The Wildcatter

“Ranchettes!” Tankersly spat into the long grass and rode on. “Risa’s brought us home a wrecker. A limp-wristed, stab-you-in-the-back-and-smile wrecker. I don’t call that breeding stock.”

Joe sighed to himself. Not a cloud in all the clear blue sky, but it was gonna be a stormy summer. Two mule-headed Tankerslys with opposing notions…

“You find a replacement for that boy?” Tankersly demanded, changing the subject abruptly. One of their haying crew had gashed his leg from knee to toe cutting hay yesterday. Joe had driven down into Trueheart last night, seeking a replacement.

“Nope.” Haying was sweat-soaked, backbreaking drudgery. And hardly the safest of jobs, with all that whirling machinery. He’d tried the bars in town, the general store, Mo’s Truckstop—and he’d come up dry. Only real prospect had been that young drifter in the Star, and he’d turned the job down flat. Which was probably just as well. A foreman got so he could smell trouble. Knew better than to invite it home.

“You tried the Lone Star?” growled Tankersly.

A roadhouse out on the highway to the south of Trueheart, the Lone Star was dear to the thirsty hearts of local cowboys, passing truckers and in-town rowdies. Surest place to find a cold brew, a hot woman or a knuckle-busting debate. Or a bum broke enough to consider haying till he’d made the price of his next bottle. “Did. There was one Tex-Mex kid…” Big enough to buck bales and old enough to hold his own with a rough haying crew.

Watching him from across the smoky room, Joe had figured the kid was trolling for a job, the way he struck up casual conversations with this group of cowboys or that. He handled himself well among strangers, casual but confident, neither cocky nor shy. He’d do, Joe had decided after sizing him up for a while. So he’d approached and asked the drifter if he was looking for work.

“Might be,” the kid had agreed pleasantly, with just the trace of a Texas drawl. “Where?”

Not doing what, but where. Now, that seemed sort of odd. “Ranch north of town,” Joe allowed, playing his cards close to his vest. “We’re one short on our haying crew. Just a summer job, but it pays pretty well. Plus bunk and board if you want it.”

“Haying.” The young man’s excellent teeth flashed for a second; he knew about haying. His chin jerked in the start of a “No,” then he paused. “On what ranch?”

“Suntop.” Really no reason not to tell him. Still, something wasn’t ringing true here.

“The biggest outfit in these parts.”

So the stranger had made it his business to learn that much. “And the best.”

“So I hear. But no, thank you.”

Something just a little too polite and formal for a Texan in his manner, and he cut his o’s short and soft. Mexican somewhere in his background? He was a big, rawboned, good-looking kid, maybe mid twenties, maybe older than Joe had first thought. But seen close up, this one had the eyes of a seasoned man and poise to match. He smiled now as Joe stood perplexed; tipping his head in the faintest of farewells, he swung away.

Joe covered his dismissal by ambling off to the men’s. When he came back to the room, the kid was standing a round of drinks for some of the Kristopherson crew. Trolling for a date instead of a job? Somehow Joe didn’t think so. The ledge of rock under the manners suggested far otherwise.

But then, what the Sam Hill’s he after? Whatever, Joe was still one down on the haying crew. Settling his hat to a determined angle, he’d walked out the door, bound for Mo’s.

“Didn’t find a soul,” the foreman repeated now glumly as they rode into the ranch yard and reined in to sit watching. Eyes shifted their way, then skated on by. A few hat brims dipped half an inch in laconic salute, but everyone went on about his business, as good hands should. Down at the horse barn a brawny young cowboy strode out of the tack room, toting a saddle toward a hipshot gray tied to the hitching rack. “So I reckon I’ll tap Jake there for the hay fields ’fore he rides out.” Joe shot a sly sideways glance at Tankersly. “’Less you want to loan me Risa’s new sweetheart? Maybe he’d like to try his hand bucking bales.”

Tankersly snorted. “The way a pig loves to tap-dance, he would!” He looked automatically back toward the Big House, then stiffened. “And speak of the devil, here he—they come. Didn’t figure that one would roll out of bed before noon.”

But Tankersly’s eldest daughter would not have graced the lawyer’s bed, Joe figured privately. Not by chance was Ben’s master bedroom situated between the wing of the Big House that housed his family and the wing that held guests—welcome or otherwise. To tiptoe past the boss’s door on the way to one of his cherished daughters would take balls of clanging brass. So, likely Risa and her man were up early, seeking a safer place for canoodling.

The little red sports convertible—Joe didn’t bother with the names of cars—stopped as it reached the yard. Its top was down, but the foreman didn’t waste a glance on the driver. With a wide grin, he sidestepped his mare over to the passenger side.

Risa threw off her seat belt and stood, hanging on to the top of the windshield. “Joe! Oh, Joe, you look wonderful!” She laid a smacking kiss on his leathery cheek as he swept off his straw hat and leaned in close to collect it. “Lord, I missed you!” Her big golden eyes were starry with tears, though she was smiling to beat the band.

Joe blinked frantically and jammed his hat down over his nose to hide his own swimming eyes. “It’s you that was missed,” he said gruffly. And she’d come back prettier than ever, it seemed, though thinner than he cared to see. “Didn’t even visit us for Christmas!”

