Aspen Gold (28 page)

The cattle checked, the evening chores done, and supper eaten, Bannon sat on the front porch of the log ranch house. A mental and physical weariness loosened his long frame and the ease of the darkening night moved over him. With an indolent rhythm, he swayed the rocker across the planked floor and breathed the fragrance of his cigar.

The ranch hands had long since gone to their homes. Old Tom stirred in the house, grumbling at the television's snowy reception.

On the porch, night crowded around Bannon until he felt thoroughly alone. The call of a whippoorwill ran through the silence and a small steady breeze, cool with the coming winter, brushed over his face.

There were two great hours in life, Bannon decided--the hour of morning's first gray light, when everything was fresh and sharp and keen, and this hour with its softness and mystery and time for reflection.

He located the Big Dipper and the North Star, a bright, unblinking point of light that reminded him of the constancy of all things, the changelessness and fidelity of the outer world. Man was the only impermanent thing.

Those were his thoughts, all pathways leading back to his early manhood and to Diana, the woman who had been his wife. He remembered how bright and clear that time had been, how much fun they'd had.

Then the fun had gone, leaving him alone--almost beyond the power of laughter.

He kept remembering her eyes, how black they'd been with anger and reproach when she'd looked at him at the last--black with the thought that their unhappiness had been his fault. She had died hating him for taking her from the life she'd known, hating him for a marriage she had so soon found wrong.

That was always the clearest thing--the memory of her eyes. That memory had left him with one permanent, impossible wish--to live those days over again and give back to her that insatiable love of life she'd had when they first met. Not her love for him. That, they had both learned, had never existed.

He rolled the cigar between his fingers and took another puff, reliving those old moments. As he blew out a stream of blue smoke, he heard the distant drum of hoof beats coming out of the foothills to the west. He lifted his head, the sound like an echo of an even older memory.

He waited as the drum of cantering hooves came closer. A horse and rider emerged from the black shadows of the ranch buildings. Bannon recognized the chestnut's blaze face and four white stockings and knew it was Kit in the saddle.

She rode the horse in a way that was good to see, her shoulders swinging, her body full of grace.

At the porch, she reined in and dropped to the ground in one careless jump. Bannon rose from the rocker as she came up the stone steps.

"Hello, Bannon." She stood in front of him, stripping off her riding gloves, smiling and watching his answering smile break the healthy darkness of his face.

"Kit."

The ride had deepened her breathing and whipped her cheeks pink. He caught the fragrance of her hair, a familiar fragrance that took him back, reviving old things better not revived. But she'd brought it all with her and faced him now, her vitality and strong spirit touching him and lifting his impulses.

"Have you come to sit on my porch again?" he asked lightly.

She tensed for an instant, then smiled and said firmly, "I think we should stay away from that, Bannon."

He knew she was right. "I see Sundance still remembered the trail." He brought over another rocker.

"We both did." She sank gratefully into it and lay her head back. "It was a wonderful surprise to find him in the corral. I thought you'd sold him."

Her arm trailed over the rocker's arm, the leather fringe on her suede jacket sleeve falling loose, her face and hair a soft-shining blur in the dark. But he didn't need to see her. He remembered how gently her lips lay together, how half serious and half amused her eyes would be.

"Nobody wanted to pay more than a killer's price for him. They thought he was too old. So I kept him." His cigar was out. He struck another match to it. "Laura rides him sometimes."

"Where is Laura?" She lifted her head and glanced back at the lighted windows behind them, an odd dread surfacing.

"She's spending the night in town with Sondra.

The two of them were going shopping to buy Laura some winter school clothes. She's grown out of last year's."

Kit looked down at the motionless shape of her hands, keeping her expression composed. "It's good you're letting her spend time with a woman. A girl needs that."

"So I am beginning to notice."

She let an interval of silence run, then stole a glance at his face. It was in shadows, the lights from the windows showing only the uneven traverse angles of his face, the smoldering tip of his cigar a dull red glow in the night.

