A Mating of Hawks (9 page)

Vashti rose. “Miss O'Rourke! I find such language exceedingly offensive!”

“What language?” Mary asked, eyes rounding. “I only said—”

Vashti stalked out, shoes clicking, her head so high that not a hint of double chin showed. Tracy looked suspiciously at Mary, saw she was honestly puzzled and burst out laughing.

Geronimo slapped his thigh and handed Mary a slice of luscious mango. “Mary O'Rourke, you're one dynamite Apache! You'll do more for Don Patrick than all of my tequila!” Grinning at Tracy, he added, “That took nerve,
chica
, cutting Blondie off at the pass. Shea still can't believe it.”

Tracy's exultation began to ebb. Shea had come forcefully to the rescue, she couldn't fault him for that, but he hadn't said one approving word to her—not that she expected praise, but it wouldn't have hurt him to acknowledge that she'd helped Mary at some risk to herself.

Damn him anyway! If he wanted to think all women were awful because he'd married a faithless one, that was his problem. But his cold behavior rankled later, during the deputy's interrogation.

As Tracy explained why she had stopped, Shea listened with a remote smile, and as soon as the deputy had his information and prisoner, Shea reminded Geronimo that they had been on their way to pick up some fence posts that were still waiting for them.

Geronimo sighed and assured Mary that he'd see her soon. “Maybe you'd like to go riding,” he suggested.

“I'd like that even better than working on a truck!” she assured him.

Geronimo nudged Shea. “Maybe you could come along. Have a picnic.”

“I'm busy.” Shea's tone was curt. But when his gray eyes rested on Tracy, that heady, dizzying surge of attraction ran between them like a high-voltage shock. “Next time you park in front of a hoodlum, you'd better have a plan. He might have shot you or run right over your little car.”

Tracy gasped. “I couldn't just drive on!”

His gaze burned into her, making her weak, making her wish crazily that he'd take her in his arms, at the same time that she blazed with indignant hurt. “Maybe you couldn't,” he said at last, slowly, as if forced to admit something he preferred to deny. “Did Judd go up to Phoenix this morning?”

She nodded. “It's hard on Patrick for you two to fight. Can't you—”

“No.”

Wheeling away, Shea strode to the pickup. With a shake of his head and an apologetic show of his palms, Geronimo followed.

Shocked at Shea's rudeness, shaken by the hostile magnetism between them, Tracy turned to Mary. “Shall we?”

From the door, Mary called, “Mr. Scott?” Then she walked to him and shook his hand. “I'm Mary O'Rourke.”

“Hello, Mary O'Rourke.” He smiled slightly, looking up at her through his darkness. “You can't be the new nurse!”

“I hope I am,” she laughed. “It's a long way back to town.”

“You sound young—and pretty. Why do you want a job like this, taking care of a broke-down old critter like me?”

“I came because the pay was good. But now I've seen you, I'd work for board and room.”

The movable white eyebrow bushed formidably. “And why is that?”

“You remind me of my grandfather.”

“Then why aren't you home taking care of him?”

“He was breaking a colt last fall. It tossed him off and broke his neck.”

Patrick was still a moment. He had heard the tremor at the end of Mary's statement. “That was a good way to go, Mary.”

“Sure.” She nodded and smiled, though tears glistened on her dark lashes. “I know that, Mr. Scott.”

“Call me Patrick,” he commanded. “Pull up a chair and tell me about yourself.”

“She just got here, Patrick,” Tracy objected, but Mary laughed and drew a seat close to the bed.

Tracy shrugged. They certainly seemed to be taking to each other, and she couldn't imagine that Patrick would attempt anything that might get
his
finger broken. Remembering Inez's tamales, she hurried down to get them from the car and tell Concha they were for Patrick's lunch.

Patrick insisted that Tracy and Mary share the tamales, along with refried beans and guacamole. He preferred to feed himself, though he spilled some, so Mary had made him an outsize napkin out of a quartered sheet that covered him from chin to waist.

“Has Geronimo met this one yet?” he asked Tracy. “He'll be jealous! She's three-quarters Apache.”

“They've met,” Tracy said. “Mary, didn't you tell him?”

