Trouble at Lone Spur

Dusty and Rusty rode a matched set of well-gaited buckskin geldings. They were small, but not as small as Melody’s Welsh pony. Gil Spencer rode a powerful bay gelding, instead of his injured mare.

The three children met and galloped off in the lead. Gil tipped his hat to Liz and cantered past without saying a word, even though she had her pickup window rolled down. She was so busy admiring the way he sat a horse that she almost broke an axle driving across a rocky arroyo. Darn, but she was a sucker for the way a man—a good rider like Gil Spencer—looked on his horse. He had an easy fluid grace that Liz considered the trademark of a real cowboy. The gelding recognized his mastery, too. He responded to the slightest touch of his rider’s heel or knee.

The boys, now, were learning, and they were perpetual motion in their saddles. She could see daylight between rump and saddle. Liz grinned to herself. Melody was the more polished rider by far. She could handle a bigger horse. Deserved one.

The salary that went with this job was more than adequate to provide for their needs, and maybe there’d be enough left over each month to start saving for a couple of really nice horses.

Speaking of horses, off to her left, ankle-deep in grass, stood thirty or so buckskins, the sleek well-proportioned animals that put Spencer’s name in the horse breeders’ registry. Liz slowed her pickup to a crawl. The land they’d just gone through was barren and dry. These grassy knolls, outlined in a patchwork of fences, had obviously been seeded and irrigated. She’d guess it hadn’t been an easy matter to pump water uphill from the river she could see winding through the stand of cottonwoods far below.

Gil noticed that she’d slowed almost to a stop. Turning, he galloped back. “Is everything okay? You crack the oil pan when you bottomed out back there?”

Just as Liz thought—nothing got by Gil Spencer. For that reason she didn’t make excuses, only laughed. “For a few seconds I wondered that myself. But my pickup’s running fine. I’m just admiring the scenery. Your irrigation setup took some ingenious engineering.”

Gil thumbed back his hat, rested his forearm on the saddle horn and surveyed the pasture all around him. “I’m afraid I see five years of backbreaking work—not to mention buckets of money that both my dad and Ginger accused me of pouring down the drain.”

“Ginger?” She’d noticed a bitter edge in his voice when he said the name. Liz knew someone named Ginger—but no, it was too much of a coincidence to think she’d be one and the same person. Maybe his dad’s second wife? “A wicked stepmother, I presume,” she teased lightly.

His eyes glittered angrily. “You presume wrong,” he said, surprising the gelding when he choked up on the reins and wheeled him on a dime. Sod, damp from a recent watering, flew from the gelding’s sharp heels and stuck to the pickup’s windshield as Spencer cantered off. In the field the horses stopped eating and whinnied nervously. Liz sat in her idling pickup. “What in heaven’s name was that all about?” she wondered aloud. Obviously it’d been a mistake to tease him about Ginger—whoever she was. But if Gil Spencer thought his terse remark would end her curiosity, he didn’t know human nature very well. Although not prone to gossip, Liz did like to know what made people tick. She was intrigued by the little mysteries of life; she was also patient and content to bide her time.

Catching up to the children, Liz insisted Melody join her in the fenced-off pasture where three geldings grazed. No matter how cleverly the boys and her daughter cajoled her, Liz had no intention of allowing Melody out of her sight.

“I should be able to shoe two of those horses before lunch. Melody and I will meet you fellows at the crawdad hole. We’ll share our sandwiches if you point out where you’ll be.”

Gil had dismounted to check a fence post nearby. “We don’t expect you to feed us,” he said. “But you’re more than welcome to join us at the river. See that tall weeping birch?” Liz turned the way he pointed. “My grandfather planted two of them as seedlings,” he added. “Grandmother wanted to build a home there when the trees got big enough for shade.”

“What happened to change her mind?” Liz asked, assuming they built the Spencer ranch house.

“First big rain, and the river flooded the valley.”

“Oh. Did it wash out the second tree? I only see one.”

