The first one had thudded to the floor when Jessy called from the closet, “What time are you getting up in the morning?”
Ty held the other boot while he thought about it. “It’s a two-hour drive to South Branch. Three-thirty, I guess. I want to be there by first light.”
He placed the boot next to its mate then reached over to set the alarm clock as Jessy emerged from the closet, wearing a T-shirt that stopped about midthigh.
“Set it for three, and I’ll fix you some breakfast before you go.” Tomorrow might be Sunday, but once roundup started, it continued seven days a week until it was finished.
“No, I’ll grab a bite at the chuck wagon with the rest of the hands.” Ty stood up and tugged his shirttail out from the waistband of his dress jeans.
“I won’t argue,” Jessy replied, a faintly mischievous gleam in her eyes. “I’ll be glad of the extra sleep.”
“Keep gloating like that and I’ll make sure you’re wide awake before I leave,” Ty declared in a mock threat, peeling off his shirt and tossing it at her.
She caught it easily and detoured to the clothes hamper. “As soon as the twins wake up from their afternoon nap tomorrow, we’ll drive over and have supper with you.”
“No, don’t.”
The firmness in his voice prompted Jessy to pause in the act of depositing his dirty shirt in the hamper. She threw him a startled look. “Why not?”
“Because there is no need for you to drive all the way over there. I’ll be home by nine or ten.” There was an edge to his voice that puzzled Jessy.
“The twins will be asleep by then.” She dropped the shirt in the hamper and closed the lid.
“I expect they will be.” Ty emptied the pockets of his jeans and placed their contents atop the tall dresser, his back angled to her. “Just the same, I prefer that you don’t come out.”
He had left something unsaid, something Jessy had a feeling she wouldn’t like at all. But she needed to be certain.
“Don’t come out tomorrow—or anytime?” Her demand for clarification was close to a challenge.
After the smallest pause, he turned, his glance bouncing off her. “Anytime,” Ty said, a closed-up look to his expression.
The incident with Buck Haskell was behind this; Jessy was certain of it. “Buck Haskell is not going to scare me into hiding,” she declared with force, angered that Ty would even suggest that she should.
“Jessy,” Ty began in a reasoning tone.
“Don’t Jessy me!” she flashed.
As calm and steady as she was by nature, Jessy had a temper that was the match of any man’s when aroused. And Ty knew he had triggered it. He moved into her path, catching her by the shoulders and immediately noting her stiffness.
“Cool down and listen for a minute,” he said.
“Why? I’m not going to like it any better this time.” Jessy glared at him, not backing down an inch.
Ty studied the angry glitter in her eyes, aware that she felt all things passionately—love and hate, joy and grief—but she seldom let it show.
“I don’t often ask you to do something for me. But I’m asking now.” Ty was careful to word it as a request, not an order. “Stick close to headquarters.”
“I won’t be any safer here than at roundup. That rebuilt shoulder of yours is proof of that,” Jessy stated with heat. “At roundup, I would be surrounded by dozens of hands. Here, it’s just me and a bunch of old men.”
Ty couldn’t explain why he felt so strong about this. There was no logic in it. The request was based purely on a gut feeling that wouldn’t stand up under an argument.
“Do you know when you get angry, your eyes flash fire and your lips lay all tight together?” he mused aloud.
“Don’t change the subject, Ty.” The fire in her eyes leapt a little higher.
“Why not?” He shifted a hand to the side of her neck and stroked his thumb over the clean line of her jaw. “I’ve made my request. I’m not going to try to talk you into it. You’ll either agree to it or you won’t.”
Ty bent his head and tested the tightness of her lips. When they failed to soften immediately, he shifted his attention to her cheek and the shell of her ear.
“Give me one good reason why I should agree,” Jessy challenged, but in a voice that suggested she might be open to reason.
“That’s easy,” Ty murmured, smiling as he nuzzled her neck. “Because you love me.” His arms encircled her, molding her T-shirt-clad body to his length.
“That’s not fair.” But Jessy smiled the protest and slipped her own arms around him, spreading them over the corded muscles along his back to increase the closeness.
Pretending to misunderstand, Ty drew his head back to look at her. “You mean you don’t love me?”
“You know very well I do,” Jessy chided, her eyes shining with love as she ran her gaze over his face.