"You were doing some sober thinking when I rode up, weren't you?" she observed.

He stirred. "How would you know?"

"I know." She looked at the cigar between his fingers. Bannon only smoked one when he was caught up in heavy thought. "So well,"

she added in a small, fugitive murmur.

"Too well."

If he heard her, he didn't comment, nor did he press for an explanation of her certainty. Instead he asked, "Did you get settled in at the house?"

"More or less." She had intended to lead the conversation around to the ranch. Now Bannon had provided the opening. "John Travis was impressed with Silverwood when he saw it. In fact, he said I could probably get ten million for it if I sold it."

"I wouldn't be surprised."

His ready agreement startled her. "But you told me it was worth a half million this morning."

"In the eyes of the Internal Revenue," he said in qualification.

"But if it's worth ten million, why would they let me value it for less?" She frowned in confusion.

"Under the special-use provision of the estate tax code, as long as you continue to manage and operate Silverwood as a ranch, you're allowed to use comparable operations as a basis for valuation rather than the land's appreciated value due to commercial developments in the surrounding area.

It's a way of allowing family farms and ranches to pass on to the next generation.

Otherwise, if you had to pay estate tax on ten million dollars, you would be forced to sell the ranch to come up with the money." He paused. "We discussed this on the phone several months ago."

"We did?"

"We did, about a week or two after the funeral."

Which probably explained why she didn't remember it, Kit thought. She'd been going on little more than sheer nerves at the time, spending ten and twelve hours a day on the Winds of Destiny set, then racing to the hospital to be with her mother while emotionally trying to cope with her father's death and the sudden and swift advancement of the multiple sclerosis in her mother, brought on--the doctors had suspected--by the emotional shock over the news of her ex-husband's death.

In that month following her father's death, she remembered speaking with Bannon two or three times about various matters concerning the will, the ranch, and the disposition of the estate. But during that same period, she'd also had endless consultations with her mother's doctors, meetings with Hatcher Brooks, an L.a. attorney who had helped her obtain a legal appointment to handle her mother's affairs, and visits to hospitals in the area with facilities for long-term, chronic care of patients with incapacitating diseases or injuries, seeking one she'd feel secure placing her mother in.

Under the circumstances, Kit wasn't surprised she had blanked out his technical explanation about the machinations of inheritance tax laws. Understanding such things herself hadn't been high on her list of priorities at the time--not when she had so many other, more pressing, concerns on her mind.

"So, what happens if I sell the ranch?"

"If you sell it within a certain period of time, you're liable for the estate tax on the difference.

Without checking, I can't say if that's one year or two. Why? You told me you wanted to keep the ranch." The statement bordered on a challenge.

"I know I did. But I had no idea it was worth so much. Ten million dollars is a lot of money, Bannon."

He flipped the cigar into the night. "Nobody pays that much money for land unless they're confident they can make it back twice over." His voice turned cool. "They won't do that by ranching, Kit."

"No." She recognized that.

Bannon had never made a secret of his opposition to more development in the Roaring Fork Valley and the Elk Mountain Range. That opposition would be even stronger if it occurred on land adjoining Stone Creek Ranch. She understood that, and, to an extent, she agreed with him.

Which made her own decision that much harder.

Door hinges squeaked a warning as Old Tom stepped onto the porch. "Bannon." His voice searched the shadows. "I heard voices. Are you talking to yourself out here?"

Welcoming the interruption, Kit pushed out of the rocker. "No. He's talking to me," she said cheerfully.

"Kit." He peered at her face in surprise, then noticed the chestnut standing hip-locked at the bottom of the steps, and scowled. "A girl like you has got no business ramming around these mountains at night alone."

She laughed and planted a kiss on his cheek, feeling the rasp of a day's growth of whiskers.

"You said the same thing to me when I was sixteen."

"Sixteen or sixty, it would still be the truth,"

he grumbled in an effort to disguise his pleasure at her kiss.

