fussy cottage festooned with crocheted lace doilies and silk flower arrangements, and considering what must be his present mood of black despair, Kaley was sure he’d have tried a saint, much less his loving sister.

Kaley only hoped that he wasn’t driving the cowboy up at Sumner camp half-crazy, too. Adam Dubois. Kaley had never met the man. He was a stranger Jim had hired in the spring, and who knew how patient he’d be with an unexpected guest, especially when that guest was an elderly, endlessly opinionated cowboy. Line camp men took jobs in the high country for a reason. As a breed, they tended to be loners, happiest without company.

And even if—faint hope—all was bachelor bliss above, Whitey was too old for these remote and rugged mountains. He needed his own soft bed in the little house Kaley’s grandfather had built for him forty years ago out back of the barn. Needed a propane heater at night, a hot bath when he wanted one, decent meals and proximity to somebody who cared for him.

So here she was. Kaley ducked under a low-hanging branch and tightened her knees; the chestnut surged uphill, ear tips almost touching with alert interest, hooves clopping softly on the dirt trail. It was nearly noon now, though she’d left the ranch at dawn. Assuming that she’d find Whitey in camp, rather than have to hunt him down out on the mountainside, still they’d be driving bad roads home in the dark.

Of course there was one advantage to this. She’d miss Tripp again.

She’d managed to duck him all yesterday. He’d come by once while she was in Trueheart and left her a note on the back door. Just four brusque words: We’ve got to talk.

Then he’d returned after supper. She’d seen him from the slope of Cougar Rock Pasture, where she’d walked out to admire the sunset. Standing motionless under the trees, she’d watched Tripp hammer on her back door, then open it. She’d clenched her hands to fists at that. Thinks he owns the place already? They would have to talk.

He’d emerged in a minute, apparently satisfied that she wasn’t hiding within, to stand glaring around the property.

He’d stalked to the barn, no doubt figuring she was feeding the horses or chickens, then moments later he’d reappeared, a tall, unmistakably masculine shape in the gathering dusk, broad of shoulder, narrow of hip, turning slowly on his long horseman’s legs, staring out across the darkened pastures and slopes that he meant to own.

She should have gone down to him. No use making things any rougher between them than they already were. Not when, thanks to her brother, Tripp had her dead to rights.

She couldn’t bring herself to smile and do it. Not yet.

She needed time to get the bitter pill down and keep it down. Bitterness piled on top of old bitterness, but still, there it was. Thanks to Jim she owed him. Owed him big-time. All the wishing in the world wouldn’t change that, any more than it had changed his mind nine years ago.

Tomorrow she’d have to face him and work something out.

But that was tomorrow, and today was today, Kaley reminded herself, squaring her shoulders. Today the sky was a color of high-altitude cobalt that Phoenix, with its streams of glittering, smog-belching traffic, would never match. Breathing deep, the cool air fragrant with pine, she tipped her head back to watch a black dot against the blue—a golden eagle, wheeling high above the granite pass toward which Sunny was climbing. She smoothed her palm round and round the top of her saddle horn, and laughed aloud. Oh, I’m home all right! However uncertain and terrifying her future, the present was sweet as wine. Kaley Cotter and daughter are home again.

THE LINE CAMP STOOD in an alpine meadow, starred with late-blooming asters and goldenrod, encircled by the shivering gold of turning aspens. A one-room log cabin built by Kaley’s great-grandfather and added onto by every generation of Cotter since—a lean-to here for feed and tack, a shed for wood there, a rough pole corral that fenced in a small vegetable garden, keeping the crops safe from marauding cattle, if not the rabbits and deer.

Three horses lazed at the far end of the pasture, in the shade of the trees. They lifted their heads and whinnied as Sunny trotted down the slope toward the cabin, then went back to their grazing. The line man would have five horses in his string, at least, Kaley figured. If two were missing, then he was out prowling the meadows. And Whitey must be, too, on a borrowed mount, since he’d driven his rattle-trap pickup to the trailhead and left it there.

She tied off Sunny and knocked on the screen door. “’Lo the house!”

Something stirred beyond the sun-spangled, rusty mesh.

