Peggy Nicholson - True Heart

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.