“I thought maybe—” Mary began.

Patrick demanded to know. When Tracy had finished telling him, he swore. “Maybe Judd's right,” he muttered. “If a woman's not safe on our ranch—”

“I
was
hitchhiking,” Mary said. “I know it's dangerous but the bus would have dropped me twenty miles away.”

Squinting at Tracy, Patrick's voice had an edge of wistful pride. “Shea plumb knocked that no-good down the arroyo?”

“After the man shot at him.” Tracy laughed. “Considering everything, it's funny that the only real injury was the finger Mary broke for Blondie.”

“Judd would have shot him, and good riddance,” said Patrick.

“I don't think Shea or Geronimo had guns.”

“Reckon not.” Patrick's face twisted. “That damned war! When Shea came home, all he did for a year was drink, whore and raise hell. Went off to Mexico, then. When he went back to school, I was sure thankful, but damn it, the craziness he's got now is harder to put up with than the way he was before! Selling off cattle, hogging pasture he's not using, croaking about water!” He punched the mattress impotently with his good fist. “What I wouldn't give to be out of this bed again—able to see for myself!”

“You could always hire an independent range biologist to make a report on the land,” Tracy suggested.

“Hell, that's what Shea is, a range biologist!”

“I'm no expert,” Tracy said carefully. “And my memory may be tricky. But it looks to me as if there's a lot less grass than when I went away.”

“It's a dry year,” Patrick said testily.

“If it's dry now, when grass should be getting good, what'll it be by fall?”

Patrick gave the classic statement of all ranchers and farmers. “It's got to rain sometime.”

The trouble was that a cow didn't clip off grass as a horse did. Cows wrapped their tongues around a tuft of grass and if it wasn't held by intertwining systems in the sod, it was pulled up by the roots. That left nothing to sprout when rains finally came.

Patrick knew that even better than Tracy. She hadn't come home to quarrel with him and felt a pang of contrition as he lay back, looking exhausted.

“I'll see you later,” she said, kissed him, and went out.

Mary and Patrick got along so well that Tracy felt superfluous if she stayed with him very long, though he joined her in insisting that evening that Mary get out for a walk or a swim. After dinner, Tracy played the guitar for him, and Vashti came in briefly a few times. Though she all but ignored Mary, she must have been relieved that her recalcitrant husband had at last got a nurse he wouldn't try to run off.

Feeling rather useless and lonely as she went to bed early with a hefty novel she'd been saving, Tracy decided to take her camera out tomorrow. There was no telling when she might happen on a good picture, though she knew wildlife photography was very different from what she was used to. The outdoors editor of her paper had taken her out a few times and showed her how to use a blind and how to rig a camera for automatic exposures, but she suspected it would take more than that to get the kinds and numbers of shots she wanted.

If El Charco was closed to grazing, there should be considerable wildlife, especially around the earthen tanks that gave the sub-ranch its name. She'd try there. Photography didn't hurt grazing so Shea could scarcely object to that, even if she had the ill luck to encounter him.

Ill luck? Honesty made her laugh out loud at that. Shea drew her—and she'd bet that he felt the same attraction, though, damn him, he was apparently blaming her for all female transgressions since Eve! She wanted a chance to storm his cold reserve, have it out with him.

And for some reason she couldn't really name, she wanted to see him before Judd returned.

After breakfast and a visit with Patrick, Tracy left him swapping risqué tales with Mary. Putting nuts, fruit and cheese in a smaller cooler with a jug of lemonade, she got her camera gear, rubbed on sunscreen, got an old broad-brimmed hat out of the armoire and went to the garage.

Since she might be driving off the road, she took the little Toyota pickup. As any ranch vehicle should be, it was supplied with a jug of water, rope, and a shovel, in case it was necessary to dig out of either mud or sand.

Past the house turnoff, the road diminished to ruts. It wound back through the hills toward Mexico and, after perhaps ten jolting miles, continued beyond a heavy gate, though the pickup could not.

The gate was padlocked, and the fence running away from it was firmly stretched between posts, though Tracy was glad to see it was horse wire, not the usual barbed variety that could seriously damage an animal that ran into it.