“Anybody home?” When nobody answered, Kaley opened the door.

Lying in a bunk against the far wall, Whitey heaved himself to his elbows and blinked. “Kaley?” He swiped a gnarled hand across his unshaven face. “Kaley-girl?”

She crossed the bare, dusty boards in four strides. In all the years she’d known him, Whitey had never slept past seven. “Whitey, what’s wrong?” She knelt beside him and touched his bristly cheek, then cupped a palm to his forehead. “You’re sick?”

“Had a wreck yesterday. Nothin’ t’speak of.”

A wreck was cowboy for a fall. One to speak of. Minor spills didn’t count. “You’re okay?” She checked the urge to whip off the dingy blanket that covered him and see for herself.

“Banged up m’damn knee.”

“Good one or bad one?” A cow had crushed his right knee between a gate and a fence post years ago. He limped badly at the best of times.

His snort was a rueful laugh. “M’good one’s not so good now.” He touched her shoulder, the shy touch of a child. “What’re you doin’ here, girl?”

“Come to bring you home. We’re not selling the ranch, Whitey. Not if I can help it.” She patted his hand, then stood hastily as his eyes glistened. He’d never survive her seeing him cry. With her own eyes brimming, she turned briskly on her heel. “Where’s Chang?”

She spotted the circular heap of frizzy white-and-copper hair, coiled in a battered easy chair that was pulled up to the wood-burning stove. Trust Chang to claim the best seat in the house. “Hey, Chang.” She stooped beside the ancient Pekingese and warily offered her knuckles for his identification.

A wavering growl issued from somewhere within the furry mound, and one brown goggle eye cracked open to regard her with weary malevolence. “Let’s go home, old guy.” The mountains were no place for a short-legged lapdog. “Mellowed a bit, hasn’t he?” she observed when he didn’t lunge for her. Oh, she’d stayed away too long! Even Chang had changed.

“Just losing his teeth and too dang proud to gum you,” Whitey grunted. From the shuffling and groaning behind her, he was struggling into his jeans.

“The hand here—Dubois?” she asked without turning. “Any chance he’ll be stopping back by for lunch?”

“That Cajun? He never shows before dark.”

Meaning that Whitey’s presence was probably proving a strain. Kaley’s eyes wandered to the bunk on the opposite wall from Whitey’s. A book on dinosaurs, of all things, rested on a Mexican blanket tucked to drum-tight perfection. “Too bad. I wanted to meet him.”

She’d be needing at least two dependable hands to help with fall roundup. Jim had said Dubois could be trusted, but Kaley preferred to see for herself. Some cowboys had problems taking orders from women. If that was going to be an issue, she needed to know sooner rather than later.

She scratched Chang’s tasseled ear and stood. “Guess I’ll go catch you a ride.” She supposed they could leave Dubois a note, telling him to collect Whitey’s mount, which they’d tie off at the trailhead. “Any preferences?”

Whitey grunted. “Shot my preference yesterday. That grullo your dad used t’ride. Ol’ fool stepped smack in a badger hole.”

Kaley winced. Hence Whitey’s wreck and his taking to his bed. More sadness than jarred bones, she’d bet—one more connection with her father gone forever. Apart from which, nothing hurt worse than to shoot a good horse. “I’m sorry.”

“Huh! No sorrier than he was.”

RIDING ACROSS the flowery pasture, Kaley held a coffee can of grain balanced on her thigh. She reined in Sunny and rattled the oats against the tin. “Who wants to work today?”

A couple of glossy equine heads lifted from the grass, but she had no takers. The sun-burned black grabbed a green mouthful, turned a casual quarter turn as he grabbed another bite, till, apparently without intention, he ended facing toward the trees. He glanced back at her over his rump, chewing insolently, ready to bolt. And the others looked as if they’d take their cue from him. “Come on, you bum.” She rattled the oats seductively.

“Which one do you want?” called a masculine voice behind her.

Her thighs clamped together in startlement and Sunny jumped, then steadied as she reined him in again and looked over her shoulder. To find Tripp, his big white-faced bay carrying him down the meadow at a half trot. He was building a loop in his catch rope already. “The paint,” she said, her voice steadier than her heartbeat. Think of the devil and here he came riding!