But his comment caused Kit a sharp twinge of sadness. She wouldn't be ramming around these mountains at night when she was sixty. There was no chance of it, not once she sold the ranch. Yet, there had been a time when she thought she'd grow old and happy in these very mountains.

"How come you two are sitting out here? Don't you know it's cold? Come on inside." He waved them both toward the door. "The coffee's hot and Sadie baked a chocolate cake. It's a little on the dry side but a scoop of ice cream'll fix that."

Kit glanced at the log ranch house that had been like a second home to her when she was growing up. Going in would just stir up more old memories, and that didn't seem wise.

"I'd better not," she said with a faint shake of her head. "I left Paula at the house by herself. If I'm gone much longer, she might start wondering if something happened to me."

"And she'd be right to worry, too. Ride home with her, Bannon," he ordered, just as he had all those years ago.

Kit protested automatically. "It isn't necessary. I--"

"Give up, Kit," Bannon said, his long shape making a black silhouette in the shadows.

"It's an argument you won't win." She closed her mouth, knowing he was right. "Give me a minute to catch up the buckskin."

"Sure." She watched him go down the steps and head for the corral, striding with an easy, masculine gait.

"Might as well go give him a hand," Old Tom said. "That's what you always used to do."

"I know." But she took her time crossing to the barn, leading the chestnut. When she reached it, Bannon was cinching the saddle on the black-maned buckskin.

"Ready?" He threw her a look.

"Ready." Kit nodded.

They mounted and cantered out of the yard into the night, riding abreast along the wide dirt track of a ranch road and following it all the way up to the summer pastures. In silence, they crossed the dun yellow surface of the high meadows, lit by the pale light of a sickle moon.

At a far corner of the meadow, they struck the game trail and traveled single file along the narrow, steepening path. The strike of iron-shod hooves on rock and the clatter of stones rang across the night's stillness. Then they passed into the cathedral-like silence of the pines, where all was hushed and muted.

Beyond the pines, the trail turned and rose sharply into a rocky defile. As both horses labored to make the climb, the chestnut slipped and scrambled to regain solid footing. Bannon turned in the saddle to check on the others.

"Okay?"

"Yes."

"We'll rest where the trail widens up here."

"Right."

After another hundred yards, they broke out of the rocks and the ground leveled out for a short stretch.

Bannon pulled the buckskin in and swung out of the saddle, catching the chestnut's reins as Kit dismounted.

"I forgot how rough the climb is coming back."

She hooked the stirrup over the saddle horn and loosened the cinch strap, watching while Bannon ran an exploring hand down the chestnut's front legs.

"It's a hard climb for any horse at any age." He straightened and gave the gelding a pat, dropping the reins to let the ends trail the ground. "But you're okay, aren't you, Dance?"

Kit followed when Bannon moved away from the horses. "Just the same, I'm glad it's not much farther." They had stopped in the shadow of the ridge top. Silverwood lay on the other side of it.

"No, it's not much farther," he agreed idly and paused, facing the rugged body of land they'd just traveled over.

His shoulders made a black cut against the night; the brim of his hat shadowed much of his face. Standing there, he reminded her of the land itself.

He had its same rugged and enduring qualities, its deep silences and harsh beauty.

Then he turned, his gaze seeking hers, the moonlight touching his face, burned by wind and sun and marked by fine lines radiating out from the corners of his eyes--lines left by a lifetime of gazing into long distances and bright sunlight undimmed by city smog. His smile was a slash of white.

"This is the way it should be, Kit. A lot of riding. A little fun. Something to remember when it's all over."

"Yes," she said faintly, then again with gathering conviction. "Yes, it is."

He swung away, throwing a glance at the horses. "We might as well rest ourselves, too." He crossed to a gnarled tree and settled himself at the base of it, then patted the ground. "Sit down."

Kit toed a rock out of the way, then dropped down near him, and folded her legs beneath her. She trailed a gloved hand over the ground, then lifted some of the loose earth and let it sift through her fingers.