“Good. Because it’s becoming more and more obvious to me that there is nothing under this T-shirt but your skin.” In a silent reinforcement of his statement, his hands glided down the small of her back and over the womanly shape of her firm buttocks and hips.
“And you are wearing way too much.” Her fingers worked to loosen the waist of his jeans.
“We’ll have to do something about that.” At the moment he was more interested in exploring the giving taste of her mouth. There would be time later for the heat and urgency of skin against skin.
Stretched in a limp sprawl with Ty’s warm flank against hers, the bed covers kicked to the foot and a fine sheen of perspiration covering her body, Jessy reveled in the tingling aftermath of their lovemaking. It mellowed the stand she had previously taken.
“I’ve been thinking,” she murmured as an opening.
“So have I.” Ty stifled a yawn. “Three-thirty is sounding earlier and earlier.”
A smile curved the wide edges of her mouth. “Actually I was thinking about something else.” Jessy rolled onto her side to study the craggy male lines of his face. “Roundup will last another two weeks or more. I can’t guarantee I’ll stay close to headquarters that whole time. But if I do leave, I promise I will be extra cautious.”
For a woman who loved open country and the feel of a horse beneath her, it was a major concession, and Ty knew it. Reaching out, he drew her into the hollow of his shoulder.
“I’ll rest easier in my mind knowing that,” he murmured.
Yet her assurance did little to chase away the shadows that lurked at the edge of his consciousness, without shape or identity.
Chapter Nineteen
B
y the end of the first week, the routine had been established. Every morning Ty was up and away at the crack of dawn. Most evenings he returned around ten o’clock. True to her word, Jessy didn’t venture from the Triple C headquarters. But being bound by that promise seemed to increase her restlessness.
Friday morning she stood at the kitchen sink and gazed with longing at the big sweep of country beyond the window. Laura sat on the floor, happily playing with one of her dolls while Trey tore around the kitchen in a release of overabundant energy.
With neither child requiring her attention, Jessy let her thoughts roam where she couldn’t. The summer roundup had shifted its operation north to the Broken Buttes country, an area she knew well.
“I hope somebody remembers to check that hanging valley.” She dipped the oatmeal pan in the rinse water and passed it to Sally to dry. “That old longhorn-cross brindle cow always hangs out there, usually with two or three others.”
Sally stared at her as if she had taken leave of her senses. “What does that have to do with chicken salad?”
“Chicken salad?” Now it was Jessy’s turn to stare in bewilderment.
“Yes. I just asked what you thought about having chicken salad for lunch today.”
“You did?” Jessy said in surprise. “I’m sorry. I guess I was miles away.”
“That’s obvious.” A suppressed smile of amusement carved dimples in Sally’s plump cheeks.
Trey chose that moment to pick a fight with his sister by snatching her doll. The theft evoked the expected response, as Laura screamed an angry, “No!”
With the devil gleaming in his dark eyes, Trey taunted his sister with the doll. When Laura clambered to her feet to snatch it back, Trey took off with it, grinning from ear to ear. Laura turned to Jessy for help.
“Mama, Mama, dolly, dolly,” she wailed, her hand outstretched toward her brother, fingers clutching and unclutching in that familiar gimme-gimme gesture of a child.
“Trey, you give that back to your sister,” Jessy ordered.
With a gleeful giggle, he clutched it tighter and tore out of the kitchen as fast as he could. “Trey Calder, you come back here this minute.” Jessy dropped the dishrag in the sink water, hastily dried her hands on a towel, and ran after the fleeing toddler, leaving Sally to comfort the furious Laura. When she entered the living room, she spotted Trey making a beeline for the den. “Trey Calder,” she called one last warning.
He threw a look behind him and barreled into Chase, who was on his way out of the den. The collision with Chase’s legs knocked Trey to the floor. Seconds after he landed, he broke loose with an ear-splitting shriek.
When Chase crouched down to see how badly the boy was hurt, Trey took one look at him and screamed all the louder. In Jessy’s experience, it was a sure sign that his pride was hurt a lot worse than he was, a fact she confirmed when she arrived.
“He came out of nowhere,” Chase said in regret.
“I know.” Satisfied that Trey had suffered nothing worse than a bruise or two, Jessy picked him up. But he made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her, his whole body stiffening in resistance while he twisted toward the den, screaming for his daddy. “Daddy isn’t here, Trey,” Jessy told him, which brought a freshened cry of anger. In the age-old response of all mothers, Jessy bounced him up and down in her arms and slid an annoyed glance at Chase. “The poor guy hasn’t seen Ty in a week. They are always asleep by the time he comes home.”