Ears pricked in fascination, the brown and white-patched mare watched Tripp’s advance till it dawned on her she’d been singled out. She snorted and spun away—straight into the path of his lazily descending loop. She flinched as it tightened around her neck, then stopped dead and blew out a disgusted breath.

“Thanks,” Kaley said as Tripp reeled her in. “What are you doing here?”

He nodded back toward the cabin, where two packhorses now stood in hipshot patience by the corral. “Dubois is about out of salt blocks. And I wanted to see for myself how the grass is holding.”

“Neighborly of you,” she couldn’t resist saying—though it wasn’t. He was acting as owner already. So he hadn’t believed her when she’d told him she wasn’t selling. Or if he had, he meant to ride right over her.

His mouth tightened at her tone. She found her gaze snared by its well-carved shape, the bottom lip full and almost sensuous, the upper lip stern to the point of harshness. The nerves at her nape quivered and stung as the memory came, unwilled as it was vivid—the rasp of his afternoon beard across her shuddering skin, the furnace warmth of his breath at her ear. She looked away.

“Not exactly,” he replied evenly. “Jim and I split Dubois’s time and wages. He works for both of us.”

“Oh.” Another thing Jim had forgotten or omitted to tell her in their short while together. Kaley felt her temper kick up a notch. So Jim hadn’t even been able to pay a full-time line man? No more putting it off. Tonight she’d have to sit down with the ranch accounts.

“And you,” Tripp said as they turned their mounts toward the cabin. “What brings you here?”

She told him about Whitey. “He ended up here,” she said with a dark, accusing glance. “Forty years with my family and this is what it’s come to. Who knows what he meant to do when the snows came?”

Tripp opened his mouth to tell her that he’d intended all along to take Whitey on, make him welcome. Because she was right. You didn’t turn away a man who’d worked his whole life for your family, any more than you sent your old saddle horse to the cannery. Loyalty bound both, hired hand and rancher. And the whole point of this way of life was that, hard as it was, there was always room and grass enough for one more.

He’d made it plain to Jim Cotter that Whitelaw had a job and a home, but he’d been remiss not seeking out the old man himself first thing. He’d been too preoccupied this past week with arranging Loner’s sale, with double-checking his forecast of the fall profits as he prepared for the purchase of the Circle C. Tripp felt a muscle tick in his jaw. If there was one thing he hated, it was to realize he’d left something undone that he should have done.

And here it was Kaley, of all people, pointing out his blunder. “I…” He clamped his jaw on his explanation and shrugged. Coming now, it would only sound like an excuse. Talk was cheap and action all. He’d failed to act in time.

He glanced at her bitterly, then when he found that she rode with face averted, he gazed with greedy abandon. Kaley. She didn’t look a day older than the last time he’d kissed her, in the spring of that terrible year when she’d come home from college for Easter. Or if she’d changed, it was—impossible as it seemed—for the better. The long, reddish-brown hair that had once hung like a silk shawl to her waist, now swung enticingly at her shoulders. And last time he’d held her in his arms, she’d been angular as a yearling colt. Now she looked curvier—still slender, yet somehow softer. Soft—he remembered drawing his nose across her cheek, soft as a foal’s velvety muzzle. He could still feel the creamy smoothness of her breast cupped in his palm. Don’t go there, he warned himself harshly. She’s another man’s woman.

A woman he’d put behind him years ago. Only fools looked back.

“We have to talk,” he reminded her as they reached the cabin. “I came looking for you yesterday.” Then again this morning. When he’d stopped by the Circle C and found her car gone, he’d wondered if perhaps he’d dreamed their whole encounter.

Or at least misunderstood. It had crossed his mind, on not finding her for the third time, that maybe she’d dropped by the ranch to say farewell to Jim and to a way of life. If bad luck hadn’t sent Tripp stumbling into her path, maybe she’d have cried a few tears and gone her way.

Instead, he’d shown his ugly mug at the worst possible moment. Her refusal to sell had been a spur-of-the-moment token protest against bitter reality. A gut-level, reflexive denial that Tripp could well understand. He’d sooner part with an arm than an acre of his own land.