“It died when I was a boy, during the seven-year drought. Granddad packed water all the way out here from the house, and still he lost one. Even though they’d given up the idea of building here, they still planned to be buried at the foot of those old trees.”

“So, are they? Buried under that tree, I mean?”

Gil shook his head and stared down at the solid gold key chain he’d absently pulled from his pocket—a gold spur linked by the arch of a golden horseshoe. Diamonds winked from the spur’s rowels. His grandfather had entrusted Gil, rather than his own son, with the keepsake. He’d made Gil promise to look after the ranch he so loved—as if he knew his only son wouldn’t. To Gil, the key chain symbolized the heart and soul of the Lone Spur. “It’s almost impossible to bury someone on private property,” he said in a low voice.

“Yes. Corbett’s rodeo buddies wanted him buried beneath that chute. I was relieved when the funeral home refused.” Brushing a sudden tear from her eye, Liz hurriedly pressed a hand to Melody’s shoulder. “Come along,” she urged softly, “I have work to do. Run and tell the boys you’ll see them later.”

Gil watched the woman gather her tools and stride toward the horses to be shod. Tears? At this late date? He couldn’t say why it annoyed him to see proof that she grieved for her husband, that she’d loved him.

It more than annoyed him, it made him damned uncomfortable. Because Lizbeth Robbins didn’t seem to fit his image of rodeos and their hangers-on.

And, thanks to his wife, he knew plenty about those.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_d5e9efa1-c062-5e9d-8367-11713860e0a2)

AFTER LIZ FINISHED checking the hooves of all three horses, she started with the one that was hardest to fit. Rafe had told her cold-shoeing was the only method the previous farrier used. It was certainly cheaper to use ready-mades, but Liz had been taught by an old-timer who believed that a foot shod properly and at regular intervals would remain sound for the life of a horse. Forming a shoe to fit exactly corrected a multitude of problems and extended the animal’s work life.

Liz slipped a lariat over the first horse and led him to a big oak tree. Its spreading branches provided shade and a relatively clean work space. From the notations Rafe had made on her clipboard—indicating each animal’s identifying features and markings—she determined that this horse was called Sand Digger. Back at her pickup, Liz wrote his name on a three-by-five card, dated it and briefly listed what she intended to do. Then she placed the card in a recipe box, which would eventually include every horse she worked on, with the cards filed in date order. She believed in shoeing at six-week intervals, eight at the most, unless the animal threw a shoe. Good records were something else Hoot had insisted on, and another thing the Lone Spur’s former farrier apparently hadn’t felt was important. She was virtually working blind on these animals.

Gil trotted up just as Liz fired her forge. “Starting lunch?”

She slipped on her apron and gloves. “It’s barely nine-thirty. Don’t tell me your breakfast has worn off already?”

His gaze slid from its inspection of her trim figure to where his sons were energetically throwing a football. “I’d barely poured my coffee when our breakfast conversation turned to bats. Food was forgotten.” He glanced at Melody, who played quietly in the pickup’s cab with a family of plastic dolls. “Is she always so placid?”

Liz looked up from gathering her nippers, blade and rasp. Laughter bubbled spontaneously. “Rarely. She’s trying to impress me so she can go catch crawdads later. Beneath that sweet exterior lies a total tomboy. You’ll see.”

Gil adjusted his hat. “That’s good. Maybe my sons’ll learn some respect. They seem to equate female with inferior.”

“Imagine that,” Liz said dryly. Then before he could take exception, she turned and made her way back to Sand Digger. Thanks to her sixth-sense antennae that were attuned to Spencer, Liz knew the moment he dismounted and followed her. Ignoring him, she arranged her tools carefully, then walked Sand Digger in a circle to check his gait. She reminded herself that a lot of owners preferred to watch their horses being shod. But for some reason it grated on her nerves to have Gil Spencer hunkered down beneath the tree, relaxed as you please. Evidently he hadn’t spied on his other farriers. If he had, his animals might be in better shape. Sand Digger favored his right front foot. On closer inspection, Liz discovered that the last nails had been driven in crookedly.