“By December I was just getting over being homesick,” she protested, laughing as she patted his wiry forearm. “I didn’t dare risk stirring it up again. Another round would have killed me. That was before I met— Oh!”

She glanced around at her driver, then knelt on the edge of her seat so he could see past her. “Joe, this is Eric Foster, my…” The color rose in her heart-shaped face and she tipped up her chin as if she expected resistance—and likely she’d had a wagonload of that already. “My fiancé. We’re engaged.” She presented her left hand for Joe’s inspection, slender fingers arching in one of those graceful girly gestures that a man couldn’t have made in a thousand years.

The stone was not quite as big as Ben had described, but twice as gaudy. Still, Joe would leave disapproval to her daddy. “Very nice. And pleased t’meet you.” He nodded graciously to Risa’s young man.

“And you,” agreed the blond, movie-star-handsome youngster—without a trace of real warmth. His hands were fixed firmly to the steering wheel; though with a bit of a reach, he could have shaken Joe’s hand. “Risa, could you please sit down,” he added coolly. “Unless you want everyone staring at you.”

“I…” She slid abruptly into her seat, her smile fading for a moment before it rallied. “Sorry.”

She was taking that from this puffed-up young rooster? Their Risa of a year ago would have tweaked his long, haughty nose and bounded out of that fancy car without bothering to open the door. So this was what they taught a girl back East? Polished the grit right out of her? Joe’s gaze met Ben’s over the width of the convertible.

The boss man had ridden up close on the lawyer’s side. “You’ve just arrived and you’re off again already?” he demanded of Risa.

She had spunk enough to spare for her daddy, if not the fiancé. “We’re driving down to Mesaverde. Just for the day.”

“I’m fascinated by Anasazi ruins,” added the boyfriend, putting the shine on for Ben that he hadn’t for the hired man. “And with Risa to give me the tour, how could I resist?”

“I was thinking you might like to help us out ’round Suntop, today,” Ben said, poker-faced, though his eyes were as intent as a coyote’s at a gopher hole. “Seems we’ve lost one of our haying crew. Could sure use a hand. And it’d give you a taste of real ranch work.” That is, if you plan to be part of the family, was the unspoken challenge.

The lawyer’s wide, slick smile didn’t waver. “Gee, I’d really enjoy that, Ben!” He shook his head regretfully. “But I’m a martyr to hay fever. Once I start sneezing… That’s one of the reasons I thought it might be wise to spend the day off-ranch. Give my nose a break.”

“Huh.” Ben straightened in his saddle and fixed his shrewd eyes on his daughter. “Then you two be back by suppertime, princess, you hear me?”

Foster laid a hand on her knee as he cut in smoothly, “We’ll certainly try.”

Speaking for her, as if she had no mind of her own. Joe didn’t like it a bit, as he tipped his brim to Risa and smiled her on her way. She brushed her blowing, sunset hair from her cheeks and waved back at him, then to her father. Then she turned forward to call a greeting to this hand or that as the convertible threaded through the bustling yard.

“Hay fever,” Joe said quietly, looking after them.

“See what I mean?” Ben spat in the dirt again. “Can the girl pick ’em or what? You know what he asked me at dinner last night? How much land I have here!”

“He did?” That was the worst kind of manners. You knew how much land a man owned you knew his worth close to the penny. Might as well ask to see his bank book.

“Let a bad ’un like that into your breeding stock,” Tankersly fumed, “and you’ll be culling out his knock-kneed, greedy get for the next four generations!”

But try to tell a woman what to do. Joe had never had any luck at that, and neither, for all his land and wealth and sheer cussedness, had Ben Tankersly. Risa would follow her wistful heart, even if it led her straight on to heartbreak.

And ain’t it a cryin’ shame? Joe jammed his old straw down over his nose and rode off to spoil somebody else’s day—Jake’s, he decided. And if he heard one peep about hay fever…

CHAPTER TWO

HE’D HAVE TO EAT some crow, Miguel Heydt reflected as he turned his dusty old pickup off the county road. Serious crow. Driving under the arching name board, he glanced up. Suntop Ranch was emblazoned between two rising suns, both the letters and suns shining gold in the morning light—gilded to perfection. It was that kind of outfit.

With pride to match, he didn’t doubt. The biggest, richest spreads always had the best jobs—and didn’t they know it. He’d made a bad mistake rejecting that old man’s offer last night.

Then to show up today, hat in hand and crow feathers all over his mouth? He’d be lucky if they didn’t run him off the place.

But how was I to know? The one map he had, marking the Badwater Flats, was eighty years old. It located the plateau on Kristopherson land.

Last night at the Lone Star he’d learned that the Kristopherson Ranch was still in existence, still lying east-northeast of Trueheart. So he’d been looking for Kristopherson cowboys, not Suntop men. Buying them drinks when he found them, pumping them casually, discreetly. Making up stories, then seeing what stories he got in return.

He’d told his tale about a water hole that poisoned cattle back on a ranch in Texas where he used to work—and heard tales about locoweed poisoning in return.