Peggy Nicholson - The Wildcatter

Or so it seemed to his hired hand, who was braced for the worst. What a fool I’ve been—¡qué tonto! To give this merciless geezer an excuse for firing him before he’d barely started… No woman was worth this!

“You’re wearing your stirrups a notch too short,” he growled at his eldest. “You learn that back East?”

“What if I did?” Risa leaned back in her stirrups till her hat brim brushed Miguel’s mouth.

“Should have sent you west.” The massive old sedan rumbled on past and vanished up the hill.

Not once had Tankersly cracked a smile. So why did Miguel have the strangest feeling that the old man had been pleased?

MORNING. Joe Wiggly and the Old Man sat their horses in their usual corner of the yard, watching the hands saddle up and ride out. Two cars rolled up the hill, parked by the tool shed and disgorged those men of the hay crew who slept down in Trueheart. The rest of the crew shambled out of the bunkhouse, stretching and yawning, to clamber aboard the two empty hay wagons that waited by the barn.

“Been keeping an eye on him for me?” Tankersly nodded toward Heydt as the young man vaulted onto a wagon’s flatbed. He sat down immediately, then flopped backward on a broken bale, pulling his hat over his face.

Joe smiled wryly at that. He knew just how the fella felt. He meant to catch a few winks himself, soon as he and Tankersly had planned the day’s work. “Yep, I’ve been watchin’ him. Didn’t get really interesting till last night.” He’d hoped Ben would ask. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled a cigarette out of his pack, and stuck it between his lips. Proceeded leisurely to light it.

The tractors fired up and hauled the wagons down the road, off to the fields for a day of baling. Tons of hay to be stacked and moved and stacked again. Heydt’s tail would be dragging by the end of this day for sure.

“He’s been ridin’ most evenings, going a little farther every night, mostly upriver and down. But last night, danged if he didn’t set off like a dog smelling a bitch over the mountain. Straight line. Along the road to the main gate, then north, then through our gate on the other side. On and on east till he comes to the gate to the Sweetwater Flats. I’m hanging way back, you understand, but ’bout then we lost the last of the light.” The foreman drew on his cigarette, squinting through the smoke as he exhaled.

“You know how ragged that section is. Reckon I’d’ve broken my neck a dozen times if there hadn’t been a half-moon.” Maybe, come to think of it, that was what Heydt had been waiting for—enough moon to see by?

“Anyways, I move up a bit closer. I’m starting to wonder if maybe he’s scouting cows to rustle.” He’d begun to regret that he’d not thought to pack his .22 along. Heydt was unfailingly pleasant, but something told a man that he’d be a rough one to cross.

“Ya think?” Tankersly scowled. Rustling was no longer a hanging offense, and that was a pity, because it was a growing problem in the West. A thief could fill a cattle truck with twenty head, drive ’em to hell and gone, earn himself a year’s pay in a single night.

“Not now I don’t. Eventually he comes to where we’ve fenced off the creek bed, and he ties his horse and climbs through the wire. I’m figuring he’s forgotten his canteen and he’s meaning to drink from the stream, and I’m grinnin’ to myself, picturing his face when he tastes that water. So I wait, expecting him to come scrambling back up the bank, spitting and wiping his mouth. But he doesn’t show.”

He leaned over to tap his ash off on his boot heel, then straightened again. “After a bit, I get kinda curious and I ride up t’where I can see over the fence and down into the cut. It’s about twenty feet deep along there…” He dragged in a lungful of nicotine, smiling inside at the look on the boss’s face. Oh, he had him, all right. “’Bout a quarter mile on, I see a light–bright light, one of them halogen lanterns. Kid’s walking real slow, playing his beam over the banks, first one side, then t’other. Stops every so often, looks real close at something, then moves on.”

“Huh.” Tankersly spat thoughtfully into the dirt.

“I follow along the top of the flats, find another place to peek over the side. But he’s just moseying on, flashing his light.”

“He ever find anything t’speak of?”

Joe shrugged. “Not’s so as I could tell. I hung around till two or so, till I was yawnin’ so hard I feared he’d hear m’jaw crack. He was still hard at it when I headed on home.” He’d flopped onto his couch at the foreman’s house not long before sunrise. Had slept for an hour, then saddled Tankersly’s mount for the day and set off to fetch him. “If Heydt made it back to the bunkhouse in time to snatch the last biscuit, I’d be surprised.” And served him right for keeping an old man out all night.

Tankersly rubbed his craggy jaw. “Now, what the devil’s he up to?”

RISA RODE her outrage all the way down to the ranch yard. How dared he? Did Ben imagine she was still a rebellious fourteen, to be sent to her room without supper when she disobeyed? Or fifteen, forbidden to drive with her girlfriends to Durango to see a movie?

But to have intercepted Eric’s messages…this was a new low in high-handedness even for her father!

And worse, he’d almost succeeded in driving a wedge of misunderstanding between her and her fiancé. After three days of echoing silence, she’d begun to fear that Eric had stopped returning her calls. That perhaps he’d found someone at the law firm where he was working. That he’d finally come to his senses and realized he could do much better than Risa Tankersly.

To call him one last time at work had taken all her courage. She’d gotten past the secretary who’d recorded her previous messages and reached Eric himself.

And learned that over the past three days, he’d called Suntop four times! Once her father had answered the phone, and the other times Socorro, their cook and housekeeper, had taken Eric’s calls.

Neither of them had passed his message on.

Furious as she was, Risa couldn’t blame Socorro; the woman had worked for Ben for thirty years and she knew who signed her paychecks. She only would have been following orders. But Ben? “You manipulative heartless bastard!” she swore, swinging down from Sunrise by the barn. Pity her father wasn’t here so she could say that to his face! He was off in his Town Car, at one end of the ranch or another.

She knew because she’d checked the garage, up at the Big House. Had she found his car, she would have taken it and paid the consequences later.

But no such luck.

Which brought her here. She would not sit meekly at home, letting Ben think he’d won again. After tying Sunny’s reins to the hitching rack, she loosened the mare’s cinch, then stalked off toward the bunkhouse.

Her steps shortened as she neared it. The bunkhouse was off limits to her and her sisters. Ben insisted that the men liked their privacy, and no doubt that was true. But over the years, the forbidden had bred fascination. To the Tankersly women, the shabby old one-story barracks had an aura of masculine mystery, much like the sacred ritual house of Hopi men. A kiva for cowboys.

Don’t be silly, she scoffed at herself. It’ll just be a bunch of hands, wandering around without their shirts on. Bad enough. She should have brought Tess along for support. Go on. All you have to do is rap on the screen door and ask for him.

Then endure the knowing smile on the face of whichever man answered her knock! She came to a halt, one foot on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the sagging porch.

“You look lost, señorita!” called a low mocking voice from across the yard.