But given two nights to think it over, maybe her defiance had faded to pained acceptance. So she’d fled back to her husband in Phoenix, leaving Tripp shaken but whole, winner by default.

So much for hopes and dreams!

“We do have to talk,” Kaley agreed. “But first I’ve got to get Whitey home. Maybe to a doctor.”

She’d been too long in the city if she thought she’d drag Whitelaw to a sawbones. Short of major blood loss or compound fracture, his generation of cowpokes tended themselves and kept on working. City girl, go back where you belong. “I’ll help you get him a-horseback,” Tripp said bleakly.

She looked for a moment as if she meant to refuse him, then she nodded and slipped off the chestnut. “Let me see if he’s ready.”

SHE’D NEVER HAVE MANAGED without him, that was sure, Kaley realized a short while later as she watched Tripp lift the old man into the paint’s saddle. “All right now?” Tripp asked, stepping back from the mare.

“Right as rain,” Whitey growled, looking more than a little flustered.

Kaley bit down on a worried smile. If she knew Whitey, it was his helplessness that was irking the old man, not the pain. Though that had to be considerable. His left knee was puffed to the size of a cantaloupe.

“Where’s that damn Chang?” he added.

“Coming.” Kaley slipped back into the cabin and brought the pannier she’d padded with a blanket over to the easy chair. “Be nice now, you, if that’s possible.” She clamped her hands around the dog’s fat middle and lifted him, wriggling and snarling, into the basket and shut its lid. “You’re lucky a coyote didn’t gobble you up, up here.” Or maybe the dog was too mean to be eaten.

Tripp’s face was carefully blank as he took the basket from her arms and fastened it behind Whitey’s saddle, to counterbalance the one that held his clothes. The paint’s ears swiveled backward in alarm, but they didn’t flatten to her head. Embarrassment rendered Whitey speechless. With a grudging nod of thanks to Tripp, he set off toward the pass, his right hand absently patting the pannier’s lid.

“Well…” Kaley untied and mounted. She’d left a note for Dubois along with the brownies she’d baked for him the night before. Meeting him would have to wait for another day. “Thank you, Tripp.”

But he was swinging astride his big bay. “He’s heavier than he looks,” he warned her, nodding at the distant rider, who’d almost reached the top of the meadow. “You’ll need help getting him off again.”

Nodding grimly, she touched spurs to Sunny’s ribs and shot away. Thunder of hooves on the grass, and Tripp was loping alongside her in seconds. She should know better than to hope to lose him so easily. He rode like a centaur, plus his gelding had two hands on Sunny and a stride to match.

Where the trail entered the trees, they reined back to a walk. Resigning herself to his presence, Kaley tugged her Stetson lower on her forehead to shield her eyes. Still, like sunlight on her cheek, she could feel him looking.

“How did an old hardcase like him end up with a useless lapdog?” Tripp wondered. “He ever married?”

She had to smile at the thought. “Not in fifty years, and I think that ended badly. No, he found Chang about eight years ago out on the highway. Had a busted shoulder. All we could figure is he’d leaned too far from a car window and tumbled out, and his owner didn’t notice and drove on. Whitey always says he should have shot him.”

“Uh-huh,” Tripp said dryly.

“Well, he chases cats on command.” Trying to explain the inexplicable, Kaley laughed under her breath.

“That’s useful.”

She’d forgotten how he’d say one thing and mean quite the opposite. All the humor he could pack into a word or two. “Besides, everybody needs somebody to love.” Laughter fading, she trailed two fingertips across her stomach.

“Do they?” His voice had lost its warmth.

Don’t they? She certainly had. Did. Her fingers twitched toward her stomach again; she flattened them, instead, on her leg. But take her companion now—apparently he hadn’t felt the need. Nine years and Tripp still hadn’t bothered to find a lasting love of his own.

Or had he? She felt as if she’d have known somehow, but really, how would she? Jim had been only eighteen when she and Tripp parted. Still, in all the years since, he’d known better than to mention Tripp’s doings to her.