“It’s rough on them,” Chase agreed and laid a comforting hand on Trey’s head, but Trey batted it away with his fist. “I was just on my way to Broken Butte. I’ll make sure Ty comes home early today.”
In that split second, Jessy made a decision she would never regret. “I have a better idea. We’re going with you. Give me five minutes to get their things together.”
Thirty minutes later the headquarters of the Triple C was well behind them, and the ranch road to the Broken Buttes area stretched ahead of them in a long tan line. Jessy glanced in the back seat to check on the twins. The drone of the Suburban’s engine had worked its magic, lulling both toddlers to sleep.
“I don’t have to worry about them missing their morning nap,” she said to Chase.
He threw a look over his shoulder and smiled in agreement. “I thought it was awfully quiet back there.”
Facing the front again, Jessy scanned the land on either side of the open road. But one look at the drought-seared earth took any enjoyment from the outing.
“It has to rain soon,” she murmured.
“Not according to the thirty-day forecast,” Chase replied grimly. “At best, we might see an isolated shower.”
“Even that would be better than nothing,” Jessy said with feeling.
Shortly after midmorning they arrived at the gather point. A dust fog swirled around the small herd that had already been collected. A thin film of it drifted into the makeshift camp set up by the motorized cookshack. Parked nearby were a half-dozen pickups and stock trailers hitched behind them. Chase parked alongside one of them and gave Jessy a hand with the twins. The minute Trey spotted the spare horses tied in the shade of the trailers, his excitement knew no bounds.
“G’mpa, horsey.” Trey pointed to them with a look of pure joy.
“Lots of horses,” Chase agreed.
“Trey wide, G’mpa,” Trey asserted with a vigorous nod of his head.
Chase shook his head. “We’ll ride later. Right now your grandpa wants a cup of coffee.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m afraid you’re not quite old enough to be drinking camp coffee.” His mouth crooked in a suppressed smile, but his eyes beamed with a mixture of pride and approval.
He had missed out on being part of Ty’s formative years, but Chase intended to be part of his grandson’s. He liked the idea of passing on the wisdom and range lore he had learned from his father. Chase didn’t fault the way Ty had turned out. Maggie had done a good job of raising him. But Ty didn’t have the same understanding of the land and this life that he would have if he had been raised with its legacy from birth the way Trey would be.
“You see that sky, Trey.” Chase looked up at the vastness of it. “That’s a Calder sky. My daddy told me a long time ago that it takes a big chunk of land to fit under it.”
“Horse, G’mpa.” Trey pointed instead to a pair of riders, pushing a half-dozen cows with their calves toward the gather site.
Chase recognized the short-coupled bay mare and the small rider on its back. Which made the identity of the second rider obvious. “Looks like that’s Quint and your Aunt Cat.”
Trey’s eyes got big with the news. “Kint.”
“Yup. You’ll see him in a little bit. How about some coffee, Joe?” he said to the thirty-year-old cook, a new man by the name of Joe Johns, who had taken over the job from Tucker when he retired a year ago.
Johns was a mountain man, born and raised, and looked the part with his stocky build and bushy beard. Although he was a stranger to the plains country, the Triple C riders had gladly overlooked that flaw the first time they tasted his coffee.
“You want a cup, too, Miss Jessy?” He filled a tin mug for Chase and reached for another.
“Are you kidding?” Jessy smiled. “I would never turn down a cup of your coffee.”
As they drifted away from the cookshack on wheels, cups in hand, Chase told her, “The men have taken to calling him Coffee Joe. As far as they’re concerned, the job is his for life.”
“Let’s hope he agrees.”
Chase sat down on one of the collapsible campstools, but Jessy remained standing, breathing in the familiar roundup smells of horses and cattle, saddle leather, and strong coffee. A scan of the riders holding the gather failed to locate Ty among them, but Jessy was quick to recognize her own father when Stumpy split away to ride into camp with Cat and Quint.
“I saw we had some special visitors this morning.” Stumpy chucked a finger under Laura’s chin, drawing a giggle from her. “Ty never said anything about you coming by this morning.”
“That’s because he didn’t know.” When Laura stretched out her arm to her other grandfather, Jessy handed the child over to him. “Where is he, anyway?”
