Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

Orvis had followed orders. What was it to him if Sharon Russell wanted to go hunting on her own? If they were all lucky, maybe she would be eaten by a grizzly. But he had a feeling she wasn’t alone. Just to remind himself why he didn’t like her, he parked the truck out of sight on the old logging trail and looped back around through the trees to take a quick gander in the back window of the cabin.

The dogs, a pair of big African something-or-others, barked at him, but they were chained to a tree and they never quit barking anyway, so it was hardly an alarm. Orvis was unconcerned with getting caught as he sidled up to the window.

Sure enough, she was with a woman. He had a bad angle on the bed, and the window was so dirty, it was like looking through a glass of milk, but he could tell a few things without any trouble-they were both stark naked and the other one was tied to the bed. Damned queer. Sick stuff, really, he thought, somehow managing to detach his conscience from his body as arousal stirred his pecker like a swizzle stick in his Wranglers. He could make out black hair and dark skin on the woman Sharon was doing things to. He couldn’t see her face, but the only woman around Bryce’s crowd lately who fit that description was Sam Rafferty, Will’s wife.

Now Orvis sat in his pickup, wondering what to do. He had a pretty good idea Will didn’t know his wife had gone lesbo on him. But then, he couldn’t quite accept that image himself. Sam was a nice girl. Orvis knew all the Neill kids, and aside from Ryder, who was mean and drunk much of the time, they were all real nice. He couldn’t figure out what Sam was doing hanging around with Bryce’s people to begin with. He sure couldn’t picture her taking up with the dragon lady.

The ropes bothered him, though he knew there were folks who went for that kind of thing. He rubbed his scrubby little chin and sucked on his crooked teeth. His ferret’s face screwed up into a look of supreme concentration, and he bounced on the seat of the truck as though he had to pee. He didn’t want to do the wrong thing. He didn’t want to go to Will Rafferty and tell him his wife was getting naked with another woman and get himself punched in the mouth for no reason. On the other hand, if there was something kinky going on here…

Sad to see you come to this, Orvis…

The dilemma wrestled around inside him like a pair of wildcats in a cotton sack. He started the truck and put it in gear and let it start rolling down the grade.

Sure wished he automatically knew the right thing to do, like J.D. always did.

Damned sorry he usually did the wrong thing… not that it was his fault.

AND SO Isaid to Harry Rex, why would I want her? She’s got so many wrinkles, she’s gotta screw her hat on to go to church.” Tucker shook his head in disgust, leaned to the left in his saddle, and spit a stream of tobacco juice that sent a marmot scuttling for cover. “Well, Harry Rex, he just laughs like the big old jackass he is. I swear, he’s about as useless as a dog barking at a knothole. If brains were ink, he couldn’t dot an I.”

J.D. let the old man ramble on, tuning himself out of the conversation. Tucker and Harry Rex Monroe of Monroe’s Feed and Read had been buddies since God was a child. They bickered and goaded each other like a pair of old hens. He could remember when he was a kid, Tucker and Harry Rex and their ongoing competitions of thumb wrestling, wrist wrestling, arm wrestling, tobacco spitting, watermelon-seed spitting, cherry-pit spitting. They went from one challenge to the next, neither willing to let the other have the final victory or the final word. The prattle was familiar and unimportant. J.D.’s thoughts were elsewhere.

Down the hill, to be precise. On Mary Lee. She had certainly told him what-for. Twice. At least. He felt like a bull that had to get knocked on the head over and over before he took the hint to quit pushing on the fence. For so long now his focus had been on the ranch. The ranch was everything. The ranch took everything-his energy, his money, his heart, his soul, his integrity. He didn’t like thinking about what he had become in the guise of knighthood to the Stars and Bars. A martyr. A hypocrite. A mercenary. A liar. He had spent years creating the image of the noble rancher only to find out there was nothing behind it but fear. Fear of losing the ranch. Fear of letting anyone too close. Fear of losing himself. The irony was that there wasn’t that much to lose; he’d given it all away… to the ranch.

Christ, he hated irony.

He rode alongside Tucker, amazed that the old man could ramble on about nothing at all, as if he didn’t have a clue that the world was coming unglued around him. He was amazed that there weren’t visible signs-the sky ripping open like a blue silk sheet, the earth cracking and separating as the various factions warring over it tore it apart. It all looked perfectly ordinary. The grass was green. The air smelled sweet with the promise of rain. The ranch buildings in the distance looked as they had always looked, aging but neat, one or two in need of paint. In the pasture they rode through, calves bucked and chased each other. Most of the cows were lying down-another sign of the coming rain. Normal sights.

He thought of what Chaske had said to him about owning the land, and knew that if the Raffertys ceased to exist tomorrow, the land would still be here. Ownership wasn’t the important thing. Stewardship was. Tradition was. He had pared down his life to the point that tradition was just about all he had, and it could be lost in a heartbeat, in the time it took a banker to sign a note.

His heart felt like a lead ball in his chest.

“… J.D.?” Tucker leaned ahead in his saddle, stretching his back, frowning at J.D. The chaw of tobacco looked like he had a golf ball in his cheek. “You use them things on the side of your head for anything but hanging your sunglasses on?”

J.D. shook himself out of his ponderings and scowled to cover his embarrassment. “What?”

“I asked, had you figured out the water yet. If we’re moving the herd next week, who’s gonna change the water?”

The way of ranching. In the spring and summer everything needed doing at once. During the long, cold winter there was hardly anything to do at all. It was time to start irrigating the hay ground. The system on the Stars and Bars was an old one of ditches and dams that cost nothing but required almost constant manpower as someone had to periodically move the dams to make certain all the land would be irrigated. With Will gone, they had postponed driving the herd up to the high pastures, and now the move would conflict with the irrigation. With the two jobs happening simultaneously, they were essentially short two hands on a ranch that ran with a skeleton crew as it was.

“I’ll see if I can get Lyle’s boys to help move the cattle. You’ll have to see to the water. I can’t trust some kid to that job.” Which was true enough. The job, while boring as hell, required experience. It was also far less physi-cally taxing than driving a herd of cattle up the side of a mountain.

Tucker digested this with a nod. He spat and kept his gaze forward, trying too hard to be nonchalant. “’Course, if Will comes back-”

“I don’t see that happening, Tuck.”

“Well, I dunno. If that ain’t my old truck parked up in the yard, then I’ll be giving some poor fool my condolences for having one just like it.”

J.D.’s gaze sharpened. The truck was unmistakable, a hulking, inelegant block of rusted metal. Someone sat on the tailgate, throwing a Frisbee for Zip. The dog blasted off the ground, did a graceful half-turn in midair, and came down with the brilliant yellow disk in his mouth.