From the corner of her eye she could see Tripp’s elk-hide boot resting lightly in his stirrup, the long, muscular length of his calf and thigh. Hard to imagine he hadn’t had his pick of the ladies in the years since he’d dumped her. Tripp wasn’t film star–handsome as Richard was, and the regularity of his features was forever marred. But the scar that he hated added so much character. Edge. And he had something better than glossy perfection—an aura of strength and presence that a woman couldn’t ignore. He wasn’t an image, handsome or otherwise, he was a…a force. A man in motion, striding through life.

“When does school start in Phoenix?” he asked, reining his bay closer to Sunny as the trail narrowed.

Their knees brushed and she drew in a feathering breath. So even if she hadn’t heard about him over the years, he’d made it his business to learn about her—that she taught school. “It started this week.”

“They gave you time off to say goodbye?”

She shook her head. “I’ve quit, Tripp.” And now the trail was narrow enough to give her an excuse. She drew back on the reins and Sunny slowed to fall in behind the bay.

Tripp glanced back, frowning, then wheeled his mount across the path.

She halted with Sunny’s nose almost touching Tripp’s knee. Funny, but she felt as if she’d been trotting alongside the horses, her breath was coming that fast. Here it comes.

“Decided to be a housewife, instead,” he hazarded, voice stonily neutral, eyes narrowed. “Reckon a lawyer earns enough for two and then some.”

“He does,” she agreed defiantly. Not that Richard hadn’t spent it just as fast as it came in. On sleek cars, a twenty-thousand-dollar Ducati motorcycle that he had no time to ride, a gym full of shiny weight machines for his exercise room, custom-fitted golf clubs, a collection of antique handguns. Boy toys. But try to explain that to Tripp, who hadn’t been a boy since his early teens. By then his father had pretty well slid into the bottle, and it was Tripp who’d called the shots at the M Bar G.

“Reckon he can support a wife at home, and a manager for a hobby-horse ranch, as well.”

“He could,” she allowed. Tripp was probing closer and closer to the heart of the matter.

“So who’re you hiring? Whitelaw’s too old for the job.”

Closer. She remembered playing blindman’s buff with him one night in the barn, up in the hayloft. Standing with a half-terrified giggle frozen in her throat while his arms swept the hay-sweet dark, coming closer and closer. The trembling in his fingertips when they found her at last, tracing the shape of her face…her mouth…her body…as if he’d never touched her before, never touched a woman in all his life. Then her lashes shivering against his lips…her knees turning to butter…

“Who, Kaley?”

She blinked and sat taller in the saddle. “I’ll manage my own place.”

His incredulous smile died stillborn. His dark eyebrows drew together. “And commute to Phoenix on weekends? Reckon you do wear the pants in your house.”

Reckon I do, at that. She met his gaze squarely. “My house—my home—is here now, Tripp. I’m divorced.”

His head rocked back half an inch; his eyes narrowed to slits. Reacting to something sensed in his rider but not visible, the bay threw up his head and snorted, dancing in place.

“So that’s it.” Tripp’s face was wiped clean of all expression, but the starburst scar on his cheekbone faded as he paled. “Why?”

“Why what?” He was mad, she realized as the bay pinned back its ears, half rearing to Tripp’s shortened rein. Blazingly mad. But then, so was she. Who was he to demand an explanation?

“Why did you leave him—or did you?”

No, he left me just as you did! Because in spirit, if not in the flesh, it was Richard who’d walked out on their vows—rejected her child and therefore her. But she’d sooner rip out her heart and hand it over than admit that now she was a two-time loser! Touching her spurs to Sunny’s flanks, Kaley drove him past the bay. Branches flailed her hunched shoulders. Her hat flipped back and cartwheeled away.

Let him fetch it or let it lie! She urged the chestnut to a tight lope and held him there, huffing and puffing, till she reached the pass, where Whitey and the paint stood waiting.

By the time Tripp joined them at the trailhead and handed over her hat, his temper had vanished behind a wall of ice-cold, courteous calm. And the more she pondered it, on the drive home, the less Kaley could make sense of his response. Perhaps she’d imagined it.

Because how could Tripp be mad, when she was the one who’d been injured?