“He was with me.” Cat pulled a kerchief from her pocket and wiped at the dust film on her face. “He sent us back with the cattle and went to make a sweep through the area by Three Fingers butte. I swear I ate a pound of dust that last mile. It is really dry here, Dad.”
“It’s bad everywhere.” Chase let Trey down to play with Quint and stood up to look northward in the direction of Three Fingers, gripped by an unease he couldn’t name. “I wonder what’s keeping him.”
“If he came across any cattle that found some decent graze, he’ll have his hands full trying to get them to leave it,” Cat replied. “I was just telling Stumpy that if Ty doesn’t show up soon, I’ll ride back and give him some help.”
She had no more than finished her sentence when the distinctive
crack
of a rifle shot sounded in the distance. Chase whipped his head around in instant alertness. After a short pause, it was followed by two more quick shots. On the Triple C, such a spacing of shots meant only one thing—a rider was hurt. It was a sound that chilled Chase all the way to the bone.
“Watch Trey.” He threw the words at Cat. Unaware of dropping the full mug of coffee, he headed for the nearest saddled horse.
Fighting a sick feeling in his stomach, Chase jerked the reins loose and swung into the saddle. Both Jessy and Stumpy were right on his heels. But Chase didn’t waste time waiting for them, leaving camp at a swift canter. Every inch of him strained in anticipation of the next shot that would guide him. In the meantime, he pointed his horse in the direction of the rock butte Cat had mentioned, hoping against hope that he was wrong.
Hoofbeats pounded the ground behind him as Jessy and Stumpy galloped after him. Two more riders came from the east, abandoning the bunch of cows they had gathered.
The rifle cracked again, the sound coming from somewhere ahead of him, but a little to the east. With a twitch of the reins, Chase altered his course. The other riders did the same. All five riders converged on a high knoll and reined in to make use of the land’s vantage point.
“There he is.” An out-of-breath Stumpy pointed to a rider, visible against the skyline about a half-mile away, an upraised arm waving the rifle. Behind him was a riderless horse, its head hanging low and a foreleg raised, suggesting an injury.
It was Jobe Garvey who spoke the words Chase dreaded. “Isn’t that the big bay Ty was riding?” The minute he finished, he froze and shot a quick glance at Chase.
There was no reaction from Chase. With a nod, he signaled everyone forward and led the way, keeping his mount to a strong lope.
Riders were always getting thrown, even the best of them, and Chase ranked Ty among that group. An accident—that was likely what had happened. His horse spooked or stepped wrong. There were a hundred possible scenarios that might have separated Ty from his horse. It didn’t have to be the one that was making his throat go dry.
The waiting rider was another of the Garvey boys. It was the youngest one, Jed, not much more than twenty-four. There was a clear uneasiness about the young man. Chase was quick to identify it in the way the rider had trouble looking him in the eye when Chase pulled up before them.
Instead the Garvey boy focused on his older brother. “I came across Ty’s horse back there.” He gestured over his shoulder. “It looks like he mighta bowed a tendon.”
“Any sign of Ty?” Chase made a scan of the open ground beyond the rider.
“No, sir.” Again the Garvey boy failed to meet his gaze. “I didn’t really expect to.”
Nobody called him “sir,” but it was something else in his tone made Chase stiffen. “Why not?”
“One of the reins is broke. I figure the horse was running and stepped on it.”
Leather creaked as Chase shifted in his saddle to address the rest of the men. “According to Cat, Ty was headed for the Three Fingers. The horse probably threw him somewhere in that area.”
“I don’t think he was thrown, sir,” Jed Garvey ventured hesitantly.
The “sir” business was beginning to annoy Chase. “Why not?” he asked with impatience.
“Because”—he paused and pulled the lame horse forward, turning it sideways—“there’s blood all over the saddle.”
The summer sun had already dried it a dark color. Chase reeled slightly. The sight of the big smear shut off the air from his lung and momentarily robbed him of speech.
Somewhere off to his left, Jessy murmured a pained, “Dear God, no.”
Soft as it was, her voice cracked over Chase like a whip. Immediately he sat tall in the saddle, his big shoulders squaring up. “You ride back to camp, Jessy.”
The crispness of his order wiped the stricken look from her face. “No, I won’t,” she replied in a voice equally firm in its defiance. “I am riding with you to look for Ty.”