True Heart

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.