So!

Frustrated, especially since she should have expected this because of the disagreement between Shea and Judd, Tracy scanned the immovable object, grumbled under her breath and turned around. She had just passed a draw that had a seep at the far end, if her memory was right. She'd walk up the sandy wash and investigate. Early morning and evening were the best times to find wildlife, but a place with water could be frequented throughout the day.

She took a long draught of cold lemonade, put her camera pack over her shoulders, locked the pickup she'd parked off the road and started along the dry watercourse.

It was just warm enough for her to be glad of the spotty shade cast by the feathery leaves of greening mesquites and the occasional denser thatch of evergreen oak. The crisp clean air filled Tracy's lungs till they expanded with zestful well-being. It was a wonderful place to be, mountains rising in all directions beyond this stretch of hills and valleys, but her exuberance faltered when she remembered that Patrick couldn't see it.

That was bad enough, without being paralyzed, without his sons wrangling bitterly about what would be their inheritance.

A dozen Gambel's quail, black tassels bobbing with their quick clockwork steps, paraded across the wash, leaving tracked signatures. A pair of red-tailed hawks were soaring and swooping around each other, vanishing almost into the sun, then dropping near the big trees bordering the creek that ran through El Charco.

The cleft mark of deer hoofs followed the wash for a distance, then cut over the bank. An acorn woodpecker was busy at a dead trunk and scrub jays called raucously as they foraged on the slope amid small junipers. A javelina was rooting at the inside of a yucca, chewing out the succulent heart.

Tracy got out her camera and tripod, selected her zoom lens and got a dozen shots, including several of the baby javelina that had come up to try to suckle its feasting mother. The youngsters, like piglets except for longer, darker, stiffer hair and a rangier build, were adorable, but adults could be dangerous if crowded. They had sharp tusks and could move with surprising speed on their neat, small hoofs.

Moving on, Tracy saw lizards, a jackrabbit, a sidewinder's tracks. A cactus wren was singing and she laughed at the heart-catching flash of a cardinal in a mesquite.

A fine morning. It was good to be healthy and alive. She didn't care anymore that Shea had locked his gate, or care whether she got more pictures that day. It was right and wonderful just to be here.

The wash curved around an island of rocks and trees. Tracy heard a metallic clatter. Glancing toward the edge of the island, she gasped in pure pleasure.

A ringtail! The impressive black-and-white-banded tail was as long as the rest of the body and the small fox-like head combined. Tracy had caught only glimpses of the elusive little creatures before this day. Then she saw why she was getting such a good look at this one and cried out.

A trap held one tiny forefoot. The ringtail had dragged the trap, which probably outweighed it, as far as it could. The chain at the other end was anchored around a big root.

Terrified of the human looming over it, the ringtail tugged desperately to free itself, its mouth open in a terrible soundless mewling.

What if it tore its foot off? How to get it loose? Sickened as if the trap held her, Tracy knew she had to immobilize the animal, keep it from biting while she pried the trap apart. Putting down her pack, she stripped off her shirt, doubled it, and folded it swiftly over the ringtail.

It still fought. Dear God, how was she ever going to get it out of the trap? Weeping with grief and outrage, she tried to speak soothingly to the small beast. The rusted jaws were almost shut on the delicate foot. Even if Tracy had both hands free, she didn't see how she could get the trap open.

Maybe she could carry trap and ringtail to the pickup and drive to help. She couldn't think of any other course. Holding the furry little thing, which couldn't have weighed more than two pounds, Tracy leaned the trap against her knee and began to work at its fastening on the root.

“Now what?”

She jumped. Shea was scowling down at her. Before she could speak, he dropped to his knees, grabbed a stick and worked it between the jaws of the trap till he could grasp them with his hands and pull them apart.

Tracy saw a flash of bloodied foot as she drew back her shirt. Instead of being maimed as she'd feared, however, the ringtail was gone in a blur of black-banded tail.

“Will it be all right?” she asked shakily.

“Sure. Wild animals have great powers of recuperation.”

Grateful for that but overwhelmed by horror, Tracy buried her face in her arms and sobbed. “H-how can they? How can people do that?”