“Something wrong?” Noticing her frown, Gil stood and removed his hat.

“What? Oh, nothing.” She repeated the procedure with the other hooves and found the same crooked nails in all but one.

“You frown at nothing?” Gil tilted back his hat and sauntered over to take a look. By the third hoof, he whistled through his teeth. “Damn!”

“You swear at nothing?” Liz restrained a smirk.

“That jerk!” he exploded. “I had no idea…” Off came the Stetson again and he began the signature tap, tap, tap on his thigh. “I fired him because I smelled liquor on his breath. I don’t tolerate anyone drinking on the job.”

“I guess you didn’t follow him around and check his work.” She shrugged.

He paused in the middle of tapping; an expression of surprise then chagrin furrowed his brow. “Look, ten years ago my pop’s weakness for alcohol nearly lost us the ranch. I sold off all but thirty horses, dropped everyone from the payroll but Rafe, and the two of us put in twenty-hour days, seven days a week, to dig this place out of bankruptcy. There weren’t enough hours in the day. We handled breeding, training, shoeing, built fence, mucked stalls—you name it. Now I have twenty men on my payroll. All experts.”

“Twenty men and one woman,” she said. “And as an expert I recommend you let this horse run barefoot and riderless for about six weeks.” She flipped her rope off Sand Digger’s neck and walked back to change the information on his card. “I don’t drink, and I drive a very straight nail, Mr. Spencer, so you won’t need to check up on me, either. Maybe you can take that extra hour or so a day I’ll be saving you and spend it with your kids.”

Gil stiffened. She’d hit a raw nerve. Ginger complained to anyone who’d listen that he’d neglected her in favor of the ranch. Neglect was a big issue in the custody hearing, even though Gil had hired Ben and cut back to ten-hour days. Little by little, as the boys grew and spent more time with him out on the range, he’d let longer hours in the saddle creep up again. But he didn’t neglect his sons and he didn’t need some woman looking at him with sorrowful calf eyes, suggesting that he did.

“Are you fixin’ to fire me again?” Liz drawled softly, wishing he wasn’t such a hard man to read. She could see he’d worked up a head of steam but honestly didn’t know why. “I only meant you can trust me to do a good job of shoeing.”

Gil stared at her neat array of tools. The card she’d been writing on fluttered to the ground. He picked it up, realizing at a glance that if all her records were this precise, she was definitely telling the truth. “Guess I’m kind of touchy when it comes to my family,” he said gruffly, handing her back the card.

Liz filed it and filled one out for the next gelding, Coppertone’s Pride. Named for his perfect all-over tan, she reasoned—and then her mind flipped back to what Melody had said about her teacher’s pictures of family. Mom, dad, kids. It seemed grandparents were acceptable, as long as there were two. But one parent and child? Apparently not. By Miss Woodson’s definition, she and Melody weren’t a family. But of course they were, the same as tens of thousands of other single-parent families in the world. Liz would have to have a talk with Miss W. She needed a new supply of pictures.

“C’mon, boys,” Gil called. “Mount up. Time to check fence.” He squinted at the sun. “We’ll mosey toward the river about noon,” he told Liz.

“Do we hafta go with you?” The boys stopped tossing the football. “Riding fence is boring. Can’t we stay here and play? We brought a Frisbee, too.”

“No. Remember, I said idle hands make mischief.”

“Aw, Dad. We said we were sorry.”

Gil turned back to Liz, giving an apologetic shrug. She wasn’t sure if he was asking her to let them stay or if he was irked at having her witness a little family discord. “I’ll keep an eye on them if you’d like,” she murmured discreetly. She didn’t want to be accused of aiding and abetting dissension.

His sudden grin was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “Thanks. I’ll put the fear of the Lord in them so they won’t cause you any trouble. Riding fence is boring. Someday they’ll accept that it’s part of the job. Now they’re at the age where anything short of calamity is boring.”